From: David Baker (email suppressed)
Date: Thu Feb 18 2010 - 10:57:15 PST
Mark,
A fascinating program for which one West Coast person trapped in an
East Coast persons body is envious.
Recently (January 26th) I was vexed by a film program at Anthology in
NYC.
A group from Danspace Project solicited a viewing of Maya Deren's
unedited Haitian Footage.
Initially they were eager to engage in a marathon viewing of the
entire four and a half hour (or thereabouts?)
extant reels. However they learned that the film is too fragile to be
projected . The group settled for a silent 28min. on Beta,
and another 33 min. on dvd (half of which was actually shown).
This is all there is to be seen at this time of Deren's opus.
Some days later an article reported the event in the New York Times
as a "dance review",
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/arts/dance/28lost.html
The scant yet spellbinding footage projected was utterly at odds with
the
Ito cut of this material known as "Divine Horsemen:Living Gods Of Haiti"
Rereading Deren's Authors Preface from the book by the same title
suggested to me
that the entire "unedited footage" may in fact be the only legitimate
FORM
this film can take. What I saw effected me as powerfully as anything I
have seen
in thirty years of looking at experimental film,yet the film is
unprojectable,languishing
in the Anthology archive since 1972. Deren's intent and orientation
was explicitly that of
an artist.(My orientation is specifically avant-garde/experimental
and it hit me like a lightning bolt.)I know with absolute certainty
Deren's footage
in its entirety is of the utmost consequence to dancers,ethnographers
and
scholars, not to mention artists.
Has anyone seen the unedited film in its entirety?
What can be done to remedy this grievous circumstance?
Can you help?
David Baker
On Feb 18, 2010, at 12:31 PM, Mark Toscano wrote:
> A good reminder that I've been awful about keeping that blog active.
>
> To Jonathan for promoting Bordwell's blogging of my visit: thtppppp.
>
> But I guess I'll use this opportunity to ask if there's any topic/
> film/filmmaker I might work with that anyone here would be curious
> for me to, uh, blog on on my, uh, blog.
>
> I promise I'll eventually get to JJ Murphy's Print Generation. My
> thoughts for it involve something kind of elaborate (and I bet many
> of you can guess what I'm thinking), so I might have to do some
> other entries in the meantime.
>
> Mark T
>
>
> --- On Thu, 2/18/10, Jonathan Walley <email suppressed> wrote:
>
>> From: Jonathan Walley <email suppressed>
>> Subject: [FRAMEWORKS] Frameworker in the news
>> To: email suppressed
>> Date: Thursday, February 18, 2010, 7:11 AM
>> I hope this little announcement
>> doesn't embarrass him, but Mark Toscano is featured in David
>> Bordwell's blog this week. A very interesting entry on
>> Mark's tireless efforts in preserving experimental film:
>>
>> http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=7017
>>
>> I'm sure everyone already knows about Mark's blog,
>> Preservation Insanity, but in case not, it, too, is worth
>> following:
>>
>> http://preservationinsanity.blogspot.com/
>>
>> Happy reading,
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
>> Jonathan Walley
>> Asst. Professor of Cinema
>> Denison University
>> 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>.