Re: Conceptual movies

From: esperanza collado (email suppressed)
Date: Sat May 19 2007 - 06:51:43 PDT


Hey,

Patrick is right about McDonald's book "Screen Writings: Scripts and
Texts by Independent Filmmakers". Here you can find Yoko Ono's "Mini
Film Scripts". The entire book is actually a good reference for what
you are looking for.

Other conceptual films regarding sets of instructions and wording,
apart from Smithson's are:

"Anemic Cinema" by Marcel Duchamp (this one to be the very first one,
Id say), made aroun 1926.

"So Is This" (1982) by Michael Snow is composed with words (one word
at a time), no images.

"Word Movie" (1966), by Paul Sharits.

I would also consider most (or part of) Hollis Frampton's works as
"films that exist as sets of instructions or declarations (nothing to
actually watch) that belong to the same history/tradition/whatever you
want to call it as conceptual art".

And, what's about Tony Conrad "Yellow Movies"
(http://www.galeriebuchholz.de/exhibitions/06/06111/text_en.html) or
McCall "Long Film for Ambient Light"
(http://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=507). These
two, as the mentioned Tapp & Tast Kino by EXPORT, are not films but
they highlight cinematic properties as light, time and spatial
modulation. They are films embodied in another medium. Probably
McCall's piece would be of more interest for you since the entire
installation is determined by a text with instructions or directions
for the audience.

The sites included could be very limited, I am pretty sure you can
find much more info about this on the internet. If you are interested
in McCall's piece I could send you the text.

Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Esperanza.

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