Reading Response 2: Due Sept. 29 @ 5 p.m.
Coincidentally, a major retrospective of Abstract Expressionist painting is just about to open at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Here's a description of the exhibit for those interested:
http://www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1098#related_events
For those who would like an overview of Post-WWII American Painting, take a look at the documentary Painters Painting:
http://www.ubu.com/film/deantonio_painters.html
Now, on to the questions:
Post a brief response to one of the following Brakhage films: The Wold Shadow, Window Water Baby Moving, Dog Star Man Part 2, Dog Star Man Part 3.
Window Water Baby Moving was a film I personally enjoyed. I liked the color and the fact that it was silent. I don’t think I could have handled the baby screaming when it was born! It was a unique experience watching the woman in the bath juxtaposed to images of the baby being born.
Sitney, “Apocalypses and Picaresques”
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? (Implicit in this question: what is synechdoche? It is a figure of speech, but what kind?)
Synedoche means a part of the whole. It also can be used the other way around in order to explain the uses of techniques in films, particularly Brakhage’s films. In the Dog Star Man films, stylistic techniques are used to show the man in relation to the seasons. They have their own characteristics, but they are put together to make the film as well as the idea of the seasons in a year. With different scenes in Maclaine’s films, such as arms flexing or a man on the bridge, they represent bigger ideas through the fact that all the characters are connected somehow.
What are some similarities and differences between the apocalyptic visions of Christopher Maclaine and Bruce Conner?
They both have visions of apocalyptic despair. Sitney says that Connor is not naive in his vision of doom and Connor has irony and symbolism in his films.
Bruce Jenkins, “Fluxfilms in Three False Starts.”
NOTE: This is in the "Kreul Articles" folder on the Flash Drive that you gave me.
4. How and why were the “anti-art” Fluxfilms reactions against the avant-garde films of Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger. [Hint: Think about Fluxus in relation to earlier anti-art such as Dada, and Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain."]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3671180/Duchamps-Fountain-The-practical-joke-that-launched-an-artistic-revolution.html
Flux filmmakers were more like everyday people and not just filmmakers that believed art shouldn’t be a certain way when it came to film. As a result, they were against the established avant-garde which was Brakhage and Anger at the time. Because they were also involved with other parts of the art, they were known for incorporating other artistic items in their films, but in such a way where anybody could be a part of it. Flux kits became part of the Flux movement.
5. What does Jenkins mean by the democratization of production in the Fluxfilms?
He’s talking about the fact that due to the fact that Fluxus films can be made by anybody, then when a group is making one, everybody should have a say in what the film should look like. It is the making of the film that makes it art.
6. Critic Jonas Mekas divided avant-garde filmmaking into the "slow" and the "quick"; which filmmakers were associated with "slow" and which filmmakers were associated with "quick"? Which Fluxus films were "slow" and "quick" (name one of each)?
Slow category and films: Andy Warhol and Yoko Ono; Disappearing Music for Face and Joe Jones’ Smoking
Quick category and films: Stan Brakhage and George Maciunas; Sun in Your Head and Opus 74
7. How is the Fluxus approach to the cinema different from both Godard and Brakhage?
Brakhage and others were concerned with creating a new art form through the medium of film in a new and rebellious way, but Fluxus artists sought to create art through many mediums.
8. Why does Jenkins argue that Nam June Paik’s Zen for Film “fixed the material and aesthetic terms for the production of subsequent Fluxfilms”? How does it use the materials of the cinema? What kind of aesthetic experience does it offer? A version of the film (and other Fluxfilms) is available here:
http://www.ubu.com/film/fluxfilm.html
Because a 7 minute film of a white screen is the perfect way to downplay Avant-Garde films up to this point. All the while filmmakers are trying to break into a new art form, Zen For Film is unbeatable according to the Fluxus logic because not only can a blank screen be art, but everybody participates because everybody is going to have a different take on it.
