Goshogaoka

In discussion on Wednesday, all of the questions we asked each other eventually led up to the penultimate, scratching inquisition in everyone's mind: why did Sharon Lockhart make this film, Goshogaoka? The answers lie in her still photography collection that she showed before the film. One of her film heroes is Cassavetes, who was a very inclusive filmmaker; in other words, his professional work involved the efforts of a lot of amateurs.
With Vito Acconci we talked about performance, and i think this film is mostly about performance. We are definitely not just peering in on a normal basketball practice, but the kids in the film are normal basketball players. The parameters of the lens bring out this quality of performance aesthetically, as the camera never changes position, evoking the idea of a stage. The hand of the maker, however, is pretty much always evident, because they are moving these kids around (she hired a movement coordinator from Belgium) and having them exhibit skills that they didn't practice.
This dynamic still doesn't answer the question, however. Did she just make the film to prove this point about performance and film, or to show the performance qualities in everyday people? I think so. The total lack of anything interesting in the film forces you to examine the techniques and the movements of the kids--that's all there is. This doesn't mean it was an easy film to make or anything--she didn't let anything into the film that she didn't wish to be there. It was a very controlled production; maybe this lack of ambiguity of content left too little room for the viewer, or at least me, to explore the space of the film and feel anything strong about its images.