Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Faceless-The film
FACELESS was produced under the rules of the 'Manifesto for CCTV Filmmakers'. The manifesto states, amongst other things, that additional cameras are not permitted at filming locations, as the omnipresent existing video surveillance (CCTV) is already in operation.
directed by Manu Luksch, voice over: Tilda Swinton, soundtrack: mukul, piano music: Rupert Huber, www.ambientTV.NET
Friday, February 20, 2009
"The Puppet" by Ibrahim Al-Koni,
Ibrahim Al-Koni, scion of a Libyan Tuareg family, is regarded as the great writer of the Sahara. In his new novel "The Puppet" Al-Koni perceptively depicts the way in which the modern world intrudes into the Tuaregs' traditional society.A fundamental examination of the phenomenon of emergent capitalism: Al-Koni's Die Puppe ("The Puppet", not yet available in English translation)
A presentation of the novel by Kersten Knipp
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Laurie Simmons's film 'The Music of Regret,'
ACT2:'Excellent Moon'
Cafe Song
from 'The Music of Regret,' by Laurie Simmons, featuring Adam Guettel as The Dummy // music M. Rohatyn, lyrics L. Simmons.
'The Music of Regret' is a mini-musical in three acts. The film is inspired by three distinct periods of Laurie Simmon’s photographic work. Vintage childcraft puppets, ventriloquist dummies and walking objects enact three tales of ambition, disappointment, love and regret. more
Read lyrics of the songs here
'The Music of Regret''s acts I and III also staged and performed live as part of PERFORMA05
Many more wonderful photographs and artworks at the artist's website
You can read also an interview here
Cafe Song
from 'The Music of Regret,' by Laurie Simmons, featuring Adam Guettel as The Dummy // music M. Rohatyn, lyrics L. Simmons.
'The Music of Regret' is a mini-musical in three acts. The film is inspired by three distinct periods of Laurie Simmon’s photographic work. Vintage childcraft puppets, ventriloquist dummies and walking objects enact three tales of ambition, disappointment, love and regret. more
Read lyrics of the songs here
'The Music of Regret''s acts I and III also staged and performed live as part of PERFORMA05
Many more wonderful photographs and artworks at the artist's website
You can read also an interview here
Saturday, January 3, 2009
"Theater Of War" by John Walter
John Walter labels his film Theater Of War “a documentary about art and politics,” which is the kind of blatant provocation meant to pay homage to the film’s ostensible subject, Bertolt Brecht. In 2006, Walter was allowed to film the rehearsals for George C. Wolfe’s Central Park production of Brecht’s anti-war play Mother Courage And Her Children, starring Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, and Austin Pendleton, with a Tony Kushner translation and songs by Jeanine Tesori. Walter was also granted extended time with Streep, who allowed a rare and reluctant glimpse at her process in deference to Brecht, an artist who favored exposing his own artifice. Walter intersperses his coverage of the Mother Courage production with biographical sketches and analysis of Brecht—much of it provided by post-modern novelist Jay Cantor. At one point, Walter shoots some stock footage of Cantor working at his computer, then cuts to a shot of what Cantor is writing: a few idle lines about how much he hates pretending to work for the sake of a movie.
Though Theater Of War is informative—both about Brecht and about the effort it takes to mount a big New York production—Walter overreaches in trying to connect Brecht’s anti-war sentiment with contemporary protest movements, and doesn’t do more than dabble with the themes of truth and representation in documentary filmmaking. There’s an interesting section about how in Brecht’s 1947 appearance before HUAC, he used his own theatrical techniques to throw Congress off the scent of his Marxist leanings; for the most part though, Walter is unable to make the intersection between art and politics in Brecht’s work really come to life. The problem is built into the documentary’s design. While Theater Of War contains a few direct, empathetic moments—like Kushner describing how Mother Courage changed his life when he read it in college, or Streep explaining that she sees her role in theatrical revivals to be “the voice of dead people”—Walter would rather we care about the ideas this film raises, not the people we meet. Which is very Brechtian, to be sure, but not always so engaging
http://www.avclub.com/content/cinema/theater_of_war?utm_source=imdb_rss_1
http://filmmakermagazine.com/directorinterviews/2008/12/john-walter-theater-of-war.php
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
The Birth of Primary Cinema from the Spirit of Sound - Feature Article by Frank Rothkamm
on Furthernoise http://www.furthernoise.org/index.php?url=page.php&ID=273&iss=71
It is about eleven o'clock in the morning in my studio in Los Angeles. I look out the window and stare at the Hollywood sign in the distance. The phone almost never rings. If it does, I pick up and nobody is on the line. After a while my mind drifts and a single thought forms in my head like a mantra:
As the rate of information is increasing, so is its comprehensibility decreasing.
