Week 2

1. I thought this film was really cool and it will probably be the film I do my Brakhage paper on. I found it interesting the way he manipulated the way I saw things. I figured out they were trees but the way it was red and dark at first and then the camera would zoom in and the flash of the true colors would come out was awesome. However, towards the end I got confused on what I was seeing, it looked like the trees were bleeding and through listening to other classmates I figured he had painted the trees. No matter my confusion it was still awesome to see and I really liked it. I think I like more abstract avant garde films because I don't look for a narrative structure I just look for patterns and color repetitions which is fun. Like you said the fun of these films is that its like a puzzle and you have to figure it out so I liked it.

2. I don't think I will be anywhere close to the answer you want for this but I will try anyway. Synecdoche is like saying one thing to describe another. So if I were to say there are 20 students in a film class I could also say their are 20 young adults. Maybe that wasn't good enough to describe it let me try again. You could say she works for a pharmacy or say she works at CVS. I think that is what it means. But relating it to the film I think it is trying to say that the film shows us different ways actions took place and displaces them throughout making it like a puzzle film where we have to take each scene and map out the story. I guess it is mythopoeic because it is showing or trying to convey what it would be like at the end of the world and has all these characters doing different things so they could be seen as gods. (I have no clue if that is right). So Brakhage comes into the picture because he was trying to get beyond trance films. His film Dog Star Man must represent the mythopoeic film because each part has to do with a different motif which could also be seen as a gods path or journey. That was a hard question for me I'm sorry if it is all wrong.

3. Some similarities between the two film could be that they are both about the apocalypse. While MacLaine's film was planned out and shot scene for scene, Connor took pieces from different film to create each scene. I think this is right. Differences would be that Connor took found footage to create his film while Conner went out and shot most of his scenes. (I think). Conner also uses the element of comedy in his film which is absent from MacLaine's.

4. I think the Flux Filmmakers were trying to make fun of Brakhage and the like. Instead of taking a subject and trying to be serious with it they took it more lightly. Anger made his films with a message or meaning behind them. These Flux Films would take "mundane" subjects and make a light film out of it, but with some of the same aspects as Anger or Brakhage. One example given is No. 24 which is a color test film. So the Flux Film took an element of the Anger type films and made their own. Another one directly aimed at Brakhage is called Invocation of Canyons and Boulders for Stan Brakhage and the film is a close up of a man chewing. The article said it was attacking Brakhage's highly personal and autobiographical films, so they shot some one chewing. That is personal and autobiographical because its someone chewing and it did happen. I don't know if that's right, but its what I got.

5. I think he is trying to say that through the Tree film people became aware that anyone can make a movie. This guy simply got a camera, film and found a tree and made a film. So what is stopping other people who want to make movies. I think it was saying that Avant Garde filmmakers would start to make it a practice to have low budgets. I think it was also trying to say that if you have a set idea about something you can turn anything into art.

6. Slow: Andy Warhol, Nam Jun Paik, George Brecht, Peter Moore, Yoko Ono, Pieter Vanderbeek, Joe Jones.

Slow Film: Zen for Film, Disappearing Music for Face.

Fast: George Maciunas, Wolf Vostell, Eric Andersen, Paul Sharits.

Fast Film: Dots 1 and 2, Opus 74 Version 2

7. Godard was trying to open up new ideas to the cinema such as political analysis the idea of a cinephillia and the idea of being self reflexive through films. Brakhage was trying to show a more personal form of the cinema such as birth and death. Fluxfilms are suppose to be childlike and innovative. So I guess the difference between all of these are the people and ideas behind each movement or person. Godard had one idea, Brakhage another and Fluxfilm another. Godard and Brakhage planned out and had serious ideas about the films they were making while Flux Films I guess are suppose to be fun or interesting. Nothing like The 400 Blows or Window Water Moving Baby.

8. I think he is saying that it was made cheaply and quickly. The film used a camera, lights, film stock, editing and sound. So I guess thats what you mean or what he means. The experience makes people get out of their shell and see film in a new way. The film is suppose to be the celluloids journey through the projector so I guess it is trying to show people what they are really watching when the watch a film. It is also capturing the truth, nothing was done to it and it was not manipulated in anyway like other Avant Garde filmmakers.

Hope that is right.

First Week

1. I'm not sure if this is right but it has elements of a dream, ritual, dancing, and sex. The chapter before Ritual and Nature explains Maya Derren's Meshes of the Afternoon as a psycho-drama saying the central theme of it is a quest for sexual identity. Going back to chapter two, Sitney explains that these are trance films. So I guess I am wondering if trance films are the same thing as psycho-dramas because Sitney goes on to explain trance film deals with visionary experience. The protagonist are usually priest, initiates of rituals and possessed. He goes on to say the camera movements are stylized with slow and fast motions.

