“Secret Cinema is a growing community of all that love cinema, experience and the unknown. Secret audience. Secret locations. Secret worlds. The time is now to change how we watch films.”

It’s like an elaborate cosplay event, a midnight screening of Rocky Horror and a candle-lit Cinespia cemetery screening picnic got thrown into a blender together with tens of thousands in sponsorship funding from Windows Phone (?!), and the incredible clip above was the result. Yellow snakes, white doves, retina I.D. testing stations, dancers wearing hockey masks, streetside noodle bars, even a passage with artificially-created rain. How I wish we could’ve all been there.

The images below were taken by mike mike mike, found in the Secret Cinema/Blade Runner Flickr Set. More images here.

[via m1k3y]

It’s almost Halloween which mean it’s time to hunker down and finish off putting all those razorblades in the candied apples you bought if you’re going to have them finished in time for the trick-or-treaters. While you’re doing that, you sick, sick bastard, enjoy a few hours of macabre tales on film.

First up we have Eyes Without a Face (Les yeux sans visage) from 1960, directed by Georges Franju and based on the novel by Jean Redon. Eyes Without a Face tells the story of one Doctor Génessier, a surgeon looking to restore the face of his daughter Christiane, disfigured in a automobile accident. To this end the doctor, with the help of his assistant Louise, abduct young women in order to provide a face for transplant. For a film made in 1960 Eyes Without a Face contains what must have been a shocking amount of gore. The scene in which Génessier slowly removes the face of Edna Gruber is still effective in grossing out the squeamish and the slow degeneration of the transplant as Christiane’s body rejects it follows right on its heels. If you only watch one of these films I urge you to watch this one. Wonderfully shot by Eugen Shuftan, alternating between the serene and the grotesque, it’s an under-appreciated classic.

Next is 1977’s Suspiria directed by the one and only Dario Argento. Suzy Bannion, a ballerina from New York, travels to Freiburg to attend a famous ballet school only to discover that it actually houses a coven of murderous witches. What follows is a surreal hallucination of horror movie. Argento’s world is downright insane and his signature use of anamorphic lenses is in full effect. Also present is his pointed use of incredibly vivid primary colors, particularly red which is so bright here that the blood is almost fluorescent. The effect was achieved using the imbibition process utilized by Technicolor, the same process used in movies like The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind. In fact, as well as featuring Udo Kier, Suspiria is also known for being the last film processed using this method. Udo Kier alone should be reason enough to watch this one.

And there it is ladies and gentlemen, your Halloween flavored FAM. Enjoy the holiday and make sure you don’t eat those special, candied apples. They’re for the kids.

You may never experience anything more meditative and calming than this. The short clip below has the amazing ability to turn nervous, fidgety thoughts into a state of pure halcyon, and I’m not the only one who says so! Many people who viewed this irresistibly cute video told me they felt literally mesmerized by the Rabbit Which Did Nothing.

The title is almost perfect. Almost, because the rabbit breaks his zen routine and cleans his paws at about 0:51. Oh, and he disapproves, like rabbits usually do, too. Apart from that small departure from the rule, the rabbit is definitely doing nothing throughout the entire 2:46 minutes. A friend suggests that looping and extending the length of the clip would make it the perfect video to John Cage’s “4’33”.

The only question remaining is whether it’s the mysterious fluffy being in the foreground who is, in fact, the true Rabbit Which Did Nothing.

Elegant finger waves, glass domes, cookie-cutter craters, robots and skyscrapers. What does it all mean? Collage artist Le Corbus‘ striking red/grey palettes, obliquely sinister themes and uncanny retro-future juxtapositions feel like a perfectly-blended mix of punk collage artist Winston Smith, anti-Fascist photomontage artist John Heartfield and Soviet propaganda poster master El Lissitzky. More from when the ’20s met the ’60s, after the jump.

Guest blogger Olga Drenda writes about war crimes and home-made drugs for a living, but it’s fluffy rodents who are her true love. She hails from the land of pierogi, supermodels and death metal bands, and is an editor at seelebrennt.com.

When going on an urban exploration trip, what do you expect to find in an abandoned building? Non-functioning devices, dilapidated furniture, calendars from 1975, some good graffiti on the walls, traces of cybergoth photo sessions. Sometimes you might even come across unexpected peculiarities like a carpet made of adult magazines and empty vodka bottles with rainbow-like, holographic labels (the last two, I’ve seen myself). However, occasionally you find something even more surprising, just like it happened earlier this year in Riga.

Inside a crumbling building (property the Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art), the duo of fashion designers Mareunrol’s, together with Austrian scenographer Rūdolfs Bekičs, light artist Krišjānis Strazdītis and sound designer Kaspars Groševs created an unusual installation called Eden: a road to a luscious forest growing inside the structure. While the building was left unused for years, trees grew there on their own. With the help of Mareunrol’s and team, this abandoned space became a temporary shelter from the constant noise and hum of the outside world. After conquering a labyrinth of claustrophobic, somber corridors, the visitors entered a wild indoor microcosm, an urban garden of Eden.

