Robert Penn Warren Archive Brings Early Civil Rights to Life

in Education, History, Law, Politics | June 5th, 2012

While an under­grad­u­ate at Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty in Ten­nessee, writer Robert Penn War­ren began writ­ing about the south and its tur­bu­lent racial his­to­ry. He trav­eled through­out the Unit­ed States and inter­viewed men and women involved with the Civ­il Rights Move­ment, record­ing each con­ver­sa­tion on a reel-to-reel tape recorder—a project that result­ed in the 1965 book Who Speaks for the Negro? This month, Van­der­bilt University’s Robert Penn War­ren Cen­ter for the Human­i­ties makes a full dig­i­tal record avail­able of Warren’s research for the book—an impres­sive and well-con­struct­ed col­lec­tion of inter­views with his­tor­i­cal fig­ures includ­ing Ralph Elli­son, James Bald­win and Mal­colm X. The rich­ness of the site is its con­nec­tive design. Each inter­view is tagged by top­ic, includ­ing a subject’s link to broad­er issues or to oth­er inter­vie­wees, mak­ing evi­dent through user expe­ri­ence the com­plex nature of the Civ­il Rights Move­ment. A search for the NAACP, for exam­ple, yields mul­ti­ple inter­views fea­tur­ing dif­fer­ent points of view on the organization’s for­ma­tion along with PDFs of orig­i­nal let­ters and the search­able text of news­pa­per arti­cles about ear­ly NAACP demon­stra­tions. But the site’s audio offer­ings are its most pow­er­ful assets.

The mate­r­i­al offers a potent por­trait of a his­tor­i­cal moment and is rich with ref­er­ences to pol­i­tics, art and spe­cif­ic con­flicts over inte­gra­tion. The group inter­views with uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents and pro­test­ers are worth a lis­ten, both for the con­tent and for the ear­ly 1960s group dynam­ics. When War­ren inter­views men and women togeth­er, men tend to speak first and at most length. But the views expressed are fas­ci­nat­ing, as in one case when a female sit-in par­tic­i­pant gives her opin­ion about assim­i­la­tion.

“My first reac­tion of course would be, think­ing of Socrates: Know thy­self. We do face the prob­lem of amal­ga­ma­tion into the whole of Amer­i­can life, being Amer­i­cans first, say, or being what I would like to term Negro Amer­i­cans or Black Amer­i­cans. I think that we as black men have an oblig­a­tion to know our­selves as black men and be proud of what we are, and con­tribute to Amer­i­ca what we could actu­al­ly offer to this cul­ture.”

Kate Rix is an Oak­land based writer. See more of her work at .

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Mal­colm X at Oxford, 1964

Great Cul­tur­al Icons Talk Civ­il Rights (1963)

MLK’s Omi­nous Final Speech

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Great Violinists Playing as Kids: Itzhak Perlman, Anne-Sophie Mutter, & More

in Music | June 5th, 2012

For most chil­dren the word “play­ing” brings to mind things like wif­fle­ball or hide-and-seek. But for a very few tal­ent­ed and ded­i­cat­ed kids it means Mozart, or Mendelssohn. Today we bring you four videos of famous vio­lin­ists play­ing when they were incred­i­bly young.

Itzhak Perl­man, age 13: “When I came to the Unit­ed States, ” Itzhak Perl­man told Pia Lind­strom of The New York Times in 1996, “I appeared on The Ed Sul­li­van Show as a 13-year-old and I played a Mendelssohn Con­cer­to and it sound­ed like a tal­ent­ed 13-year-old with a lot of promise. But it did not sound like a fin­ished prod­uct.” In the clip above, Perl­man plays from the third move­ment of Felix Mendelssohn’s Con­cer­to in E minor dur­ing his debut Sul­li­van Show appear­ance in 1958. The young boy was an instant hit with the audi­ence, and Sul­li­van invit­ed him back. Encour­aged by his sud­den celebri­ty, Perl­man’s par­ents decid­ed to move from Israel to New York and enroll him in Jul­liard. But despite his pre­coc­i­ty, Perl­man mod­est­ly asserts that he was no child prodi­gy. “A child prodi­gy is some­body who can step up to the stage of Carnegie Hall and play with an orches­tra one of the stan­dard vio­lin con­cer­tos with aplomb,” Perl­man told Lind­strom. “I could­n’t do that! I can name you five peo­ple who could do that at the age of 10 or 11, and did. Not five, maybe three. But I could­n’t do that.”

