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.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Hamilton
The writer and director of Hamilton, a story about two young people with a baby, chose to include as little dialogue as possible in his Baltimore portrait. He also didn't include the introduction of new conflict into the story--he depicted peoples' lives after the problems had been introduced. Joe, the young father, is a growing boy trapped in a fatherhood predicament. The result, besides bitter silence and coldness towards his girlfriend, is a ranging body, yearning to escape. The seminal moment of the film probably comes during a walk, when Joe traipses about, smoking, and for a while, cars cannot be heard. Then, he is picked up by his mother, and we sense that he does not have a lot of freedom. The director won't give us the satisfaction of really knowing anything solid about any of the characters, which gives us some weird character pairings, like the house Joe lives in, for example. He seems to have black sisters, which is just a sort of odd thing when he's white, unless he or they were adopted. The director did not think it was important for us to know. Maybe being a foster child could help explain Joe's loneliness and seemingly constant discomfort?
The scene where this strategy of silence and plot absence works is in a scene that would have been at home inside of any type of narrative film. Joe is in his girlfriend's bed, and wakes up at 3 in the morning to play video games. The woman tries to get him to go back to bed, offering the warmth of her body. By the way Joe reacts, or doesn't react, we get the deep sense of resentment he has for the mother of his child, and we see the effect it has on the girl, who gets up to wash her face, presumably frustrated.
For all the time spent on the faces of the characters, however, there are some really stilted and boring performances. Joe, who Carl informed us is a semi-professional actor, is pretty interesting, but the girl is just toneless and expressionless, even though the camera is on her face when she's on camera, and it doesn't really move. And as Dan Kelly mentioned in class, the grandmother's speech about her flowers to the little boy was kind of creepy, and sounded as if she was reading off of cue cards as she went.
People talk more than these people talk, so the search for realism cannot explain this movie's lack of extraordinary or more melodramatic events. I appreciated the scenes where the strategy worked, such as Joe's walk, the car ride with his mother, and the walk to meet his girlfriend. Other than that, the style was much more apparent than the film's subjects, who appeared to simply be unprofessional actors, not real characters.
The scene where this strategy of silence and plot absence works is in a scene that would have been at home inside of any type of narrative film. Joe is in his girlfriend's bed, and wakes up at 3 in the morning to play video games. The woman tries to get him to go back to bed, offering the warmth of her body. By the way Joe reacts, or doesn't react, we get the deep sense of resentment he has for the mother of his child, and we see the effect it has on the girl, who gets up to wash her face, presumably frustrated.
For all the time spent on the faces of the characters, however, there are some really stilted and boring performances. Joe, who Carl informed us is a semi-professional actor, is pretty interesting, but the girl is just toneless and expressionless, even though the camera is on her face when she's on camera, and it doesn't really move. And as Dan Kelly mentioned in class, the grandmother's speech about her flowers to the little boy was kind of creepy, and sounded as if she was reading off of cue cards as she went.
People talk more than these people talk, so the search for realism cannot explain this movie's lack of extraordinary or more melodramatic events. I appreciated the scenes where the strategy worked, such as Joe's walk, the car ride with his mother, and the walk to meet his girlfriend. Other than that, the style was much more apparent than the film's subjects, who appeared to simply be unprofessional actors, not real characters.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Learning to Love You More
On Yoko Ono's website, there are assignments anyone can do to explore their world, and the resulting media is pretty entertaining. My favorite assignment was "Make a documentary about a small child." My Star by Roger Scott is about his son, Dylan. It has a great soundtrack that actually makes the baby exciting, maybe giving the audience a sense of the astounding amount of discoveries the baby makes each day. There is a hilarious shot where Scott zooms out and we realize that Dylan is lying in a dryer, which his mom programs to start like the liftoff of a space ship. This short and sweet style of documentary is like a yummy after dinner mint.
I also enjoyed exploring the guest curators' (or Ono's friends) choices, presenting some very interesting portraits generated from the assignments. The effect of taking a tour through the assignments allowed me to see the greater vision of the website coalesce into a jagged collection of artists and everyday people. This was probably the best example 201 students could get of daily practice, or personal filmmaking.
I was amazed at the amount of work put into some of these, especially the neighborhood field recording from Erin Thompson and Hanna Vachs. They took time with each person who accepted to draw their portrait and record their musical talents or performances. It wasn't especially entertaining--the bad musicians were very boring, but i did enjoy the first performance by the acoustic guitarist. The drawing allowed me to listen to the fingering and picture the performance in my mind.
