Reading Response Three

1. Post your response to Brakhage's Prelude: Dog Star Man.

It is an interesting mix, though the use of video does throw me off. Some of the mixing use of video, which in the sun shots gives a hexagonal lens flare, and film threw me off a little and sidtracks my mind while watching the film. I have been studying this effect for a few years now, actually ever since I saw a shot from Superman Returns, and my cinematography teacher taught me about this effect. Video is the only thing that creates this effect, in film the flares are round. It may be due to the conversion of the copy we saw, I cannot rule this out yet. It however is not because of the iris closing. On a film camera this looks completely different than that. I have been studying this effect when watching films in the theater and whenever I see it in a movie I look it up to see if that movie was shot in video. I have yet to find this happen and find the movie shot completely on film.
Other than this personal distraction, the film seemed a lot less “focused”, is probably the best word I would have to describe it, compared to the other films we have watched. I also kept thinking, how does he make a living? Is it through his films?

Sitney, “Apocalypses and Picaresques”

2. Why does Sitney argue that synecdoche plays a major role in Christopher Maclaine’s The End, and how does the film anticipate later achievements by Brakhage and the mythopoeic form?

After looking up synecdoche, and learning what that means, then re-reading the section on it and The End. Sitney is not clear on how “it plays a major role in MacLaine’s film.” He does seem to be more clear on the connection between MacLaine and Brakhage. How that Brakhage, trying to get away from trance films, saw The End and worked on what would become Reflections on Black, and later refining of the techniques created Dog Star Man.

3. What are some similarities and differences between the apocalyptic visions of Christopher Maclaine and Bruce Conner?

It seems that Conner has a much greater sense of humor, compared with MacLaine. With the sequence of the periscope operator intercut with nudie shots of Monroe. He seems to want to “play” with the film process more than just commenting alone, like Maclaine does in The End. These types of films, however, do not become a trend in either’s career. Both men make a small number and the “apocalyptic visions” film fade out.

4. Why are the films of Ron Rice (The Flower Thief) and Robert Nelson (The Great Blondino) examples of Beat sensibility and what Sitney calls the picaresque form?

Sitney explains that “it portrays the absurd, anarchistic often infantile adventures of an innocent hero.” While this combines with the term “Beat sensibility” does give a vague idea of it. When I read “Beat” I think of “Beat poetry.” This bringing its own imagery much more powerful than anything implied by Sitney.

Bruce Jenkins, “Fluxfilms in Three False Starts.”

5. How and why were the “anti-art” Fluxfilms reactions against the avant-garde films of Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger. [Hint: Think about Fluxus in relation to earlier anti-art such as Dada, and Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain."]

It appears that while Brakhage and others were looking for the more personal and mental perception through intimacy, the “anti-art” was looking at cutting much of that out. Also, breaking the “impersonal encounter” of subject and camera with such films as Sleep by Warhol, which is a rip off of a film which is in turn a rip off of another film. I also think of Warhol’s Empire, a film that is of the Empire State Building. I looked it up and watched some online.

6. What does Jenkins mean by the democratization of production in the Fluxfilms?

It means taking the film out of a single person’s personal hand, which have complete control over every aspect of it, from idea to fruition. That it is made to be made to be made to be made to be made to be made. I think you get the idea.

7. Why does Jenkins argue that Nam June Paik’s Zen for Film “fixed the material and aesthetic terms for the production of subsequent Fluxfilms”? How does it use the materials of the cinema? What kind of aesthetic experience does it offer?

It made a cheaper and quicker way of making the films from the traditional production style. It uses 1000 feet of 16mm clear leader film. What it does is look back to the beginning of film as being a simpler time and draws on that aesthetic.