I realize that this is especially true for motion pictures, arguably the first digital art form because they're made of single images floating by at the rate of twenty four frames per second. At this rate however, the perception is one of continuous motion. Because of the high rate of images per second, or, of information given per second, the brain (or let me use a Kantian term: the understanding) can no longer understand or process the single image. The development of the modern cinema in Hollywood has only increased the misunderstanding of the single image by constantly increasing the rate of events per second. When I turn on the TV, a SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon is interrupted by a commercial. The longer the show continues, the more often the commercials are shown. The scenes in these commercials are cut so fast and there are so many images per second that I have no idea of what I'm actually watching and thus, no idea what it is that I'm supposed to buy. I do not try to understand anything anymore, I just sit here and let the events pass by.
My eyes drift back to the Hollywood sign: Motion pictures are based on an illusion.
It is about eleven o'clock in the morning in my studio in Los Angeles. I look out the window and stare at the Hollywood sign in the distance. The phone almost never rings. If it does, I pick up and nobody is on the line. After a while my mind drifts and a single thought forms in my head like a mantra:
As the rate of information is increasing, so is its comprehensibility decreasing.
I realize that this is especially true for motion pictures, arguably the first digital art form because they're made of single images floating by at the rate of twenty four frames per second. At this rate however, the perception is one of continuous motion. Because of the high rate of images per second, or, of information given per second, the brain (or let me use a Kantian term: the understanding) can no longer understand or process the single image. The development of the modern cinema in Hollywood has only increased the misunderstanding of the single image by constantly increasing the rate of events per second. When I turn on the TV, a SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon is interrupted by a commercial. The longer the show continues, the more often the commercials are shown. The scenes in these commercials are cut so fast and there are so many images per second that I have no idea of what I'm actually watching and thus, no idea what it is that I'm supposed to buy. I do not try to understand anything anymore, I just sit here and let the events pass by.
My eyes drift back to the Hollywood sign: Motion pictures are based on an illusion.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Animata
Animata is a real-time animation software, designed to create interactive background projections for concerts, theatre and dance performances, and promotional screenings.The peculiarity of the software is that the animation is generated in real-time, making continuous interaction possible. This ability also permits that physical sensors, cameras or other environmental variables can be attached.The software can be connected with many pieces of external software in order to make use of the possibilities of these applications in the fields of image processing, sound analysis, or motion capture. These applications can analyse for instance sound input, or user movement, and this data could drive animations reacting to these environmental changes in real-time.
http://animata.kibu.hu/
http://www.piksel.no/piksel08/p08_workshops.htm
See also: http://createdigitalmotion.com/
http://animata.kibu.hu/
http://www.piksel.no/piksel08/p08_workshops.htm
See also: http://createdigitalmotion.com/
Thursday, September 25, 2008
The Callas Project
CALLAS (the acronym stands for Conveying Affectiveness in Leading-edge Living Adaptive Systems) is a integrated project funded by the European Commission.
In the project vision, ambitious challenges are pursued: partners from different countries are working together in pursuit a common goal that will contribute to reduce the cost and the complexity of development of multimodal interfaces in the Digital Entertainment and Information context.
- to produce a set of components (known as Shelf components) which can be used to generate emotionally-aware user interfaces (or Affective Multimodal Interfaces).
- to handle interoperability between the components through the open source CALLAS Framework
- to provide APIs to 3rd party developers through which the shelf components and emotional model might be accessed.
Finally, the capabilities of the CALLAS Framework will be demonstrated through the development of CALLAS Showcases, significant test-beds in the context of New Media, embryonic samples of applications of the future.
CALLAS aims to design and develop a Framework based on a plug-in multimodal architecture, invariant to configuration of Multimodal Components, to interpret and process emotional aspects in real-time for easy and fast development of applications for Art and Entertainment, paying attention to the value of users, who are no longer passive spectators of artistic performances, but stimulating sources of human communication. The project is developing selected scenarios for Art and Entertainment, to showcase CALLAS technology in different typologies of space: theatres, home, squares, festivals, etc., as the "space" is one of the most interesting factors where human emotional interaction takes place. A strong attention is given to all interface and interaction aspects, to minimize the complexity for multimodal handling, to make creative industries and artists free to develop truly interactive art, keeping the technology burden hidden and preserving the naturalness of user interaction, not altering the spontaneity of their experience.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
ABLE DANGER THE MOVIE
POSTING ABLE DANGER
To conclude our series of blog posts from Paul Krik, writer/director of Able Danger, currently in theaters, here is his breakdown of how he posted his movie.