Anne-Sophie Mut­ter, age 13:

One vio­lin­ist who cer­tain­ly was able to per­form at a high lev­el at a very ear­ly age was the Ger­man vir­tu­oso Anne-Sophie Mut­ter, shown here per­form­ing the Médi­ta­tion from the Jules Massenet opera Thaïs with Her­bert von Kara­jan and the Berlin Phil­har­mon­ic in 1976, when she was 13. Mut­ter began play­ing the vio­lin at the age of five, and by nine she was per­form­ing Mozart’s Sec­ond Vio­lin Con­cer­to in pub­lic. Kara­jan took her under his wing when she was 13, call­ing her “the great­est musi­cal prodi­gy since the young Menuhin.”

Jascha Heifetz, age 11:

Jascha Heifetz was indis­putably one of the great­est vio­lin­ists of the 20th cen­tu­ry. His father, a music teacher, first put a vio­lin into his hands when Heifetz was only two years old. He entered music school in his home­town of Vil­nius, Lithua­nia, at the age of five, and by sev­en he was per­form­ing in pub­lic. At nine he entered the St. Peters­burg Con­ser­va­to­ry, where he stud­ied with Leopold Auer. In this very rare audio record­ing from Novem­ber 4, 1912, an 11-year-old Heifetz per­forms Auer’s tran­scrip­tion of Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart’s Gavotte in G from the opera Idome­neo. It was made by Julius Block on a wax-cylin­der Edi­son phono­graph in Grünewald, Ger­many. Heifetz is accom­pa­nied by Walde­mar Lia­chowsky on piano. At the end of the per­for­mance the young boy’s voice can be heard speak­ing in Ger­man. Rough­ly trans­lat­ed, he says, “I, Jascha Heifetz of Peters­burg, played with Herr Block, Grünewald, Gavotte Mozart-Auer on the fourth of Novem­ber, nine­teen hun­dred and ten.” A week ear­li­er, Heifetz made his debut appear­ance with the Berlin Phil­har­mon­ic. In a let­ter of intro­duc­tion to the Ger­man man­ag­er Her­man Fer­now, Auer said of Heifetz: “He is only eleven years old, but I assure you that this lit­tle boy is already a great vio­lin­ist. I mar­vel at his genius, and I expect him to become world-famous and make a great career. In all my fifty years of vio­lin teach­ing, I have nev­er known such pre­coc­i­ty.”

Joshua Bell, age 12:

The Amer­i­can vio­lin­ist Joshua Bell began play­ing when he was four years old, and made his debut as a soloist with the Philadel­phia Orches­tra when he was 14. The video above is dif­fer­ent from the oth­ers, in that it does­n’t present a pol­ished per­for­mance. Instead, we watch as the leg­endary vio­lin teacher Ivan Galami­an con­ducts a les­son in 1980, when Bell was 12. Bell spent two sum­mers study­ing at Galami­an’s Mead­ow­mount School of Music in the Adiron­dack Moun­tains of upstate New York. In the video, the elder­ly teacher works with Bell as he plays from Pierre Rode’s Etude No. 1.

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Author Flannery O’Connor Captured on Film at Age 5, with Her Chickens

in Literature | June 5th, 2012


In 1961, Flan­nery O’Con­nor wrote an essay called “Liv­ing with a Pea­cock,” which begins like this:

When I was five, I had an expe­ri­ence that marked me for life. Pathé News sent a pho­tog­ra­ph­er from New York to Savan­nah to take a pic­ture of a chick­en of mine. This chick­en, a buff Cochin Ban­tam, had the dis­tinc­tion of being able to walk either for­ward or back­ward. Her fame has spread through the press and by the time she reached the at­tention of Pathé News, I sup­pose there was nowhere left for her to go—forward or back­ward. Short­ly after that she died, as now seems fit­ting.

