Experimental Films in the Sight and Sound Poll 2012

Having been housebound this past week, and having my desired film festival attendance shattered, I have consoled myself in some small part by trawling through the full kit-and-caboodle of the Sight and Sound 2012 Poll. The list of the Top 250 films held brief interest, but it was trawling through the full list of films voted that has held the greatest fascination. To flick through the list and find utter obscurities, and then search for further info on these unknown potential treasures has provided a nest of joy and comfort in a current cinema-less phase. This, surely, is the true pleasure of these meta-lists – to come across yet more films and more directors that are completely unheard-of, then setting off in search of any scant information on these films, and then setting off once more to find the actual film itself. My personal list of ‘must-watch’ films gets more and more gargantuan by the hour.

Having a growing and abiding fascination for experimental cinema, I have been especially interested to see how this has fared in the polls. There has been a surprising quality and depth to the representation of experimental cinema in the polls, with some filmmakers popping up with alarming frequency (for example, Robert Beavers and Bruce Baillie have six films each on the full poll list). It would have been grand to have had films by Lawrence Jordan, Gustav Deutsch, Martin Arnold, and Lewis Klahr on the list, but perhaps if the pollsters had the opportunity to draft up a list of 20 films rather than 10, the story would have been quite different.

Born purely out of sheer curiosity, I have collated all of the experimental films found in the full poll list, and you’ll find the complete list of 127 films below. The list is not definitive, as there is a likelihood I’ve accidentally skipped a film here and there in my trawl through the poll list. But, hey ho, it’s good enough for now.

Update: 11 September 2012 = It's taken me a while but I've added the votes from the Directors polls, released by Sight and Sound on 22 August. Any odds and ends that I missed out first time around have also been included. I've added the votes together for the Critics and Directors. And here's the updated list:

