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.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Leftovers, Part One.
10. 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.”
Brakhage used fast cutting and scratching/painting on the film to push the image into the space of Abstract Expressionism, which no other American filmmaker was doing yet.
11. What archetypes are significant motifs in Dog Star Man, and which writers are associated with these four states of existence?
The writer most associated with this is Blake, and the four states are innocence, experience, ulro (hell) and eden (heaven).
12. What are some similarities and differences between Dog Star Man and the Songs?
Differences: different film format/stock (16mm vs 8mm). all fades/superimpositions on Songs had to be done in camera. 30 Songs vs 5 DSM sections.
Similarities: deal with similar themes. all sections are in some way connected. lots of superimposition.
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.]
Alright, I'm not too sure on this one, but I think he means hard montage to be when the images juxtaposed are very different, such as in the opening with the montage of day and night, and soft montage is when the images are more similar and lead in to each other through pattern or color.
Brakhage used fast cutting and scratching/painting on the film to push the image into the space of Abstract Expressionism, which no other American filmmaker was doing yet.
11. What archetypes are significant motifs in Dog Star Man, and which writers are associated with these four states of existence?
The writer most associated with this is Blake, and the four states are innocence, experience, ulro (hell) and eden (heaven).
12. What are some similarities and differences between Dog Star Man and the Songs?
Differences: different film format/stock (16mm vs 8mm). all fades/superimpositions on Songs had to be done in camera. 30 Songs vs 5 DSM sections.
Similarities: deal with similar themes. all sections are in some way connected. lots of superimposition.
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.]
Alright, I'm not too sure on this one, but I think he means hard montage to be when the images juxtaposed are very different, such as in the opening with the montage of day and night, and soft montage is when the images are more similar and lead in to each other through pattern or color.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Week Three.
*I apologize, I don't have all the questions done. I think I caught the plague this weekend, I'm going to try to make it to class but I don't know if I will. I will answer the rest of these questions as well as the ones I skipped from last week later this week.*
3. Why does Sitney argue that synechdoche plays a major role in Christopher Maclaine’s The End, and how does the film anticipate later achievements by Brakhage and the mythopoeic form?
Synecdoche: n. A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole (as hand for sailor), the whole for a part (as the law for police officer), the specific for the general (as cutthroat for assassin), the general for the specific (as thief for pickpocket), or the material for the thing made from it (as steel for sword).
Synecdoche plays a role in The End because Maclaine uses episodes of different lives to give new meaning of the whole.
This influences and anticipates Brakhage and mythopoeic films by combining multiple episodes with a unifying theme, the combination of colour and black-and-white footage and the use of direct address and indirect narration.
4. What are some similarities and differences between the apocalyptic visions of Christopher Maclaine and Bruce Conner?
Conner's vision is less naive. Maclaine has a feeling of desperation but gradual postulation of hope while Conner uses deliberate and carefully organized twists to create his vision. Conner engenders in the viewer a state of extreme ambivalence.
5. Why are the films of Ron Rice (The Flower Thief) and Robert Nelson (The Great Blondino) examples of Beat sensibility and what Sitney calls the picaresque form?
Ron Rice's The Flower Thief is an example of Beat sensibility because it portrays the absurd, anarchistic, often infantile adventures of an innocent hero. Robert Nelson's The Great Blondino shows Beat sensibility through an alienated and naive protagonist who is fleeing to escape a detective from "the committee".
Picaresque = a simplification and elongation of Maclaine's form.
3. Why does Sitney argue that synechdoche plays a major role in Christopher Maclaine’s The End, and how does the film anticipate later achievements by Brakhage and the mythopoeic form?
Synecdoche: n. A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole (as hand for sailor), the whole for a part (as the law for police officer), the specific for the general (as cutthroat for assassin), the general for the specific (as thief for pickpocket), or the material for the thing made from it (as steel for sword).
Synecdoche plays a role in The End because Maclaine uses episodes of different lives to give new meaning of the whole.
