Sorry this is late! I've be gobsmacked with work and sickness this week.
1. How does this work relate to our discussion of intermedia and expanded cinema in the 1960s?
Prune Flat stands a piece of art which cannot be repurposed and commodified; the unique performance and everything it entails is an extremely important part of the piece. Combining the film elements with live performance, Whitman creates an artwork which is similar to the intermedia/expanded cinema scene discussed in class, in that the act of participating in the 'film/performance/art' IS the true work of value on its terms.
2. Describe a passage from Prune Flat in very concrete terms, and explain how film and performance are combined to create different images and/or illusions.
The moment which struck me the most was when the clip in which two people dressed in white coats raise and lower a lightbulb is displayed, and the two live performers, dressed similarly, actually mimic the actions occuring on the screen, layered over the flat surface, giving it depth yet at the same time pointing out the sheer two-dimensionality of the film. The brightness of the actual lightbulb obliterates much of the film projected behind it, creating a visual of the grayscale backdrop of the silver screen.
3. How does Edie Sedgewick end up "stealing" the scene in Vinyl?
Edie Sedgwick was a quintessential "it" girl; she has charisma and screen presence, even when she is not the focus of the camera. During the film, she simply sits on a trunk to the right of the frame, occasionally smoking/drinking and sometimes interacting with the main action occurring in the middle of the frame (like flicking ash on someone, or taking a hit on a joint passed to her by a main player.) When all else around her vies for the camera's eye, she holds it through no real "performance"; she is simply there to be seen, as herself.
4. In what ways did the underground film begin to "crossover" into the mainstream in 1965-1966?
During that year, mainstream magazines (such as Playboy) ran articles on the phenomenon of underground cinema. The spark which caused the hubbub was Warhol's Chelsea Girls; his name was already well-known outside the "art crowd" so once released a somewhat more commercially viable film, the public became curious.
5. How was John Getz an important figure in the crossover of the underground?
Getz acted as a vehicle to spread experimental films outside of art meccas (eg NYC), starting Cinema Theatre in Los Angeles and creating a distribution centre for underground films by having them shown in theatres run by his uncle.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Xmas on Earth/Chelsea Girls Response
Barbara Rubin's Christmas on Earth was quite beautiful. From the article description, I was kind of wary--I expected it to be very very amateur porno with artsy accoutrements slapped over it. But instead, my mind was boggled by the whole experience of it. The interactive aspect was the most thrilling part; knowing that OUR showing of it will never be the exact same as other showings, made it a unique film-watching experience. The painted woman who stares out of the frame throughout the first several minutes was haunting, especially with the overlay of differently coloured filters. Creating a film that is so candid yet so intriguingly composed, Rubin left her mark on film history.
Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls is frankly not a film I could ever see myself watching all the way through [this coming from someone that LOVES Satantango!] I think I just feel slightly disgusted or annoyed by how histrionic most of the Factory crowd is, and the fact that they aren't particularly riveting people [besides Pope Ondine] makes such a long run-time a feat, to me. The first scene with the boy's stripping created a kind of awkward tension with the lack of great lighting and muffled sound, and the fact that he is trying to be sexy and frankly not pulling it off. The second scene was much more involving, as the dear Pope Ondine was a riot for the majority of his episode, even when he was flipping out and getting violent. Though I would listen intently to him, my visual attention was drawn to Nico on the left, simply because of the beauty of the shot of her. The light and colour and masks creating shadows over her face was too pretty to look away from.
Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls is frankly not a film I could ever see myself watching all the way through [this coming from someone that LOVES Satantango!] I think I just feel slightly disgusted or annoyed by how histrionic most of the Factory crowd is, and the fact that they aren't particularly riveting people [besides Pope Ondine] makes such a long run-time a feat, to me. The first scene with the boy's stripping created a kind of awkward tension with the lack of great lighting and muffled sound, and the fact that he is trying to be sexy and frankly not pulling it off. The second scene was much more involving, as the dear Pope Ondine was a riot for the majority of his episode, even when he was flipping out and getting violent. Though I would listen intently to him, my visual attention was drawn to Nico on the left, simply because of the beauty of the shot of her. The light and colour and masks creating shadows over her face was too pretty to look away from.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Reading Response #5
1. Chapter 4: What are some of the reasons suggested for Smith’s obsession with Maria Montez? What are some of your responses to the clips from the Montez films (especially Cobra Woman)?
The general consensus of those interviewed seems to be that Jack Smith was enamoured by Maria Montez’s presence; she was a diva, an exaggerated form of femininity lavished onscreen, akin to the drag queens Smith would film. In the clips shown, I find Maria Montez’s performance to be quite campy and stilted, and the Cobra Woman costume to be the height of outlandish—right up Jack Smith’s alley.
2. Chapter 5: What were some attributes of the New York art community in the 1960s, and what was the relationship between the economics of the time and the materials that Smith incorporated into his work and films? [How could Smith survive and make art if he was so poor in the city?]
According to those interviewed who were a part of the 1960s New York art community, it was a close-knit group, where everybody knew everyone else. In spite of the notoriously high prices of today’s NYC, parts of Manhattan in the 1960s were terribly affordable [apartments in Tribeca and the Village for only $20-$40 a MONTH!] Many props and accoutrements utilized in Jack Smith’s films could be found in department store dumpsters, free for the taking, and Jack Smith loved trash.
3. Chapter 6: What problems emerged after the obscenity charges against Flaming Creatures in the relationship between Jack Smith and Jonas Mekas? What metaphor emerged from the conflict between Smith and Mekas?
Jonas Mekas championed the cause against censorship following the charges, making Flaming Creatures a poster-child-film[?] to advance his career as the most famous underground film distributor in the US. Jack Smith saw Mekas as an opportunist who didn’t give credit [or monetary royalties] to the filmmakers whose films he screened. Smith also felt Mekas’s cause sucked all the life and beauty from his film. Ultimately, Mekas was called a “lobster” by Smith, symbolizing a scavenger who takes what he needs to profit off a situation.
5. Chapter 8: What are some arguments about the relationship between Jack Smith’s artistic practice and Andy Warhol’s artistic practice?
Warhol himself says that Jack Smith is “the only person I would ever copy,” and this is evident in the structure of Warhol’s Factory, Screen Tests, and his ‘borrowing’ of Smith’s regular actors, including Mario Montez. Jack Smith appeared in several of Warhol’s films, including Camp, as well. Robert Heide describes Warhol as detached and separate from his art, while Jack Smith was always in the midst of what he created. Others say Warhol was creating something ‘hip’ to be consumed, while Smith really didn’t care if anyone outside himself loved his films—he was building his dream world.
6. Chapter 9 & 10: In what ways did Jack Smith become “uncommercial film personified”? What is meant by the slogan “no more masterpieces” and how did Smith resist commodification (or the production of art products)?
Jack Smith decided to never truly ‘finish’ a film, to protect it from being banned [like Flaming Creatures was.] He traveled with prints of his films at showings, and would edit the films live as well as choose the records to play at that moment, subject to change upon his whim. Jack Smith wanted to transform life into art, instead of creating an ‘artistic commodity’ to be consumed by the spectators. A ‘masterpiece’ in this light is unappealing: it connotes an entirely finished product, something definitive and in many cases easily mass-reproduced. He was strongly anti-capitalism and this showed through in his life and work. In the 70s, he held free performance art shows in his loft, and even if no one showed up, Smith would perform as to a packed house. In this case, here was no product or concrete item to be declared “this is a work of art” but instead his life and its ethereality became his art.
7. Name at least three important friends/relationships Barbara Rubin had in the world of art and music in the early 1960s.
