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.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
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.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Reading Response Two
1. The conditions in Europe that made the avant-garde film movement possible after WWI was: It was a period of readjustment to the new sets of standards, which came as a consequence of the war. People were looking for new ideas, so the new ideas of the avant-garde were easily accepted.
2. The goals of abstract art include creating its own plastic expression, abstract art sought out for its “plastic value” for the very elements responsible for its creation.
3. The grounds that Fischinger argue that “there is nothing of an absolute artistic creative sense” in conventional cinematography are: copies only nature with realistic conceptions, destroying the deep and abstract creative force with substitutes, and surface realisms; mass product of factory proportions-cut down the creative purity of work; creative artist can’t have their final say with so many co-workers, who will change and kill their ideas, prevent ideas from being born, and substitute absolute creative motives for cheap ones; lastly creative artist works at their best alone, so the artist Creative Spirit is not unobstructed.
4. Brakhage’s Reflection on Black is a trance film Sitney argues that it anticipates the lyrical film, “Reflections on Black is a trance film striving for a new form that has not yet been born.” Sitney also states, Brakhage began to transcend the distinction between fantasy and actuality moving into the cinema of triumphant imagination. It also anticipates the lyrical film by the identity of erotic and aesthetic quests, the physicality of the film material within the context of the blind man’s “vision”; metaphors of vision; scratched film stock itself; Brakhage begins to formulate an equation between the process of making film and the search for consciousness; a clear line was drawn between hallucination and actuality; he used plastic cutting with collision montage; the repetition of shots; slow panning camera movement; rippling distortions from an imperfect window in the car; continual flow of movements. Brakhage’s Reflection on Black postulates the filmmaker behind the camera as the first person protagonist of the film, just like a lyrical film would.
5. The key characteristics of the lyrical film are: the film-maker behind the camera as the first-person protagonist of the film; there is no hero; the screen is filled with movement which of the camera and the editing, reverberates with the idea of a person looking; flattened space; superimposition, several perspectives can occupy space at the same time; lastly, the film-maker affirms the actual flatness and whiteness of the screen, rejecting for the most part its traditional use as a window illusion.
6. The filmmaker that was highly influential on Brakhage’s move to lyrical film in terms of style was Marie Menken. Brakhage enjoyed the delicate mesh of observation and imposition that appears in almost all of Marie’s films, Brakhage radicalized it and systemically explored its potential for the invention of new forms.
7. Sitney meant Brakhage achieved a dialectical fusion of the image represented on the screen and the filmmaker/subject’s reaction to it.
8. The characteristics of vision according to Brakhage’s revival of the Romantic dialectics of sight and imagination are: seeing includes what the open eyes view, including the essential movements and dilations involved in that primary mode of seeing, shifts in focus, what the mind’s eye sees in visual memory and in dreams; play of shapes and colors on the closed eyelid, and occasionally on the eye surface; Brakhage feels that the imagination includes the simultaneous functioning of all these modes.
2. The goals of abstract art include creating its own plastic expression, abstract art sought out for its “plastic value” for the very elements responsible for its creation.
3. The grounds that Fischinger argue that “there is nothing of an absolute artistic creative sense” in conventional cinematography are: copies only nature with realistic conceptions, destroying the deep and abstract creative force with substitutes, and surface realisms; mass product of factory proportions-cut down the creative purity of work; creative artist can’t have their final say with so many co-workers, who will change and kill their ideas, prevent ideas from being born, and substitute absolute creative motives for cheap ones; lastly creative artist works at their best alone, so the artist Creative Spirit is not unobstructed.
4. Brakhage’s Reflection on Black is a trance film Sitney argues that it anticipates the lyrical film, “Reflections on Black is a trance film striving for a new form that has not yet been born.” Sitney also states, Brakhage began to transcend the distinction between fantasy and actuality moving into the cinema of triumphant imagination. It also anticipates the lyrical film by the identity of erotic and aesthetic quests, the physicality of the film material within the context of the blind man’s “vision”; metaphors of vision; scratched film stock itself; Brakhage begins to formulate an equation between the process of making film and the search for consciousness; a clear line was drawn between hallucination and actuality; he used plastic cutting with collision montage; the repetition of shots; slow panning camera movement; rippling distortions from an imperfect window in the car; continual flow of movements. Brakhage’s Reflection on Black postulates the filmmaker behind the camera as the first person protagonist of the film, just like a lyrical film would.