This influences and anticipates Brakhage and mythopoeic films by combining multiple episodes with a unifying theme, the combination of colour and black-and-white footage and the use of direct address and indirect narration.
4. What are some similarities and differences between the apocalyptic visions of Christopher Maclaine and Bruce Conner?
Conner's vision is less naive. Maclaine has a feeling of desperation but gradual postulation of hope while Conner uses deliberate and carefully organized twists to create his vision. Conner engenders in the viewer a state of extreme ambivalence.
5. Why are the films of Ron Rice (The Flower Thief) and Robert Nelson (The Great Blondino) examples of Beat sensibility and what Sitney calls the picaresque form?
Ron Rice's The Flower Thief is an example of Beat sensibility because it portrays the absurd, anarchistic, often infantile adventures of an innocent hero. Robert Nelson's The Great Blondino shows Beat sensibility through an alienated and naive protagonist who is fleeing to escape a detective from "the committee".
Picaresque = a simplification and elongation of Maclaine's form.
–adjective
| 1. | pertaining to, characteristic of, or characterized by a form of prose fiction, originally developed in Spain, in which the adventures of an engagingly roguish hero are described in a series of usually humorous or satiric episodes that often depict, in realistic detail, the everyday life of the common people: picaresque novel; picaresque hero. |
| 2. | of, pertaining to, or resembling rogues. |
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Week One, Part Two.
"Ritual and More"
-What are some characteristics of psychodrama in the 40s?
Statues, especially when they come to life, dream sequences, temporal and spacial unreality.
"The Magus"
-Paraphrase the paragraph on p. 90 that begins “The filmic dream constituted…” in your own words.
The use of a dream as a means of storytelling is the most common method of storytelling in avant garde films of the 40s. It allows spacial and temporal unreality and allows the subject to appear multiple times in one frame.
-According to Sitney, what is the ultimate result at the end of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome?
The ultimate result is a triumph of the imaginations and the subsumption of characters into the Magus.
"Cinema 16"
-What were some general tendencies in the programming at Cinema 16, and how were films arranged within individual programs?
Goal: Pleasurable, exciting education, variety - mostly within documentaries and avant garde, but including all other forms of filmic media, to supple individual personal expression.
Arrangement: As Eisenstein's montages - colliding to create maximum thought.
-What kinds of venues rented Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks?
A very wide strange variety - a lot of individual people rented it for the usual universities and film societies, but it was also (strangely) rented by the US Naval Hospital, Colonial Williamsburg and the Dupont Institute.
-What were some of Cinema 16’s other activities (beyond exhibition and distribution)?
Aiding filmmakers in completing their projects, lecturing and showing films at schools and university and offering a competion/awards show.
-What impact did Cinema 16 have on New York City film culture?
It was a model for other film societies, it influenced the "movers and shakers" and young/aspiring filmmakers, it opened doors for european influence.
-What are some characteristics of psychodrama in the 40s?
Statues, especially when they come to life, dream sequences, temporal and spacial unreality.
"The Magus"
-Paraphrase the paragraph on p. 90 that begins “The filmic dream constituted…” in your own words.
The use of a dream as a means of storytelling is the most common method of storytelling in avant garde films of the 40s. It allows spacial and temporal unreality and allows the subject to appear multiple times in one frame.
-According to Sitney, what is the ultimate result at the end of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome?
The ultimate result is a triumph of the imaginations and the subsumption of characters into the Magus.
"Cinema 16"
-What were some general tendencies in the programming at Cinema 16, and how were films arranged within individual programs?
Goal: Pleasurable, exciting education, variety - mostly within documentaries and avant garde, but including all other forms of filmic media, to supple individual personal expression.
Arrangement: As Eisenstein's montages - colliding to create maximum thought.
-What kinds of venues rented Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks?
A very wide strange variety - a lot of individual people rented it for the usual universities and film societies, but it was also (strangely) rented by the US Naval Hospital, Colonial Williamsburg and the Dupont Institute.
