BACURAU (2019) dir. juliano dornelles, kleber mendonça filho. 131 mins.
MERRY GO ROUND (1981) dir. jacques rivette. 160 mins.
WALDEN/DIARIES NOTES AND SKETCHES (1969) jonas mekas. 167 mins.
WE GIVE A LEAD TO BRITAIN (2020) rene matić. 12 mins.
NONA. SI ME MOJAN, YO LOS QUEMO (2019) dir. camila josé donoso. 86 mins.
ANOTHER COUNTRY (1984) dir. marek kanievska. 90 mins.
THE GRAND BIZARRE (2018) jodie mack. 61 mins.
CRACKER - 'THE MAD WOMAN IN THE ATTIC' (1991) dir. michael winterbottom. 101 mins.
PARASITE (2019) dir. bong joon-ho. 132 mins.
FLEETWOOD MAC (2020) uploaded by doggface208. 22 seconds.
L’HOMME À LA VALISE (1983) dir. chantal akerman. 61 mins.
still from BACURAU (2019)
- construction of an image of a credible possible society, anarchism-with-smartphones in a small village. important news is shared on big screens on wheels, while a teaching scene involves movement through classrooms and outdoor spaces and between interconnected large and small screens, used to view maps. technology is kept in check in the village, but not amongst the wealthy nihilist/tourist characters. maybe the film can suggest how 'the cloud' might be subverted. this interpretation is probably the usual overly optimistic dreaming, but it's refreshing to see a film in which technology is at least dealt with, especially in this constructive manner.
- this also happens in the montage itself. footage from drones and viral videos is directly incorporated into the edit, as in HAPPY END (2017, dir. michael haneke). this solution seems the best one to the problem of depicting the smartphone planet, a splintering of the modes of image-capture and a greater complexity of montage. maybe this isn't so far from simple tropes like the camera looking through binoculars or telescopes. BACURAU suggests new approaches by continuing this integration of new technology into the construction of a film in its use of sound, where the sound from loudspeakers used to communicate information across the village slips in and out of the soundtrack.
still from MERRY GO ROUND (1981)
- a series of in-between places; airports, hotels, taxis, abandoned houses, roadside cafes, an empty golf course. this film's paris is different, composed of unidentifiable (a sense of endlessness) far-outskirts, where the city dissolves into the countryside. airfield country. adventuresville. two actors set adrift move through these places constructing temporary settlements out of blankets and holding a banquet with a found cache of tinned and preserved food. a freedom of movement through spaces and landscapes, jumping from taxi to taxi, and freedom of production/alteration within these; lighting cigarettes off candelabras, tearing up wallpaper.
- the thin plot (maybe just an excuse to travel around) is formed of a mystery game, inscribed upon space itself, for instance little notes left in telling locations and the writing of a secret code on a fogged-up window. maps are constructed out of fragments like newspaper clippings. another clue is given via a telephone on the side of a derelict railway station.
- this movement, what passes for a narrative, is intercut with footage of two musicians rehearsing. the film cuts back but the music continues as the soundtrack. this creates an odd sense of space, moving from tiny room to open field. the free jazz improvisations in the soundtrack scenes are mirrored by the traversal of space in the narrative images. the same cutting back and forth to the origin of a soundtrack is also used in PRENOM CARMEN (1983, dir. jean-luc godard), which uses a rehearsing string quartet. perhaps MERRY GO ROUND was where this idea came from.
still from PRENOM CARMEN (1983)
- is the camera work in rivette's films incredibly simple? it resembles documentary; often seemingly 16mm, when the camera moves it seems to be carried. the un-showiness of the compositions (rarely close up) makes them more interesting, more open to interpretation. what happens is left to chance. the colours are always vivid. this simplicity is somehow never boring; it's not as if editing compensates for this either, the cuts, especially in MERRY GO ROUND, are not frequent. something in this maybe. usually what is happening in the frame is interesting enough.
