SILENT FILMS
Our last unit is on films out of the “Hollywood Standard.” Film scholars Thomas and Vivian Sobchack ascribe a number of characteristics to the “Hollywood Standard” which includes film as we’re used to seeing it at the multiplex theater at the mall.
Films within in the “Hollywood Standard” tend to
1) be “a product made in the context of American capitalism,” produced primarily to make a profit;
2) be narrative, that is they tell a story;
3) have a narrative that “absorbs us…Thus, a good film is seen as the one best able to take us in, to create the conditions that most appeal to our credulity—to our willingness to believe in the visible, in what we see, as true;
4) not draw attention to the “signs… of labor and technology used in their production.”
5) follow “standards or general rules and conventions of visual and aural representation [that] tend over time…to seem not only normal, but natural.” That is, it seems that the Hollywood style is the only way to make a “good” film.
The last four weeks of our class we devote to films that are made outside of the standard of the Hollywood Studio system. We begin this week with several short and one feature length silent films. These films are out of the Hollywood Standard simply because they predate the studio system. They come before the time when films existed primarily to make money for large corporations.
The first short films we’ll see are among the first films projected before an audience on December 28, 1895, in Paris by the Lumiere brothers. Here are a couple of things to look for as we see a few of these short films, which last about 30 seconds each.
LUMIERE BROTHERS SHORT FILMS: ACTUALITIES (1895-7)
--Kinds of SUBJECTS chosen (mise en scene)?
(Why might they have chosen these subjects?)
--CAMERA--How is the camera work (cinematography) different from today's Hollywood films?
The Lumieres called their films “actualities,” which should give you some idea of the documentary nature of the films. Their goal seems to have been in part to hold a mirror up to reality. Audiences, of course, were stunned by this new technology. In fact, when the brothers projected the their first film, which was the one of the train pulling into the depot for its first audience in a Paris cafe, some of the people in the audience screamed and hid under their tables. They thought they were going to be run over! So can there be any doubt in your mind that watching films is a learned activity, something cultural and not natural.
show: Exiting the Factory, Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat, Baby’s Lunch, The Sprinkler Sprinkled, Demonlition of a Wall (and reverse), Card Party.
Why might they have chosen to shoot the film of this locomotive? Perhaps simply because there was motion in the subject: this is the kind of thing that motion pictures could do that still photography couldn’t. The other film, of the child eating, was perhaps the first in what has been a one hundred year tradition in film: the home movie!
How is the camera work different from today’s films? Well, these first filmmakers were greatly limited by the technology available to them. Besides the length of the film, you’ll note that the film is all one take, and that the camera doesn’t move.
By the time of Georges Melies a few years later, film had changed into something more of a vehicle to entertain its audiences. Melies was a originally a magician (you’ll see how this affects the kind of films he made). Melies became the most popular filmmaker in the world of his day. A Trip to the Moon is considered his masterpiece.
Here are a few things to look for:
MELIES: A TRIP TO THE MOON (1902)
--MISE EN SCENE--How is it like a staged play?
--CAMERA--How is the cinematography different from today's Hollywood films?
--How is Melies' work DIFFERENT from the Lumieres'?
You’ll note that the action in this little film all occurs as if it were taking place on a stage. Everything is in two dimensions, with very little depth. The camera seems to be placed about ten rows back in a theater: as if the film audience were given the best seat in the house for a Paris stageplay!
Once again we have a camera that doesn’t move, but we do have editing…even though all the shots keep their same distance from the action: there are no close ups, no medium shots, etc. It’s all still as if on a stage, with different backdrops. (Your text on pages 116-117 gives a breakdown of the scenes in this film, discussing the editing).
The one time the camera appears to move, when the rocket is heading towards the moon, Melies actually kept the camera still and moved the set construction of the face of the moon closer to the camera to give the impression of movement.
Melies started his career as a magician. One change in his film from the Lumiere, not surprisingly, is the use of special effects: the characters who disappear (Melies merely stopped his hand cranked cameras, removed the actor from the stage, then started cranking again: no editing took place!). And in some of his films, color, which came about not through color stock film, which didn’t exist, but through Melies himself hand painting each frame!