Chien Andalou, Un (1928) Luis Buñuel	24
Wavelength (1967) Michael Snow	19
Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) Maya Deren, Alexander Hammid	17
Chelsea Girls (1966) Andy Warhol, Paul Morrissey	9
Région Centrale, La (1971) Michael Snow	7
Empire (1964) Andy Warhol	6
Outer Space (2002) Peter Tscherkassky	6
Aguaespejo granadino (1955) José Val del Omar	5
Flaming Creatures (1963) Jack Smith	5
Mothlight (1963) Stan Brakhage	5
Portrait of Ga (1952)  Margaret Tait	5
Arnulf Rainer (1960) Peter Kubelka	4
As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty (2000) Jonas Mekas	4
Unsere Afrikareise (1961) Peter Kubelka	4
13 Lakes (2005) James Benning	3
Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes, The (1971) Stan Brakhage	3
Blue (1993) Derek Jarman	3
Hart of London, The (1970) Jack Chambers	3
Line Describing a Cone (1973) Anthony McCall	3
Little Stabs at Happiness (1963) Ken Jacobs	3
Movie, A (1958) Bruce Conner	3
Report (1986) Bruce Conner	3
Schwechater (1958) Peter Kubelka	3
Too Early, Too Late (1982) Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet	3
Walden: Diaries, Notes and Sketches (1975) Jonas Mekas	3
Zorns Lemma (1970) Hollis Frampton	3
Valentin de las Sierras (1967)  Bruce Baillie	3
(nostalgia) (1971) Hollis Frampton	2
Adebar (1957) Peter Kubelka	2
Anticipation of the Night (1958) Stan Brakhage	2
Cosmic Ray (1962) Bruce Conner	2
"Diary" David Perlov	2
Ere erera baleibu icik subua aruaren (1970) José Antonio Sistiaga	2
Free Radicals (1958) Len Lye	2
From the Notebook of… Robert Beavers	2
Girl Chewing Gum, The (1976) John Smith	2
Human Remains (1998) Jay Rosenblatt	2
Images of the World and the Inscription of the War (1988) Harun Farocki	2
Mass for the Dakota Sioux (1964) Bruce Baillie	2
Outer and Inner Space (1965) Andy Warhol	2
Rose Hobart (1936) Joseph Cornell	2
Ruskin (1974) Robert Beavers	2
Scorpio Rising (1964) Kenneth Anger	2
Screen Tests (1965) Andy Warhol	2
Trade Tattoo (1937) Len Lye	2
verifica incerta, La (1967) Alberto Grifi, Gianfranco Baruchello	2
Way Things Go, The (1987) Peter Fischli, David Weiss	2
Window Water Baby Moving (1959) Stan Brakhage	2
1126 Dewey Avenue, Apt. 207 Creators unknown	1
23rd Psalm Branch (1966) Stan Brakhage	1
37/78 Tree Again (1978) Kurt Kren	1
Amor (2002) Robert Beavers	1
Arabesque (1929) Germaine Dulac	1
Assumption (1997) Peter Gidal	1
Ballet mécanique (1924) Fernand Léger, Dudley Murphy	1
Beauty No 2 (1965) Andy Warhol	1
Begone Dull Care (1949) Evelyn Lambart, Norman McLaren	1
Behindert (1974) Stephen Dwoskin	1
Birth of the Nation (1973) Klaus Wyborny	1
Black TV Aldo Tambellini	1
Bleu Shut (1970) Robert Nelson	1
Blight John Smith	1
Bliss (1967) Gregory J. Markopoulos	1
Blow Job (1964) Andy Warhol	1
Carriage Trade (1967) Warren Sonbert	1
Casting a Glance (2007) James Benning	1
Castro Street (1966) Bruce Baillie	1
Clock, The Christian Marclay	1
Color of Love, The (1995) Peggy Ahwesh	1
Colour Box, A (1935) Len Lye	1
Dots (1940) Norman McLaren	1
Dresden Dynamo (1971) Lis Rhodes	1
Egyptian Series Stan Brakhage	1
End, The (1953) Christopher Maclaine	1
Eniaios Gregory J. Markopoulos	1
Eureka (1983) Ernie Gehr	1
Exodus (1997) Steve McQueen	1
Fire in Castile (Tactil Vision of the Wasteland of Fear) (1961) José Val del Omar	1
Flicker, The (1966) Tony Conrad	1
Fuses (1966) Carolee Schneemann	1
Gammelion (1968) Gregory J. Markopoulos	1
Geschichte der Nacht (1978) Clemens Klopfenstein	1
