1. 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.

I think Window Water Baby Moving was a fascinating movie as far as analyzing its impact on the viewer. In the beginning moments of the film, it felt like the most natural extension of Imagist Poetry I had seen so far in the class. It took a single moment, a pregnant woman laying in the bathtub with her husband near her, and seemed to evoke an amazing depth of intimacy in that small space of time. The way the editing went from the stomach (the womb), to the water, to the glances shared between the man and the woman felt like a meditation on the existence of love and the hope intrinsic in new life. As the film went on, though, it seemed to make a pointed collision between those intimate moments and the unabashedly graphic scenes of actual childbirth, almost forcibly making the audience accept that this too must be beautiful because each moment is necessarily linked to the other. It was difficult to watch, I think mostly because as a cultural thing we shy away from the reality of these situations (see: animated storks carrying babies to doorsteps). In any case, it felt like Brakhage was straining to depict childbirth as a whole truth, and I find it hard to believe that he wouldn't think of the graphic moments, the blood and viscera, as something deserving of awe as well.

Sitney, “Apocalypses and Picaresques”

2. 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?)

According to Dictionary.com synechdoche means: a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part"

In this particular sense, Sitney seems to be referring to how a part of the film (ie brief images) tend to clarify the greater whole of what the filmmaker is trying to say in a given moment. For instance, the images of a turnstile and of a bridge symbolize and clarify the suicide of one of Maclaine's characters. Not only that, but Sitney suggest that how one section ends seems to have an encompassing connection to the whole of the following section in his film. As far as how the film anticipates Brakhage and the mythopoeic form, Maclaine is already beyond the characteristic traits of the trance film at this point. His characters kill, they play, they engage with activity in the film, so the characters are already in a position of action where they can better evoke mythic connections. But more importantly, there is an underlying theme of the destruction of man that seems to be particularly linked to the ambitions of the mythopoeic form, because Maclaine's apocalyptic vision seems to carry some weight of myth itself. The vision is not one of stark realism, but an absurd fable wrought with the anxiety of times, a feeling of pessimism that is alienating and universal all at once.

3. What are some similarities and differences between the apocalyptic visions of Christopher Maclaine and Bruce Conner?

Sitney talks about the intentional provocation of ambivalence in Bruce Conner's vision by alternating between gestures of attraction and repulsion. For instance, A Movie contrasts the humor of the periscope spying on Marilyn Monroe to the violence associated with the Atomic Bomb. By Sitney's account of The End, it seems that Maclaine similarly uses extreme juxtapositions to accentuate a tonal mood, for instance a dying man's legs compared to a dancer's legs. However, with Maclaine I'm not certain that ambivalence is the desired effect (the book doesn't state one way or the other). It seems to me that the specific gesture in question would call an associative link between the joy of life and the despair of life, where Conner's link between the images seems more disconnected and extreme. In other ways their visions are similar obviously because they share "an apocalyptic despair", a pessimism inherent with the times. However, while Conner's work is imbued with irony, Maclaine's work suggests a genuine hope that is only snuffed out by an Atomic bomb at the film's finale.

Bruce Jenkins, “Fluxfilms in Three False Starts.”

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

Jenkins states that the flux film reaction against avant-garde films had to do with the "deadly serious" attitude of the Avant-Garde filmmakers. Because of this self-imposed severity, those of the fluxfilm movement chose to target them, through mockingly replicating their films while dispensing of their formal trademarks (complex editing schemes or personal content inherent in poetic films) or "less formal but more parodic" attempts like Dick Higgins' Invocation of Canyons and Boulders for Stan Brakhage which showed a close up of the filmmaker chewing in a continuous loop. These films, from the viewpoint of the filmmakers, flew in the face of the conventional thought that art must be bereft of silliness and ran amok with childish glee.

5. What does Jenkins mean by the democratization of production in the Fluxfilms?

He talks about a direct challenge to the idea of the authorship of a film through the practice of recreation, thereby allowing access to a true filmmaking collective in the process of production. The example he gives is of several different filmmakers filming the same tree, thereby decentralizing the film, denying the voice of any one true artist, allowing the medium to "dematerialize...in order to bridge the gap between art and life".

