Week 8 The Post-War Avant-garde

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Week 8 The Post-War Avant-garde

• The Post-War Avant-garde and Independent
  Cinema.Readings Thompson Bordwell Chapter 21
  Documentary and Experimental Cinema in the
  Postwar Era 1945-Mid 1960s pp 478-507 and
  pp536-555 (3rd Edition). Maya Deren p 490 452-3
  (3rd Edition)
• Hayward, Key Concepts Feminist film theory
  pp97-116
• Supplementary Reading Laura Mulvey Visual
  Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, (Braudy and Cohen
  pp 833-844).

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Topics

• Counter culture, Avant-Garde, Experimentalism,
  Structural cinema.
• May 68 The Society of the Spectacle (Guy
  Debord)
• Semiotic Theory (Saussure, Barthes, Pierce)
• The Mirror Stage Psychoanalysis and cinema.
  (Christian Metz Jacques Lacan).
• Filmmakers Maya Deren, Kenneth Anger Warhol,
  Ackerman, Mekas, Snow, Varga, Schneeman,

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Counter culture

• Independent film makers c.w. more commercial
  interests of Hollywood producers.
• Documentary film making
• Avant-garde personal expression aided by the
  introduction of cheaper portable 8mm 16mm cameras
  and projection equipment

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Screenings Meshes of the Afternoon (1943-59)
Maya Deren/ Alex Hammid Fireworks (1947)
Kenneth Anger Last Year at Marienbad (1961),
Alain Renais  
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Maya Deren 1917-1961
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NYC Avant-Garde 1947-68

• Jonas Mekas Important figure impresario of the
  NYC Avant-garde (or neo-avant-garde) (Film makers
  Cooperative founder and cofounder of anthology
  film archives) Film Culture magazine and writing
  for the Village Voice.
• Bruce Connor A Movie (1958)
• Jack Smith Flaming Creatures (1963)

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Kenneth Anger (1927-Fireworks (1947) Scorpio
Rising (1964)
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Important independent films

• Cleo from 5-7 (1961) Agnes Varda Scorpio Rising
  (1964) Kenneth Anger
• Chelsea Girls (1966) Andy Warhol Weekend (1967)
  Jean-Luc Godard
• Wavelength (1967) Michael Snow
• Performance (1970) Nicholas Roeg
• Privilege (1990) Yvonne Rainer

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May 1968
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Guy Debord (1931-1994) and Situationism 1957-1968

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Society of the Spectacle Theses 14

• The entire life of societies in which modern
  conditions of production reign appears as an
  immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything
  that was expressed directly has been distanced in
  a representation. (Thesis 1) The term had been
  first used in print in LInternationale
  situationniste 3 in 1959, in an article probably
  penned by Guy Debord, which gave rare approval to
  Alain Resnais film Hiroshima mon amour.

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• Spectacle in general, as the concrete immersion
  of life is the autonomous movement of the
  non-living. Spectacle is not a collection of
  images, but a social relation between people
  mediated through images. (Thesis 4)

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• Among other possibilities the cinema lends
  itself particularly well to studying the present
  as an historical problem, to dismantling the
  processes of reification. ( René Vienet, 1959)

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Debord and Godard were interested in a
politicized Brechtian Cinema A Marxist
cinema?The Dziga Vertov GroupImportance of
Cahiers du Cinema.Semiology (Discourse on
signs) Ferdinand Saussure Roland Barthes The
Death of the Author
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Semiology / semiotics

• theoretical framework for the study of the
  meaning of language, signs and symbols
• Ferdinand Saussure
• Charles Sanders Pierce
• Semantics -- language and meaning
• Pragmatics -- who says what to whom context
• Syntactics formal rules for use of language.

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Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)
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Signs (dyadic)

• According to Ferdinand Saussure the Sign consists
  of
• (1) signifier -- the material form of the sign
  for example the word red - and
• (2) the signified -- the concept it represents
  i.e. the colour red
• Sound/sense
• Dark Clouds signify? In nature? In Culture?

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Connotative denotative

• Denotation denotative (indexical) plane of
  meaning
• r.e.d. colour red
• Connotation connotative (iconic and symbolic)
  plane of meaning

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Red

• rose, love, passion, lust, hot, anger, blood,
  communism endless signification hence
• the arbitrary nature of the sign

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sound/sense

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3 Categories (Saussure cw C.S. Pierce) Triadic

• 1. Iconic - a sign which resembles the signified
  (portrait, photo, diagram, map)
• 2. Symbolic - a sign which does not resemble the
  signified but which is purely conventional (the
  word stop, a red traffic light, or a national
  flag)
• 3. Indexical - a sign which is inherently
  connected in some way (existentially or causally)
  to the signified (e.g. smoke signifies fire and
  all the little symbols and emoticons on web pages
  ? -- mailboxes, speakers, envelopes, arrows etc
  _at_ ).

