Reading Response 2: Due Sept. 29 @ 5 p.m.

1. Post a brief response to one of the following Brakhage films: The Wold Shadow, Window Water Baby Moving, Dog Star Man Part 2, Dog Star Man Part 3.

Window Water Baby Moving was an amazing portrait of the feelings a mother and father experience when they are within hours of having their baby born. All the senses are heightened. Brakhage used montage or the water, belly (up, down, left, right), the window and the shadow of the window. I have never seen child birthing so real. The camera being so close to the objects forces the viewer to look at the blood from her vagina. The hand held camera is wonderful to know a human is experiencing this along with her. My jaw dropped when I saw the repetition of shots of the baby’s head. As the baby’s head was coming, earlier shots before she went into labor were juxtaposed, making me think the husband thought, “wow, only a few minutes ago this kid was in the belly. Look at what these 9 months have brought us” To me this is completely lyrical. Even though there is a main character, it’s the experience from both mom and dad, and what dad is capturing on camera that helps me understand what he might have felt before, during, and after the child was born.

Sitney, “Apocalypses and Picaresques”

2. Why does Sitney argue that synecdoche plays a major role in Christopher Maclaine’s The End, and how does the film anticipate later achievements by Brakhage and the mythopoeic form? (Implicit in this question: what is synecdoche? It is a figure of speech, but what kind?)

Synecdoche means a simultaneous understanding:

Part of something used to refer to a whole thing or a whole used to refer to part of it

Maclaine’s uses the characters in The End to express his own views on the world and how he handles or how he thinks others can/do handle themselves. A few thoughts from research I did on Christopher Maclaine: he was a drug user, went insane and died in an asylum. I think The End was a story of doom, despair, and hope for a better life. I think Maclaine tells as story of his life and how he sees the world. Perhaps he felt the world lived in ignorance until that Atom bomb. The film illustrates a Mythopoeic genre from the unity of characters representing society’s issues of doom from the Atom bomb, but hope from surviving it. Also, it’s parallel to maybe the despair Maclaine had from his drug use, but hope that he would one day overcome it. Maybe he didn’t. Somewhere in the late 50’s he had brain damage from the Meth, luckily he made The End in 1953.

Brakhage, after viewing The End, a few years later made Dog Star Man. “The combination of color and black and white, the proleptic use of metaphor, and the dialectic of doom and redemption”

3. What are some similarities and differences between the apocalyptic visions of Christopher Maclaine and Bruce Conner?

Bruce Conner uses Synecdoche similar to Maclaine. Conner’s films were culled from old newsreels, documentaries, and fiction films into his collage film. His whole film would be made up of pieces of other films creating a distance between the image depicted and our experience of it. Both use stray titles “End of part four” or “The End” near the beginning of the film. Both share an apocalyptic despair. Conner is not naïve in his vision of doom. Conner deliberately and carefully orchestrates the twists and changes of pace within his film. Conner uses irony and symbolism in his films.

Bruce Jenkins, “Fluxfilms in Three False Starts.”

4. How and why were the “anti-art” Fluxfilms reactions against the avant-garde films of Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger. [Hint: Think about Fluxus in relation to earlier anti-art such as Dada, and Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain."]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3671180/Duchamps-Fountain-The-practical-joke-that-launched-an-artistic-revolution.html

Fluxus, like Dada, chose to make the art their own instead of being market driven. They had a “do-it-yourself aesthetic and chose simplicity over complexity” This goes along with Duchamp’s Fountain and the joke at the art exhibit that his urinal piece was a work of art as well. As the article stated, a lot of art isn’t meant to be taken so seriously.

5. What does Jenkins mean by the democratization of production in the Fluxfilms?

That anyone can produce/create works of film, not just the high individuals of the avant-garde practice in that time period. An ideal medium for the multiples.