Gloria! Hollis Frampton	1
Ground, The (2002) Robert Beavers	1
Guns of the Trees (1961) Jonas Mekas	1
Hapax Legomena Hollis Frampton	1
Hardwood Process David Gatten	1
Himmler Project, The (2000) Romuald Karmakar	1
Hold Me While I'm Naked (1966) George Kuchar	1
Hours for Jerome I & II (1983) Nathaniel Dorsky	1
In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni (1978) Guy Debord	1
Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine (2005) Peter Tscherkassky	1
Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969) Kenneth Anger	1
Kitch's Last Meal (1978) Carolee Schneemann	1
Lamentations (1985) R Bruce Elder	1
Mirror Animations Harry Smith	1
My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure Robert Beavers	1
Nicht löschbares Feuer (1968)  Harun Farocki	1
One Way Boogie Woogie/27 Years Later (2005) James Benning	1
Peggy and Fred in Hell (2002) Leslie Thornton	1
Place of Work & Tailpiece (1976)  Margaret Tait	1
Poetic Justice (1972) Hollis Frampton	1
Presents (1981) Michael Snow	1
Quick Billy (1968) Bruce Baillie	1
Quixote (1964) Bruce Baillie	1
Rabbit's Moon (1950) Kenneth Anger	1
Rainbow Dance (1936) Len Lye	1
Reassemblage T. Minh-ha Trinh	1
Reel Time Annabel Nicolson	1
Renaissance (1963) Walerian Borowczyk	1
Revolver (1994) Jonas Odell, Stig Bergkvist, Marti Ekstrand, Lars Olsson	1
Ritual in Transfigured Time (1946) Maya Deren	1
RR (2008) James Benning	1
Seashell and the Clergyman, The (1928) Germaine Dulac	1
Seasons of the Year, The (1975) Artavazd Pelechian	1
Serene Velocity (1970) Ernie Gehr	1
Short Film Series Guy Sherwin	1
Shulie (1998) Elisabeth Subrin	1
Side/Walk/Shuttle Ernie Gehr	1
Sky Socialist, The Ken Jacobs	1
Society of the Spectacle, The (1973) Guy Debord	1
Song and Solitude Nathaniel Dorsky	1
Star Spangled to Death (2003) Ken Jacobs	1
Study of a River Peter Hutton	1
Tango (1980) Zbigniew Rybczynski	1
Text of Light (1974) Stan Brakhage	1
Textism Hirabayashi Isamu	1
To Parsifal Bruce Baillie	1
Trasferimento di modulazione Piero Bargellini	1
vallée close, La (2000) Jean-Claude Rousseau	1
Videograms of a Revolution (1993) Harun Farocki, Andrei Ujica	1
Visions of Meditation Stan Brakhage	1
What Goes Up? Robert Breer	1
Wildfire (2003) Amy Greenfield	1
Wind Vane (1972) Chris Welsby	1
Work done Robert Beavers	1
Aerial (1974) Margaret Tait	1
Allures (1960) Jordan Belson	1
Anthem Apichatpong Weerasethakul	1
At Land (1944) Maya Deren	1
Capitalism: Slavery Ken Jacobs	1
Christmas on Earth (1963) Barbara Rubin	1
Anemic Cinema 1926 Marcel Duchamp	1
Commingled Containers Stan Brakhage	1
Condition of Illusion (1975) Peter Gidal	1
Couch (series) (1966) Andy Warhol	1
Crossroads (1976)  Bruce Conner	1
Entr'acte (1924)  René Clair	1
Light Reading (1979) Lis Rhodes	1
Long Film for Ambient Light Anthony McCall	1
Lost Lost Lost (1975) Jonas Mekas	1
Ménilmontant (1926) Dimitri Kirsanoff	1
Nicht löschbares Feuer (1968) Harun Farocki	1
Roh-Film (1968)  Birgit and Willhelm Hein	1
Soft Fiction (1979)  Chick Strand	1
Stadt in Flammen (1984)  Schmelzdahin	1
Standard Gauge (1985)  Morgan Fisher	1
Golfball - Ode to IBM   Mara Mattuschka	1
Weather Diary 3   George Kuchar	1
Super Dyke Meets Madam X  Barbara Hammer, Max Almy	1
Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1967)  William Greaves	1
TV (1967)  Kurt Kren	1
10 minutes older (1978)   Frank Herz	1
2 minutes 45 seconds  William Raban	1

