Week Two.

1. What conditions in Europe made the avant-garde film movement possible after World War I?
Political and economic unrest, opposition of conventional film, an artistic climate and the influence of new technique and new art made avant garde possible after World War I.

2. If the goal of Impressionist art is “Nature Interpreted by Temperament,” what are the goals of abstract art?
Abstract art's goal is to overcome pure individualistic emotional expression and find instead an expression of universal feeling.

3. On what grounds does Fischinger argue that “there is nothing of an absolute artistic creative sense” in conventional cinematography? (At least two important reasons.)
Fischinger argues this on the grounds that it is simply surface realism, and is not artistic - it copies rather than creating. He feels there is too much input (from the director, cinematographer, operator, lighting designer, actor and anyone else who happens to be close by) and the result must cater to the masses, the lowest common denominator, rather than the artistic/creative vision of the individual filmmaker.

4. While Brakhage’s Reflections on Black is a trance film, why does Sitney argue that it anticipates the lyrical film?
Alright, first for this one a disclaimer...I think I'm completely off on this answer, but:
He argues that Brakhage begins to transcend the line between fantasy and actuality, moving towards triumphant imagination.

5. What are the key characteristics of the lyrical film (the first example of which was Anticipation of the Night).
Key characteristics are: flatness of frame, multiple perspectives occupying a single space through superimposition, and the lack of a single hero - instead there is an experience of seeing.

6. Which filmmaker was highly influential on Brakhage’s move to lyrical film in terms of film style, and why?
Joseph Cornell was very influential because he hired him on projects with no storyline or hero, which forced him to shoot differently and develop the lyrical mode of simply seeing. Marie Menken's films, especially Visual Variations on Noguchi which showed rhythmical movement around statues, visually influenced his style.

7. Alright, for some reason I wrote down a different question than what I just saw on the blog when I went back to copy and paste the questions in to here..so I'm going to go ahead and answer what I wrote, and I'll get back to the real 7 later..(I have absolutely no idea where the question I answered came from...I think I must be going crazy)
7a. Paraphrase the paragraph beginning with "Brakhage takes up the opening of Meshes of the Afternoon and elaborates it in terms of a Petersonian consciousness..." in your own words.
In the opening of Meshes we don't actually see the main character's face, only her body parts as they enter her own POV. Similarly, Brakhage shoots with only the body parts the subject would see of himself visible in the frame.

8. What are the characteristics of vision according to Brakhage’s revival of the Romantic dialectics of sight and imagination?
The characteristics of vision are lens distortion, obliterated perspective, discaring the tripod, changing camera speeds and changing film stocks; he thinks these should be used to enable you to show what you actually see rather than what you have been taught to see.

9. How are Bruce Baillie’s lyrical films and filmmaking practices similar to and different from Brakhage’s?
Bruce Baillie, according to Sitney, has the most distinctive voice of his own seperate from Brakhage. Brakhage's films show uneasy inwardness, Baillie's show a problematic study of the heroic. They both portray an argument between consiousness and nature; an impersonal or unqualified consciousness.