Experimental film/video works are often perceived as difficult. How far are your experiences as a spectator in this topic?
Admittedly, the first few experimental films I watched embraced entirely what the true catalysts behind them were: that they were very hard to get my head around, because of the bowdlerized purging of everything vulgar being sanitized. Even without the excuse of growing up in the 60’s when directors such as Warhol and Anger being much more of shock than a modern approach nowadays, I found myself uneasy without the usual backstory and skeletal frame of past events that help my understanding of the motivation behind the film come to life. I found that the films I was watching were “high-brow”, the type to find in an art-house, and yet these were the films that influenced cinema irreversibly.
I suddenly found that Andy Warhol, whose trash cinema “Sleep” which involved six hours of the sleeping of a man shot through a static camera using grainy monochrome film, was in fact a very dry and witty persona within his body of work. His interest in the concept of pointing the camera at people may have put me at unease slightly, but in essence this was repeated in the later experimental film (1982) Koyaanisqatsi, which revealed the globalised, mechanical world through the medium of many layers of film taken over years. I found that if such a beautiful body of work that took more than six years to complete could consider Warhol as not as pretentious as initially thought, so could I. I found that his major movement in avant-garde cinema within the film “Sleep” demonstrated in fact many changes from the camera angles, establishing its concept that he could not just walk away from the camera and leave it there, in effect dismissing the mainstream cinema that I am used to. Not only did this inspire art-house cinema but we can see it in culture today, such as the filming of David Beckham asleep. Warhol provided a radical shift in thinking about the nature of art with his 1966 movie “Chelsea Girls”, a revolutionary film technically as it used split-screen editing and mentioned sex, something that would have shocked the audience back then but obviously didn’t affect me as much as I have become, through mainstream cinema, desensitised to that. I also was refreshed by the idea that Warhol was not snobbish in his approach, not as “high-brow” as I thought, as there is little distinction between his avant-garde exterior of pushing the boundaries and the way he defied categorization by throwing “pop” culture of trash and meaningless things into the mix.
Someone whose films gave me the feeling of unease was Kenneth Anger, in his 1964 film “Scorpio Rising” particularly. Contextually shown at underground clubs and dealing with homosexuality in a “fetish” like way, I could see that he was revolutionary. I could see that his tracking shots of objects on the table have been referred to in many other films, one being “Taxi Driver” so his influence is obvious. Cinema in the 50’s was more ideological of everyone being normal and the same, whereas this film, connected with drugs and a collage-like, pastiche of borrowed genres such as fame, popular culture, art, the American dream and more, was more visual than narrative. But the film did not provoke appreciation within me, although I could admit that it was pushing the boundaries exceptionally – perhaps I did not find it structured in a way that created meaning without further studies and referential insight.
On the other hand, my favourite of all experimental film directors was Stan Brakhage. Particularly in his film “For Marilyn” (1992), I regarded him as someone who possessed the ability to conceive the idea of both the concept that distances the audience from the film so regularly in experimental cinema, and being able to materially and thematically push the boundaries of cinematic film to reveal universal qualities within its deep layers. The musically structured aesthetic of light moving in time to a pattern unheard as it is silent, paired with fleeting images of painted glass, took film in a new direction. Whereas many of the experimental films used asynchronous sound tactics to portray the feeling of the poetic relationship between sound and image, I liked the way that my response to the beautiful images was entirely through visuals.
The multi layered dimension effect of the complex, non-linear narratives were often hard to grasp, which is why I found the film “La Jetee” more easy to watch and aesthetically pleasing. However, it did not convey strong emotion as a lot of thought went into the narrative, whereas films like the Quay Brothers stop-motion body of work gave me an uneasy feeling and a response of boredom, which is, regardless of preference, a stronger response.
The 1977 film “Eraserhead” by David Lynch, with its infrequent dialogue, was more emotive than any of them, conveying to me more anguish than films without minimal speech as the words from Henry to Mary “Where have you been?” haunted me into the tension of the atmosphere more effectively. Henry’s perspective filled with male sexual imagery such as the grotesque reproduction of the sperm and the comprehension of the consequences of irresponsible sex (the mutant baby), teamed with a non-personal mis-en-scene that embodied the abandoned industrial zone Lynch felt inspired by Philadelphia to create, and the questioning of a simple existence at the film’s leisurely and nightmarish pace, captivated me. Undoubtedly, it was not an enjoyable experience, but nonetheless it was one that replayed in my mind.
The film “Bodysong”, taking something perceived as beautiful like childbirth and turning it entirely on its head, consisting of no dialogue and not being given a way of being told how to read it, gave me the thought that most people do not like not knowing how to think. All of these clips are things that we cannot see with the naked eye, and perhaps that is the reason behind the film, because most people do not want to. In comparison to Koyaanisqatsi’s artistic and thoughtful creation, this footage was found footage, and exploring life as it happens everywhere in its pastiche way. It was a slow-paced film at first, which I think was perhaps part of my reason for rejecting it as a film, as it dealt with themes of bullying, love, family and teen trends too similarly to be interesting and quite conflicting to agree to an opinion on.
Finally, Svankmajer’s 1972 “Food” film was witty, somewhat enjoyable and very much narrative-based, with the concept of humans becoming vending machines, the product of what they create, and exploring themes of cannablism to materialism, devoured by mechanical, non-emotive lives and pouring with rich images was as haunting as it was peculiar.
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