THAT SUMMER

(Phillipe Garrel; France/ Italy/ Switzerland; 2011)

(In order to review films seen at MIFF 2012 at a faster pace, I now endeavour to keep the word limit to 200 words or less. This limitation has been imposed by my beloved wife, who is wonderfully adept at drafting domestic legislation that enables me to actually get some semblance of sleep at a normal hour, as opposed to staying up half the night, falling asleep at my computer, and writing drivel).

Ah, Garrel. Surely it would be easiest to review a Garrel film by just writing ‘Garrel’ 200 or so times. 

I have yet to work out why Garrel’s films appeal. His films seem occasionally morose, the characters sometimes need a good slap, the pace can veer towards lethargy. Yet everything works, it all hangs together perfectly. Garrel has spent a lifetime mapping relationships as they change, disintegrate, and bend over time, and he does not waver from this obsession in this film. 

Usually the focus is on one sole couple, but this time he adds a second couple. An artist befriends a struggling actor, and when the artist and his actress wife move to Rome, the actor and his girlfriend move in with them and become observers to a falling apart of the marriage and the gradual disintegration of the artist. The reason for the marriage breakdown is introduced piece by piece, gently stirred into the froth of the film, and it all seems to hinge on one seemingly innocent yet intensely electric dance scene between the artist’s wife and her film director. This scene alone epitomises Garrel, mixing spontaneity, dynamism, and some kind of sublime, elemental zest.

CORRESPONDENCE: JONAS MEKAS – JL GUERIN

(Jose-Luis Guerin/ Jonas Mekas; Spain; 2011)

Akin to a series of letter exchanges, the correspondence between Jose-Luis Guerin and Jonas Mekas harkens to a nostalgic form of conversation, an antidote to the rapidity and ease of exchange afforded by social media nowadays. Digital technology allows these filmmakers greater immediacy to respond to their environment, thus allowing the exchange of filmed moments and reflections to occur more readily – yet paradoxically there is almost something a little blissfully archaic about these two men deciding to communicate via filmed fragments of their everyday worlds.

The contrast between Guerin’s still and stately reflections and Mekas’ happily chaotic visual-tumble seems to mark them as cinematic chalk-and-cheese. But their obsession is shared – the obsession to film their environment on a regular basis. Why? Mekas tries to answer this in lucid moment of unusual stillness, assessing his love of ‘taping’ the world as something he just needs to do, without knowing why. Whether we see Guerin’s crisp black-and-white framings, or Mekas’ manic and shaky whirligig-world, in both instances what emanates is a desire to ensnare a moment.

The film reminded me of the letter exchanges in Adrian Martin/ Jonathan Rosenbaum’s Movie Mutations, not just in the sense of an exchange occurring but in a joyful sense of camaraderie. Guerin clearly respects Mekas immensely, and the feeling appears to be mutual. But this is no backslapping club –this is simply a humble sharing of thoughts and reflections from two men who are driven to capturing brief moments of fleeting time.

One cannot help but wonder if the filmmakers may have become influenced by the other during their exchange. It’s possible to assess Mekas’ moments of stillness as mimicking Guerin, and Guerin’s shot of his own shadow on the footpath as he walks as being infused with Mekas. For some inexplicable reason, the almost-final scene by Guerin, of two ants trying to haul a large twig up the side of a tombstone in Ozu’s cemetery, feels as if both filmmakers could have been present when the shot was taken. Guerin may be shooting this, but Mekas is there, watching with him, pointing out where they are and telling him to just keep taping the ants to see what might happen.

MIFF 2012 - better late than never.....

The hiatus is finally broken. Yay, some films at last. The Melbourne International Film Festival 2012 has been on for at least 11 days now, and due to work and study commitments I have missed most of these past 11 days. Ahhh, bugger. Still, I've seen a small handful so far, and have a bit of time up my sleeve to see a swag of films over the final 6 days.

I'll attempt to jot down a ramble for each film viewed, including the small amount seen so far. So, I have some catching-up to do. Better get cracking......

[a postscript, after film festival is over; Well, the whole festival did not pan out as expected, with a number of emergencies, issues, blah blah getting in the way of seeing any more than 6 films. Pathetic, really, considering i used to knock off between 60 to 70 films per festival once upon a time. Ah, the trials and tribulations of a cinephile with a wife and a bub. So, considering I only saw six, and only reviewed two, I can't be bothered reviewing the rest - better to chalk the whole event up as "crap, not what I wanted at all, sigh" and move on. Yes, now I have the joyful task of chasing up all the films i missed out on. Oh, frabjous day.]

The Edge Of Cinema: Experimental Cinema Log #10: Mothlight

MOTHLIGHT (Stan Brakhage; USA; 1963)

[3.30 minutes]

Dear Lord, this blog has cobwebs.

