Inner Sanctums – the Quay Brothers’ distinguished Blu-ray arrival
It’s been a decade since the British Film Institute released The Quay Brothers – The Short Films 1979-2003 on DVD. In the time passed, the American-born, London-based, identical twin filmmakers Stephen and Timothy Quay have designed operas and plays in Austria, Switzerland, Los Angeles, Amsterdam and London, took the mantel of lead artists for the Cultural Olympiad in Leeds, created animated projections for stage and made eight new films. Thankfully, two of animation’s most influential artists show no sign of slowing pace as they approach their seventieth birthday next year.
With the superior capacity and quality of Blu-ray gradually superseding the DVD, on 10th October the BFI released a beautifully conceived and long-awaited Blu-ray collection entitled Inner Sanctums – Quay Brothers: The collected animated films 1979-2013. For admirers of the Quays’ evocative and masterful animated cinema; this is the ultimate assemblage of their remarkable career. Unlike the singular-disk American Blu-ray, released almost a year ago by Zeitgeist Films, the BFI generously spreads the Quays’ oeuvre and associated materials across two disks, consequently boasting more content than its US equivalent. The 24-piece filmography, here presented in ravishing high definition, plays out chronologically over the two disks and is accompanied by several insightful special features, mostly impossible to watch elsewhere.
In addition to the contents of the 2006 DVD, which compiled classic films such as The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer (1984) and the seminal Street of Crocodiles (1986), the new Blu-ray includes the Quays’ 1989 film Ex-Voto along with several more recent shorts. These are made up of two films characterised by a close dialogue with music and movement, two documentaries about museums, a perfume advert, a festival ident and three animated shorts that viewers will immediately associate with the Quays inimitable style. The new additions feature three UK premieres and five worldwide premieres, with the contents of the Blu-ray coming to a grand five hour total. One of the stand-out films from the new additions is Maska (2010). An adaptation of Polish science fiction writer Stanisław Lem, the film is possibly one of the Quays’ most narrative pieces and features baroque puppets in a tensely seductive tale.
Although billed by the BFI as a ‘comprehensive’ collection, the keen-eyed cinephile will note that there are a handful of the Quays’ initial films still absent from Sanctums, including documentaries made for Channel Four in the early eighties. One can only assume there were issues around licensing or that, due to being deemed relatively primitive compared to later films, the brothers chose to omit them from the official canon. Whilst most of the Stille Nachte music videos are included, other clips made for musicians such as 16 Horsepower, Michael Penn and Sparklehorse are also regrettably absent and perhaps prefer to be gently unremembered by the twins. Lastly, The Metamorphosis, a more recent film from 2012, commissioned by Cité de la Musique in Paris and based on the book by Franz Kafka, is curiously missing but then again it would be out of character for the Quays to reveal all, so appropriately; a sense of mystery prevails.
The Quays’ commercials, which they’ve often referred to as their ‘pact with the devil’, are a necessary duty to pay the bills of the studio and remain some of the most hard-to-find of their creative output. Trawling the internet will unearth some results but included in the Blu-ray is one of the twins’ more accomplished and stylistically pertinent commercials; Wonderwood, a perfume advert for Commes des Garçons which plays to the Quays understanding of wood in all its forms.
Of course beyond the longer playlist, it’s really the quality of picture afforded by Blu-ray that draws people to invest in this kind of release. When I screened a selection of the Quays’ films at the Bristol Festival of Puppetry last year, I showed thirty five millimeter prints from the BFI’s archive. Whilst nothing quite surpasses viewing the Quays’ transfixingly tactile films as projected celluloid, this Blu-ray does come notably close. Some of the films have been recently restored from the original negatives and all transfers have been personally overseen by the Quays themselves which gives the package a certain authenticity. The films call for the viewer to dedicate their time, draw the curtains, sit down with a glass of wine or perhaps a Belgian beer and immerse themselves in the arcane worlds that the Quay Brothers conjure on screen. Seeing the earlier films in high definition gives the viewer an opportunity to notice details and accents that were previously almost indistinguishable and the special features alone practically warrant the purchase.
For years the Quays have remained bathed in an enigmatic mystique and filmed interviews have been few and far between. The special features include the twenty minute introduction from the previous DVD as well as a twelve minute interview made during the production of their first American film Through the Weeping Glass (2011). It’s from this film that producer Edward Waisnis created Behind the Scenes with the Quay Brothers (2013), a unique, thirty minute impression of the Quays’ process. Whilst the documentary itself reads rather like a collection of B-roll footage, lacking much dramaturgy other than a handful of title cards, it does provide an unrivalled glimpse into the Quays’ on-set working methodologies. As orchestral music echoes in the background, we view the Quays invoking their celebrated sculptural lighting and witness how working in unison as twins offers an unspoken spontaneous creativity.
Another highlight, again impossible to find anywhere else, is Quay (2015), an unobtrusive yet revealing portrait of the twins at their London studio, created by Hollywood director and Quay enthusiast; Christopher Nolan. In the film, which tantalizingly only runs to eight minutes, the twins talk candidly about their métiers, materials and motivation and the piece almost follows ‘a day in the life of’ although, in the Quays’ crepuscular fashion, it is nearly impossible to discern dawn from dusk. What is does provide is an intimate glimpse of the filmmakers’ studio and therein the many books, objects and ephemera that line the walls and pile the floors of the hallowed space where virtually all of their films have been shot. The piece also features the Quays posing puppets from their as of yet unfinished feature film Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass which is based on the novella by Bruno Schultz and is rumoured to include more animation than either of their previous feature films. We can only wait with baited breath.
The BFI’s Inner Sanctums – Quay Brothers: The collected animated films 1979-2013
Like the 2006 DVD, the Blu-ray’s packaging and on-screen menus are beautifully designed, emitting a sense of the intensely crafted, Mitteleuropa-inspired cinema within. The accompanying booklet is largely made up of an updated A Quays Dictionary by Michael Brooke which features entries for some of the Quays’ varied and exotic collaborators and inspirations. Though you might need a magnifying glass to read it, the booklet in itself is an investigative source of further research for those hoping to decipher the works and does well to open up a whole range of literary, musical and filmic pathways. The booklet concludes with an entertaining interview in which the twins converse with a somewhat nebulous calligrapher and previously was only available in the catalogue to the Quays’ retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Inner Sanctums is without doubt the most comprehensive collection of the Quays’ films but don’t be fooled into thinking it is the summing up of a concluding career. Aside from the new feature, the Quays are currently working on a new animated short, their second based on the works of Uruguayan writer Felisberto Hernández (1902-1964) and will mark a return to shooting on film, their last 35mm piece being 2000’s In Absentia. Provocative, hypnotic and nuanced, there really is no one else making films like the Quay Brothers, so whether you’re a long-term admirer or a curious beginner, this Blu-ray is both the collectors item and simultaneously, the neophyte’s portal into the Quays’ inner sanctums.
You can purchase Inner Sanctums directly from the BFI.