1. This work relates to our discussion in intermedia and expanded cinema in the 60's with the process of performance. There are all different kinds of acting, even if we think it is not acting at all, "it just is" relates to our discussion with previous performance.
2. A close up of a hand cutting of the orange, and unexpected black tiny marbles come out of it. A man is who is one the left and right of the screen is looking at an apple on the screen, when he walks into look closer the man walks through the apple. The illusion of the apple looking that it popped off the screen. The performance of the man slowly walking toward the screen (with the fruit) really got the viewers attention.
3. I think Eddie steals the scene in Vinyl, because first, she is the only woman in the scene, second the viewer tends to notice all the images on the screen, there is a lot going on, and the viewer is looking at her to see if she will interact with the boys. Lastly, her dance moves while she was sitting down pulled her even more apart from her fellow performers.
4. Underground began to crossover into mainstream cinema by the attention it was getting in magazine articles, and with the release of Chelsea Girls.
5. Getz was an important figure in the crossover because he is the one who implemented a new distribution channel, and traveling over twenty cities with his traveling show, and really got the word out about underground cinema.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Thougts about The Chelsea Girls
I thought the Warhol's Cheslea Girls to interesting. The split screen at first was neat the way he did it, with a woman on the left and someone speaking on the right. Then I found myself ignoring the left side of the screen and focusing more on the right. I did that until I did not enjoy what I was watching on the right side, then I would look to the left side. The "pope" sequence was entertaining to me until he started to freak out on the woman. Once he threw the water on her, I starting thinking is this staged or not. Then when he hit her, and her reaction to him looked pretty real to me. Thats when first I thought, if a man ever hit me, I would be the kind of person to hit him back, and then I look to the left of the screen to see what the woman alone was doing. The "pope" was an odd character, and was neat to watch because I kept thinking is this guy for real? I don't know if I would have liked the film for its full duration of time, I thought an hour, fifty minutes was enough to see what the film was about.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Response 5
2. Smith incorporated in his films found materials to keep the budget down, and had homosexuals, transvestites his friends were in his films. In NY at the time you could rent a seven-bedroom apartment for fewer than twenty dollars. The cheap budget, gave the underground film its own feel and presence, they went through dumpsters to find manicans and anything else a filmmaker would need to make a film. The artistic community was a cohesive group, not that many people in it, and now that it was okay to be friends with homosexuals, Smith used that in his film, and pushed that ‘okay’ relationship in his films.
3. Problems that emerged after obscenity charges against Flaming Creatures in the relationship between Smith and Mekas were they were both arrested. Jack thought Jonas advanced his own career by traveling with the film, and making as much money as he could and giving none back to him. Jonas Mekas was called “Uncle Fish Hook”, the metaphor taking anything you wanted-exploiting, and giving nothing back in return.
4. Johns Zorn argument on about Normal Love was the real show was filming not the film it was the actual filming of it. His argument relates to the NY art world in the 60’s by filmmakers wanted the viewers to pay attention to the process of the film being made as well as the actual finished product of the film. Jack Smith influenced other filmmakers such as Fellini.
5. Some arguments that were made about the relationship between Jack Smith’s artistic practice and Andy Warhol’s were: Warhols Factory was based on Jack’s work, Jack introduced the super star aspect, an example would be Montez.
7. Important friends/relationships for Barbara Rubin in the 1960’s were: Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Jonas Mekas, and Andy Warhol.
8. Rubin’s production and exhibition practices for Christmas on Earth, the key formal innovation of Christmas on Earth is its superimposed projection in unequal sizes, a format that she originated. Rubin projected on reel normally and the projected the second reel over it, about one third smaller, using a longer focal length lens. Belasco argues Christmas on Earth can’t be reproduced electronically or in other forms because it can’t be copied mechanically, run thought an editing deck or captured of a still due to its place as a work of filmic alchemy. The only way to record it is at a live screening, making it a production of a single event, not a copy of the work itself.
3. Problems that emerged after obscenity charges against Flaming Creatures in the relationship between Smith and Mekas were they were both arrested. Jack thought Jonas advanced his own career by traveling with the film, and making as much money as he could and giving none back to him. Jonas Mekas was called “Uncle Fish Hook”, the metaphor taking anything you wanted-exploiting, and giving nothing back in return.
4. Johns Zorn argument on about Normal Love was the real show was filming not the film it was the actual filming of it. His argument relates to the NY art world in the 60’s by filmmakers wanted the viewers to pay attention to the process of the film being made as well as the actual finished product of the film. Jack Smith influenced other filmmakers such as Fellini.
