Bringing up a Memory

Thanks to my good buddy and DTLT’s “big toe” Jim Groom, I finally found a long lost video that has been haunting me for about 22 years. You see back in the late 80’s I used to work at a camera shop (MQ Camera) in downtown Syracuse. At lunch time I would go to the public library and look for videos to watch at home. At the time, checking out VHS tapes and CDs was a new phenomenon. One particular videotape was “Salvador Dali – A Soft Self-Portrait” (1967). I re-discovered it thanks to Jim’s tweet regarding UbuWeb. Follow the links if you want to know what UbuWeb is, or see an FAQ.

There was this one scene in particular that was magic (literally) for me. The simplicity of the “trick” was marvelous. It reminds me of what students are doing in DS106 and in other places. Creating interesting videos as experimentation. No one did this quite like Dali, and the whole video provides many great examples.

My memory of this scene has been altered over a 22 year period. I thought that the delivery of the “metallic paper” and the dancing assistant went on much longer. It is rather fleeting. However, that unique dance and hauntingly jaunty music, was strongly etched into my pre-frontal cortex. Thanks to digital archivists such as UbuWeb, I’ll have this memory forever.

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One Response

  1. My mind is officially blown. I love the assistant, but the little dance Dali does as they walk away at the end of the scene is priceless. And the look he gives the audience as the metallic paper mask comes into being. Groovy.

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