- the clothes in rivette's films are so great.
still from WE GIVE A LEAD TO BRITAIN (2020)
- a single shot which has been stretched out with slow motion. this manipulation of/stretching of time itself maybe is also a reaching into the past, finding a moment and stretching history, pulling it forward into the present with this video. elastic history.
- the artist dances steps long disappeared for many, bringing them back to life and the present, matching up with and also adding to the invisible footprints on the floor left by previous dancers in the location (the site of the first "no colour bar" dance at lambeth town hall), now empty and harshly lit (also the coat rack empty of nice coats and tables free of drinks). the slow motion movements are passing through different histories (some cool steps in slow motion almost make an illusion of flight). writing new histories for this part of the world (atlantic archipelago). a really simple way of contrasting past and present in one image and duration. the empty present seems troubling but the image suggests possibilities for the future from the past (makes you want to dance).
- the soundtrack by harrison bernard contrasts with the absence of the great sound of feet on a wood dancefloor. fragments snip in and out, also being stretched. slowed down voices reach out of the past, are pulled toward us. these sounds seem to be old recordings and layer over each other, more playing with different histories. digital static sounds replace the crackle of vinyl.
- ends with the empty hall, more traces written on it with feet, waiting for something to happen again.
- the artist dances steps long disappeared for many, bringing them back to life and the present, matching up with and also adding to the invisible footprints on the floor left by previous dancers in the location (the site of the first "no colour bar" dance at lambeth town hall), now empty and harshly lit (also the coat rack empty of nice coats and tables free of drinks). the slow motion movements are passing through different histories (some cool steps in slow motion almost make an illusion of flight). writing new histories for this part of the world (atlantic archipelago). a really simple way of contrasting past and present in one image and duration. the empty present seems troubling but the image suggests possibilities for the future from the past (makes you want to dance).
- the soundtrack by harrison bernard contrasts with the absence of the great sound of feet on a wood dancefloor. fragments snip in and out, also being stretched. slowed down voices reach out of the past, are pulled toward us. these sounds seem to be old recordings and layer over each other, more playing with different histories. digital static sounds replace the crackle of vinyl.
- ends with the empty hall, more traces written on it with feet, waiting for something to happen again.
still from NONA. SI ME MOJAN, YO LOS QUEMO
- digital mode of production has created a screen-white blank space on to which all formats and images fit, a library simultaneous shelving system (maybe a black screen, like aby warburg's mnemosyne atlas). images from any medium are scanned or converted and are framed by this space (surface?), sitting side by side they are levelled. the super-cleaned, every frame scanned and corrected restorations of analogue films look as contemporary as the newest, highest definition digital video footage.
- maybe this means a (post-digital?) state where you can use any moving image medium, analogue or digital, without prioritising any of them - they all sit in this space, standardised (by whom?). none are dominant. or each has its function based on the qualities it does or doesn't have. this is different to analogue revivals, where one older medium is contrasted against the current-dominant. what are the implications for the relation to capital in this case? all formats become absorbed into it on some level (newer HD digital which smells like computer showrooms suffers the most from this), unless they stay away from computers entirely (miniscule distribution, the retro?).
- (the (historical-iconographic) system of warburg's atlas renders previously 'good' and 'bad' pictures on to a level playing field?)
- NONA shows this visually in the edit - different formats and mediums sit side by side within the digitally produced montage. each has its own qualities but they all co-exist on the same digital non-depth surface (imagine if a standardising factor like this could exist outside of the digital, well maybe it could?). each format seems to be used for a quality inherent in it but as all are used none particularly evoke nostalgia or the retro.
some ideas NONA suggests about different formats:
1. widescreen digital becomes a tool for big, structured compositions and quiet, detailed soundscapes. the length is good for looking at and through windshields - several long shots taken from car interiors recall abbas kiarostami's films (also straub-huillet's HISTORY LESSONS (1972)), but the HD camera takes this in a different direction, lingering on decorations of car interiors. at one point the camera records the feeds from lower quality CCTV cameras, the first of several layerings within the digital image-space.
