Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival
11/18/2002
Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival
The
seventh program in the Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival included
fourteen films shot in Super-8 or in 16mm in the last two years. Although
most of the films had their interesting moments, ten of them were really
"experimental movies" in the real sense of the word. It was very
difficult to see a mature and fresh style that can be considered important
in them. The rest, three films by Lewis Klahr and one by Robert Todd, went
beyond just experimenting with the camera and achieved a real style that
is moving and thought provoking.
Catherine Webster's Spillway was a good
example of the first category of films I have mentioned. The images of water
flowing out of a hose and parts of nature in the garden where we assume
the hose is, all in close-ups, succeeded quickly one another. In each cut,
the composition changed in a very significant way. For example, there were
no two succeeding shots where the objects were in the same place on the
screen. Moreover, the nature of the light also changed almost certainly
in each shot. All these techniques break the continuity of the film, despite
the fact that all objects are situated in the same garden, and we are forced
to watch each image as a unit in itself. This "cubist" breakdown
of space and time is interesting on its own but unfortunately Webster cannot
use this to create a new rhythm or to give a deeper meaning to the objects.
Similarly, Eve Heller, in Her Glacial Speed,
forms interesting images without being able to create a meaningful whole.
Many of the images in the film have a foreground and background lit in different
colors and in different intensities of light. Moreover, the camera is placed
in such a way that the middle ground is almost non-existent. This breaks
the three-dimensional illusion and makes us see the images as we see collages:
two two-dimensional images placed next to each other. However, the way she
edits these fascinating images with others proves that Heller either is
not aware of or miscalculates the affect her images have on the viewer.
In contrast to the ones in the first category,
Robert Todd's Clip was moving for its whole running time of three
minutes. Steady images of a bleeding bird, of a building and of a prison-like
interior are held on the screen no more than one second. As they are repeated
all the time, after a while, we are able to distinguish the images and see
their content. However, we are never able to study the compositions because
of a lack of time. Similar to Spillway, the fact that the light and
spacing in the frame changes all the time creates a discontinuity. However,
interestingly, there are a few movements at the same time that we are expected
to notice. First, the bird is moving each time we see it again. And then,
in a more abstract sense, the compositions are edited so that there is always
a movement of light.
In his website, Robert Todd says: "I had an idea that the imposition
of a strict formulaic process to living imagery would drastically alter
its appearance, much as the strict adherence to dogma can disfigure or even
destroy a life." This statement proves he knows very well the way the
meaning is created in his viewer's mind. Both the steady buildings and the
process of recording the bird and editing it with a mathematical precision
emphasize the idea of death. At the end, the rapid cutting stops and the
negative of a flying bird in slow motion is on the screen for about 3 seconds.
This would be a very short time for any other film but in a film where we
are used to see images no longer than a second, it seems very long. It is
a poetic moment where freedom and redemption are suggested in both the content
and the form of the image.
It is probable that some of the films that are
in my first category work in a level I did not comprehend. However, the
program still proves that in experimental film, as in the mainstream cinema,
very few artists can achieve works that are significant and valuable as
a whole. The rest either tries to imitate the great filmmakers of the past
without adding much on their own or to find new ways of seeing without understanding
how the "new" images can be used to form a meaningful whole. Fortunately,
there are filmmakers like Todd who can find new ways of seeing the world
while balancing the form and the content
- Robert Todd's Web Site (It has a good quality clip from Clip)
- Onion City Film Festival
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