Prop Art

The rise in film related museum shows: are we already mourning cinema?

Is the museum takeover of movie ephemera weird to anyone else? I mean...I loooove that storyboards, costumes, set pieces- all that stuff- are becoming elevated to art (jump started by the wildly attended Tim Burton retrospective at MoMA a few years ago, and Deitch's Gondry fetish leading up to that..and the recently announced Bjork exhibit- a music, film, costume, app crossover- which spurred me to write this post). And it is great that these things are no longer regulated to solely movie museums and Planet Hollywoods across the globe but....it also spooks me a little that people need to see these physical objects removed from the ethereal cinematic experience in order to appreciate them.

Each of these film-related "things" we see in museums were placed with a purpose, expertly lit, engaged in a story, edited, appeared during a particular song, and so on, culminating in the all encompassing form of contemporary art: cinema! There are a few reasons I think this trend is happening:1. The high-art film prop is acting to ground cinema in the real world, to elevate & isolate it from the accessible internet ether that films are now floating in. 2. It is new way to profit from the rickety film system, these objects seen as solid commodities in the market of a not-so-concrete medium. 3. The accessibility of a film audience is being capitalized on by these museums in an attempt to bolster visitor numbers...most people have probably heard of Burton whereas Arp? Probably not so much! Ultimately, these shows are helping film during its weird digital transition but seeing these tiny parts divested from their whole is a worrisome thing to me.

Seeing objects stripped of meaning in an alien setting could take away from the elaborate, constructed film world they were meant to live in. Here is my terrible, overly dramatic comparison: a stroke of a Picasso instead of the whole thing? A sentence of Hemingway instead of the novel? No way! Without the big picture, objects are somewhat empty, devoid of their signification. Seeing a cinematic object becomes a Where's Waldo interaction with film ("What film did this come from?") rather than a thoughtful, introspective, emotional one ("what was the symbolic importance of this object in this particular story"). And, even if the craft of the objects themselves are being celebrated as a new type of sculpture, there is the craft of the huge undertaking of film that could also use a fine art pedestal. But....despite my skepticism: I am planning on seeing the hell out of the Jim Henson exhibit listed below!

1. David Cronenberg, The Exhibition. (a traveling exhibit originating from TIFF). The EYE Film Institute of Amsterdam. June 22nd-Sept 14th, 2014.  Well...if a filmmaker is going to have an exhibit with objects I guess Cronenberg IS the best candidate being that his films often deal with the physical manifestations of psychological states that his transforming, mutating, augmented characters undergo...! (Images from top: Crash, The Fly, eXistenZ)

2. Jim Henson: The Exhibition. The Museum of the Moving Image. Queens, NY. TBD 2015.
Jim Henson is one of my heroes. Rooted in experimental film he managed to be one of the only people to elevate puppets to actors while combining a signature heart, humor, and artistry. I can see there being a positive effect of seeing Henson's creation in the flesh too, reinforcing a physical creativity that is fundamental in storytelling and play, aspects of childhood development that need to be revived. There will be puppets! (Image from previous exhibit Jim Henson's Fantastic World)

3. The Dying of the Light: Film as Medium & Metaphor. Mass MoCA. North Adams, MA. Opens March 29th-2014-????. This exhibit is a nice confluence of my concerns above as it focuses on the medium of film (film film, not digital film). It deals with the changing symbol film has become, its physical presence, its mechanical needs, the physical yet transparent materialization-and more- all highly unique to this form. Film itself is now an object. Most of all: I love me some Tacita Dean! Other artists on display include Rosa Barba, Rodney Graham, Lisa Oppenheim, and Simon Starling. (Image directly above & below)

4. Icons of Science Fiction and Can't Look Away: The Lure of Horror Films. EMP (Experience Music Project). Seattle, WA. Summer 2014. Horror and Sci-fi used to rely on the physical to create their own emotional microcosms. It is weird to think that these shows are like Unnatural history exhibits, artifacts to the now digital worlds created for scary & futuristic movies...weird! I wonder if this is another reason hands on film shows are so popular...the world is changing so fast our dinosaurs are still living.  I just learned about this space, EMP, created by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, designed by Frank Gehry, and celebrating the art of popular culture- neato! (Below: the axe from The Shining, as part of Can't Look Away show)

Humans for Film!