For those looking for more information about Fluxus, here is an interesting podcast called "The Sounds of Fluxus" by the Poetry Foundation:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/audio/agat_may2010.mp3
Posted by kreulj at 10:01 AM
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Monday, October 25, 2010
1. What are some characteristics of the American psychodrama in the 1940s?
The American psychodrama of the 1940’s was dominated primarily by the trance films. One well known artist was Maya Deren and her film Meshes of the Afternoon. Trance films involve the character, or protagonist, struggling with external struggles in a dreamlike state or “trance.” The camera typically does not track; rather, it pans or tilts. Because of the trance state, the films don’t follow a linear structure. Another quality involved hard and soft montage, as in Brakhage’s The Wold Shadow. In this film, through soft montage, images of trees slowly become images of abstract images.
2. What does Sitney mean by an “imagist” structure replacing narrative structure in Choreography for the Camera? For reference, you can see the film here:
http://www.ubu.com/film/deren_study-in-choreography.html
Maya Deren is noted for the “imagist” structure because she believed that a film could revolve around a single image. In this film, a dancer is this image because we see him in all different sorts of settings.
3. Respond briefly to Sitney’s reading of Ritual in Transfigured Time (27-28); Is his interpretation compatible with your experience of the film?
I was able to follow the film as he wrote about it, but the imagist symbolism was very dense according to Sitney. For instance, the statues and what they represented in history was not something I readily knew. As a result, I knew there was much more to get (like Sitney) if I was aware of such histories behind the “imagist” structure.
Sitney, “The Magus”
Paraphrase the paragraph on p. 90 that begins “The filmic dream constituted…” in your own words.
Basically, during the 1940’s Avant-Garde, filmmakers such as Deren and Anger made films in which the camera was the subject and everything in front of the camera was to be interpreted, instead of a person in front of the camera having to interpret his or her world while a camera films it. The camera is literally the eye of the filmmaker.
According to Sitney, what is the ultimate result at the end of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome? How does his reading of the film compare / contrast with your own experience of the film?
He’s redeemed, but I personally hated the film. Sitney, as always, was able to interpret several parts of the film, but upon watching it in class (before any discussion) I didn’t see any structure to it whatsoever. It was a hard watch because the music was primarily the same and all I saw was colorful, distorted images of the same thing. Apparently Sitney got more out of it.
Sitney, “The Lyrical Film”
What are the key characteristics of the lyrical film (the first example of which was Anticipation of the Night).
The protagonist’s point of view is represented through the camera’s point of view. Therefore, the films are jarring, with many angles and colors throughout.
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.]
Brakhage explains soft montage as something becoming another thing. Sitney describes “soft” montage similarly by explaining that images similar to one another are juxtaposed to one another until one item or subject “becomes” the other. “Hard” montage involves juxtaposing images that don’t have commonalities with each other, producing a jarring effect on the viewer.
8. What are the characteristics of vision according to Brakhage’s revival of the Romantic dialectics of sight and imagination? [I’m not asking here about film style, I’m asking about Brakhage’s views about vision.]
Brakhage says a lot about vision. First, his concept of the untutored eye involves the assumption that most of us don’t “see” (according to him). Because we have been brought up knowing what certain objects and colors are and/or what they represent, we do not look at the world with an “untutored” eye. He asks what grass looks like to a baby unfamiliar with the color green. He makes distinctions between open-eye vision, the way our eyes operate while awake and about, and closed-eye vision, the way our eyes see the back of our eyelids and also think back on memories. Brakhage calls them “brain movies.”
Sitney, “Major Mythopoeia”
9. 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 was the first to incorporate other art forms into his films. He would scratch the surface of the film on certain frames to convey a particular idea. He would put dirt, leaf particles, etc on the film stock and photograph it. These were directly related to abstract expressionism and up to this point were unique and fresh to the world of Avant-Garde filmmaking.
What archetypes are significant motifs in Dog Star Man, and which writers in what movement are associated with these four states of existence?