But Eden isn’t the only indoor forest in existence. Another, completely different example, is Singapore’s Elok House. Constructed by Chang Architects, the “purposely wild”, however paradoxical it may sound, green area inside an utterly modern building is an oasis of foliage within one of the most industrialized cities on Earth.

Even if Elok House may be more designed rebellion than high art, the project is more than a mere decorative garden and and is still worth noticing. The architects indeed endeavored to equip the house with realistic forest qualities. Leaving enough room for plants to grow freely, letting rainwater collect in an indoor pond, covering the interiors with layers of moss is certainly more extreme than what most designers set out to achieve. The smell of wet soil completes the picture. I wouldn’t mind a squirrel or a deer running around, but even without them, the place – aseptic and nobly minimalist on the outside – appears to be alive enough to be called a radical statement of eco-design.

So how do you decorate an indoor oasis? Ayodhya‘s moss table certainly seems fitting – just looking at this photo makes me turn into a forest pixie in my imagination! The table would perfectly match a meal of blueberries and morning dew. And what about music? Apart from field recordings, which appear to be a natural choice when we think about forest surroundings, consider Pyramids and Stars. This little-known, but worthy of attention, music act with its aptly named song makes for a good soundtrack here.

Craig Welch’s short, animated, silent film from 1996 is the story of a strange, reclusive man obsessed with the mechanics of winged flight who one night receives a mysterious visitor in his dark and empty abode. Always in Welch’s animation benefits from a distinct, Edward Gorey inspired look which complements the strange and macabre subject matter quite well. Welch’s protagonist, as well as being enamored of wings, is also someone who has created around him a sphere of perfect and utter control. There is no aspect of his existence that has not been meticulously planned, going so far as to force this exacting mastery over other living creatures that make their way into his world. Whether or not his mysterious guest meant him any ill will is left unspoken but regardless she proves to be his undoing. Indeed it may be that she is more cipher than anything — a metaphor for that which he hopes to attain through all his miniature, bio-mechanical tinkering. However you interpret it, it remains a short journey well worth taking.

Japanese photography studio Neon O’Clockworks, previously mentioned on Coilhouse, recently released a short film titled Déjà Vu. The film features an assortment of complex, theatrical headgear crafted by London-based designer Tomihiro Kono. Influenced by 1920-30s, Dada, Surrealism and Assemblage, the hairpieces are constructed from found objects and vintage materials.

More images of Kono’s intricate hairpieces, wigs, masks and other “head props” can be found at Kono’s site and blog. At the latter, you can find full credits and behind-the-scenes stills from Déjà Vu. Full video, after the jump. [via TwistedLamb]

See also:

• Yaso Magazine
• Manuel Albarran Redux
• I Blame Pierrot For Everything
• Once Upon a Time With Sarah Moon

Didn’t get enough of the heebie jeebies after viewing Ross’s Gimme Pizza post? It’s OK, evil scrambled Fox News is here to help. The mysteriously-titled clip, “auspice,” presents a ghostly double-exposure view of slowed-down Fox personalities, set to an unholy-sounding chorus. The music is not credited, and any help identifying the artist would be appreciated. “I hear a little bit of Diamanda in there at the halfway point,” notes Wobbly, who sent this in.

It’s the perfect companion to this CNN piece, also submitted by Wobbly sometime ago. “Listen to me. I want to tell you something. Come closer. Don’t be upset and don’t get emotional.” Which is scarier, that CNN clip (embed-disabled high-res version posted here for your viewing displeasure), or this FOX clip?

It should be pointed out that this is, perhaps, not the best video to be watching first thing in the morning or, conversely, right before bed. The above is a clip from late 80s maudlin sitcom Full House, jumping off point for the careers of The Olsen Twins and the show partially responsible for convincing America that Bob Saget was not a perverted lunatic. Were that all it would not be here, of course (Zo’s obsession with the program and her unbridled lust for Dave Coulier notwithstanding).

What pushes this into true bizarro territory — and, hence, this post — is the fact that it has been slowed down by an unspecified number of degrees, an effect that one could be argued is overdone, but one that nevertheless is almost guaranteed to produce pure nightmare fuel. This point is made plain when the aforementioned clip turns to some of the program’s musical numbers at about 3:40, turning what appeared at first to be a bad acid trip into twisted, lecherous dreamscape. It’s really quite astonishing. And horrible. Mostly horrible.

Correction: It seems this clip is not from late 80s maudlin sitcom Full House and is, apparently, from some other, Olsen related venture. Apologies to Zo and all the other Full House aficionados amongst our readership.

Malcolm Sutherland’s strange sci-fi short Umbra: the tale of a space man who finds himself on a strange, yet seemingly familiar, planet. Sutherland uses his chosen medium to great effect, achieving a complex range of emotions using rather simplistic characters. Combined with a sparse, haunting soundtrack by Alison Melville and Ben Grossman, it makes for a great five minutes.