All posts tagged with 'film theory'
The Cinematic Experience and Memory Sense
5 p.m., Saturday, April 16, room 715 | Faculty respondent: Sam Ishii-Gonzalez
Post-production of the Past: Moving Images as Smooth and/or Monumental Memory
“It is in the present a filmmaker makes memories,
in order to make use of them in the future when
the present will be past.”
- Gilles Deleuze (Cinema 2: Time-Image, 1986, 52)
The presentation (paper) is based on the study of ways in which various forms of film medium can either monumentalize the past or creatively and critically stimulate our memories. The differences between smooth (semi-stable, open, becoming) and monumental (ideologically constructed and representational) cinematic memory, determined by films’ time rendering and based on the techniques of post-production, will be discussed in the presentation.
The texts by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition, A Thousand Plateaus, Cinema 2: Time-Image), German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (On the Use and Abuse of History for Life), contemporary art critic Nicolas Bouriaud (Postproduction: Culture as Screenplay: How Art Reprograms the World) as well as thoughts by acknowledged film and video artists (including A. Weerasethakul, D. Narkevicius, A. Tarkovsky and M. Antonioni) will serve as the theoretical background for the presentation. The comparison of film form to architectural space will be used to exemplify the distinction between the production of striated and smooth memory.
The case study of the portrayal of the monument in honor of the first Soviet dictator Vladimir Iliych Lenin (built in 1953 in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania and dismantled in 1991) will be done by analyzing and comparing short 2-minute excerpts from the Soviet propaganda film “One Day in Vilnius” (1969) and the contemporary video artwork “Once in the 20th Century” by Deimantas Narkevicius (1998), both presenting image of the same Lenin monument, but in very different ways. Summing it up, the new possibilities and risks of a creative post-production of smooth (versus monumental) memory in a digital film era will be also reviewed.
Dislocating the Senses: the Musical and Cultural Material of Fellini Satyricon
With the film Fellini Satyricon (1969), Federico Fellini pushed deep into a sensual, often surreal visual style and a mode of storytelling undermined linearity and logic. The film’s score, departing from the style that Nino Rota typically contributed to Fellini’s work, was a combination of pure electronic sounds, acoustic instruments and voices arranged in distinctive textures, and ethnographic recordings of non-Western music. Fellini made his Satyricon as a reflection on and reaction to its times, in which people in his native Italy and elsewhere were exploring the limits of social and sexual mores. Electronic music of this period, in both institutional studios and the work of independent experimenters, made similar claims to test the boundaries of what was possible in sound and how music was situated in cultural context. The sensory world of Fellini Satyricon’s score fit easily with that of the film’s visual material and narrative.
While the film’s visual and sonic elements suit and reinforce one another, their combination works less to seem “natural” and encourage clear readings of the scenes than to heighten the film’s odd, disorienting sensory experiences. I identify this phenomenon as a kind of dislocation, and in this paper I explore how the sense of dislocation in Fellini Satyricon relies on music. My study draws on the history of experimental music in the mid-20th century, theories of how cinema constructs the sense of place, and analysis of scenes and score passages. I examine how music and picture interact both as sensory material (playing, for example, on the effects of distinct timbres and textures of electronic and acoustic sound) and as cultural material (referencing the viewer’s knowledge of filmic and musical conventions.)
Kino-Made: In Search of an Emancipated Cinematic Pedagogy Through a De-centered Montage
What is an emancipated spectator? Is there something in the construction of a work of art that allows for an emancipated spectator? Is it possible for the object of a spectatorʼs gaze to facilitate an egalitarian discourse between the construction of the object, the artist, and the spectator?
This essay and video project is going to investigate Jacques Ranciereʼs notion of the ʻemancipated spectatorʼ and the cinematic object realized by the spectator, as realized in certain films by Jean Luc Godard. In the case of the essay, the cinematic object will be signified as Kino-Made, the juxtaposition and synthesis of the theories and practices of Soviet documentary filmmaker Dziga Vertovʼs ʻKino-Eyeʼ and French artist Marcel Duchampʼs ʻReadymadesʼ.
Thus, Kino-Made is a cinematic object constructed from the already-processed sounds, images and texts from everyday life and situations. This cinematic object is a de-centered object held together by the relations between its assembled elements. It proposes an emancipated pedagogical relationship between artist and spectator through the work of art, an art object that allows for observation and analysis of its intervals, elements, appearance, and construction in a heterogeneous manner.
Pedro Juan Vidal is a video-artist based in Brooklyn, New York. With an undergraduate degree in film studies, Pedro came to study his Master’s in Film & Media Studies at the New School with an interest in cultural studies and aesthetic critique. His work explores everyday life in its construction and assemblage. Kino-Made, the project which he brings to Critical Themes, transforms the construction and assemblage of cinema into a school of thought. Kino-Made investigates the possibility of an egalitarian discourse between the the artist and spectator through the cinematic object. Vidal’s videos can be found here.
Panel: The Cinematic Experience and Memory Sense
Sam Morrison is a Master of Arts candidate in media studies at the New School and a musician with a background including improvisation, performance in musical traditions of the Americas, Europe and Africa, and music theory and history. His work in media studies deals with music, film/video and visual art through questions of individual creative practice, reception and interpretation, and sensory and embodied experience. His current and recent production activity includes composition, piano performance, film sound design, and multimedia installations.
Panel: The Cinematic Experience and Memory Sense
For the last seven years Lukas Brasiskis has worked in film education, theory and production. In 2005, after earning his bachelor degree in Vilnius University (Lithuania), he was among the founders of the first non-government Film and Media Education Center (www.menoavilys.org) in Lithuania. There he worked on implementation of a number of film education projects and reviewed films in Lithuanian cinema-devoted magazines and on Lithuanian National TV. Since then Lukas has been contributing to the biggest film devoted magazine in Lithuania “Cinema” (“Kinas”). In 2006 Lukas was one of the directors (together with Rugile Bardziukaite and Dovydas Petravicius) of the experimental documentary “K City”, which received The Best Youth Documentary Award in the Lithuanian contest organized by Goethe institute and was selected to be screened in the International Munich Film Festival for Film Schools among other international film festivals. In 2009 Lukas has received Fulbright Scholarship and currently he is pursuing MA degree in Film and Media Studies Program at the New School University. In New York City Lukas continues to focus his attention on film theory, in particular on the temporal aspect of moving images and their exceptional rapport with reality. Lukas also creatively examines film as he produces his theory-and-practice based master’s thesis on “Cinematic Realism beyond Representation”. As a part of his thesis Lukas has also worked on three-channel video installation “any-space-whatever” (http://aswnewyork.tumblr.com) as well as on a creative documentary “Moving Memories”.
Panel: The Cinematic Experience and Memory Sense
Daniel Nienhuis is a video editor and animator currently living in Pennsylvania. This is his second year in The New School’s Media Studies MA program. Dan’s primary interests lie in film theory and his short films have been honored in numerous festivals. His work can be seen online at wataingi.com. Dan recently began work on his thesis, which explores the films of Hayao Miyazaki.
Panel: You are (W)Here: Critical Approaches to Mapping