One important advance from Lumiere to Melies is the fact that the latter’s films tell a story, something that we’ve come to expect in our days.
Our last silent film is a feature length, 76 minute comedy from 1926 by American filmmaker Buster Keaton. It’s called The General. I think you’ll be able to see how far film advanced between the turn of the century and the era right before sound films (which began in 1927—by 1929 virtually all films had sound). I also think you’ll enjoy The General much more than the short films we saw, and you might want to ask yourself why. This could help you understand how films advanced in their first thirty years. But in The General you’ll have to watch very closely to notice the subtleties of the film. We’re used to depending on sight and sound to enjoy movies, which means in part that we can be somewhat careless. Depending only on sight means we must work a little harder.
We can surely consider Buster Keaton a film auteur. In 1920 he founded the Keaton Film Company, of which he had total artistic control. Between 1923 and 1928 he made nine films, each of which was very successful financially. The General is considered his masterpiece. You’ll notice that the film has a fairly complex narrative, but you’ll also notice that on anther level it’s a series of gags, of comic situations. One of the amazing things is that most of these gags were improvised by Keaton. They weren’t planned out ahead of time! Keaton’s films never used written scripts or shooting schedules. The filmakers knew only the premise of the film and its conclusion. The rest was improvised. Keaton did all his own gags, never using a stunt man, even for the ones that are dangerous. Keaton never smiles in the films, and he often appears as a mere speck in the mise en scene, surrounded by large machines. You’ll notice despite Keaton’s serious-little-man persona, he is almost like an acrobat or an athlete. His movements are almost balletic at times, which adds to the comedy (which is often physical humor).
One of Keaton’s associates tells us that Keaton came up with the ideas himself for 90% of the gags in the films. He also chose every camera set up, and was responsible for the final cut of the film, which means he was in charge of editing. He was usually able to execute these gags successfully on the first take, without so much as a rehearsal. Keaton believed that rehearsing the gags produced an effect that looked calculated and mechanical.
Keaton’s typical method was to shoot five or six times the amount of film he needed, edit together the footage that was funniest and leave out the rest. The films were played before audiences in sneak previews, reedited based on audience response, then released to the general public.
Some other things to look for in The General
--The Gags: a series of “theme and variations.” They have multiple parts
--Editing
--Realistic acting, costuming, settings (not melodramatic as in some early films)
--Action takes place on several planes at once (depth in the mise en scene)
--Keaton’s character in the film
--the depiction of “the girl”
AFTER THE FILM
I’m going to play through a few scenes from The General to illustrate for you some of the things I asked you to look for in the film, elements that mark Keaton’s artistry. I’ll try not to stand up here and “explain the jokes” to you, since nothing is worse than that! And I’m not going to claim some deep “hidden meaning” exists in the film. My point is to show how Keaton was skillful enough to recognize the potential of the film medium for his audiences. That’s probably why he was so popular in his day and so heralded as an important filmmaker to this day.
1. OPENING SHOTS (1:28 – 3:15)
Note how the opening shot gives us the characteristic action on several levels simultaneously, in this case three levels. Note that we have realistic acting in the film even though it’s a comedy. We don’t have handwringing and exaggerated gestures as we see in some early melodramas or comedies. Note too the degree of editing which exists in the film: “He had two loves…his train…and” and then we get a cut from the titles to a shot of “the girl,” the love interest, and then a cut to Keaton taking down her picture.
Note next the characteristic small protagonist (Keaton) against the large set, shot in a long shot, here of the girl’s family’s house. In this scene we get the first simple “gag” of the film, when Keaton discovers the girl behind him rather than inside the house, as he expects her to be. Keaton described his character’s persona as that of the classic slow thinker, who has a delayed reaction to the complications life presents him. In that delay is some of the humor, I think.