5. Some arguments that were made about the relationship between Jack Smith’s artistic practice and Andy Warhol’s were: Warhols Factory was based on Jack’s work, Jack introduced the super star aspect, an example would be Montez.
7. Important friends/relationships for Barbara Rubin in the 1960’s were: Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, Jonas Mekas, and Andy Warhol.
8. Rubin’s production and exhibition practices for Christmas on Earth, the key formal innovation of Christmas on Earth is its superimposed projection in unequal sizes, a format that she originated. Rubin projected on reel normally and the projected the second reel over it, about one third smaller, using a longer focal length lens. Belasco argues Christmas on Earth can’t be reproduced electronically or in other forms because it can’t be copied mechanically, run thought an editing deck or captured of a still due to its place as a work of filmic alchemy. The only way to record it is at a live screening, making it a production of a single event, not a copy of the work itself.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
Response to Flux Films:
04 Chieko Shiomi-Disappearing Music for Face: This film is black and white, the title that came up in the beginning of the film was in the center of the frame and slowly decreased in size until it faded away completely. Flashes of credits were shown, then a close up of a woman’s mouth that showed her teeth and was gapped tooth, it was a static shot and it was framed to left side of the frame not in the middle. It was up on screen for what felt like a very long time, then the image switched to a static shot of her mouth more slightly closed, not showing her teeth but her lips were still separated, the final shot showed the woman’s mouth closed. I kept waiting for other images to appear but there weren’t any. I find it interesting that the lips were framed slightly to the left of the center of the frame. However, I don’t really understand if the image of the lips were supposed to have a deeper meaning.
07 George Maciunas- 10 Feet: This film was black and white and showed very fast flashes of numbers. The numbers started from regular numbers, to minutes, then the credits were flashed followed by more numbers, to numbers in feet; the flashes of the numbers were in different sized font. I am unaware why the numbers started flashing and then the credits were shown, and then back to the numbers.
14 Yoko Ono- One: Flashes of the title in black and white there was a close up of a males hand holding a match, then the hand lite the match, I thought it was neat that you could see the smoke from the match as it was burning. I think it was a male’s hand by the size of it, and the fingernails were dirty. I am not sure why the fingernails were not clean, it made me think of what kind of work he did in his life, which is probably not what you are supposed to think about while watching this film. The shot of the match is on screen until it burns out.
28 Paul Sharits-Wrist Trick: Images were juxtaposed together in this film. It was black and white; it however looked like an x-ray. Flashes of an open hand, a close hand, animals, I think a goat and rabbit were shown. I did notice repetition of these images which I felt was interesting, and it made me wonder if the images some how could be related to one another.
Answers to Questions
1. The films Jonas Meka’s associated with “Baudelairean Cinema” were Twice a Man, Scorpio Rising, Heaven and Earth Magic, and Dog Star Man. Meka called it Baudelairean cinema because Charles Pierre Baudelaire who was a French poet, critic and translator in the 19th century was known for being a controversial figure. Meka felt the films he would range in the Baudelairean Cinema were controversial or it could have been that the filmmaker themselves were controversial.
2. Jonas Meka’s views on experimental cinema change between 1955 and 1961 dramatically. When Meka originally began his magazine, Film Culture in the third issue there was a sneaky attack on American film poem, disguised by a survey. In the attack Meka's wrote “experiments should be directed not so much towards new techniques but toward a deeper theme” he also stated, “for more attention to these film-makers as a way encouraging their improvement.” In 1957 Meka's let the film-makers of the ‘Experimental Scene’ contribute to articles in the magazine, from that point on there were no more attacks. In 1959, the magazine even gave more credit to avant-garde filmmakers. Meka's began to see films he previously rejected in 1959 through 1961 his thought process shifted with the impression nouvelle vague in France. Meka’s was named film critic for Village Voice, and was one of the most powerful critics in America. When he took time off to shoot one of his films, Meka left Maya Deren as his substitute critic, this step for Meka’s was a huge change from his first impression of experimental cinema.
3. Meka’s interest in performance and improvisation shaped his views of the New American Cinema in the 1960’s, Meka’s stated, “Improvisation is the highest form of condensation; it points to the very essence of thought, an emotion, a movement.” Meka enjoyed the break down of the difference between the performer and his role. Performance helped Meka’s position in his criticism; an example of this is when he announced the death of “the symbolist-surrealist cinema of intellectual meanings.” After that statement Meka made the symbolist-surrealist cinema was shown publicly for the first time in that same year the statement was made.
