Re: INSECT FILMS

From: William Wees, Dr. (email suppressed)
Date: Wed Jul 30 2008 - 07:00:57 PDT


"The Smell of Burning Ants" by Jay Rosenblatt

--Bill Wees

William C. Wees,

Emeritus Professor (McGill University)

Postal address:

Department of Art History and Communication Studies

McGill University

853 Sherbrooke St. West--Arts W225

Montreal, QC H3A 2T6

Phone: 514 398-4935 Fax: 514 398-7247

-----Original Message-----
From: Experimental Film Discussion List
[mailto:email suppressed] On Behalf Of Chen Sheinberg
Sent: July 30, 2008 6:10 AM
To: email suppressed
Subject: INSECT FILMS

Hello,
does anybody know about experimental films involving insects except
"Mothlight" by Brakhage?
thanks
chen

----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve Polta" <email suppressed>
To: <email suppressed>
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2008 8:15 PM
Subject: Re: perfect films

> One things that I would add to this qualification is that, besides
being a
> found film/video object presented in unaltered form (as found), to me,
a
> "perfect film," as defined (more or less) by Jacobs, is that it (the
film)
> is selected/found by the artist and presented somehow as his or her
own
> work--not in a deceptive way but, with the act of selection and
> presentation being the artistic gesture, but with a commentary made,
> perhaps not primarily, on the artists' own work (and yes, this favors
> artists with established bodies of work). I.e. Jacobs' PERFECT FILM,
> *seems* like a Jacobs film; WORKS AND DAYS elaborates Frampton's work
(the
> film is actually "signed" by him I believe. Liotta's MOST BEAUTIFUL
> SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS series too. I would not consider, for example, any
of
> the "Found Film Festival" Wendy's burger flipping type stuff to be
> "perfect films," strictly speaking. Taking this definition, to state
> counter to Andrew lampert, the list of "perfect
> films" (strictly speaking) becomes very short, although the use of
large
> parts of unaltered material in works is not.
>
> Worth mentioning in the discussion is the alleged mis-delivery of the
> Jesus-on-a-donkey film incorporated into SCORPIO RISING.
>
> Steve Polta
>
>
> --- On Tue, 7/29/08, Scott Stark <email suppressed> wrote:
>
>> From: Scott Stark <email suppressed>
>> Subject: Re: perfect films
>> To: email suppressed
>> Date: Tuesday, July 29, 2008, 8:39 AM
>> At 07:51 PM 07/28/2008 -0400, Tom B Whiteside wrote:
>> >This has been a good thread. My vote for the most
>> perfect perfect film
>> >goes to the eponymous, "Perfect Film" by Ken
>> Jacobs. It is truly amazing -
>> >not only for the story of its existence (cool enough),
>> but what it is on
>> >screen. Unsettling, profound, real.
>>
>> One thing that's particularly fascinating about that
>> film is that, as I
>> understand it, it was a reel of outtakes, spliced together
>> by some editor
>> as a convenience without any particular structure in mind.
>> So what we're
>> seeing becomes an inadvertent record of what was not shown,
>> which in many
>> ways reveals more than the public version probably did. I
>> think that's part
>> of the irony of Ken's title.
>>
>> I remember Jeanne Liotta showing a Hollis Frampton
>> ready-made in San
>> Francisco a few years ago, with a man and woman tending to
>> a small produce
>> garden. It was beautiful, simple, and has stuck in my mind
>> since then.
>> Don't recall the title though.
>>
>> Some long-time frameworkers may remember a discussion I
>> started back in the
>> mid-90s (yes, frameworks is going on 13 years old!) about a
>> group of
>> amateur films by a guy named Fred McLeod who made a
>> charming little 16mm
>> opus about his golf swing. The Orgone Cinema folks were
>> showing it as an
>> art film. There was an interesting discussion about
>> artistic intentionality
>> and transplanting things from their original context. The
>> discussion's no
>> longer in the archive but digest versions of all archives
>> are available on
>> request from the site (http://www.hi-beam.net/fw/).
>>
>> Scott
>>
>>
>> __________________________________________________________________
>> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at
>> <email suppressed>.
>
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.

__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.

__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.