2. SITTING ON THE WHEEL OF THE LOCOMOTIVE (chapter 3, 10:35)
Here’s one of the most well known shots in Keaton’s films. Look at how the little man is so deep in thought that he doesn’t notice the train is moving. Note the expression on his face. Great comic timing!
3. CANNON GAG (19:11 - 22:33)
(read before we see the clip).
First note the use of crosscutting, (or “parallel editing” as your text calls it on page 140) in which “the film shifts back and forth between two or more actions, often suggesting tha the actions are occurring simultaneously.”
We see in a lot of the shots in this gag that Keaton the little man hero is small in the mise en scene (as he is when he’s sitting on the locomotive wheel, or running down the track chasing after the General after the Yankees have stolen it, or left alone on the empty street at the end of the film after all the Confederate soldiers have gone off to battle).
Notice too the skillful editing in this scene, how it adds to the humor. First we get a tracking shot of the locomotive hauling the cannon. This isn’t some kind of gimmick or studio shot. It probably would have been technically fairly difficult to produce this shot at the time.
The gag here, as always, is set up in a series of parts. First the cannonball comes up short, then there’s an explosion behind the train when the cannonball is pushed over the side. Then the car uncouples and the cannon lowers. Note the editing at this point: we have a long shot to show the uncoupling, then we cut to the point of view of the cannon (look at the depth in this shot). Then we get a shot from the front of the engine looking back, when Keaton uselessly throws a little piece of wood at the cannon
The gag is completed when the trains randomly come to a curve in the the track and the exploding cannonball accidentally comes close to hitting the Yankees
4. LOG ON TRACK (chapter 6 24:57)
Here’s another famous moment in The General. Again here we have the little man pictured small against the giant machine in the mise en scene. Notice the cut to tracking shot, then cut to a long shot as Keaton cleverly (and luckily) hits one log with another to clear the track. Here is a fine example of Keaton’s athleticism—Keaton as a performer, an acrobat, and a physical comedian. Imagine pulling off this “gag” in one take, without special effects!
5. ARMY RETREAT chapter 7, 28:23 - 30:28)
One last very famous scene in the film. Here’s a great example of action going on on more than one plane in the mise en scene. In the foreground, Keaton stokes the fire unaware, while behind him the Confederate Army retreats, and later the Yankee army advances. The contrary movement, the locomotive going one direction and the soldiers going the opposite direction, is visually interesting for us. And this gag is not just for laughs, but its irony is tied to the conflict and maybe the theme of the film: who after all is the real hero? Is it the supposedly gallant soldiers? Or the officers, who later in the film can’t figure out how to straighten out the track that Keaton has bent. They stand around and discuss it as if in a committee meeting, until an enlisted man with an axe finally fixes it. The hero, in The General, and in life perhaps the film is saying, is the little guy, the Keatonesque figure who by luck and by pluck comes out on to at the end.
A few last words. First, consider the shot of the train falling off the bridge into the river: tame by the standards of today’s action movies, but a pretty remarkable piece of filmmaking for 1926
Second: Some of the comedy of The General revolves around the figure of “the girl.” She’s the butt of a lot of the jokes, including the physical humor when Keaton puts her in the bag, or when he’s trying to protect her decency (by not touching her an “improper” way!) at the same time she’s crawling out of the boxcar and onto the tender. But it’s worth noting that this minor character changes somewhat! I love the stereotypical humor when she sweeps the cab of the locomotive during the chase, and throws away one big piece of wood because it has a hole in it! But later, she is the one who thinks up the trick of tying the two spruce trees together so it slows down the Yankees. And by the end of the film, she’s running the engine quite well without him. When he puts down his hand to help her up to the cab, she doesn’t need his help, but bounds up on her own instead.
And finally: what became of Buster Keaton? In 1928 he signed a contract with a major studio, MGM, a move which Keaton later referred to as “the biggest mistake of my life.” The studio system ate up Keaton. They insisted that he work from a script instead of improvising. They insisted that there be more storyline to his films. And they demanded final control over his output. His scripts got worse and worse, his films worse and worse, and by 1933 he was fired. As it does so many times, the conformity demanded by the Hollywood Standard, the conservative nature of the American corporate system, destroyed the work and the spirit of the creative individual Keaton.