Able Danger was shot on an Panasonic AG-HVX200 by accomplished Brooklyn-based cinematographer Charlie Libin. We shot HD using no tape. It was shot to P2 cards, basically RAM and then copied to a hard drive. It was edited on Avid mostly on a laptop in a basement and then on an Avid at Jump Editorial. It was edited in HD but at the Panasonic "native" file size of 1280 x 720. This is not true HD, but after testing the camera's 1920 x 1080 record modes, I found the difference negligible and the 1080 mode had problems with motion. And the file sizes made shooting 1080 inefficient.
After much research about the absolute best methodology for finishing, I decided on the following; 123,840 uncompressed TIFF frames (86 mins x 24 frames per second) were exported to a hard drive and brought over to one of my favorite post production facilities, NICE SHOES, and colorist Chris Ryan imported the TIFF sequence into the specter (German color correct box) and bumped up to true HD 1920 x 1080. It was color corrected there and laid down to D5.
No special pro lenses were used. We used a wide angle adapter on occasion and a long lens adapter for daytime surveillance. For surveillance night scenes, we used military grade night vision.
I did all of the sound editing and sound designing and editing and music editing in the Avid. The final was mixed in Protools. Shots that needed effects were exported as uncompressed TIFFs out of Spectre and went to one of two places:
1. AFTER EFFECTS was used for the surveillance graphics. It took months to develop the surveillance look. We (Roberto Serrini and I) experimented with a lot more graphics on screen and a lot more text. But that took away from the beauty of the imagery and became too noisy and less "filmic" also getting the right interaction of the onscreen text, the surveillance chatter (which I recorded through a kids' toy voice distorter) and the onscreen action took a lot of fine tuning. I worked intimately with my assistant and After Effects artist refining ad infinitum. After I color corrected the night vision in Specter, TIFF frames were exported and we laid the After Effects back on top and then exported TIFF frames.
2. THE FLAME was used for some "gun flashes" and "electricity" in the stun baton were added after the color correct and bump up to 1080 HD from the Specter. The color TVs were composited and tweaked in the flame by Nick Sasso at Manic. Final finishing took the After Effects TIFF frames and conformed in the flame and laid down to D5 at NICE SHOES.
The film basically only existed on hard drives until we were done and laid down to D5. I think it was pretty innovative. The dream sequences on top of the World Trade Towers were shot on green screen, and uncompressed TIFFs were exported out of Avid and into FLAME and matte paintings and comps were done in flame. The intro animation was done in After Effects.
www.abledangerthemovie.com
To conclude our series of blog posts from Paul Krik, writer/director of Able Danger, currently in theaters, here is his breakdown of how he posted his movie.
Able Danger was shot on an Panasonic AG-HVX200 by accomplished Brooklyn-based cinematographer Charlie Libin. We shot HD using no tape. It was shot to P2 cards, basically RAM and then copied to a hard drive. It was edited on Avid mostly on a laptop in a basement and then on an Avid at Jump Editorial. It was edited in HD but at the Panasonic "native" file size of 1280 x 720. This is not true HD, but after testing the camera's 1920 x 1080 record modes, I found the difference negligible and the 1080 mode had problems with motion. And the file sizes made shooting 1080 inefficient.
After much research about the absolute best methodology for finishing, I decided on the following; 123,840 uncompressed TIFF frames (86 mins x 24 frames per second) were exported to a hard drive and brought over to one of my favorite post production facilities, NICE SHOES, and colorist Chris Ryan imported the TIFF sequence into the specter (German color correct box) and bumped up to true HD 1920 x 1080. It was color corrected there and laid down to D5.
No special pro lenses were used. We used a wide angle adapter on occasion and a long lens adapter for daytime surveillance. For surveillance night scenes, we used military grade night vision.
