News from Brett Ingram of Bright Eye Pictures:

Bright Eye Pictures is thrilled to announce two new exclusive DVD releases for retail, wholesale, and institutional buyers. Just visit the store at our new website: www.brettingram.org

PROMETHEUS’ GARDEN (28 minutes, 1988) is the only film over which legendary stop-motion animator Bruce Bickford maintained complete creative control. Bright Eye Pictures is making PROMETHEUS’ GARDEN available to the public for the first time since its completion two decades ago. The DVD features a commentary track by Bickford, an alternate score by Shark Quest’s Laird Dixon, and the half hour documentary featurette, LUCK OF A FOGHORN: the Making of Bruce Bickford’s Prometheus’ Garden, directed by Brett Ingram.

Synopsis: Inspired by the Greek myth of Prometheus, a Titan who created the first mortals from clay and stole fire from the gods, Prometheus’ Garden immerses viewers in a cinematic universe unlike any other. The dark and magical images of this haunting film unfold in a dreamlike stream of consciousness revealing an unlikely cast of clay characters engaged in a violent struggle for survival. Enchanted forests, animated torture chambers, hamburgers that morph into mythical monsters, and epic battles between giants, fairies, and anachronistic historical figures populate just a small corner of Bickford’s animated universe. Like all Bickford films, Prometheus’ Garden defies description and simply must be experienced. In Clay Animation, film scholar Michael Frierson writes: “Bickford offers us a visionary landscape, a hallucinogenic retreat into magical settings where figure and ground may transform into the other at any moment, enchanted settings in which modern technocrats are easy villains and nature is under siege.” Bickford is an underground artist who has mystified animation critics and inspired generations of animators, while somehow eluding fame. He has been described as the world’s only “outsider artist” working in the medium of animation. He has been recognized as a “genius” by Frank Zappa and countless other iconoclasts. Under employment by Frank Zappa, Bickford relinquished creative control of his work (which was edited and scored by Zappa). Consequently, Prometheus’ Garden is Bickford’s most comprehensive and least compromised vision.

Best known for his collaborations with rock iconoclast Frank Zappa in the 1970s (THE DUB ROOM SPECIAL, BABY SNAKES, THE AMAZING MR. BICKFORD), underground animator Bruce Bickford has influenced generations of artists with his startlingly original vision.

What the critics are saying about PROMETHEUS’ GARDEN:

“Wildly imaginative and morbidly funny” - SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

“Surreal, absurd and metaphorical” - ANIMATION MAGAZINE

“Psychedelic metamorphosis” - ANIMATION WORLD JOURNAL

We are also happy to announce the exclusive release of the new MONSTER ROAD “Collector’s Edition” DVD. This new version features a DVD-9 encode for superior image quality, plus the movie soundtrack by Shark Quest and 45 minutes of extras, including rare Bickford animation and deleted scenes from the documentary. MONSTER ROAD is a feature length documentary exploring the wildly fantastic worlds of legendary animator Bruce Bickford. Tracing the origins of Bickford’s iconoclastic worldview, the film journeys back to Bickford's childhood in a competitive household during the paranoia of the Cold War and examines his relationship with his father, George, who is facing the onset of Alzheimer’s Disease. MONSTER ROAD was directed by Brett Ingram. MONSTER ROAD won “Best Documentary” at the 2004 Slamdance Film Festival, eventually screening at more than 90 festivals around the world and winning sixteen awards, before premiering on Sundance Channel in 2005.

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I recently got in contact with a film maker whom I have a lot of respect for. I discovered during our correspondence that Brett Ingram is not just a documentary maker, but is a great animator in his own right. Brett Ingram (who directed 'Monster Road', the award winning doco about legendary Bruce Bickford) is the animator behind Freak Box (right). I asked Brett to describe his short animation and give our readers a little background information about himself. Here was Brett's response:

"What do a monkey, a robot, and two numbed out teenagers have in common? The symbiotic processes of the idiot box, as it turns out.  Freak Box is a stop-motion satire of the lulling evils of television – an electro-mechanical circus where viewers lose – and find - themselves in the hopelessness of a pixel array constructed by monkeys and robots."