6. Critic Jonas Mekas divided avant-garde filmmaking into the "slow" and the "quick"; which filmmakers were associated with "slow" and which filmmakers were associated with "quick"? Which Fluxus films were "slow" and "quick" (name one of each)?

Long take features of Andy Warhol

Slow films included minimalist works such as Nam June Paik’s Zen for Film. Also, Peter Moore’s use of a high-speed, slow motion camera to produce works that, when projected at normal speed, resulted in highly distended portraits, performances, and motion studies. Disappearing Music for Face, 8 seconds of real time is distended to 11 minutes of screen time. Yoko Ono’s Eyeblink, and No. 1 (burning match), Pieter Vanderbeek’s 5 O’Clock in the Morning (objects falling and rotating in slow motion), Joe Jones’ Smoking (artist exhaling).

Kinetic, highly edited work of Stan Brakhage.

George Maciunas, Wolf Vostell, Eric Andersen, and young American filmmaker Paul Sharits experimented with “quick” works. Their films, which make use of animation, pixilation, collage, decollage – exhibited brevity in both their rapid-fire montage and brief running times.

Wolf Vostell’s Sun in Your Head.

Paul Sharits Dots 1 and 2. Sears Catalogue, and Word Movie.

Some words that came out of the Word Movie: Crome breakesel

Burn,Insert,Lung,Hormone,Flee,Shit,Space, Screen, Eeg, Bank

Cancel, Meat

oleeinerrtsuckslugcowtumormanualgrowthslasshsnailskincutceellstopwetlobeincisionsslitbandageeinjectmicrobeecomeeairduckoleedroporgancompreestonguejumpsasmfeedrhusrtadeeclosseepraorshmoemraneescrrewopeen

7. How is the Fluxus approach to the cinema different from both Godard and Brakhage?

Godard opened the narrative form to varied new content (political analyses, cinephilic homage’s, and reflective exercises on and of the medium. Brakhage redirected redirected the medium inward toward the personal, private realms of intimate experience (birth, sex, death) and the visions of the camera eye. Fluxus chooses simplicity, instead of riddles.

8. Why does Jenkins argue that Nam June Paik’s Zen for Film “fixed the material and aesthetic terms for the production of subsequent Fluxfilms”?

Zen for Film is the ultimate simple film, there’s nothing on it except or dust particles, and later the deterioration of the film itself.

How does it use the materials of the cinema?

What kind of aesthetic experience does it offer?

Zen for Film liberated the viewer from the manipulation of both the commercial and the alternative cinema. It would be an ongoing observation and screenings in the form of accumulated scratches, dust, dirt, rips, and splices. Finally, something that viewers would critique! The film domesticated the power of this powerful medium, reducing the silver screen to the proportions of this powerful medium. More people made home movies!

A version of the film (and other Fluxfilms) is available here:

http://www.ubu.com/film/fluxfilm.html

For those looking for more information about Fluxus, here is an interesting podcast called "The Sounds of Fluxus" by the Poetry Foundation:

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/audio/agat_may2010.mp3

Reading Response 1: Due Sept 22nd

Sitney, “Ritual and Nature”

1. What are some characteristics of the American psychodrama in the 1940s?

Dream, ritual, dance, and sexual metaphors. Dream films were also called trance films, with the action being the dream and the actor as a somnambulist (sleepwalker). We have seen some of this already in Meshes of the Afternoon. Sitney describes a classic trance film: the protagonist who passes invisibly among people; the dramatic landscapes; the climactic confrontation with one’s self and one’s past. Around this time period, unless you had a private membership, movies with sex in them could not be shown in a public theater. Sex was alluded to for instance, At Land, the mustached man in bed, and the caressing of the girl’s hair by the beach. Maya Deren realized that space and time is a creative function that had to be made and was not a universal given.

2. What does Sitney mean by an “imagist” structure replacing narrative structure in Choreography for the Camera? For reference, you can see the film here:

http://www.ubu.com/film/deren_study-in-choreography.html

As we spoke of in class, two cinematic forms to compare are the Horizontal Privileges special and temporal continuity narrative form.