So, in the past two months I’ve viewed next to nothing, which makes me cranky. Amongst the whirlwind that appears to be my lot at the moment, the one film that I’ve been able to view repeatedly that staves off total cinema starvation is Mothlight. Yes, Brakhage’s three and a half minute mini-odyssey seems to perfectly function as the equivalent of an energy-rousing tonic. Any tiny glimmer of free time that I can squeeze out of the day may often result in using Mothlight as a cinematic self-help boost.

Brakhage. The name alone sounds like some kind of feverish creative shenanigans, a distant cousin to bricolage. And, of course, Mothlight is definitely a filmic bricolage, born from Brakhage’s poverty and cobbled together by the arrangement of insect wings, twigs, and flora between two pieces of perforated tape. This is a truly earthy film, a pulsating representation of picking and sorting through forest-floor detritus. 

Sure, you could say it’s about nature’s ebb and flow. And, sure, you could say there’s a birth/ death dynamic at play here, with shapes being constantly born from light and returned to the dark. But what is most appealing is the feeling that this is cinema as naked and primal music. The film may be silent but there is a constant rhythmic pulse constantly pounding over and over, as this seemingly chaotic concatenation of nature’s flotsam and jetsam flows in an uncanny harmony. 

There is a fantastically mesmeric quality to Mothlight. Repeat viewings always reveal new shapes, new associations, new ideas. It is easy and thrilling to get completely lost inside the billowing leaves and beating wings. It proffers the nostalgic kick of the first childhood moment of viewing something under a microscope and marvelling at new ways of viewing the world around you. It gives off the electric frisson of being in close proximity to the natural environment. Best of all, you can freeze the film at any time, and always find a new image to play with, like looking for shapes and associations in the clouds. In the last couple of viewings of the film I froze the film a number of times and saw:

• A river delta as viewed from a plane
• A field of wheat
• An art deco silhouette
• A sole tree at night
• Dried, discarded snake skin
• The debris of an explosion hanging in the air
• A close-up of bicycle spokes

Try it when you view the film. Stop it at any random point, and see what you find in the frozen frame.

You can view the film here and experiment with it to your heart’s content.

30 Unseen Directors

God, I miss film. It seems my film-viewing has trickled to a near stand-still in the past few months. Through hair-tearing tracts of time mismanagement and a general blood-curdlingly hectic schedule, it feels like casting my eyes over some quality cinematic images is becoming some kind of mythic quest.

The only thing that keeps me going in these bleak times of my own GFC (Ginormous Film Crisis) is using any tiny snippet of time to stay plugged in the cinema world. I can either graze on a film magazine, sift through film news on the net, or draft list after list of films that could all be lumped under the heading “Films To Watch When Some Semblance Of Time Management Takes Hold In My Life.”

It’s odd, but lists of films to watch keeps the engine running. It keeps the desire fuelled. To cast my eyes over screeds and screeds of “must-watch” films provides a heady mixture of overwhelm and yearning.

One new list I conjured up, in between frantic bouts of just being me, is of directors who I’ve never seen. It’s alarming to find the gaps in my cinema viewing, amazing to see what slips between the cracks. Once upon a time I think I would have hidden this out of some dumb form of embarrassment at “not keeping up” with the cinephile world, but really why hide this? So I haven’t seen Louise Feuillade yet, or Mikio Naruse. Big deal. I have something to look forward to – and once I ‘conquer’ a few films by these directors, I’m damn certain there will be new names popping up to replace them.  It’s great, really - there is always something new to pursue, always new epiphanies potentially around the next corner.

To be transparent, I’ve provided a selected list below of 30 directors who I haven’t seen yet, whose films frequent my “must-have-a-look-at-this-some-time” lists. Here’s to the future of film-viewing.

