The Occult and Experimental Film
By: Kidist Paulos Asrat
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I occasionally revisit the film discipline that I left several years ago to pursue drawing, painting and textile design.
My saving grace in my non-filmic endeavors was that I was a relative newcomer, although I have been following the arts ever since I got my first camera as a nine-year-old, a Kodak instamatic, and took my first picture: a cropped close-up of a rose. It looked artistic to me - and I still think it is.
I never formally studied painting or drawing. Instead, with my various science-based degrees filed away, I found local artists and craftsmen to teach me the basics, and more. The course prices were right, and the teachers were (still are) savvy, talented artists. They taught evening adult education courses in high-school art studios. They formed arts and crafts workshops. They grouped together in co-ops and collectives. They sold their art (and craft) in temporary markets at summer fairs and winter bazaars. They hung their works on cafe walls and in hotel lobbies. They took on secondary jobs as freelancers at advertising and commercial agencies. They designed flyers and websites for the up-and-coming.
And they stayed away from university art programs, much like what I was doing. They found relative independence from the art world’s perils and pitfalls, which have increased in dimension and brute force in our contemporary world. Government funding has taken on the role of philanthropic families and church and royal commissions of earlier eras, and this sugar-coated charity can put a noose around the fragile artistry of these brave warriors by cutting off promised monies if the artist doesn’t toe the line. The “starving artist” takes on a new dimension in our cruel contemporary world.
Nonetheless, these art warriors found ways to pursue their art and craft in this era which wants printmakers with works destined for gallery walls and not for homes, and landscape painters that depict undecipherable abstractions that only the extremely wealthy can (or wish to) afford.
These art teachers, and artists, were forging their own revolutions, which many times seemed destined for failure. But their very persistence gives unexpected gifts: a painting commissioned by someone who is tired of, and even repelled by, those undecipherable abstractions, and wants an accomplished botanical artist whose rose looks like a rose. A real rose to hang on a living room wall.
I learned from these quiet revolutionaries how to sketch a picture from scratch, and to mix colors precisely, to transform this image into a color and shape-filled wonder, where the blue of the sky had to reveal its temperament, and the thin dark line of a branch evoke a winter’s temperature.
I surprised even myself.
And, when I studied design, I found that patterns on cloth, used for upholstery and wallpaper, were much more inviting, and much more delightful, if we recognize the objects on the fabric rather than wonder if even the shapes, if even the circles and squares, were indeed what we presumed them to be. "Is that a periwinkle or a primrose?" is a legitimate question to ask of something that may not even be a flower, as would be to question the amoeba-like shape which if stretched and prodded might be a circle. Why would I want such esoterism, neither geometry nor nature, in my house, to breathe its alienness into my home? Why would anyone?
But, contemporary design and art that is devoid of recognizable forms is not just from talentless designers, it is also the purpose, and intentional. The program is long and elaborate, and its endgame is to change the world by injecting these incongruities, these obtuse elements, into our homes. The scheme is to purge the West, and its foundations, and to bring on a Brave New Word by destroying fabric filled with birds and trees and flowers and roaring lions, and inoculating it with strange shapes and stranger creatures. The end game, the very end game, is to mastermind a world that replaces God with Satan. The conduits are the form-bereft designers, artists, and craftsmen, who lure these contortions into their works, having rejected their own traditions, their own cultures, their own Western world.
God's perfection is no longer their goal.
This rejection goes further, and deeper, than mere disdain for one’s own Western traditions. Contemporary artists are fascinated by the imprecision of representation because they are taught that way. Contemporary art is the practice of imprecision. And the crafts are no better. Artists and designers teach their disciplines with little emphasis on the craft and more emphasis on the creation.
I developed a theory for why this is.
The last time I ever saw R. Bruce Elder [1], or communicated with him, was about three years after I left, after I quit, my Film/Photography/Media Arts program in Ryerson University, in Toronto. Elder is a decorated, and prolific "experimental" filmmaker, who had a long-standing professorship in Ryerson University. He received Canada's prestigious Governor General's award in Visual and Media Arts in 2007, an award that "represent[s] the most prestigious distinction for artistic merit and outstanding contribution to the visual and media arts in Canada."[2]
Right after my departure from my Ryerson arts program, I still went to Elder's "soirees," monthly events where he would bring together the artistic community in Toronto that had befriended him or followed his work. Sometimes we would have American or European visitors. I met Stan Brakhage there, although by then I was ready to ask questions.
