Talk:CINE-X SHOWCASE
From mediaartiststudio
Film Discussion
The Cine-X Showcase started out fine, but by the end, I was relieved it was over. My favorite was Amber Smith's Mom II, which featured Amber's mother, awkwardly positioned in front of a static camera. On one side of the screen, Amber's mom is shown staring straight-on into the lens, answering Amber's personal, sometimes uncomfortable, questions, and on the other side, a long take of her profile is shown. In between the two images, Amber hangs on a rope, interacting with her piece by asking interview questions. Although it appeared simple to create (besides hanging from that rope), the piece came across as sincere, engaging, and sometimes funny. John Maeda would probably approve. I'm not quite sure what Amber's intent was by hanging from the rope or including her mother's still profile for 15 minutes (her mom is a good sport), but it was different and I did like it.
Faux Movements stood out for me because I knew it had come all the way from France which caused me to have higher expectations and it was very long (well, longer than the others). However, all I could think about during the film, with it's unappealing train images, and grating soundtrack, was when I was going to get to move my legs. Obviously many people, (who probably are more cultured and have longer attention spans than me) liked it, because I looked it up on the internet to try and figure out what I was missing and it has been in many festivals. Apparently, "backwards and forward motions occur together" and the audience sees movement in still images, but as an uninformed viewer, it's difficult to appreciate this aspect of the film.
The last one, Scott Spark's Speechless also stood out to most people due to the "mature content," and I believe it is a prime example of why many people are wary of experimental cinema. The film would switch back and forth between a couple pictures of a various vaginas, creating crude animations, which were paired with nature footage. I was unimpressed and bored (13 minutes of this seemed unnecessary), but thinking maybe there were some interesting ideas hiding within the flickering close-ups of genitals and plants, I searched the internet for the film. These images were originally made for Viewmaster (remember these from when you were little?) to accompany a text entitled The Clitoris. In Spark's words, "The film became, for me, a celebration of a raw, mysterious and sometimes fearful beauty, exploding with images of power and presence, of a part of the female body that is, one could argue, under-represented and seldom looked at, except when crudely sexualized in modern porn or subjected to the sterile scrutiny of the physician's gaze. Yet . . . the images in Speechless also invite pleasure; animated, they might appear to be speaking, forming words and sentences using a vocabulary that, with our unversed eyes and ears, we're unable to parse, and hence assume the speakers' voices muted; but perhaps it is we who are left speechless." This isn't what I got from the film at all, but obviously with a name like Speechless and the content he chose, he wasn't trying to appeal to the masses, so maybe I'm just one of the many viewers who weren't able to fully appreciate his work.
Honestly, afterwards I had trouble keeping many of the other films and their directors straight because they were extremely abstract and short and kind of blended together for me.
What did the rest of you think? -Celena
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I was pleasantly surprised with the Cine-X Showcase at the Olympia Film Festival. I wasn’t expecting every film to be great, since I believe I’m well-accustomed to experimental films and the vagueness of the term, but I appreciated a good number of them and questioned –not exactly disliked—a few others, too. I will attempt to remember and accurately review each film, hopefully.
Mom II / 2008 / Portland, OR /15 min / live multi-media performance / Amber Smith
One of my favorite pieces from the showcase. At the time, I didn’t notice that Amber Smith, hanging from the top of the stage, was interacting with her mother’s image on screen, since her voice sounded calm and the sound from the microphone was very clear. After I noticed she was actually performing, instead of simply hanging as a gimmick, I appreciated the piece more. The video itself was interesting in that it transferred this personal moment between a mother and a daughter into the public realm, and Amber being in front of the screen magnified this private-into-public aspect. The interview seemed cold and lifeless –one question was asked after another—but this could be a look into the mother-daughter relationship, or even a mother-daughter-movie camera relationship, which adds more layers to the piece. To the simple visuals of the piece, Amber’s performance gave the event more life.
Lake Effect / 2008 / Ithaca, NY / 1:46 min / DV / Jason Livingston
I saw this short video as the typical experimental film. Flashing images, found-sounding sound, more flashing images. Surely, an experimental film showcase requires at least one cliché piece like this, but seeing as there were other pieces that had these qualities, this one could have been omitted. I am sure that the filmmaker could conjure a great explanation for this video, and at times when I’m questioning why I watched this film or others like it, I would wish that the Olympia Film Festival program would give that highly intellectual explanation.
Land of Quicksand / 2008 / Olympia, WA / 6 min / DV / Christine Davis and Lauren Likely
Though I can’t explain why exactly, I enjoyed this film. It seemed so typically “art school,” but at the same time genuine. It was really Olympia, and somehow that gave me a good feeling. It looked like it was filmed using a VHS camera, which I appreciated, and how it looked home-made made it seem more personal, as if you could sense that their friends, while wondering what the film is about, had to move the scenery outside the window while the character is sitting at the table.
One Last Shock / 2008 / Boston, MA / 5:30 min / DV / Adam Paradis
The introduction scene was the most enjoyable part of the film. It is too easy to make found footage films funny, so after watching a good number of them, I found this piece mostly uninteresting.