But his early funny films remain.
LUMIERE BROTHERS SHORT FILMS: ACTUALITIES (1895-7)
the first films projected before an audience on December 28, 1895, in Paris
--Kinds of SUBJECTS chosen (mise en scene)?
(Why might they have chosen these subjects?)
--CAMERA--How is the camera work (cinematography) different from today's Hollywood films?
MELIES: ATrip to the Moon (1902)
--MISE EN SCENE--How is it like a staged play?
--CAMERA--How is the cinematography different from today's Hollywood films?
--How is Melies' work DIFFERENT from the Lumieres'?
The General (Buster Keaton, 1926)
Some things to look for in The General
--The film is a series of Gags: “theme and variations.” (The gags have multiple parts)
--Editing
--Realistic acting, costuming, settings (not melodramatic as in some early films)
--Action takes place on several planes at once (depth in the mise en scene)
--Keaton’s character in the film
--the depiction of “the girl”
Experimental Films
In our last unit we’re viewing films outside of the Hollywood tradition, the Hollywood Standard—specifically, a number of short and one feature length silent film last week, tonight two short and one feature length experimental films, a documentary, and a foreign language film. My purpose in showing you these films is simply to give you a chance to see films you wouldn’t have a chance to see otherwise (none of these films will be playing at Cinemark). Some of these films also make us ask some very basic questions about what film is and what film can do. This week’s films, especially, may question your assumptions, enculturated in you by the Hollywood Standard that you’re used to, that in order to be a “good film,” a film must be a narrative film, that it must be realistic, and that it must be “entertaining” in a light way that doesn’t challenge your intellect too much. The films we will see tonight are none of these. Yet I will argue that they are very good films.
The ideas and concepts we will cover in this unit will be easier than in our past units. But the films themselves will be more challenging. Therefore you must watch the films very closely, especially this week, and consider a second viewing of the films on reserve in the library.
Your text on page 367 describes characteristics of experimental films. They “may explore the possibilities of the film medium, may have been ahead of their time, are out of the mainstream, rely heavily on self-expression, and remain largely free of the limitations placed on commercial movies.”
And on page 368:
“Experimental films…tend to question the dominant ideology, including a society’s political assumptions and sexual mores.”
They…”frustrate the expectations of viewers brought up on classical Hollywood cinema and often aim to startle, if not shock.”
Keep in mind that ALL film originally was experimental and independent. Film was at first a technological experiment (think of the Lumieres), later it was a commercial experiment. Before the rise of the major Hollywood studios film was produced by individual entrepreneurs (Lumieres, Melies, Keaton), not by corporations. So what you accept now as the “natural” state of film—that it be narrative, realistic, and entertaining to large numbers of people, a mass audience—isn’t natural at all. It’s a construction of our culture and our economic system.
However, it’s also true that a lot of imagery currently IN our popular and commercial culture could be said to have ORIGINATED with the avant garde. People imagined images and pioneered film techniques for artistic purposes before the techniques were coopted for commercial ones. I’m thinking of primarily tv advertising and music videos—perhaps in the way they are edited, in what appears in the mise en scene, and the way they seem to eschew traditional narrative. You might ask yourself how these short films we’ll see tonight are similar to ads and videos. How do these art films predate the commercial films (ads and videos) that came after them?