Brakhage was another eminent, and prolific, experimental filmmaker, and American this time. He was Elder's close friend. He visited Toronto one year, from his (then) home in British Columbia. He lived and worked in Boulder, Colorado until a few years before, and came to live in the home province of his then Canadian wife, after divorcing his American wife. His second wife was Elder’s former student, and I can surmise that they met through Elder. I was by then a reluctant ally of experimental filmmakers, and slowly finding my way out. That evening, I got my chance at asking Brakhage my pressing question, and I deigned, in this manner, to criticized the formidable filmmaker. [3]
I asked him why he never showed us clear and articulate images, why he did not define the image for us, and if he did, it was in brief moments, later to dismantle it again, or to obscure it in some way through double exposures, or painting or scratching on the film’s image.
I never got a clear answer from Brakhage. For a brief moment, he was taken aback and didn't seem to know what to say. Then, he deflected my question, re-directing his answer to some other ("related") topic.
I heard about this interaction from Elder, who was somewhat surprised at my boldness, but none too pleased. "So you were asking Stan some questions," he said.
Much later, on about a year later, after I had left the experimental film culture, and no longer attended these soirees, let alone film festivals, I went to a program organized by one of Toronto's independent film organizations, which had invited Elder to speak about his films. I went, I think to make my departure unequivocal, to release me from the psychological and artistic pull, and to hear one last time directly from Elder, one way or another. I let the moment guide me. And there, unplanned, I asked Elder the very same question that I had asked Brakhage and for which I had received no answer. I actually didn't expect an answer this time. I just wanted to present it within a group of people who clearly were enamored with Elder.
The answer?
"Let me just finish this point," said Elder, as though I had interrupted some thought process.
Elder finished his point but never got to mine. I left the lecture as things were wrapping up before the moderator called it over.
I saw (or heard) Elder once after that at a Toronto Film Festival screening. I could hear him talking behind me. I watched the film and never turned back. I left as the credits were rolling. I never went to these film festivals again, and whatever films I watched related to this movement would be on my flat screen courtesy of the local TV box office.
But I wasn’t completely alone.
From: [...]
To: Kidist P. Asrat
Sent: Monday, April 7, 2014 11:15 PM
Subject: Re: Credit
…Like you I studied film at Ryerson. I can still recall Bruce Elder stopping and starting Red Desert and L'Aventura to point out important moments.Surely you also studied the late Stan Brakhage. Bruce loved that man.
Cheers!
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From: Kidist
To: [...]
Sent: Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 3:45 PM
Subject: Re: Credit
Dear [...],
Sorry to get back to you late. I cannot "unsubscribe" you at the moment, but I'm looking up how to and hope to do so soon.
...
Yes, I had Bruce Elder. He was an odd fellow, and to be honest, not very artistic. I think that was partly his forceful presence in "experimental" film. He started out as a poet, but failed at that, then turned to film.
I was one of his protege's, but I left the group. I criticized him on several occasions, twice during speeches he was making at public lectures. He could never answer my basic question of "why was he trying to destroy the image" questions. He would thoroughly disapprove my "realist" approach to photography.
I also similarly criticized the big and formidable Stan during one of his visits to Toronto, in Bruce's home, where I was a member of his "round table" group of students, faculty and artists (we met about once a week [Note KPA: this should be once a month] for drinks and discussions). My question to Stan was similar in stance to the one I asked Bruce, of why he was destroying the image. Stan, for a few brief moments, didn't know what to say. I think he deflected the question and talked about something else.
Your photographs are wonderful. You have a beautiful family.
All the best,
Kidist
—---------------------------
From: [...]
To: Kidist
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2014 10:14 PM
Subject: Re: Credit
No rush. Thanks.
p.s. I must contact a friend who now lives in Montreal and tell him your thoughts on Bruce Elder. He'll smile. I had Bruce speak at an [...] seminar once. I gave him a simple task, to talk about two television news reports, one American and one Canadian and both reporting on the same story. The news stories took two different views. The news was clearly biased in one or both countries. Bruce veered off into a very weird talk that literally emptied the auditorium. Hundreds fled his talk. I laugh now but I was the seminar chair and it was an awful moment.
