The Image

Posted by Moonage | Filed under Vision

Alberto posted a comment to another post that merits it’s own post entirely. His blurb was brief in the comment, but his post on the topic is excellent. To wit, Bowie appeared in a short film in 1967 with Michael Byrne called “The Image”. This short is described as “a study of the illusionary reality world within the schizophrenic mind of the artist at his point of creativity.” Alberto then describes the movie as such:

This kind of grand statement is, not surprisingly, not fulfilled in the movie, which lurches about confusedly searching for depth, but instead ends up locked in a self-conscious trance. One thing that is good about it is Bowie’s performance as a man come to life out of a painting who haunts the artist who created him. The artist repeatedly attacks Bowie, who, zombie like, revives inexplicably. Bowie’s stage presence and moody posturing inject life into this film without dialogue. In 1983, Bowie described “The Image” as

“an underground black and white avant-garde thing done by some guy. He wanted to make a film about a painter doing a portrait of a guy in his teens, and the portrait comes to life, and in fact, turns out to be the corpse of some bloke. I can’t really remember all the plot, but it was a fourteen-minute short and it was awful.”

Alberto also has a clip from the movie, which at 75 meg, is a bit slow to download, but well worth the wait. It’s a hoot! And Bowie’s right, it’s AWFUL!

Thanks for the link Alberto, most excellent!

UPDATE: March 1, 2007: Rather than blasting Alberto’s bandwidth, thanks to all the video servers out there these days, let’s just watch it here!

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Permalink | November 2nd, 2005

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    • 3 Squawks to “The Image”

    1. Alberto Squawked:
      November 2nd, 2005 at 4:08 pm

      hey Anthony,

      Thanks for the write up! keep an eye out for more Bowie goodies on Audium

    2. Moonage Squawked:
      November 2nd, 2005 at 11:55 pm

      No need for thanks, I greatly appreciate the info. Honestly I do. If you stumble accross any more Bowie oddities, please let me know.
      I track a lot of sites and miss stuff a lot.

    3. Moonage Squawked:
      March 1st, 2007 at 10:42 pm

      Updated post to add the video feed for “The Image”.

    Squawk like a pink monkey bird!