Barbara Rubin was friends with Beat poet Allen Ginsberg (she even wished to marry him for a time), worked closely with Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground, particularly in the Up-Tight series, and she was Jonas Mekas’s close assistant at the Film-Maker’s Co-Op.
8. Briefly describe Rubin’s production and exhibition practices for Christmas on Earth. Why does Belasco argue that Christmas on Earth cannot be reproduced electronically or in other forms?
Rubin shot Christmas On Earth over a single weekend on a 16mm Bolex camera borrowed from Jonas Mekas, with five friends taking part in an orgy. After the quick shooting, she spent three months editing the film on whim. She created two separate reels, one to be projected at about a third its original size, overlapping the other, full-size, reel. During exhibitions, Rubin would sometimes project one reel upside down or show them in succession, or superimposed on another film. Filters colourised her black and white films, which would be randomly changed by the projectionists. She also specified that the film was to be played silent, with the accompaniment of a loud rock radio station, whatever happens to be on the air at that moment. Belasco argues that the film cannot be reproduced properly because of its unique dual-projection format as well as the use of live radio and colour filters over the film; only a single showing of it could ever be recorded, and each time it would be different, akin to videotaping a piece of live performance, like dance.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Reading Response #4
Fluxfilm viewing response:
George Maciuna's 10 Feet was a playful exercise, showing the viewer exactly how quickly ten feet of film passes through the projector at a normal frame rate. The blackness is only interrupted by the flashing white numbers denoting the length that has been shown.
Yoko Ono's One is a beautiful film. The high-speed camera captures every flicker of motion and amplifies it, slowing the act of striking a match down to take up several seconds, letting the viewer absorb every detail of her hand, the dancing flame, and the chiaroscuro of the shadows around it.
Paul Sharits's Wrist Trick is completely different; I had no idea what I was looking at most of the time, as the negative images flashed in split-seconds across the screen, creating an illusion of movement. I know there were hands, and a banana-shaped thing. The energy of it was exhilarating.
1. What films did Jonas Mekas associate with “Baudelairean Cinema,” and why did he call it that? [Yes, I’m implicitly asking you to look up Baudelaire.]
I've read Baudelaire, so I didn't need to look him up! Baudelaire was associated with the so-called Decandence movement in French literature during the mid-19th century, a reaction against the Romanticism of the past and a forerunner to Modernism. I've read a lot of writers from that period [Huysmans, Rimbaud, de Nerval, etc.] and from what I've read, "Decadence" refers to the championing of the artificial, including outrageous content [rape, murder, sex are all fair game.] Getting back to the question at hand, Jonas Mekas's term "Baudelairean Cinema" refers then to the "beautiful and terrible," to quote Mekas, showing something horrid through the lens of its decaying beauty. Mekas named Flaming Creatures, Blond Cobra, Little Stabs at Happiness, and The Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man as Baudelairean.
2. How did Jonas Mekas’s views on experimental cinema change between 1955 and 1961?
Mekas lambasted the early American avant-garde films of the 40s-50s as degenerative and pretentious, saying in his magazine Film Culture that such artists as Brakhage and Deren were pushing for new techniques, not deeper meaning or new themes in their work. When John Cassavetes' Shadows was released, he began to come around to the American avant-garde, awarding it and Pull My Daisy. Mekas was greatly influenced by the Nouvelle Vague movement in France in the late 50s-early 60s; their spirit and innovation made him re-evaluate his earlier condemnation of American avant-garde film, since without it, this new cinema may not have come to fruition.
3. How did Mekas’s interest in performance and improvisation shape his views of the New American Cinema in the 1960s?
Mekas was always interested in acting, as he was a member of a theatre in Lithuania before he moved to the US, studying the Stanislavsky method. He believed not so much in acting a role, as performance--when the actor merges with his role, and the difference between the two becomes unclear. He was especially impressed by improvisational films, such as Shadows and Pull My Daisy, which have a loose script.
6. How does Angell characterize the first major period of Warhol’s filmmaking career? What are some of the films from this period?