Cheers!
—---------------------------------
From: Kidist
To: [...]
Sent: Saturday, May 3, 2014 at 07:17:02 PM GMT+3
Subject: Re: Credit
Dear [...],
...
Thanks for your patience.
Here is one really interesting piece of information proclaimed by The Great Bruce himself:
"Years ago, I used to tell people, only half facetiously, that I was a film maker because I wasn't a creative artist." [4]
More at In Conversation with R. Bruce Elder [4] on "techniques" he developed to make his films (one of which, I should add, [...] is to stand clotheless in front of the camera being "creative" with himself).
He got one other film student, a woman called Izabella Pruska, to take off her clothes and make her "films." Here [5] she is in all her non-glory posing for the Toronto Star.
Here [6] is her Garden of Earthly Delights, which is a clever erotica, a la Elder, where we see flashes of her "delights."They have made porn, basically. The greatest of nudes in classical painting were never so explicit (or subversively explicit).
And here is Pruska's latest: This Town of Toronto [7], with the Elder imprint of layered images that are difficult to decipher, repetitive, and which I call "destruction of the image." And Brakhage's imprint of flowers as erotica. Also, using old (or found) footage is another lazy way out of making films and photographs, as I write here in my recent post Art Thieves.[8]
To make the 8-minute This Town of Toronto, Pruska had funding from the Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre, which receives its funding from various government sources, including Canada Council for the Arts [KPA Note: for this previous sentence, I have added more information, and corrected agency titles] [9]. They never think to fund their own films. Pruska is married to a well-positioned pharmaceutical researcher[10] [...] who I have no doubt has enough money to pay for his wife's "experiments" - (the Elder crowd calls itself "experimental film makers").
Pruska, and MacDonell (artist of Art Thieves) both teach at Ryerson now. The "legacy" lives on.
(Macdonell never took off her clothes, but her Masters thesis, which went into the "festival" circuit, was based on the "found" images of a "burlesque dancer" as she calls it, which is another way of saying "a stripper." [11]
Better label for these filmmakers might be "Subversive porn filmmakers."
Those that Elder couldn't get to declothe, he got them to shoot him in his exposed glory. One woman who filmed him in his many naked works, never worked in film after that [12]. She is now a manager (or producer, or a freelancer) at some video production company.
Elder tried to get me to film him as well, but that was one of the last straws which convinced me to quit his program. I left without finishing my degree at Ryerson (with only one more year to go!).
But, I got my films exhibited around Toronto, as well as my photographs.
I do not miss those days. As Elder said, there was nothing creative about it. I actually call it 'evil." His aim is to get at your "subconscious," and more precisely, your sexual/Freudian subconscious.
Here [13] is a link to his "method" and aim.Brakhage also worked at this "subliminal" level, and essentially destroyed or distorted the image to make his films. But he was clever than Elder. He made "imageless" films by coloring on the film itself. He is really akin to the abstract expressionists, who "splashed" paint all over the canvass, a la Jackson Pollock.
Elder has a new book out (he is a prolific writer, or re-writer I should say), on Dada and surrealism. Both these movements are dead and gone (probably how their founders would have wanted it), but Elder keeps on churning out the Dada and the Surreal.
Here [14] is the link to Dada, Surrealism and the Cinematic Effect, which came out in 2013. Same old, same old. Elder gets grants from the Canada Council and other government agencies to make his films and write his books. He has convinced them such that he can do whatever he feels like, and they give him the money for it.
Here [15] is a google books link if you want to read large excerpts from the book.
This Dada book was funded by:
- The Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences
- Canada Council for the Arts
- Ontario Arts Council
etc.
[Some of the] links below are from my old website, Camera Lucida, so images are missing, but here are a couple of posts I did on Elder when his film The Young Prince" came out.]
- New Books on Art: Beauty, Dissent and Wreckage (April 14, 2009) [16]
- The Destruction of Art by Artists: Comments on Bruce Elder's Film "The Young Prince" (April 25, 2009) [17]
I hope I haven't bored you!