4. Even thought Jack Smith did not use found footage in Flaming Creatures, the film was a transformation on an ironical recreation of the pseudo-Arabian world of Maria Montez films. The similarity of Joseph Cornell’s Rose Hobart, and Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures is they both took images; one by found footage, the other by recreating footage and used it to make their own films.
5. Some visual influences on Flaming Creatures are visual texture, androgynous sexual presence, and exotic locations. According to Sitney the scenes are organized by rhythm and dramatic effect rather than narrative. The style of photography is different in each scene; Smith pairs the photography like they were ‘movements of a musical work.’
6. Angell characterized the first major period of Warhol’s filmmaking career as a ‘primitive’ approach, the films were a group of minimalist films, which were long and static some of the films included from this period were Sleep, Kiss, Haircut, Blow Job, Eat, Empire, and Henry Geidzahier.
7. The screen tests played an enormous role in Warhol’s filmmaking; they were a central development of Warhol’s Cinema in the attraction and the selection of people to star in his movies, and also the expansion of his film practice into continuous, cumulative mode of serial production. The role the Screen tests played in the routines at the Factory was: the Factory became a functioning film studio because of the tests, with camera, lights, etc. Also, celebrities, potential actors, technicians, and assistants would come to the Factory for these Screen Tests, making more elaborate productions a reality for the Factory.
8. Angell characterizes the first period of sound films in Warhol’s filmmaking career as ‘early narratives.’ Some of the films in this period are: Harlot, Vinyl, and the film series, The Poor Little Rich Girl Saga.
04 Chieko Shiomi-Disappearing Music for Face: This film is black and white, the title that came up in the beginning of the film was in the center of the frame and slowly decreased in size until it faded away completely. Flashes of credits were shown, then a close up of a woman’s mouth that showed her teeth and was gapped tooth, it was a static shot and it was framed to left side of the frame not in the middle. It was up on screen for what felt like a very long time, then the image switched to a static shot of her mouth more slightly closed, not showing her teeth but her lips were still separated, the final shot showed the woman’s mouth closed. I kept waiting for other images to appear but there weren’t any. I find it interesting that the lips were framed slightly to the left of the center of the frame. However, I don’t really understand if the image of the lips were supposed to have a deeper meaning.
07 George Maciunas- 10 Feet: This film was black and white and showed very fast flashes of numbers. The numbers started from regular numbers, to minutes, then the credits were flashed followed by more numbers, to numbers in feet; the flashes of the numbers were in different sized font. I am unaware why the numbers started flashing and then the credits were shown, and then back to the numbers.
14 Yoko Ono- One: Flashes of the title in black and white there was a close up of a males hand holding a match, then the hand lite the match, I thought it was neat that you could see the smoke from the match as it was burning. I think it was a male’s hand by the size of it, and the fingernails were dirty. I am not sure why the fingernails were not clean, it made me think of what kind of work he did in his life, which is probably not what you are supposed to think about while watching this film. The shot of the match is on screen until it burns out.
28 Paul Sharits-Wrist Trick: Images were juxtaposed together in this film. It was black and white; it however looked like an x-ray. Flashes of an open hand, a close hand, animals, I think a goat and rabbit were shown. I did notice repetition of these images which I felt was interesting, and it made me wonder if the images some how could be related to one another.
Answers to Questions
1. The films Jonas Meka’s associated with “Baudelairean Cinema” were Twice a Man, Scorpio Rising, Heaven and Earth Magic, and Dog Star Man. Meka called it Baudelairean cinema because Charles Pierre Baudelaire who was a French poet, critic and translator in the 19th century was known for being a controversial figure. Meka felt the films he would range in the Baudelairean Cinema were controversial or it could have been that the filmmaker themselves were controversial.
2. Jonas Meka’s views on experimental cinema change between 1955 and 1961 dramatically. When Meka originally began his magazine, Film Culture in the third issue there was a sneaky attack on American film poem, disguised by a survey. In the attack Meka's wrote “experiments should be directed not so much towards new techniques but toward a deeper theme” he also stated, “for more attention to these film-makers as a way encouraging their improvement.” In 1957 Meka's let the film-makers of the ‘Experimental Scene’ contribute to articles in the magazine, from that point on there were no more attacks. In 1959, the magazine even gave more credit to avant-garde filmmakers. Meka's began to see films he previously rejected in 1959 through 1961 his thought process shifted with the impression nouvelle vague in France. Meka’s was named film critic for Village Voice, and was one of the most powerful critics in America. When he took time off to shoot one of his films, Meka left Maya Deren as his substitute critic, this step for Meka’s was a huge change from his first impression of experimental cinema.
