The Definitely Definitive Psychedelic Sangha Criterion Channel Viewing List

Black Moon

Black Moon

Selecting a film from the Criterion Channel’s huge and always changing line-up of classic international and arthouse films can be an intimidating task. To assist your boredom-relief efforts during these quarantine days, Psychedelic Sangha has assembled a short list of worthy works currently available for streaming on Criterion, arranged by theme.


Cinematic Lava Lamps

The Mirror

The Mirror

“Surreal” doesn’t even begin to describe these immersive dream-worlds filled with floating signifiers and amorphous narratives. Glimpses of meaning bubble up and evaporate, always evading your grasp.

L’age d’or (Luis Buñuel, 1930)

Woman in the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964)

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (Jaromil Jireš, 1970)

Fantastic Planet (René Laloux, 1973)

The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1974)

Black Moon (Louis Malle, 1975)

Stalker (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979)


Subversive Sixties

Daisies

Daisies

Free love, radical politics, acerbic satire, and rule-breaking formal experimentation—the delirious, often anarchic energy of the late Sixties is captured here!

Daisies (Věra Chytilová, 1966)

Chafed Elbows (Robert Downey Sr., 1966)

La Chinoise (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967)

I Am Curious—Yellow (Vilgot Sjöman, 1967)

Black Panthers (Agnès Varda, 1968)

Symbiopsychotaxiplasm Take One (William Greaves, 1968)

Teorema (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1968)

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (Paul Mazursky, 1969)

Lions Love (...and Lies) (Agnès Varda, 1969)


Myth, Folklore & Fairytales

Black Orpheus

Black Orpheus

Myths, legends, and tales have been a rich, perennial source for cinematic storytelling (the fact that the stories are all public domain probably doesn’t hurt). Criterion currently offers a nice spread, with stories that ride along the whimsy of the unconstrained imagination, or stories that take worldly (or even underworldly) tribulations and amplify them to epic proportions.

The Thief of Bagdad (Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell & Tim Whelan, 1940)

Jungle Book (Zoltán Korda, 1942)

Beauty and the Beast (Jean Cocteau, 1946)

Orpheus (Jean Cocteau, 1950)

The Ballad of Narayama (Keisuke Kinoshita, 1958)

Black Orpheus (Marcel Camus, 1959)

The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (Karel Zeman, 1962)

Jason and the Argonauts (Don Chaffey, 1963)

Kwaidan (Masaki Kobayashi, 1965)

Kuroneko (Kaneto Shindo, 1968)

Donkey Skin (Jacques Demy, 1970)

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Terry Gilliam, 1988)


Concert Films & Music Docs

Leon Russell tears it up in A Poem Is a Naked Person.

Leon Russell tears it up in A Poem Is a Naked Person.

If you need a musical mood-booster, Criterion’s gotcha covered!

Don’t Look Back (D. A. Pennebaker, 1967)

Monterey Pop (D. A. Pennebaker, 1968)

The Blues Accordin’ to Lightnin’ Hopkins (Les Blank, 1968)

Gimme Shelter (David Maysles, Albert Maysles & Charlotte Zwerin, 1970)

A Poem Is a Naked Person (Les Blank, 1974)

Trances (Ahmed El Maanouni, 1981)

Stop Making Sense (Jonathan Demme, 1984)


Bowie!

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me

David Bowie gets his own category, of course. Right now Criterion offers a few leading roles, a cameo, a film with an iconic scene featuring a Bowie song (Mauvais sang), and another film which pays homage to that iconic scene (Frances Ha).

The Man Who Fell to Earth (Nicolas Roeg, 1976)

The Hunger (Tony Scott, 1983)

Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence (Nagisa Oshima, 1983)

Mauvais sang (Leos Carax, 1986)

Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (David Lynch, 1992)

Frances Ha (Noah Baumbach, 2013)


Trilogies

O Lucky Man!

O Lucky Man!

Only one of these is a traditional trilogy, telling the ongoing story of the same character (Satyajit Ray’s “Apu Trilogy”). Lindsay Anderson’s “Mick Travis Trilogy” is held together by the same character, but is anything but traditional. And the rest are trilogies in an even looser sense: films made during the same period which share common themes. Some were originally conceived together (Kieślowski’s Three Colors), while others were dubbed as trilogies only after the fact, by either critics or the filmmaker.

Rome Open City, Paisan, Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini, 1945-48)

Pather Panchali, Aparajito, Apur Sansar (Satyajit Ray, 1955-59)

L’avventura, La notte, L’eclisse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960-62)

The Milky Way, The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, The Phantom of Liberty
(Luis Buñuel, 1969-74)

The Mick Travis Trilogy: If...., O Lucky Man!, Britannia Hospital
(Lindsay Anderson, 1969-82)

Trilogy of Life: The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights
(Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1971-74)

The Koker Trilogy: Where Is the Friend’s House?, And Life Goes On, Through the Olive Trees (Abbas Kiarostami, 1987-94)

Three Colors: Blue, White, Red (Krzysztof Kieślowski, 1993-94)


Highbrow Binges

Scenes from a Marriage

Scenes from a Marriage

If you’re not already busy reading weighty tomes by Pynchon or Proust, then perhaps you’ll want to sink your teeth into these challenging yet rewarding episodic narratives, ranging in length from about four hours (The Age of the Medici) to over fifteen hours (Berlin Alexanderplatz).

The Human Condition, Parts One, Two & Three (Masaki Kobayashi, 1959)

War and Peace (Sergei Bondarchuk, 1966)

Phantom India (Louis Malle, 1969)

Scenes from a Marriage (Ingmar Bergman, 1973)

The Age of the Medici (Roberto Rossellini, 1973)

Berlin Alexanderplatz (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1980)

Fanny and Alexander (Ingmar Bergman, 1983)

Carlos (Olivier Assayas, 2010)

Anything missing? Any suggestions you’d like to add? Then please leave them in the comments below!



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