I did all of the sound editing and sound designing and editing and music editing in the Avid. The final was mixed in Protools. Shots that needed effects were exported as uncompressed TIFFs out of Spectre and went to one of two places:
1. AFTER EFFECTS was used for the surveillance graphics. It took months to develop the surveillance look. We (Roberto Serrini and I) experimented with a lot more graphics on screen and a lot more text. But that took away from the beauty of the imagery and became too noisy and less "filmic" also getting the right interaction of the onscreen text, the surveillance chatter (which I recorded through a kids' toy voice distorter) and the onscreen action took a lot of fine tuning. I worked intimately with my assistant and After Effects artist refining ad infinitum. After I color corrected the night vision in Specter, TIFF frames were exported and we laid the After Effects back on top and then exported TIFF frames.
2. THE FLAME was used for some "gun flashes" and "electricity" in the stun baton were added after the color correct and bump up to 1080 HD from the Specter. The color TVs were composited and tweaked in the flame by Nick Sasso at Manic. Final finishing took the After Effects TIFF frames and conformed in the flame and laid down to D5 at NICE SHOES.
The film basically only existed on hard drives until we were done and laid down to D5. I think it was pretty innovative. The dream sequences on top of the World Trade Towers were shot on green screen, and uncompressed TIFFs were exported out of Avid and into FLAME and matte paintings and comps were done in flame. The intro animation was done in After Effects.
www.abledangerthemovie.com
Monday, September 8, 2008
Manny Farber's Lists
Barbara Schock wrote for Filmmaker:
The phenomenal painter, teacher and film critic Manny Farber called his film class “A Hard Look at the Movies.” It was the first upper-division college class I took. I’d transferred from a small college in the Midwest to the University of California at San Diego, and I’d never seen a foreign film, unless you count the Sergio Leone westerns. We watched the following films in a 10-week period, and it turned the way I looked at movies upside down: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Max Ophuls’s The Earrings of Madame de…, Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: the Wrath of God, Joseph Lewis’s Gun Crazy, Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout, Roberto Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy, Werner Schroeter’s The Death of Maria Malibran, Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou and Les Carabiniers, John Boorman’s Point Blank, Eric Rohmer’s La Collectionneuse, Joseph Losey’s Accident, Robert Aldrich’s The Grissom Gang, Luis Buñuel’s Diary of a Chambermaid, Frank Borzage’s Man’s Castle, Nagisa Oshima’s Diary of a Shinjuku Burglar, Jean Cocteau and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Les Enfants terribles and several Buster Keaton films.
The phenomenal painter, teacher and film critic Manny Farber called his film class “A Hard Look at the Movies.” It was the first upper-division college class I took. I’d transferred from a small college in the Midwest to the University of California at San Diego, and I’d never seen a foreign film, unless you count the Sergio Leone westerns. We watched the following films in a 10-week period, and it turned the way I looked at movies upside down: Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Max Ophuls’s The Earrings of Madame de…, Jacques Tourneur’s Out of the Past, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity, Werner Herzog’s Aguirre: the Wrath of God, Joseph Lewis’s Gun Crazy, Nicolas Roeg’s Walkabout, Roberto Rossellini’s Voyage to Italy, Werner Schroeter’s The Death of Maria Malibran, Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou and Les Carabiniers, John Boorman’s Point Blank, Eric Rohmer’s La Collectionneuse, Joseph Losey’s Accident, Robert Aldrich’s The Grissom Gang, Luis Buñuel’s Diary of a Chambermaid, Frank Borzage’s Man’s Castle, Nagisa Oshima’s Diary of a Shinjuku Burglar, Jean Cocteau and Jean-Pierre Melville’s Les Enfants terribles and several Buster Keaton films.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Sunday, August 3, 2008
FINISTERRE by Saint Etienne
FINISTERRE from Plexifilm on Vimeo.
Presented by Saint Etienne, Finisterre takes us on a journey through London, from the suburbs into the heart of the city over an imaginary 24 hours. Featuring the observations and reminiscences of Lawrence from Felt/Denim, Mark Perry, the editor of original punk fanzine Sniffin' Glue, singer Vashti Bunyan, and many more...
