Film Club

A book club that replaces books with documentary films? SwoooOOoon! Yes, Influence Film Forum sets out to do just that even providing resources relevant to the film's subjects and in some cases even access to exclusive filmmaker interviews. This is such a brilliant way to introduce cultural dialogue and also to discuss the role of media in our lives: what we choose to believe and how it is presented. Image culture bombards and sensory overload is the norm in contemporary culture. The idea of fostering a more informed and thoughtful understanding of media and visual storytelling seems like the obvious next step to the overwhelming image production of late.

In learning about this doc film club I came across another organization called, simply,  Film Club, a British based org that seeks to use film as a resource for young students. Children are taught how to interpret, express and discuss literature so why wouldn't they be taught to do the same with the equivalent medium of the times? Behavioral changes, focus, introspection, building of emotional intelligence, and close reading of film are obvious, positive outcomes, a closer look at which is discussed in this great article for educators. This concept of the film club is invaluable to the future of our changing relationship with visual media.

I am fully aware that film societies dot the US but in my experience these orgs are often populated with a more serious film person and are concerned with specific styles of curation whereas I think the ideal film club would look to cultivate a critical language for even the casual film watcher. Libraries, schools, malls, museums are great potential meeting places... hell, maybe this is even a way to save the ailing videostore or maybe it's another way for distribution or publicity companies to package product (reading guides, access to filmmakers, relevant books or similar films available with the film)!

This also makes me think that the current modes of public screening fees are a bit outdated...some organizations are able to skirt the costs of public viewing with educational licenses of some kind but maybe these guidelines need to change along with the changing economy/distribution of film? Or we all need to raid more public domain archives a little bit more? From a personal standpoint, my middle school was really good at avoiding screening fees...I fondly remember a student bringing in a street bought bootleg of Twister- conveniently missing the INTERPOL warnings- but full of additional special effects made by the video-camera-in-theater-on-lap bootlegger artist, the frame shook with the entire camera whenever a storm was erupting on screen. And this was most definitely one of the most formative experiences of my life!

Film should be viewed more as the educational and creative resource that it can be and I really think that this idea of film clubs would make for a more rounded viewer, one that could become part of a larger, welcoming audience that is needed in the over-saturated film market. And maybe this is what we've been missing these past few years, maybe instead of focusing on the expansion of production in the new digital film world we should all be focusing on the consuming side of things? We need to make an interested, engaged audience specifically looking for good work if we want to have a reason- if we want to have eyes & ears- to actually experience the new, bountiful landscape of stories in film form.  Oh, and, uh, for the record, this post does not endorse Hot Tub Film clubs...wtf world...WTF!

Score.

  
There are a lot of live orchestra performances of film related material lately. I know it is a format with quite a legacy, the silent film era even had a live organ accompaniment, and opera & stage can be seen as a predecessor to the storytelling/image/music combo too. But why now? Why is the symphony combining with the screen once again? There is probably good money to be made by the classical/scored music and film crossover- a live performance garners a higher ticket price, but I can't help but hope that the profit margin isn't the only thing driving this trend...

I tend to blame a lot of things on the digital age but this is another case where I think it might be applicable. Seeing a film can be an isolating experience, made even moreso by the home viewing/VOD explosion (Truth: I have not worn pants while watching a movie in awhile). Experiencing images with the sound popped out in front of you, being made by breathing humans, is the opposite of experiencing a movie soundtrack on your tablet. With headphones on. People are seeking out real experiences but what if this good, idealistic intention is actually somehow managing to work against itself? 

After reading the essay Three Regimes: A Theory of Film Music by Robert Spande, quickly followed by the article How Film Music Works by Peter Nickalls, I began to rethink my original "need for human connection" idea that I have clung onto when talking about new expanded cinema. Spade talks of film music as a "vanishing mediator," originally created to seamlessly hide the noise of clanky film projectors, and evolving into an important, invisible bridge that carries the audience through a film. Nickalls also speaks of the magical role of film music in the same way: "Thus for most of the movie-going public, a lot of film music actually bypasses consciousness, functioning – according to [Claudia] Gorbman – as the ‘hypnotic voice bidding the spectator to believe, focus, behold, identify, consume’. Gorbman claims that in such a state there is a ‘greater disposition for the subject to accept the film’s pseudo-perceptions as his/her own’. This is one of the reasons why music is so crucial to many films as it provides a way for audiences to enter into the world of that film."  

