One of the most fascinating marathon-ish experiences I ever had at a movie theatre — other than the Planet of the Apes quintet screening I attended a loooooong time ago — would be the opportunity to see all five of artist Matthew Barney’s incredible Cremaster movies, over a period of a few days.  (I’ve just searched and found out it was playing from October 31 until November 6, 2004).  Various of the parts had been screening since the late 1990s in venues all over the world, but it took a few years for the whole collection to start making the rounds of museums and cinema art houses.  I doubt that anybody who sat through these movies was ever quite the same afterwards.  Whether one was just glad to have made it through them alive, or was thrilled and intrigued as I was, The Cremaster Cycle is an experience that should be seen by anyone with an eye for the adventurous and a soul that craves to go to unexplored realms.

I can’t even easily give you the gist of what The Cremaster Cycle is about, and those of you who’ve seen it I’m sure would also be similarly flummoxed.   Anatomically speaking, the Cremaster muscle is the muscle that covers the testis, and Barney used the muscle’s normal functioning — to move the testicles higher or lower depending on outside circumstances — as inspiration for the five films, produced from 1994 to 2002, that make up The Cremaster Cycle.  From the first to the fifth film, the thru-line is basically from ascended to fully descended, ala the testicles.  It’s not even crucial (or probably even possible) to know precisely ”what’s going on” when you watch something like the movies which make up The Cremaster Cycle.  They simply ARE — and we just need to let the amazing creativity, visual design and artistic genius lead us to somewhere we’ve never dreamed of, nor could we.  We’re not Matthew Barney, but fortunately he is.

Highly recommended as either an appetizer before watching or after the visual feast of The Cremaster Cycle is a visit to Barney’s Cremaster website, a beautifully laid-out and just plain beautiful journey through each of the individual films, with the official description, photos of Barney’s sculptures for the Cremaster museum experience, rundowns of the various characters, and film clips.  There’s also a well-stocked Matthew Barney fansite called Cremaster Fanatic with some good basic info on the artist and his works.  There’s also a documentary called I Die Daily, by San Francisco filmmaker Matthew Wallin, which covers the production of Barney’s Cremaster films.  (Wallin worked for Matthew Barney on several of the movies.)

The only trouble with deciding to watch The Cremaster Cycle is that is isn’t officially released on DVD.  A very few art collector’s sets were sold at huge prices early on to help finance the project, and various pieces have been let out here and there, but if you go to Netflix, say, and try to find it, you’ll find a section from Cremaster 3, but that’s about it.  A search around the net brings up a few items that will intrigue you, at least, until such time as this remarkable art film hopefully becomes more easily accessible.  It’s probably worth mentioning that while Matthew Barney himself is the key performer in The Cremaster Cycle, a variety of other personalities and performers also appear throughout, including Norman Mailer as Harry Houdini, Ursula Andress as a Queen in the fifth movie, athlete/actress Aimee Mullins,  Irish singer/songwriter Paul Brady, actor/comedian Terry Gillespie, and sculptor Richard Serra in Cremaster 3, and many other bewitching talents.  Also featured in Cremaster 2 are heavy metal musicians Dave Lombardo and Steve Tucker.

So here’s a selection of excerpts.  Enjoy.  Clips below, but you can find the whole forty-minute Cremaster 1 here, a half-hour from 3 here, and search around and you probably can find more.

The Opening from Cremaster 2:

Lombardo and Tucker in Cremaster 2:

Footage of Paul Brady from Cremaster 3:

A section from “The Order” from Cremaster 3:

Some of the “Proscenium Arch” from Cremaster 5:

“A Dance for the Queen” from Cremaster 5:

Here’s a long interview with Matthew Barney prepared for the exhibition of The Cremaster Cycle in Norway:

And this is my favorite character from all the movies, The Loughton Candidate, played by Matthew Barney, from Cremaster 4.