Documentary/Film

THE DARKER SIDE OF BLACK

Intro

Isaac Julien's The Darker Side Of Black (1994, U.K.) is a documentary that seeks to discuss the attitudes and open prejudice that are indoctrinated by hip-hop and dancehall music culture, which are genres that heavily reflect and express Black people's perspective. The film takes a close look at how these musical styles seem to include a common theme of nihilism, which supports the ideal that life is inherently meaningless and thus morality is simply a socially constructed concept. British director, Isaac Julien takes his audience members on a thorough tour through the lives and music influenced by specific controversial artists, as well as the history and social context of hip-hop, dancehall, and reggae cultures. Some of the most prominent topics that become focal points of this documentary, including homophobia, sexism, gun glorification, and virility, are frequently illustrated and addressed in the aforementioned genres of contemporary Black music. As a Black gay man exploring this topic, Julien is able to accomplish a valuable narrative that concerns his own misguided brethren, while also indicating how outside observers may misperceive the ongoing prejudice and violence that goes hand-in-hand with popular Black music culture. 

Content And Form

The Darker Side Of Black is a shorter documentary, running only 55 minutes, but rich in content and shot on 16mm color film stock to be eventually converted to digital video. Throughout the film, director Isaac Julien personally conducts a number of interviews with many, almost all Black, individuals, mainly hip-hop and dancehall music artists, homosexual victims, scholars from various national backgrounds, religious figures, fans and critics of each music culture, as well as the former prime minister of Jamaica, Michael Manly. In addition, Julien provides his own understanding and perception toward the subjects he is exploring by including his own occasional voice-over, which in turn amplifies the primary issues highlighted by this work, and also makes this film partially operate in the participatory mode of documentaries. The film also intercuts original captured footage of dancehall and hip-hop club scenes, where participants dance and majorly respond to the music in both Jamaica and the U.S. Some of the other footage Julien obtains in the construction of this documentary includes homosexuals' reactions to aggressive homophobic sentiments embedded in music, intercut snippets of recognizable but controversial dancehall and hip-hop videos, as well as re-appropriated footage that offers the depiction of Christian imagery to pair with religious insight or discussion. Julien does an incredible job of giving the film a natural flow by editing all of this aforementioned visual material in a cohesive and smooth format. One of the best examples of this the transition occurs from 4:30-6:00, when Isaac reveals a perfect example showcasing his direct involvement in shaping the film's connection between Jamaican social culture, especially dancehall music and the United States' hip-hop culture mostly originated in New York City.

At the start of this seamless transition, Julien is using a well-composed voice-over to explain how the sounds and loops attributed to dancehall completely reflect the sense of powerlessness that largely affects the lower-class communities, which thus lead to an overcompensating bodily reaction expressed through intense dance. The audience then sees frames that show dancehall fanatics emphatically dancing in a nightclub scene, as the music permeates the film space, overriding Julien's need to further narrate. Then, the film sound drifts back into voice-over as Julien makes a connection between dancehall and hip-hop by commenting on the migration of innovative Jamaican sound systems to America, in which Black communities would create hip-hop. As Julien provides the voiceover, the audience also sees the footage cut from Jamaican dancehall clubs to the streets of Harlem, New York, to transition into hip-hop and make connections about the ideals of nihilism that embody both music genres. The film continues by cutting smoothly into an interview that Julien conducts with two Black women in a record store, discussing the undesirable effects hip-hop has on the youth and how they claim it alters the mindset of young Black people. The numerous visual and audible transitions that occur between 4:30-6:00 perfectly showcase the basic formula that Julien follows to connect the dancehall community and hip-hop culture. 

Political and Social Context

At the time that this film was made, there were extremely prevalent political and social contexts that heavily influenced the attitudes and mindsets of a widespread group of individuals as well as shaping the majority of this film's overarching commentary. In fact, one could write an entire paper about how the political climate of both countries directly informs the Black nihilist sentiments that then become transformed and reflected in dancehall and hip-hop music. The film basically discusses how in Jamaica, society has accepted the fact that they can't dictate their nations progress, which then gives them a sense of hopelessness and a need to express themselves in ways other than the mind. Former prime minister, Michael Manly, tells viewers that drug trade in Jamaica has also heavily affected the culture because the selling of ganja and cocaine has gone hand-in-hand with the multiplication of firearms and the desensitization of gun use, which is heavily represented in dancehall. Another important aspect of Jamaican society to note is that homosexuality is criminalized and made to be seen as repulsive and against the will of God. This anti-gay legal system also fosters an open opposition and intolerance toward homosexuals that may go as far as to utilize the desensitized gun to resolve the issue. DJ Buju Banton, one of the dancehall artists that Julien bravely interviews, elaborates on this societal willingness to use the gun, because he personally acts as one of the advocates for homophobic violence in his famous song, "Boom Bye Bye," which also becomes subject to major scrutiny in Julien's film. The director almost makes it his duty to depict the context of Jamaica in a way that makes the openly homophobic and violent attitudes of his brethren understandable, but obviously not in a way that supports any form of their misguided homophobia. In addition, Julien makes a similar effort, when he travels to the U.S., to make sense of the political and social climate that directly informs the violent, elitist, sexist, and homophobic lyrical content sometimes found in hip-hop. Essentially, the film argues that the content in hip-hop comes down to African-Americans also being a product of their complex environment and their naturally aggravated response to being shown that their views and presence doesn't matter to the progression of the U.S. That sense of worthlessness and helplessness is responded to through hip-hop, by verbally reflecting on the violence that goes on in lower-class communities while also creating a persona of an able-bodied and minded alpha male, who can overcome their obstacles. In turn, by creating this image of a hard, strong-willed macho man, homosexuals become that much more outcast. Homosexuals especially find themselves at the brunt of aggressively charged hip-hop lyrics because many individuals in the Black community find homosexuality to be ungodly and not conducive to the continual procreation of the human species or in solidifying the strong machismo image found in hip-hop. Julien makes it clear that these controversial issues are heavily embedded in Black communities found in Jamaica and the U.S. because they mirror the content found in both of their music styles. As the director, he is able to create a strong bond between these diverse Black social spheres by connecting their similarities in not only the content, but also in the form and structure, by editing juxtaposed frames of both societies and linking them through his hardly intrusive, but necessary narration. It is also important to acknowledge that Isaac Julien is a homosexual Black-British director and therefore has a personal bias and heartfelt interest in using his film to explain why Black communities, especially in Jamaica and the U.S., have constructed this outspoken intolerance for homosexuals, with such violent undertones. 

Scene Analysis

One of the most vivid and quintessential sequence of shots found in The Darker Side Of Black occurs from 17:00-20:15, in which the film makes a strong statement about homophobia and gun glorification reflected in Jamaican dancehall music. Julien begins this scene by showing spectators a snippet from a music video of DJ Buju Banton's hateful hit "Boom Bye Bye."

Julien begins the segment with the music video to give a context to the intriguing discussion to follow. Buju Banton's lyrics are outright horrendous and speak openly about using guns against anybody that is perceived or known to be homosexual. The film then transitions to a talking-head interview with a legal aid from Kingston, Jamaica named Florizelle O'Connor with a quick interjecting gunshot clip. She talks about how Buju's song is representing the dominant homophobic perspective shared in the Jamaican community. Not only that, but she argues that the song influences and shapes the direct societal response against gay individuals. Julien has a clear agenda in including her input because he too is horrified by the homophobic violence prevalent in Black communities and wants to offer scholars a platform to intellectually bash Buju's ignorance. After Julien edits in this snippet of O'Connor's interview, he intercuts an inter-title that reads, 'sex culture' accompanied by ominous rhythmic tones to further discuss the utter disregard and misguided hate many people have for those that lead deviant sexual lifestyles.

The audience then hears Julien participate overtly in the film by going into a somewhat poetic voice-over piece to enhance the viewers' understanding of how homosexual individuals have become physical victims of dancehall and its listeners. As the film transitions into frames that aesthetically resemble paintings, which illustrate the bond of like genders and the immediate societal response with firearms, Julien states that "bad dreams are turning into violent realities for some, but most, don't seem to care. The lyrical gun has now identified a new enemy taboo, queers" (18:04). However, Isaac Julien is no coward and decides to confront the victimization stemming from "Boom Bye Bye" by interrogating its homophobic creator himself, DJ Buju Banton. The director decides to precede the talking-head interview with Buju with a disclaimer concerning his open disregard and insensitivity toward equal and fair treatment of all humans.

This does overtly shape the film's sentiment and director's obvious attitude that homophobia is inherently wrong and should have no justified place in society. I, as an open-minded viewer and one that prides himself on treating people with respect, had no problem in aligning with the film's argument but could see how a homophobic spectator would be displeased. Overall, I think that Julien is absolutely right in advocating for fairness and equality for homosexual people in Jamaica, because their lifestyle has been criminalized and therefore eliminates their voice and makes them often victims of unprovoked assault. Buju Banton's interview goes as expected as he talks about his homophobia comfortably and sees no problem in it because it is the majority sentiment of almost everyone surrounding him. He doesn't see any problems in his hit song's message because it conveys the mutual attitude of Jamaica and it postures him as an alpha in popular culture. The film then appropriately cuts to another talking-head interview with gay musician Karl Fraizer who gives the victim's perspective on the situation. I like that Julien gave so many sides to the issue because it effectively offered a platform for all the ridiculous, but absolutely essential counter-arguments to the film, which illustrate the homophobic consensus in Jamaica that is perpetuated by dancehall artists such as Buju Banton or Shabba Ranks. Karl Fraizer shares his valuable insight, which sees Buju's song as an absolute threat to him and his lifestyle and argues that it completely advocates blind gun use toward any homosexual. I think it is also important to note Julien's unique camera technique that he employs throughout all of these interviews by utilizing an almost fisheye lens distortion. In fact, Bruce Morrow questioned Julien's use of this visual effect in the film in an extensive interview to which Julien replied, "We wanted to use a special lens to give the interviewees a sort of tableau, stylized, imagistic feeling, to get them to move away from being this sort of realist talking-head representation. Sometimes it worked- and sometimes not" (Morrow, p.413). Julien's explanation of this camera use is completely understandable and shows the very deliberate experimentation that the director decided to fiddle with in this film. I'm not sure how affective this visual manipulation was, but in first watching the documentary I know that the interviews visually put me at ease and did give a sort of roundness to each film subject. Meaning that I felt that I could understand the ideals and mindsets that each subject represented without placing blame, because I acknowledged each person's environments and societal upbringing. I think that this understanding, in part, comes with the painterly camera aesthetics and sensations that accompany these interviews. To complete this scene, Julien rhetorically asks the audience to give a final consideration of whether or not Buju's "Boom Bye Bye" advocates the hateful bashing and physical abuse of perceived homosexuals. Then, to give the audience context and to wrap up the argument, Julien gives a final intercut of Buju's music video which chants that he "won't promote no Batty (Gay) Boy, they must be dead" (20:05).

In these just three minutes, Julien has made an impressively impactful statement about the wrongness behind homophobia in Jamaica and how its become solidified with support in popular dancehall culture. The culmination of film techniques, documentary structure, and the director's personal relation to the film topic gives The Darker Side Of Black a resonating effect on its viewers.

