Offon (1968) User Reviews

Questionable Date

[rfnaples · 6/10 · 5 May 2006]

This film may have been released in 1972 but according to the Pacific Film Archive it was 1968--Database ID: 10746, PFA Accession Number: 1604-01-9129.

Apparently a VHS version was copyrighted first in 1967 according to the Pacific Film Archive--Database ID: 7259, PFA Accession Number: 0500-01-7835. This print was loaned to Academy Film Archive for NFPF Millennium DVD project. For PFA exhibition only.

Experimental film by San Francisco cinematographer Scott Bartlett, achieved by feeding material into a color TV receiver; electronic sound accompanies the film.

1968 is the date listed by the Naional Film Registry and the National Film Preservation Foundation.

"If you can't say something nice... don't say nothing at all." (Thumper in Bambi, 1942)

Marrying technologies

[ackstasis · 7/10 · 9 September 2008]

Scott Bartlett's 'OffOn' is nine minutes of pure craziness. It is a full-frontal assault of psychedelic, pulsating, epilepsy-inducing flashing lights and colours, and the first true merging of film and video in avante-garde cinema. There's no story to speak of, but Bartlett uses images of nature – particularly the human face and form – to provoke a sequence of emotional reactions, integrating these biological phenomena into the highly-industrial form of modern technology. In a sense, the film represents the merging of humanity into his tools, his machinery, his technology. This theme connects loosely with the subplot of HAL9000 in Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey (1968),' and, indeed, Bartlett's opening sequence of images – flashing colours before a close-up human eye – recalls Dave Bowman's journey through the Stargate. The visuals are richly-coloured, a confronting blend of sharp, vivid photography and increasingly-grainy video, as though we're sitting too close to a television screen {as a matter of fact, the end product was recorded from a TV monitor}.

There appears to be some confusion about the film's release date. IMDb lists the film as a 1972 release, but both the National Film Registry and the National Film Preservation Foundation give 1968 as the correct year. Perhaps this disparity reflects the time between the film's completion and its first public screening. Either way, the visuals are distinctly ahead of their time, occasionally reminiscent of a 1980s music video, and some brisk techno music wouldn't have gone amiss, either! 'OffOn' captures grainy, fragmented images, presenting life from the warped perspective of a computer processing too much information. I had a thought – and please don't laugh at this free-thinking interpretation – that an extraterrestrial civilisation capturing Earth's television signals might very well receive such a disjointed, alien documentation of human life, a bizarre montage of only vaguely-familiar imagery that couldn't possibly make any coherent sense. Perhaps this is where Mankind, with all his technology, is eventually heading, towards an irreversible merging of film and video, of purity and artificiality.

OffOn offers a weird trippy time in silhouette images so be warned...

[tavm · 5/10 · 31 July 2008]

Just accidentally discovered on YouTube this abstract short of electronic sounds and silhouette images taken from video courtesy of director Scott Bartlett. Really weird images starting with an eye with superimposed objects and nearly ending with faces splitting apart before your eyes. Actually, it's hard to describe anything that happens in between so all I can say is you'll have to see for yourself if you decide to do so. Only in the late '60s-early '70s would you see such stuff on film or television since this was the period when certain drugs were fashionable and these were the kinds of images that possibly resulted from them. So on that note, while OffOn was interesting to watch, I'd only recommended this to anyone who has an open mind about these things, otherwise stay far away...

Very unusual and creative, but not at all compelling

[planktonrules · 3/10 · 28 October 2006]

This is an art film that was either made in 1969 or 1972 (the National Film Preservation Foundation says 1969 and IMDb says 1972). Regardless of the exact date, the film definitely appears to be very indicative of this general time period--with some camera-work and pop art stylings that are pure late 60s-early 70s.

The film consists of three simple images that are distorted using different weird camera tricks. These distorted images are accompanied by music and there is absolutely no dialog or plot of any sort. This was obviously intended as almost like a form of performance art, and like most performance art, it's interesting at first but quickly becomes tiresome. The film, to put it even more bluntly, is a total bore and would appeal to no one but perhaps those who made the film, their family and friends and perhaps a few people just too hip and "with it" to be understood by us mortals.

Too long, even at 9 minutes.

[Art-22 · 3/10 · 18 March 2003]

Nine minutes of psychedelic, pulsating, often symmetric abstract images, are enough to drive anyone crazy. I did spot a full-frame eye at the start, and later some birds silhouetted against other colors. It was just not my cup of tea. It's about 8½ minutes too long.

Fascinating early video/film amalgam is beautiful in a mostly formal sense

[OldAle1 · 8/10 · 21 January 2009]

IMDb lists this as 1972 for some reason, but the other sources I've seen including the excellent program notes mark it as '68. Doesn't really matter, except that it's quite interesting to watch this abstract collage of film and video (one of the first art works to merge the two apparently) in the context of the Star Gate sequence in 2001, released the same year. Pure abstraction isn't really my thing, but I can take it in small doses and the super-saturated optically printed colors and psychedelic feel of this series of flowers, Rohrschach blots, birds, etc is pretty compelling and quite beautiful. Certainly helped paved the way for many other nascent video artists in the 70s, and deserves to be better known.

Experimental film just isn't my thing

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 12 March 2016]

"Off On" is a 9-minute short film directed by American filmmaker Scoott Bartlett and in my opinion it is the outcome of what happens when Brakhage meets Jefferson Airplane. Very colorful, very stylistic, had certainly an alien touch of science fiction to it like filmed in a spaceship. Still, I did not really enjoy the watch. Then again, experimental film isn't my preferred choice at all and I probably even enjoyed it more than I thought I would. It does not make me curious about the rest of Bartlett's work, however, which is admittedly not a lot, also due to his very untimely death. So yeah, if you like experimental film and strange supernatural soundtracks, go for it. Otherwise, just skip it and you will not be missing much.

Riveting viewing

[JohnSeal · 10/10 · 3 October 2010]

OffOn is perhaps best described as a psychedelic Rorschach test: once the eye that introduces the proceedings gives way to filmmaker Scott Bartlett's inventive blend of film and video, you won't be quite sure what you're watching. Some people won't enjoy the experience, but I found this nine-minute journey to the center of my mind a most amazing adventure. Also of considerable note is the music that accompanies the visuals: it's a rhythmic, percussive, and frequently grating example of early electronica that sounds, at times, very similar to the experiments that would be unleashed by Sheffield's Cabaret Voltaire only a few years later. All in all, OffOn is a near perfect film, but sensitive viewers should be aware in advance of the strobing effects used throughout.