Lesson 8

Impressionism (60s - 70s)

-> New behavior of artist

-> Not agree with the idea with imitating the world

-> What is unique in one medium? [medium specificity]

-> rules & methods

-> urge of asking of pure art

    - pure painting...

AFTER -> intermedia activities

Recommended Book --> The Avant-garde Film *By Paul Sitney

Avant Garde

*Visual art... France artist

e.g. Man Ray

*US Avant Garde Cinema (1950s)

*narrative VS poetry

1905 - 1907 --> not really only storytelling

The Merchandized Eye

1) Poem 8 - keep dancing

- continuity - narrative

- don't really tell a story

- woman - poetic image - softness

- mood - sense of time

2) The fall of the house of Usher

- super imposition

- seems there is a story

- not necessarily exclude storytelling in avant-garde film

- surrealism - 2 shots different are put together

- film with a title that about the story everybody may know

- raise people expectation

3)Maya Deren

- idea of poetry

- in the language of cinema

- how poetry appears in film language?

  -unique to cinema?

*1943 - Meshes of the Afternoon (cinematic poetry)

- metaphoric functions <-> objects <-> poetry -> disruption(montage)

- varied length of shots - repetition - sense of rhythm

- ellipsis - shot complete

                - meaning incompleted but we are able to carry on

DOSCOM - discontinuity of space, continuity of action / movement

Dream / fantasy --> narrative status - destablized - fluid circulation

- structural film

- Stan Brakhage

- Window Water Baby Moving - Born of Baby

- autobiography - the process

*Jonas Mekas

was born in Semeniskiai, Lithuania, in 1922. He lives and works in New York. After being imprisoned by the Nazis in a forced-labour camp and a period in Belgian Displaced Person camps, Mekas studied philosophy at the University of Mainz 19461948. He then emigrated with his brother Adolfas to the United States, settling in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. 

Mekas discovered avant-garde film at venues such as Amos Vogels Cinema 16, and began to screen his own films in 1953. In 1954 he became Editor-in-Chief of Film Culture magazine, and in 1958 he began his groundbreaking Movie Journal column in The Village Voice. In 1962 Mekas founded the Film-Makers Cooperative (FMC) and in 1964 the Filmmakers Cinematheque. The latter eventually grew into Anthology Film Archives, one of the worlds largest repositories of avant-garde film, which Mekas continues to direct.

Mekass film output includes narrative (Guns of the Trees, 1961), documentary (The Brig, 1963) and diaries (Walden, 1969; Lost, Lost, Lost, 1975; Reminiscences of a Voyage to Lithuania, 1972; Zefiro Torna, 1992, and As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, 2001). 

In addition to his prolific output in film, Jonas Mekas has published 24 volumes of poetry, essays, interviews, and diaries, and has been the subject of 12 book-length studies. His films have been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world, including Jeu de Paume in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Photography in Tokyo, Documenta 11, the Venice Biennale, and many others. (all from www.e-flux.com)

Cinema should be about

- documentary

- inventive comparison correspondent

- only show portion of an object

(not show whole object, turn them to the unique vision of the world, "the familiarization")

--> Make familiar things not familiar by CU or special angles or special framing methods or tightness of shot, get you away from normal view

--> Request cinema

      - improve our seeing, better & more

      - enhance perception / stretched perception [deep perception]