Allures

1961 Directed by Jordan Belson

Allures is a spectacular sequence of moving figures and points, a film which reaches out to the cosmic and the spiritual, where the spatial dimension becomes transcendental.

8 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by ghostdinosaur ★★★★½

This is indescribably delightful. I think I love experiments in structural cinema. At first the smoothness of the animation reminded me of Walter Ruttman's Opus series, which also experiments with abstracted shapes flowing to the sound of music. But soon it incorporates other facets, like experimenting with various colors of flickering screen so intense even I had trouble looking at it the entire time. But look I did, and fell into its hypnotic sway. I loved how this movie made me feel while watching it. It's one of the first avant-garde films that, when it was over, I felt a sadness because I wanted it to keep going. Maybe not forever, but for longer. I am so easily distracted these days that being totally entranced is an enormously welcome feeling.
Review by brotherdeacon

I know, let's put on a play! Oh fuck that, let's dive so deep into graphic motion imagery that we'll stand experimental film on its 1961 ear, and speaking of ear, let's play with electronic lab soundscapes and loops to merge metronomes into mewling mews and hissing physics swishes of kaleidoscopic rhumbas which actually fit our pre-psychedelic optic-gasm rather sweetly. That'll get it.
Review by Jake Martin ★★★★½ 1

I.... I think avant-garde short films are my new thing now.
Review by greencap ★★★½

i absolutely love when stock is extremely freckled so you can see how many frames go into the beautiful animations
Review by connor ★★½

suffers from the structurelessness typified by the majority of Belson’s work—a compilation of various tricks from expanded cinema which are lovely from moment to moment but lose all sense of lasting intrigue due to their failure to cohere into something more than irreconcilable nodes of transcendence
Review by Ash ★★★★★

holy fucking shit this just reshaped my brain. all that negative space, all that black. and those hypnotic kinetic colours. a psychedelic wonderland that's both peaceful and erratic. watch this in the dark! i couldn't blink. wtf. i want to watch it again.
Review by Kenneth Kriheli ★★★★★

"It's all strongly reminiscent of 2001—except that it was made seven years earlier." -Gene Youngblood, Expanded Cinema
Yes this is the third time I've logged Belson's Allures, Samadhi and Light this year and in less than 6 weeks' time and I'm proud of it. Every time I watch and hear them they are genuinely evocative, taking the audiovisual production of animation far beyond just Mickey Mousing. Image and sound correlate and synchronize with one another in a way that was way ahead of its contemporaries and nearly as much so for today's cinema(s). Actually I take that back: Kenneth Anger and Lis Rhodes were and still are alive.
As a film with music (but so is every Belson film) I…
Review by Kyle

Very interesting use of shape, color, and music to make an experimental short
Review by calamityhey ★★★

OOOO back on track, I could luxuriate in these space age swirls and pinwheels all afternoon. Much closer to the avant garde of yester year that I've been screening as of late, but with technique and style that is oh so modern (circa 1961)
Review by sophia 🍄🌿🐝🍊🐛 ★★★★

a solid astral projection show
Review by irequirechocola ★★★★

Nice to bone to.
Review by Justin Zuckerman

Some films are designed to enhance a drug trip. This film is the actual pill

Recent reviews

Review by andrew jacobson

watched for class. accurately anxiety ridden for the events going on currently. it’s beautifully done. electronic disintegration and reconstruction.
Review by bjwwilcera ★★★★

Hehe swirly. Epilepsy warning tho
Review by zTony

wow that hurt my fuckin eyes but i liked it
Review by sophia 🍄🌿🐝🍊🐛 ★★★★

a solid astral projection show
Review by Christian Payongayong ★★★½

EPILEPSY WARNING.
Anyways, those visuals and sounds were so hypnotic (or alluring) and it really felt like an abstract idea is space.
There was also a part that looked like the build up in Space Mountain, so that was cool.
Review by orinow ★★★★½

melodia sfer, święta geometria, iluzje powierzchni, filozoficzna muzyka wizualna, animacja abstrakcyjna, awangarda, NFR,,,
Using an evocative combination of sound and light effects, the film has been described by Belson as the "space-iest film that had been done until then", creating "a feeling of moving into the void"
"I think of Allures as a combination of molecular structures and astronomical events mixed with subconscious and subjective phenomena - all happening simultaneously. the beginning is almost purely sensual, the end perhaps totally nonmaterial. It seems to move from matter to spirit in some way."
lightcone.org/en/film-125-allures
www.centerforvisualmusic.org/Belson/
NFR
Called the master of "cosmic cinema," Jordan Belson excelled in creating abstract imagery with a spiritual dimension that featured dazzling displays of color, light, and…
Review by RED ★★★

my brain
Review by greencap ★★★½

i absolutely love when stock is extremely freckled so you can see how many frames go into the beautiful animations
Review by irequirechocola ★★★★

Nice to bone to.
Review by mollei

orb time
Review by damián ★★★

if UFOs was your brain on jungle mixes, this is your brain on Jeff Mills Live @ Wire
Review by Luka Malthus ★★★½

Cool :)