Warhol's early films were silent, minimalist works with a usually static camera. These include Sleep, Eat, Blowjob, and his masterpiece of his long minimalist films, Empire.
7. What role did the Screen Tests play in the routines at the Factory and in Warhol’s filmmaking?
Screen Tests were shot over an extensive period, of basically every person who visited the Factory during that time. They were each three-minutes long, and the person was told to be very still, making these films little portraits. These Screen Tests also helped to segue into Warhol's next era of filmmaking, that of serials.
8. How does Angell characterize the first period of sound films in Warhol’s filmmaking career? What are some of the films from this period?
Warhol's first sound films include Harlot, Poor Little Rich Girl and Vinyl. These sound films are characterised by a loose narrative, lack of editing, and creating a film as a full experience. Warhol refused to cut mistakes from the finished films, leaving in out-of-focus shots, and making sure the actors did not know their lines. Whatever the camera captured was the film.
George Maciuna's 10 Feet was a playful exercise, showing the viewer exactly how quickly ten feet of film passes through the projector at a normal frame rate. The blackness is only interrupted by the flashing white numbers denoting the length that has been shown.
Yoko Ono's One is a beautiful film. The high-speed camera captures every flicker of motion and amplifies it, slowing the act of striking a match down to take up several seconds, letting the viewer absorb every detail of her hand, the dancing flame, and the chiaroscuro of the shadows around it.
Paul Sharits's Wrist Trick is completely different; I had no idea what I was looking at most of the time, as the negative images flashed in split-seconds across the screen, creating an illusion of movement. I know there were hands, and a banana-shaped thing. The energy of it was exhilarating.
1. What films did Jonas Mekas associate with “Baudelairean Cinema,” and why did he call it that? [Yes, I’m implicitly asking you to look up Baudelaire.]
I've read Baudelaire, so I didn't need to look him up! Baudelaire was associated with the so-called Decandence movement in French literature during the mid-19th century, a reaction against the Romanticism of the past and a forerunner to Modernism. I've read a lot of writers from that period [Huysmans, Rimbaud, de Nerval, etc.] and from what I've read, "Decadence" refers to the championing of the artificial, including outrageous content [rape, murder, sex are all fair game.] Getting back to the question at hand, Jonas Mekas's term "Baudelairean Cinema" refers then to the "beautiful and terrible," to quote Mekas, showing something horrid through the lens of its decaying beauty. Mekas named Flaming Creatures, Blond Cobra, Little Stabs at Happiness, and The Queen of Sheba Meets the Atom Man as Baudelairean.
2. How did Jonas Mekas’s views on experimental cinema change between 1955 and 1961?
Mekas lambasted the early American avant-garde films of the 40s-50s as degenerative and pretentious, saying in his magazine Film Culture that such artists as Brakhage and Deren were pushing for new techniques, not deeper meaning or new themes in their work. When John Cassavetes' Shadows was released, he began to come around to the American avant-garde, awarding it and Pull My Daisy. Mekas was greatly influenced by the Nouvelle Vague movement in France in the late 50s-early 60s; their spirit and innovation made him re-evaluate his earlier condemnation of American avant-garde film, since without it, this new cinema may not have come to fruition.
3. How did Mekas’s interest in performance and improvisation shape his views of the New American Cinema in the 1960s?
Mekas was always interested in acting, as he was a member of a theatre in Lithuania before he moved to the US, studying the Stanislavsky method. He believed not so much in acting a role, as performance--when the actor merges with his role, and the difference between the two becomes unclear. He was especially impressed by improvisational films, such as Shadows and Pull My Daisy, which have a loose script.
6. How does Angell characterize the first major period of Warhol’s filmmaking career? What are some of the films from this period?
Warhol's early films were silent, minimalist works with a usually static camera. These include Sleep, Eat, Blowjob, and his masterpiece of his long minimalist films, Empire.