If I put this infor­ma­tion in the begin­ning of an arti­cle on pea­cocks, it is because I am always being asked why I raise them, and I have no short or rea­son­able answer.

From that day with the Pathé man I began to col­lect chick­ens. What had been only a mild inter­est became a pas­sion, a quest. I had to have more and more chick­ens. I favored those with one green eye and one orange or with over-long necks and crooked combs. I want­ed one with three legs or three wings but noth­ing in that line turned up. I pon­dered over the pic­ture in Robert Ripley’s book, Believe It Or Not, of a roost­er that had sur­vived for thir­ty days with­out his head; but I did not have a sci­en­tif­ic tem­pera­ment . I could sew in a fash­ion and I began to make clothes for chick­ens. A gray ban­tam named Colonel Egg­bert wore a white piqué coat with a lace col­lar and two but­tons in the back. Appar­ent­ly Pathé News nev­er heard of any of these oth­er chick­ens of mine; it nev­er sent anoth­er pho­tog­ra­ph­er.

Now you have the back­sto­ry for the video above — the young girl caught on film, tend­ing to her chick­ens, many years before she wrote “A Good Man is Hard to Find” (lis­ten to her read it here) and oth­er sto­ries. Thanks goes to Josh for flag­ging this for us.…

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This is Coffee!: A 1961 Tribute to Our Favorite Stimulant

in History, Life | June 5th, 2012

Water. Cof­fee. Time. It’s those three spe­cial ingre­di­ents that went into mak­ing the tra­di­tion­al cup of Amer­i­can cof­fee. In case you missed that, let me remind you: It’s water, cof­fee, and time. Don Drap­er had noth­ing to do with this 13-minute, nos­tal­gia-induc­ing infomer­cial from 1961. Rather, it’s the work of the Cof­fee Brew­ing Insti­tute, which turned the art of mak­ing cof­fee into a dis­mal sci­ence — that is, until glo­ri­ous Peet’s came around. This clip per­ma­nent­ly resides in the Prelinger Archive, and comes to us via The Atlantic.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every­thing You Want­ed to Know About Cof­fee in Three Min­utes

Jim Henson’s Vio­lent Wilkins Cof­fee Com­mer­cials (1957–1961)

A Rol­lick­ing French Ani­ma­tion on the Per­ils of Drink­ing a Lit­tle Too Much Cof­fee

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Transit of Venus: A Quick Guide to a Last-of-a-Lifetime Event

in Astronomy | June 4th, 2012

Some­thing extra­or­di­nary hap­pens this week. The plan­et Venus will move across the face of the Sun for the last time in our lives.

Tran­sits of Venus occur on a 243-year cycle, with pairs of tran­sits eight years apart sep­a­rat­ed by gaps of 121.5 and 105.5 years. The last Venus tran­sit hap­pened in 2004. The next won’t occur until Decem­ber of 2117. So if you want to see one, don’t put it off! “This is it, folks,” said Robert Naeye, Edi­tor in Chief of Sky & Tele­scope mag­a­zine. “Unless mod­ern med­i­cine comes up with a mir­a­cle to extend human lifes­pans, this tran­sit of Venus will be your final oppor­tu­ni­ty to watch our sis­ter plan­et cross the Sun’s fiery disk as seen from Earth.”

The event will take place tomor­row, June 5, or the next day, June 6, depend­ing on your loca­tion. In North Amer­i­ca the tran­sit will begin tomor­row, just after 6 p.m. East­ern Day­light Time. Because of the great dis­tance between the Earth and Venus, the dura­tion will be far longer than for a Solar eclipse: over six hours.

Here are six tips for mak­ing the most of this last-of-a-life­time event:

1: Read up about it. For a quick and neat­ly orga­nized overview your best bet is astronomer Chuck Bueter’s Tran­sit Of Venus.org. The site includes all kinds of use­ful and inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion, includ­ing the video above.