Conclusion

Overall, I have high admiration for Isaac Julien's creation of this work because he makes a bold statement about his brethren and has the right to be displeased with the treatment of fellow Black homosexuals. As far as the film's critical reception went, Julien decided to shed some light on that in his interview with Bruce Morrow. The director stated that, "Since its screening in Berlin, Darker Side has now been shown in film festivals all over Europe, North America and Australia. It's even been shown in South Africa, at the first lesbian and gay film festival. I really wouldn't call Darker Side of Black a cinematic experience. It's more televisual, really, which was correct for the subject matter to me. Sometimes one makes a film for more important reasons than the 'good review' in the New York Times- though, of course, it's nice if you get one! -or for the mere winning of a prize at a film festival" (Morrow, p.413). This shows that Julien's film has reached the hearts and minds of diverse groups of people. One could hope that the film has raised further awareness about the unjustified social construction of homophobia in Black communities and has begun chiseling away at this perpetuation by informing spectators. Due to the fact that there is such a strong movement in support of homophobia it is valiant to see Julien break through barriers and reveal the context of a complicated situation. The film makes a distinct argument that the violent homophobic macho misogynist attitudes fostered in Black communities is a response to continually feeling useless, hated and undervalued in society. I think that the title The Darker Side Of Black has two important meanings because of that context. First of all, the more obvious meaning to the title to be derived is that all of these negative attitudes and violence spawning in Black communities is a darker aspect to all of the comparative success of hip-hop and dancehall artists. In addition, I think that the "darker side" also refers to the unnoticed oppression that acts as the foundation to all of this disrespect and negativity seen in the ideals of Black communities. Nihilism, or the sense or meaningless that has infected the minds of many Black individuals had come hand-in hand with the glorification of firearms as well as the constant hating of those perceived to be of lesser utility or worth. The Darker Side Of Black, is real quite an ingenious title because it is reflexive in itself. At a first glance, on a surface level, that title perfectly reflects what the media and popular culture wants the mass community to see, which is the negativity and hate multiplying in Black culture and music. However, if one takes a closer look at the title, it really has to do with the unnoticed elements or aspects that are hidden in the shadows about the context and background behind Black communities in both Jamaica and the U.S. and how people's environments lead to their negative, misguided frames of reference.

Works Cited: 

Morrow, Bruce and Isaac Julien. “An Interview with Isaac Julien.” Callaloo 18.2 (Spring 1995), 406-415. 

This is Not a Film- Jafar Panahi

This is Not a Film is an incredible work of existential art by Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi. The film is well described by its title, its’s name encompasses the irony of the project. Although the video documents of Panahi’s life developed into a film, the conventions of making it were far from ordinary in relation to the history of filmmaking. As the audience is informed in the opening titles, prior to making This is Not a Film, Jafar Panahi, one of Iran’s leading filmmakers, was arrested in 2010 by the Iranian government for the alleged act of intending to commit crimes against national security because of a documentary that he made after the reelection of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He was put on house arrest while awaiting his court hearings and faced a maximum prison sentence of six years and was blacklisted from making films for twenty years.  According to The Green Voice of Freedom, Panahi has also received a tenth-year ban on making or directing an movies, writing screenplays, giving any form of interview with Iranian or foreign media as well as leaving the country.”(1) The scenes that make up This is Not a Film aren’t shot on studio sets and weren’t budgeted by a big time studio. The video of Panahi and his associates was shot at the living quarters of the filmmaker during his excruciatingly long, drawn-out days on house arrest outside the knowledge of authorities and away from the public eye. The film is simple yet captivating, calm yet suspenseful. When the project was finalized, the film was transported out of the country in a flash drive destined for the 2011 Cannes film festival where it received critical acclaim. It was later shown at the New York Film Festival, the Toronto International Film Festival, the Dubai International Film Festival, and the Pusan International Film Festival; it has been seen and studied all over the world, including at the University of Colorado in Boulder in Film Theory and Documentary Film courses taught by Professor Shira Segal. Jafar Panahi was born to be a filmmaker and when he was stripped of his rights to do his life’s work, he decided to truly exemplify the definition of existentialism. He documented his mere existence in a place ruled by those that told him he didn’t belong. When he was told to sit down he stood up. The people in the highest positions of power tried to cast a shadow over Jafar Panahi and he took it as an opportunity to show that even in a society where people don’t have the right to creative freedom and opinion, individuals never cease to exist and never cease to be heard. 

The film begins in Jafar Panahi’s apartment and is shot within the compound for the duration. We first see the man eating a snack at the table and making a phone call on speaker phone to his friend and colleague, Mojtaba Mirtahmasb. It is evident from the very beginning that Panahi is nervous about talking on the telephone because the authorities have almost certainly tapped into his line. He tells his friend not too worry but to come over to his apartment and discuss some ideas because he can’t say much on the phone. His situation makes me think of the characters of Florian Henckel von Donnersmark’s film The Lives of Others, who live in the soviet sector of East Berlin and are forced to write their articles in secrecy with the use of an unregistered and illegal typewriter in the midst of being spied on by the secret intelligence agency, the Stasi. The difference between The Lives of Others and This is Not a Film is that the characters of The Lives of Others are acting out a screenplay while Jafar Panahi is living out his life, without the aid of a sympathetic member of the intelligence agency looking out for him. After Panahi invites his companion over, he listens to his voicemail messages, feeds his exotic pet iguana, and sits down at a table to make another phone call. This is the clip I chose to analyze, it is the first time the audience heres the subject talking about his legal battle. He dials up a lady named Ms Gheyrat and from the conversation it sounds like she is his legal assistant. Panahi seems more relaxed during this call because he is talking about the allegations surrounding him rather than his film project. He sits at a table with a beverage, sugar cubes, and a pack of cigarettes. There is a flat screen television in the corner and this is the first scene the audience can identify that he is using an iPhone smart phone. Seeing these luxury items from western companies surprised me at first. I guess my perception of Iran before watching this film was of a country entirely consistent of impoverished people living in shacks out in the mountains and every now and then some of them traveled around to cause violence. I never thought about the contemporary artists that want to be involved with the world and all of the opportunity, change, and progress thats out there and that just happen to be from Iran. With regard to his case, Panahi asks Ms. Gheyrat how soon a decision will be made. He is anxious for the proceedings to take place, it seems as though waiting to see if the appeals court upholds the sentence is the hardest part at this point. He asks “is it going to be clear by the new year?” and she replies “It all depends, if there is some influence then they may issue a verdict immediately.” This indicates that they live in a place where social and political status can mean a lot. Ms. Gheyrat suggests that she is optimistic about the appeals court dropping the 20 year ban on filmmaking and also reducing the prison sentence. The chance of not going to prison at all, according to Ms. Gheyrat, is slim to none, he will almost certainly be going to prison. The greatest help at this point is international as well as internal pressure and demand that the filmmaker should be found innocent. Panahi is hardened and humbled, though, and doesn’t want to put his friends at risk. He mentions that the Domestic Cinema Community isn’t in the position to help him out because they have to fear being banned as well. Ms. Gheyrat also indicates that “the rulings aren’t legal rulings at all” and that their legal argument wasn’t even heard. She says “I should say this plain and simple that the rulings are one hundred percent political and not legal at all…It all depends on the current social conditions and the pressures and reactions.” This is so interesting because this is an attorney that clearly has alot of experience and merit and is telling her that it is out of her hands, their legal argument doesn’t even matter, and that it is all up to the politicians interpretations. At the end of the phone call, Panahi looks over at the camera with a forced smile that expresses his frustration and disbelief. As an onlooker I felt his frustration, that feeling like there is nothing you can to help yourself out at a time with so much on the line. 

The next moment Jafar Panahi is filming his television screen and a program with an adorable little rebellious girl riding a bus is playing. To go with the theme of spontaneity and real life footage, the little girl on the bus yells “I’m not acting” and demands “let me off the bus.” She is just a little girl but she is brave and full of courage and the will to be free. The bus driver stops the bus and she walks off. 

At this time Panahi’s friend Mirtahmasb shows up to the house. Mirtahmasb takes charge of the camera at this point. As his fellow filmmaker holds the camera on him, Panahi begins to explain his ideas about a project within his home. He has a very tasteful home with grand wood furniture throughout, intricate carpets, and flowers potted all around. Panahi has thought of a simple screen play about a girl that is stuck in a house and tries to find a way to escape. He maps out the house on his living room floor on a large carpet. He gets really enthusiastic about the screenplay and begins acting it out on the carpet with the tape measure walls. The audience gets to see the deprived filmmaker back in his environment. Thinking up and inventing new stories and new ways to tell them. The screenplay that he is acting out is a metaphor for his own situation and thus he becomes the little girl in his story, stuck in a house until the end when the gate is opened. This simple movie about a girl in a house will never be seen in This is Not a Film but the development of the idea being formed is captivating material in itself which is an existential quality of it all. 

The New York Times wrote an article about This is Not a Film in 2012. In the positive review they wrote “Using modest, ready-to-hand techniques and a format that seems to emphasize the most banal, literal-minded, artless aspects of picture taking, Mr. Panahi has constructed a subtle, strange and haunting work of art.” (2) The more one learns about the film the more and more significant and special it becomes. Carrying around a camera, Jafar Panahi had to be very careful about who he trusted. On the night of an ancient Iranian holiday Chaharshanbe Suri, Panahi hears noises of fireworks as well as gunshots. It sounds chaotic in the streets outside and for a second it doesn’t seem that bad that Panahi is inside. A television announcement notifies that the president has banned fireworks on the national holiday. This is interesting to see that the president has banned something so harmless on such a big holiday. 

Towards the end of the “video diary”, Panahi gets paid an unexpected visit by a young college student who helps dispose of trash at the compound. Panahi answers the door with the camera still recording and begins talking to the man. It is a very tense and suspenseful encounter because it is unclear if the man really is who he says. The possibility of Panahi getting arrested on the spot seemed likely and imminent. Panahi takes the elevator all the way down several levels of floors while the trash man collects the garbage each floor down. When they get to the street level, there are sounds of loud yelling and explosions outside. The trash man pleads Panahi not to go outside in fear that someone would see his camera. This is a relief because now the trash man is trustworthy. As Panahi glances around the corner the camera exposes a giant fire right outside the gate in the middle of the street. It looks like a giant riot going on outside. The ending is exactly like the ending what he describes in his screen play. He walks out of the house to the gate and  outside of the gate is all of the madness of Iran. It left me wondering what was going to happen to him that very night or the next even more so than his future imprisonment. 

Jafar Panahi by making This is Not a Film gave me a whole new perception of Iran as well as documentary filmmaking. Jafar Panahi is a man who one likes to think they could relate to and often does. He is intelligent, passionate, and driven. He picks up the camera and shoots what he sees and thinks and feels. He is involved in an unequal battle where he is the overwhelming underdog and he has his whole life and career on the line. Panahi is caught in a “catch-22.” His most trusted advisors have told him that his only chance to reduce his sentence is to receive pressure and demand from important people, those being his fans. He needs to maintain his reputation as a critically acclaimed leading filmmaker in order for the international community to rally behind him and demand his innocence and yet he can’t legally film anything under the government’s ban. 

