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."]
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:
Very good.
ReplyDeleteBe sure to bring up some of your Maclaine details in our discussion of The End.