2: Find out when you can see it from your loca­tion. The inter­na­tion­al non-prof­it group Astronomers With­out Bor­ders has cre­at­ed an extreme­ly handy Web page that will auto­mat­i­cal­ly gen­er­ate a sched­ule of the tran­sit for your loca­tion, based on your com­put­er’s IP address. The site allows you to choose between a sim­ple graph­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion (the default set­ting) or a more detailed data sheet. It even pre­dicts the like­li­hood of cloud cov­er where you are.

3: Pre­pare for safe view­ing. Look­ing direct­ly into the sun can cause severe and per­ma­nent eye dam­age. There are a num­ber of safe ways to view the tran­sit of Venus, but it’s essen­tial that you fol­low the advice of experts. Bueter has pub­lished an overview, “Six Ways to See the Tran­sit.” Rick Fien­berg of the Amer­i­can Astro­nom­i­cal Soci­ety has pub­lished a detailed arti­cle on how to build a “sun fun­nel.” And Doug Dun­can, direc­tor of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado’s Fiske Plan­e­tar­i­um, has cre­at­ed a video explain­ing a very sim­ple way to safe­ly project an image of a solar event onto a two-dimen­sion­al sur­face using a pair of binoc­u­lars.

4: Check for events in your area. If you fol­low the links in step three you should be able to watch the tran­sit on your own, but you might have more fun–and learn more–if you join a group. Astron­o­my clubs, plan­e­tar­i­ums and oth­er sci­ence groups will be host­ing tran­sit-view­ing events around the world. Check your local list­ings or go to the NASA Sun-Earth Day Web site for a com­pre­hen­sive round-up of events across the globe. Just scroll the map on the NASA site over to your own geo­graph­ic region and zoom in.

5: Down­load the app. If you have an Apple or Android device you can down­load a free Tran­sit of Venus phone app that will allow you to send your own obser­va­tions of the tran­sit to a glob­al exper­i­ment to mea­sure the size of the Solar Sys­tem. “In cen­turies past,” writes Steven van Roode of Astronomers With­out Bor­ders, which is orga­niz­ing the project, “explor­ers trav­eled around the globe to time the tran­sit of Venus to deter­mine the size of the solar sys­tem. We invite you to inspire inter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion dur­ing the 2012 tran­sit of Venus by enabling a dig­i­tal re-cre­ation of those glob­al expe­di­tions. The phone app will allow cit­i­zens around the world to wit­ness this rare phe­nom­e­non and to con­tribute their obser­va­tion to a col­lec­tive exper­i­ment to mea­sure the sun’s dis­tance.” Also, Sky & Tele­scope is help­ing peo­ple make the most of the tran­sit by offer­ing free use of its Sky­Week astron­o­my app through June 7. You can down­load it for iPhone or Android.

6: Watch the web­cast. If you are unable to get a clear view of the tran­sit from your location–or even if you are–you should check out either of a pair of live web­casts which will be held dur­ing the event. Astronomers With­out Bor­ders will trans­mit its web­cast live from the Mount Wil­son Obser­va­to­ry in Cal­i­for­nia. The pro­gram will include inter­views with experts and con­tri­bu­tions from ama­teur astronomers, along with video tours of the his­toric obser­va­to­ry and its equip­ment, both antique and state-of-the-art. You can access the Astronomers With­out Bor­ders web­cast here. Anoth­er major web­cast will be broad­cast by NASA from Mau­na Kea, Hawaii begin­ning tomor­row at 9:45 p.m. UTC (Coor­di­nat­ed Uni­ver­sal Time) or 5:45 p.m. East­ern Time. You can access the NASA web­cast here. For a sched­ule of the pro­gram, which will include many videos and inter­views through­out the event, you can down­load a PDF.

British astronomer William Crab­tree, depict­ed observ­ing the 1639 tran­sit of Venus in a mur­al at Man­ches­ter Town Hall, paint­ed in 1903 by Ford Madox Brown.

