Julian Semilian, a film professor at the UNC School of the Arts, and my oldest filmmaker friend as I have written recently, has applied the full-force of his expansive intellect to creating an amazing surrealistic film that he calls “devotees of the precipitate.” The film had its premiere recently at the School in April 2009 at The School. Semilian was given a leave of absence to work on the film, traveling to London to meet with the Brothers Quay, and travel to Prague to film images provided by Jan Svankmajer, a hero to the Brothers Quay and anyone in the world who loves creative animated films.
The 36 minute film is about the life and work of Emuel Dnitsk, someone not found anywhere on the web (except a few references) which is amazing to say the least. He was friends with some of the 20th century’s greatest artists including Man Ray, Bruno Schulz ( a major influence on the Brothers Quay) , and Andre Breton. He was influenced greatly by the work of E.T.A. Hoffman.
The film was produced by “Insubstantial Films” which fits in to the surrealistic title of “devotees of the precipitate.” What do either expressions mean? I guess that is the aim of the film, to cause the viewer to question everything.
The film begins with the statement that it is had been culled from the secret files of Emuel Dnitsk. It also posts the following statement from Dnitsk, “It is unnecessary to unlock anything, so long as you can see below the surface.” The film begins with optical printing over a window that has a small lock on it, showing many things, especially swimming fish and eventually mannequins. ( The Brothers Quay use mannequins to create their amazing animations.) The combination of slowly changing images and surrealistic music, created by Semilian’s wife, Laura Semilian, truly create a trance-like dream state in the viewer, definitely creating an internal world different from the usual TV/Hollywood imagery found everywhere in our culture.
During my almost 40 years as a professional film programmer, I have seen a few other films like this. They are called “experimental” and rely on the same combination of Jungian imagery combined with interesting, abstract music.
One great West Virginia film that combines text with underlying imagery is Robert Gates’ award winning “Communication from Weber.” Weber was a Charleston transplanted artist from California who eventually died from a brain tumor. Gates places various writings of Weber on screen, usually with interviews of him below, or showing his room which was full of his writings and art pieces.
I also thought about great experimental films by people such as Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage who created entire universes of their own, showing the world in completely different ways. I hope that Semilian, or some other film profs at UNC School of the Arts, are able to show some of these artists films in their courses.
Anyone interested in truly creative filmmaking should learn about the films of the Brothers Quay, distributed mainly by Zeitgeist Films in this country. Their films, probably more than anyone else’s, are related to this surrealistic way of thinking about the world.
Hopefully, Semilian, as a great translator/writer himself, will be able to make some of the secret journals of Mr. Dnitsk available. According to statements posted on the screen during the film, Dnitsk had a difficult life, not getting much support from his friends like Man Ray. Near the end of the film, we learn that when he was going to meet with Breton, a chance meeting with a woman caused Breton to miss the meeting.
I have a question for the filmmaker. He says that Dnitsk wanted to create “moving paintings.” During the film we see various paintings of his which are more or less just a bunch of dots and slashes on a canvas. Are these the “moving paintings”?
About the only real facts we learn about Dnitsk is that he started creating around May 1921 and his journals stopped in 1942. Imagery of Holocaust victims must imply that he ended up in a Nazi Concentration camp. He must have been Jewish, and maybe even Romanian, like Mr. Semilian who has translated many books of poetry by great Romanian poets. Amazon.com lists 9 books that are either his translations or include some of his original poetry.
Congrats to Julian and Laura Semilian for creating this provocative new film! I will be sure to let friends at Zeitgeist Films know about this interesting work. Hopefully he will be able to get it shown in many other sites including the annual NY Film Festival progams devoted to similar experimental films called “Views from the avant garde.” Who knows – maybe Al Milgrom will bring Semilian back to Minnesota Film Arts to have a one-time associate present this film.
While watching the film, I thought about Semilian’s years of editing Hollywood films. In this film, we get to see how he believes in doing such creative editing with only himself as master. One believes that we must be watching a living dream, created by a man who has seen the world.
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Very interesting. Thanks for posting this.