Bill Brand Circles of Confusion USA, 1974, 15 mins, 16mm

Ian Helliwell Patterns of Interference UK, 2000, 3 mins, video

Paul Sharits Ray Gun Virus USA, 1966, 14 mins, 16mm

The films in this list are broadly 'flicker films'– in most cases, they use film frames to generate strobing effects.

See also:
ABSTRACTION

BILL BRAND
CIRCLES OF CONFUSION
USA, 1974, Sound, Colour, 15 mins, 16mm.
Circles of Confusion uses as its image three central elements of the analytic cinema, the hot spot, the screen and flicker. The film is seen as pulsating and flickering circles of coloured light (red, green, blue) which move around the frame. Where they intersect, they display a variety of secondary colours. The film was shot with a hand held camera off a 'Scotch-light' screen which was illuminated by projector light and coloured by separation filters. The term 'circles of confusion' belongs to the physics of lenses, in particular having to do with focus. In this film it refers to focus of my own mental and emotional energies as a system (an irrational system) for organising the elements of the film. Each original roll was shot on a different day trying each day to maintain a different emotional state within myself. The material was then edited into elaborate circles of contradiction derived by riding the crest of an infinitely regressive, irrational thought. The contra-dictions led to utter confusion, and out of confusion to revelation. - B.B.

TONY CONRAD
THE FLICKER
USA, 1966, B&W, sound on tape*, 30 mins, 16mm
(*When ordering, please specify either half track mono version or quarter track stereo version of the 7.5 ips magnetic tape soundtrack.)

'The ultimate to date in the nonobjective film is Tony Conrad's The Flicker. It has only black and white frames... and the resulting strobe effect can cause the illusion of colour, of a spreading of light, and of lacy patterns. Seeing The Flicker will cause one person in every fifteen thousand to have an epileptic seizure.' - Sheldon Reynon, An Introduction To The American Underground Film.

'Right from the top a warning appears on the screen. The spectator is advised that he views what is coming at his own risk. that certain 'hypnotic' and 'psychotic' symptoms may appear...the shocker from producer Tony Conrad is called The Flicker. And then it flickers endlessly. Now black, now white...'-Der Kurier, Vienna.

'The Flicker has been called a sort of visual LSD, including hallucinations...You know a man can be called a bald faced liar simply by being an honest reporter. Some of these cats were sitting staring...as if watching and hearing Beethoven himself play his fifth piano concerto.'- The Evening Star, Washington.

BEVERLY & TONY CONRAD
STRAIGHT AND NARROW
USA, 1970, sound mag stripe, B&W, (with subjective colour), 10 mins, 16mm
'A stroboscopic film of unusual intensity, by the maker of the classic strobe film The Flicker. - Whitney Museum of America Art Announcement.

Straight and Narrow is a study of subjective colour and visual rhythm, although it is printed on black and white film, the hypnotic pacing of the images will cause most viewers to experience a programmed gamut of hallucinatory colour effects. Through the intermediary of rhythm, the maximal impact is drawn from the simplest of universal human images: straight horizontal and vertical lines.

'Set to a strong percussive musical background, rapidly alternating images of black and white straight lines are juxtaposed in precise rhythmic patterns to create specific colours... if you can watch without becoming hypnotised...' - NY Daily News.

'[...] I love 'Straight and Narrow'... as a pure abstraction of feeling, in a Mondrian-mood structured hypnotically mind-changing, at the same time attacking our visual sensibilities and our optic nerves. And we see colours of the MIND exploding and dissolving in straight and narrow fleeting pictures, cubes, lines, rectangles, overcuttings, dissolves, pannings, flickering happenings...'Lil Picard, 'Inter-VIEW'.

IAN HELLIWELL
PATTERNS OF INTERFERENCE
UK, 2000, 3 mins, video
Abstract flicker animation.

IAN HELLIWELL
OPTICAL ACTION
UK, 2004, sound, colour, 4 mins, video
Found Super 8 footage is the basis of this flicker film which has been hand treated with ink and bleach. Every other frame has been coloured with a black marker pen to create the flicker and cracked mosaic effect.

TAKAHIKO IIMURA
SHUTTER
Japan, 1971, sound, B&W, 25 mins, 16mm
"Using two projector speeds and various camera speeds, he (Imura) photographed the light thrown onto a screen by a projector with no film running through it. Because of the disparities between the speeds of the camera and projector shutters, the resulting footage, which he printed first in positive, then in negative, creates a series of flicker effects which are even more powerful than those at the end of Film Strips II...

All in all, the variety of effects SHUTTER creates makes for one of the more interesting of those many works of recent years which have attempted to explore the visual potential of film process and materials." - Scot Macdonald, 1978.

PAUL SHARITS
RAY GUN VIRUS
USA, 1966, sound, colour, 14 mins, 16mm
Although affirming projector, projection beam, screen, emulsion, filmframe, structure, etc., this is not an 'abstract' film. /projector as pistol/time coloured pills/yes-no/mental suicide and then rebirth as projection.'...I really think you have a very fine film there of magnificent subtlety in its byplay with the texture of film and the eye's grain...' - Stan Brakhage.

'The retinal retention of after images is remarkable.'-Emshwiller.

'With films like RGV, LSD may become obsolete.'-MOMA

'...it is not so-called 'Psychedelic Cinema' but it is even more and goes beyond it through Sharit's bright clarification of the media.' - limura.

PAUL SHARITS
PIECE MANDALA/END WAR
USA, 1966, sound, colour, 5 mins, 16mm
'blank colour frequencies space out optically feed-fuse black and white images of one love-making gesture which is seen simultaneously from both sides of its 'space' and both 'ends' of its time/dedicated to frances sharits'-P.S.

'Thanks for the strip-it is that/cut to the bone of some matter that does really concern me: how a man and woman meet nakedly head on among the colours...lovely: I can hardly wait to see the entirety of that vision...' - Stan Brakhage.

'Reminds me very much of the back light ('Go Ko') which illuminates the spirit of Buddha yet no images of Buddha appear, rather several naked bodies. I have never imagined that Go Ko could really occur and illuminate as it does in this film.'- Takahiko Iimura.

PAUL SHARITS
T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G
USA, 1968, sound, colour, 12 mins, 16mm
'starring poet david frank whose voice appears on the soundtrack / an uncutting and unscratching mandala.' - P.S.

'merges violence with purity.' - P. Adams Sitney.

'Surrealist tour de force' - Parker Tyler.

On the '10 best films of 1969'

GUY SHERWIN
CYCLES 1 (aka DOT CYCLE)
UK, 1972-77, sound, B&W, 5 mins, 16mm
Cycles 1 is a flicker film that investigates rhythms of light and sound near the persistence-of-vision and sound thresholds. Made by punching holes into plain leader and using a similarly hand-made soundtrack, the film was subsequently hand-printed through rhythms of fluctuating light. G.S.

STEINA & WOODY VASULKA
NOISEFIELDS
USA, 1974, 12 mins, video
Noisefields is an important example of the Vasulkas' early experiments, a visulization of the materiality of the electronic signal and its energy. Colorized video noise (or snow) is keyed through a circle, producing a rich static sound that is modulated by the energy content of the video.