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A Soft Self-Portrait of Salvador Dali, Narrated by the Great Orson Welles

in Art, Film | June 4th, 2012

The sur­re­al­ism of Sal­vador Dali knew no bound­aries. It went straight from his paint­ings and into his per­son­al life. Every­thing was a spec­ta­cle. The pub­lic loved Dali for it, but jour­nal­ists always wres­tled with his show­man­ship, won­der­ing how to extract seri­ous answers from the man. (Watch Dali toy with Mike Wal­lace here.) And, of course, some­one like Dali posed chal­lenges for biog­ra­phers. Could you make Dali con­form to the con­ven­tion­al bio­graph­i­cal form? In 1970, the French direc­tor Jean-Christophe Aver­ty trav­eled to Spain, to the lit­tle sea­side vil­lage of Portl­li­gat, where he shot a 52 minute doc­u­men­tary called A Soft Self-Por­trait of Sal­vador Dali. Orson Welles nar­rates the film and lay­ers in some tra­di­tion­al bio­graph­i­cal ele­ments. But, oth­er­wise, the film does­n’t both­er try­ing to fit a round peg into a square hole. It embraces Dal­i’s schtick and goes along for the sur­re­al­ist ride. In this sep­a­rate video you can take a tour of Sal­vador Dal­i’s sea­side home.

You can find A Soft Self-Por­trait of Sal­vador Dali per­ma­nent­ly housed in our col­lec­tion 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Dark Side of the Moon: A Mockumentary on Stanley Kubrick and the Moon Landing Hoax

in Film, History | June 4th, 2012

Poor moon-land­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists. Lack­ing the his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al grav­i­tas of JFK assas­si­na­tion con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists or the brazen pseu­do-rel­e­vance of 9/11 con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists, those who believe the Apol­lo 11 mis­sion came out of a Hol­ly­wood back­lot must toil in deep­est obscu­ri­ty. Imag­ine suf­fer­ing from the aching con­vic­tion that the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment, in league with a respect­ed auteur or two, hood­winked the entire world with a few min­utes of blur­ry, ama­teur­ish video and gar­bled walkie-talkie speech — hood­winked the entire world except you, that is. Now imag­ine a Truther and a sec­ond-gun­man obses­sive shar­ing a laugh about all your impor­tant rev­e­la­tions. If indeed you do hold that mankind has nev­er vis­it­ed the moon, make sure you don’t watch usu­al­ly seri­ous doc­u­men­tar­i­an William Karel’s Dark Side of the Moon. In it, you’ll see your ideas fur­ther ridiculed, which would be unpleas­ant — or, even worse, you’ll see them vin­di­cat­ed.

These moon-land­ing con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists offer many alter­na­tive his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tives, and Karel picks a rich one. He pro­ceeds from the ques­tion of how, exact­ly, film­mak­er Stan­ley Kubrick came into pos­ses­sion of the advanced cam­era lens­es he used to shoot 1975’s can­dle-lit Bar­ry Lyn­don. Per­haps NASA, who had the lens­es in the first place, owed Kubrick for cer­tain ser­vices ren­dered six years ear­li­er? Cut­ting decon­tex­tu­al­ized file footage togeth­er with script­ed lines deliv­ered by actors, NASA staffers, and Kubrick­’s actu­al wid­ow, Karel tells an omi­nous­ly earnest sto­ry of how the CIA recruit­ed Kubrick and his 2001-test­ed cin­e­mat­ic crafts­man­ship to “win” the space race, at least on tele­vi­sion. Though lib­er­al­ly pep­pered with small false­hoods and inside jokes for film buffs, Dark Side of the Moon has nonethe­less inad­ver­tent­ly won its share of sin­cere adher­ents, includ­ing self-styled “Speak­er of Truth” Wayne Green. It’s been said many times, many ways: human­i­ty isn’t quite smart enough to effec­tive­ly con­spire, but we’re just smart enough to invent an infini­tude of con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Very First Films: Three Short Doc­u­men­taries

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The “Collapse” of the Sydney Opera House Sails

in Art, Media | June 4th, 2012

Mul­ti-award win­ning Ger­man design col­lec­tive URBANSCREEN spe­cial­izes in large-scale pro­jec­tion on urban sur­faces. Their first great inter­na­tion­al suc­cess was “555 KUBIK — How it would be if a house was dream­ing,” a bril­liant media instal­la­tion using the façade of the Kun­sthalle Ham­burg. This project quick­ly found its way to all major blogs and sites on the Inter­net and gained so much fame that it sur­passed the pop­u­lar­i­ty of lol­cat videos for almost an hour.