2. super 8 is used here for surface and abstraction, the grain taken to the point of mannerism. short shots capture cheap shiny surfaces in crazy colours creating an effect like glitter. this camera briefly records someone filming with a mobile phone.
3. shots using an old video camera are longer and full of movement. lots of shots suggesting agnes varda's revolutionary camera work in THE GLEANERS AND I (2000), in which one hand films while the other plays around. here the camera plays dominoes and picks herbs to smell, then sticks them behind someone's ear. suggests proximity and presence and performance (not just because the filmmaker talks behind the camera); the camera gets to go on the swings, filming an actor moving back and forth going right up to the lens.
4. 16mm is mainly used to capture light (flame, neon, sunlight forest) and vivid colour. at one point this camera films video from a television.
- this play of formats is different for the soundtrack. of all the formats only the older video format has an in-built form of sound recording, which is incorporated into a digital space in the same way as the image. the other formats seem to all use some form of digital recording, but this changes with each; the super 8 sections use abstract sound heavily manipulated by reverb effects.
still from ANOTHER COUNTRY (1984)
- this film uses a set of locations that in reality are geographically distant. these are glued together to create the space of an enclosed world (in particular the use of the inner square at the bodleian library in oxford). knowing this, the cut is also of real space. does the foot fall across one strip of film to another, moving miles in the process? like the steps through different landscapes in deren's MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON (1943). giant steps. moving through night and day with a short movement. a maze of famous buildings attached to one another. the dissenting characters in the film subvert the authoritarian organisation and discipline of this hermetic world, using the space itself, climbing over gates and up drainpipes.
still from MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON (1943)
still from THE GRAND BIZARRE (2018)
- more possibilities of disconnected sound and image; the image of something, but now it can make a different sound. also Possibilities (for a quieter world); a moped that makes the sound of a wave, a truck that makes the sound of a bird.
- the final scenes set a rapid stop motion sequence to the sound of its own construction, which is so slow and laborious. click... click. this pacifies the frenetic image? no more big shock moments now (ramones, modernism), instead a new era of slower construction, more productive for problems of perilous globalised society, as maybe suggested in this small film that may contain so many interpretations.
- elaboration of possibilities suggested in agnes varda's films, for instance JANE B. PAR AGNES V. (1988) and LES GLANEURS ET LA GLANEUSE (2000). in varda's films the playful construction of image compositions in real time, somewhere like drawing (moving image adds fairground moving parts), for instance the playing with mirrors. in THE GRAND BIZARRE, playing with fabrics placed in the frame which zip around, march up and down stairs, and flash fabulously as they stop motion cycle through many different patterns. also recalls the globe trotting works of chris marker, but much terser. continuing at working to break down all the 'documentary' labels and distinctions.
still from JANE B. PAR AGNES V. (1988)
- really sick of the screen this week, and actually all the time. THE GRAND BIZARRE uses the surface of 16mm as the surface of textiles (like stan brakhage or whoever (MOTHLIGHT (1963))). 16mm and fabric as roll-media, also evoked in shots and sounds of printers. rolls untouched, the bolex camera is a printer of scrolls (mekas' work evokes this best). it would be enormous and cumbersome, but the idea of an off-screen textile moving image, a big roll of different attached fabrics on a giant set of rollers that could move so quickly it would create the same effect as the stop motion fabric dance of THE GRAND BIZARRE.
still from CRACKER (1991)
- a long and complex mystery plot, murders, psychology, a prime suspect who has lost their memory. after a possible clue to this persons identity proves a fraud, the image above. the narrative drifts away, for less than a minute. out of nowhere, though he apparently has no memories, he begins to sing the jazz standard 'laura', accompanied only by the sound of the train; the camera slowly drifts backwards through the carriage, revealing the familiar landscape of archipelago railway interiors, the seats apparently upholstered (to this day) in scratchy carpets. the train, moving through the atlantic archipelago darkness somewhere in the enormity of the northwest urban corridor (greater liverpool, greater manchester), landscape decorated with infrastructure. this shift into a different space is (thankfully) never explained and co-opted back into the overall narrative. move...
other notes:
- protagonist 'fitz' has no car, and regularly within the narrative no money. his movement through the city is reliant on chance (most explicitly when money comes back via gambling), and favours - borrowing money and drinks.
