Avant-Garde Film Journal: Stan Brakhage Interview

Avant-Garde Film Journal
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Avant-Garde Film Journal
Week 7
* Stan Brakhage Interview
In week 7, we studied about Stan Brakhage's interview. The interview communicated about Stan Brakhage's ideas that enhanced his artistic practice. Adams explains that Brakhage's artistic work started in 1963 and ended in 2003 after his death. During the time, Brakhage's ideas on Cinema and writing were consistent. However, in his late 80s, Brakhage shifted to autobiographical and psychodrama confessional work that enabled him to define his Cinema. Stan explained about moving from "Beakhage to "SB." He grew spontaneously as a film artist after getting rid of drama. He felt that his history and life had to come from the inside of him. He had perceived that everything radiating out of him would cause him to be more egocentric or personal. He also stated that he allowed himself occasionally to be used by mysterious forces to accomplish tasks that would satisfy him more. Stan had met with Jean Cocteau's while in secondary school, which caused him to acknowledge that film was indeed an art. During the time, he was involved in music, drama, and mostly in arts.
* Stan Brakhage's 60th Birthday Interview
Brakhage stated that all the films he made were political. For instance, the "Scenes from Under Childhood" that was out of disgust represented a false childhood and was primarily focused on abetting and aiding children's abuse. Moreover, his childbirth films were focused on showcasing how women were mistreated and ignored during childbirths (Suranjin, n.d). As a result, political motivations caused him to produce the first childbirth films. Besides, as an artist, Stan was careful to ensure that he did not allow political and social impulses to dominate because they would cause him to falsify the natural and most essential balances in making aesthetic ecologies.
Week 8
Bruce Conner: Crafting Visions from Film Pieces
Bruce Conner started "A Movie" after establishing a shop in 1957. David (1984) expresses that he primarily focused on performance pieces, abstract art, drawing, printmaking, painting, assemblage, sculpture, and collage. When creating 'A Movie," he envisioned a recurring footage loop that was projected from the back in an installation piece. Unfortunately, he could not fund his project because he was unstable financially. He realized that he could not afford a camera, and took inspirations from Duck Soup and started editing footage bought from a store into a chase sequence that became a vital scene in his "A Movie." Conner created numerous sub-sequent films that comprised of footage sequences that carried similar sociopolitical drive and visual energy that enabled his initial creation to appear excellence. Conner's films were primarily concentrated on "the struggle between tenebrous obscurity and dazzling illumination."
Conner started his film work in 1933. He complicated, expanded, and extended his work, and by 1953, he created the "A Movie." He used the film marked to deal with countdown codes and numbers obtained from production labs. The utility footage captivated Conner because it tapped in his reflexive attraction with the film materiality and because he found the sinister implications on how the visual material was essential to the filmmaking mechanics. He saw the suppression as a censorship form linked to male chauvinism, militarism, and the manipulation of media that raged cancers on modern culture. He perceived censorship as "death against life," which was relevant to the information, leaders, and film images that viewers were not supposed to see. Such formed the special place that Conner reserved for the disdained, misunderstood, undervalued, and the overlooked actors in the film. He concisely announced his intent to expose the viewing processes and persistent conceptual filters "although unseen" that shaped his mainstream media. Furthermore, Conner had also planned to present the sociopolitical ideologies that the methods and filters affirmed and legitimized.
Week 9
Carolee Schneemann: Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising
The Scorpio rising film presents Kenneth Anger's violent imagery and ideas broadcasted to the entire nation. The magic in Kenneth Anger's film comprises significant excerpts from fireworks, "My Demon Brother" invocation, and the Puce Moment, Rabbit's Moon, and Pleasure Dome Inauguration. Carolee explains that the films portrayed the smoking of cocks and hash on TV. Although it is not possible to imagine such instances getting on the TV in the United States decades ago, Kenneth Anger films literally got on the TV. According to the filmmaker, Reinhold E, Kenneth Anger directed himself, therefore getting on film. Kenneth Anger did not allow filmmakers to lead him, and when he was directed, he provided his terms and conditions. Filmmakers shot Kenneth Anger's interview segment while sitting behind a makeshift altar, in the magical "war gods," and lit in magenta circle observed as the film ends.
The Scorpio rising film shows Kenneth Anger flipping through the sketchbook "Puce Women." Anger is an outstanding illustrator of his tributes to Hollywood's female archetypes in the golden era and the movie star architecture. Moreover, in the Scorpio Rising film, Kenneth Anger is observed shooting scenes with a demon, with the adept in his war gods circle, and with Leslie Huggins. In the final film, Kenneth Anger is observed muttering mysterious words when the demon appears. Anger engages in a discussion with is art theories such as Aleister Crowley. He perceives his camera as a wand and casts his films in a manner suggesting that he considered his actors as elemental spirits but not human beings. In other instances, he indicates that he makes use of astrology when deciding on the choices. Such, directly explains the cinematic modus operandi of Kenneth Anger. As a result, people interested in Anger's work can view his films to learn more about how he portrays Cinema Magus.
Week 10
Asian and African-America Cinema
Michael Atkinson in the "Page of Madness" explains that "A Page of Madness" film by Teinosuke Kinugasa provides a surprising, dazzling, and impressing silence. Michael (2017) states that the Asian Cinema, because of the silent marketed by megatauteur imprint of Kenji Mizoguchi or Yasujiro Ozu, which indicates that the film was not viewed mainly by westerners. As a result, it did not make a significant standout in the evolution of Cinema. Besides, the scholarship annals about the experimental or avant-garde film, which is a heritage to which Kinugusa's movie belongs, was somehow ignored. For instance, the movie was substantially unknown, until the film director concealed a copy in storage in the 1970s, many years after retiring.
The historical anomalies of Asian and American films are n...