Reading Response 2: Due Sept. 29 @ 5 p.m.

1. Post a brief response to one of the following Brakhage films: The Wold Shadow, Window Water Baby Moving, Dog Star Man Part 2, Dog Star Man Part 3.
The Wold Shadow by Stan Brakhage took my by surprise. I liked it more the second viewing and felt I got more of what Brakhage was going for as well. I think you need several viewings sometimes to let yourself go and be in the moment.Although there was no movement in the images of the forest except the various lighting, shadows, colors and textures are what I think make everything come together in the film. The screen seemed to come alive rhythmically, almost dance, a sequence of images the forest and the paintings somehow had an aural quality to them. Even though the image changed from the video(photo?) of the forest to the paintings they seemed to seamlessly blend together. It made me look at the forest in a new and fresh way, maybe with the "untutored eye" like Brakhage wanted.

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? (Implicit in this question: what is synecdoche? It is a figure of speech, but what kind?)
Sitney says, "Synecdoche plays a major role in McClaine's film, as does the elipsis. the combination of picture and sound at the conclusion of the next episode exemplifies the latter." I think a synecdoche means a part of a whole or a sub set of something.McClaine's,The End has a tragic hero protagonist like the mythopaethic form that Brakhage is associated with.

3. What are some similarities and differences between the apocalyptic visions of Christopher Maclaine and Bruce Conner?
They both have a vision of doom but Sitney says that unlike Maclaine, "Conner is not naive in his vision of doom."Both use montage style with non linear non narrative structure."Both film-makers extended the technical discoveries of their early woks in films that were less ambitious an prophetic but no less exquisite."


Bruce Jenkins, “Fluxfilms in Three False Starts.”

4. 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."]
I feel like the article is saying that Anger,Bailie and Brakhage felt as thought these films weren't as serious or credible as theirs. They thought their works had purpose and meaning as compared to the Fluxfilms where most of seemingly simple ,light hearted, or humoristic could be a a long take of a tree.

5. What does Jenkins mean by the democratization of production in the Fluxfilms?
I think he is saying that these Fluxfilms with the long takes of simple everyday actions, expressions ,etc... can be made by anyone.

6. Critic Jonas Mekas divided avant-garde filmmaking into the "slow" and the "quick"; which filmmakers were associated with "slow" and which filmmakers were associated with "quick"? Which Fluxus films were "slow" and "quick" (name one of each)? The filmakers who fit in the "slow" category were Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, George Brecht and Nan June Pak. Some "slow" films are Zen For Film and Entrance-Exit. "Quick" were George Maciunas, Wolf Vostal, and Eric Anderson.Some "quick" films are Sun in Your Head and Opus 74 version 2.

7. How is the Fluxus approach to the cinema different from both Godard and Brakhage? Jenkins says, the Fluxfilms approach, "which maintained an immaculate conception of the cinema that was at once chldllike and cunning" while Brakhage who redirected the medium inward toward the personal, private realms of intimate experience and the visions of the camera I/eye and Goddard who opened up the narrative feature film to varied content spearheaded new cinemas.

8. 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?
I think Jenkins is saying that anything goes, as seen by this 7 minute film of a white screen. Anything you want to make art can be art. The perception is left up to the viewer. It's kind of funny, it seems like Paik is poking fun at avant-garde films, but the film actually makes sense. The warmly lit screen for 7 minutes can and did put me in a zen like place, thus the title.

Reading Response 1: Due Sept. 22 @ 5 p.m.

If you haven't already, write a brief response to either Fireworks or Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome on your blog. Then respond to the following questions.

Sitney, “Ritual and Nature”

1. What are some characteristics of the American psychodrama in the 1940s?
Some characteristics of the American Psychodrama in the 1940's are dreams, dance, ritual and sex. The images on screen alongside the sound(s)(if there is any) makes you feel as if you are in a trance or dreamlike state.This is why they are called "trance" films, and they are more about the visual experience rather than the narrative. Another characteristic is the use super-impositions and slow and fast motions through camera movements . Sitney says'"Trance films tend to resist specific interpretation." The protagansist (many times the filmmaker) is a passive one who deals with internal struggles.This was seen in the Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome and Meshes of the Afternoon.

