ART FILMS

LOON’S NECKLACE

SCORPIO RISING

BARAKA

Representational art

Music has often been seen as a “pure” art form. By this is meant that the art makes no attempt to be representational. People often feel with painting and sculpture for example, that the approach is to make things look as real as possible and that paintings and sculptures which are “distortions” of reality are somehow the result of incompetence on the part of the artist or they are the result of some visual distortion caused by some kind of eye problem rather than being a deliberate decision on the part of the artist to present an image which may not represent reality in a recognizable way.

Music on the other hand is not seen in this same way. While some music clearly becomes imitative of reality (birds etc.) most music is not of this kind. There is an abstraction about music that does not cause people to see it as a “distortion” of reality. People do not see composers as writing music which is mean to represent something in the real world – the music is not seen as a “distortion” of the real world. Painters titles are often partially the cause. The title refers to something in the real world, whereas the music titles “Tocata and Fugue in D minor”(originally for organ and later transcribed for orchestra) refers to nothing in the real world. Other pieces like “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (often played by orchestras but more recognized as the "background music" used in Walt Disney's Fantasia as a vehicle for Mickey Mouse) are programmatic – that is they have a kind of plot line, but music cannot attempt to reproduce what a sorcerer’s apprentice sound like. Some music of the Romantic period has moments when it does try to reproduce a sound from the real world, but even then it is rarely compared to the actual sound. The anvils of Wagner’s Das Rheingold or Verdi’s Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore; Respeghi went so far as to specify the recording of the nightingale he wanted used about 6 minutes and 10 seconds into the 3rd section of The Pines of Rome called "Pines of the Janiculum" ! Some works like Richard Strauss' Also Sprach Zarathustra have “translated” text into music.

Many artists rue the fact that people seem to want to impose on them the idea of representation!

FILM GENRES

Some people like to divide films into three kinds: non fiction; fiction; and experimental. We might think of experimental as a sub division of non fiction although many experimental films are fiction films. (consider Memento, Pi etc.) The question is does experimental film have to be like Brakhage?

In something like a half a century, Brakhage created an extensive corpus which explored different formats, approaches and techniques. These included handheld cameras, painting directly onto the film itself (which had been done in some silent films), rapid cuts, in-camera editing, making scratches directly on the film, collage film and the use of multiple exposures.

Consider modern poetry which is often unclear in its meaning viz TS Eliot The Wasteland relies in large part on intertexual relations. Even before the poem begins there is a quote (roughly translated) :

(For when I had, with my own eyes, seen the Cumeean Sybil hanging in a bottle, these boys asked "What is it you want Sybil, she responded "I only want to die".)

So who is the Cumean Sybil and what is she doing in the bottle and why is it she only wants to die? These are the kinds of things that you need to know to get to the meaning of the poem. Because it requires some knowledge on the part of the reader from "outisde" of the poem, the poem can be seen as "thick" or "dense" meaning the the analysis of the poem requires a good deal of information from external sources.

Later we find paraphrasing:

Parliament of Bees
by John Day,

When of the sudden, listening, you shall hear,
A noise of horns and hunting, which shall bring
Actaeon to Diana in the spring,
Where all shall see her naked skin...

===>

When of the sudden listening you shall hear,
The sounds of horns and motors which will bring
Sweeney to Mrs. Porter in the spring

Quotes from Richard Wagner's Tristan und Isolde

Frisch weht der Wind	Fresh the wind blows
Der Heimat zu	to the homeland
Mein Irisch Kind	My Irish child
Wo Weilest du?	Where do you tarry?

Öd' und leer das Meer	Dreary and desolate the sea

. . The reader needs to know the references and why the text is being quoted and why it has been modified.

So it can be with films

THICK FILMS:

Hard to Understand Symbolism is complex and often individual.

ART FILMS

Art is difficult to define. As a result so is “art house” a theater that shows "art films" - These are usually low budget independent films geared to a small “niche” market rather than a mass market. Seen as serious aesthetic work not made for profit motive.

There are problems with definition here as there is with something like “cult film” which is defined more by a sociological phenomenon (midnight showings, devoted audience often showing up in costume and acting out with the film)

Some claim that art film is a “genre” (More problems with definition!) Often held to be made for a “knowledgable audience" (perhaps by unknowledgable directors). They are often associated with auteur theory.

There are often comments which parallel those of modern art and modern poetry - “Doesn’t know how to make films” like “doesn’t know how to paint”.

Some very much experimental and maybe involved in technique (overlapping film images, scratches on film etc.)

