21-87Star Wars
Where the Force came from
Lucas watched 21-87 over and over as a film student. He has tied the Force to a line spoken in it, and its number turns up in Star Wars.
Influence
Lines from the avant-garde to the films, forms, movements and stages it fed. Each one says how well it's documented, from a critic's comparison to a director's own words.
Into films you know
21-87
Meshes of the AfternoonLost Highway
The dream that loops back on itself
A woman relives the same afternoon, each time meeting another version of herself. Critics have long traced Lynch's doubled, looping nightmares back to it.
MothlightSe7en
Scratched film opens a blockbuster
Kyle Cooper's twitching, hand-scratched opening titles for Se7en drew on the hand-worked film strips Brakhage spent his life making.
Scorpio RisingMean Streets
Pop songs as a second script
Scorpio Rising scored its bikers with thirteen chart records, each commenting on the scene. Scorsese has credited that idea for the way he uses songs.
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 BruxellesElephant
Real time as a source of dread
Jeanne Dielman watches a routine in full until the smallest change feels catastrophic. Gus Van Sant has named it as a model for the long, patient takes of Elephant.
An Optical PoemFantasia
Abstract animation, uncredited
Fischinger developed designs for Fantasia's opening abstract segment at Disney, then left before it was finished. His name isn't on the film.
Very Nice, Very NiceDr. Strangelove
Kubrick wanted him for the trailer
Kubrick wrote to Lipsett in 1962 to praise Very Nice, Very Nice, then asked him to cut the trailer for Dr. Strangelove. Lipsett said no.
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 BruxellesSafe
A suburban life, held at a distance
Todd Haynes has said he looked to Jeanne Dielman for the style of Safe, another film that watches a housewife's routine from a distance.
A Colour BoxBoogie-Doodle
Paint on film, passed on
Norman McLaren saw A Colour Box in 1935 and studied it closely. Drawing and painting straight onto film became the core of his work in Canada.
7362The Empire Strikes Back
From the optical printer to Hollywood
O'Neill mastered the optical printer on films like 7362, then founded Lookout Mountain Films, which did effects for two Star Wars sequels.
Lichtspiel Opus 1Studies
The screening that started a career
A young engineer watched Ruttmann's painted shapes move in a Frankfurt cinema in 1921 and set out to make abstract films of his own.
Flaming Creatures
Batman Dracula
Use whoever's around, and keep shooting
Warhol went to Jack Smith's shoots, cast Smith as Dracula and borrowed his performers. He credited Smith with how he made films.
Hold Me While I'm Naked
Pink Flamingos
Permission to be tawdry
A teenager in Baltimore saw the Kuchars' 16mm melodramas and decided he could make films too. He has said they mattered more to him than Warhol or Anger.
Dimensions of Dialogue
The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer
A homage with a doll's head
The Quay brothers met Švankmajer's films in 1983 and made a short in his honour the next year, with his name in the title.
Into whole forms
A MovieThe music video
Found footage, cut to a record
Conner was cutting stock footage to pop music in 1958. His later films for Devo, Brian Eno and David Byrne are often counted among the first music videos.
A Study in Choreography for CameraDance for camera
Dance that only exists on film
A dancer starts a move in a forest and lands it in a living room. Three minutes long, it's routinely taught as a founding work of screendance.
SunstoneComputer animation
An artist in the computer lab
Emshwiller made Sunstone with Alvy Ray Smith at the New York Institute of Technology. The Computer History Museum counts it among the most important early computer-animated films.
Into movements and institutions
WaldenAnthology Film Archives
A home for films no one else would show
Besides making diary films, Mekas built the Film-Makers' Cooperative and Anthology Film Archives, which still screen and preserve the avant-garde in New York.
Nitrate KissesNew Queer Cinema
Before the movement had a name
Hammer had been making openly lesbian films for nearly twenty years when New Queer Cinema was named in 1992, the year of Nitrate Kisses.
Into music and the stage
The Exterminating AngelThe Exterminating Angel (opera)
Trapped at dinner, now in song
Thomas Adès turned Buñuel's film into an opera. It opened at the Salzburg Festival in 2016 and went on to Covent Garden and the Met.
Un Chien AndalouIsolar tour
The opening act was a razor
Every show on Bowie's 1976 Isolar tour began with a screening of Un Chien Andalou. He walked on stage as it ended.
Touki BoukiOn the Run II tour
The motorbike with horns
Mory's motorbike, a zebu skull on the handlebars, turned up again on the poster for Beyoncé and Jay-Z's 2018 tour.
The Color of Pomegranates
911
Pomegranates, fifty years on
Tarsem Singh's video for Lady Gaga's 911 restaged the look of Parajanov's film, and put its poster on screen.
Into internet culture
Possibly in MichiganTikTok
A 1983 video finds a new audience
In 2019 a 20-second song from Possibly in Michigan spread across TikTok, where thousands of users lip-synced to it.
RejectedInternet comedy
My spoon is too big
Pirated copies of Rejected spread across the early web, and its lines became catchphrases of the era's deadpan, surreal humour.