This year, URBANSCREEN was com­mis­sioned to trans­form the sails of the icon­ic Syd­ney Opera House as part of Vivid Syd­ney, a fes­ti­val of light, music and ideas. The tru­ly amaz­ing pro­jec­tions explore the sculp­tur­al form of the Opera House and its place as a home for music, dance and dra­ma. The con­clu­sion is not to be missed.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

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The Ghosts of Père Lachaise

in Animation, Music | June 3rd, 2012

Père Lachaise — it’s the ceme­tery of the celebri­ties in Paris. Jim Mor­ri­son, Gertrude Stein, Oscar Wilde, Balzac, Proust, Delacroix, Molière, Yves Mon­tand, and Edith Piaf are all buried there. (Vis­it each grave with this vir­tu­al tour.) So, too, is Frédéric Chopin, who gets chan­neled in this short ani­mat­ed film by Guil­laume Rio and Antoine Colomb. Enjoy.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and we’ll bring intel­li­gent media right to you…

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Allen Ginsberg Reads His Famously Censored Beat Poem, Howl (1959)

in Audio Books, Literature, Poetry | June 3rd, 2012

Before Banned Books Week comes to a close, we bring you Allen Gins­berg’s 1955 poem, Howl. The con­tro­ver­sial poem became his best known work, and it now occu­pies a cen­tral place in the Beat lit­er­ary canon, stand­ing right along­side Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch. Gins­berg first read the poem aloud on Octo­ber 7, 1955, to a crowd of about 150 at San Francisco’s Six Gallery. (James Fran­co reen­act­ed that moment in the 2010 film sim­ply called Howl.)

Things got dicey when City Lights pub­lished the poem in 1956, and espe­cial­ly when they tried to import 520 print­ed copies from Lon­don in ’57. US cus­toms offi­cials seized the copies, and Cal­i­for­nia pros­e­cu­tors tried City Lights founder Lawrence Fer­linghet­ti and his part­ner, Shigeyosi Murao, on obscen­i­ty charges that same year. Nine lit­er­ary experts tes­ti­fied to the redeem­ing social val­ue of Howl, and, after a lengthy tri­al, the judge ruled that the poem was of “redeem­ing social impor­tance.”

Above, we give you Gins­berg read­ing Howl in 1959. It’s also list­ed in the Poet­ry sec­tion of our Free Audio Books col­lec­tion. An online ver­sion of the text appears here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Waters Reads Steamy Scene from Lady Chatterley’s Lover for Banned Books Week (NSFW)

See Pat­ti Smith Give Two Dra­mat­ic Read­ings of Allen Ginsberg’s “Foot­note to Howl”

2,000+ Cas­settes from the Allen Gins­berg Audio Col­lec­tion Now Stream­ing Online

 

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The Best Animated Films of All Time, According to Terry Gilliam

in Animation, Film | June 1st, 2012

Ter­ry Gilliam knows some­thing about ani­ma­tion. For years, he pro­duced won­der­ful ani­ma­tions for Mon­ty Python (watch his cutout ani­ma­tion primer here) , cre­at­ing the open­ing cred­its and dis­tinc­tive buffers that linked togeth­er the off­beat com­e­dy sketch­es. Giv­en these bona fides, you don’t want to miss Gilliam’s list, The 10 Best Ani­mat­ed Films of All Time.

It was pub­lished in The Guardian back in 2001, before the advent of YouTube, which makes things feel a lit­tle spare. So, today, we’re reviv­ing Gilliam’s list and adding some videos to the mix. Above, we start with The Mas­cot, a 1934 film by the Russ­ian ani­ma­tor Wla­dys­law Starewicz. The film pio­neered a num­ber of stop ani­ma­tion tech­niques, mak­ing it a sem­i­nal film in the his­to­ry of ani­ma­tion. About Starewicz’s film, Gilliam wrote:

His work is absolute­ly breath­tak­ing, sur­re­al, inven­tive and extra­or­di­nary, encom­pass­ing every­thing that Jan Svankma­jer, Waler­ian Borow­czyk and the Quay Broth­ers [see below] would do sub­se­quent­ly.… It is impor­tant, before you jour­ney through all these mind-bend­ing worlds, to remem­ber that it was all done years ago, by some­one most of us have for­got­ten about now. This is where it all began.