7. What role did the Screen Tests play in the routines at the Factory and in Warhol’s filmmaking?
Screen Tests were shot over an extensive period, of basically every person who visited the Factory during that time. They were each three-minutes long, and the person was told to be very still, making these films little portraits. These Screen Tests also helped to segue into Warhol's next era of filmmaking, that of serials.
8. How does Angell characterize the first period of sound films in Warhol’s filmmaking career? What are some of the films from this period?
Warhol's first sound films include Harlot, Poor Little Rich Girl and Vinyl. These sound films are characterised by a loose narrative, lack of editing, and creating a film as a full experience. Warhol refused to cut mistakes from the finished films, leaving in out-of-focus shots, and making sure the actors did not know their lines. Whatever the camera captured was the film.
Monday, February 2, 2009
Reading Response #3
Compare/contrast one European film & one American film:
Man Ray's L'Etoile de Mer may be my favourite avant-garde film I've ever seen. The use of Surrealist poetry to construct the film's imagery gives it an ephemeral air, emphasized through the use of distorted lenses in certain shots, obscuring the characters as they interact in altogether odd ways. The absurdity of the film is strung together by very striking, at times sheerly beautiful shots [when the woman steps onto the open book, for instance.] Qu'elle est belle! On the other hand, Joseph Cornell's Rose Hobart stands as a kind of cultural oddity, a man's personal obsession with an obscure star. I've been a big fan of found film/collage film for a few years now, and how Cornell isolated beautiful moments in an otherwise unremarkable film/performance shows how a filmmaker can manipulate so-called film reality with ease. The personality of Rose/her character is revealed in Cornell's film and his use of silent-speed, unlike how clouded and unknown the characters in L'Etoile de Mer are. I also loved the monkey, like any normal person would.
1. What are the characteristics of vision according to Brakhage's revival of the Romantic dialectics of sight and imagination?
Brakhage upholds sight as a full-blown experience, denouncing what we are taught to see and relying on true vision, what we actually see, both with our eyes open as well as closed (what he calls "brain movies" and the play of colour over one's closed eyelids), memories of sights seen, and dream-sight. Stripping vision of its analytical aspects, Brakhage wishes to express how a child sees before it is taught the world of traditional perspectives and sight acting solely as information.
2. Why does Sitney argue, "It was Brakhage, of all the major American avant-garde filmmakers, who first embraced the formal directives and verbal aesthetics of Abstract Expressionism."
Brakhage rejected the conventional mode of filmmaking (even within avant-garde filmmaking at the time) by his use of painting/scratching directly on the film, intentionally flattening the space, utilising freewheeling camera movements to elude to the emotions of the filmmaker, and generally evading the traditional storytelling mode of film in exchange for an emotional/visceral personal experience crafted by the filmmaker. This is closely tied to the Abstract Expressionist painters, and how let paintings come alive through the movements of their brush-wielding hand. In particular, Brakhage's hand-painting over film is abstract and as full of energy and emotion as the Abstract Expressionist painters, as they tried to evoke the emotion of an action/memory/etc itself, as opposed to representing it through recognizable paint forms on the canvas.
3. Why does Sitney argue that synecdoche plays a major role in Christopher Maclaine's The End, and how does the film anticipate later achievements by Brakhage and the mythopoeic form?
In Maclaine's film, synecdoche is used to allude to actions which are never shown, taking a partial piece to represent the entirety of something. This is used to grim effect by showing the young man Charles in combination with shots of the Golden Gate Bridge; through our knowledge of his past acts, we infer that he has committed suicide. Maclaine's film, according to Sitney was so ambitious in its scope of what it tried to do in prior to the proper birth of the mythopoeic form, that it may have influenced Brakhage, who saw it before he moved from trance films to his mythopoeic films.