Best,Kidist
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I wrote in the above email:
Brakhage…made "imageless" films by coloring on the film itself. He is really akin to the abstract expressionists, who "splashed" paint all over the canvass, a la Jackson Pollock.
Whereas Elder’s films contain actual images, which were distorted in one way or another, mostly through computerized, and cinematic, techniques.
And in a later post at Reclaiming Beauty, I finally understand the core intent of these "experimental" films, as exposed by Elder himself [18]:
I thought that Elder was showing us what is "out there" as a responsible film professor. And that his prolific writing about such films (and art traditions) was to give us the necessary information and background as students (and artists): part art/film history, part a morality education on what to expect, part critique of a seasoned filmmaker.
And I present my theory:
Elder has written much about the occult in film. And he would introduce us to occult-creating artists and filmmakers, one, Kenneth Anger, who is an outright Satanist.[19]
There is a big gap between presenting these mesmerizing “going to the other side” films, showing us what artists have done and are doing in relation to the occult, and explaining this phenomenon. And Elder was obligated to explain, which he never did.
Elder never said: this is evil, this is the occult, this is playing with the devil, this is satanic.
Instead, impressionable twenty-something-year-olds sat in pitch-black screening rooms with only the focused light of the projector exposing these hidden messages, which would not see the light of day in the light of day.
Elder was grooming these young souls. What else am I to conclude, now, and even then, when I went cold-turkey and quit “experimental film?”
Elder has few followers. Recently, I read about his retirement, and Ryerson University (now called Toronto Metropolitan University) presented a special retirement function for him [20]. I looked at photos and videos of the event. It was surprising how few followers he has. A couple of older/youngish men made eulogizing comments, but I have never heard of them, and clearly they are not “experimental” filmmakers. The audience was sparse, and reminded me of those festiveless film screenings, full of quiet, introverted young filmmakers, who are happier in the darkened room of a movie theater, than out in the open.
So this is the legacy of experimental film. Who in their right mind would, as I spell out in the email correspondence would want anyone or anything to “get at your ‘subconscious?’”
Here is a quote from the preface of the book Harmony and Dissent: Film and Avant-garde Art Movements in the Early Twentieth Century by R. Bruce Elder [21]:
"Vanguard artists in the early twentieth century likewise proposed that a universal transcendent art might come forth, might yet unite the arts, might yet re-enchant the world of nature and even of ordinary objects by treating them as hieroglyphs of an invisible reality, and so sway the mind toward a creator-unity immanent in nature. That new art might yet come forth that could fully express the artist's mind. At the beginning of the twentieth century, cinema seemed to many that most closely approximated this ideal. Furthermore... they believed that since it was a synthetic art that exemplified the best attributes of each of the other arts, it was the Ottima Arte."
This quote sounds innocuous enough, but the whole idea is to bring transcendence without God. A kind of man-made transcendence. Not only that, but to conjure up ways for the viewer of these films to be caught up in this transcendence.
This is the false deity, or the hollow deity, that modern artists proclaims to us.
And it leaves a space, a hole, to allow other deities to full, and to inhabit.
Once again, Elder seems to wash his hands off the implications of this filmic device and strategy, merely appearing to act as the messenger.
And once again, he stops, just there, leaving a vulnerable audience of now matured ex-film students who have graduated from his program with excellence, to sit and contemplate in this undefined black space, which lights up and gives them targeted illumination, and which surely is the guide to a new direction.
And now I believe that like all modern artists who espouse modernism and its implicit rejection of God, Elder has delved into "the other side." [22] And all the while, he was carefully cultivating followers. The occult is encrusted in their realm.
So, what has this, an apparently obscure film movement called “Experimental Film,” to do with our contemporary world, where the ordinary (youngish) man doesn’t sit in darkened movie theaters watching entrancing, flickering, images?
Well, on a more practical, and technical, level, many filmmakers use these techniques (from Wikipedia) [23]:
Though experimental film is known to a relatively small number of practitioners, academics and connoisseurs, it has influenced and continues to influence cinematography, visual effects and editing.
The genre of music video can be seen as a commercialization of many techniques of experimental film. Title design and television advertising have also been influenced by experimental film.