- more archipelago noir: fitz riding a tram through manchester without a ticket, accompanied by generic jazz soundtrack; white light tram interior, darkness and city lights of anonymous locations outside.
- images of the archipelago underworld, its weird blankness and everywhere-ness; betting shops, high street casinos, old pubs, dog tracks and the rare after hours drinking-place. lighting either harsh or completely gloomy, dark red, brown. more old carpet. coats.
- later episode: fitz on the roof with another prime suspect - turning the city itself into a mystery novel, using its surfaces as pages to inscribe upon - a book written in the land.
still from PARASITE (2019)
- physical spaces and places as the narrative.
- or manifestations of the narrative as much as anything the actors/characters are doing. an expansion of the work by wong kar-wai and collaborators in IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2000) - the use of locations the physical space of which reflect, or create, or physically are the narrative, and particularly the use of stacked vertical and horizontal lines in framing the images (mainly in interiors) to create this effect. or perhaps a narrative as a mere excuse to move through these spaces and places with and in the moving image (removing the narrative entirely resulting in chantal akerman's HOTEL MONTEREY (1972)?).
still from IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE (2000)
still from HOTEL MONTEREY (1972)
- in PARASITE this approach is possibly subject to a simultaneous simplifying and complexifying. it is absorbed into the film's political critique, becoming a device that visually manifests the opposition between two families (rather than the (very) subtle changes of mood/emotion in MOOD FOR LOVE). within this PARASITE opens up more ground, exploring new, different or more complex structures and formal ideas.
- the claustrophobic techniques of MOOD FOR LOVE are used in the scenes set in a basement flat. but then, in the house of the super-wealthy family and its surroundings, the characters become miniaturised in the frame by huge blocks of concrete and glass (recalling the films of michelangelo antonioni). the expensive wood floors of the house frequently fill the frame creating an enormous cold depth.
still from L'ECLISSE (1962, dir. michelangelo antonioni)
outside of this rich enclave the other characters are placed into city locations that become increasingly crowded as the film progresses; a corner cafe surrounded set into cramped, narrow streets dense with signage; an office and hospital waiting room both full of people; and finally a gym/municipal building used as emergency accommodation following a huge storm.
finally, a scene in which the camera pans down a street set on a hill, moving through a dense network of telephone wires before reaching the pavement. this shot dangles and suspends the straight lines used in MOOD FOR LOVE, creating a more complex structure which reflects that of the film. a more complex and developed economic structure in PARASITE's 2010s seoul compared with the 1960s hong kong setting of MOOD FOR LOVE. these structures of capital that warp and create the weirdness and horror of the contemporary city which is the film's subject.
still from PARASITE (2019)
- some recent conversations with artists have concerned one particular (more formal?) type of reading the moving image; looking at the depth of the image and where it places the viewer within this depth (similar to reading paintings?). in PARASITE, frequent shots which place characters behind glass, then more characters looking through it, and us seeing the whole.
- phones on film: they feature prominently in the narrative of this film. here the formal decision is to film them as they are held with the images taking place on them, rather than incorporating the activity on the screen itself into the montage. the phones featured make HD images which at one point are put into slow motion; this probably looked a lot better on a big screen in a cinema.