3. Meka’s interest in performance and improvisation shaped his views of the New American Cinema in the 1960’s, Meka’s stated, “Improvisation is the highest form of condensation; it points to the very essence of thought, an emotion, a movement.” Meka enjoyed the break down of the difference between the performer and his role. Performance helped Meka’s position in his criticism; an example of this is when he announced the death of “the symbolist-surrealist cinema of intellectual meanings.” After that statement Meka made the symbolist-surrealist cinema was shown publicly for the first time in that same year the statement was made.
4. Even thought Jack Smith did not use found footage in Flaming Creatures, the film was a transformation on an ironical recreation of the pseudo-Arabian world of Maria Montez films. The similarity of Joseph Cornell’s Rose Hobart, and Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures is they both took images; one by found footage, the other by recreating footage and used it to make their own films.
5. Some visual influences on Flaming Creatures are visual texture, androgynous sexual presence, and exotic locations. According to Sitney the scenes are organized by rhythm and dramatic effect rather than narrative. The style of photography is different in each scene; Smith pairs the photography like they were ‘movements of a musical work.’
6. Angell characterized the first major period of Warhol’s filmmaking career as a ‘primitive’ approach, the films were a group of minimalist films, which were long and static some of the films included from this period were Sleep, Kiss, Haircut, Blow Job, Eat, Empire, and Henry Geidzahier.
7. The screen tests played an enormous role in Warhol’s filmmaking; they were a central development of Warhol’s Cinema in the attraction and the selection of people to star in his movies, and also the expansion of his film practice into continuous, cumulative mode of serial production. The role the Screen tests played in the routines at the Factory was: the Factory became a functioning film studio because of the tests, with camera, lights, etc. Also, celebrities, potential actors, technicians, and assistants would come to the Factory for these Screen Tests, making more elaborate productions a reality for the Factory.
8. Angell characterizes the first period of sound films in Warhol’s filmmaking career as ‘early narratives.’ Some of the films in this period are: Harlot, Vinyl, and the film series, The Poor Little Rich Girl Saga.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Reading Response 3 cont.
1. Brakhage’s views on vision according to his revival of the Romantic dialectics of sight and imagination are you should used stylistic choices that attempt to replicate the untutored eye, eliminate linear perspective, and flatten space.
2. Brackhage first embraced the formal directives and verbal aesthetics of Abstract Expressionism; Sitney feels this because his action painting interpretive schemata, action filmmaking interpretative schemata, and he interpret camera manipulations of the film stock.
3. Synecdoche plays a major role in The End, by having six varying degrees of narrative coherence, with MacLaine’s possessed characters. The film anticipates later achievements by Brakhage and the mythopoeic form by the combination of color and black and white, the proleptic use of metaphor, the dialectic of doom and redemption in The End can be found in Brakhage’s, Dog Star Man.
4. Some similarities between the apocalyptic visions of Christopher Maclaine and Bruce Connor, all three of Conner’s film discussed aspire to an apocalyptic vision by engendering in the viewer a state of extreme ambivalence, by alternative gestures of attraction, and repulsion. Unlike Maclaine, Connor liked the vision of doom, and he was not naïve in it. Both filmmakers extended the technical discoveries of their early works in films that were less ambitious and prophetic but no less exquisite.
5. Ron Rice and Robert Nelson continued in the line of extended technical discoveries in the sixties, they simplified and elongated MacLaine’s form the picaresque. Nelson, incorporated strategic elements from Connors work. Ron Rice’s film contained mythic elements.
6. Many fluxfilms were comedies and they share with their more mainstream predecessors both an outward parodic focus and an inward reflexive gaze. The target of this humor was directed less medium in general or the social order to the contemporary art world, especially the deadly film culture represented by the leading avant filmmaking of the day, the personal and poetic cinemas of artists such as Kenneth Anger, and Stan Brakhage.
7. Jenkins means by the democratization of production in the Fluxfilms, the representation of a transgression of the highly individualistic, personal, and handcrafted “style” of then-current avant-garde practice.
