This is, at least, the 12th edition of my attempt to write something about the films, The Blood of the Poet and Rose Hobart. I sit at my desk, in front of my computer [and I sit on trains and in parks and other miscellaneous places, with a notebook and a pen], and try to answer the question: ‘so, what did I think of these films.’
While I resign myself to letting you know that these films intrigued and challenged me, it is by no means an admission that the others didn’t. Berlin Symphony of a City and Man with a Movie Camera were of a genre I had only once encountered in the film Koyaanisquatsi but were sufficiently different that they astounded me. Piccadilly was unlike any other film that I had encountered with respect to the depiction of the Other. Most of the films I had encountered previously – films like Uncivilised, East of Borneo, and even King Kong – were so ingrained in conventional representations of the other that Piccadilly struck me as innovative. Apart from their chairs and penchant for interior design, I knew nothing about the Eames’. And Ozu. A poster-boy for filmmakers who want to violate filmic conventions. A filmmaker who can make lecturers, and this particular student, cry. Especially when a character says, with a smile, ‘yes, it is’ to the question. ‘isn’t life disappointing.’ [As an aside, I also cried in Berlin Symphony of a City and Man with a Movie Camera].
While I resign myself to letting you know that these films intrigued and challenged me, it is by no means an admission that the others didn’t. Berlin Symphony of a City and Man with a Movie Camera were of a genre I had only once encountered in the film Koyaanisquatsi but were sufficiently different that they astounded me. Piccadilly was unlike any other film that I had encountered with respect to the depiction of the Other. Most of the films I had encountered previously – films like Uncivilised, East of Borneo, and even King Kong – were so ingrained in conventional representations of the other that Piccadilly struck me as innovative. Apart from their chairs and penchant for interior design, I knew nothing about the Eames’. And Ozu. A poster-boy for filmmakers who want to violate filmic conventions. A filmmaker who can make lecturers, and this particular student, cry. Especially when a character says, with a smile, ‘yes, it is’ to the question. ‘isn’t life disappointing.’ [As an aside, I also cried in Berlin Symphony of a City and Man with a Movie Camera].
And still, no films have ever bothered me so much as Rose Hobart and The Blood of the Poet. I couldn’t unravel what I felt was the beauty of the plotless, non-sequitar, non-film fan video type film and the one hour long five episode film about the experiences of a man as he searches crevices and keyholes and the universe. This is not unlike my experiences in trying to understand these two films, in trying to understand surrealism and the movements within society that centre these two films in context, in the history of film, in the history of civilisation.
My searches took me everywhere from the Art Gallery of New South Wales to see a surrealist exhibition, to Melbourne to see the legacy of surrealism, to a dinky second hand bookstore, and back to Schaeffer library. I’m no closer to any real conclusions.
I picked up threads that made me laugh [The Simpsons], saw images that frightened me, and screamed upon seeing Un Chien Andalou. It felt like an adventure. As I recall these experience I recall a series of photographs at the surrealist exhibition – I cannot name the artist or images, I can share only my recollections– of a man looking into a department store window and longing to feel a glove, and never being able to, and only being able to scrawl incoherent messages at the bottom of the photographs in biro for the delight of others like me, until of course the same glove presents itself on a vacant bus seat, and he reaches a moment, of feeling, not of clarity. This is not unlike my own adventures.
If I tried to recount to you the narratives of these films I couldn’t. I could, as I have these past 500 or so words, recount my experiences of the films- my frustrations, my first screams and convulsions over a severed moon and slivered eye, my amazement at the visual surfaces and textures of films where words do not matter so much as the feeling of touching velvet and thinking its quicksand.
The conclusions [of sorts]: (1) Film and photography’s inherent duality makes it a perfect medium for invoking the surreal. Commonly perceived as objective, the medium remains open to manipulation, allowing ambiguity to enter, thus, imbued with strange and disturbing qualities these works provoke and intrigue the imagination [this conclusion was partly written on a wall]. (2) Conclusions are unnecessary when you derive as much enjoyment as I have had following clues like a detective. (On that note, the surrealist artworks by Mari Mahr, 13 Clues to a Fictitious Crime circa 1940-1941, 1984 series of 13 @ Art Gallery of NSW).
My searches took me everywhere from the Art Gallery of New South Wales to see a surrealist exhibition, to Melbourne to see the legacy of surrealism, to a dinky second hand bookstore, and back to Schaeffer library. I’m no closer to any real conclusions.
I picked up threads that made me laugh [The Simpsons], saw images that frightened me, and screamed upon seeing Un Chien Andalou. It felt like an adventure. As I recall these experience I recall a series of photographs at the surrealist exhibition – I cannot name the artist or images, I can share only my recollections– of a man looking into a department store window and longing to feel a glove, and never being able to, and only being able to scrawl incoherent messages at the bottom of the photographs in biro for the delight of others like me, until of course the same glove presents itself on a vacant bus seat, and he reaches a moment, of feeling, not of clarity. This is not unlike my own adventures.
If I tried to recount to you the narratives of these films I couldn’t. I could, as I have these past 500 or so words, recount my experiences of the films- my frustrations, my first screams and convulsions over a severed moon and slivered eye, my amazement at the visual surfaces and textures of films where words do not matter so much as the feeling of touching velvet and thinking its quicksand.
The conclusions [of sorts]: (1) Film and photography’s inherent duality makes it a perfect medium for invoking the surreal. Commonly perceived as objective, the medium remains open to manipulation, allowing ambiguity to enter, thus, imbued with strange and disturbing qualities these works provoke and intrigue the imagination [this conclusion was partly written on a wall]. (2) Conclusions are unnecessary when you derive as much enjoyment as I have had following clues like a detective. (On that note, the surrealist artworks by Mari Mahr, 13 Clues to a Fictitious Crime circa 1940-1941, 1984 series of 13 @ Art Gallery of NSW).
2 comments:
i think you are an example of an active film viewer - not the one incarcerated in a train carriage, beholding the moving scenery - or movie scenes - go by, but rather, running alongside them, getting puffed and at the whim of the elements. you used the word "adventure" to describe your experiences in this course, and i think this is a good way to approach a film experience.
"And still, no films have ever bothered me so much as Rose Hobart and The Blood of the Poet" yes!! i have actually dreamed of rose hobart and i have no idea why. joseph cornell used to spook me. he was obsessed with girls. for a while i was convinced he even killed one because she screwed with his head, stole some of his box constructions and sold them to an art dealer. but i've since learned that this girl ('tina' as she is etched into his artworks) was killed by a drug addict. i'm not sure how this is relevent, but it adds to the surreal experience. unending cognitive linkages.
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