Week Four.

1. What films did Jonas Mekas associate with “Baudelairean Cinema,” and why did he call it that? [Yes, I’m implicitly asking you to look up Baudelaire.]
Baudelaire: Charles Baudelaire, who is known for literary and artistic decadence.
Mekas associated The Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man, The Flaming Creatures, Little Stabs at Happiness and Blonde Cobra with Baudelairean cinema. He called it this because it contained poetry both beautiful and terrible and was unsuerpassable in perversity, richness, beauty, sadness and tragedy.

2. How did Jonas Mekas’s views on experimental cinema change between 1955 and 1961?
He became more accepting of the films as time moved towards the 60s and he began to see them as forerunners for independent cinema.

3. How did Mekas’s interest in performance and improvisation shape his views of the New American Cinema in the 1960s.
He was less interested in realistic world views than in a substitution on spontaneous performance. He considered improv the essence of thought, emotion and movment.

4. Even though Jack Smith did not use found footage in Flaming Creatures, what are some similarities between Flaming Creatures and Joseph Cornell’s Rose Hobart?
They both deal with the tranformation and "liberation" of Hollywood stereotypes in a pseudo-Arabian world. Neither had a plot, only structured scenes.

5. What are some of the visual influences on Flaming Creatures, and according to Sitney how are the scenes organized?
Visual influences: Maria Mantez and von Sternberg.
Organization: Scenes are blended with deliberately obscured boundaries determined not by plot or narrative but by rhythm and dramatic effect.