Rain / 2008 / Springfield, MO / 3:34 min / DV / Rebecca Ruige Xu
This animation made me sad when I realized it had been picked instead of some of my good friends’ work. It was basically green and pink dots appearing and disappearing on a white screen, emulating rain drops, synced with sound as each drop appeared. It looked like a simple demo contained in an early-nineties computer-animation program showing what you could do using it. If there’s more to it, please let me know.
Gossamer Walls / 2007 / Seattle, WA / 5 min / 16mm film / Malic Amalya
Very interesting film. I think Devon Damante screened this at his workshop. Amalya used old her grandfather’s old super 8 reels, laid them on 16mm film in a dark room, and shined a light on the film, if I remember correctly.
The Production and Decay of Strange Particles / 2008 / Seattle, WA / 7:30 min / 16mm film / Jon Behrens
Great direct animation. I understand audience members who are not filmmaker’s wondering why they’re looking at abstract images on screen for nearly eight minutes, but I appreciated the film simply because of the clear and colorful imagery –paint and other decaying substances on 16mm film.
Baghdad Plan is a Success / 2007 / Madison, WI / 3 min / 16mm film / Sabine Gruffat and Matthew Kelson
A really simple film which used words from headlines on the Iraq war to make a direct animation-looking piece (I do not actually know how it was done). The words created a pattern that kept scrolling, at times it was difficult to read the one repeated word on screen. Though it was simple, I thought it was effective and visually engaging.
Faux Mouvements / 2008 / Paris, France / 12 mins / 16mm film / Pip Chodorov
I also wasn’t very impressed with this film. It was visually pleasing, but not intellectually engaging. So the audience sees movement in still images –it’s what it is, but why should we care? If that was the point of the film, it has such a scientific feel to it that it completely loses its life. Does it see its audience as creatures to experiment on? Also, how long could you look at an optical illusion (for example, a stereogram) before you get bored with it? It is an interesting effect, but maybe it drags out for a bit too long, and for no real purpose but to see it. As something to please the eye, it is a good piece (the spiral has an exquisite shape), but as something to devote your active mind, it fails. I could say that about other pieces on this showcase I liked, but somehow hearing people trying to intellectualize Faux Movements doesn’t attract me.
Speechless* / 2008 / Austin, TX / 13 min / 16mm film / Scott Stark
Speechless had very typical aspects of experimental cinema: flashing images with their inverted counterparts, having a controversial subject, and a droning soundtrack. However, I did think it was interesting how Stark created movement and showed similarities by splicing the clitoris images with animated images of nature. I think I do agree with Stark when he says, “The film became, for me, a celebration of a raw, mysterious and sometimes fearful beauty, exploding with images of power and presence, of a part of the female body that is, one could argue, under-represented and seldom looked at, except when crudely sexualized in modern porn or subjected to the sterile scrutiny of the physician's gaze.” I agree that the human body contains a “fearful beauty,” and both to people sensitive and desensitized to content like this, the film tries to portray and break against the sterile, clinical feel of the images by making them somehow vibrant, though not glamorous, sexualized, or idealized. Link to description (mature content)
Overall, I was glad to see new experimental films at the Cine-X showcase (and though I seem critical of some of them, I appreciated them all). It is interesting to see how they are basically the same nowadays as they were in decades before. Many fads are still overused and have proven to be more than fads, but the standard -the antithesis of experimenting. My only complaint is that they did not showcase many films that did not seem scientific, as in, most did not pass through my eye into my mind and through to what is classically called the heart. Most just passed straight from the eye into the left part of my brain. The showcase was great, but I cannot see myself at this moment creating work like Lake Effect.
-Aris Chagoya, Nov. 18 4:31pm
[edit] The Production and Decay of Strange Particles 2008, 16mm color sound 7 ½ min Dir by Jon Behrens
I was awe-inspired by Jon Behren’s direct animation piece The Production and Decay of Strange Particles. Like most abstract direct animation pieces I have seen, it was hard to attain its meaning or fathom its content while watching it for the first time. Instead, I was lost in its beautiful and vibrant imagery. Due to technical difficulties the sound was not brought up until half way through the piece. When the sound was finally brought up, in a way I was taken out of the piece. It wasn’t because the sound didn’t fit with the piece or was jarring in any way, it was just because I began to wonder if it was actually a technical difficulty or if the director meant to bring the audio up at that portion of the film and if so why. I began to ponder these questions and found myself forgetting I was actually still watching the film. I would love to see the film again with its full soundtrack to see if my initial reaction to the film would change. I thought the technique Jon used to create this animation was unique for a direct animation in the sense it produced such bright saturated colors that often are hard to produce due to the projectors often blowing out the paint or other materials directly applied to the film. On Jon Behrens website he says, “In this film I began to experiment more with creating mats with liquid latex directly on the film emulsion then bleaching of all the excess image around the latex and using the clear bleached sections of film as a canvas to paint my film poem I used special inks that were custom made just for me called Keneville Dyes I then to re-photographed it all on my beloved JK optical printer. I also created this films sound design.” All of the imagery of this piece was created by directly painting on film and re-photographing it, but Jon does edit his sound digitally. Jon has been making films for over 29 years and this animation made me want to see more of his work.
[edit] Arist Link
Jon Behrens Offical Website: http://www.jonbehrensfilms.com/
-Tommy Thompson Nov, 22 2008 5:17PM
