Tag Archives: x-ray

Links, curiosities & mixed wonders – 4

As I am quite absorbed in the Academy of Enchantment, which we just launched, so you will forgive me if I fall back on a new batch of top-notch oddities.

  • Remember my article on smoked mummies? Ulla Lohmann documented, for the first time ever, the mummification process being carried out on one of the village elders, a man the photographer knew when he was still alive. The story of Lohmann’s respectful stubbornness in getting accepted by the tribe, and the spectacular pictures she took, are now on National Geographic.

  • Collective pyres burning for days in an unbearable stench, teeth pulled out from corpses to make dentures, bones used as fertilizers: welcome to the savage world of those who had to clean up Napoleonic battlefields.
  • Three miles off the Miami coast there is a real underwater cemetery. Not many of your relatives will take scuba lessons just to pay their last respects, but on the other hand, your grave will become part of the beautiful coral reef.

  • This one is for those of you acquainted with the worst Italian TV shows. In one example of anaesthetic television — comforting and dull, offering the mirage of an effortless win, a fortune that comes out of nowhere — the host randomly calls a phone number, and if the call is picked up before the fifth ring then a golden watch is awarded to the receiver. But here’s where the subversive force of memento mori comes in: in one of the latest episodes, an awkward surprise awaited the host. “Is this Mrs. Anna?” “No, Mrs. Anna just died.“, a voice replies.
    For such a mindless show, this is the ultimate ironic defeat: the embarassed host cannot help mumbling, “At this point, our watch seems useless…“

  • How can we be sure that a dead body is actually dead? In the Nineteenth Century this was a major concern. That is why some unlucky workers had to pull cadaver tongues, while others tried to stick dead fingers into their own ears; there were those who even administered tobacco enemas to the dead… by blowing through a pipe.
  • What if Monty Python were actually close to the truth, in their Philosphers Song portraying the giants of thought as terminal drunkards? An interesting long read on the relationship between Western philosophy and the use of psychoactive substances.
  • If you haven’t seen it, there is a cruel radiography shattering the self-consolatory I-am-just-big-boned mantra.

  • Man will soon land on Mars, likely. But in addition to bringing life on the Red Planet, we will also bring another novelty: death. What would happen to a dead body in a Martian atmosphere, where there are no insects, no scavengers or bacteria? Should we bury our dead, cremate them or compost them? Sarah Laskow on AtlasObscura.
  • In closing, here is a splendid series of photographs entitled Wilder Mann. All across Europe, French photographer Charles Fréger documented dozens of rural masquerades. Creepy and evocative, these pagan figures stood the test of time, and for centuries now have been annoucing the coming of winter.

X-ray Film

Chris Munger è un regista che ha diretto una manciata di oscuri titoli negli anni ’70. Attorno al 1968, quando era uno studente di cinema all’UCLA, ha diretto questo cortometraggio sperimentale, in seguito distribuito da Pyramid Films.

In un catalogo, il film viene descritto come un “commento cinico sull’ingenuità romantica rispetto ai nostri corpi, in particolare in termini di relazioni amorose”. Il corto è aperto a molteplici interpretazioni, ma non siamo sicuri che sia corretto leggerci tutto questo disincanto; certo, il finale sembra ammonirci sulla reale portata delle nostre intenzioni (davvero è una decisione quella di innamorarsi, o è il risultato di forze biologiche interne di cui non siamo consci?), ma allo stesso tempo ci sembra che le note del compositore olandese Henk Badings, unite alle immagini a raggi X che sondano le profondità nascoste del nostro essere, creino un senso sospeso di meraviglia e di mistero. Il mistero è, appunto, quello dell’uomo in rapporto al suo stesso corpo, dalla nascita all’accoppiamento e alla nuova vita.

Il film è uno sguardo su ciò che resta normalmente occultato alla vista, quasi alla caccia di indizi, di una spiegazione o di un dettaglio illuminante che risultano però impossibili da trovare: il cinismo sarebbe ridurre l’amore all’anatomia, quando l’anatomia non fa altro che aggiungere profondità al suo segreto.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/72703151]