http://plexifilm.com/media.php?id=77
Sunday, May 4, 2008
GLORIOUS GLORY
http://www.filmmakermagazine.com/blog/2008/04/glorious-glory.php#comments
One of the hits of this year's SXSW was the 25-minute short, Glory at Sea. Set in a magically real, emotionally honest post-Katrina New Orleans, the film is something of a mini-epic, a grand tale of outsized, heartbreaking ambition set against both a devastated city and the boundlessness of the open waters. The story of Ben Zeitlin's film, unfortunately, did not end with its triumphant Austin premiere. Zeitlin and members of his crew were injured in a serious car accident on the way to a screening. The uninsured Zeitlin broke his hip and pelvis and has two sprained ankles. So, the upcoming New York screening this Saturday is not only your chance to see a great film but also your chance to help Zeitlin pay his medical bills, as proceeds will go towards defraying his $80,000 worth of expenses. There's also an Austin screening on April 29 that is also a medical-bill fundraiser. (And if these screenings sell out, which I'm sure they will, please consider donating.)In case I haven't been convincing enough, I'll quote here Michael Tully from an email he sent around urging people to attend the screening:
Glory at Sea should be taught in film schools from this point forth. In only 25 minutes, it has the emotional gravity and impact of a feature four times its length. On a production level, I consider it to be more Herzog than Herzog. On an emotional level, is spiritually transcendent and indescribably powerful. It also has one of my favorite scores of all-time. Do yourself a favor and buy a ticket for this special screening of Glory at Sea. If there's a way for me to be there, I will be. For now, I will simply watch it again and succumb to its reckless, daring, brilliant magic.
One of the hits of this year's SXSW was the 25-minute short, Glory at Sea. Set in a magically real, emotionally honest post-Katrina New Orleans, the film is something of a mini-epic, a grand tale of outsized, heartbreaking ambition set against both a devastated city and the boundlessness of the open waters. The story of Ben Zeitlin's film, unfortunately, did not end with its triumphant Austin premiere. Zeitlin and members of his crew were injured in a serious car accident on the way to a screening. The uninsured Zeitlin broke his hip and pelvis and has two sprained ankles. So, the upcoming New York screening this Saturday is not only your chance to see a great film but also your chance to help Zeitlin pay his medical bills, as proceeds will go towards defraying his $80,000 worth of expenses. There's also an Austin screening on April 29 that is also a medical-bill fundraiser. (And if these screenings sell out, which I'm sure they will, please consider donating.)In case I haven't been convincing enough, I'll quote here Michael Tully from an email he sent around urging people to attend the screening:
Glory at Sea should be taught in film schools from this point forth. In only 25 minutes, it has the emotional gravity and impact of a feature four times its length. On a production level, I consider it to be more Herzog than Herzog. On an emotional level, is spiritually transcendent and indescribably powerful. It also has one of my favorite scores of all-time. Do yourself a favor and buy a ticket for this special screening of Glory at Sea. If there's a way for me to be there, I will be. For now, I will simply watch it again and succumb to its reckless, daring, brilliant magic.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
"A Story of the Red Hills" at Tribeca Film Festival
A Story of the Red Hills
The story of a disheartened dancer and a disabled boy--both of whose lives are transformed by the magic and power of Chhou, a traditional Bengali dance of great spectacle and color-is recounted movingly, if improbably, by a renowned Bollywood choreographer. » Read More
The story of a disheartened dancer and a disabled boy--both of whose lives are transformed by the magic and power of Chhou, a traditional Bengali dance of great spectacle and color-is recounted movingly, if improbably, by a renowned Bollywood choreographer. » Read More
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
3 Documentaries and 2 Art Films at the Tribeca Film Festival
Standard Operating Procedure
Can a photograph change the world? Can an exposé also be a coverup? In Standard Operating Procedure, Academy Award®-winning director Errol Morris turns the camera on the American soldiers who took the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs.
Followed by a conversation with Errol Morris. » View Film Details
2001: A Space Odyssey
Sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Kubrick’s 2001 caught the imagination of a generation with its near-hallucinatory depiction of space, artificial intelligence, and the human condition. The 40th anniversary of this film finds us once again confronting profound questions about the effects these things have had on our culture and our future.Followed by a conversation with scientists about the realities of Kubrick’s futuristic masterpiece and of artificial intelligence. » View Film Details
Celebrating Berlin
Hosted by the School of Visual ArtsLou Reed’s critically acclaimed 1973 album Berlin was yet another musical step forward in the career of the man who brought the darkest themes of literature to rock and roll. For years, Berlin was considered one of the more eclectic works in Reed’s extraordinary catalog, but one that clearly cried out for a theatrical presentation. In 2006, backed by a full orchestra, Reed performed the mini-opera in its entirety over five nights at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. And, under the direction of painter/director Julian Schnabel, this historic event was captured on film.