As for the filmmaker now, although his 20 year ban on filmmaking is still in effect, Jafar Panahi is still making films to this day. His latest film, Closed Curtain, was shot in secrecy at Panahi’s seaside villa on the Caspian Sea and premiered at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival. I am excited to see Closed Curtain along with more of Panahi’s work. This is Not a Film is a magnificent and real demonstration of existential wonder. It deserves attention, respect, and appreciation. People may not appreciate it enough now, and maybe won’t for another 20 years, or even within Panahi’s lifetime, but every moment it’s message with get stronger with time and some day far in the future it may help change the way things are. Beyond the cinematic joy that it brings to watch, it is a strong statement against restrictions on artistic freedom. It’s a peaceful and enchanting way of rebelling against the corrupt and paranoid political system of Iran. Jafar Panahi 

Works Cited: 

1. ”Filmmaker Jafar Panahi sentenced to six years in prison.” Green voice of Freedom 12 20 2010, n. pag. Print. <http://en.irangreenvoice.com/article/2010/dec/20/2581>

2. Scotts, A.O. “A Video From Tehran: It’s Not What It Isn’t, but What It Is He’s Jafar Panahi, but ‘This Is Not a Film’.” New York TImes [NYC] 02 28 2012, n. pag. Print. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/29/movies/hes-jafar-panahi-but-this-is-not-a-film.html?_r=0>

Scene Analysis: 

Manufactured Landscapes 

Manufactured Landscapes (Jennifer Baichwal, 2006) is a concentrated look at Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky's photographs that depict the large-scale industrialization and environmental impact within China. These incredible color photographs display the environmental results of never ending consumerism and are commonly shown in galleries around the world.  

The Canadian Baichwal and her crew showcase in color video not only Burtynsky's photographic process but also go beyond the individual still-frames that are the central focal point of this feature. By focusing on the narratives that exist within Burtynksky's photos Baichwal is able to translate these photographs into the the time based medium of film. This translation reveals an uncomfortable image showing how industrialization is changing our environment. She also offers what the photographs cannot by adding significance to the individuals within the still frames, this in turn clashes with Burtensky's  ambiguous standpoint. 

The camera-work is elegant and subtle in nature. Landscapes opens with a 6 mintue dolly shot through a Chinese factory. Row after row of workers pass by with nothing but the ambient noise of the 1km long facility at work. Time stretches further and further. As the shot continues it is hard to grasp the sheer scale of this place. We then see the first of Burtynsky's photographs, a large still of the 23,000 workers all arranged in lines outside the factory.  

By allowing us to experience what the photo cannot Baichwal adds a humanistic element to her piece. Unlike Burtynsky's far away shots which emphasize "the dehumanizing dimensions of industrializtion," Baichwal returns the viewer to the "teeming organic life that also constitues China and its images," with close ups and a roaming eye (Bozak, 69).  

The film operates under this stylistic umbrella for the rest of the piece. In terms of audio we never hear the director but rather a few voice over clips from photographer Burtynsky. These sporadic audio bits breath insight into the objective of Burtynsky during these photographic expeditions.  He makes it clear his intentions with these photographs isn't to glorify or condemn the effects of industrialization, but rather to showcase how the relationship with our environment is changing within this consumerist society. This ambiguous attitude is called into question as the visible evidence within the photographs seem to be chilling in nature. Music sits underneath a good portion of the sequences within Landscapes. This music is open to further interpretation as in some sequences it "provides a subtle yet distinct means of guidance and persuasion," (Bozak, 69). Dissonant chords and melodies paired with the factory images give  the viewer the feeling of discomfort.    

The director manages to use "basic cinematic," techniques to help "reorient the viewer's perception of the photographs," by calling into question this ambiguous stance that Burtynsky takes.  In the opening fifteen minutes of the film we are presented as the viewer with the staging of one of Burtynsky's photographs. The Factory bells ring as we see rows of workers leaving the factory.   

The camera slowly pans and zooms in on its subjects, the eye investigates slowly revealing personality. Off the screen we hear Burtynsky's voice telling his crew how he would like certain rows arranged. This creates discomfort as the viewer and calls into question what Horton calls the "documentary power of cinema to show real landscapes captured on film." Hearing the photographer stage his subjects is reminiscent of the romantic ethnography within Nanook. "Flaherty carefully selected his 'cast' and directed them to 'play' their roles," just as Burtensky is keenly aware of his desired image (Horton, 89). It is difficult as the viewer to hear these stagings and to still believe that there is no objective behind Burtensky's work. Landscapes does a good job including these kind of behind the scenes sequences, and allows the viewer to ponder on Burtynsky's motives. The film doesn't condemn Burtynsky but nor does it overlook his creative process within taking these landscape photographs.

In a sequence about half way through the feature we see Burtynsky and his crew being told by the owners of an oil mining facility that they are not allowed to shoot film there. It is the only time in the film that we see director Baichwal and Burtynsky together in the frame. The production crew tries to reason with the security but ultimately are not allowed to continue shooting footage there. 

By including this scuffle with the security it makes the following images feel more enticing as the notion of forbidden landscapes is heightened. One must ask though if the inclusion of this aside was done strategically. As Leo Braudy points out, "too often we accept a film as a window on reality without noticing that the window has been opened in a particular way, to exclude as well as include," (Horton p71). Any experienced documentary viewer will understand that the director makes active choices constantly that will result in the final product. "Someone always chooses what to shoot and how, and such a process implants to one degree or another, a perspective on the material, the characters, the landscapes shot," (Horton p88). In the case of Baichwal's film the main character is the landscape. Burtynsky occupies a side role in contrast with the focus on the ever changing landscape of an industrialized China. 

During the back quarter of Landscapes we are presented with a voice over clip from Burtynsky that stuck with me as the viewer deeply. He makes note of the fact that his projects and photos are, "complicit with the very systems he is attempting to expose" (Bozak p2).

During this we as the spectator see a long slow zoom. The frame begins on a single car, and than as the frame expands we see thousands of the same vehicle. It is a subtle yet powerful way for director Baichwal to convey more than the photographs themselves.

"Because photography is an industrial practice, Burtynsky's photographs (and Baichwal's film) cannot document the ills of industry's expansion without being implicated," as well (Bozak, 69). This adds a very unique dynamic to the remainder of the feature as images glide past of children digging through plastic scraps looking for valuable metals. The viewing experience no longer one spent questioning Burtynksy. Baichwal very keenly exposes moments of Burtynksy's deep honesty to demonstrate how this environmental impact is complex and not just a straightforward prognosis. Regularly throughout the film we see images that leave an undeniable assumption that China's industrialized practices cannot be sustained. The frames are filled with man made beauty but only in the documentary do we get to experience the human aesthetic associated with the still frames. Burtynsky's far away top down shots "depict people as all but lost in the immensity of their environment" (Diehl, 121). Instead Baichwal gives us long take shots of workers at the factory, some of which even acknowledge the presence of the camera, adding a personal layer to the overlaid images.

Reception

Manufactured Landcsapes made its debut at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival and was met with positive review. Critiques have arisen that outline the lack of a solution as well as the structure of the ending. The very process of filming and photographing contribute to the issues that this piece brings up. And yet there is no call to action during the final sequence. Rather only the idea of awareness that is displayed for 86 minutes. The film just gracefully fades out to a shot of a new nightclub in Shanghai. The idea is that the new standard for living has created an incredible impact on our environment. I would have preferred some line of dialogue from Burtynsky, instead the picture just ends unexpectedly.

Minor critiques aside Manufactured Landscapes is an excellent film very much worth viewing. The images that comprise the piece are so enticing and beautiful that each cut is anticipated. The subject material is layered offering two unique arguments to consider. On the surface there is the ever present reminder that industrial growth of China and its practices are clearly not sustainable. Beyond the surface we see that Baichwal doesn't shy away from calling into question the so called objectivity that Burtynsky has in the display of his photographs. The documentary shows moments of stagings that beckon back to an earlier era of ethnographic filmmaking. The viewer is kept busy exploring these two concepts throughout the film. Manufactured Landscapes can be found on Netflix currently and is very much worth the viewing experience. 

-Chase Orrick

Works Cited

Bozak, Nadia. "Manufactured Landscapes," Film Quarterly 62.2 (Winter 2008), 68-71.

Diehl, Carol. "The Toxic Sublime," Art in America 94.2 (February 2006). 118-123. Web.

Fishman, Ted C. "The World's Future Take Root in China's Cities," China: The Photographs of Edward Burtynsky. Steidl, 2005.12-13.

“For nearly eighty years, filmed images of the natural world conformed to the classic documentary aesthetic. Such images, were perceived to be an expansion of human vision, a means of entering into a world that was invisible to the human eye, an extension of the physical body of the subject, allowing for the creation of pleasure by bringing animals in their natural habitat closer to humans though the act of visualization in moving image media,” (Horak, 459).

Microcosmos, otherwise known as “The Grass People,” is an 80-minute documentary film bringing detail and beauty to a world otherwise shrugged off or crushed under the sole of a hiking boot.  With a colorful cast of insects, birds and other animals, the filmmakers are able to magnify the scope through which we view such characters paralleling a world that is in many ways quite similar to our own. “The microscope camera view revealed scenes hidden from the naked eye, constructing uniquely cinematic image while displaying the abstract beauty of nature,” (Horak, 465). In an interview on how the film was made, co-director Claude Nuridsany notes that, “when you watch a nature film, everything appears perfect and amazing. But what interests us is to show all the quirks of the insects' lives—to bring out their individual personalities. When you are looking at insects on their own scale, they cease to be insects,” (Making of Microcosmos).  They are ultimately brought to the same magnitude that we see any film with a human cast.

 French filmmakers Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou released the film in October of 1996 and international audiences widely accepted it for never before had anyone seen such beautifully detailed images of the insect world.  Before the 1990s, it was technologically impossible to photograph the insects on such a large scale without running into issues such as depth of field and lighting the artificial sets without overheating the insects.  It took Nuridsany and Pérennou over 3 years to perfect their custom remote camera rigs, macro lenses, and artificial sets before they could even start shooting. 

Microcosmos begins with the camera fading through the clouds, across a couple of sweeping meadows resting its focus on a blade of grass.  Here the filmmakers ease the audience into the micro world of insects and other invertebrate.  Many of the shots in the beginning of the film are purely observational, with little to no drama or conflict.  Interestingly enough, the framing of these shots are quite symmetrical in contrast to Mother Nature’s common asymmetrical architecture.  Nuridsany and Pérennou let the images speak for themselves with the exception of a very quick voice over narration introducing the audience to the setting and cast. 

“Like most classic documentaries, wildlife documentaries rely on narrative to construct meaning from disparate shots of nature, and to allow for viewer identification,” (Horak, 462).  Contemporary nature pieces such as Planet Earth have adapted many of the same formal techniques that were once a precedence set by Nuridsany and Pérennou in 1996 .  Their sound design builds the emotion, anticipation and ultimately carries the storyline across the 80 minutes with little to no narration.  In fact, one of the main differences between Microcosmos and Plantet Earth Is that the director of planet earth use big name celebrities such as Ophra Winfrey to carry their storyline. Philippe Barbeau and Bernard Leroux, the film’s primary sound designers, found it quite challenging to recreate certain sounds that are rarely ever heard by the human ear.  “The smells, tastes, and sounds of nature all played their part in rousing the emotions,” (Mitman, 76). The emphasis in Microcosmos is primarily on the sounds of nature. Barbeau and Leroux prove that there is no need for the typical human narrative voice when the natural sounds of the environment are suitable to tell the story and carry the emotion of the film in themselves.

"Even the directos couldn't say what sound they wanted on their pictures."

"Who has ever heard an ant close up?  It makes no sense."

-Philippe Barbeau on the sound of "Microcosmos."

