Sequoia Films presents: "Sequoia Old Tape"

[Orbited insanitarium]

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I thought this was so brilliant that it deserved it's own topic.
For those who were watching the livestream with me over on GNRST, you know how great this was!

What do we think?

[Quadrivium]

It was amazing for sure. Some very haunting, unsettling visuals that pair greatly with some of the geo tracks. Very impressed

[zeoevil]

It feels like a love letter from one fan to fans everywhere on this their special day.

[NTFMTS]

The slowed down track mukinabaht paired with that video was utterly surreal. Probably my favorite moment from the stream. That or the live song with the Tesla video. It fit so well

[rodox_head]

Telephasic Workshop, A06, Mukhinabaht, The Beach At Redpoint, and Sundown were the big faves for me.

[Negamuse]

Goddamn this is so good.

I kind of wish it started after the Incredible String Band bit, personally, that kind of goes on a long time and stands on its own. But damn, the rest of it is so good and goes to some amazing places, and rarely by route one. Really well done to whoever put this together.

[Negamuse]

Oh actually you know what, the moment I post that some fucked up shit starts happening. Gaah. Well, that's a shame. It's well put together but uh... damn

[Fredd-E]

Oh actually you know what, the moment I post that some fucked up shit starts happening. Gaah. Well, that's a shame. It's well put together but uh... damn

What's that?

[SamuraiDrifter]

Oh actually you know what, the moment I post that some fucked up shit starts happening. Gaah. Well, that's a shame. It's well put together but uh... damn

What's that?

If I had to guess, probably the weird occult ritual with all the swastikas in "Alpha and Omega."

[Orbited insanitarium]

Oh actually you know what, the moment I post that some fucked up shit starts happening. Gaah. Well, that's a shame. It's well put together but uh... damn

What's that?

If I had to guess, probably the weird occult ritual with all the swastikas in "Alpha and Omega."

Oh bugger, didn't notice that.

[NTFMTS]

Yeah not the best stuff to broadcast to an audience, but also I wasn't personally offended because I thought it was silly / stupid imagery. But yea not great

[Twentington]

I wouldn't be put off by 2 minutes of dark imagery, I watched the entire stream and didn't even notice, this whole video is of a premium quality, the Incredible string band and old adverts were most agreeable!

[rodox_head]

I think the Alpha and Omega video was the one that stuck with me the least, only because to me the true music video for that is the one with the nuke testing footage.

[SamuraiDrifter]

Yeah, personally I didn't get the feeling that the swastikas were presented in a light that approved of or glorified them at all. The same segment also included shots from the Vietnam War and the counterculture, and the swastikas themselves were brought out by people wearing comically cheap devil costumes, creating a mixture of almost cartoonish goth kitsch and legitimately horrific symbols.

To me it was kind of giving the same vibe as a lot of Geogaddi, referencing both the good intentions of the counterculture (as an anti-war movement), its childish naivety, as well as its darker side and the times it crossed over into actual evil (for example, how Charles Manson, a participant in the hippie counterculture and former associate of the Beach Boys, ended up founding a cult, and brainwashing those otherwise innocent, searching kids to commit brutal murders to start a race war).

That said I also think it's a totally valid reaction to be angry and unsupportive of someone using a symbol of the systematic murder of millions of people to make an artistic point. That's something that anyone who uses those symbols in their work has to accept - shocking and provoking also means a lot of people are going to understandably be pissed and turned off to anything else you make. It's up to each content creator to decide if that's a risk they're willing to take.

[SamuraiDrifter]

As far as the film itself went, I agree with Negamuse, it should have been about an hour shorter and started after the ISB segment. Don't get me wrong, I've seen and really enjoyed "Be Glad for the Song Has No Ending," but I really did not see the point of just dropping 45 unedited minutes of another movie in there.

After that point, I'd say about a third of the fan films were great, particularly A07, Nothing Is Real, and Pete Standing Alone. A few others had a really good selection of footage accompanying them (like Mukinabaht, Alpha and Omega, and A06), but didn't do much with it besides drop a scene over the track and let it play. And then there were others like Telephasic Workshop and Twoism that didn't hold my attention because not that much was going on (Telephasic, for example, was pretty much just the same animation of breasts flashing around the screen over and over). A couple of the PSAs and commercials were interesting and caught the slightly unsettling vibe that matches BOC's music, but I think they could maybe have done with half as many of them.