Followed by Lou Reed in a conversation with Vanity Fair's Lisa Robinson. » View Film Details
Empire II
Although inspired by a monument of cinematic stasis, Andy Warhol's eight-hour Empire (1964), this new three-hour experiment is an astonishingly beautiful and unexpectedly lively tone poem paying unforgettable tribute to the sights and sounds of the mythical, magical place called Manhattan. » View Film Details
Everywhere at Once
Renowned photographer Peter Lindbergh and experimental filmmaker Holly Fisher, with actress Jeanne Moreau, weave a tapestry of images shaping one woman's deepest sense of selfhood. Music by Lois V Vierk. » Read More http://www.peterlindbergh.com/everywhereatonce/
Can a photograph change the world? Can an exposé also be a coverup? In Standard Operating Procedure, Academy Award®-winning director Errol Morris turns the camera on the American soldiers who took the infamous Abu Ghraib photographs.
Followed by a conversation with Errol Morris. » View Film Details
2001: A Space Odyssey
Sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Kubrick’s 2001 caught the imagination of a generation with its near-hallucinatory depiction of space, artificial intelligence, and the human condition. The 40th anniversary of this film finds us once again confronting profound questions about the effects these things have had on our culture and our future.Followed by a conversation with scientists about the realities of Kubrick’s futuristic masterpiece and of artificial intelligence. » View Film Details
Celebrating Berlin
Hosted by the School of Visual ArtsLou Reed’s critically acclaimed 1973 album Berlin was yet another musical step forward in the career of the man who brought the darkest themes of literature to rock and roll. For years, Berlin was considered one of the more eclectic works in Reed’s extraordinary catalog, but one that clearly cried out for a theatrical presentation. In 2006, backed by a full orchestra, Reed performed the mini-opera in its entirety over five nights at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. And, under the direction of painter/director Julian Schnabel, this historic event was captured on film.
Followed by Lou Reed in a conversation with Vanity Fair's Lisa Robinson. » View Film Details
Empire II
Although inspired by a monument of cinematic stasis, Andy Warhol's eight-hour Empire (1964), this new three-hour experiment is an astonishingly beautiful and unexpectedly lively tone poem paying unforgettable tribute to the sights and sounds of the mythical, magical place called Manhattan. » View Film Details
Everywhere at Once
Renowned photographer Peter Lindbergh and experimental filmmaker Holly Fisher, with actress Jeanne Moreau, weave a tapestry of images shaping one woman's deepest sense of selfhood. Music by Lois V Vierk. » Read More http://www.peterlindbergh.com/everywhereatonce/
Sunday, January 6, 2008
http://www.formatlabor.net/
Collective Subjectivity – On the way to new manners of working and distribution formats in audiovisual media.
Janus von Abaton / Till Nikolaus von Heiseler / Sophia Nabokov / Andres Fuentes Cannobbio / Schlomo Uhlenspiegel
1. About this Text Together with the camcorder revolution and with the digital possibilities of post production and distribution an immense technical space of feasibility was opened. The actual possibilities of realisation however are restricted by the network of standardized production and distribution, by traditional methods which still date from the time of classical film and by our ideas which are formed by cinema and TV.
This text invites video artists, film-makers, film-editors and actors to reflect and to develop together a method for developing non linear and polyphone narrative ways for the area of audio-vision and of other...
Read article
Janus von Abaton / Till Nikolaus von Heiseler / Sophia Nabokov / Andres Fuentes Cannobbio / Schlomo Uhlenspiegel
1. About this Text Together with the camcorder revolution and with the digital possibilities of post production and distribution an immense technical space of feasibility was opened. The actual possibilities of realisation however are restricted by the network of standardized production and distribution, by traditional methods which still date from the time of classical film and by our ideas which are formed by cinema and TV.
This text invites video artists, film-makers, film-editors and actors to reflect and to develop together a method for developing non linear and polyphone narrative ways for the area of audio-vision and of other...
Read article
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Truth/False=Documentary/Fiction Film?
Shock of the New: Fresh Directions in Documentary
The final discussion panel at True/False held Sunday afternoon was, "The Shock of the New." It was the most passionate documentary panel I've attended in a while—notwithstanding the provocative "21st Century Documentary: Notes on the Evolving Doc Form" panel I attended at Sundance (the official Sundance podcasts are here.)
Toronto Film Festival programmer Thom Powers moderated a panel of four directors whose new documentaries push the boundaries of the doc genre: Arturo Perez Torres (Super Amigos), Fergus O'Brien (The Armstrongs), Brett Morgen (Chicago 10) and Jason Kohn (Manda Bala).
