fantasma

fantasma

Monday, January 25, 2016

Avant-Garde: Film Analysis


...each spectator creates an image along the representational guidance suggested by the author, leading him/her unswervingly towards knowing and experiencing the theme in accordance with his/her own personality, in his/her own individual way, proceeding from his/her own experience, from his/her own imagination, from the texture of his/her associations, from the features of his/her own character, temper, and social status.
- Sergei Eisenstein, Notes of a Film Director

The following films were created to do many things… but, most of all, they were intended to experiment with what the director/maker understood to be the very character or objective of film making.  Through them, the spectator is challenged; he/she is asked to comprehend not only the work itself but to understand reality differently. 

You will be assigned one of these films to study and diagram:
Charles Scheeler and Paul Strand, Manhatta, 1921
László Moholy-Nagy, Berliner Stilleben, 1926
Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy, Ballet Mecanique, 1924
Joseph Cornell, Rose Hobart, 1936
Maya Deren and Alexander Hamid, Meshes of the Afternoon, 1943
Bruce Conner, A Movie, 1958
Stan Brakhage, Dog Star Man, 1961-64
Chris Marker, La Jetée, 1962
Ernie Gehr, Serene Velocity, 1970
Bruce Baillie, Quick Billy, 1971
Pat O’Neil, Water and Power, 1989
Peter Tscherkassky, Outer Space, 1999
Eve Sussman, 89 Seconds at Alcázar, 2004
Alessandro Cima, Detective City Angel, 2011
For this analysis, begin by watching the film a number of times: looking to understand the narrative, the visual qualities, the emotions that it might try to evoke, etc.  Following this, do some research on the author(s) of the film and find any information that you can find that describes and elucidates it; see if this information matches what you understood the film to be about or its intention. 



No comments:

Post a Comment