{"id":42320,"date":"2024-01-12T18:52:48","date_gmt":"2024-01-12T23:52:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=42320"},"modified":"2024-01-12T18:52:48","modified_gmt":"2024-01-12T23:52:48","slug":"the-bootleg-files-naked-yoga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2024\/01\/12\/the-bootleg-files-naked-yoga\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: Naked Yoga"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 851:<\/strong> \u201cNaked Yoga\u201d (1974 Oscar-nominated short). <\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> On YouTube and Internet Archive.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> None.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> It fell deep through the proverbial cracks. <\/p>\n

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> Not likely.<\/p>\n

It has been said that the 1970s was the decade that good taste forgot, and that cogent designation is on full display in a 1974 short film called \u201cNaked Yoga.\u201d The film earned a footnote in cinema history as being among that year\u2019s nominees in the Academy Award competition for Best Documentary Short Subject.
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The premise of \u201cNaked Yoga\u201d is simple to the point of being imbecilic: three women perform yoga exercises across the beaches and meadows of Cyprus without being encumbered with clothing, while a fourth goes through her routine inside a plain white studio. When the screen isn\u2019t occupied by these undressed lovelies, it is filled with selections of Buddhist-inspired art from London\u2019s Victoria & Albert Museum and the Hugh Moss Gallery, along with psychedelic effects similar to imagery viewed by the Jupiter-bound Keir Dullea in a certain Kubrick movie. The soundtrack is full of vaguely Indian-sounding music and narration by British blues musician Alexis Korner that is allegedly based on Buddhist texts but comes across as a wee bit too hippy-dippy in Korner\u2019s gravelly and decidedly less-than-enlightened voice.<\/p>\n

Now, if you recall the first paragraph of this write-up, you might recall that \u201cNaked Yoga\u201d was nominated for the Best Documentary Short Subject Oscar. And, yes, at 24 minutes it qualifies as a short film, but there is a chance that you might be puzzled at how a montage of naked women performing yoga qualifies as a documentary. Well, move over because I have no idea either \u2013 how in the world this thing ever got into that category is beyond me. Mercifully, it didn\u2019t win \u2013 but, then again, the winner in the category was something called \u201cDon\u2019t,\u201d which followed the life cycle of the monarch butterfly. Clearly, the Oscar voters of that year had more entomologists than Buddhist-focused perverts.<\/p>\n

\u201cNaked Yoga\u201d might have gone the way of \u201cLondon After Midnight\u201d had it not been for Ed Carter, documentary curator at the Academy Film Archive, who did an inventory check in 2004 of the archive\u2019s holdings and realized this film was not in the collection. Sadly, the film wasn\u2019t completely lost \u2013 Carter learned that cinematographer Michael Elphick possessed a PAL Beta SP videotape copy \u2013 but it wasn\u2019t until 2011 that he tracked down a 35mm print in the collection of the British Film Institute. From that print, the Academy Film Archive was able to do a digital restoration.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are several interesting aspects to this film,\u201d Carter wrote in his blog Docs R Us. \u201cIt\u2019s a real period piece, with the yoga content, the psychedelic music, the long lap dissolves, and unique special effects. The sequences of the Tantric art were made using an audio input, e.g., music soundtrack which created the multiple echo images (audio feed back) recorded onto a 2″ video tape recorder. The resulting manipulated images were then transferred out to 35mm film. There was only one machine like this, called a “Cox Box,” at the BBC.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sadly, Porter makes the film seem a lot more interesting than it is. To date, \u201cNaked Yoga\u201d has been unavailable for U.S. home entertainment release and it appears that it was never broadcast on U.S. television. It did show up on Britain\u2019s Channel 4 and video tapings from that presentation are the source of the unauthorized uploads to the Internet.<\/p>\n

But unless you are a die-hard Oscar completist who needs to see every film nominated for the cherished Hollywood prize, I would recommend that you satisfy your cravings for campy yoga flicks by looking up the Elvis Presley \u201cYoga Is As Yoga Does\u201d<\/a> from his flick \u201cEasy Come, Easy Go.\u201d And as someone who came of age in the 70s, even I have to grimace at the awfulness of \u201cNaked Yoga.\u201d<\/p>\n