I’ll introduce the first two, fifteen minute films to you, and then show them back to back
INTRODUCTION TO
UN CHIEN ANDALOU (Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali, 1929)
MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON (Maya Deren, 1943)
“Occasionally” writes Thomas Sobchack, “a filmmaker will create a dream without a dreamer. In a sense, it is the film that dreams or remembers.” This is the case with Un Chien Andaolou. The film comes out of the artistic and literary movement at the beginning of the twentieth century called Surrealism, which believed in the liberating qualities of illogic and shock. But the surrealists were also interested in Freud’s idea that in dreams and in the unconscious mind, and in the shocking, sometimes sexual images that appear in dreams, lay a key to understanding human behavior. Surrealist films are structured by free association of images—that is, there seems to be some kind of connection between one image and the next, one scene and the next, but it’s not a strictly logical connection. We’ve all had dreams like this, which seem illogical yet in a strange way make sense. Say for instance that you dream you’re in your apartment talking to a friend, but then for no reason you're outside with him in the backyard of your childhood home. You look again and it's no longer your friend with you, but your family dog. Your grandfather comes out the door, who's been dead for ten years, and then suddenly where your house was there is now a spaceship or a prison or a giant piece of cheese or . . .well, you get the idea.
This European surrealist movement in art, literature, and cinema was also in part a reaction to the senseless slaughter of WWI. The surrealists actually hoped to promote world revolution by releasing untrapped forces of the unconscious mind! This probably seems pretty idealistic to us now—a mark perhaps of how naive the surrealists were, but equally of how jaded politically we are in this day and age, living in a time when most people feel, even in democracies, that they can do little to bring about political or economic change.
As you watch this short film, look for
1) how it shocks you
2) how it uses free association
3) how it violates your expectation of what film should be
4) experimental cinematography
The second film short film I will show, “Meshes of the Afternoon” is credited with being the first experimental film made in America. Maya Deren was the primary figure in the new American avant garde movement in film in the 1940's
Before this film, about the only film that we could call purely experimental done in the States, believe it or not, was the animation of Walt Disney!
In this film, look for
1) where it goes against your expectations
2) experimental cinematographic techniques
3) symbols --objects that seem to have an importance beyond their everyday function in the world or in this film
AFTER THE FILMS
Chien
Director Luis Bunuel describes Un Chien Andalou this way:
“The sources from which the film draws inspiration are those of poetry, freed from the ballast of reason and tradition….This film has no intention of attracting or pleasing the spectator; indeed, on the contrary, it attacks him, to thet degree that he belongs to a society with which surrealism is at war….The motivation of the images… was meant to be purely irrational! They are as mysterious and inexplicable to the two collaborators as to the spectator. NOTHING in this film SYMBOLIZES ANYTHING.”
Perhaps you did indeed feel attacked by this short film. The title, by the way, translates from the Spanish as “An Andalusion Dog,” which the director said was also completely meaningless.
But despite the avowed lack of meaning, what effects did this very early, technologically primitive film produce on you, and how did it produce them?
1) how it shocks you (or how it at least intended to shock the audience of its day)
--opening image of eyeball being sliced by razor is one of the most famous in all of cinema history.
--man dragging a piano with 2 priests by the neck to get at woman is overtly sexual as a dream can sometimes be. We can see the new European interest in Freud.
--I find the woman poking the severed hand with a stick to be the most shocking image, along with the ants coming out of the hand in another shot
2) how it uses free association
--cloud cuts across moon, razor cuts across eye
--hair in a woman’s armpit dissolves to a man’s beard
--a book in a man’s hand turns into a gun
--a man is fondling breasts, then buttocks
There seems to be a kind of logic to the free association of these images, but it is more the logic of dreams than our waking logic. One thing suggests the next.
3) how it violates your expectation of what film should be
--not "realistsic": The man wears the clothes of a maid for no reason. There is no plot; the film is not narrative. A man is killed in one scene, then reappears in the next. The various special effects are not in the interest of creating an illusion of realism.
--violates unity of time. The titles seem to make a mockery of narrative in film: “once upon a time” “eight years later” “towards three in the morning” “sixteen years before” and finally “in the spring.”
--violates unity of place (woman leaves apartment and is directly on the seacoast, man falls in the apartment but lands in the woods)
4) experimental cinematography
--the trick dissolves mentioned above, superimposition, slow motion
Meshes
1) where it goes against your expectations
--the same character appears on screen in two, three different places
--violates unity of time (same piece of film footage repeats in the film, suggesting that time is elastic, that film does not represent an event happening only once)
--violates unity of place (towards the end, when we see the close ups of the woman walking, each footstep lands in a different place)
These last two points are what your text calls a “lack of narrative” in the film (379). We expect stories to take place in one identifiable time and place, and while there may be flashbacks, we don’t expect film to be edited in such a way as there are continual jumps in time and place not motivated by the story.