Movements beyond movies.

As I often do, here is a list of ways to support current socially conscious film endeavors! The diversity of stories that still need to be told through film is vast and projects like the ones below could use the support they deserve!

1. Sarah Jacobson was a bad ass female filmmaker who studied under George Kuchar, making her signature edgy but thoughtful films with no excuses. I have seen some of her work, not a ton, but I have seen a lot of the work from the recipients of her memorial Film Grant and every single one of them is carrying on the heartful, dark, DIY spirit that Jacobson seemed to embody. Donations into this fund are being accepted until Friday June 20th through Indiegogo. If, like me, you look to film in order to see the world from a different perspective and push artistic boundaries please give! Or, apply for the grant next year to help keep her spirit alive!

2. This one is a personal/highly local one but I would be stupid not to ask....I currently live in a tiny, tiny town in Southern Vermont that, drawing me to it like a moth to flame, has the largest film screen in the state! Every Wednesday for $5 a classic movie is screened for the community in the fully restored Bellows Falls Opera House. Seeing a little girl sing along to Mary Poppins, watching a group of eyes-covered adults experience The Shining for the first time, even having some firsts of my own (WTF Sean Connery Bond!?) are the reasons that I continue to promote film: sharing stories through art to bring us closer to each other in the world beyond the screen. The series is subsidized by the town but attendance has been low lately so a friend of mine (with a little help from me) have started a campaign to keep it going (<---CLICK ME!). Even if you aren't one of the 3,000 people living in my little Vermont village, fostering creativity through the legacy of cinema is a cause definitely worth supporting...you never know, maybe we have the next Lars Von Trier among us?

3. And speaking of sharing stories to foster an understanding....the Human Rights Watch Film Festival is underway in NYC (ending June 22nd)! HRW is an independent organization that researches, documents, exposes and aids in issues regarding abuses of people worldwide. As their website describes: "Through our Human Rights Watch Film Festival we bear witness to human rights violations and create a forum for courageous individuals on both sides of the lens to empower audiences with the knowledge that personal commitment can make a difference. The film festival brings to life human rights abuses through storytelling in a way that challenges each individual to empathize and demand justice for all people."  This humanitarian fest features an incredible line up of films that perfectly balance artistry with issue, even offering a traveling version of their program in order to have the widest impact possible. Igniting action through the flicker of the film projector? Exactly!

The Search for Emak Bakia

A lyrical documentary whose surreal subject is defined through the movements of reality.

Have you ever tried to describe a poem to someone? It is hard. Really, really hard. It is so difficult because poems often deal with emotion as a medium, emotion that is delivered through a re-imagining of the way we have been trained to use words. Trying to describe The Search for Emak Bakia (and also the film's namesake subject, the modernist/dadaist/surrealist Man Ray's 1926 experimental film Emak Bakia - embedded below!- whose Basque translation is "Leave Me Alone") is like trying to describe a filmic poem that splinters, spins, risks, and is made with an entirely new look at the form.

With this debut feature, director Oskar Alegria sets out on a journey to find the illusive place of Man Ray's film which was shot somewhere along the South Coast of France. But, it isn't really the name or location that is the subject of this film, it is the journey in search of the name that becomes the off-centered focus. Alegria takes the phrase "Emak Bakia," shines light on the amorphous meaning, and explores how it is the humans uttering the phrase that breath into it life, purpose, meaning, and beauty of all kinds.

Like Man Ray and his contemporaries, The Search for Emak Bakia is also similarly preoccupied with movement, light, technology and expectation. Alegria uses digital film as the secretly malleable form that it is, mediating the world around him through the possibilities of the camera lens and his own keen mind's eye. A documentary film is never a completely objective act and approaching the form as an artist crafting art the director, the subjects- nearly every aspect of the film- are able to have a freedom that makes the film feel like it is levitating. This freedom silently, imperceptably, creeps out into the audience, hovers over each viewer, and offers them a brief moment of communal experience, feeling, & understanding that only the best art can conjure.