Tex Avery pro­duced car­toons dur­ing the Gold­en Age of Hol­ly­wood ani­ma­tion, most­ly for Warn­er Bros. and Metro-Gold­wyn-May­er stu­dios, and cre­at­ed some mem­o­rable char­ac­ters along the way — Daffy Duck, Bugs Bun­ny, Droopy dog and the rest. In 1943, Avery ani­mat­ed Red Hot Rid­ing Hood, which amount­ed to a rebel­lious retelling of the clas­sic Lit­tle Red Rid­ing Hood tale. 50 years lat­er, ani­ma­tors ranked it 7th on their list of The 50 Great­est Car­toons. Accord­ing to Gilliam, Avery’s work deliv­ers this:

The mag­ic of Tex Avery’s ani­ma­tion is the sheer extrem­i­ty of it all. The clas­sic Avery image is of some­one’s mouth falling open down to their feet, wham, their eyes whoop­ing out and their tongue unrolling for about half a mile: that is the most won­der­ful­ly lib­er­at­ing spec­ta­cle.… There is also a child­like sense of immor­tal­i­ty and inde­struc­tibil­i­ty in his work; peo­ple get squashed, mashed, bashed, bent out of shape, what­ev­er, and they bounce back. In essence, it is like the myth of eter­nal life.


Dur­ing the mid-1950s, Stan Van­der­beek began shoot­ing sur­re­al­ist col­lage films that, as NPR put it, “used clip­pings from mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers to cre­ate whim­si­cal but point­ed com­men­tary.” If you think this sounds famil­iar, you’re right. It’s pre­cise­ly this approach that sur­faces lat­er in Gilliam’s own work. And if one film pro­vid­ed par­tic­u­lar inspi­ra­tion, it was Van­der­beek’s 1963 film Breathdeath (right above).

 

About Waler­ian Borow­czyk and his 1964 film Les Jeux des Anges, Gilliam writes:

Borow­czyk was a twist­ed man whose films were infused with a unique cru­el­ty and weird­ness. He start­ed out mak­ing extra­or­di­nary ani­ma­tions, grad­u­at­ed to direct­ing clas­sics such as Goto, Island of Love and La B te… Les Jeux des Anges was my first expe­ri­ence of ani­ma­tion that was utter­ly impres­sion­is­tic. It did­n’t show me any­thing spe­cif­ic, just sound and move­ment from which you cre­ate a world of your own.

Jan Svankma­jer is a sur­re­al­ist Czech ani­ma­tor whose work has influ­enced Tim Bur­ton, The Broth­ers Quay, and Ter­ry Gilliam him­self. In his Guardian list, Gilliam points us to one film, Svankma­jer’s stun­ning 1982 clay­ma­tion short, Dimen­sions of Dia­logue, in part because the film “has moments that evoke the night­mar­ish spec­tre of see­ing com­mon­place things com­ing unex­pect­ed­ly to life.”

Based on a short nov­el writ­ten by Bruno Schulz, Street of Croc­o­diles is a 1986 stop-motion ani­ma­tion direct­ed by the Broth­ers Quay, two Amer­i­can broth­ers who migrat­ed to Eng­land in 1969, short­ly after Gilliam, also Amer­i­can born, became a British cit­i­zen. In 2002, crit­ic Jonathan Rom­ney called Street of Croc­o­diles one of the ten best films of all time — sure­ly enough to make you give it a view.

Oth­er films men­tioned in Gilliam’s list, The 10 Best ani­mat­ed Films of All Time, include:

Out of the Inkwell by Dave Fleis­ch­er (1938)

Pinoc­chio by Hamil­ton Luske and Ben Sharp­steen (1940)

Knick Knack by John Las­seter (1989)

South Park: Big­ger, Longer and Uncut by Trey Park­er (1999)

Some films list­ed above will appear in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our big col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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