Many experimental filmmakers have also made feature films, and vice versa.
It is fascinating that television advertising comes into the category as a film technique influenced by experimental film.
Advertising captures your soul to sell you something; experimental film, at its most ambitious, captures your soul to sell it to the devil.
Elder has one student, loyal to him to the end. Izabella Pruska (I referred to her above), who was also a student colleague of mine (she left about a year before I joined the program), and who continues on with Elder’s legacy with her own brand of experimental film.
I wrote to the email correspondent:
And here is Pruska's latest: This Town of Toronto, [24] with the Elder imprint of layered images that are difficult to decipher, repetitive, and which I call "destruction of the image." And Brakhage's imprint of flowers as erotica. Also, using old (or found) footage is another lazy way out of making films and photographs, as I write here in my recent post Art Thieves.
The film was shown at a Ryerson University Symposium in 2013: Electric Visions: How DADA and Surrealism Anticipated the Later Avant-Garde." [25]
I continue in the email:
Pruska also had funding from Canada Council to make this 3 minutes 50 seconds piece. They never think to fund their own films. Pruska is married to a well-positioned pharmaceutical researcher, at INC Research [whom I have referred to above], who I have no doubt has enough money to pay for his wife's "experiments" - (the Elder crowd calls itself "experimental film makers")
...
Pruska…teach[es] [26] at Ryerson now. The "legacy" lives on."...
But, more than that, Pruska, who has admitted occult influences had this Instagram correspondence with me and my questions on her uploaded video “Bat Dance” (I haven’t edited any of the conversation, to avoid problems of misrepresenting what Pruska wrote.
I interacted briefly, and publicly with Pruska (in 2023) via her Instagram account, where she posted some short clips of her projects and (real) experiments. [27]
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Kidist:
It looks like you have started a new way to make films.
A couple of questions about your "Bat Dance" video:
Did you "download" the images, or find other ways to incorporate images already out there - e.g. scanning/photo copying, etc.? Or did you create from scratch, through this software all the images?
The software looks like a variation on an animation/image creation software.
Why "bats?" All images tell a story, and I was wondering what this one was.
Is it about death (of the angel/fairy)?Pruska:
Thanks for your comments. This short video sequence is a nod to Loie Fuller’s turn of last century choreography titled Bat Dance. Keeping up the spirit of Fuller’s fluid identities and misidentifications of films documenting “her” perform serpentine dance, which she invented, I am using generative AI software Replicate Deforum that employs Stable Diffusion LLM (I noted this in my comment for this video), which was evidently trained on images of Fuller and others who imitated her dance. So, unlike in my previous film inspired by Fuller, fugitive l(i)ght, in which I used films of her imitators to represent what might have felt like to experience her dance in real life, I am relying on AI and its algorithms (partly influenced by my prompts and settings in the app) or controlled chance and recent issues it has raised around the notions of authorship, authenticity, appropriation and art itself, to return to Fuller and these issues that were already taking root at the turn of the 20th century. This is the main premise of my new film and this and other videos I posted are among some of the tests I’ve been doing. I’m glad to see that this piece spurred these questions for you and I appreciate you sharing them.
Kidist:
So, if I understand correctly, the AI software uses ACTUAL images (videos, moving images) of Fuller’s Bat Dance. And you have programmed these videos/moving images using this AI software through a “chance” codified system - which you call “controlled chance” - that you generated through this AI software, so you can further investigate and to return to issues of art appropriation.
That is actually the least of my concerns, for a variety of reasons, although I believe art, true art, has the least amount of appropriation, and works through individual creation, with of course, clear references and influences - historical/cultural/traditional/etc.
My question is about the CONTENT of the video.
And I repeat it here: Why bats? All images tell a story, and I was wondering what this one was.
Is it about death (of the angel/fairy)?
