Oh, Yoko! There's a tidy little collection of Fluxus films online here at UbuWeb. [via Bitter Cinema]
Starting in the early sixties, Fluxus followed in the footsteps of the Futurist and Dada avant-gardes, going against the established grain of Fine Art and Official Art and promoting imposture as an aesthetic dimension.
Fluxus interdisciplinary aesthetic brings together influences as diverse as Zen, science, and daily life and puts them to poetic use. Initially received as little more than an international network of pranksters, the playful artists of Fluxus were, and remain, a network of radical visionaries who sought to reconcile art with life.
The cinetrix could watch the hypnotic "Smoking" all day long.
You can also find links to films by Man Ray, Kenneth Anger, Guy Debord, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Robert Rauschenberg, Jack Smith, and other avant-garde badasses on the main film page.
Why not start with John Cale's 4'33"? But if you have the time and a fat pipe connection, allow the cinetrix to recommend a personal favorite: animator Harry Smith's Heaven and Earth Magic. Rather than describe it myself, I'll let this guy do the honors because his summary made me laugh:
Harry Smith is either a genius, a nut or both, because this is one of the most fucked-up movies I've ever seen. I actually own a copy, because it's worth having. It's essentially collage-art animation, sort of reminiscent of Max Ernst's Surrealist collage novels, but much more stark and minimalist. The entire soundtrack is nothing but sound effects. It's supposedly a parable for civilization's evolution or something, but I'm not sure how. Still, it's worth seeing.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
