Altered States
Ken Russell, USA, 1980, 102 min
Audio excerpts from Voile D’Orphée by Pierre Henry

A Harvard scientist conducts experiments on himself with a hallucinatory drug and an isolation chamber that may be causing him to regress genetically. – IMDb

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On le met en relation avec le Cerveau Mystique (2006) d’Isabelle Raynauld (on en parlait ici), les Witches’ Cradles (2009) du Center for Tactical Magic (ici), la Hofmann’s Potion (2002) de Connie Littlefield (ici) et la pochette du groupe Godflesh pour l’album ‘Streetcleaner‘ (1989)

Eraserhead
David Lynch, USA, 1977, 89 min

‘Eraserhead is my most spiritual movie. No one understands when I say that, but it is.’ He went on to write about the difficulties he was having making sense of the way the film was « growing » and didn’t know the thing that just pulled it all together. He then reveals it was the Bible that provided the solution:

‘So I got out my Bible and I started reading. And one day, I read a sentence. And I closed the Bible, because that was it; that was it. And then I saw the thing as a whole. And it fulfilled this vision for me, 100 percent.’ – WIKI

La villa Santo Sospir
Jean Cocteau, France, 1952, 35 min

A 35-minute color film by COCTEAU entitled “La Villa Santo Sospir.” Shot in 1952, this is an “amateur film” done in 16mm, a sort of home movie in which Cocteau takes the viewer on a tour of a friend’s villa on the French coast (a major location used in Testament of Orpheus). The house itself is heavily decorated, mostly by COCTEAU (and a bit by Picasso), and we are given an extensive tour of the artwork. COCTEAU also shows us several dozen paintings as well. Most cover mythological themes, of course. He also proudly shows paintings by Edouard Dermithe and Jean Marais and plays around his own home in Villefranche. This informal little project once again shows the joy COCTEAU takes in creating art, in addition to showing a side of his work (his paintings and drawings) that his films often overshadow.