Microcosmos demonstrates many different visual techniques in its story including timelapse photography used to parallel the growth of a vine with the crawling of a pink inchworm. Slow motion is utilized to emphasize the devastation that raindrops cause on a world that sees them as millions of bombs falling from the sky.  The framing of the battle of the beetles scenes resembles a battle of gargantuan creatures worthy of Jurassic Park. The sound design in the kissing snails scene constructs something similar to an opera. These cinematic techniques stand in place of a voice-over narration to provide emphasis on the emotions in which the audience is experiencing.  Nuridsany and Pérennou continue these parallels throughout the film emphasizing the animalistic tendencies within one’s self.  They involve themes of self cleansing, family, birth, death, and reproduction in both animals and plants, to name a few.  We are all live beings, made from the same organic compounds.

One scene in particular that both Nuridsany and Pérennou gave special attention to was the famous snail scene.  With a screen time of over two minutes, the intimate love making scene shared between two snails almost seems choreographed. The gorgeous cinematography paired with an opera juxtaposes our own intimate sexual moments with that of the snails—regressing our own romanticized sexual tendencies to that of the natural world.

Although Microcosmos was advertised as a documentary, it exhibits many portions of pre-conceived scenes and even had a preliminary script followed by the filmmakers.  In an article written on the film, Angie Brammer quotes Nuridsany saying that some scenes took over 40 takes to perfect.  Obviously, this film transcends any attempt at the expository or observational mode of cinema walking that fine line between a creative treatment of actuality vs a fictional nature film in the Disney tradition.

There were a few visual effects used by Nuridsany and Pérennou in an effort to enhance the audience’s viewing experience, however they were quite cheesy and ultimately took away from the film’s impact.  The effects were implemented to simulate a first person experience, such as a honeycomb filter replicating the eyesight as a bee, and the dragonfly camera—free flying hand held camera that imitates the flight path of a dragonfly.   The special effects used were seemed quite out of place because who actually knows how a bee sees?  This technique in particular is similar to Stan Brakhage’s attempted to represent ones inner sight in his 1974 silent film, The Text of Light.   What did work, however, was the sound in this particular scene.  In order to isolate the foley of individual bees flying through the air, Barbeau and Leroux recorded live bees flying in a “dead room.”  When the directors opted to include a soundtrack as well, quickly vibrating violins and other string instruments mimicked the buzzing of bees.

Despite not being the first wildlife film to feature macro photography, Microcosmos stands alone in it’s ability to create a narrative of non-human animals without the aid of the voice-over narrative. The images along with the meticulously created sound design work together to seam together narratives of the different insects. Each species has it’s own unique conflict and resolution. This film reveals a much more intimate view of nature than ever seen before. The audience takes on a voyeuristic role, which at times like the mating sequences of the different species, can feel very much intrusive and even possibly draw a blush from the viewer. Microcosmos is a rare and wonderful look into the everyday lives of our mostly unseen neighbors of planet earth.

---

Works Cited:

Brammer, Angie. "Reel Bugs." Angie Brammer's Insects in Film: Reel Bugs. N.p., 18 Apr. 2002. Web. 1 Nov. 2013. <http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/Spring02/Brammer/reel.htm>.

"microcosmos - Snails of beauty High Quality." YouTube. YouTube, 14 Sept. 2009. Web. 3 Nov. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEva0pT9ndg>.

"Making of Microcosmos Part 3 (Sound & Foley)." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3GduxWVTuk>.

Mitman, Gregg. "Zooming in on Animals' Private Lives" and "Afterword: The New Green Wave." Reel Nature: America's Romance with Wildlife on Film. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999. 59-84 and 209-220.

Bousé, Derek. "Are Wildlife Films Really 'Nature Documentaries'?" Critical Studies in Mass Communication 15.2 (1998): 116-140.

Bousé, Derek. "A Breif History of a Neglected Tradition." Wildlife Films. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. 37-83.

Bousé, Derek. "Appendix: Chronological Highlights from the History of Wildlife and Natural History Films" Wildlife Films. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. 195-222.

Bousé, Derek. "The Problem of Images." Wildlife Films. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. 4-36.

Horak, Jan-Christopher. "Wildlife Documentaries: From Classical Forms to Reality TV". Film History: An International Journal 18.4 (2006): 459-475.

Introduction

Pat O’Neill was born in 1939 in Bakersfield, California but grew up in Inglewood, California.  During his youth, O’Neill “made occasional excursions to view the Beat scene at Venice Bech and gained an informal cinema education at Raymond Rohauer’s Coronet Theater, where the Surrealist classics made an especially strong impression.” (James, p. 428)  O’Neill would go on to study design and sculpture at UCLA but would shift his interests to photography and then film upon going for his graduate.  He would make his first film in 1963 called By the Sea.  It was “a study of beach culture in Venice made in collaboration with a computer graphics pioneer, Robert Abel, and several other shorts brought him into contact with Peter Mays, David Lebrun, and others in the UCLA and Topanga Canyon circles of psychedelic filmmakers.” (James, p. 428)  He would then make 7362 in 1967.  With this film, he established his own style.  After the release of this film his innovative skills has made his special effects work in demand for commercials and independent features. (James, p. 428)  He would go on to work on special effects for feature films such as Stars Wars: Episode V and VI, and Superman IV.  It was during this time he produced three of his major films.  One of those films was Water and Power.  One theme that is shown throughout the film is how light moves over time.  An issue that is raised is how people are making their mark on nature.

Content/Context

Water and Power is a 55 minute movie that mixes both color and black and white scenes.  It was shot on 35mm and uses superimpositions throughout the whole film.  The superimposition shots shows us the change of nature to city simultaneously.  O’Neill also uses long pans and tracking shots which were controlled by a “specially designed computerized motion-control device that permitted O’Neill to make very exact tracking and panning shots and to duplicate those motions exactly, so that additional material could be precisely layered into the original take.” (James, p. 432)  He also uses time lapse through a majority of the film.  In an interview with O’Neill he talks how one of his goals was to show how light moves over time, which is why he used so many time lapse shots.  O’neill doesn’t use a typical narrative structure but instead relies on inter-titles to tell a story along with fragments from movies which include Detour, The Last Command, The Lady Confesses, The Docks of New York, and The Ten Commandments. (James, p . 433)It is hard to give a clear synopsis on the movie, but according to O’Neill, it is about “a detective investigating Haskell’s death visits his wife, who lives in a trailer in the desert near their mine with her lover, Rudy, who tells old tales on topics ranging from ghostly critters to corruption in the Russian army.” (James, p.433)  

Scene Analysis

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxJWwfZs6KM

0:00 - 3:28

The scene starts with a just a voice over narration for a movie.  It then cuts to a hand scratching the letter X on what sounds like glass. 

Then it cuts to shot a handle held shot of what appears to be trees at dawn.  This clip is sped up and is hard to tell what is actually happening because it appears that everything is being blurred.  The next shot is what looks women coming out from the lantern that is on a chair.  The women is rocking back and forth but due to the speed you can fully see her leaning and sitting up straight.  O’Neill then zooms and pans up to the corner where it appears there is a dark cave.  A light is being emitted from the cave in which little dots of lights come out. 

Music is cued up while these dots of light are marching and every time the string instrument is plucked, there are a few dots that get shot across the screen as if it was a shooting star.  Once the sun starts to come out the shadows go away along with the dots of lights.  On the last shot of the rocks, a shot of the letter Y is superimposed on the rock.  He then cuts to an inter title with the words “Osmotic Pressure”.  The scene from mountains area to the arctic.  There then is a series of repeated pans accompanied with a mechanical sound as if O’Neill is telling everyone that he used a machine for his pans.  The first pan is to what appears to be a desk.  A scene from a movie is then superimposed over the arctic scene.  The next pan is very similar except for the fact there is a lamp post super imposed in the frame. 

A scene is again superimposed over the arctic except this time the dialogue has been stripped and replaced with classical music.  This repetition of pans goes on two more times.

The first half of the scene in the mountains relates to light moving in all sorts of ways.  The first way is with the long streaks that are made while the clips are sped up.  These long exposures show light moving in long clusters in a very moment of time.  It is then followed with the dots of light marching together.  The dots of light are the complete opposite of the long exposure shots because O’Neill is showing light as individuals.  Finally when the sun rises, the light emits eventually overtakes the dots of light to become one.  This could be seen as all light moving together as one and not individually.  Right before O’Neill cuts to the inter-title, a hand scratching the letter Y is superimposed on the rocks as if O’Neill is trying to say we leave our mark everywhere in nature.  The use of the superimposition of scenes from old movies over the arctic is a way to show how humans will eventually get to the arctic and make it there own.  The repetition of pans are seen as a never give up mentality, in which we will keep trying until we succeed.  As for the different scenes used, that is the different groups that will try.  As for the change is music, it is used to distinguish the same group trying to “control” the arctic, but with a different cast trying.  The mechanical sound is used to show nature at a peaceful state, but when we hear the sound, we realize that we aren’t here for nature.  That is followed with what appears to be a desk and eventually a lamp at the end of the shot.  The exclusion of the lamp on the first pan shows us looking at this place we are at for the first.  When the lamp is added it seems as if we are in a home like setting that makes us feel comfortable.  

Referential Text: “The City as Motion Picture: Notes on Some California City Films” Scott MacDonald (1997)

Scott MacDonald lists Water and Power as a representation of Los Angeles.  He goes on to say “O’Neill’s depiction of Los Angeles can be read as a revision of the form, that reflects the more complex relationship of city and country we have been forced to recognize as a result of the West’s dwindling water resources.” (MacDonald, p. 7)  This is shown early on in Water and Power, with the water pipe shot.  This shot represents the water being transferred into the city.  MacDonald then goes on to say “Water and Power can be seen as, simultaneously, an emblem of despair and of hope.” (p. 10)  This again goes back to the shot of the water pipe which is probably the most important shot of the whole film.  The water pipe is connecting nature with the city and also bringing life into the desert.  Humans can’t survive very long at all without water, and therefore if something drastic happens to the pipe, nature and the city are isolated from each other until the problem is fixed.

Conclusion

Water and Power was released at the end of the 1980’s after Manuel DeLanda’s Raw Nerves, Better Gordon’s Variety, Yvonne Rainer’s The Man Who Envied Women, and Lewis Klahr’s In the Month of Crickets.  These films marked a culmination of sorts as an “avant garde’s pointed revision of film noir codes.” (Arthur, p. 13)  According to Arthur, film noir, “spawned Hollywood’s most dire, if also conflicted, dramatizations of the plight of America’s urban middle class.” (Arthur, p. 13)  O’Neill is able to show us this with the expansion over nature by the human race.  The title of the film directly reflects this, because O’Neill named the film after a company that bought the water and moved into Los Angeles.

Bibliography

MacDonald, Scott. “The City as Motion Picture: Notes on Some California City Films.”Wide Angle 19.4 (1997), 109-130. 

Arthur, Paul. “Permanent Transit: The Films of Pat O’Neill.” Lookout Mountain Studios, 2013. 1-17. <www.lookoutmountainstudios.com>

World renown artist, Christo Javacheff, ambitiously decides to make his next project, in the early 70s, an impressively large sheet of bright orange fabric stretched out across the Rifle Gap in Colorado.  Conveniently, famous documentary filmmakers, Albert and David Maysles, decide at the same time to make their next documentary film about someone doing that very thing.  "Christo's Valley Curtain" is the result.  While the piece of art itself has been lost to the ravages of nature after only a few days of existence (Scott, 62), the film has now become the final stage and remains as a triumph of ingenuity.  The Maysles brothers utilized their footage of the varying scales of the project to make interesting comparisons to the relative simplicity of creating a template in Christo's studio, to the massive collaboration that took place for the real-world realization.  These elements of cooperation and increasing complexities make this relatively short documentary more than just a documentation of progression.