8. Jenkin’s argues that Nam June fixed the material and aesthetic terms for the production of subsequent Fluxfilms because it focused on the presentations of basic film materials clear leader, black leader, sound, and silence. Fluxfilms maintained an immaculate conception of the cinema that was at once childlike and cunning.
2. Brackhage first embraced the formal directives and verbal aesthetics of Abstract Expressionism; Sitney feels this because his action painting interpretive schemata, action filmmaking interpretative schemata, and he interpret camera manipulations of the film stock.
3. Synecdoche plays a major role in The End, by having six varying degrees of narrative coherence, with MacLaine’s possessed characters. The film anticipates later achievements by Brakhage and the mythopoeic form by the combination of color and black and white, the proleptic use of metaphor, the dialectic of doom and redemption in The End can be found in Brakhage’s, Dog Star Man.
4. Some similarities between the apocalyptic visions of Christopher Maclaine and Bruce Connor, all three of Conner’s film discussed aspire to an apocalyptic vision by engendering in the viewer a state of extreme ambivalence, by alternative gestures of attraction, and repulsion. Unlike Maclaine, Connor liked the vision of doom, and he was not naïve in it. Both filmmakers extended the technical discoveries of their early works in films that were less ambitious and prophetic but no less exquisite.
5. Ron Rice and Robert Nelson continued in the line of extended technical discoveries in the sixties, they simplified and elongated MacLaine’s form the picaresque. Nelson, incorporated strategic elements from Connors work. Ron Rice’s film contained mythic elements.
6. Many fluxfilms were comedies and they share with their more mainstream predecessors both an outward parodic focus and an inward reflexive gaze. The target of this humor was directed less medium in general or the social order to the contemporary art world, especially the deadly film culture represented by the leading avant filmmaking of the day, the personal and poetic cinemas of artists such as Kenneth Anger, and Stan Brakhage.
7. Jenkins means by the democratization of production in the Fluxfilms, the representation of a transgression of the highly individualistic, personal, and handcrafted “style” of then-current avant-garde practice.
8. Jenkin’s argues that Nam June fixed the material and aesthetic terms for the production of subsequent Fluxfilms because it focused on the presentations of basic film materials clear leader, black leader, sound, and silence. Fluxfilms maintained an immaculate conception of the cinema that was at once childlike and cunning.
Reading Response 3
Compare and Contrast
I choose to contrast Entr’ace and Life and Death of 9413 A Hollywood Extra. A similarity both film have is a woman that is reoccurring in each film. In Entr’ace the woman is a dancer, which the camera angle is at first underneath of her showing her feet to her tutu. Then the camera angle moves to a more traditional one showing her whole figure. The woman in Life and Death of 9413 stands up and sits down repetitively. Both films have the woman in each film as repetitive images. Both films have coffins in them, but in Entr’ace the coffin opens up and someone gets out of it in a grass field, where as in Life and Death of 9413 in the coffin is the man who is current through out the film. Cities were used in both films, however in Entr’ace the city is filmed at all different angles, most untraditional angles, in Life and Death the city that is shown is a more traditional angle, but the city itself looks unrealistic. In Life and Death of 9413 A Hollywood Extra, there are intertitle cards whereas Entr’ace does not have intertitle cards. Close ups were used in both films, in Entr’ace there was close ups of the canon, and in Life and Death, there were close ups of the man’s hand. Lastly both films used an overlapping technique of two different images.
I choose to contrast Entr’ace and Life and Death of 9413 A Hollywood Extra. A similarity both film have is a woman that is reoccurring in each film. In Entr’ace the woman is a dancer, which the camera angle is at first underneath of her showing her feet to her tutu. Then the camera angle moves to a more traditional one showing her whole figure. The woman in Life and Death of 9413 stands up and sits down repetitively. Both films have the woman in each film as repetitive images. Both films have coffins in them, but in Entr’ace the coffin opens up and someone gets out of it in a grass field, where as in Life and Death of 9413 in the coffin is the man who is current through out the film. Cities were used in both films, however in Entr’ace the city is filmed at all different angles, most untraditional angles, in Life and Death the city that is shown is a more traditional angle, but the city itself looks unrealistic. In Life and Death of 9413 A Hollywood Extra, there are intertitle cards whereas Entr’ace does not have intertitle cards. Close ups were used in both films, in Entr’ace there was close ups of the canon, and in Life and Death, there were close ups of the man’s hand. Lastly both films used an overlapping technique of two different images.
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