Stan Vanderbeek
Thursday night, lulabellafp and I went to see an installment in an experimental film festival titled Balagan. The topic last night was one Stan Vanderbeek. The retrospective consisted of several short films, followed by an ad hoc discussion. While Vanderbeek can be viewed as a complete modernist, what I find amusing is that among a certain cross section of the population – those who have not heard of him, but who are avid watchers of Monty Python’s “The Flying Circus,” Vanderbeek’s work will come across as extremely familiar. Check this out, especially the clip titled “extrait1” This is very much like the animated interludes between the Python skits.
While the Python animation was very entertaining, Vanderbeek is trying to achieve something quite formidable – he is taking a great deal of information about contemporary culture and events, all thorough photographs and short movie clips, and to merge them into one impression. His montage breaks down any attempt on the part of the viewer to see a typical sequence of events one would expect in a movie. Once that expectation goes away, the audience is potentially ready for different kind of information, which Vanderbeek provides. I don’t think I will provide commentary for the movies – I have not seen enough of them, and I don’t want to ruin it for those who intend to watch. What I find particularly intriguing is how Vanderbeek, while taking away a great deal of the comfortable and familiar, nevertheless manages to keep the spectator glued to the screen. This is where talent comes in, something without which no work of art can exist, regardless of the sophistication of its ideas and good intentions of the artists.
4:21:20 PM 
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