Content and Form

The 28 minute documentary spends the majority of its time primarily focused on the orange fabric (or, at least, how it is being manipulated), rather than centering on Christo himself.  This allows the audience, through the course of the film, to connect with the construction workers arguably as much as the creative force behind them.  In fact, many of the most memorable moments are actually actions that the workers perform (including one of the oldest contractors climbing across the guide wire, hundreds of feet off the ground, in order to loosen parts of the fabric that had become tangled).  The motivations and opinions of the project are never given through interviews, although it is clear on one or more occasions that the person speaking is speaking directly to the filmmakers.  The unobtrusive style, or observational mode, that the Maysles brothers employ here creates an element of realism that simultaneously adds tension and eloquence.  We are given no context to the event, outside of what is said by the subjects being recorded as they are doing their work.  The story is told through a combination of juxtaposed edits and the methodical craftsmanship that unfolds before us.  The juxtapositions come from cutting back and forth between the large-scale event at the Rifle Gap and the small-scale planning stages that took place in Christo's studio.  This not only helps compress the two-year planning for the project (Scott, 62), but also gives us a comparison between Christo's ambitious inspiration as well as his glorious execution.

The curtain itself was met with little opposition from the locals.  Even the golfers who are "asked" on film about the project seem more interested in how it will look, than how it will effect them.  Film critic, Vincent Canby remarked that "The surprise of the film is the enthusiasm with which this project was greeted by the residents of the town of Rifle..." (Scott, 62).  Christo himself had already made, and continues to make, a reputation out of erecting large works like this, often using fabric of some kind.  During the mid-90s, Christo covered the Reichstag, in Berlin (a political landmark building in Germany) with sheets of white fabric (Christo, 1995).

It is through the notoriety of his artwork (and the related films that accompany them) that have given Christo the freedom to do this.  Oddly enough, according to Albert Maysles, who worked with him on "Valley Curtain" as well as four others, stated in an interview with Wheeler Dixon that "Christo makes the drawings, but that's only part of the whole project.  The most important part of his project was getting all the legal permissions to create his works.  And that interested us, and we started working together" (190).  While Christo's Valley Curtain doesn't show us that particular aspect of the Rifle Gap project, it paints a unique picture of the differences between motivations in art and in film.  For Christo, the final spectacle is what he is striving for, which we stand with him at the end of the film as he marvels at it, mentioning that "It looks just like the drawing."  For the Maysles brothers, however, being filmmakers guided their interests into the entire process, rather than just the final few shots of the film.

Scene analysis

Christo's Valley Curtain - Part 2

The editing of the film creates a complex assortment of contrasting feelings and moments.  Early in the above clip, Christo is anxiously watching as the fabric, which is attached to the main guide wires, is being unwrapped from its protective cover.  He tells an off-screen person, "Don't cut into the fabric."  The film then cuts back to Christo in his studio carefully ironing out the small piece of fabric he has glued to a photo of the Rifle Gap.  This cut does a couple of things to the viewer.  The obvious is that it gives the audience some insight into the kind of care that he wants shown to the final piece of fabric, by demonstrating the extreme care that he shows with just his small-scale reference.  The cut also explains to the audience why his order about not tearing the fabric sounded so anxious and annoyed, by reminding us that a lot of care and thought went into preparing for this event, and that Christo has years of his life riding on its success.  Finally, the cut also juxtaposes the chaotic and loud setting that Christo is in while he works to complete his project with the peaceful and methodical tone that surrounded him as he planned for it.  It's possible that with this cut (and the many similar ones that riddle the film) the Maysles are trying to comment on the contrast between how a project might seem in your mind, running smoothly and in control, versus how the project actually comes to fruition, often hectic and stressful.  Christo clearly feels these two mindsets during the course of this film, and it is unlikely that the Maysles brothers hadn't noticed.

Later in the above clip, there exists another juxtaposition through cuts, but this time they remain in the same time.  While Christo and Jean-Claude are frantically trying to keep the curtain release on schedule, they begin arguing with the servicemen on the ground about why nothing is happening (arguing that things are safe now, but may not be for long), while the film cuts occasionally to the workers up on the mountain who are making jokes and talking about the inebriated feelings they plan on having after the project is finished.  While the cuts back and forth are slightly humorous, they also allow for a connection (or, rather, a contrast) to be made between the apparent blue and white-collar separation that is happening on the site.  Christo is frantically ordering the people around, trying to complete a job, possibly without the understanding of what may be necessary to finish it, while the engineers are calmly making preparations and eventually unveiling the curtain...almost.

Referential Text - "The Christo Films: Christo's Valley Curtain and Running Fence" Nancy Scott (1982)

Nancy Scott's review of Christo's Valley Curtain puts most of its emphasis on both the constant juxtapositions caused by the jump cuts, as well as what she calls "the immediacy of the direct cinema method" (62).  Her focus on the curtain itself expresses that it symbolizes a break in the normal experiences of the society around it.  People see the curtain, which is an object that is massive and impossible to ignore, and are forced to see the landscape that they have have become jaded to in a new light.  They begin to question art itself, and its forms of expression through nature (63). 

Scott believes that "The dialectical reference of Christo's art is [through juxtaposition] powerfully evoked by the very structure of the film itself" (62).  By creating opposition within the film through the contrasting cuts, the Maysles brothers are encapsulating the confrontational nature of Christo's art.  Many of the cuts in the film jump between Christo frantically trying to lead the team to his final vision, while keeping the people and the fabric safe from harm, to him calmly and happily working on the sample drawings and fabric testings in his shop.  Each contrasts as well as compliments the other.  The audience senses the peaceful nature of the formulation of the artwork in Christo's shop, because of the previously hectic shots of him scrambling to keep the operation running smoothly.  They also feel the weight of the anticipation while the work is being done in Rifle Gap, because they just witnessed the tensely methodical planning that led to it in earlier shots.

One of the most intense moments of the film, which Scott references, is when it looks like the curtain is finally being open, but 2/3 of the way across the fabric gets tangles and stops unraveling.  She says, "At the very moment when the curtain gets stuck...the precision push-pull of the film's advancing rhythm is brought to a grinding halt" (62).  Curiously, Christo tries to coach the crew, yelling "Pull, pull, pull!" as they attempt to lightly tug on the line in hopes that it will free itself.  The editing calms down slightly, only cutting between different vantage points of the hold-up, which creates a strong feeling of tingling suspense as we watch to see if the curtain will eventually continue its unveiling without any damage to itself.

Conclusion

Christo's Valley Curtain, and other films like it, have helped give an already well-known artist some extra renown in the art world.  Christo's "fabric art" is internationally famous and every installation is extremely temporary.  Each piece is quickly either dismantled or ravished by its surroundings shortly after its initial resurrection.  This element of anti-longevity makes the films capturing the creation of the artwork its final, more permanent stage.  While we may be able to drive down to the Rifle Gap and see where the curtain joined two immovable objects, the curtain itself no longer remains.  However, the film doesn't only record the evidence of the curtain's existence.  It also takes the audience through the journey of the planning, arguing with the manpower, and eventual feeling of relief as Christo's vision is finally realized.  In many ways, the Maysles brothers' film has become the curtain itself.  Its beauty and awe strike us as we witness the incredible spectacle, and, just like a curtain in a movie theatre, the film punctuates Christo's vision with resolution and a strong feeling of closure.

Bibliography

Dixon, Wheeler Winston. "An Interview with Albert Maysles." Quarterly Review of Film and Video, Vol 20.3 (July-September 2003). 177-192. Print.

Javacheff, Christo and Jeanne-Claude de Guillebon. "Wrapped Reichstag." 1971-1995.  Web. (http://christojeanneclaude.net/projects/wrapped-reichstag#.UmGwaSTXHJ8)

Maysles, Albert and David, dir. Christo's Valley Curtain. Documentary, 1974. Film.

Full length film located with link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liYnvIBLMBQ Link to full film

Introduction

Born September 5th, 1942 in the town of Munich, Germany, Werner Herzog would become one of Germany's most gifted talents (Young, 409). Having made his first film in 1961, it wasn't until the year of 1974 in which Herzog would produce and direct his documentary film The Great Ecstasy of the Sculptor Steiner, which would later become one of his most important films. Combining aesthetics of dangers caused by armed conflict, accident and natural forces we follow the young and talented Walter Steiner and his relationship as a ski jumper and to the sport. Having been once inspired by an episode from the television serious Land of Silence and Darkness, Werner Herzog looks to explore the mind-body state of the "ski-flyer". Two themes thus emerging throughout the film are the senses of "ecstasy" in which one feels when watching ski jumpers perform. This as well as the many dangers ski jumpers encounter resulting from the need to produce this feeling of "ecstasy". Not only Steiner, but Herzog as well helps to emphasize and expand on these two themes throughout the film.

Content/Context 

Running for 45 minutes with a total film length of 501m, Werner Herzog was able to shoot the entire film on 16mm film with a color-negative type of film stock. While 16mm lies halfway between the finer, less grainy 35mm film stock, Herzog was still able to capture the beauty and "ecstasy" of the ski jumpers in their competitive nature. Consisting of shots from German towns such as Oberstdorf, Garmisch-Portakirchen and the country of Yugoslavia, the film had originally been made for a German television station in 1974 called "Series of Extreme Situations". While in most of Werner Herzog's film's he does not appear on camera, for this particular assignment the television station required for Herzog to appear on camera in which Herzog plays the assumed roll of the narrator. Throughout the film we see Herzog framed in a medium-shot in which he is holding a microphone beneath his chin, a way in which a sports broadcaster may. Doing this promotes several things: Herzog is therefore the assumed narrator of the film making Herzog's presence and narration a dramatic tension between Walter Steiner and the sport itself. By doing this, we see Herzog interact with Steiner not only physically but verbally, placing this film under the participatory mode of documentary modes. When we then do see Steiner's interviews (with the absence of Herzog) it is only him we hear of. No narration, no music, it is the silence of the interviews that deepens his separation from the public world of competition (Waller, 30). However, the ways in which Steiner's interviews are portrayed are in many ways representative as a PSA announcement may be. For Steiner's first monologue when he is at the mountain Steiner states "ski-flying has reached the point where it is beginning to present real-dangers" (Herzog,1974,film.) Here the suggestion of harm and danger is presented over the underlying senses of ecstasy. However, this sense of danger is quickly smother by the heavy usage of slow motion shots. For the film, Herzog was able to use extreme slow motion cameras specifically used for ski jumping. By using these special high speed cameras, Herzog is able to capture the effect of flying as the ski jumpers jumps are dramatically dragged out, lasting seemingly forever. What is important and what the high speed cameras alone can begin to capture visually is the ecstasy of flight (Waller, 30). In one scene, there is a dream type sequence in which we see Walter Steiner silently placed within the fame which then cuts to slow motion shots of him jumping. The simple departure from the usual documentary technique suggests that the dream contributes in a key way to Steiner's knack for ski flying (Cook, 289). This ecstasy of comparing an actual dream correlates with the feeling of ecstasy from flying on skis. However, content raises questions of whether Herzog is more concerned about Steiner's well being or the films dramatic effect (Cook, 285). Herzog dramatizes  the occurrences of Steiner's career exclaiming in his first interview (more or less or a sports report) "Walter Steiner was in very great danger" (Herzog, 1974, film). Here is how we see how we see that The Great Ecstasy of the Sculptor Steiner is a stylized film (Waller,26). During the time in which Steiner was jumping in the early 1970's, no one but Steiner had jumped at such great distances and courses were not yet prepared for such feats. Steiner, in a way, was exceeding this feeling of ecstasy to a point in which it could have been life threatening.  