4. What are some similarities and differences between the apocalyptic visions of Christopher Maclaine and Bruce Conner?
Maclaine's vision of the apocalypse in The End is characterised by its contradictory tentative glimpses of hope and its quite pessimistic conclusion, creating a mostly straight-forward, and as Sitney puts it, naive take on his apocalypse. Conner, on the other hand, plays with the audience, creating humour through juxtaposition and pacing, such as the famous periscope/nude false eyeline match. Conner exerts complete control over his film, establishing his unique blend of irony, beauty and destruction.
5. Why are the films of Ron Rice (The Flower Thief) and Robert Nelson (The Great Blondino) examples of Beat sensibility and what Sitney calls the picaresque form?
Using absurd, outlandish, anarchistic imagery, these films depict young, naive heroes galavanting about their insane/inane world; these films are indicative of the subculture that produced them in San Francisco at the time.
6. How and why were the anti-art Fluxfilms reactions against the avant-garde films of Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger? [Hint: think about Fluxus in relation to earlier anti-art such as Dada]
Fluxfilms were a direct call to arms against the too-serious, poetic/personal avant-garde films of Brakhage and Anger. Fluxfilms championed the film form as ideal for collective production through its inherently mechanical aspects, in opposition to the single-creator filmmakers like Brakhage. Some films were made in obvious parody of Brakhage and his cohorts' personal/autobiographical poetic mode, such as Invocation of Canyons and Boulders for Stan Brakhage. In the various Fluxfilms, parodic/ironic baring of the film medium was utilized to combat the poetic avant-garde mode. Fluxfilms can be seen as a successor to Dada as anti-art backlash against the pretentiousness of high art/film at the time.
7. What does Jenkins mean by the democratization of production in the Fluxfilms?
In Fluxfilms, most were produced by a team of artists (many of which were not filmmakers, but often composers or writers) as opposed to the single visionary artist dichotomy of figures such as Brakhage. Personal/individual films were not the point of Fluxus; instead, they strived to mock this mode, and create films which played with the film medium itself, as well as duration and audience expectations.
8. Why does Jenkins argue that Nam June Paik's Zen for Film "fixed the material and aesthetic terms for the production of subsequent Fluxfilms"? How does it use the materials of the cinema? What kind of aesthetic experience does it offer?
Paik's film does not use regular film stock, but instead only clear 16mm leader, projected unaltered as a "film". This act makes one question what constitutes a "film", and how it can be produced by anyone, since a camera was not used in any way. As the film accumulated dust and scratches, the film changed over time and screenings.
Man Ray's L'Etoile de Mer may be my favourite avant-garde film I've ever seen. The use of Surrealist poetry to construct the film's imagery gives it an ephemeral air, emphasized through the use of distorted lenses in certain shots, obscuring the characters as they interact in altogether odd ways. The absurdity of the film is strung together by very striking, at times sheerly beautiful shots [when the woman steps onto the open book, for instance.] Qu'elle est belle! On the other hand, Joseph Cornell's Rose Hobart stands as a kind of cultural oddity, a man's personal obsession with an obscure star. I've been a big fan of found film/collage film for a few years now, and how Cornell isolated beautiful moments in an otherwise unremarkable film/performance shows how a filmmaker can manipulate so-called film reality with ease. The personality of Rose/her character is revealed in Cornell's film and his use of silent-speed, unlike how clouded and unknown the characters in L'Etoile de Mer are. I also loved the monkey, like any normal person would.
1. What are the characteristics of vision according to Brakhage's revival of the Romantic dialectics of sight and imagination?
Brakhage upholds sight as a full-blown experience, denouncing what we are taught to see and relying on true vision, what we actually see, both with our eyes open as well as closed (what he calls "brain movies" and the play of colour over one's closed eyelids), memories of sights seen, and dream-sight. Stripping vision of its analytical aspects, Brakhage wishes to express how a child sees before it is taught the world of traditional perspectives and sight acting solely as information.
2. Why does Sitney argue, "It was Brakhage, of all the major American avant-garde filmmakers, who first embraced the formal directives and verbal aesthetics of Abstract Expressionism."