5. The key characteristics of the lyrical film are: the film-maker behind the camera as the first-person protagonist of the film; there is no hero; the screen is filled with movement which of the camera and the editing, reverberates with the idea of a person looking; flattened space; superimposition, several perspectives can occupy space at the same time; lastly, the film-maker affirms the actual flatness and whiteness of the screen, rejecting for the most part its traditional use as a window illusion.
6. The filmmaker that was highly influential on Brakhage’s move to lyrical film in terms of style was Marie Menken. Brakhage enjoyed the delicate mesh of observation and imposition that appears in almost all of Marie’s films, Brakhage radicalized it and systemically explored its potential for the invention of new forms.
7. Sitney meant Brakhage achieved a dialectical fusion of the image represented on the screen and the filmmaker/subject’s reaction to it.
8. The characteristics of vision according to Brakhage’s revival of the Romantic dialectics of sight and imagination are: seeing includes what the open eyes view, including the essential movements and dilations involved in that primary mode of seeing, shifts in focus, what the mind’s eye sees in visual memory and in dreams; play of shapes and colors on the closed eyelid, and occasionally on the eye surface; Brakhage feels that the imagination includes the simultaneous functioning of all these modes.
Monday, January 19, 2009
372 "Meshes" Part Two
7. What were some general tendencies on the programming at Cinema 16, and how were films arranged within the individual programs?
Some general tendencies on the programming at Cinema 16 were: All the films in both programs can be seen as supplying evidence about what is usually termed individual expression; Vogel demonstrated alternative to industry-made cinema; economic dimension to the selections; worshipping physical beauty or the dramatic ability of the stars; and16mm – represented of individuals and social life, and for expressing the problematic realties of class. Films were arranged with in the individual programs by Vogel would view the films and decided what films would be viewed each year. “While some programs or parts of programs revealed particular political positions on specific issues, individual programs and seasonal series were usually structured as if each ere a meta-film meant to confront the audience in manner reminiscent of Sergei Eisenstein’s dialectic editing”; Vogel would show films together to have maximum thought from the viewer; and screenings were accompanied by program notes.
8. What were some of Cinema 16 other activities?
Cinema 16 other activities included: editing, production of musical tracks, microphotography, took bus loads of members to Rochester for weekend visits to watch classical films Vogel could not get, Vogel and Peretz Jones created a film series for children, several courses were developed in collaboration with Cinema 16, and Cinema 16 gave out two awards-avant-garde film, and documentary.
9. What impact did Cinema 16 have on NY City film culture?
The impact Cinema 16 had on NY City film culture was big. Vogel’s rough calculations stated 188,000 individuals came to Cinema 16; two million people had seen films distributed by Cinema 16; influential figures in the arts and entertainment were members; Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney who became spokespeople for North American Avant-garde cinema were members.
Some general tendencies on the programming at Cinema 16 were: All the films in both programs can be seen as supplying evidence about what is usually termed individual expression; Vogel demonstrated alternative to industry-made cinema; economic dimension to the selections; worshipping physical beauty or the dramatic ability of the stars; and16mm – represented of individuals and social life, and for expressing the problematic realties of class. Films were arranged with in the individual programs by Vogel would view the films and decided what films would be viewed each year. “While some programs or parts of programs revealed particular political positions on specific issues, individual programs and seasonal series were usually structured as if each ere a meta-film meant to confront the audience in manner reminiscent of Sergei Eisenstein’s dialectic editing”; Vogel would show films together to have maximum thought from the viewer; and screenings were accompanied by program notes.
8. What were some of Cinema 16 other activities?
Cinema 16 other activities included: editing, production of musical tracks, microphotography, took bus loads of members to Rochester for weekend visits to watch classical films Vogel could not get, Vogel and Peretz Jones created a film series for children, several courses were developed in collaboration with Cinema 16, and Cinema 16 gave out two awards-avant-garde film, and documentary.
9. What impact did Cinema 16 have on NY City film culture?
The impact Cinema 16 had on NY City film culture was big. Vogel’s rough calculations stated 188,000 individuals came to Cinema 16; two million people had seen films distributed by Cinema 16; influential figures in the arts and entertainment were members; Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney who became spokespeople for North American Avant-garde cinema were members.
