Experimental Class Review: Week 2
- infamousproduction0
- Dec 27, 2022
- 4 min read
Updated: Jan 5, 2023
Link to Artist and Work: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/vxGqD
The schedule has not went to plan with Christmas and work, but I will try to make posts as frequent as I can until things normalise for me in the next week or so.
The Week One review was interesting, as I mentioned on a previous post. I feel like the message that Lee was trying to get across is that, anything can be considered experimental film. Which has had me wondering since, where is the line between experimental filmmaking and regular film making. This is something I hope to be able to answer with more confidence as time goes on.
Week Two's Film Selection
The films that have been chosen for this week are an interesting bunch, I have only skimmed through some of them prior to writing this. But today I will be looking at each of the links that Lee has provided in order to do a breakdown summary of what I thought of each video and what I thought the artist was trying to achieve. I like that Lee continues to give samples over a broad period of time, I think this is a great idea to see the passage of time and how society has developed as cinematographers.
1. Strike (Sergei Eisenstein, 1924)
This was interesting to watch, I really enjoyed this movie as it seems to be an early take on a documentarian style film. Even though the movie does has moments of eccentricity, the way it captures this particular time period in Russia is very interesting.
I feel that the reason Sergei Eisenstein makes comparisons to the monkey drinking out of a bottle for it immediately to fade to a man drinking in a similar fashion draws comparisons about the inner nature of the characters of the movie. As the movie at the start is comparable to almost like a comedic silent film, but as Strike continues you see that the parallels such as the animals to the humans show that the humans are just as much a prisoner within this era of Russian history.
The use of creative comparisons like the final scenes cross-cutting with footage of livestock being slaughtered, shows that type of conditions that civilians were prone too during this period of history. I think that Sergei Eisenstein was trying to lift the curtain for the citizens of Russia to show exactly how they are being treated by being compared to animals. I thought that this film was incredible for its time, there was comedy, drama, shock and horror with the conditions that the film displayed.
2. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodore Dreyer, 1928)
This clip was truly moving, while this is not the full film there is so much to unpack from this one scene alone.
The close ups of Joan, are what fascinate me the most. The emotion that is conveyed through her eyes and face is astounding, you can see that she is in peril of what is to potentially come. When the priest mention prison, you can truly see that she feels as if she has failed in her mission given to her by God.
The artist of this movie clearly is wanting us to see the finer details of the emotional human spectrum, Joan's' eyes are captivating, you could get lost within the see of swirling emotion contained there.
3. Fireworks (Kenneth Anger, 1947)
Watching this movie initially was a little weird, as at the start of the film I was really trying hard to figure out what was experiential about this particular movie. After continuing watching this movie, I ended up putting two and two together and figured out that this film is an early homoerotic film that Anger has produced. For the time that this film was made I could see it being considered very controversial for the time period it was released.
That being said, I found the imagery to be quite striking and in some scenes disturbing. However, considering it was made with a Bell & Howell16 mm camera which allowed him to film at 24 frames per second and this was made by a 17 year old I think is a massive accomplishment. This was probably my favourite short film due to the brutality of the short and the message that it is trying to convey.
4. Faster Pussycat Kill Kill (Russ Meyer, 1965)
Honestly when I first started watching this I felt like this was a film that could have been made by Quentin Tarantino. The bad ass women, the fast cars, the action scenes combined with the silly chemistry that the three women share really remind me of how Tarantino would write his female characters.
I may not have been around during this time period, and I have not watched nearly enough films from this time to compare. However, from what I have seen from this period, I don't think there has ever been a film from the 60's that presents women the way they are shown in Faster Pussy Cat Kill Kill. It is really cool and interesting, as I can only imagine how many women were inspired by having three strong female protagonists as role models. In an era were women were heavily considered to fall into the perfect woman is a "housewife", Varla, Rosie and Billie break that stereotype through their independence.
5. The Raft (Bill Viola, 2004)
This was probably the most straight forward experimental piece that I have seen thus far on this course. The real scenario of a bunch of people together, suddenly being struck by a "natural disaster" brought out emotions and reactions in a very strange situation.
People in the video fall, scream and grab onto each other trying to make it through the torrent of water that is attacking them from both sides. Here we see a variety of people from all backgrounds, bundle together by the force of circumstance to make a raft. The raft endures until the sequence is over where they are all still together. I thought this was an interesting experiment as you got to see real reactions to a very real situation, which the people on stage looked like they weren't expecting at all.
Wrapping Up
The selection of films and clips this week were interesting, some I felt like were hard to see what they were trying to experiment with but upon a deeper inspection you can start to see what these artists are trying to do. I honestly think my favourites out of this week were, 2, 3, 4 and 5 as they all gave something extremely different to analyse and enjoy.
Thanks for reading!
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