Over at the Invisible Cinema blog,
Jennifer MacMillan starts the new year
with a list challenging the binary oppositions that too often
inappropriately frame the relationship between narrative film and
experimental film. And, um, I guess with that last sentence I fell into
the sloppy thinking she critiques. Witness point number four: "To say
that an experimental video is 'non-narrative' is like saying that Henry
Ford's invention of the T-model automobile was a non-horse &
carriage buggy! Or it's like saying that Rimbaud wrote non-novels.
Grouping all short films together is misunderstanding cinema."
And here's #2, on the year-phenomenon of "10 Best" lists:
2. form and content
Your
top ten lists? Go ahead with placing the mystery of cinema into a
concise numerical form if it makes you happy. Seriously, I love awesome
writers, and I do not care how you label yourselves. But let's look a
bit closer. Your IndieWire list for example, that's all narrative
cinema. Cinema differentiated ONLY by CONTENT. Experimental cinema
radically changes FORM. Experimental cinema has exquisitely evolved
into a complex system of formats! Here are a few highlights:
live
video performance, enhanced by the invention of new softwares, i.e.
Module8 and Jitter, used by artists such as Luke Dubois, Chika, Nisi
Jacobs, Zach Layton, Andy Graydon, and Zach Layton.
applied
materials: hand painting, collage, sewing on the film strip, polarized
light experiments used by Courtney Hoskins, Jennifer Reeves, Lewis
Klahr . . .
animation: Martha Colburn, Tim Reardon, Xander Marrow
single frame films: Joel Schlemowitz
pioneering video inventions: Cori Archangel, Ken Jacobs
experimentation with film loops and non-camera filmmaking: Bruce McClure, Luis Recorder, and Sandra Gibson
# posted by Scott Macaulay @ 1/05/2008 03:10:00 PM
Comments (1)
Hey Scott,
To
be featured on your blog is such a compliment, thank you! When seeing
experimental cinema and narrative cinema as opposing complements, the
big picture really comes into focus. Yin/Yang seems to be the perfect
symbol of our cinematic cosmic forces!
P.S. No reader who takes the time to read Invisible Cinema is ever a sloppy thinker. :)
#
posted by jmac @ 1/05/2008 6:35 PM