372 "Meshes" Part One
1. According to Sitney, what are some of the important differences between Meshes of the Afternoon and Un Chien Andalou?
Some important differences between Meshes of the Afternoon and Un Chien Andalou are: the early American avant-garde “trance film” and surrealistic cinema; Un Chien Andalou “attempts to provide us with a broken, violent, spatially and temporally unstable world, without final reference to a more conventional actuality, Meshes of the Afternoon, offers an extended view of in which there is a terrible ambivalence between stable actuality and subconscious violence”; instructive-Un Chien Andalou has many metaphors, and Meshes has no metaphors; the space in both films are different, Un Chien Andalou has deep space where Meshes has a rounded space.
2. What are some characteristics of the American psychodrama in the 1940s?
Psychodramas have central themes, the quest for sexual identity; protagonist who passes invisibly among the people; dramatic landscapes; climactic confrontation with one’s self and one’s past; the camera is generally static; and the principle of editing.
3. What does Sitney mean by an “imagist” structure replacing narrative structure in Choreography for the Camera?
Choreography for the Camera moves from the most common narrative to the imagist structure, by isolating a single gesture as a complete film form. The term Imagist comes from the poetry Imagism, and Sidney coined this word, focusing on “pure examples, describing the inevitable inflation of the simple gesture to contain more and more aesthetic matter.”
4. According to Sitney, Ritual in Transfigured Time represents a transition between the psychodrama and what kind of film?
“Ritual in Transfigured Time is a radical extension of the trance film in the direction of a more complex form, architectonic film.”
5. Respond briefly to Sitney’s reading of Ritual in Transfigured Time, is his interpretation compatible with your experience of the film?
His interpretation is compatible with my experience of the film, except where he states, “It is this middle passage that makes one think that Maya Deren was openly trying to deal with the problem of the prestylization of dance in film, although she never acknowledged the problem as such in her writings.” I would think if she had a problem with this aspect of her film, which would be interesting since dance was incorporated even with elements outside the dance, she would have mentioned it in her writings. I haven’t read many of her writings; I am going off of Sitney’s knowledge of Maya Deren writings.
6. According to Sitney, what is the ultimate result at the end of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome?
The ultimate result at the end of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome is “what divinity the others obtain comes through the Magus.”
Some important differences between Meshes of the Afternoon and Un Chien Andalou are: the early American avant-garde “trance film” and surrealistic cinema; Un Chien Andalou “attempts to provide us with a broken, violent, spatially and temporally unstable world, without final reference to a more conventional actuality, Meshes of the Afternoon, offers an extended view of in which there is a terrible ambivalence between stable actuality and subconscious violence”; instructive-Un Chien Andalou has many metaphors, and Meshes has no metaphors; the space in both films are different, Un Chien Andalou has deep space where Meshes has a rounded space.
2. What are some characteristics of the American psychodrama in the 1940s?
Psychodramas have central themes, the quest for sexual identity; protagonist who passes invisibly among the people; dramatic landscapes; climactic confrontation with one’s self and one’s past; the camera is generally static; and the principle of editing.
3. What does Sitney mean by an “imagist” structure replacing narrative structure in Choreography for the Camera?
Choreography for the Camera moves from the most common narrative to the imagist structure, by isolating a single gesture as a complete film form. The term Imagist comes from the poetry Imagism, and Sidney coined this word, focusing on “pure examples, describing the inevitable inflation of the simple gesture to contain more and more aesthetic matter.”
4. According to Sitney, Ritual in Transfigured Time represents a transition between the psychodrama and what kind of film?
“Ritual in Transfigured Time is a radical extension of the trance film in the direction of a more complex form, architectonic film.”
5. Respond briefly to Sitney’s reading of Ritual in Transfigured Time, is his interpretation compatible with your experience of the film?
His interpretation is compatible with my experience of the film, except where he states, “It is this middle passage that makes one think that Maya Deren was openly trying to deal with the problem of the prestylization of dance in film, although she never acknowledged the problem as such in her writings.” I would think if she had a problem with this aspect of her film, which would be interesting since dance was incorporated even with elements outside the dance, she would have mentioned it in her writings. I haven’t read many of her writings; I am going off of Sitney’s knowledge of Maya Deren writings.
6. According to Sitney, what is the ultimate result at the end of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome?
The ultimate result at the end of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome is “what divinity the others obtain comes through the Magus.”
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