1.       Louis Feuillade

2.       Kira Muratova

3.       Boris Barnet

4.       Jon Jost

5.       Nathaniel Dorsky

6.       Jean Epstein

7.       Alexander Kluge

8.       Stephen Dwoskin

9.       Jonas Mekas

10.   Mikio Naruse

11.   Werner Schroeter

12.   Joao Cesar Monteiro

13.   Guru Dutt

14.   Sharunas Bartas

15.   Marco Bellocchio

16.   Bill Douglas

17.   Sacha Guitry

18.   Luis Garcia Berlanga

19.   Marcel L’Herbier

20.   Lav Diaz

21.   Mark Rappaport

22.   Alan Rudolph

23.   Alain Tanner

24.   Johan van der Keuken

25.   Mario Monicelli

26.   Alexei German

27.   Jacques Audiard

28.   Francois Ozon

29.   Krzysztof Zanussi

30.   Alain Robbe-Grillet

[pic: Louise Feuillade]

The Edge Of Cinema: Experimental Cinema Log #9 - Lyrical Nitrate

LYRICAL NITRATE (Peter Delpeut; Netherlands; 1990)

[50 minutes]

Peter Delpeut's Lyrical Nitrate is a mini-archive, a visual museum of dusted-off nitrate relics given a chance to dance on screen once more. The snippets of film that Delpeut used date from 1905 to 1920, and were recovered from the collection of Jean Desmet, a Dutch cinema owner and film distributor who horded hundreds of films in an Amsterdam movie house.

Here, cinema's mortal form is firmly on display and in question, as the film is split into six parts that refer to cinema's nature and life cycle – 'looking', 'mise-en-scene', 'body', 'passion', 'dying', 'and forgetting'. These sections seem to mimic the function of categories in an archive, to assist with classification and archival location. Delpeut's use of images incrementally reveals a desire to present the heart and the history of cinema. The film is almost the mortal anthropomorphic trajectory of cinema as an entity, going from birth, living and loving, pain, dying, then finally death.

The film is 'born' with a series of iris shots, until we see a screen within the screen, and the black of the rest of the shot lights up to reveal an audience watching a film. This introduces a self-referential aspect that permeates the entire film, and sets off a chain of relations between scenes that suggests that the history of cinema is predicated on constant influence, mutation, and re-birth. At times it even seems like these films are watching each other, providing a haunted fantasy of what films might get up to in an archive when they are discarded, forgotten and unobserved.

Delpeut often retains the natural speed of the images he uses, but on occasion he employs variations to startling effect. During the 'mise-en-scene’ section, a scene of a man and a woman talking then moving apart in a drawing room is broken down into still shots. After these still images choppily describe their brief liaison, they finally kiss, and the film comes to life again as they embrace, a moment that is exquisitely similar to the blinking eye that occurs in Chris Marker's La Jetee. This sequence not only signifies the archival reduction of early cinema to still images through inaccessibility, but also of the metaphysical movement of early film from death back to renewed life again, through rediscovery, re-projection, and re-use.

In another section, Delpeut scientifically breaks down a scene where a woman is assailed with some kind of emotional trauma in a parlour room. He plays the scene over and over, first at normal speed, then slower, then even slower again. At this slowest speed, Delpeut zooms in on details in the scene – her neck stretched and taut, her arm flailing behind her, searching for support. Suddenly the spell of being immersed in pure unadulterated early cinema is broken, as this moment is scanned and analysed, like a specimen to be observed, dissected, and experimented upon. It is a moment of analytical re-photography akin to Ken Jacobs' work.

The final section of Lyrical Nitrate is a dream (nightmare?) of the death of cinema. The scene is of Adam and Eve, but most of the images are ravaged by decay. Images flicker determinedly through increasing barrages of haze and murk, as we see Eve converse with the Serpent, and then take a bite of the fruit that gives knowledge but takes away immortality. At this moment, the film is completely obliterated with decay, the only image visible in the final two minutes being the image of either Death or God, seated, in the sky. It is fitting that this final moment is part of a section entitled ‘forgetting’, which comes after ‘dying’. Here, alone in the archive, these films dream of their possible fate, and dream of their fear of death. But an even worse fate for these ‘lost’ films is the possibility of being forever forgotten, their existence slowly extinguished as the memory of them fades.

You can watch a small segment of the film here.