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Charles Sanders Pierce (1839 1914)
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Roland Barthes The Death of the Author the
death of the authorensures the birth of the
reader
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Christian Metz (1931 1993) The Imaginary
Signifier Psychoanalysis and the Cinema
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The Lacanian Mirror Stage

• The Imaginary, the Symbolic and the Real
• The dyad and split subjectivity. The one who is
  not one yet seeking the other un petit autre le
  petit object a in Lacanian terms.
• Subjectivity, identity formation and..
  misrecognition. I am.. another to myself?
• .

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Desire/pleasure

• I seek an other to myself. Jouissance!
• I am necessarily incomplete until I bond with
  another. and yet this bonding occurs in the
  realm of the imaginary or the symbolic!

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Implications for cinema

• Spectatorship Desire/Fetishism..
• Narrative construction - The Oedipal Trajectory
  in classical narrative cinema.
• Character formation and identification. You
  become what you desire?

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Jean-Luc Godard (1930-)

• Weekend (1967) released in 1968
• Begins a film found on a scrap heap
• Ends with the end of cinema

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Francis Ford Coppola (1939-)The Conversation
(1974)
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Robert Altman 1925 2006Nashville (1975)
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Chantal Ackerman (1950 --) Je Tu Il Elle
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V2_ Je Tu Il Elle
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Claude Jutra (1930 1986)Mon Oncle Antoine
(1971)
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Alain Renais (1922-)Last Year in Marienbad
(1961).

• Alain Robbe-Grillet Le nouveau roman

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Stan Brahkage (1933-2003)

• Brahkage is one of the four or five most
  authentic film artists working in cinema
  anywhere, and perhaps the most original film
  maker in America today (Mekas, J 1961 Village
  Voice column) Dog Star Man (1961-64)
• Mothlight (1963)

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• OF NECESSITY I BECOME INSTRUMENT FOR THE
  PASSAGE OF INNER VISION, THRU ALL MY
  SENSIBILITIES, INTO ITS EXTERNAL FORM.

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• My most active part in this process is to
  increase all my sensibilities (so that all films
  arise out of some total area of being or full
  life) AND, at the given moment of possible
  creation to act only out of necessity. In other
  words, I am principally concerned with
  revelation. -letter to P Adams Sitney, (1963)

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Endgames
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Agnes Varda (1928-)

• Cleo from 5-7 (1961)

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Andy Warhol (1928- 1987)

• Sleep (1963) 6h
• Empire (1964) 8h
• The Factory productions with Paul Morrissey
• Chelsea Girls (1966)
• Lonesome Cowboys (1968)

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• Chelsea Girls (1966) I love to be bored
• In the future everyone will be world famous for
  15 minutes

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Michael Snow(1929-

• Wavelength (1967) 45 minute slow zoom to a
  photograph of waves attached to the wall of his
  loft apartment/studio in NYC

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Structuralist film

• (P. Adams Sitney The film insists on its shape
  and what content it has is minimal and subsidiary
  to its outlineOther early Structuralist
  FilmsHollis Frampton (Zorns Lemma 1970)Ernie
  Gehr (Serene Velocity 1970)George Landow
  Remedial Reading Comprehension(1970)

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Hollis Frampton (1936-1984) Zorns lemma (1970)
Zorns Lemma
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Performance Nicholas Roeg (1928-)(1970)
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Womens Political films

• Geri Ashur Janies Janie (1971)
• Jim Klein and Jukia Reichart Union Maids (1976)

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Connie Field The life and times of Rosie the
Riveter (1976)
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The Personal is political (Confessional films)

• Carolee Schneeman Fuses (1964)
• Joyce Wieland Reason over Passion (1969)
• Michelle Citron Daughter Rite (1978)
• Sue Freidrich The Ties that Bind (1984)
• Trin te Min ha Surname Viet, Given Name Nam
  (1989)

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Carolee Schneeman (1939-) Fuses (1964)
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Yvonne Rainer (1934-)

• Lives of Performers (1971)
• Film about a woman who (1974)
• The man who envied women (1985)
• Privilege (1990)
• Ref. NSCAD Press Book 1974

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Week 9Contemporary Cinema Since the 1960s

• Crime, Horror and Suspense. The Hollywood B
  movie.
• Readings Thompson Bordwell Chapter 22
  Hollywoods Fall and Rise pp 505-533
• Hayward, Key Concepts Horror pp174-178.
• Screening Bucket of Blood (1960) Roger Corman,
  Night of the Living Dead (1968) George Romero
  Breathless (1960) Jean Luc Godard.