TRIBECA 2010: VISIONARIES & THE TRAVELOGUES
"There is no such thing as abstract film. Every frame is real" - Kenneth Anger
Cinema is an adventure of perception. Perception being synonymous with subjectivity, a word, perhaps the very state of being, which seems to be used in more of a negative context with film rather than a positive one. This subjective state is, I think what gives cinema its wonderfully vibrant nature; its lustful, tenacious constantly shifting form. Cinema is real because it is subjective; subjective because it is real... every frame.
Okay, all right enough lecture... Chuck Workman's VISIONARIES is not a lecture either, don't worry. Flowing over with a great exuberance, Workman's doc is an ample introductory history to the avante-garde, particularly the "New American Cinema", and a nice love letter to fans of Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, Bob Downey, Peter Kubleka, the quoted Anger, and dozens of other filmmakers on the cutting edge. It is also the story of the man in the above photo, Jonas Mekas, a Lithuanian who came to America in the late 1940s and soon became something of the grandmaster of ceremonies for the avant-garde big top. Mekas had key involvement in starting some of the first "art" house cinemas in New York - nurturing and gathering filmmakers and their work - and was crucial in starting the Anthology Film Archives, the leading institution in the education on and preservation of alternative and underground cinema.
One wonders if most of these films would have survived at all without the archives, and though Workman doesn't show very much of the preservation work , the impact of Mekas and company is certainly apparent and far reaching.
With places like Youtube, a generation who grew up primarily on mainstream, "normal" cinema (most clueless to the likes of Brakhage or Deren) creates and shares in an environment much closer to that of the New American Cinema than of a Hollywood studio production.
The present day Mekas is an electric older fellow, traversing the streets of New York, camera in hand, collecting footage for his five-decades long "visual journal. "I live 24 hours but I might only shoot a little bit I see every day, or even every week. It is a little something, but it is something." He relays a desire from his cinematic quest, his desire to get back to that wonderful state of being one feels as a four or five year-old.
A beautiful moment comes from a video Mekas shot at 2:30 in the morning in his room: Spot light on, the camera darts and bobs across the walls covered in photographs, dips past his cat, all the while with Mekas singing over classical music about how he can't fall asleep. There is a purpose to documenting and sharing such a personal moment, but what that that purpose is, no one knows, especially Mekas. " I have no idea who I am," he states, "and I don't care."
Recently Film Philosophy's Steven Shaviro stated that our current moment was "post-cinematic. The Auteurs' David Hudson (on 2010 film thus far) said that perhaps it was "extra-cinematic". While both gentleman's statements are intriguing and hold some weight (Though I feel the basic phrase "post-cinematic" sounds depressing), another assessment I am much more excited by is featured in VISIONARIES. Damn my poor note taking, but I'm not sure if it was Peter Kubelka at a Los Angeles retrospective of his work or Mekas who stated that at its very birth cinema was one thing one moment and then something completely different the next. That it is this vivacious mutability that makes cinema, cinema. Not something "pre" "post" or "extra, just cinema, which to me equates the possibility of everything. We are just living in a moment where accessibility to that possibility of everything is greater. Workman's distinct admiration for Mekas and his fellows has reinvigorated that feeling in me tenfold.
The only feature length experimental work actually playing at Tribeca this year is Dustin Thompson's THE TRAVELOGUES. Wandering off into dreamy realms of wanderlust , of the little moments, of landscapes and soundscapes, playing somewhere between fiction and documentary - the prologue states - "All that you see is real, everything else is purely your imagination."
It is a curious little experiment of a film. Based on your appreciation of avant garde filmmaking, the film will either be a chore to get through or a welcome detour from general cinematic fare.
Shot on mostly well worn Super 8 and 16mm sources (with the inter-mitten DV) THE TRAVELOGUES is Thompson's own take on a visual journal, a shape-shift persona keepsake from trips across Europe and the California coast. Thompson turns his camera on usually empty, plain landscapes, and more often than not waterways. Traces of romances shiver across the drifting frames, suggestions of adventures, allusions, aspirations to spirit... and of the ever shifting nature of time and space; of the transient wonders of film stock itself.