"At the time I made Freak Box, I was freelancing as a sound mixer for documentaries, commercials, and various cable television programs. I also directed a couple of episodes of a “documentary” program about dog breeds on Animal Planet. In my youthful naivety, I was astonished at the level of manipulation of the content by the producers. Each episode was completely formulaic with cinematographers following “style sheets” for uniformity and the whole bit. Network executives constantly challenged my choices in subjects (mainly dog owners) based solely on their appearance or manner of speaking. The whole experience reminded me of a circus, one where monkey minds orchestrate productions carried out by robots to produce homogeneous faces on a screen watched by couch potatoes."

"I became interested in stop-motion animation in film school. Bruce Bickford was invited to our local film festival one year and I was charged with helping him conduct a stop-motion workshop. Watching Bickford gradually animate a morphing head frame by frame over the course of six hours was mesmerizing and left a lasting impression."

"I never received any formal training in animation. Inspired by my brief experience with Bickford, I learned everything by trial and error. Once you understand the basics of stop-motion and how the illusion of cinema works, the rest is an application of imagination and problem-solving skills through endless hours of labor."

"From the beginning it seemed to me that straight character did not fully exploit the creative possibilities of stop-motion as a medium. I was drawn to the surrealism of the Brothers Quay, but found even more inspiration from their acknowledged primary influence, Czech animator Jan Svankmajer. Svankmajer’s work was more original and idiosyncratic, yet his stories and the ideas they communicated were paradoxically more universal. I digested the work of Bickford, Svankmajer, the Quays, and others before experimenting to find my own aesthetic."

Brett Ingram's Website.

See more Surreal Animation on YouTube.

News from Alex Grey:

Adam Jones, the lead guitar and filmmaker of TOOL has been working with Alex Grey on Vicarious, the first music video from TOOL's 10,000 Days album. Scheduled for release shortly before Christmas 2007, the video features Jone's signature surreal and dark dream vision blended with Grey's glimpses into a brighter world. 

Alex Grey
'Net Of Being'
November 10th - December 31, 2007
MICROCOSM Gallery
542 W. 27 St.
4th Floor
NY, NY

Alex Grey is one of 50 artists published in our first book: Metamorphosis.

Brave Destiny The Movie is now available on DVD

63 minutes showing many works by artist participants including HR Giger and a host of others! The film covers the opening reception, the ball,  showing behind the scenes on the work by the artists in putting together this colossal show.
The ball footage features original musical compositions by surrealist composer Peter Dizozza.

$19.98 plus $2 shipping in USA and Canada
$5 shipping worldwide
Payments by check or money order or by Paypal to W.A.H. Center

Send to: WILLIAMSBURG ART and HISTORICAL CENTER, 135 Broadway, Brooklyn, NY 11211

WORLD PREMIER
BRAVE DESTINY THE MOVIE, NOVEMBER 2007

Cocktails, buffet dinner and film showing, where it all happened – the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center, Brooklyn, USA. The Brave Destiny show at the Williamsburg Art and Historical Center (WAH Center) was the world’s largest show of living surrealist artists the world has ever seen. It also held the first international Grand Surrealist Ball in the United States, in the tradition of Surrealist balls put on by the Baroness de Rothschild in Europe up until the death of Dali. Many people, including European nobility, flew in from around the world for the one night event.

Imagine five floors of art of the finest international surrealist/visionaries in a French empire mansion in the world’s trendiest artists neighborhood – filled with magnificent art from catacombs to attic by nearly 500 artists! Add on a month of incredible living installations, dance, theater, a fashion show, ballet, and film. An extravaganza never likely to be equaled. This is the documentary.

The man behind Brave Destiny, Terrance Lindall published a long article about Brave Destiny on beinArt.org

Photo credit Joel Simpson