1. Punk music and the No-wave film scene share many similarities in terms of technology, style, and community. Crew for films were formed in the same way bands were formed: not necessarily by artistic talent but by association and friendships. Secondly the bands were forming out of a mentality of "if people who cant play the guitar can pick it up and start a band then why cant we get a camera and make films?" Lastly, the films inherited the same "devil may care" attitude that Nares says came from rock and roll.
2. Punk film was a reaction to the film institutionalization on the 1970s through the technology used and the ideology behind it. First, punk filmmakers used super-8 film compared to the usual 16 and 35mm in most film venues. This plays into the idea that anybody could make a film but also brings with it low quality and operating costs. Nare's also states in the pdf that they wanted to make movies like the ones made at the turn of the century. These filmmakers werent trying to copy fillmmakers of their time but rather the earlier filmmakers.
3. The filmmakers referenced as influences on Poe, Mitchell, and Dick are Godard and the entire new-wave movement including Truffaut, and Rohmer, as well as Warhol.
4. The venues affected the films content and style through the ways that the filmmakers wanted the audience to participate. At first they wanted a place where people could just be (smoke, drink, whatever) and then if the piece grabbed them they began to participate. But when Blackbox came out they wanted to make the audience feel trapped so they blasted the soundtrack and also included parts of silence. The audience seemed to play in the filmmakers mind throughout the entire process.
5. In the statement "Fake right, go left", Baldwin is speaking about the contrast between what is communicated through the words being said vs. the unspoken that develops from how/who/where it is said. "Double-voicing" comes from the meaning derived from voice-over vs the image on the screen.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Response
A. Sitney states that Warhols art is "anti-romantic" because Warhols method in creating his art involves no romantic thought what so ever. Romanticism stresses emotion as a source of aesthetic experience. Warhols pop art was not based in emotion but rather in creation. Warhol basically said "look what I can take, do a few things too, and then BOOM: its art." Rather than find beauty in emotion, Warhol finds beauty in mundane, commercial objects. Stephen Kock says that Warhol wanted to eliminate himself from the stressful world of human existence and become beautiful like the objects and scenes he filmed.
B. The distance between Warhol and Snow/Gehr cannot be reconciled because the artists have completely different motivations. Warhol came from a lucrative painting career to film only to lambaste the original traditions by pointing a camera at something and letting it roll. The structural filmmakers take their films more seriously in terms of planning and execution.
C. "Conscious ontology of the viewing experience" means that the viewer is constantly questioning or analyzing the nature of existence. Warhols films are actually studies in ontology themselves. What else is going on in films like Sleep or Empire because one object or being existing. This is furthered by the idea of duration. The audience does not just see a shot of a man sleeping and then something else. Nor does the audience see many different man sleeping. The audience see's one man sleeping for 6 hours. The man sleeping is exists on the screen in the same time period as the audience exists watching it.
Structural films work in the same way except they concentrate on the total existence of one space over a period of time versus one object or being.
D. Structural film is related to the psychodrama/mythopoetic/ and lyrical tradition because even though it radically simplified the process and took cinema away from the dream metaphor, it is still in itself trying to create a metaphor for film. Instead of trying to show a dream through the eyes of the filmmaker it shows a space or a object as it actually exists or could actually exist.
B. The distance between Warhol and Snow/Gehr cannot be reconciled because the artists have completely different motivations. Warhol came from a lucrative painting career to film only to lambaste the original traditions by pointing a camera at something and letting it roll. The structural filmmakers take their films more seriously in terms of planning and execution.
C. "Conscious ontology of the viewing experience" means that the viewer is constantly questioning or analyzing the nature of existence. Warhols films are actually studies in ontology themselves. What else is going on in films like Sleep or Empire because one object or being existing. This is furthered by the idea of duration. The audience does not just see a shot of a man sleeping and then something else. Nor does the audience see many different man sleeping. The audience see's one man sleeping for 6 hours. The man sleeping is exists on the screen in the same time period as the audience exists watching it.
Structural films work in the same way except they concentrate on the total existence of one space over a period of time versus one object or being.
D. Structural film is related to the psychodrama/mythopoetic/ and lyrical tradition because even though it radically simplified the process and took cinema away from the dream metaphor, it is still in itself trying to create a metaphor for film. Instead of trying to show a dream through the eyes of the filmmaker it shows a space or a object as it actually exists or could actually exist.
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