Another way to attempt to speak about this film is to relate images from it but the luscious dreamscape is to be seen not described: intertitles and interviews are posed between shots of sculptural wonder and fluid forms that are enmeshed with a texture of noises, songs, nature that implicate the space & viewer in a web of connectivity that this rhizome-like film expands from. Another angle is to try describe this film through the humanistic stories encountered along the director's journey, but these stories are best told by their individual protagonists: an aging princess drawn to the pulling shores, a wayward glove guiding the way in the breezy streets, a dead clown who becomes a prism for a multitude of musings. The whole film feels like a shared dream.

There is no way to describe this film other than to say it is indescribable. And I am not saying this as a cop out. Or an attempt to lure you into a screening. I am saying this as someone who gets chills when seeing a new, luminous vision with a strong, resilient purpose. You must dream this film with a room full of strangers.


The Search for Emak Bakia plays Rooftop Films Friday June 13th, 2014. Rescheduled due to weather for Sunday 15th @ 8pm due to weather (Note: I wrote the description of the film for Rooftop Films which can be found at this link! ) 

The Reinvention of Hollywood

A series of online roundtable discussions that look to imagine the best of all possible film worlds in the new creative climate.

Fandor, the wondrous streaming film platform that I got to know before it even had a name, has teamed with the Reinventors project, a community of thinkers and doers looking to have widespread discussions regarding rapidly changing industries. The result is a series of online talks- like an open source think tank of sorts- lead by a group of innovators who take additional questions & comments from the audience following the conversation on their electronic devices at home, or work... or even in bed with coffee (what? I was wearing pants at least!). Actually, I missed most of the inaugural talk thanks to a scheduling conflict but today (June 10th) is the second installment in this series that was sparked, and is hosted, by the legendary Ted Hope. Hope was recently named the CEO of Fandor, a bold and interesting move for a classic indie film producer (The Ice Storm, Happiness, Cindy Sherman's Office Killer + and many, many more), a move that is in itself a mark of the film industry sea change and the need for this dialogue.

The first lecture focused around "Form," the fluctuating shapes that visual storytellers are currently presented with, creating, and are looking to create to tell their tales. I caught the tail end of the conversation and it seems that Form slowly melted into a larger issue, that of story. The discussion naturally seemed to turn away from seeing technology or new media platforms as a form to stuff ideas into but as a way to expand, augment, or relate a particular idea: the stories are dictating the form. A truth that I think is at the core of a lot of the failures of burgeoning filmmakers who need to simply ask themselves why they are telling a story and what the best way to do so is: form should follow function in nearly any creative endeavor.

There was also a brief tangent regarding Joseph Beuys' concept of "social sculpture," the notion that art can transform society in huge ways, physically and maybe even spiritually, an idea that seems extremely relevant in a digitized, globalized society where all kinds of movements can now instantly take shape to reach far outside of themselves and in turn shape their surroundings. The responsibility in making a film, in making a social sculpture, is an underutilized fact that has massive, unlimited potential. It was extremely refreshing to hear someone within the industry recognize this awesome possibility that I personally thrive on! There was also a mention of a new Sundance endeavor that I hadn't heard of too, the Sundance Transparency Project (which I cannot seem to find info on? Does it have some other name?). As it was described in the roundtable, this project is a forum where people from different sectors of the film industry make the results of their particular projects open information to help others learn, an idea that makes me hopeful about a film world where community is valued in conjunction with profit.



I just noticed that the Reinvent Hollywood lectures are recorded and available to stream after the fact! So I will be sure to catch up at some point during this rainy summer week. The full schedule for the entire six part series can be found here, the second installation takes place today, June 10th 2014 at 11am PT (2pm ET?) and will focus on The Artists: How do we enable the most diverse range of artists and creative work in a globalized marketplace? The Reinventors seems like the kind of creative, digital utopia that I tend to dream about on this blog. A truly open place of learning through listening and sharing where a wide variety of people with vastly different experiences are all working toward the same creative goal, with the same impassioned love. These explorations are invaluable and joining this conversation can only make our shared cinematic hope, and the resulting beauty, stronger! I will save you a seat in the cloud audience!