- the big new film but very old school, cinematic in its approach. PARASITE recalls lots of other works. the entrance of subversive elements into the homes of the super-rich suggests THE SERVANT (1963, dir. joseph losey), and TEOREMA (1968, dir. pier paolo pasolini). but at other times the dark slapstick and crazy-house setting also suggests MON ONCLE (1958, dir. jacques tati) or THE LADYKILLERS (1955, dir. alexander mackendrick).
still from TEOREMA (1968)
still from THE SERVANT (1963)
still from THE LADYKILLERS (1955)
still from MON ONCLE (1958)
Still from FLEETWOOD MAC (2020)
Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcWA2wEFkeY
“What form do you suppose a life would take that was determined at a decisive moment precisely by the street song last on everyone’s lips?” - Walter Benjamin
- this viral smash hit might be seen as the latest in a long history of disruptive moments in the moving image.
- these moments of sudden narrative drift and spontaneous different performance in cinematic moving image beginning possibly with cleo's sudden descent into song in CLEO DE 5 A 7 (1962, dir. agnes varda).
Still of Corinne Marchand in CLEO DE 5 A 7 (1962).
- then running through (but definitely not limited to) the cafe dance in BANDE A PART (1964, dir. jean-luc godard), denis lavant cartwheeling down the street to david bowie's "modern love" in MAUVAIS SANG (1986, dir. leos carax), dean stockwell lip-syncing to roy orbison in BLUE VELVET (1986, dir. david lynch), faye wong dancing to the mamas and the papas in CHUNGKING EXPRESS (1994, dir. wong kar-wai), denis lavant's final dance in BEAU TRAVAIL (1999, dir. claire denis), perhaps the unexpected tap dancing finale from ZATOICHI (2003, dir. takeshi kitano), and finally another lavant explosion in the accordion interlude of HOLY MOTORS (2012, dir. leos carax).
Still from BANDE A PART (1964)
Still of Denis Lavant in MAUVAIS SANG (1986)
Still from BLUE VELVET (1986)
From CHUNGKING EXPRESS (1994)
Still from BEAU TRAVAIL (1999)
Still from ZATOICHI (2003)
Still from HOLY MOTORS (2012)
- FLEETWOOD MAC is different, it is a fragment only 22 seconds long, it doesn't disrupt any larger narrative around it in terms of its own position in a longer montage made by the same author. but it seems to function in a similar way as a brief ecstatic moment of freedom. it does this in contrast with, as a disruption within, the stream of all the other moving images we come across every day online and outside. as such maybe FLEETWOOD MAC even functions in the manner of the above examples as a disruption of our daily lives in general, if it can be said that our daily lives are now inseparable from this constant flood of online content (which it almost certainly can). this might suggest a possibility for making online moving images and a potential for these to be subversive.
- is this mass of moving images coalescing then into an enormous montage, one more integrated with our daily lives than the cinematic moving image? a montage that can more easily show multiple images at once. the internet is a city and youtube is a main avenue, a broadway full of strange activity (with the same positives and negatives of a busy main street? i hope this small blog will be like a little bookshop somewhere). another moving image i've been looking at online this week is a music video, THE BARREL (2019, dir. aldous harding, martin sagadin). maybe music videos can also function in the way FLEETWOOD MAC does as another kind of musical interlude, more expected, within the big online montage. i'm not sure what i think of this music video but i haven't been able to stop watching it, it also has a subversive quality brought about through dance/movement - do your own thing. and the way the video begins travelling through a tunnel, like going down a secret passage off the street...
Still from THE BARREL (2019)
Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyZeJr5ppm8
- maybe the cleo moment clipped from its context could also be traced to moving image works in contemporary art, for instance pipilotti rist's video installation EVER IS OVER ALL (1997), or rene matić's series of videos of slow motion dances (see earlier notes on WE GIVE A LEAD TO BRITAIN (2020)). these also disrupt our daily lives in the way the online works do, by sitting in marked contrast to the experience of the street outside the gallery space, the journey there and away from there. or, to return to our internet city, subversive and revolutionary acts of performance in this setting like david hammon's BLIZ-AARD BALL SALE (1983), or yoko ono's use of billboards in new york city.
Photograph by Dawoud Bey of BLIZ-AARD BALL SALE (1983) by David Hammons
still from L’HOMME À LA VALISE (1983)
- EFG