Vertical privileges graphic or symbolic principles; poetry.

Imagism, concentrates on a single gestures as a complete form film. Choreography for the camera was an effort to isolate and celebrate the principle of the power of movement. Choreography uses the dancing (leaping) from one environment to the next as the main focus, (vertical cinema). The dance movement provides and continuity through a space that is severely telescoped and a time that elongated. This is a shift from the narrative form of that has a thematic composition. The Imagist film represents a progressive state of inflation, whereby lateral or foreign material is introduced. In Choreography the forest and the room are introduced by the main focus is on the dancer, his foot (as he moves from the forest to an inside room) and his leaping.

3. Respond briefly to Sitney’s reading of Ritual in Transfigured Time (27-28); Is his interpretation compatible with your experience of the film?

I agree with Sitney’s description of Ritual in Transfigured Time. He examines the synthesis of the somnambulist to the repetitive cyclic movement when the crowd was dancing. We also discussed in class the suppressed feeling of being in the crowd, but I enjoyed the mastery Deren displayed as a director in collaborating the dance and accomplishing her intentions. As in Meshes, Ritual also used slow motion to achieve the trance film. I could connect with what I felt Deren was trying to say in Ritual, or at least what I thought she was saying. Especially, in regards to our class discussion of Ritual being about the dance of courtship.

Sitney, “The Magus”

4. Paraphrase the paragraph on p. 90 that begins “The filmic dream constituted…” in your own words.

My understanding is: I would film an environment or subjects based on my feelings toward them or what I think these would mean to others. Organized consciousness enmeshed in some variant of Nostalgia. For ex. If I filmed a teddy bear bc I thought it metaphorically represented my childhood.

5. According to Sitney, what is the ultimate result at the end of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome? How does his reading of the film compare / contrast with your own experience of the film?

There was an ultimate showdown in the end of Pleasure Dome. Sitney explains the essential tension of the film rests on the resolution of the Magus’ several aspects into a unified, redeemed man, or man made god. All the actors of the films are subsumed in his power and glory. The divinity of the others comes through the Magus.

Sitney’s explanation is a possible belief for me. All the characters were having a grand time in their costumes and drinking. The more they drank, the more Shiva’s eyes became excited, his head rocking forward with the notion of “YES!” Shots of Shiva’s glee were repeated numerous times juxtaposed with reuniting of the all the characters in Shiva’s circle, to convey the transformation and assuming the personae of gods.

Sitney, “The Lyrical Film”

6. What are the key characteristics of the lyrical film (the first example of which was Anticipation of the Night).

The lyrical film:

Film-maker behind the camera as the first-person protagonist of the film. The images of the film are what he sees. There is no longer a hero; instead the screen is filled with movement, both the camera and movement reverberates with the idea of a person looking.

The viewers see the mediator’s intense experience of seeing. Through Anticipation of the Night, superimposition was explored; several perspectives can occupy that space at one time. The film-maker working in the lyrical mode affirms the actual flatness and whiteness of the screen. After reading this information, I reflected back on question #4, which made me think of the film-maker as being the camera.

Night writing and Moon Play. P. 161.

7. What does Sitney mean by "hard" and "soft" montage? What examples of each does he give from Anticipation of the Night? [Tricky question; read the entire passage very carefully.]

Hard and soft Montage for me meant possibly the type of montage. Harder montage maybe a quicker, less narrative. Softer montage might be slower montage, more narrative like. Sitney indicates the opening collision of night and day shots, as counterpoint of hard and soft montage. The significant transitions of large areas of film, unlike the counterpoint, are forecast in advance by a pattern of camera movement, a drift of colors, or the “soft” preview of a forthcoming image.