2. What does Sitney mean by an “imagist” structure replacing narrative structure in Choreography for the Camera?
Sitney says, " Maya Deren introduced the possiblity of isolating a single gesture as a complete film form." This is called "imagist" structure, these films can be as simple as a man banging his fist on a glass tabletop as seen in the film by Boultenhouse.


3. Respond briefly to Sitney’s reading of Ritual in Transfigured Time (27-28); Is his interpretation compatible with your experience of the film?
I feel like our experiences with Ritual in Transfigured Time were pretty similar but I feel like he got much more out of it than I did. I had a hard time deriving meaning from the film, although I feel like the repitition of images , the slow motion and freeze frames really gave me a sense of time being slowed down and exaggerated.


Sitney, “The Magus”

4. Paraphrase the paragraph on p. 90 that begins “The filmic dream constituted…” in your own words.
I think it is saying, Deren and Anger want to be one with the camera. because the camera that is the receptive mind that interacts with our minds.Sitney says, that the main object or subject is shown on screen then the other objects that pertain to it appear as well. Making the viewer place the two together.

5. According to Sitney, what is the ultimate result at the end of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome? How does his reading of the film compare / contrast with your own experience of the film?
The ultimate result at the end of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome according to Sitney ,is that Magus becomes a redeemed man. Which I really didn't get, I felt like there was something shady going on with Magus at the beginning but then I kind of lost touch of any meaning to the story towards the middle through to the end. The repetition, all of the characters and colors made it hard for me to find any resolution in the film, but were beautiful and entrancing none the less.


Sitney, “The Lyrical Film”

6. What are the key characteristics of the lyrical film (the first example of which was Anticipation of the Night).
Sitney says,"There is no longer a hero in lyrical film" and "the lyrical film postulates the film-maker behind the camera as the first- person protagonist."Lots of color and movement.

7. What does Sitney mean by "hard" and "soft" montage? What examples of each does he give from Anticipation of the Night? [Tricky question; read the entire passage very carefully.]
Sitney brings up the fact that Brakhage accurately chooses the verb "to become". He speaks of the opening collsion of day and night shots, and how major scenes blend into one another in rhetoric of becoming. I had a hard time fully grasping this one.

8. What are the characteristics of vision according to Brakhage’s revival of the Romantic dialectics of sight and imagination? [I’m not asking here about film style, I’m asking about Brakhage’s views about vision.]
Sitney says,"His sense of vision presumes that we have been taught to be unconscious of most of what we see. For him seeing includes what the open eyes view, including essential movements and dilation's involved in that primary mode of seeing, as well as the shifts of focus, what the minds eye sees in visual memory and in dreams( he calls them "brain movies"), and the perpetual play of shapes and colors on the closed eyelid and occasionally the eye surface("closed-eye vision"). The imagination includes the simultaneous functioning of all of these modes."

Sitney, “Major Mythopoeia”

9. 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.”
Because, Sitney argues,"With his flying camera and fast cutting, and by covering the surface of celluloid with paint and scratches, Brakhage drove the cinematic image into the space of Abstract Expressionism and relegated the conventional depth of focus to a function of the artistic will, as if to say "the deep axis will appear only when I find it necessary."

10. What archetypes are significant motifs in Dog Star Man, and which writers in what movement are associated with these four states of existence?
1)Innocence:Babies
2)Experience:growing up/sexual frustrations
3)Damned:Domination of Nature
4) Liberated:Eden

Writers like Witman, Blake, and Pound all linked with the Romanticism Movement are associated with these four states of existance. Sitney writes, "Brakhage like Blake, describes the sources of renewal as an innocence of the senses and erotic union..."

Response to: Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome

The film has a vast array beautiful of images warm colors alongside strange images of thought evoking circumstances ( ie. the man eating jewelry) . The use of devilish or evil masks gives me a feeling of people trying to hide behind something and not being who they appear. The juxtapositions of the different characters superimposed on screen along with the music put me in a dreamlike state of mind. I feel like these characters might represent gluttony, lechery and the bourgeois. I tried to focus on the ritual structure you spoke of in class with Anger's formula of: Preparation, Build of Energy, and Destruction. Overall I enjoyed the film, and after viewing I can definitely see why it's called a "trance film".