Up Yours Too Guillaume Apollinaire! (1968)
By B.S. Johnson
Made in 1968 at the invitation of the ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts), B.S. Johnson's animated take on Apollinaire's 'Calligrammes' (1918) - precursors of 'concrete' or 'visual' poetry - is both a cheeky two-fingered salute to French Modernism, and an irreverent homage to surrealism; a humorous animated take on the calligrams of the famous poet and eroticist. lthough perhaps best known for ground-breaking novels such as The Unfortunates and Christy Malry’s Own Double-Entry, BS Johnson was also the director a number of a number of extraordinary and daring films that have been out of circulation for decades. You’re Human Like the Rest of Them brings these rare and fascinating works - experimental shorts, humorous animation, provocative agitprop and uniquely personal documentaries - together for the first time, revealing Johnson to have been as radical and inventive a filmmaker as he was a writer. From his award-winning 1967 experimental film You’re Human Like the Rest of Them, which was based on his own poem, written in decasyllabics, to his ground-breaking TV films, including The Unfortunates (BBC) and the extraordinary Fat Man on a Beach (HTV), Johnson’s work is fuelled by…
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