Innocence, experience, damned, and liberated. Writers like Black, Pound, Stevens, and Witman wrote about these archetypes.
The American psychodrama of the 1940’s was dominated primarily by the trance films. One well known artist was Maya Deren and her film Meshes of the Afternoon. Trance films involve the character, or protagonist, struggling with external struggles in a dreamlike state or “trance.” The camera typically does not track; rather, it pans or tilts. Because of the trance state, the films don’t follow a linear structure. Another quality involved hard and soft montage, as in Brakhage’s The Wold Shadow. In this film, through soft montage, images of trees slowly become images of abstract images.
2. What does Sitney mean by an “imagist” structure replacing narrative structure in Choreography for the Camera? For reference, you can see the film here:
http://www.ubu.com/film/deren_study-in-choreography.html
Maya Deren is noted for the “imagist” structure because she believed that a film could revolve around a single image. In this film, a dancer is this image because we see him in all different sorts of settings.
3. Respond briefly to Sitney’s reading of Ritual in Transfigured Time (27-28); Is his interpretation compatible with your experience of the film?
I was able to follow the film as he wrote about it, but the imagist symbolism was very dense according to Sitney. For instance, the statues and what they represented in history was not something I readily knew. As a result, I knew there was much more to get (like Sitney) if I was aware of such histories behind the “imagist” structure.
Sitney, “The Magus”
Paraphrase the paragraph on p. 90 that begins “The filmic dream constituted…” in your own words.
Basically, during the 1940’s Avant-Garde, filmmakers such as Deren and Anger made films in which the camera was the subject and everything in front of the camera was to be interpreted, instead of a person in front of the camera having to interpret his or her world while a camera films it. The camera is literally the eye of the filmmaker.
According to Sitney, what is the ultimate result at the end of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome? How does his reading of the film compare / contrast with your own experience of the film?
He’s redeemed, but I personally hated the film. Sitney, as always, was able to interpret several parts of the film, but upon watching it in class (before any discussion) I didn’t see any structure to it whatsoever. It was a hard watch because the music was primarily the same and all I saw was colorful, distorted images of the same thing. Apparently Sitney got more out of it.
Sitney, “The Lyrical Film”
What are the key characteristics of the lyrical film (the first example of which was Anticipation of the Night).
The protagonist’s point of view is represented through the camera’s point of view. Therefore, the films are jarring, with many angles and colors throughout.
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.]
Brakhage explains soft montage as something becoming another thing. Sitney describes “soft” montage similarly by explaining that images similar to one another are juxtaposed to one another until one item or subject “becomes” the other. “Hard” montage involves juxtaposing images that don’t have commonalities with each other, producing a jarring effect on the viewer.
8. What are the characteristics of vision according to Brakhage’s revival of the Romantic dialectics of sight and imagination? [I’m not asking here about film style, I’m asking about Brakhage’s views about vision.]
Brakhage says a lot about vision. First, his concept of the untutored eye involves the assumption that most of us don’t “see” (according to him). Because we have been brought up knowing what certain objects and colors are and/or what they represent, we do not look at the world with an “untutored” eye. He asks what grass looks like to a baby unfamiliar with the color green. He makes distinctions between open-eye vision, the way our eyes operate while awake and about, and closed-eye vision, the way our eyes see the back of our eyelids and also think back on memories. Brakhage calls them “brain movies.”
Sitney, “Major Mythopoeia”
9. 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 was the first to incorporate other art forms into his films. He would scratch the surface of the film on certain frames to convey a particular idea. He would put dirt, leaf particles, etc on the film stock and photograph it. These were directly related to abstract expressionism and up to this point were unique and fresh to the world of Avant-Garde filmmaking.
What archetypes are significant motifs in Dog Star Man, and which writers in what movement are associated with these four states of existence?
Innocence, experience, damned, and liberated. Writers like Black, Pound, Stevens, and Witman wrote about these archetypes.
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