From: Sam Wells (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Nov 01 2005 - 16:50:06 PST
> I have used Film Art in the past to teach experimental filmmaking. I
> think it is useful in two ways. The first is that it explains the
> conventions of cinema very well. And I think it is helpful for
> beginning experimental filmmakers to know the conventions in order to
> break them effectively and creatively.
I wish every film student in the world could attend Peter Kubelka's
lecture / screening tour somehow.
It's not that I would quote agree with his idiosyncratic theorizing on
cinema in every respect. If fact the specifics seem less important than
the fact that it's "theory hands on" so to speak - and demonstrated by
the films. I likened him (someone who missed them this fall asked me)
to a master carpenter who brings the saw and block of wood; and says
"this is the wood, this is the tool to cut the wood" and then "here's
the grain of the wood, this is what happens if you cut with the grain.
And this is what happens if you cut against the grain" He even lets you
take the cut wood in your hands.
It strikes me that his approach absolutely does engage the cognitive,
and gives living example or if you prefer samples of how cinema can be
approached cognitively.
In this sense though, I think he quite rightly turns the idea of
conventions as above on it's head. In showing how (I'll use his terms,
I'm not sure they would be mine) the "metric" *allows* the
"metaphorical" to emerge but does not beg it, he really suggests - I
think - what I also believe: at its core so called "experimental
cinema" is not a subset of "conventional" cinema but if anything exists
at conventional cinema's foundations.
-Sam
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.