-What were some of Cinema 16’s other activities (beyond exhibition and distribution)?
Aiding filmmakers in completing their projects, lecturing and showing films at schools and university and offering a competion/awards show.
-What impact did Cinema 16 have on New York City film culture?
It was a model for other film societies, it influenced the "movers and shakers" and young/aspiring filmmakers, it opened doors for european influence.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Week One.
(more to come later)
1. According to Sitney, what are some of the important differences between Meshes of the Afternoon and Un Chien Andalou?
The major differences are: Chien uses metaphors, Meshes doesn't; Meshes uses repetitive symbolism (key, knife, flower) while in Chien they simply repeat (clown clothes, box); in Chien all the space of the frame is used, in Meshes we only see bits with the character walking through; Chien presents a more unstable world, Meshes is merely a dreamworld.
2. What does Sitney mean by an "imagist" structure replacing narrative structure in Choreography for the Camera?
Imagist structure = a single gesture or movement telling the entire story. So instead of having a lot of action to create the story for Choreography, there is simply one dancer making one movement.
3. According to Sitney, Ritual in Transfigured Time represents a transition between the psychodrama and what kind of film?
Ritual in Transfigured Time is a transition between psychodrama and the architectonic/mythopoeic film style.
4. Respond briefly to Sitney's reading of Ritual in Transfigured Time (27-28); is his interpretation compatible with your experience of the film?
I found his interpretation fairly compatible with what I remember of the film. I kinda wish I could go back and watch this again while I'm still thinking about the things I should be looking for and see if I understand it better - the first time around I missed details such as the three women playing the part of the Greek Graces.
1. According to Sitney, what are some of the important differences between Meshes of the Afternoon and Un Chien Andalou?
The major differences are: Chien uses metaphors, Meshes doesn't; Meshes uses repetitive symbolism (key, knife, flower) while in Chien they simply repeat (clown clothes, box); in Chien all the space of the frame is used, in Meshes we only see bits with the character walking through; Chien presents a more unstable world, Meshes is merely a dreamworld.
2. What does Sitney mean by an "imagist" structure replacing narrative structure in Choreography for the Camera?
Imagist structure = a single gesture or movement telling the entire story. So instead of having a lot of action to create the story for Choreography, there is simply one dancer making one movement.
3. According to Sitney, Ritual in Transfigured Time represents a transition between the psychodrama and what kind of film?
Ritual in Transfigured Time is a transition between psychodrama and the architectonic/mythopoeic film style.
4. Respond briefly to Sitney's reading of Ritual in Transfigured Time (27-28); is his interpretation compatible with your experience of the film?
I found his interpretation fairly compatible with what I remember of the film. I kinda wish I could go back and watch this again while I'm still thinking about the things I should be looking for and see if I understand it better - the first time around I missed details such as the three women playing the part of the Greek Graces.
The Cage
To be perfectly honest, I don't think I really understood this film.
I found it interesting to watch, but as far as a meaning I was a bit overwhelmed.
The effects in it were pretty nifty - the rewind-action with only the actors moving forwards, the camera seeing the world as the eye. I'm not one to get motion sickness, but I did get pretty dizzy a few times as the camera bounced and swirled around as the eye tumbled loose through the city.
I thought the artist scraping "paint" off his board and eating it on the bread was kinda funny.
I'm sure there was lots of meaning in all three of these elements, but I'll confess I'm not entirely certain what it may be.
I found it interesting to watch, but as far as a meaning I was a bit overwhelmed.
The effects in it were pretty nifty - the rewind-action with only the actors moving forwards, the camera seeing the world as the eye. I'm not one to get motion sickness, but I did get pretty dizzy a few times as the camera bounced and swirled around as the eye tumbled loose through the city.
I thought the artist scraping "paint" off his board and eating it on the bread was kinda funny.
I'm sure there was lots of meaning in all three of these elements, but I'll confess I'm not entirely certain what it may be.
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