Scene Analysis

[02:03-04:02]

At 02:03 of the film, the scene opens up with an extreme close up shot of a skiers face. With music playing over the footage we watch as the skier performs a jump in real-time speed.

As the skier performs his jump he proceeds to crash violently into the hard packed landing area. Music plays on. 02:17

Cutting with smooth continuity from a multi-camera setup of the skiers, we watch medics come to the aid of the fallen skier as they lift him from the icy course. 02:28

When cutting to a different skier who is about to jump we are introduced to their name through text placed on the bottom of the screen. 03:16

Nearing the end of the scene, cuts were made directly on slow motion falls, excluding the anticipation of going down the ramp.

03:41

This scene holds significance in which it is able to exemplify several elements of the documentary. As we watch each skier accelerate down the ramp launching their bodies into the air, we begin to experience this mix between the ecstasy of a skiers jump as well as an equal balance of danger. While each jump in the sequence of jumps is spectacular (this "ecstasy") each one lands with a terrible crash. However, throughout the sequence music plays, aiding beauty to the flights of the skiers and enhancing the emotion tremendously. It is as if the ecstasy of the flight overpowers the danger it beholds. While quick cutting of the scene emphasizes the dangers of skiing, it is the music that plays over throughout the scene that truly displaces the actions on the screen creating the feeling of ecstasy. It is this scene where we are able to see the blending of themes come together within the film.

Conclusion

Werner Herzog's film The Great Ecstasy of the Sculptor Steiner is a visually masterful film exploring the life and dangers of ski jumper Walter Steiner in the early 1970's. After the making of the film, Herzog quickly gained recognition not only for creating some of the most fantastic narratives in Film History, but also for pushing himself and crews to the limit.  With the use of the participatory mode of documentary in this particular film, Werner Herzog was able to use himself to his advantage of dramatizing and emphasizing the life of a ski jumper and how it has not only effected Walter Steiner himself, but the competitors around him. Thus being able to distinguish the ecstasy of the sport from the harm of the sport. Within the title it is not hard to make the connection of comparison with the content shown. The Ecstasy of the Sculptor Steiner is directly linked to that of Walter Steiner himself and the feeling of "ecstasy" he can so produce when competing in the sport he is so, if not too good at. While there was once ecstasy some are still left scarred by the brutal footage of the fallen skiers. While the show "Series of Extreme Situations" ended in 1998 in which Herzog was filming for, still today, ski jumping associations complain of the damage the clip has done to the sport (Cook,284).

Bibliography

"Die Große Ekstase Des Bildschnitzers Steiner." IMDb. IMDb.com, n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2013.

Cook, Roger F. ""The Ironic Ecstasy of Werner Herzog: Embodied Vision in The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner."" A Companion to Werner Herzog (2012): n. pag. Print.

Waller, Gregory A. ""The Great Ecstasy of the Woodsculptor Steiner": Herzog and the "Stylized" Documentary." (n.d.): n. pag. Print.

The Woman's Film (1971)

Introduction:

Produced, directed, and edited by San Francisco Newsreel filmmaker Judy Smith, along with Louise Alaimo and Ellen Sorren, The Woman's Film is an American realist documentary and is considered to be one of the first feminist documentaries (Lesage, 3). Released in 1971 during the second wave of the Women's Movement, this film was made to raise awareness of the collective oppression that many women had felt within the domestic sphere of the home to the idealistic notions that patriarchal society had put on women. Smith and her fellow filmmakers had focused on a diverse set of women including women of color as well as poor and working class women, as they had been the most oppressed and were the women who were mainly on the forefront of the women's liberation movement (Warren, 83). Themes that we can see which correlate throughout the film and with the women being interviewed, is that through consciousness-raising, and as women share stories of similar experiences with one another, they are able to fully become aware their identities as individuals and collectively as women. The women in the film as well as the women filmmakers also want to show the differences and variety in women as well in order to show a more “realistic” representation of women.

Content/ Context:

Running time for the film is just over 40 minutes in length, and is shot on black and white 16mm film. Like filmmaker Judy Smith, many feminist filmmakers used a “realist” documentary structure, because at the time of their release, the feminist filmmakers saw that making these films were an urgent public act for the women's movement. By using 16mm film with The Woman's Film Judy Smith, wanted to enter the film within the 16mm circuit of educational films, especially in libraries , schools, churches, unions, and YWCAs, to bring a feminist analysis to many woman it might not otherwise reach (Lesage, 3). The films use of realism is quite apparent within the content of the film as well as the style, techniques and aesthetic used in The Woman's Film. Concerning content we see that Smith attempts to “capture” the world how it is and to project the women on screen as if they were natural and real (Warren, 81). When the talking head interviews are taking place, the women being filmed are usually within consciousness-raising meetings. The women speaking are given all the attention, they are usually centered within the frame and take up all of the screen space. We can see that these medium shots of the individual women produce a visual equality on screen between the women. The filmmakers also never seem to intervene in while the women are speaking. The reason for this as Judy Smith states is that, “...this film came from the people. When we started out to make this film we decided that we weren't going to write a script, that the ideas would come from those women,...from the people to the people” (Warren, 85). In the film, the women's interviews are broken into different segments and distributed through out the film. We see mothers on welfare, a Chicana activist, and other middle class working women (Warren, 89). The women talk about their different roles as a woman such as being a mother, daughter, wife, and worker, and how they are frustrated and tired of all the male patriarchy controlling their lives. In the film one of the middle class working woman explains how she never knew she was “strong” until recently. This was because in schools females were not encouraged to be strong mentally or physically, that was a masculine trait and women were encouraged to think they were inferior from men (The Woman's Film, 1971). Through consciousness-raising meetings, these women were able to relate and redefine each others shared experiences in order to find the “root” of their oppression and to understand what political actions they need to take. As for techniques or rather anti-techniques we see a lot of shaky camera work, blurred focus, erratic editing, and a sometimes a lack of narrative cohesion. Though this is because The Woman's Film was distributed through the Newsreel film-making collective which was infamous for these anti-conventions of camera work (Warren, 85). These sort of anti-conventions could possibly add to the immediacy and realism to The Woman's Film. During the late 1960's Newsreel was at the center of the political cinema scene in the U.S., and generally claimed an anti-bourgeois notion of cinema, keen on shocking what they understood as bourgeois aesthetic sensibilities (Warren, 85). Newsreel was dedicated to the concept of a continuing revolution and the potential of the cinema to mobilize a shared political identity necessary for broad based social change (Renov, 21). This can apply to The Woman's Film as well,considering the context surrounding this film, as it was filmed during the peak of the second wave of Women's Liberation. Like many other Newsreel productions, it can almost be seen as a sort of propaganda by in which the way it confronts its audience with the subject matter quite straight forward. As well as the immediacy in the way it looks due to the fact the filmmakers wanted to get the message out to as many women as they could.

Scene Analysis:

0:13-5:03

Within The Woman's Film, an effective way in which the filmmakers chapter or set-up the women's conversation topics is by intercutting montage of related still-images and other film footage. One scene that exemplifies this clearly is the opening scene of the film. The scene begins showing images and footage of a variety of women of different eras, age, class, and race. The montage continues showing footage of women cooking, cleaning, and taking care of children which is then juxtaposed with idealized representations of brides and women's beauty in the mass media. The song “I Can't Get No Satisfaction” which is played during the montage sequence, sets up the contradiction that these working class women being filmed explore throughout the film. The contradiction being the women's preconceived notions of what womanhood would be, or for this particular scene, what marriage would be like compared to their real life experiences. After the montage the film then cuts to the title which then cuts directly to the first woman being filmed. The camera giving her full attention, the woman being filmed talks about her poor upbringing and how once she got married “...that would be the end of your troubles” (The Woman's Film, 03:56). She them goes on to reveal how her real experience of getting married was the complete opposite of what she thought it was going to be like. The scene cuts back and forth between three different women being interviewed on the same topic, and their responses are quite similar to each others. The first woman interviewed stated that because she had no education to get a job she “needed” her husband to basically provide for her and their children even though this meant she had to put up with her husband mistreating and abusing her (The Woman's Film, 4:15). From responses like this one from the women, you begin get the overall theme in which these women feel this collective oppression which they are trying to work together on how to recognize it together and what to do about it.

Conclusion:

The Woman's Film is a film that had been made by women for (primarily the audience of)women (The Woman's Film, 1971). It was also one of the first films which had an all female crew and cast. Upon its release in 1971 the newsreel production had successful runs in California and New York theaters (Warren, 91). The Woman's Film was also screened to diverse audiences, ranging from movement meetings and university screenings, to a room of male telephone company employees (Warren, 91).The film also reached the museum circuit with a screening at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and positive reviews were abundant from Berkeley to New York (Warren, 91).Though a few years later in 1976, the feminist journal devoted to gender and cinema, the Camera Obscura collective worried about the prominence of feminist documentary films like The Woman’s Film. In women’s documentaries, the Camera Obscura collective found a problem in which they find that the film subjects rely too heavily on dominant cinematic structures to form identification and subject positioning. Such other early feminist documentaries include Three Lives (1971), The Woman’s Film, and Janie’s Janie. For Camera Obscura, realist feminist documentary films relied on psychoanalytic identification and presented themselves as “unmediated and transparent” ,and thus constructed “the same kind of subjectivity” for spectators as “classical” films (Warren, 92).However, Camera Obscurawere in pursuit of a distinct political vision than those at stake for the filmmakers and subjects of feminist documentaries (Warren, 92). Whereas early feminist documentaries had lied down the framework for the ensuing and inevitable political revolution.

Work Cited:

Lesage, Julia. “Feminist Documentary: Aesthetics and Politics.” Show us Life: Toward a History and Aesthetics of the Committed Documentary. Ed. Thomas Waugh. Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1984. 223-251.

Renov, Michael. “Newsreel: Old and New. Towards An Historical Profile.” Film Quarterly 14.1 (Autumn 1987), 20-33.

Smith, Judy, dir. The Woman's Film. Newsreel, 1971. Film.

Introduction

Born on October 27, 1936, Joyce Chopra – an American feminist filmmaker – began directing her own films in the early 1970s with an autobiographical film about herself at the time (“Joyce Chopra”). The film depicts a woman struggling with her own inner conflict between her current career of filmmaking and a developing career of being a new mother. Created in 1972 with co-director Claudia Weill, the film documents the forlorn opportunities of women everywhere that have given up professional careers for the ability to remain at home and provide for the family (“Joyce at 34.”). Two of the returning overarching themes presented by Chopra in this documentary are the role of women in the film industry and the role of women in the household. Chopra mentions in the film how she enjoys working with her co-director Claudia because she doesn't feel like there is any bias against her (Joyce at 34, 17:50). When she works with Weill on film sets her opinions are treated with more equality than had she been working on a male-dominated film set. The film also prods at the movement towards women entering the professional workplace and how Joyce is caught in the middle of wanting to have her own career being a filmmaker while also having to care for her daughter, Sarah. Shot on 16mm film and edited in between other jobs, this extremely reflexive film utilizes the observational mode of documentary to offer a brief yet sincere look into the personal conflicts of a mother and filmmaker.