So...with the presence of a live film music-making orchestra or band does the audience not get lost in a film? From my personal experience this is not the case. The audience still becomes deeply engrossed in the film, maybe even more-so given the resonance of the live, hypnotizing music...but what scares me is how the actual band seems to recede. The humans I so relied on for my human connection theory disappear, simply becoming another cog in the film machine performing a dreamy function to trap you in the film, losing connection with self and others. Is our digital reconditioning actually forcing us further from humans/means of production even in these live experiences? Is the revival of expanded cinema accidentally deepening the isolation rut that we are all suffering from as even the people performing become an echo of reality...Shudder. Man. I need to get off the computer.

List of the best recent expanded cinema after the jump! And videos of people performing soundtracks. Which are weird.

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Mike Kelley: Day Is Done

 
A few years back I was doing my usual weekend routine of ambling through Chelsea in New York. When I opened the hulking door of a Gagosian that day, against the mighty Chelsea winds, an intriguing darkness sucked me in. An attack of sound hit me like a cacophony of ill tuned children's choirs. Small stages & kinetic scenes (ex. a trippy, black lit livingroom with spinning furniture) along with giant props (ex. a homemade looking rocketship) rose up as obstacles in the darkened space. Video projections were thrown on surfaces everywhere. The placid breath of still photographs gave a moment of reprieve; a bright, awkward color image accompanied by a similar black & white one. I unknowingly fell into the warped rabbit hole known as Mike Kelley.

In this exhibit, titled Day Is Done, Mike Kelley restaged the awkward images of suburban ritual, taking old yearbook pictures and telling his own story of the twisted teenage rites of passage they recall. The overwhelming sets and props in the space were the backdrops for his remixed stories of American myth. Kelley took the collective conscience of a cross section of America and turned it inside out  with each remade frame. I was in love with Mike Kelley. The exhibit swallowed me up and spit me out and I never thought I would be able to see its fabled glory again... but then a few weeks ago I happened to be in L.A. during the MoCA's retrospective (ongoing until July 28th), a sweeping survey that prominently features my first introduction to Mike Kelley. (Actually second, if you count Sonic Youth's Dirty.)  

The exhibition at MoCA is sooooo thorough and Mike Kelley's projects each vastly different from the next that I am going to distill my experience to three pieces from the Geffen MoCA branch. But know: this show, and nearly every individual piece by Kelley, is enough to make one think and feel forever. I also want to note this exhibit is an important study in sensory storytelling, meaning and creative responsibility. It shows how one can melt down culture and reform it into something new that not only speaks to the original culture but also creates a(n often progressive) new meaning or critique. This show is required viewing for all you damn L.A. film people who seem to be losing sight of what being part of an artistic legacy truly means. YOU ARE PART OF AN ARTISTIC LEGACY! (end rant)

The Bell Jar: According to comic book myth, the capital (Kandor) of Superman's home planet (Krypton) was shrunken by a scientist and rescued by Superman, now hidden under a glass bell jar in his Fortress of Solitude. Kelley re-imagined the dwarfed metropolis in translucent, frosted, hulks of buildings, like small glowing cities delicately set atop pedestals and rock like formations, under thin layers of clear glass. These were complimented by lenticular Lichtenstin-ian images of bell jars that move with you, your position determining the freedom of whatever is trapped. A video glowed in the corner of a Superman dressed actor reading from Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar and other texts, the flatly impassioned feminist pulp of sorts, completing the overlapping of cultural reference. The room was a dim world with glowing spots of promise, an American palimpsest of a strange history we will leave behind that will be peered at and judged for future generations- both in Kelley's work and in the charged pop culture references that are his medium. 