2) cinematographic techniques
--jump cuts in one scene place the woman in different places on the stairs
--slow motion: we’ll accept it now in realistic narrative films, but at one point audiences would have considered it unrealistic, dreamlike. It would have called attention to itself.
--the rocking image as woman climbs the stairs.. In the days before hand held cameras, to move the camera this way must have been disorienting or at least something new to the viewer.
3) symbols --objects that seem to have an importance beyond their everyday function in the world or in this film
key, flower, knife, mirror: these objects repeat in the film so that they seem to have a special meaning. But in keeping with the mysterious, dreamlike vision of the film, it would be difficult for us to say just what that meaning is.
Baraka (1992, Ron Fricke) 96 minutes
The making of this film involved a 13 month shoot, in 24 different countries. The filmmakers went around the world 3 times, shooting in a different culture every week or two for a year.
The film is nonverbal. there are no main characters. “The main characters are the locations and the essence that comes out of those images” said director Ron Fricke.
This from a DVD review by Larisa Lomacky Moore on amazon.com
The word Baraka means "blessing" in several languages; watching this film, the viewer is blessed with a dazzling barrage of images that transcend language. Filmed in 24 countries and set to an ever-changing global soundtrack, the movie draws some surprising connections between various peoples and the spaces they inhabit, whether that space is a lonely mountaintop or a crowded cigarette factory. Some of these attempts at connection are more successful than others: for instance, an early sequence segues between the daily devotions of Tibetan monks, Orthodox Jews, and whirling dervishes, finding more similarity among these rituals than one might expect. And there are other amazing moments, as when sped-up footage of a busy Hong Kong intersection reveals a beautiful symmetry to urban life that could only be appreciated from the perspective of film. The lack of context is occasionally frustrating--not knowing where a section was filmed, or the meaning of the ritual taking place--and some of the transitions are puzzling. However… cinematographer Ron Fricke (Koyaanisqatsi) explains that the effect was intentional: "The film is not about where you are or why you’re there; it's what's there."
Perhaps this is a film about seeing and noticing the world. Judge for yourself…
After the film:
*Why doesn’t the filmmaker provide subtitles or voice over telling us where in the world these pictures are taken?
--not necessary. Producer Mark Magidson: “it’s not about where is this and where is that. It’s not a travelogue, but a moving emotional experience.” Or perhaps the film is a comment on our need to locate. My wife every time the film switched to a new scene asked, “Where was that?? Where was that?” And sometimes when the film changed locations, I remarked out loud, “I was there!”
Perhaps just as we try to impose a narrative on Meshes of the Afternoon (has the woman killed herself? Been murdered by the man? Is this all a dream?), we try to locate the exotic images in Baraka, instead of just experiencing them.
Director Ron Fricke:
“It’s like doing a painting, really. There’s a concept in the beginning. You go out and gather up all this data, you shoot on all these occasions, then you bring it back and look at it. You make a structure based on what works with the concept.”
The director’s initial controlling idea was that the film be about “humanities relationship to the eternal.”
*What recurring themes or subjects do you see running through the images depicted?
--the sacred (whirling dervishes, budhist monks, the River Ganges, Hassidic Jews, orthodox Christianity, hieroglyphics, incredible natural beauty)
--“humanties relationship to the eternal” (terra cotta warriors, pyramids)
--poverty (people on garbage dump looking for…food?)
