Ism Ism
Once thought lost, but recently found and restored by Anthology Film Archives, artist/philosopher Manuel De Landa’s Super 8 Ism Ism captures his truly inspired collage mutations of New York City subway ads during the mid-to-late 70s. Slicing and dicing the perfect faces of models into deviant ghouls, Ism Ism turns the homogenate into the ripening rot of nightmares.
Manuel DeLanda
Director
Also Directed by Manuel DeLanda
The editing strategies parallel the personal relationships depicted, and a mismatched cut is literally only the other side of a mismatched couple. Rarely have sound, image and the spatio-temporal coordinates of narrative illusion been buffeted about so vigorously.
The film consists of five different versions of the same scene.
Insects are tortured in various ways amidst the sounds of screaming.
A noir mostly set in a bathroom stall and stairwell. A private dick trapped in a tight spot. A narrator searching for a way out of the story.
Image and sound by Manuel DeLanda.
My take on New York City crowds. Some effects involve tracking individual faces and a lot of masking work, others use multiple slices of the same shot, offset a few frames, to stretch all moving figures in strange ways.
An experimental film; a digitally filmed video distorted by custom made machine learning algorithms, creating generative fractured city landscapes.
The next chapter in the battle of effects versus porno.
From the 1970s urban interventions on billboards, Ism Ism (1970), to his recent digital manipulation of digital footage, Manuel DeLanda keeps testing the rough edges of perception.
Directed by Manuel DeLanda.
