Reading Response 2

Hans Richter, “A History of the Avant-garde”
1. What conditions in Europe made the avant-garde film movement possible after World War I?

- Political, social, cultural, and economic unrest (desire of new ideas)
- The Opposition against conventional film routine (commercial aesthetic lacking the technical ability of the medium)
- The Artistic climate of Europe (the rise of Cubism, Expressionism, Dadaism and Abstract art)
- The influence of new technique and new art on the public (new generations finding beauty in new capabilities)

2. If the goal of Impressionist art is “Nature Interpreted by Temperament,” what are the goals of abstract art?

- The elimination of the uncontrolled, creation of norms, discipline and control of the whole. Or I would say, to rearrange the impressionist conception; temperament interpreted by creation with nature.

Oskar Fischinger, “My Statements Are in My Work”
3. On what grounds does Fischinger argue that “there is nothing of an absolute artistic creative sense” in conventional cinematography? (At least two important reasons.)

- Oskar argues that these films lack an absolute artistic creativeness because the films are created as “photographed surface realism” therefore it “copies only nature with realistic conceptions, destroying the deep and absolute creative force.” By using reality as its basic model for creation it limits the artistic freedom of the medium. Also, he argues that the conventional cinema “is a mass product of factory proportions” which limits the effectiveness of the artist because of the influence of the many contributors in the process of creating those films. “They change the ideas, kill the ideas, before they are born, prevent the ideas from being born, and substitute for the absolute creative motives only the cheap ideas to fit the lowest among them.” Also he thinks that the artist should not be concerned with whether his art is understood or misunderstood, but only with his “Creative Spirit” and “highest ideals… and that art museums create greater interest in this direction”.

Sitney, “The Lyrical Film”
4. While Brakhage’s Reflections on Black is a trance film, why does Sitney argue that it anticipates the lyrical film?

- It anticipates the lyrical film because it Brakhage begins to explore “the perimeters of imagination”. In the blind man’s “visions” “fantasy and sight mingle together”. “Later, more emphatically, the film-maker scratched with a sharp instrument on the film stock itself, so that a set of brilliant white stars shimmers over the blind man’s eyes, changing slightly from frame to frame. By attacking the surface of the film and by using materials which reflect back on the condition of film-making, Brakhage begins to formulate an equation between the process of making film and the search for consciousness…” The final episode is introduced by scratches of stars bursting on black leader, as if we too were seeing through the blind man’s eyes.” This, to Sitney, seems to signify Brakhage’s attempts to create subjective vision from pure imagination.

5. What are the key characteristics of the lyrical film (the first example of which was Anticipation of the Night)?

-According to Sitney, “The lyrical film postulates the film-maker behind the camera as the first-person protagonist of the film. The images of the film are what he sees, filmed in such a way that we never forget his presence and we know how he is reacting to his vision. In the lyrical film there is no longer a hero; instead the screen is filled with movement, and that movement, both of the camera and the editing, reverberates with the idea of a person looking.” Space is typically flattened as if in an Abstract Expressionist painting. “Through superimposition, several perspectives can occupy that space at one time.”

6. Which filmmaker was highly influential on Brakhage’s move to lyrical film in terms of film style, and why?

- Marie Menken was highly influential to Brakhage’s move to lyrical film in terms of film style mostly because of her first film: Visual Variations on Noguchi. In it she subtly created the impression of an implied mediator and “demonstrated a rhythmic inventiveness previously unmatched in cinema.” She did this “with a freely swinging camera, (shooting) rhythmic movements around the smooth, curved forms.” Of Noguchi’s sculptures, creating a style very similar to what would become Brakhage’s lyrical film.

9. How are Bruce Baillie’s lyrical films and filmmaking practices similar to and different from Brakhage’s?

- In his lyrical films, Baillie turns from the uneasy inwardness of Brakhage’s work to a problematic study of the heroic. Similarly to Brakhage Baillie attempts to create a cinematic haiku and the argument between consciousness and nature is as crucial to Baillie’s cinema as it is to Brakhage’s. Both Baillie and Brakhage push in their later lyrical films toward cinematic vision of impersonal or unqualified consciousness.

Sitney, “Major Mythopoeia”
10. 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.”

-Brakhage’s very tight artistic relationship with his film’s aesthetic, Brakhage created expressions in his films equal to the painterly abstract expressionist form. “With his flying camera and fast cutting, and by covering the surface of the celluloid with paint scratches, Brakhage drove the cinematic image into the space of Abstract Expressionism and relegated the conventional depth of function to a function of artistic will…”