I also enjoyed exploring the guest curators' (or Ono's friends) choices, presenting some very interesting portraits generated from the assignments. The effect of taking a tour through the assignments allowed me to see the greater vision of the website coalesce into a jagged collection of artists and everyday people. This was probably the best example 201 students could get of daily practice, or personal filmmaking.
I was amazed at the amount of work put into some of these, especially the neighborhood field recording from Erin Thompson and Hanna Vachs. They took time with each person who accepted to draw their portrait and record their musical talents or performances. It wasn't especially entertaining--the bad musicians were very boring, but i did enjoy the first performance by the acoustic guitarist. The drawing allowed me to listen to the fingering and picture the performance in my mind.
Abstraction and Projection
For this class, the theme was light. Projection was examined as an action, and the capturing of light on film was featured in the films. The most abstract films concerning light were Available Light: Shift and The Dark Room.
For Available Light, Luis Recoder set up a fogged lens apparatus that captured unfocused light on a 16 mm camera, turning everything into it's color-on-film representation. The film was long for such a project, but the effect was still pretty engaging. It was interesting that color was used as a key for vision, and that color on film was examined--it calls into question the realism aspects of film that viewers take for granted when color is paired with a film image.
The Dark Room was a roving trip of dark blues and greys recorded on 16 mm in a camera obscura. This film was a lot more difficult for me to engage in than Available Light, probably because nothing was ever sharp or definite. I didn't feel like i was in a camera obscura though; i just couldn't tell what was going on, and the set-back screen was just too hard to focus on.
For Available Light, Luis Recoder set up a fogged lens apparatus that captured unfocused light on a 16 mm camera, turning everything into it's color-on-film representation. The film was long for such a project, but the effect was still pretty engaging. It was interesting that color was used as a key for vision, and that color on film was examined--it calls into question the realism aspects of film that viewers take for granted when color is paired with a film image.
The Dark Room was a roving trip of dark blues and greys recorded on 16 mm in a camera obscura. This film was a lot more difficult for me to engage in than Available Light, probably because nothing was ever sharp or definite. I didn't feel like i was in a camera obscura though; i just couldn't tell what was going on, and the set-back screen was just too hard to focus on.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Vladmaster rocks the auditorium
I came in late, as usual, with a special greasy snack in hand and, to my pleasant surprise, found that i would not be watching five or more abstract films in one sitting. Instead, i would get to play with a cool toy. Well, i didn't really get to play with it, the directions were pretty clear, coming from an honest, NPR-type-voice from somewhere.
On the whole, I found the Vladmaster medium fresh and interesting. The experience is a very controlled one however, and put me in a meditative, obedient, almost hypnotic state. Especially with the lack of blinking, my narcolepsy got me a couple times as i caught myself dropping the Vladmaster. For this reason, i went ahead in the slides a few times, and listened to the soundtrack as i clicked through to the right spot, and really viewed the things as two seperate works. From Vladamir's comments, it appears that the processes are a bit separate, but she does still write the stories.
My favorite disc was the one about the construction equipment. An amazingly inventive story that begins with a fairly abstract picture of crumpled construction paper with an airplane's shadow on it, it also provides proof for the effectiveness of the authoritative power of direct eye-to-lens contact. It was a story that was made up, but told in a TLC, UFO sighting style, even referencing reports on the evening news that left me questioning why i had never seen anything about this event before.
I believe the soft miniature scenes were also effective in throwing the audience into another world where they couldn't quite make everything out (i already referenced the fuzzy first picture) and had to listen to the voice to help tie everything together.
This medium is totally fresh, but, again, it's filmed with a 16 mm camera, which is pretty crazy. Everything abstract seems to be in that format, one which i have technical difficulties with. I want to do digital stuff like Rodriguez, where i can be a rebel and not have to worry about dirt in the shutter gate that ruins a roll of film.
On the whole, I found the Vladmaster medium fresh and interesting. The experience is a very controlled one however, and put me in a meditative, obedient, almost hypnotic state. Especially with the lack of blinking, my narcolepsy got me a couple times as i caught myself dropping the Vladmaster. For this reason, i went ahead in the slides a few times, and listened to the soundtrack as i clicked through to the right spot, and really viewed the things as two seperate works. From Vladamir's comments, it appears that the processes are a bit separate, but she does still write the stories.
My favorite disc was the one about the construction equipment. An amazingly inventive story that begins with a fairly abstract picture of crumpled construction paper with an airplane's shadow on it, it also provides proof for the effectiveness of the authoritative power of direct eye-to-lens contact. It was a story that was made up, but told in a TLC, UFO sighting style, even referencing reports on the evening news that left me questioning why i had never seen anything about this event before.