People and spheres (the moon?) are turning into bats, for example. And these are clearly "night" scenes, although some kind of ethereal light provides a diffuse glow. Is this video to do with some kind of occult transition?Kidist:
I assume by "Fuller’s fluid identities" you may refer to her lesbianism? Why mention that unless you are making a larger point on humanity's "fluid identities" which you may conclude refers to gender-transfers as the larger circle of "post-humanism" where male-to-female-[male] transfer, species-to species transfer, animate object-inanimate object transfer, etc., is part of Fuller’s intentions in her serpentine/bird dances. So, therefore, Fuller is in fact, by your assessment, moving out of humanism, into the occult, in order to disrupt this universe which most of us accept as sacred, not in her manner, in her “religion,” but in the traditional, civilization-building, Christianity. Fuller's art is thus to move us INTO this occult, this domain of the "other world" that the Bible forewarns us about, against. That is possibly her biggest transgression.
Pruska:
I don’t know whether the Instagram is the best place to engage in discussions that require more nuance. However, to quickly answer your first question regarding the occult, I don’t know much about it as it hasn’t crossed paths with my interests. So no, this video has nothing to do with the occult and if it does, it is purely accidental. Put simply, bats are nightly creatures and so moon is naturally present when they fly.
Fuller titled one of her dances Bat Dance, so I am simply nodding to her that’s all. Her other dances were titled after plants and animals, so this title is nothing out of the ordinary and quite consistent with the Art Nouveau aesthetic of that period. Natural world and aesthetics are of interest to me.
Religion is a private matter, in my opinion, and I personally like to keep it that way.
Regarding your second question about Fuller’s fluid identities, this topic is at the heart of her dance and her mythical persona, I meant it in this sense although recent biographical writings on Fuller focus on her sexual identification. I wrote two book chapters on the subject of fluid identities and self abnegation of Fuller, one is in the Oxford Handbook of Screendance. I provide my interpretation of Fuller’s performance in great detail. Instagram is not ideal to have in depth discussions on any subject. We can continue this via email or in person, if you wish.
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I didn’t follow up on this request. My point of this interaction was two-fold - to get precise answers (which I actually did) and to make it public.
I don’t believe Pruska’s answer. Fuller clearly talks about the occult, and refers to the occult, in her “bat” video [28]. A diligent filmmaker like Pruska, even as a new filmmaker when she made the video, would have found something to do with it.
And the fact that Pruska continues with this “bat” legacy in a new film technique, shows that the topic is closer and more explicit to her, than she admits in the email.
Of course, like all misinformation, there may be a kernel of truth - Prusk “didn’t” know (much) then about the bats+night+moon=occult line of analysis when she started out as a neophyte filmmaker.
But now? With her reinterpretation of Fuller’s “bat dance?”
One intriguing slip of the word. I said in the interaction that I accuse Fuller of “ mov[ing] us INTO this occult, this domain of the "other world" that the Bible forewarns us about, against. That is possibly her biggest transgression.”
Pruska replies: “Religion is a private matter, in my opinion, and I personally like to keep it that way.”
A fascinating answer from someone who uses occult imagery, which by now, in her mature artist’s years, knows full well the implications and significance of the occult in religion.
I should have asked if she had used a cross, if that would that have constituted “non-religious” but artistic significance.
Another theory that I am developing is how the occult leads to "’post-humanism’ [and] male-to-female-[male] transfer, species-to species transfer, animate object-inanimate object transfer, etc.” (quote from my above Instagram), and I continue that the “fluid identities” that Fuller espouses, and which Pruska agrees with, is part of the transgender movement, that is charging on in the world, where young children are groomed to think they can become whatever they want, whomever they want.
The occult is part of transgenderism, and transgenderism is part of the occult. Both deny God, God’s universe, God’s creations. And men, and filmmkers, in their supreme arrogance and hubris, now think they can create people in some other image.
This is the implication of these films, these underground “experiments,” these images that catch on in larger theatres, which influence the occult zeitgeist of our brave new world, and where crimes, sins, are committed on children in the name of art, personal freedom, and progress. All in the while keeping religion “private” where the wrath of God can be carefully camouflaged.
And where “art” washes its hands off, Pilate-like, all the while filling our world with these images.
This is the legacy of “experimental” filmmakers, who subversively wait behind the scenes to produce these images, and to subliminally allow them to be played out, where their film methods relay messages that fill our psyche.
If we let them. Which I didn’t.
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Some References:
Ontario Views: Picturing My Canadian Landscape
Reclaiming Beauty: Saving Our Western Civilization