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This is the most amusing piece that I found in the Times this weekend, about a real American eccentric named Sidney N. Laverents, a sort of Nancarrow of film who made some great stuff with relatively primitive machinery. I've already emailed this guy to get copies of his videos -- tough going, he emailed me back once claiming to have included an attachment with prices, etc., but it wasn't there, and he's not returned any of my emails since. He's also apparently done some wonderful nature "documentaries" shot in his backyard, kind of doing for snails what Jean Painleve did for sea horses, showing these little hermaphrodites falling in love, procreating, generally going about their business, kind of like Microkosmos with a bolex.
This story was written by Matt Haber, who has a nice blog called www.lowculture.com.
IN the video for OutKast's "Hey Ya!," André 3000 sings and dances, backed by a band of seven digitally replicated Andrés.
The effect may have helped to make the video one of the year's most popular. But to fans of the outsider filmmaker Sidney N. Laverents, the computer graphics trickery looked familiar. Mr. Laverents, an engineer and self-taught film hobbyist, created a primitive version of the same effect in "Multiple SIDosis," a nine-minute film from 1970. Working at home in suburban San Diego, he used a reel-to-reel, two-track Roberts recorder, a retrofitted 16-millimeter Bolex camera and eight musical instruments from his vaudeville days as a one-man band.
The star of the film? The paunchy, middle-aged Mr. Laverents — a square with a comb-over and ample musical talent.
Shot over four years with the help of his third wife, Adelaide, "Multiple SIDosis" went on to win dozens of awards at amateur filmmaker conventions all over the world. In 2000, it became the first amateur work included in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. And now, 34 years after it was shot, a 35-millimeter version (cleaned up by by Ross Lipman, who also has restored films by John Cassavetes and John Sayles) is the centerpiece of "The Wonderful World of Sid's Cinema," a retrospective to be held on Friday at the American Cinematheque in Los Angeles.
A One-Man Band Who Created an Oeuvre
Posted by Brian Stefans at January 28, 2004 04:02 PM | TrackBack