I believe the soft miniature scenes were also effective in throwing the audience into another world where they couldn't quite make everything out (i already referenced the fuzzy first picture) and had to listen to the voice to help tie everything together.
This medium is totally fresh, but, again, it's filmed with a 16 mm camera, which is pretty crazy. Everything abstract seems to be in that format, one which i have technical difficulties with. I want to do digital stuff like Rodriguez, where i can be a rebel and not have to worry about dirt in the shutter gate that ruins a roll of film.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
Laura Marks
To answer one of Rob's questions, when I think of Beirut I think of a group of people that are trying to live their lives the best they can. Lebanon's economy was on the rebound until the summer of 06, but scars of the eighties still remain. Do they think of themselves as a cursed people? Or just trapped between the pincers of land-grabbing hawks in Israel and the moslem extremists who fight them? Of course, everything is more complicated than that. The films Laura Marks played in class gave voice to the agony concerning a history and a nation whose fortunes shift abruptly in a volatile area of the world.
Especially representative of this entrapment and powerlessness that the people of Lebanon rebounded from and are currently re experiencing was the film Dead Time, by Ghassan Salhab. A short, easily shared quicktime film, Dead Time gives us snapshots of the wreckage left after Israel's bombs bombarded southern Lebanon, a place too dangerous for journalists to detail too closely. Even if journalists wanted to get in, however, they would have had to get there before the Israeli military demolished all roadways and bridges out of central population areas; the red cross was even stuck.
Again, all the enterprise of the Christian and Moslems and everyone else living in Lebanon was reduced to a battleground. Self-determination proves fleeting. This is why Salhab wears a superman t-shirt--he is expressing his angst for all those who cannot, people who are just like him, except for the fact that they are without a camera or other means to deliver their stories and pictures.
Self determination turns into a struggle in Lebanon for the main character of the animated film, Sad Man, who must be determined just to walk out the door in the morning. He has been robbed of his emotions; it is all he can do just to get out of bed. He saves happy faces like relics in his restroom, just to remind himself that he's human, and that even if he feels like a prisoner right now, he should persevere.
The short film never tells us why though. That is the fleeting aspect of the normality of life and the constancy of things in America one takes for granted--an operational government, a functioning military to depend on for protection (even though it is grossly misused) instead of militias to whom they owe debt for their guerilla residency and defense of their neighborhoods. The length of these films was an aesthetic and conscious decision, designed to report on conditions of life in Lebanon. Personal looks at a geopolitical struggle in which the residents can never claim victory.
Especially representative of this entrapment and powerlessness that the people of Lebanon rebounded from and are currently re experiencing was the film Dead Time, by Ghassan Salhab. A short, easily shared quicktime film, Dead Time gives us snapshots of the wreckage left after Israel's bombs bombarded southern Lebanon, a place too dangerous for journalists to detail too closely. Even if journalists wanted to get in, however, they would have had to get there before the Israeli military demolished all roadways and bridges out of central population areas; the red cross was even stuck.
Again, all the enterprise of the Christian and Moslems and everyone else living in Lebanon was reduced to a battleground. Self-determination proves fleeting. This is why Salhab wears a superman t-shirt--he is expressing his angst for all those who cannot, people who are just like him, except for the fact that they are without a camera or other means to deliver their stories and pictures.
Self determination turns into a struggle in Lebanon for the main character of the animated film, Sad Man, who must be determined just to walk out the door in the morning. He has been robbed of his emotions; it is all he can do just to get out of bed. He saves happy faces like relics in his restroom, just to remind himself that he's human, and that even if he feels like a prisoner right now, he should persevere.
The short film never tells us why though. That is the fleeting aspect of the normality of life and the constancy of things in America one takes for granted--an operational government, a functioning military to depend on for protection (even though it is grossly misused) instead of militias to whom they owe debt for their guerilla residency and defense of their neighborhoods. The length of these films was an aesthetic and conscious decision, designed to report on conditions of life in Lebanon. Personal looks at a geopolitical struggle in which the residents can never claim victory.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
you tube
On You Tube today, I watched a pretty funny video entitled Smosh-Boxman. This music video format is pretty popular online, and i think it hasn't totally dried up its potential. This video is the best when the lyrics explain something going on in the picture, like when he says that some kid "wasn't that intelligent," while he's chugging windex. That's pretty funny.
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