Retrospective 2015

Gus Visser and His Singing Duck

Theodor Case
USA 1925
2 min
V'15

No matter if the duck in Gus Visser’s arms is actually singing – it clearly does set the tone of the Dutch-born performer’s short vaudeville piece. GUS VISSER AND HIS SINGING DUCK opens the programme entitled “The Animals’ Song”, which focuses on the importance of voices, sounds and music for the way we perceive animals in film. This is also something pioneering underwater filmmaker Jean Painlevé knew about when he added a jazzy soundtrack to his perhaps best known work, LE VAMPIRE (while using the blood-feeding South-American vampire bat as an allegory for the Nazis). Brian Eno contributed the music to Malcolm Le Grice’s avant-garde classic, BERLIN HORSE: the movements of the radiant white horse running in endless circles – while a stable goes up in flames in the superimposed image – increasingly follow the rhythm of the music until image and sound become one. And do you know what a beetle turned on its back sounds like? Just listen to Chen Sheinberg’s CONVULSION!

Credits
35 mm
bw
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