Camille Paglia, a film critic and historian argued in an article "Art movies: R.I.P." that Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather series, which has cleverly used flashbacks and "gritty social realism", ..not a single film had been made in the past 35 years that has the philosophical depth or virtuosos construction of films like Bergman's The Seventh Seal or Persona. She blames this on the idea that young people of the 2000's lack the patience for the "long, slow take that deep-think European directors once specialized in". It is not clear whether her remarks are aimed strictly at narrative fiction films or all films in general. In effect the parallel made earlier in the term over the contrast between fiction and literature seems to be raising its head again. The argument here is basically, films are all "fiction" now, there is no "literature". We don't have a good set of terms like "fiction" and "literature" in film studies. While "art film" might work, the problem is that "art films" may often be seen as not being necessarily non fiction (e.g. 2001: A Space Odyssey or even Fantasia

THREE "ART" FILMS

THE LOON’S NECKLACE
F.R. Crawley
1949

SCORPIO RISING
Ken Anger
1964

His films are short and he produced more tha three dozen since 1937. The "Magick Lantern Cycle", contains 9 of his films and is the the basis for his reputation as "one of the most influential independent filmmakers in cinema history". His films are a complex mixing of surrealism, homoeroticism and the occult. They are personal films and have been described as containing erotic elements and some akin to psychodrama. The films have some feeling for being documentaries but Anger said that Scorpio Rising is a s close to a documentary as he has come. There is a kind of cinema verite feel to the films - he films what is happening, although the people are aware they are bing filmed and in some cases (e.g. the part scene in Scorpio Rising the men at the party didn't want the women they were with filmed, so it appears that the party is all male which it was not. Anger, who is openly gay is certanly one of America's first openly gay filmmakers, and his films must be considerd among first that addressed homosexuality in "an undisguised, self-implicating manner". He most probably was the first to make gay culture visible within any kind of American cinema. Several of his films had been released before prior to the legalisation of homosexuality in the United States. It was his film Fireworks which brought him to the attention of famed sexologist Alfred Kinsey with whom maintained a friendship.

Anger was also interested in the occult and his films often have links with the area. He was fascinated by the English occultist Aleister Crowley, (who appears thinky disguises as the character Karswell in Curse of the Demon). ANger professed to be a follower of Crowley's religion, Thelema.

Anger cites filmmakers Auguste and Louis Lumière, Georges Méliès, and Maya Deren as having influenced him, while Martin Scorsese, David Lynch and John Waters have cited him as influencing them

The film is known for (among other things) its use of popular songs to link heterosexuality with the homoerotic images on the screen. The film's entire soundtrack is constructed from popular 1950s songs: "Blue Velvet" by Bobby Vinton; "Torture" by Kris Jensen and "I Will Follow Him" by Little Peggy March.. (The songs were all gotten legally and Anger paid for their use)

The film was brought up on charges of obscenity and an all female jury in California agreed. The California Supreme Court however reversed the decision. It appears that the Nazi regalia in the film along with the clips of film depicting Jeses from The Living Bible series was probably more upsetting.

"Scorpio Rising" was filmed in Brooklyn in the fall of 1964, with young motorcycle buffs whom Kenneth Anger had met at Coney Island (and some shots are made there - the Cyclone roller coaster is clearly visible). Anger says Scorpio is the zodiac sign that rules both the sex organs and machinery, so it seemed like a good choice for the title. "Rising" implies the astrological term "ascendant.".

Like westerns where the order of priorities for the leading man is his horse and then his girl friend, the priorities for these bikers are motorcycles first, girlfriends second!

Using the actual apartment of "Scorpio", Anger records his subjects cats, honorable discharge from the USMC and newspaper clippings of the death of 2 bikers in Manhattan. This gives a very cinema verite approach to the film since the cats and all are visible and is Scorpio doing what he likes - reading comincs, eatching TV and doing some drugs.

The party "Party Lights" sequence was the annual all-night Halloween party of the motorcycle club he was following and was held in a Brooklyn garage.Anger claims to have staged nothing, but just brought in some lights and "filmed it like a documentary." While the party looks completely all-male and gay, in fact all of the bikers were heterosexual and had girlfriends, who were present at the party but whom the young men did not want to have filmed.

The church scenes were filmed in an old church which was had been abandoned and was being demolished, and Anger got into it, with his camera, through a broken door.

.

BARAKA
Ron Fricke
1992

In 1982, experimental director Godfrey Reggio released Koyaanisqatsi, This is a film without dialogue and emphasizes cinematography and philosophical musings. Mainly it is a film with slow motion and time-lapse photography of cities and natural landscapes which have a definite poetic feel..

Baraka is inspired by Godfrey Reggio’s in which Fricke was involved. It is also a movie with no conventional plot: merely a collection of expertly photographed scenes. Subject matter has a highly environmental, humanistic theme.

(1982) and films which followed:

Powaqqatsi (1988) An exploration of technologically developing nations and the effect the transition to Western-style modernization has had on them.

Naqoyqatsi (2002) A visual montage portrait of our contemporary world dominated by globalized technology and violence.

Baraka is related to the Hebrew Baruch, Arabic Barak meaning “blessing” or something akin to that.

All of these films are typified by a lack of plot, but with a string of remarkably shot images which seek to produce an emotional reaction in the viewer.

The film links shots of nature with those of human activities often contrasting natural activity (landscape and animal) with human and peaceful religious activities (often rural) with the hectic life in cities. The film links all humanity by showing similarities in human "sacred" exerience. Although each culture may be different in its approach there is an underlying human-ness that links all people together.

The lack of narration means there is no explanation of what the audience sees. Each person can draw their own conclusions about what is happening.