Experimental Class Review: Week One

This weeks class featured the below videos, there is quite a range here. Specifically if we look at the dates there is a lot of variance. This will be interesting to look at and study to see how techniques and ideas have developed over the course of 54 years, just from this selection alone.

All of the images will contain a YouTube Link to the video that I sampled.

A Colour Box (Len Lye, 1935)

A Colour Box is extremely interesting, for the time that this was made I knew that animations from this time were extremely experimental, and in most cases the pictures that are shown are normally without a complete and finished animated form.

Lye's' method of painting long, continuous patterns on the 35MM film gives this piece unique patterns that all blended together to make an interesting visual experience, it is almost psychedelic.

That being said, by modern day standards this is a long advert just to promote the postal services. However, that being said films especially in the early nineteen-hundreds were developing rapidly due to all of the experimental films from this era. The introduction of The Jazz Singer in 1927 had impacted how film makers made movies, as as soon as the 1930's crept in we moved into the era of "talkies". So in short to see something, that moves with the music, takes a life of it's own, is colourful, striking, imaginative and abstract is a clever move to draw attention, it sort of reminds me of graffiti in a lot of ways. In the sense, even though this was commissioned by a governmental body there definitely is a little rebellious as a film piece and for some reason gives me punk vibes. I remember watching this film in class and it was so entertaining.

A little fun fact that I discovered, Len Lye was commissioned to make this for the GPO Film Unit in 1935, according to Wikipedia he was paid £30.

The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini,1965)

The only reason my blog post was delayed yesterday as I was unsure how long this particular films run time was until I sat down to stream it. I remember the short clips that lee had shared with us in class that day about this film.

That being said, although this movie is not like Len Lye's pieces of work, there are definitely a lot of great things about this film. The use of Italian neorealism as the template really adds to the story that Pasolini is trying to tell, this is due to certain scenes almost looking documentarian with how the world, characters and the action is presented. The close ups on the faces of the characters in particular scenes, this movie tells it's story mostly just through picture and it delivers. The interesting visuals allow for contrasts.

After I watched the film, I researched Pier Paolo Pasolini to see what other works that he has done and what he was like as an artist. In my research, I found that Pasolini was an atheist, a Marxist and a homosexual. I was astounded and it really surprised me due to the religious weight of the topic that was being covered and the given time period that Pasolini lived in. The LGBT community did not exist at this point and in this period in the world, the gay community was heavily discriminated against especially in countries like Italy.

Between the visuals, and the background information that I had learned about this movie. It really truly is an interesting take on this particular religious period piece and makes the film even more interesting with its conflictions.

Hamburger (Jordan Leth/Andy Worhol, 1980)

This Experimental Film, honestly leaves a lot to be desired. However, I think that is the point that Lee is trying to make here. Compared to the first two examples, this is different, completely different. The film is literally a man, eating a burger.

I understand that this could be interrupted at the time perhaps as a reflection of society in this period. Where in the 1980's franchises were becoming more and more prominent, I assume this was to document and reflect on what eating the burger does to Andy Worhol's being.

I find it hard to look for deeper meaning in this, but the feeling that I am getting from this video is that, anything can be art or experimental film, if you want it to be.

Pièce Touchée (Martin Arnold, 1989)

Probably the strangest of all the films I have seen yet. Within this experimental film, time seems to be almost warping around the couple on screen. The "glitchy" appearance of time along with the reflective symmetry portions of the video, almost make it seem like time is struggles to move on when the two are together. The mechanical whirring in the background, I do not know if this was intentional or not, but it almost makes it seem like the wheel of time is struggling to turn. Due to this struggle it is changing the way we as the audience perceive what the characters are going through.

The wild movement produced from what I have mentioned above, almost makes it horror like. The two are stuck in a particular moment in time, being forced to repeat the same actions over and over again, only for the film to rewind at certain periods. I found this movie, visually and audibly disturbing, however I did think it was an interesting sequence due to how the editor has manipulated space and time by flipping the footage horizontally and vertically for a mirrored effect and the constant loops of the same few seconds or frames makes it almost suspenseful. We as the audience want to know what happens next, but we are literally held back by the rules the characters on screen , perception and time.

Conclusion of Week One's Videos

The four videos that lee decided to use for this lecture I think work really well, the four films that were chosen all have the same thing in common, that they are experimental. The thing that separates them all though, they are different variations on the idea of what is experimental film.

I think that is the point that Lee was trying to make with this lesson, experimental film can an animated art piece, historical, the manipulation of time and space or something simple as filming a man eating a hamburger. This means by default that there is a huge pool out there that I as an artist can draw from, and what will make my experimental film unique will be the fundamental idea and how I choose to present it.

The two favourites from today were: A Colour Box (Len Lye, 1935) and Pièce Touchée (Martin Arnold, 1989). To me at least, out of the four movies these are the ones I would consider true experimental film as they are trying to present something in a visually unique and interesting way. While The Gospel According to St. Matthew (Pier Paolo Pasolini,1965) and Hamburger (Jordan Leth/Andy Worhol, 1980) are more documentarian style methods of film making, they capture a period with the lens of documenting what is going on.

With that, that brings us to the end of todays blog post. Thank you so much for reading!