From: Cari Machet (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Oct 10 2005 - 09:14:13 PDT
then the film perhaps is what jalal toufic would call
journalism
c
--- benj gerdes <email suppressed> wrote:
> I saw Chain and posted a little bit a few weeks ago.
> I would say more
> about it but don't want to be called a glib
> anti-capitalist again. I
> think as a model, 7 years in the making,
> shot/edited/produced by one
> person, it's a pretty singular work at this point.
> For something that
> brings in footage from around the globe, it also
> differs from a lot of
> other experimental narratives that foreground their
> economic
> constraints--impressive color timing and sound mix,
> etc and no handheld
> camera fetish. Seeing stolen film footage of
> privately controlled
> social spaces--malls, hotels,etc--is striking in and
> of itself. The
> impossibility of distinguishing between documentary
> and fictional
> sequences is part of a process of accumulation over
> time--the real
> becoming surreal and at the same time more
> frightening--that succeeds
> without being heavy-handed or obvious. The
> flattening of distance
> between these sites is depicted pretty strongly, but
> the VOs ground
> this through two subjective accounts of the
> experiences of these
> spaces. It's accessible and simple formally, but I
> think effective and
> unmistakably critical in its depiction of these
> spaces without giving
> the audience too much room to get off on being
> better than, say,
> someone shopping at a strip mall in the mid-west.
>
> I guess the question about roger's film (which I
> haven't seen) is the
> degree to which people seem to want to hold his
> "authorial intention"
> of irony accountable for being underpronounced in
> some situations--I'm
> not sure this is fair. If we say irony often reads
> somewhat
> ambivalently and is almost always culturally or
> context specific, it's
> obvious audiences at the D.C. underground film
> festival will read it
> differently than a less self-selected audience or an
> audience outside
> of the US that views McDonald's in a different light
> (not to
> over-generalize, but I did read an account of a
> recent McDonald's
> opening in rural Mexico--the brightest young
> students were given the
> day off to attend). How would "Mouse Heaven" play
> to the audience at a
> disney collectors' convention? Asking for obvious
> and unmistakeable
> legibility is either a model for a consumer-based
> film or a
> really-didactic one.
>
>
>
> On Oct 8, 2005, at 11:27 AM, FRAMEWORKS automatic
> digest system wrote:
>
> > From: Sam Wells <email suppressed>
> > Date: October 8, 2005 11:09:12 AM EDT
> > Subject: Re: Composition in Red and Yellow
> >
> >
> > Without having seen your film, I think you're
> defense is, well,
> > defensible.
> >
> >> (My ex-girlfriend's father, a businessman who
> sells blue jeans to
> >> department stores, said I should try to sell the
> film to McDonald's
> >> as a commercial.
> >
> > I usually find these remarks charming in their
> innocence. (It was
> > suggested to me I sell copies of "Wired Angel" to
> Parochial Schools; I
> > think I might have better luck peddling "The
> Talking Rain" in the
> > Electrical Safety training films market......)
> >
> > p.s. Has anyone seen Jem Cohen's film "Chain" ? (I
> haven't)
> >
> > Anyway, you ain't just whistlering mickey, or are
> ya ? ;-)
> >
> > -Sam
>
>
>
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> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at
> <email suppressed>.
>
>
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.