So yeah, some cool moments but I definitely would not rewatch the entire thing, and probably not even the rest after the ISB section. I can see myself revisiting a couple of the individual music videos though. That A07 vid deserves its own upload. Probably the best R35TT fan video I've ever seen actually.

[Negamuse]

Well to be honest it was that sequence, which was uncomfortable to watch anyway but I was kinda getting through it because context and everything. I actually fully noped out at what looked to me like throwing a cat into a fire. I'm not going to go back and rewatch it to see if that's what it was, maybe I caught it wrong, I wasn't on it long. Swastikas are... well they've been waved around for shock factor since the war haven't they, I'm not exactly thrilled by that either but too many edgelords have done that since forever (and enough actual nazis are waving it around now) for the way they're using it here to really have the effect I think they're going for.

I get why they've used disturbing images to soundtrack Geogaddi, I get that's some people's response to the album, and the desire to disturb, which it did, as it was supposed to. Shock sites were all the rage 20 years ago when we were all testing our limits and I got pretty early that I'm fine with a lot of messed up things in films but I kind of need to know that what I'm seeing isn't real. Even in fiction, the context of how things are used make me feel a certain way about the choices made by the person making the thing, or in this case, editing it. I get the realism (or the blurring of the realism if it's from fiction, I don't know to be fair), I get that's the point of what they're doing but it feels more like an edgy choice to me than an artistically earned one, even coming after the rest of the film.

Just my opinion on it... I know it's not everyone's. I wouldn't say I am angry really, there's too much real shit going on in the world to be angry at, it just spoiled the thing, for me. My fault for reviewing it before I was half way through it, and I would've deleted my wide eyed "wow this is so cool!" comment rather than post but you can't on Twoism so I didn't want the last thing I said about it to be that.

[SamuraiDrifter]

I totally did not see a cat being thrown into a fire. Not to say it isn't there, but I didn't catch it. Do you remember what track it was accompanying?

[rodox_head]

Well to be honest it was that sequence, which was uncomfortable to watch anyway but I was kinda getting through it because context and everything. I actually fully noped out at what looked to me like throwing a cat into a fire. I'm not going to go back and rewatch it to see if that's what it was, maybe I caught it wrong, I wasn't on it long. Swastikas are... well they've been waved around for shock factor since the war haven't they, I'm not exactly thrilled by that either but too many edgelords have done that since forever (and enough actual nazis are waving it around now) for the way they're using it here to really have the effect I think they're going for.

I get why they've used disturbing images to soundtrack Geogaddi, I get that's some people's response to the album, and the desire to disturb, which it did, as it was supposed to. Shock sites were all the rage 20 years ago when we were all testing our limits and I got pretty early that I'm fine with a lot of messed up things in films but I kind of need to know that what I'm seeing isn't real. Even in fiction, the context of how things are used make me feel a certain way about the choices made by the person making the thing, or in this case, editing it. I get the realism (or the blurring of the realism if it's from fiction, I don't know to be fair), I get that's the point of what they're doing but it feels more like an edgy choice to me than an artistically earned one, even coming after the rest of the film.

I had to double check 'cause I missed it too; it looks like it could have been a dead one, not that that would make it much better, and I'm not even sure if I'm right on that one. I'd be a MASSIVE hypocrite if I went and outright condemned the use of that kind of thing for artistic purposes, but I get your point. It's incredibly easy to stray into the realm of tastelessness, but it was one of the biggest concepts behind the industrial genre as a whole, and I'm not completely on board with some of the stuff Throbbing Gristle put out there. Even NIN recording TDS in the house where Sharon Tate was murdered or The Monkees using footage of the execution of Nguyen Van Lem in "Head" can come off a little iffy today. BoC themselves may not be immune to this either. When you've seen things like footage of a teenage girl hanging herself, cartel executions, or internet culture of 2015-2016, the sacrifice of a cat is somewhat mild to me.

In a weird and twisted sense, I'm kinda glad that I've gotten to see a lot of horrible things like that since I've become not so reactionary to it. It's all horrific to me, don't get me wrong. Honestly, the shot of the guy's crotch was more horrific to me, but that's just my own personal issues.

[rodox_head]

I totally did not see a cat being thrown into a fire. Not to say it isn't there, but I didn't catch it. Do you remember what track it was accompanying?

At the 2:12:15 mark.

[SamuraiDrifter]

Jesus Christ, yep, that's exactly what that is.

That's fucked up.