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 Filmmakers:

Andy Warhol (long takes), Nam June Paik, George Brecht, Yoko Ono, Peter Moore

Slow Flux Film:

Zen for Film by Nam June Paik

Fast Filmmakers

Stan Brakhage (kinetic, highly edited), George Maciunas, Wolf Vostell, Eric Anderson, Paul Sharits

Fast Flux Film:

Sun in Your Head

7. How is the Fluxus approach to the cinema different from both Godard and Brakhage?

Jenkins writes that Godard and Brakhage both "spearheaded new cinemas". With Godard it was a shift of the narrative film to something that was a little more experimental but still largely accessible to those already indoctrinated with mainstream cinema. With Brakhage, Jenkins writes that he directed cinema inward to humanity's intimate experiences now seen through a new aesthetic of filmmaking ("the camera I/eye"). However, according to Jenkins both new cinemas bear some weight of the past, where Fluxfilms are an attempt at retaining the joyful conception of film, to unburden themselves of the memory of filmmakers before them and to abandon either homage or pointed avoidance of past conventions.

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

It fixed the material and aesthetic terms by being "inexpensively produced by circumventing the standard technologies of production...and post production". In other words, the filmmaker cleverly used a role of leader as the film itself, allowing the scratches that would eventually accumulate on it become a continual part of its evolution as a film. It's aesthetic experience is, in Jenkins' words, "imageless and anti-illusionist". It denies the process of making film, and any artifice that might develop through that process. In so many words, it provides the viewer with an absolutely pure experience that is constantly changing and adapting, living and breathing, sustaining a simple elegance.

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

Sitney, “Ritual and Nature”

1. What are some characteristics of the American psychodrama in the 1940s?

As Sitney writes, the elements include "dream, ritual, dance, and sexual meaphor". The "dream film" had the most immediate impact in the Avant-Garde scene in the 1940s, likely in no small part due to the impact of Meshes of the Afternoon. Sitney focuses on the quality of the protagonist in the film as the somnambulist (or sleep walker/someone who walks in a hypnotic trance). This may lend to why this form of filmmaking has led to the title "the trance film", which characteristically holds off on interactions between characters allowing the protagonist to passively work through and observe their own psychological state, slowly working towards a "climatic scene of self-realization".

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

The imagist structure, as Sitney describes it, is largely synonymous to the act of imagist poetry that isolates and expounds and elongates a single event. This would be instead of a progression of events, of a narrative path of the protagonist, of an arch of subsequent actions. By isolating the sole act of the dance in Choreography for the Camera, the protagonist vanishes as a distinct character. Instead, the focus is drawn to his action, the physical form of the dance and the idea surrounding that movement. Within the pure context of imagist film, Sitney also cites a tendency for "lateral or foreign material...introduced around the essential action without completely disrupting its unity or continuity". Perhaps this can be considered as a way to better understand the "essential action", where we change the environment for the dancer and see how this changes our reflection of his graceful movements. An ending in a dance studio as opposed to an ending in the wilderness is, after all, a completely different film experience.

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 think Sitney's reading is compatible, or at the very least very attentive to the individual details of the film. There doesn't seem to be a lot of overall analysis to 'what it all means' but I suppose that would be missing the point. I was still a little confused with what exactly the Jungian archetypes are specifically supposed to represent, so I researched the graces a little (brushing up on my Greek mythology) and found that in that particular reading the women play a completely different role than what I had attributed them to be playing: namely, the fates, some external represenation lending to the inevitable path of a woman's life. The Graces, on the other hand, were iconic images of beauty. I guess since both mythological groupings are of three, the woman are supposed to simultaneously represent both the graces and the fates? That's an odd way to read the film, it almost feels like it should be one or the other, and picking one or the other would significantly alter how you read the film. I like the feeling of nihilism in the representation of the fates, that the path of the woman's life is an almost purposeless destiny. The Sitney reading also called to attention a deeper understanding of the transition between the two characters, noting the shift from black scarf to white scarf (which I missed) and the juxtaposition from the carefree character of the invoker in the opening scene and then the sullen, somnambulist widow.

Sitney, “The Magus”

4. Paraphrase the paragraph on p. 90 that begins “The filmic dream constituted…” in your own words.
The quality of the dream in Deren and Anger's films highlights the associative property of how we as an audience view an object and how we then shift that perception to how the filmmaker views the object and speculate and interpret what the use of that object means within the context of the film and the filmmaker.

5. 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?

Well the end result, according to Sitney, is of the Magus figure becoming a man-made god, of a unification process of the ritual and its congregation. I can see the ritual process as being an act of unification, particularly because of the use of dissolves. It's as if there is a blending of consciousness, the act of God as a drug lending to a blurring of distinction of identity. However, from my personal viewing the identities were already indistinct. Unlike Sitney's reading where he can attribute every role to an iconic figure of Shiva or Pan or Magus, for me I only saw the strapping Aryan looking fellow or the green monster guy. I had no way to attribute these roles and determine a discernible course of action (for instance, the poisoning was completely lost on me. I thought it was merely part of the ritual).

