From: konrad (email suppressed)
Date: Mon Oct 17 2005 - 11:48:24 PDT
On Mon, 17 Oct 2005, jennifer fieber wrote:
> It's funny, when I quickly read the defenses of the film, my
> first impulse was that people were agreeing with me and also
> calling it superficial; their defenses are my criticisms, so
> maybe I'm just spinning my heels.
>
> Sam Wells brought up that it exposes the mise-en-scene more
> powerfully. Jesse McLean called it "boiled down" or distilled.
> I would agree the power of the Tscherkassky is that it is
> atmospheric. But I really do think the atmosphere is coming
> from the deliberate compositions and cinematography of the
> original sources, not Tscherkassky's manipulations.
I guess to consider this as a criticism, you'd have to compare
what PT did in "Outer Space" to other potential choices of
imagery. What would happen if he chose a scene with a male
protagonist, say a scene with Nick Nolte from "Cape Fear;" or a
madcap comedic scene, to play against the technique? I think he
must have sought out that footage exactly for its atmosphere and
content, because his technique amplified certain aspects or it
influenced him develop certain effects in a way that pleased
him. If he did this unsystematically or intuitively, then
perhaps there is a critique of his unconcious motives -- which i
would agree with -- as being just an extension of the movie's
with new FX.
I have to say that i thought it was creepy to subject the image
to the kind of 'torture' that the character was being subjected
to psychically, and the fact that it pleased PT to do that made
me feel his intention was a bit suspect, rather than a critique
of Hollywood female image mongery.
> a film by Luther Price called Nice Biscuits #2
> Tentatively A Convenience's Disney Spots
> Bruce Connor and more narratively,
> Craig Baldwin
> Greta Snider's Flight
Another example that's different is Rick Prelinger's "Panorama
Ephemera" which does something more akin to "Atomic Cafe" in the
sense that it is more sympathetic to the footage than most
'critical' FF works. Rather than shots or short clips, it's
made up of sequences that play out for minutes at a time in
their original context, and so avoids chopping them up solely
for iconic "image bite" purposes, really listens to what the
original films were trying to say and lets that come through --
it helps he didn't divorce the soundtracks form the image.
Abigail Child's work is also in a slightly different mode, to
me. Especially something like "Surface Tension" which i like
for its melodic cutting. That is, the montage is extremely
"musical" -- you could call it 'formal' but i prefer musical
because of the soundtrack which with the image essentially forms
an intermedia duet of collages.
konrad
^Z
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