8. What are the characteristics of vision according to Brakhage’s revival of the Romantic dialectics of sight and imagination? [I’m not asking here about film style, I’m asking about Brakhage’s views about vision.]

Brakhage got rid of drama as prime source of inspiration. He became more personal and egocentric. First his sense of the center radiating out, then he became more concerned with the rays, the very real action of moving out. Brakhage claims to see through his eyes, with his eyes, and even the electrical patterns on the surface of his eyes. So he threw away his glasses. The imagination includes the simultaneous functioning of: seeing what the open eyes view, including he essential movements and dilations involved in that primary mode of seeing, as well as the shifts of focus, “brain movies” and the perpetual play of shapes and colors on the closed eyelid and occasionally on the eye surface (“closed-eye vision”). Brakhage’s works attempts to refine the visionary tradition by correcting its errors. Ex. In Thigh Line Lyre Triangular, The anamorphic shots of Jane in labor, as viewers watch the birth through the eyes of the artist.

Sitney, “Major Mythopoeia”

9. Why does Sitney argue, “It was Brakhage, of all the major American avant-garde filmmakers, who first embraced the formal directives and verbal aesthetics of Abstract Expressionism.”

Sitney uses the examination of Dog Star Man, in describing the rhetoric of Romanticism, the birth of consciousness, the cycle of the seasons, man’s struggle with nature, and sexual balance in the visual evocation of a fallen titan.

10. What archetypes are significant motifs in Dog Star Man, and which writers in what movement are associated with these four states of existence?

The first, Beulah, or Innocence, encompasses the vision of the child

Generation or experience defines the adult world of titanic sexual frustration and circumscribed erotic fulfillment.

The third and fourth states are respectively the damned and liberated alternatives to the two-fold opposition of innocence and experience.

Ulro, the hell of rationalism, self-absorption, and the domination of nature

Eden, the redeemed unity realm of “The Real Man, the Imagination”

Stephane Mallarme, Un Coup de Des 1897, Surrealism, French Poetry

William Blake 1757-1827, English Poet, painter and printmaker, mostly recognized for the Romantic Age.

Romanticism originated in the second half of the 18^th century in Europe.

A revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment.

Science vs. nature.

Wallace Stevens “Notes toward a Supreme Fiction” 1879-1955, American Modernist Poet, most of his work famous work was created in his 50’s.

“Reality is an activity, not a static object”

Reactions To Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome

Reactions To Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome

My reactions to IPD:

I tried to make sense of the Inauguration. Preparation, build of energy, and destruction are the main focus of Anger's film. All three generalize the film's outline, however, I'm not sure how to decipher Anger's meaning he is trying to convey. Yes, the film is VERY colorful. From my understanding they are at a masquerade party that everyone was looking forward to. I also felt that everyone had a certain role they play in each other's world, but what they are I'm not sure. I thought there was the role of the King, or main God (if including multiple deities) and the servants. When they were drinking the wine (I'm assuming it wasn't water), the cups in front of their face made me think of masks themselves. Especially when other characters were seen over 30 times taking off their mask. It was as if pulling the cup down was taking off their mask. The blonde guy had women all over him, and he was initially pulling away in a teasing way, like "ladies...ladies..please" But then later as he pulled away, his facial reactions and body movements appeared that he was sincere about wanting to flee for safety. The devil was the initial character (the king who ate the jewels). He waved his long nails in pleasure as he saw the acts of drinking and sex become rampid. The ending made me feel these characters were slap drunk out of their mind, but having a great time, but with an evil ending lurking around the corner. The blonde with the harem of women, juxtaposed with the evil leader, along with the red backdrop of what looks hundreds of people scrambling around, only makes me feel like they were in a type of Christian hell, doing things "christians" would feel be inappropriate. Prior to that, the whole movie made me think of having a party in Sodom and Gomorrah. lol. They had a great time, for a few minutes I think they looked a little worried, but then went back to having fun, or maybe they were just remembering what they did.