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.