Here are a few highlights of the discussion:
Brett Morgen: "There's a great book on non-fiction film by Karl Heider called Ethnographic Film which refers to a higher truth in non-fiction. And if you know Flaherty's Nanook of the North, what it refers to is the fact that basically Nanook was all staged, but it's capturing what the life is like in way that probably couldn't be done as well in traditional vérité…I think what I'm trying to achieve in my work is achieving a higher—a heightened truth."
[…]
Thom Powers: "I feel profoundly nervous when we separate the word documentary from a search for the truth. It concerns me when people use Michael Moore and his blurred tactics to kind of cast dispersions on documentary as a form— 'Well, you can't trust documentary makers, they aren't applying the same type kind of rigor that say Frontline is.'"
Brett Morgen: "It's so archaic…Look, there's truth in fiction and there's truth in non-fiction. When you see a fiction film and there's a moment that works for you, it's because it's communicating a universal truth. And all fiction film is encoded with ethnographic DNA, so to speak. So, I think this notion that fiction is false and non-fiction is real is totally archaic…In the realm of non-fiction, we need to communicate that it is all about truth, and we need people to loosen up…We as documentarians sculpt performances from our characters from vérité in the same way we do in fiction…It is important to know that there's certain media whose sole objective is to expose a "truth." I think that it's important that there's a difference between reading the New York Times (or New York Post, if you're so inclined) or going to a movie theater. And a movie theater is about dreams and about mythology and about shared experiences. And if you want history, read a book."
[…]
Arturo Perez Torres: "You go through sometimes a hundred hours and the movie is actually made in the cutting room. When you're shooting you don't really sometimes know what you're going to get. So you are telling a story in a way that's already told in your head. So you're making the story. So I totally agree with Brett. it's totally subjective, I mean that the notion that a documentary represents some truth—the only truth that it represents is that it happened there, but when it's put together it's your own truth in a way. So it's not 'documentary' as we call it truth in that way…With Super Amigos, what we ran into—the subject is so fantastic that we [needed] to treat it in the truest way. So we [shot] fly-on-the-wall style full vérité—no one looks at the camera, the camera doesn't exist. And we would prepare our subjects: 'Please ignore the camera, we're not here.' What it ended up being was the opposite, ironically. [Audiences] would see it as 'that's totally staged' and we were like 'Wow, If they would have looked at the camera once'… So in a way, vérité almost has the opposite effect as what we wanted…"
[…]
Joel Heller (asking Thom Powers from the audience): "As a festival programmer…have you given some thought to how to describe the different sub-genres [of documentary films] in ways that help audiences make sense of this huge tent called "documentary"?
Thom Powers: "I should say that despite my role in kind of challenging [the panelists] with my questions up here, I am interested in the genre of documentary as being as wide as possible. I think it's important for us as filmmakers and programmers and journalists to communicate to audiences that a documentary can be different things and it's limiting when people only think of documentary as say a Frontline show. But I think it's incumbent upon the filmmaker, the programmer, other people involved in the film—to communicate what the level of expectation should be when you're coming to this film. As a programmer, that starts with the program notes that we write in the festival guide that express what the style of the film is that you can expect and it's in talking about the films. And I think that there are things that are maybe pushing the hybrid so far that I wouldn't necessarily program them under documentary section, but somewhere else in the festival."
These are not the only docmakers who have been thinking about the evolving genre. While I was chatting with Director Randy Olson (Flock of Dodos) last month, he said he has been wondering why documentaries are not more clearly subgrouped as fact-based documents or opinion pieces. He cites the usefulness of the way newspapers separate their news coverage from the editorial and opinion pages.
As theatrical documentaries continue to grow in visibility, I expect that this conversation is just getting started.
For me, it's refreshing that in contrast to Albert Maysles' insistence that documentary film can and should capture an "objective truth," a new generation of doc makers are exploring how to make the most of the fact that all documentary sub-genres (even vérité) are still ultimately constructions that reflect the filmmakers' perceptions.
As the doc form evolves, the challenge will be how to successfully represent individual documentary films (and set expectations) in an open and accurate way that supports audiences in appreciating each film on its own terms.
The final discussion panel at True/False held Sunday afternoon was, "The Shock of the New." It was the most passionate documentary panel I've attended in a while—notwithstanding the provocative "21st Century Documentary: Notes on the Evolving Doc Form" panel I attended at Sundance (the official Sundance podcasts are here.)
