Sound Journal #1

The landscapers are mowing the small patch of grass outside of my window just in front of the sidewalk.

The hum fades in and out as the mower gets closer and farther away from my window.

                                                         The ceiling fan cuts through the air

                                           And occasionally catches, clicking lightly.

Caitlin’s hair ruffles the pillow next me

My own hair returns the sound in kind

As I turn my head to follow the sound

                My cat knows that I’m awake

                                Can she hear my breathing change?

                                        She’s meowing in the office calling for food and attention

The sheets rustle as I fold them back to feed her

Reading Response #1

This week, we read two takes on Avant-Garde Cinema. One (MacDonald) took a historical perspective while Richter took more a theorist viewpoint.

MacDonald begins his article by prefacing what a typical response to Avant-Garde cinema is and pondering why that may be. It is true that more often than not, we are more exposed to "traditional" narrative cinema for most of our lives. This tends to make the journey into the world of experimental (and sometimes even documentaries) more jarring. We do have certain expectations of what a film should do--the most commonly stated of these expectations is "to tell a story". Therefore, sitting down to watch a film that may not have a universal, unilateral message/story/theme can be upsetting. You have to relearn to watch films--and in a culture that is so dependent on the media it creates, it can be disconcerting to find that you don't know as much as you think about movies.

Richter discusses what makes Avant-Garde cinema original. In order to drive his point home, he discredits narrative cinema. Richter says that narrative cinema is a combination of different art forms (literature/theatre) that ignores what makes it special, the camera. He argues that filmmakers like Eisenstein and the Neorealists of post World War II Italy did a much better job of using the camera to make original art rather than focusing on theatrical elements like symbolism and acting performances.

I would argue that Eisenstein is not the best example for his point. While Eisenstein is presently regarded as the epitome of Soviet Montage film and praised for his method, his contemporaries found him to be overly symbolic and theatrical. Eisenstein used actors (though non-professionals) to tell the stories of new Soviet Republic. I think that Vertov would've been a better example since he filmed actual workers in actual factories to glorify the "actuality" of the Soviet Union (MacDonald does mention him when discussing the amazing filmmakers of the early Avant-Garde.

Richter does make a point. Avant-Garde cinema is unique and it really does rely on the technology it was made on, but I don't know that it makes it more original than any other form of film making (or art in general). Narrative cinema can be beautiful and there are deft moments--if there weren't we wouldn't still be talking about the great moments in film, nor would we be studying it. Isn't every piece of art original simply by the merit that an artist is making something new out what was only previously raw materials and an idea?

Filmmaker's Manifesto

I began as a poet. If I end up an experimental filmmaker, I will have come full circle. I started writing poetry when I was nine-years-old--I didn't even know what poetry was, but I was writing it.

I think of myself first as a scholar then an artist, a writer, and (lastly) a filmmaker. While film is my medium of choice, I came to it last. All that I've learned about film--in a critical/production sense--I've learned at UNCW. That is not to say I don't love it; I'm obsessed with it. It's perfect, and it's potential is limitless.

While narrative can be amazing, it is also limiting and prohibitive by its very nature. The job of a narrative filmmaker--and even a documentarist--is to tell a story. While, one is often rewarded for innovation within the realm of film, there are still conventions that one must at least address, if not entirely follow. Experimental film does not present the same boundaries.

Anything goes.

One must not even use a camera in order to make experimental film thanks to innovations in technology and large archives of footage. Experimental film can truly be an experiment—whether someone is testing the limits of a new (or sometimes reinventing an old) technology or trying to express an emotion or set parameters to follow like writers do in warm-up exercises—it can be a visualization of a poem; it can provide an outlet for an emotion on is unable to put to words; it can be anything that the filmmaker needs it to be.

Experimental film is poetry.