Brakhage rejected the conventional mode of filmmaking (even within avant-garde filmmaking at the time) by his use of painting/scratching directly on the film, intentionally flattening the space, utilising freewheeling camera movements to elude to the emotions of the filmmaker, and generally evading the traditional storytelling mode of film in exchange for an emotional/visceral personal experience crafted by the filmmaker. This is closely tied to the Abstract Expressionist painters, and how let paintings come alive through the movements of their brush-wielding hand. In particular, Brakhage's hand-painting over film is abstract and as full of energy and emotion as the Abstract Expressionist painters, as they tried to evoke the emotion of an action/memory/etc itself, as opposed to representing it through recognizable paint forms on the canvas.
3. Why does Sitney argue that synecdoche plays a major role in Christopher Maclaine's The End, and how does the film anticipate later achievements by Brakhage and the mythopoeic form?
In Maclaine's film, synecdoche is used to allude to actions which are never shown, taking a partial piece to represent the entirety of something. This is used to grim effect by showing the young man Charles in combination with shots of the Golden Gate Bridge; through our knowledge of his past acts, we infer that he has committed suicide. Maclaine's film, according to Sitney was so ambitious in its scope of what it tried to do in prior to the proper birth of the mythopoeic form, that it may have influenced Brakhage, who saw it before he moved from trance films to his mythopoeic films.
4. What are some similarities and differences between the apocalyptic visions of Christopher Maclaine and Bruce Conner?
Maclaine's vision of the apocalypse in The End is characterised by its contradictory tentative glimpses of hope and its quite pessimistic conclusion, creating a mostly straight-forward, and as Sitney puts it, naive take on his apocalypse. Conner, on the other hand, plays with the audience, creating humour through juxtaposition and pacing, such as the famous periscope/nude false eyeline match. Conner exerts complete control over his film, establishing his unique blend of irony, beauty and destruction.
5. Why are the films of Ron Rice (The Flower Thief) and Robert Nelson (The Great Blondino) examples of Beat sensibility and what Sitney calls the picaresque form?
Using absurd, outlandish, anarchistic imagery, these films depict young, naive heroes galavanting about their insane/inane world; these films are indicative of the subculture that produced them in San Francisco at the time.
6. How and why were the anti-art Fluxfilms reactions against the avant-garde films of Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger? [Hint: think about Fluxus in relation to earlier anti-art such as Dada]
Fluxfilms were a direct call to arms against the too-serious, poetic/personal avant-garde films of Brakhage and Anger. Fluxfilms championed the film form as ideal for collective production through its inherently mechanical aspects, in opposition to the single-creator filmmakers like Brakhage. Some films were made in obvious parody of Brakhage and his cohorts' personal/autobiographical poetic mode, such as Invocation of Canyons and Boulders for Stan Brakhage. In the various Fluxfilms, parodic/ironic baring of the film medium was utilized to combat the poetic avant-garde mode. Fluxfilms can be seen as a successor to Dada as anti-art backlash against the pretentiousness of high art/film at the time.
7. What does Jenkins mean by the democratization of production in the Fluxfilms?
In Fluxfilms, most were produced by a team of artists (many of which were not filmmakers, but often composers or writers) as opposed to the single visionary artist dichotomy of figures such as Brakhage. Personal/individual films were not the point of Fluxus; instead, they strived to mock this mode, and create films which played with the film medium itself, as well as duration and audience expectations.
8. Why does Jenkins argue that Nam June Paik's Zen for Film "fixed the material and aesthetic terms for the production of subsequent Fluxfilms"? How does it use the materials of the cinema? What kind of aesthetic experience does it offer?
Paik's film does not use regular film stock, but instead only clear 16mm leader, projected unaltered as a "film". This act makes one question what constitutes a "film", and how it can be produced by anyone, since a camera was not used in any way. As the film accumulated dust and scratches, the film changed over time and screenings.
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