Content and Form

The film was shot with a 16mm video camera with color film that was often upon a tripod for a more professional and serious overtone. The film itself is relatively short, only 28 minutes long, but I feel that this is an appropriate length for the limited topic of the film. The film displays the conflicting interests of our narrator/director/actor and how she is coping with these struggles. We start the film near the end of Joyce's pregnancy and begin to see an emerging theme of impatience because she is past her due date and just wants to return to work. The film follows Chopra's personal and professional struggles as her daughter grows up and the film ends as Joyce is considering having a second child because she feels that only one child may be selfish (Warren, 191). We learn that Joyce views her pregnancy as if she were within a movie waiting to be directed to have her child (Warren, 52). There are many self-reflexive aspects to this film as a result of Joyce being a filmmaker making a movie about a filmmaker having a child (Warren, 33). There are many scenes throughout the movie where we are introduced to various pieces of filmmaking equipment like cameras, microphones, editing tables, and the film stock itself (Warren, 52). Scattered throughout the movie, there are many instances where we see Joyce within the frame. Here it is very apparent who exactly is behind the camera, that would be co-director Claudia Weill. Other times, we do not see our filmmaker on screen, which makes me believe that she was holding the camera in order to achieve the desired shot for her film.

Context

This film was produced during the beginning stages of the womens' movement of the 1970s, where women were trying to enter previously male-dominated facets of the art industry in order to “make a name for themselves”. Prior to the 1970s, women really only had two ways of becoming a director. They either became an actress in a film, or worked as a secretary or production assistant on a film and then worked their way up to ranks to director (Lane, 4). Women were typically seen as “passive” actors on film sets, while men were seen as the “active” actors, this is what was known as “the look” or “the male gaze” in Hollywood cinema of the time (Lane, 6). The “male gaze” treated the female image as a castration threat to the male film industry that would “endangers the unity of the diegesis and bursts through the world of illusion as an intrusive, static, one-dimensional fetish.” (Mulvey qtd. in Lane, 6). For some gender context: out of the 7332 films produced between 1949 and 1979, only 14 of them were directed by seven different women, which equates to approximately 0.002% of films from that time period being the result of women filmmakers (Lane, 28). Many of these women in the 1970s were trying to make films either related to the political movement or just trying to experiment with the possibilities of cinema in a creative way (Lane, 26).

As a result of cultural pressures on the female filmmaking community, many women turned to the avant-garde realm to challenge mainstream representations rather than the commercial aspect of Hollywood cinema (Lane, 6). Although the avant-garde movement had already reached it's climax, it helped facilitate the womens' movement in gaining a foothold in the film industry (Lane, 11). Since avant-garde filmmakers typically try to increase the consciousness of the audience towards the actual film process, I believe this is where Joyce Chopra enters with her highly self-reflexive piece about her own pregnancy (Lane, 9). “Women's documentary was typically organized around autobiography or oral history and was therefore structured through the consciousness-raising rhetoric of 1970s feminist politics.” (Lane, 11.) Not only does this quote from Lane help give some explanation as to the format of Joyce at 34, but we see how independent counter cinema was an extremely effective tool for social commentary and change by using inexpensive and easily accessible 16mm film stock (Lane, 11-12). We also see a progression towards the death of the “author” with female film scholars because they wanted as much power and agency over their own cultural representation that they often had difficulty theorizing the authorship of a female director (Lane, 36).

Scene Analysis

The movie begins with a double image of Joyce on screen with a clock ticking while she is peering into a mirror rested on the floor (Joyce at 34, 0:12). Upon zooming in and only being able to clearly see the image projected from the mirror, we are introduced to the title of the film: Joyce at 34 (Joyce at 34, 0:18). The next shot gives us a still image of the mother (Joyce) longingly gazing upon her enlarged stomach on the couch while we are presented with the narration from the director voicing her inner thoughts and frustrations about being stuck between her professional and personal lives (Joyce at 34, 0:24). Once the pan along her body stops, we are left listening to her voice while staring at her bare stomach (Joyce at 34, 0:28).

This transitions into a close up of Joyce's face with a contemplative look and her stomach in the foreground reminding us that she is almost near the end of her pregnancy (Joyce at 34, 0:34).

To complement the voice over about her career as a filmmaker, we switch to a close up of Joyce wearing audio headphones while on the site of a film she is working on (Joyce at 34, 0:52).

The scene ends by fading to black after Joyce says “I have no belief that the child is going to come. None” (Joyce at 34, 1:14). Following Joyce's final words, we hear non-diegetic sound from another woman coaxing someone (presumably Chopra) along and when the image fades back in, we see our narrator with a labored look on her face finally giving birth (Joyce at 34, 1:18).

After much coaching from others, the head of the child emerges (Joyce at 34, 1:45) and Joyce transitions from labored breaths to happy yelps once the baby is out (Joyce at 34, 1:58). After the child has been cleaned, we see an exhausted Chopra (Joyce at 34, 2:43) and her voice finally returns, except this time as diegetic sound instead of narration (Joyce at 34, 2:52). The birth scene concludes with a still image of the information tag for Joyce's daughter, Sarah Rose Cole (Joyce at 34, 3:26).

Although the voice over from the opening shot was continued from the still image of Joyce on the couch, the next scene (Joyce with contemplative face) makes it appear as if the whole time we have been listening to an inner monologue that Joyce is having amongst herself. We hear Joyce make a Freudian slip in her narration when she uses “having” then quickly changes to “being” when talking about giving birth to her daughter (Joyce at 34, 0:30). I interpreted this as her having resentment for “having” a child, but then instantaneously changes the subject to her “being” a woman. Warren, on the other hand, perceives it as Joyce “finding herself 'in limbo' at the end of her pregnancy” as she describes at the beginning of the narration (188). Regardless of which interpretation is correct, she begins to relate the boredom of waiting for childbirth to a film job she is waiting to hear a call from. Here she is using her film career as a metaphor for her pregnancy, while simultaneously using her pregnancy to kick start her directing career. It is as if she is waiting for her body to let her know it is alright to have the baby, just like as if she were waiting for a film crew to call her for a job position. Here is where Chopra introduces the first notion that she resents being a woman because of the inconvenience it poses to her professional life. Throughout the whole scene, the originally introduced sound of the ticking clock can be faintly heard as another indication that she is counting down the seconds to childbirth. When the ticking stops, indicating that time is up, we fade out and hear the pregnancy coach advising Joyce on how to give birth. The voice of the pregnancy coach turns from non-diegetic sound to diegetic when we become introduced to Joyce's delivery room. When Joyce is in the hospital, the narration of the opening scene is contrasted by the ambient sounds of the delivery room. Upon successful delivery of the baby, we see Joyce with a relieved look upon her face because the child did in fact arrive, despite her thoughts that it would never happen (Joyce at 34, 2:43). The portrayal of the child's information gives the audience a concrete sense that the child was born and everything was official, giving the film a greater sense of honesty.

Conclusion

The film Joyce at 34 is an extremely intimate and reflexive autobiographical documentary from Joyce Chopra and Claudia Weill in 1972. The meaning of the title in this film is quite literal; it depicts Joyce (our narrator/director/actor) when she is having her first child at age 34. The literal interpretation of the title meshes extremely well with the other self-reflexive aspects of the film because she shows images of her personal life, mostly related to her pregnancy, while also showing the tools she uses in her professional life in the film industry (cameras, microphones, film), thus giving the audience a brief snapshot of what was important to Joyce Chopra at age 34. Although Chopra strayed away from the documentary realm of filmmaking and went towards more narrative feature films such as Smooth Talk (1986) and The Lemon Sisters (1989), she still made female-oriented films and helped pave the way for future generations of women who wished to become established in the film industry (Lane, 4).

At first glance, the film appears to only portray the frustrations of a middle-class white female giving birth to her first child. Upon further examination, the film not only shows this shallow plot line, but political and cultural norms of the 1970s expose the deeper content of the film. These deeper issues emerged from the film when considering the political movement for women to empower themselves and challenge contemporary gender roles. Although the depiction of a woman giving birth is a controversial image to portray, other filmmakers prior to Chopra and Weill paved the way for these images to not be such a radical concept. I speak here of Stan Brakhage's 1962 film, Window Water Baby Moving and the 1969 film Kirsa Nicholina by female filmmaker Gunvor Nelson (Warren, 190). It is harder for this film to be related to other mothers as a result of the film's extremely personal application to Joyce's situation (Warren, 197). That being said, the film can be used as a source of inspiration for other women because cultural expectations continue to limit the possibilities for women to become professionally independent (Warren, 194).

Bibliography

"Joyce at 34." n.pag. IMDb. Web. 6 Oct 2013. <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1503716/>.

"Joyce Chopra." n.pag. IMDb. Web. 6 Oct 2013. <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0159154/>.

Joyce Chopra, dir. Joyce at 34 Phoenix Films, 1972. Film

Lane, Christina. "Femininst Hollywood: From Born in Flames to Point Break." (2000): 11-64. Print.

Reassemblage: From the Firelight to the Screen Direct link

Introduction:

    Reassemblage: From the Firelight to the Screen (1982) is a poetic documentary focusing on the life of rural villagers in post-colonial Senegal. Trinh T. Minh Ha is a Vietnamese director, philosopher and ethnomucologist, who brought her outsider-insider insight into the matrix of Senegalese socio-cultural diversity. The audience gets little insight to which group they are observing, only getting changes in music rhythm. The film lacks a typical Hollywood structure focusing on fragmentation. Whether it be broken up figures in extreme close-up, fast-pacing, random ordering of shots, or the poetic and soft narration; every part of the film’s form features fragmentation. The imagery and voice over focus on the complexity of women roles in different rural and urban groups throughout Senegal. These two themes are tied together by what Trinh calls “speaking nearby”, moving away from the anthropologist standpoint looking down at others. She states in her narration at the beginning of the film “I do not intend to speak about… just speak nearby.” At first this seems puzzling, but as the 40-minute film unfolds we can piece together her message. Trinh is trying to strive away from looking at the other as something foreign and unusual, but looking at them as they are.

  Context:

    To understand the underlying issues in Reassemblage we need to grasp the socioeconomic factors going on in Senegal during the 1980s. The country declared independence from France rule along with Sudan in 1960. The new democratic country started off with political troubles eventually leading to an economic downfall. Rural villages in search of work and opportunity moved to the city. As people gained power a vertical social structure began to form. “Before the introduction of mills in postcolonial Senegal, women, regardless of their class, commonly pounded cereals needed. With modernization, pounding becomes associated with the rural, uneducated, and working class (2008, 17). During the 1970’s we had the Women’s Right’s Movement in western culture. Although Aryan women leading the movement gained equality, minorities and women from other cultures were not included. An excellent example taken from Difference, Identity and Racism that blatantly shows this exclusivity; “Brooklyn Museum: when asked ‘Are there no black women painters represented here?’ (none of them are, apparently), a white women feminist simply replied: ‘It’s a women’s exhibit!” (1987, 17). Colored women became the “others,” with different issues than what the western feminist movement supported. Colored women during post colonialism and industrialization fell to the bottom of the social hierarchy.