Toronto Film Festival programmer Thom Powers moderated a panel of four directors whose new documentaries push the boundaries of the doc genre: Arturo Perez Torres (Super Amigos), Fergus O'Brien (The Armstrongs), Brett Morgen (Chicago 10) and Jason Kohn (Manda Bala).
Here are a few highlights of the discussion:
Brett Morgen: "There's a great book on non-fiction film by Karl Heider called Ethnographic Film which refers to a higher truth in non-fiction. And if you know Flaherty's Nanook of the North, what it refers to is the fact that basically Nanook was all staged, but it's capturing what the life is like in way that probably couldn't be done as well in traditional vérité…I think what I'm trying to achieve in my work is achieving a higher—a heightened truth."
[…]
Thom Powers: "I feel profoundly nervous when we separate the word documentary from a search for the truth. It concerns me when people use Michael Moore and his blurred tactics to kind of cast dispersions on documentary as a form— 'Well, you can't trust documentary makers, they aren't applying the same type kind of rigor that say Frontline is.'"
Brett Morgen: "It's so archaic…Look, there's truth in fiction and there's truth in non-fiction. When you see a fiction film and there's a moment that works for you, it's because it's communicating a universal truth. And all fiction film is encoded with ethnographic DNA, so to speak. So, I think this notion that fiction is false and non-fiction is real is totally archaic…In the realm of non-fiction, we need to communicate that it is all about truth, and we need people to loosen up…We as documentarians sculpt performances from our characters from vérité in the same way we do in fiction…It is important to know that there's certain media whose sole objective is to expose a "truth." I think that it's important that there's a difference between reading the New York Times (or New York Post, if you're so inclined) or going to a movie theater. And a movie theater is about dreams and about mythology and about shared experiences. And if you want history, read a book."
[…]
Arturo Perez Torres: "You go through sometimes a hundred hours and the movie is actually made in the cutting room. When you're shooting you don't really sometimes know what you're going to get. So you are telling a story in a way that's already told in your head. So you're making the story. So I totally agree with Brett. it's totally subjective, I mean that the notion that a documentary represents some truth—the only truth that it represents is that it happened there, but when it's put together it's your own truth in a way. So it's not 'documentary' as we call it truth in that way…With Super Amigos, what we ran into—the subject is so fantastic that we [needed] to treat it in the truest way. So we [shot] fly-on-the-wall style full vérité—no one looks at the camera, the camera doesn't exist. And we would prepare our subjects: 'Please ignore the camera, we're not here.' What it ended up being was the opposite, ironically. [Audiences] would see it as 'that's totally staged' and we were like 'Wow, If they would have looked at the camera once'… So in a way, vérité almost has the opposite effect as what we wanted…"
[…]
Joel Heller (asking Thom Powers from the audience): "As a festival programmer…have you given some thought to how to describe the different sub-genres [of documentary films] in ways that help audiences make sense of this huge tent called "documentary"?
Thom Powers: "I should say that despite my role in kind of challenging [the panelists] with my questions up here, I am interested in the genre of documentary as being as wide as possible. I think it's important for us as filmmakers and programmers and journalists to communicate to audiences that a documentary can be different things and it's limiting when people only think of documentary as say a Frontline show. But I think it's incumbent upon the filmmaker, the programmer, other people involved in the film—to communicate what the level of expectation should be when you're coming to this film. As a programmer, that starts with the program notes that we write in the festival guide that express what the style of the film is that you can expect and it's in talking about the films. And I think that there are things that are maybe pushing the hybrid so far that I wouldn't necessarily program them under documentary section, but somewhere else in the festival."
These are not the only docmakers who have been thinking about the evolving genre. While I was chatting with Director Randy Olson (Flock of Dodos) last month, he said he has been wondering why documentaries are not more clearly subgrouped as fact-based documents or opinion pieces. He cites the usefulness of the way newspapers separate their news coverage from the editorial and opinion pages.
As theatrical documentaries continue to grow in visibility, I expect that this conversation is just getting started.
For me, it's refreshing that in contrast to Albert Maysles' insistence that documentary film can and should capture an "objective truth," a new generation of doc makers are exploring how to make the most of the fact that all documentary sub-genres (even vérité) are still ultimately constructions that reflect the filmmakers' perceptions.
As the doc form evolves, the challenge will be how to successfully represent individual documentary films (and set expectations) in an open and accurate way that supports audiences in appreciating each film on its own terms.
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