2. I think he is trying to say that these films no longer have a narrative structure and if you look for a story in the film you will not find it. He is trying to say that one single gesture or idea can be the main source of an entire film. He explains that images make up the film and brings up Le Ballet Mecanique, in which different objects move around to look like a dance from what I remember. There is no story in that film it is just a dance using objects and I think Sitney is trying to convey that a single movement or gesture can create a film. I have no clue if that is what you are looking for.

3. With Ritual in Transfigured Time I thought that Maya Derren was the same person as the widow. But the Widow had come back to visit her past. So I thought Maya Derren's character was the same as the Widow who had been killed or died and she was coming back to retrace her steps which led to her death. My hypothesis continued as she went into the ballroom because no one was paying her any attention so she could be a ghost. Then the one man notices her so i figured he must be the one who killed her or led to her demise. Then we got to the garden scene and I was totally confused. I know we are suppose to watch the films in a vertical way but it is hard for me and that is something I will have to work on during the semester. So my reading of the film was totally different than that of Sitney. His description of the film makes more sense than mine but he is a avant garde scholar and I am just a student.

4. The filmic dream is a sensory experience where the subject of the film is represent through his or her own mind or dream. The film shows or tries to establish what is going on inside of the subjects mind. The camera is just there to record the elaboration of the dream. It also asks the viewers to interact and try and figure out what is going on inside the mind of the subject. I have no clue if that is right or even close.

5. Sitney has a better handle on Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome than I do. He explains that all of these people are represent or becoming different gods or goddesses in a cult. I thought that they were a cult and that the drug made them all feel like they were in hell. Sitney says " It is not an apocalypse of liberated gods or chaotic demons, nor is it a perversion of the myth of Pentheus and Dionysus, in which the god is devoured" So I guess I interpreted the film a whole lot different than Sitney did. But his reasons make more sense than mine. I would like to go back and watch it again to see if I can get a better grasp of the film.

6. The Lyrical film is when the main character of the film is behind the camera. There is not protagonist for the viewer to see, we are seeing the film through the camera eyes which are also the protagonist eyes. So whatever the protagonist sees or does is what the audience sees.

7. I think that he means a soft montage shows us what is going to happen. He describes showing the audience trees with color, but by the end of the film the trees have lost their leaves and are dying. So the hard montage would be the tree dying. I don't know if that is right but thats what I got out of it. It doesn't seem like montage is the right word to use for it though.

8. Brakhage believed that we all see things as they happen but we remember them according to how we feel about them. He goes on to explain that the camera is also a sort of eye but it does not have a mind to change the perception of the image we have seen. So instead of using our mind to alter an image we have seen he uses editing, or aesthetic techniques to alter the way we see things. I hope thats sort of right.

9. I think Sitney says this because Brakhage was the first person to take the 35mm film or whatever film he had and physically create art on it, either by scratching directly on the film or doing some other type of abuse to the film. It is also a new type of film where there aren't really characters but instead just abstract images.

10. I don't know if any of this is right but here we go. The four motifs are the birth of consciousness, the cycle of the seasons, man's struggle with nature, and sexual balance. I can't figure out which artist go with which motif but the artist involved are from the European Romanticism of Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, Pound, Stevens, Crane, Williams, and Sukofsky.

Inauguration

I was trying really hard to watch this film and think about it in the vertical way we talked about. I was trying to find a narrative structure to the film and every time I would do this, I would try to stop and just watch it. But I did it anyway, so here is what I think happened. All of these people are in a cult of pleasure and they are all getting ready to take some kind of drug. They all experience this great feeling but it soon turns into hell. I came to this conclusion because the woman or man in black with the feathers started laughing when all the people started freaking out and this was the person who gave them the liquid that they drank.

I noticed the repetition of eating different objects. I didn't quite understand why they kept doing it but they did, so perhaps that was a ritual in the cult. I liked all the colors, outfits and masks people were wearing it was interesting. I think Anger was trying to show different personalities through the costumes. At one point I thought all the men were just the same person but different personalities. I think the opera as the background music really worked, it helped set the tone for different scenes and sequences.

I guess this film is just suppose to be art for the sake of art, and there is nothing wrong with that. When other people were talking in class right before we left and were saying "there was nothing to hook me in" I thought of the oranges and apples metaphor, this is definitely an apple.