The stuffed animals: These aging, dusty, thrift shop plucked toys are awkwardly positioned in configurations that evoke ritualistic offerings, the weight of aging, forgotten bonds, the grittiness in the squeaky clean normalcy of America, the mass production of our youth, a sadness & sadism in their fluffy, mangled furs. One part of this series shows a few animals encased in individual coffins, much like the sarcophagi of the Ancient Egyptians: when does pop culture become artifact? What will we be remembered for? What do we sacrifice?

A video piece whose name I don't know Part of a series called "Horizontal Tracking Shots": Behind a brightly painted, striped facade-like divider you sit on small metal benches facing three flat screens clicking along like a casino slot machine. Images of single colors fill the screens, sliding along like a tense game of Russian Roulette. Suddenly a pause and a painful snippet of a home movie culled from youtube appears, a short embarrassing moment immortalized. Then the colors return, ticking in anticipation of the next falling child or other embarrassing clip. This piece said more about me than any piece of art I have ever seen, how long could I look? Why am I looking? Please don't let that kid fall-O NO!! Are our lives a game of chance? Our traumas now digitally shared? All of the hurt now belonging to, or entertaining, everyone else? Or is it making us more empathetic, diffusing the pain through numbers & relativity? Chills.




Mike Kelley's fluid contextualization of images and his ability to master every and any medium was the most astounding part of this show. He made a signature twisted form of pop art out of the myths and traumas of unsung histories, he electrified the mundane, he exposed & perverted the inherent contradictions, expectations, fears, rules, and grotesque beauty of a country and of himself.  His way of telling the story of a particular America felt like a modern counter culture Epic tale. Image, word, sound binding us together through our shared, stone washed journey to our shared, fated ends...R.I.P Mike Kelley (1954-2012)

Note: Photos are not from MoCA exhibit specifically! No photos were allowed!

Blue Ruin

Blue Ruin is the most confidently made film I've seen in years. It is a film made by someone who has a preternatural feel for the medium. A rounded, complete understanding of the way a film is created, each piece a purposeful decision with no lull or weakness.

The budding auteur here is Jeremy Saulnier who comes to the film with a background mostly as a cinematographer, working on a bunch of low key and respected indies over the years, a background that lays a strong visual foundation for Blue Ruin but by no means acts as a crutch. His visuals are strong but not overpowering. They don't fade into the background as scenery either, they are a full presence that tell the story alongside the actors, almost like another character.

There are similarities in setting to the confused rural America of rusted cars and easily accessible guns, a sort of Cormac McCarthy vibe of dirtied blood and the empty spaces of thought between action, but the film seems to create its own universe. Each perfect detail unfolds, the momentum building slowly, every line an important conveyor of information.  Blue Ruin is so contained and expertly designed that it feels like another possible world, or like the tale of a complex parallel world that exists in the neighboring house. Each scene, each detail, stacks upon one another so precisely but on such a precarious edge that it constantly borders on collapse, keeping us voyeurs wholly, almost sickly, engrossed.

The story?  It is a hazy, bold psychological revenge thriller with a tinge of unsettling dead pan comedy. But to try to simply relate the film's narrative would be to disregard the intricacy of the film's formation and the incredible acting that tells it.The controlled understatement of skill behind the camera extends in front of the camera too as Macon Blair carries almost the entire film with acting that surpasses acting. Moody, brooding, claustrophobic psychological interiors with a flat, dark humor that smoothly glide across the planes of the film. Blair's depth, range, and complex understanding of Saulnier's vision makes him seem to exist as opposed to act.

The journey the filmmaker went on to make this film, discussed in great detail over here, is a reminder that if something needs to be made, if someone has a new creative voice to share, it will find a way to be heard. This film was the hardest film I have ever tried to write about. But that's because it's not a film. It is a beautiful, fresh, entertaining new perspective of visual storytelling that is simultaneously elegant, bloody, emotional, terrifying, and heartfelt. It is more of a living being than in it is film.

Review for H2N: The Sacrament

 The Sacrament reviewed for Hammer to Nail.