Re: collage film history

From: Scott MacDonald (email suppressed)
Date: Tue Jun 30 2009 - 16:07:33 PDT


Hey, Bill,

I think of all that as "cinema" in the broadest sense of the word.

Scott

On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 2:46 PM, William Wees, Dr.
<email suppressed>wrote:

> Scott--
>
> For an extensive program of screenings at Anthology Film Archives in 1993
> and an accompanying small book, I came up with "recycled images," which I
> don't think I had seen before. But who knows about such things? I'm not sure
> who turned that into "recycled cinema"--you, maybe? The problem with
> "recycled images"--as it occurred to me later--is that it leaves out
> "recycled sound." The problem with "recycled cinema" is that it leaves out
> non-cinematic sources like music videos and all the other stuff that appears
> on commercial TV.
>
> --Bill
>
> 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
> ________________________________
> From: Experimental Film Discussion List [email suppressed] On
> Behalf Of Scott MacDonald [email suppressed]
> Sent: June 30, 2009 2:40 PM
> To: email suppressed
> Subject: Re: collage film history
>
> I don't know about the originator of "collage film" or "found footage
> film," but, Bill, I've always thought that you invented "recycled cinema."
> Is that the case?
>
> Scott
>
> On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 9:58 AM, William Wees, Dr. <email suppressed
> <mailto:email suppressed>> wrote:
> Hey, Jeanne, I didn't send the original query. If something from "Dr. Wees"
> appeared in this thread, I missed it (and it was probably sent by "Tony
> Conrad" in any case).
>
> P. Adams Sitney, writing about Bruce Conner in Visionary Film) offers what
> I think is a good way to think about collage/montage: "The natural irony of
> the collage film, which calls attention to the fact that each element quoted
> in the new synthesis was once part of another whole, thereby underlining its
> presence as a piece of film, creates a distance between the image depicted
> and our experience of it. Montage is the mediator of collage."
>
>
> The original query, if I remember correctly, concerned when the term
> "collage film" was first used and by whom. I don't know, but certainly it
> was in use in the 1960s when I first saw the collage films of Conner, Stan
> Vanderbeek, Arthur Lipsett and others. By the late 1980s, of course,
> "collage films" had been pretty well subsumed under the broader category of
> "found-footage films." I have no idea when that term was first used or by
> whom. Any guesses?
>
> --Bill
>
> 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 Jeanne LIOTTA
> Sent: June 30, 2009 11:00 AM
> To: email suppressed>
> Subject: Re: collage film history
>
> I love this thread!
>
> Agreed Esperanza, 'breed'. But re: the original query <Dr. Wees , on
> historical differences between cinematic montage and cinematic collage> it
> seems the ways in which the terms are different might be a richer vein to
> mine than the ways in which they are similar.
>
> for ex: the excellent term 'montage' gets you higher, due to it's etymology
> already embedded with labor and furthering the revolutionary cause of
> artist-as-worker, re our good friend Eisenstein as beautifully cited by
> Esperanza.
>
> Not that any of this fits the "solid academic reference" called for.
>
> I for one am somewhat nervous about 'firsts' since I was properly
> admonished by Tom Gunning once after giving a talk on J.Cornell where I
> referred to Rose Hobart as the first intentional cinematic collage, and he
> gently suggested I amend that to, "perhaps among the first". Duly noted.
>
> Am reminded of this by Bruce C's post in discussing the Hungarian artist
> heretofore unknown to me, it never ends...
>
> I dont understand the part about how time is linear in film.
> ?
> I really thought it was just the opposite--space is linear, time isn't.
>
> your comrade and idiosyncratic scholar
> jeanne
>
>
>
>
>
>
> www.jeanneliotta.net<http://www.jeanneliotta.net>
> www.youtube.com/zerojeanli<http://www.youtube.com/zerojeanli>
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed<mailto:
> email suppressed>>.
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed<mailto:
> 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>.