From: Anna Biller (email suppressed)
Date: Sun Mar 05 2006 - 10:39:13 PST
It's true that it's difficult to get film projected, but if you don't
try then it certainly will never never get projected. Another
experience that opens peoples' eyes is watching film projected. When I
invite people back to my musty shack behind the garage and show them
scenes on my flatbed, it's a sensual experience like no other they've
had. Even older people who used to work in film but stopped long ago
are amazed at the vivid experience, a trace memory of something
pleasurable they've forgotten.
I agree with Pip, for me it's no small love. If I couldn't work on film
I wouldn't go to video, I would go back to painting or do plays.
What do people think of the film "Peeping Tom?" Has anyone seen it at
the cinema lately? I saw it recently, and felt so implicated by being a
scopophilic pervert like the character in the film. The guilt comes
from identifying so much with a serial killer, which is of course the
tricky thing about the film, as it implicates not just filmmakers but
all film voyeurs, all film audiences. But what's so sensual is, he goes
around with this wonderful 16mm camera all the time and records
everything, documents his whole life, and especially things having to
do with suffering, pain, love, sex. Does anyone know what kind of a
camera that is? It looks like it's got 3 lenses in front that rotate,
and it's portable but larger than a Bolex. Probably a British model?
On Mar 5, 2006, at 9:25 AM, david tetzlaff wrote:
> Pip asked
>
>> We love film. Don't we?
>
> The use of the term is too vague, conflates too much. "Film' denotes a
> technology and/or an art-form, and we seem to disagree on whether
> those things can be separated. I love 'film' the medium, but it's a
> small love, ultimately dispensible under pressure. What I love more
> are 'the films' the art, the vision, whatever you want to call it.
>
> Mitsu refers to "pointless infighting that serves only to distract us
> from what I think is far more interesting, the discussion and
> promotion of
> experimental, innovative, creative work in any medium." Partly true.
> But the infighting does have a point, which stems exactly from the
> desire to discuss and promote experimental innovative creative work.
>
> I teach production at a liberal arts college. Our students are not
> 'artsy' and they arrive thinking 'film' is what they see in
> multiplexes. If I do my job well, they leave with a broadened
> perspective. I want to encourage them to makes kinds of pieces they
> have previously unfamiliar with - to encourage them to explore,
> experiment, innovate. They can't just do this out of thin air, they
> need to get some sense of what alternative visions are and have been,
> and they need some exemplars of being different.
>
> Here is where people like Sterritt and myself run into a big problem
> -- the increasing difficulty of presenting this work, as the
> institutions around us have dropped support of film and gone all
> digital. Not to mention the fact that a film print is NOT suitable for
> close study of a work, and an electonic reproduction is...
>
> Before you write the 'you could show the films on film if you tried'
> posts, let me note that I have been running a one person effort to
> revive 16mm projection on our campus, but there is no one who cares
> about and no one to do anything but me. I have been at it for a year
> and a half, but we still don't have a single 16mm projection setup I
> have confidence in.
>
> It is counter productive anytime anyone posting here speaks of a wider
> audience to come back with some smack about Joe Sixpack and his Plasma
> of the 'the public are cretins' variety because that is not what we
> are talking about. We are not speculating. We are talking about
> empirical evidence, actual people we know, mostly young people, mostly
> students. We have seen, again and again, how their eyes get opened,
> maybe even their lives changed, when they get a chance to see this
> stuff -- in any kind of copy. Have you not read the many posts to this
> list from people who live in the sticks and are dying to get to more
> of this stuff but have no opportunity? Yet, the constant response to
> these queries is to throw up hurdles along with a lot of rah, rah
> chatter about how easy they are to jump over. Yeah baby, you can raise
> that money to rent prints if you try! Yeah, all you need is the will
> and a phillips #1 to keep that old surplus projector humming along so
> it doesn't chew up those rare prints! Thank you Dr. Pangloss.
>
> We also have empirical proof, as Sterritt, mentions, that these
> potential enthusiastic audiences are best reached by maximizing
> overall projection fidelity, regardless of the medium of
> reproduction...
>
> I'm happy things seem much better in Europe for the connection of
> the-art-that-is-on-film with the actual material of film. Things are
> different here Pip.
>
> To sum up, the film vs. electronic debate matters because the
> ideological gravity of the positions groups of people take influences
> the actual breadth of distribution of work, and the nature of
> distribution matters because in the real world real individual people
> who want and need access to the spirit living in this art are being
> needlessly shut out.
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
>
>
http://www.lifeofastar.com/
__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.