Dangerous movies 1

Fluxus / Yoko Ono / Bob Dylan

Movies can be many things: moving, entertaining, funny, informative, experimental, challenging or revealing. But they can also be disturbing, indeed, perhaps even subversive. And in the cases where the directors really take the motion pictures seriously as an art form, the films can even prove to be downright dangerous for those involved, whether they are responsible for the visions being put forward or simply instrumental.

This is the starting point for the series of books - Dangerous films - which begins with the present volume on films related to Fluxus, Yoko Ono and Bob Dylan.

Based on her association with the Fluxus group, Yoko Ono created in the late 1960s and early 70s – alone or together with John Lennon – a series of conceptual and poetic films, where the idea was that the individual work first became full realized in the encounter with the recipient's consciousness. Some of the films were considered provocative by contemporaries. But in a single case, Rape from 1969, the forces of the medium proved to be so strong that they came close to taking power from the directing couple.
The films in which Bob Dylan has been involved since the mid-60s are at first glance less controversial, but in the poet's cinematic masterpiece – the four-hour long Renaldo and Clara (1978) – the personal investment was so skinless that the creator had to , that film art can actually be dangerous to dance with.