Sitney, “The Lyrical Film”

6. What are the key characteristics of the lyrical film (the first example of which was Anticipation of the Night).
It suggests that the protagonist of the film is the filmmaker him or herself instead of any actor playing a role. What the viewer focuses on instead is "movement", movement of shapes, of camera, of editing, scratches, paint, pieces of leaves or small insects glued to the frame, all giving a clear way to link to the act of the actual filmmaking process, thereby affirming the filmmaker as the subject whose vision is shared with the audience.

Generally, the lyrical film flattens the depth of the space of film to, as Sitney states, the "space of Abstract Expressionist painting". Through later stages of lyrical films, superimpositions were used to provide multiple perceptions at once, while retaining it's former qualities.

7. 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.]

Sitney states that the hard and soft montage has to do with the collision of night and day. The impact and juxtaposition of these scenes are as important visually as they are tonally. But the differences have more to them than simply contrasting colors, the differences have to do with the content of scenes and the way their pace of editing. Hard Montage is obviously a quicker pace with a sharper tonality, a franticness that overwhelms any attempt at establishing a narrative. Soft Montage, on the other hand, is slower, more generous and enveloping and tender, where a narrative can breathe and flourish.

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 makes a point to draw distinction between how the artist has "been taught to see" and what he actually sees. Vision, in Brakhage's view, has as much to do with imagination as it does with a straight laced replication of reality. What we see is more than a pretty post card of the world, we can see anything at any speed with any magnificent distortion. We can see black and white, we can see abstract images. It reminds me of when I was a kid and I would press my fingers to my eyelids and watch the patterns of dots and lines burst in the darkness (mind you my eyes were closed). Isn't that, too, a kind of sight, of vision? Or dreams, or memory recall? There are all sorts of ways to see the world, that's what I think he's saying.

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.”

Mainly, Sitney argues this as a formal point citing Brakhage's use of fast cutting, his use of scratching and painting, and the link between the lyrical quality of a small depth of space (first largely attributed to Brakhage) and how that all easily allows for an abstract form. It is as if Brakhage was constantly gearing towards an impulse of abstraction before this "embrace" happened, and so it simply seemed like a logical progression in his artwork.

10. What archetypes are significant motifs in Dog Star Man, and which writers in what movement are associated with these four states of existence?

The first is innocence (as of the vision of a newborn, where things have yet to take the tone of reality. Everything is possible), second is experience (how we learn and grow through the world, coping with our sexual frustrations, so on), the third is damned (exemplified through a domination of nature), and the fourth is liberated (the redemption of imagination, which Brakhage links to the iconic presence of Eden).

The writing movement associated with these states of existence is of the Romanticism Movement, hosting such names as William Blake, Walt Witman, Ezra Pound, and Wallace Stevens among others.

Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome

My experience with Pleasure Dome was one where I was alternatively fascinated and staving off boredom. When there was a way that I felt I could engage with the film, I found it's vividness breathtaking. However, when I felt like an outsider to the impregnable strangeness of the film, the color and emotion and lyrical quality could not translate into something other than tedium for me. I think this is largely due to how I specifically engage with film, really any film. I need to be able to connect to the pathos of a character, to the underlying emotion of a situation or circumstance or environment, something to hold on to as a uniquely human experience. What I ended up taking away from Pleasure Dome was the lurid quality of the ritual, the act of transformation through a heightened religious experience and how the indulgences of the characters were met with ominous warnings. Even the act of transcendence felt like an indulgent act, and while it could be seen as a positive for one to allow some release through indulgence, through wine, through drugs, some mad carnival relief of repression and anxiety and grief... At the same time it could also be the act of thrashing around near the threshold of insanity. Along the same line of indulgence, the film seemed interested in the idea of human beings as an image, an outward perception we try to maintain for others, some allusion to our vanity. The film seemed to subvert this idea in a couple important ways, the swallowing of jewelry (the inward consumption of outward "beauty"), the birdcage over the woman's face, the fox fur being stomped out by another woman's heels. Perhaps this idea of subversive ideals of beauty is somehow connected to the men in drag, I couldn't say. Lastly, I wanted to make note that I don't think the endless repetitions at the end of the film had the desired impact on me. I almost felt like they were too static. I couldn't feel the experience evolve and change and so I wondered what the prolonged nature of the ritual really did for it.