Cinema is an adventure of perception. Perception being synonymous with subjectivity, a word, perhaps the very state of being, which seems to be used in more of a negative context with film rather than a positive one. This subjective state is, I think what gives cinema its wonderfully vibrant nature; its lustful, tenacious constantly shifting form. Cinema is real because it is subjective; subjective because it is real... every frame.
Okay, all right enough lecture... Chuck Workman's VISIONARIES is not a lecture either, don't worry. Flowing over with a great exuberance, Workman's doc is an ample introductory history to the avante-garde, particularly the "New American Cinema", and a nice love letter to fans of Stan Brakhage, Maya Deren, Bob Downey, Peter Kubleka, the quoted Anger, and dozens of other filmmakers on the cutting edge. It is also the story of the man in the above photo, Jonas Mekas, a Lithuanian who came to America in the late 1940s and soon became something of the grandmaster of ceremonies for the avant-garde big top. Mekas had key involvement in starting some of the first "art" house cinemas in New York - nurturing and gathering filmmakers and their work - and was crucial in starting the Anthology Film Archives, the leading institution in the education on and preservation of alternative and underground cinema.
One wonders if most of these films would have survived at all without the archives, and though Workman doesn't show very much of the preservation work , the impact of Mekas and company is certainly apparent and far reaching.
With places like Youtube, a generation who grew up primarily on mainstream, "normal" cinema (most clueless to the likes of Brakhage or Deren) creates and shares in an environment much closer to that of the New American Cinema than of a Hollywood studio production.
The present day Mekas is an electric older fellow, traversing the streets of New York, camera in hand, collecting footage for his five-decades long "visual journal. "I live 24 hours but I might only shoot a little bit I see every day, or even every week. It is a little something, but it is something." He relays a desire from his cinematic quest, his desire to get back to that wonderful state of being one feels as a four or five year-old.
A beautiful moment comes from a video Mekas shot at 2:30 in the morning in his room: Spot light on, the camera darts and bobs across the walls covered in photographs, dips past his cat, all the while with Mekas singing over classical music about how he can't fall asleep. There is a purpose to documenting and sharing such a personal moment, but what that that purpose is, no one knows, especially Mekas. " I have no idea who I am," he states, "and I don't care."
Recently Film Philosophy's Steven Shaviro stated that our current moment was "post-cinematic. The Auteurs' David Hudson (on 2010 film thus far) said that perhaps it was "extra-cinematic". While both gentleman's statements are intriguing and hold some weight (Though I feel the basic phrase "post-cinematic" sounds depressing), another assessment I am much more excited by is featured in VISIONARIES. Damn my poor note taking, but I'm not sure if it was Peter Kubelka at a Los Angeles retrospective of his work or Mekas who stated that at its very birth cinema was one thing one moment and then something completely different the next. That it is this vivacious mutability that makes cinema, cinema. Not something "pre" "post" or "extra, just cinema, which to me equates the possibility of everything. We are just living in a moment where accessibility to that possibility of everything is greater. Workman's distinct admiration for Mekas and his fellows has reinvigorated that feeling in me tenfold.
The only feature length experimental work actually playing at Tribeca this year is Dustin Thompson's THE TRAVELOGUES. Wandering off into dreamy realms of wanderlust , of the little moments, of landscapes and soundscapes, playing somewhere between fiction and documentary - the prologue states - "All that you see is real, everything else is purely your imagination."
It is a curious little experiment of a film. Based on your appreciation of avant garde filmmaking, the film will either be a chore to get through or a welcome detour from general cinematic fare.
Shot on mostly well worn Super 8 and 16mm sources (with the inter-mitten DV) THE TRAVELOGUES is Thompson's own take on a visual journal, a shape-shift persona keepsake from trips across Europe and the California coast. Thompson turns his camera on usually empty, plain landscapes, and more often than not waterways. Traces of romances shiver across the drifting frames, suggestions of adventures, allusions, aspirations to spirit... and of the ever shifting nature of time and space; of the transient wonders of film stock itself.
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