--fast pace of modern life (Hong Kong time lapse. Chinese factory, chicks down slot)
--environmental degradation: garbage dump, cityscapes, cutting of rain forest in Brazil, ape in hot spring in early sequence
--movement: of clouds and stars, traffic (time lapse)—like Lumeire brothers’
*also note
-world music in musical score (pan flute, bag pipes, chant, asian instruments)
--the scene of the men in a crowd (perhaps in Indonesia) waving their hands: some of the only on screen sound in the whole film! The message/effect in this scene is conveyed as much through sound as through visuals. The scene makes us ask, what are they doing? Is this sport? religious ritual? entertainment? a competition? We don’t know; we’re left only to enjoy the picture, color and movement for its own sake; to draw inferences as to its significance or purpose. Perhaps the film is about that process of active viewing, of trying to make sense of what we see.
*Why is the film edited with sequences in this particular order? Can you find connections between some back to back sequences?
--shapes: back of monk’s head, to similar rock formations
--subject: religious devotion or practice
*note cinematography:
-time lapse cinematography
-slow motion (men in steel factory)
-camera movement: slow dolly in or dolly out
-aerial shots
-symmetrical and asymetrical compositions (like a series of moving paitings) that drawa attention to composition.
-use of light and shadow
-color
-people looking directly at the camera (obviously this has been staged, arranged. The subjects are not doing something as they would in everyday life, not “natural,” so is this true, natural documentary? The filmmakers’ purpose, it seems, is to show the people as icons, as images, rather than characters. We make some kind of connection with the people through their gaze).
While this film is challenging, and I find my attention lagging at points, I hope you see the benefit in viewing a film that you clearly could not see at the local mall, a film clearly outside of the Hollywood Standard that suggests that a film can be something very different from what you’re used to and still be “a good movie.”
EXPERIMENTAL FILMS
UN CHIEN ANDALOU--Luis Bunuel &Salvador Dali, 1929
--English title: An Andalusian Dog
--Surrealism: “a movement in 1920s and 1930s European art, drama, literature, and film in which an attempt was made to portray or interpret the workings of the subconscious mind as manifested in dream.” (Phillips 369)
--structured by free association
--"uses the material of the everyday world as we normally perceive it, but puts it to incomprehensible, shocking, and funny use." (Sobchack 389)
look for
1) how it shocks you
2) how it uses free association
3) how it violates expectations of what film should be
4) experimental cinematographic techniques
MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON--Maya Deren, 1943
--Deren was the primary figure in the new American avant garde movement in film in the 1940's
look for
1) how it violates expectation of what film should be
2) experimental cinematographic techniques
3) symbols --objects that seem to have an importance beyond their everyday function in the world or in this film
BARAKA (1992, Ron Fricke) 96 minutes
Look for
*Why doesn’t the filmmaker provide subtitles or voice over telling us where in the world these pictures are taken?
*What recurring themes or subjects do you see running through the images depicted?
*Why is the film edited with sequences in this particular order? Can you find connections between some back to back sequences?
*note techniques of cinematography:
-time lapse cinematography
-slow motion
-camera movement: slow dolly in or dolly out
-aerial shots
-symmetrical and asymetrical compositions (like a series of
moving paitings)
-use of light and shadow
-color
-people looking directly at the camera
*world music in musical score
Characteristics of Experimental Films
(Phillips 367)
--may explore the possibilities of the film medium
--may have been ahead of their time,
--are out of the mainstream
-- rely heavily on self-expression
--free of the limitations placed on commercial
movies.
--tend to question the dominant ideology, including a
society’s political assumptions and sexual mores.
--frustrate the expectations of viewers and often aim
to startle, if not shock.”
Baraka -- Recurring Themes or Subjects
--the sacred (whirling dervishes, budhist monks, the River Ganges, Hassidic Jews, orthodox Christianity, hieroglyphics, incredible natural beauty)
--“humanity’s relationship to the eternal” (terra cotta warriors, pyramids)
--poverty (people on garbage dump looking for…food?)
--fast pace of modern life (Hong Kong time lapse. Chinese factory, chicks down slot)
--environmental degradation: garbage dump, cityscapes, cutting of rain forest in Brazil, ape in hot spring in early sequence
--movement: of clouds and stars, traffic (time lapse)—like Lumeire brothers’
HEARTS OF DARKNESS -- notes forthcoming
SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE -- notes forthcoming