by Scott Stark (sstark@SIRIUS.COM)
[also see 1997's list]
Below are 10 (or so) avant-garde films & videos 'that mattered to me' in 1998, in no particular order. There were others that I liked also, and of course many more that I wasn't able to see.
This list was originally posted to the Frameworks mailing list and published in Film Threat's weekly online magazine.
I welcome your comments and your own favorites of 1999.
Scott
==
Field Studies by silt (8mm & 16mm film)
I think of these "silt" guys as organic film farmers. Partly it's
the nature of their material, as in a recent outdoor performance projecting
8mm and 16mm film onto a large screen mounted by an ocean cliff: images of leaves,
insects, earth, water, all matter of natural matter. But more than the content,
it's the way they cultivate their imagery: patiently, organically, pushing light
and emulsion through a variety of natural processes to achieve unexpected results.
A nourishing harvest awaits those willing to reap it.
Hours of the Idolate; and Our Us We Bone One So Naked,
Anie S8 Stanley (8mm film with audio tape, 16 mins. & 10 mins.)
Bad grrrl Anie Stanley's sloppy and indulgent super-8 fetish fantasies belie
a cunning wit and audacious post-feminist artistry. While on the surface they
appear just plain wrong -- several hand-wringing feminists in the audience found
them indistinguishable from male-centered porno -- they are in fact quite right.
The women pose and play in defiant affirmations of female sexuality, and perform
not for male pleasure or for commercial exploitation but for their own unabashed
enjoyment. As Anie herself says, "These women have stopped 'gazing,' and
have put on the welding goggles." Of particular note are Hours of the Idolate,
where scantily-clad women do politically-incorrect things with western paraphernalia,
and Our Us We Bone One So Naked, where an unseen voyeur trapped in a parked
car -- represented by the camera -- is threatened and taunted by provocatively-clad
women.
Floating by Eagle Rock/She Is Asleep by Konrad Steiner (16mm
film with separate audio, 11 mins.)
Konrad Steiner uses a simple film technique we all thought had been done to
death -- the multiple exposure -- and finds in it a new grace and vitality.
Using images culled from his personal life and travels, he builds layers of
visual richness that interweave, overwhelm and subside like tidal rhythms, revealing
the passions and other miracles that normally lay hidden below film's surface.
In an era of visual gluttony where special effects are hailed for their virtuosity,
Steiner's film re-affirms the difference between technique for its own sake
and true artistry.
Bob Cobbing/Movie Trivia/Hypnopedagogy by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE
(16mm sound film, color/sound, 28 mins.)
Artist and provocateur tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE takes found footage of a 60s-era
high school counselor -- blandly discussing teenage sexuality -- and reworks
it into a mantra-like intonation of distressed surfaces, severed frames and
stuttering loops. Bob Cobbing is a relentless, rigorous work, obsessively punctuated
and deftly executed with a complex hashwork of visual and aural cues. tENT infuses
the banality of his film's core with depth and wit.
Pasang Naik by Amie Siegel (3/4" video, color/sound, 16 mins.)
Amie Siegel's "travelogue" video shot in Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand
subtly affirms the distinction between "looking" -- gathering visual
information -- and "seeing" -- applying meaning to that information.
Each scene is a single shot, 20 or 30 seconds long, focusing on something that
caught Siegel's eye: light refracting through a window, a ring dangling from
the ear of a dancer, the shadow of a tree as it wavers across a noisy street.
Locations are never revealed, and actions are never explained, making it impossible
to exoticize, iconize or inform the imagery with any cultural bias. Instead
an indisputable essence of truth emerges: This happened here. Like so. Here
is proof.
The March by Abraham Ravett (video from film and video, color/sound,
20+ mins., work-in-progress)
In The March, the Abraham Ravett documents his mother's recollections of the
1945 "Death March" from Auschwitz, using loose interviews conducted
over a thirteen year period beginning in the mid-1980s. As his mother's health
deteriorates and her willingness to discuss that terrible time diminishes, the
video becomes less about a historic event and more about a child's need to preserve
and understand his parents' -- and his culture's -- past. Ravett's simple portrait
is loving, respectful and deeply moving.
Glass: Memories of Water by J. Leighton Pierce (16mm sound film,
7 mins.)
Leighton Pierce seems content to pursue his unique and idiosyncratic visions,
far from the madding trends of his more urban counterparts. His latest, Glass,
is a contemplative document of subtle movements in his semi-rural environs,
photographed through several light-refracting water vessels and slowed to a
sensuous and studious pace.
Variations by Nathaniel Dorsky (16mm film, color/silent, 30 mins.)
The simple street scenes and cross-sections of natural and urban phenomena that
inhabit Variations become not studies of 'what is happening' but revelations
of 'what *else* is happening.' Dorsky allows each shot to have its own life,
giving it a length and breadth that seems utterly correct by some non-verbal
system of logic, and the layering of elements within the frame gives respectful
space for the eye to wander and wonder. The more one looks, the more that is
revealed, and journeying through its 30 silent minutes becomes a process of
learning how to see.
Shulie by Elisabeth Subrin (8mm film on video)
Elisabeth Subrin's shot-by-shot reconstruction of a little-known 1967 documentary
about Shulie Firestone, an awkward art student who would later achieve notoriety
with her 1970 manifesto The Dialectic of Sex, begs the question: why? There's
no simple answer, but the question itself is intriguing and the results are
fascinating. The film resonates with the history that followed its time and
in the way our thinking has been shaped in the intervening years.
Concord by Gary Adelstein (8mm film on video); Chance Hand
by Jerry Orr (video)
Jerry Orr and Gary Adelstein toured in '98 with their videotapes designed for
large screen projection. Given the resulting diminished resolution, it's perhaps
not surprising that two of the most interesting pieces exploit the nuances of
moving water. Concord is shot over- and underwater in a colorfully-lit swimming
pool; in Chance Hand, a bathing figure moves slowly through digitized fields
of sensuous patterns.
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