      Trinh T Minh-ha moved from her homeland in Vietnam to the United States in 1970 to study literature and ethnomusicology. She later taught music at the National Conservatory of Music in Dakar, Senegal. As her time as a scholar and professor she developed philosophical ideals surrounding the feminist movement, particularly with women of color. Coming from a non-western culture she has different ideals for feminism, wanting equality for all women regardless of race and social class. To deal with problems of identity Trinh uses her idea of fragmentation and its ability to help define oneself. “Fragmentation is here… in the context of cultural hybridity, always pushing one’s questioning of oneself to the limit of what one is and what one is not”(1990, 72). It is her post-modern way of looking at the post-colonial world, coming to grips with the fact that we are not one person but many things. We don’t need to live with one identity that defines us.

Content:

    The film focuses on imagery of daily life for women in various villages throughout Senegal. The film is shot in 16mm with fast color film stock to capture poorly lit scenes and the important expressions of the subjects. It is critical to note that the film is shot entirely with a tripod. There is one jumpy pan in the film, lending to my inference that she lacked a smooth fluid head on her tripod. To make up for the lack of a moving camera, Trinh cut the shots to have a very short duration showing her subject fragmented. She would cut the same subject together from different angles, showing him or her, as they would be scene by a large group of people. This technique would lend to her theme of speaking nearby, not coming from a singular and or higher anthropological perspective. Accompanying the montage imagery of subjects in their habitat is an avant-garde mixture of sounds. There is no form to what the audience hears. We get the culturally significant music, non-diegetic conversation of females quietly talking to men with authority, a poetic voiceover with a calm delivery by Trinh and silence. If there were a moment in the film that contains holism, it would be the brief moments of silence. During these moments we are left with fragmented imagery and given the chance as an audience to take in what we have just seen, putting the big picture together. The structure of this film would fall under poetic form of documentary emphasizing the visual over content, creating visual association with a larger message. The film holds a misleading form seeming simple until broken down. Un-edited it appears at first; Reassemblage is heavily curated with philosophical and poetic depth.

Scene Analysis:     

31:00-34:00    

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc5G2-rTKis  Direct link next post

    Reassemblage is structured in a way that lacks definitive scenes or chapters having loosely broken up imagery and sound. I chose to talk about a segment starting at 31 minutes in with Trinh’s self-reflexive narration talking about her objectivity and how an observational film should be made. “Stressing the observer’s objectivity… circles around the objective curiosity… different views of different angles… the ABC’s of photography.” Her narration has little to do with the immediate imagery, but contemplating her morality as a filmmaker by speaking nearby. We then see footage of women at their daily chores, milling cereal and tending to the fire while watching their young. Women in Senegal are in charge of the household chores, most importantly being fire. To have civilization, fire is essential, women being the “one who possessed the fire. Only she knew how to make fire…She kept the fire in her nails and fingers, makes her body matter” (2008, 22). This is the identity for many of the women in rural Senegal. The women cooking “destroy the clichés of marginality that the viewer might attach to her” (2008, 22). Her power controlling the fire keeps the family going. We hear the disjointed off screen sounds of them conversing and pounding cereal provides a fragmented account of what’s going on. The “minimal response” or mumble that the females make are a part of their social status, unable to speak with pronunciation. “Women living in the Sereer land manifest their attentiveness to the speakers,” which are men (2008, 18). Although the Senegalese women are essential to their families, industrialization and their male counterparts oppress them.

    The camera focuses on emotions and tries to capture Senegalese women’s nudity. In western cinema and culture nudity is taboo, reserved for pornography. Trinh used this imagery because it is part of their culture. Not exposing the nude breasts would have added subjectivity to their portrayal. Trinh clarifies in her narration that “nudity does not reveal the hidden. It is the absence.” Trinh uses nudity to make the women invisible while elevating them to a larger than life existence, ungraspable by a western audience. When looking at imagery of women’s faces and emotions we can see a difference in social class through decoration and overall happiness. Having silence during the close ups of women’s faces leaves the audience to ponder on what they see. The scene ends 34 minutes in with a repeated quote that she opened the film with. “Scarily 20 years were enough to make 2 billion people define themselves as underdeveloped.” After nearly 40 minutes of fragmented imagery and nearby speaking we get the message. Post colonialism and industrialization created immense poverty throughout Senegal, putting women at the bottom of the social hierarchy.  How Trinh portrays the rural women of Senegal embraces their culture from an anti-colonized perspective.

  Conclusion:

    Trinh’s focus on fragmented form mimics the socioeconomic problems that Senegalese women faced in the 1980’s. Trinh was careful in how she portrayed her oppressed subject by “speaking nearby,” portraying them as they are without a western gaze. Reassemblage could be a metaphor for both the way the film was structured and the confusing new times that women of Senegal felt during the 1980’s. Little is known on how it was received, but the structure of the film could have had a huge impact. Senegalese women might have liked watching how they were honestly portrayed. As a male with a western gaze it was hard for me to identify with Trinh’s message prior to doing research. To understand what Trinh is trying to get across, one must look at the greater context with both the post-colonial and Women’s Rights issues. “The merit of Trinh’s film lies in the profoundly sharp insight of a Vietnamese ‘outsider-insider’ who carefully weaves her well crafted ethnomusicologist skills into the matrix of Senegalese socio-cultural diversity” (2008, 23). Trinh identifying as an outsider-insider allowed her undo the colonized “voice of authority” that comes with the expository mode of documentary filmmaking. She aimed to observe Senegalese women, as they would capture themselves.Trying to assimilate everyone to the western way will ruin billions of lives, thereby erasing people’s individuality and culture. Since the invention of cinema, the world has seen films through western masculine perspective, giving audiences egocentric perspectives on other cultures. Everyone has the right to his or her own autonomy and way they are portrayed.  Trinh demonstrates this idea through her film by pulling away from the colonized, western gaze and into a poetic, fragmented form that speaks nearby. 

Bibliography:

Guéye, Khadidiatou. "Ethnological Voices and African Aesthetics ." Indiana   University Press. Research in African Lituratures.39 (2008): 14-25. Web. 9 Oct. 2013.

Parmar, Pratibha, and Trinh T. Minh-ha. "Woman, Native, Other." Palgrave Macmillan Journals. Feminist Review.36 (1990): n. page. Web. 9 Oct. 2013.

                                                  The film High School encompasses Fredrick Wiseman’s fascination with contemporary institutions and the power dynamics they produce. Wiseman captures the multifaceted tensions that are ingrained within the relationship between power, body, and institution. These exchanges take place within Wiseman’s 75 minute documentary taking place within Philadelphia’s North East High School in 1968.  Viewing this high school as a factory in which students are molded, manipulated and produced, the consequences of institutions are exemplified.

                                        The 1968 documentary of Philadelphia’s North East High School is a representation of the conventional American high school. This film is shot entirely in black and white without an explanatory narrative, using the editing and camera to create a structure instead. Without this narration, Wiseman challenges the viewer to derive meaning from the short takes that he uses to create a sequence of images. Despite the fluidity of these shots, the scenes challenge the viewing of this documentary as  ‘an oversimplified pseudolineraity…[as] the formal is always at war with the material, and it is [Wiseman’s] resolution of the relation of form and matter that particular meanings emerge” (Benson, 108).  This creates an issue of “developing a theory that will relate these isolated, nonrelated sequences to each other…then trying to figure out how it either contradicts or adds to or explains in some way some other sequence in the film. Then you try to determine the effect of a particular sequence on that point of view of the film” (Benson, 108). The ability for the structure to dictate and take precedence over the content further develops his theory on power. 

The scenes within High School provoke the viewer to approach this documentary from multiple perspectives in an attempt to derive a singular meaning.  Within the high school are scenes of language classes, gym class, as well as interactions between students and figures of authority. These scenes are often shots of parts of the body, this disjointing being rooted in the tension of the execution of power within the confines of this institution aimed at educating those within it.  Power for those in authority is focused through their hands, a tool of molding and discipline. Whereas students find power temporarily in their verbal protest, placing emphasis on their mouths.  Tension develops further in the viewing of the high school as a factory that is perpetually reproducing a strategically devised product, in this case the student.

The use of the observational mode by Wiseman reflects his view on his relationship with his subjects.  Wiseman is never featured in the documentary, and states that it is not his job “to intervene in their lives…I want to show the reality without changing it” (Ferguson,77), This lack of intervention creates a reliance on  visual and audio symbols. In the beginning of the film there is a “close-up of the back of a milk truck advertising “Penn Maid Products,” a pun for the Pennsylvania made products turned out by the school (Benson, 110). This mirrors the school, which is displayed as a factory in which the final product is “students adapted to military service, which seems to stand as a symbol for alienated conformity” (Benson, 111). This documentary is deliberately manipulated in order to convey a message that is universally relatable.

The year Wiseman completed High School was 1968. During this time the US was deeply involved in the Vietnam War, counterculture movements and hearing about things like Prague Spring. This is perhaps why the themes were so potent. Wiseman was able to capture the state of politics through the very formulated sequences. He begins the film with a scene in which a faculty member reads a quote aloud: “Life is cause and effect. One creates his tomorrows at every moment by his motives, thoughts, and deeds of today.’ And this question of cause and effect, you know what they say, you might read something that might change, uh, your life (Wiseman 1968).” The film ends with an administrator reading a letter from a former student aloud. The student is a GI about to be deployed in a DMZ and it appears to be a suicide mission. He plans to leave his insurance money to the school and it  is clear the school saw this as a success on their part. Wiseman film makes it seem that that this is not the case. In the letter the soldier states that he is “Just a body doing a job (Wiseman 1968),” after all. Wiseman points back to the cause and effect scene here. The institution and the obedience it breeds is the cause and the soldier walking into his death is the effect. He is therefore exposing the institution that breeds the men that are deploying. Whether or not this is simply blind obedience based on the structure of the educational system is left up to the reader. It has been suggested that Wiseman’s next film, Basic Training(1970), serves as a sequel to High School as “both are about the suppression of the individual and the nurturing of a mentality that accepts regimentation and conformity as normal. In each film we see young people being trained to become obedient bodies in service of society (Atkins 542).”Though his approach was certainly more rhetorical, this comment on society is very prevalent throughout.

 Scene Analysis: In the North East High School presented by Wiseman, the students are told who they are and who they should become. According to the narration of Wiseman’s lens,“…the school does not produce robots, but rather very confused, oddly loyal, and self-sacrificial human victims ready to take their places as the next generation of housewives, beauticians, astronauts, soldiers, secretaries and high school teachers (Benson 118).” A look at scene six provides a perfect example of Wiseman’s criticisms of the power system in play. It is a conversation between a student, Michael, that believes he was wrongfully accused of acting out and the school’s Dean of Discipline. After Michael explains the situation in a way the audience might deem rational, the Dean of Discipline interjects with what we may understand to be the agenda of the institution.

Mr. Allen: See, we’re out to establish something, aren’t we?

Michael: Yes.

Mr. Allen: We’re out to establish that you can be a man and you can take orders. We want to prove to them that you can take the orders.

Michael: But, Mr. Allen, it’s all against my principles; you have to stand for something.

Mr Allen: Yes. But I think the principles that are involved here,  think it’s a question now of, of proving yourself to be a man. It’s a question here of how do we follow the rules and regulations. If there’s a mistake made, there’s an approach to it. I think you don’t fight with a teacher, I think you ask permission to talk, and you ask him to listen to you. Now this is what you didn’t do. Now if you had taken your detention, and, after all, they didn’t require much from you. The teacher felt you were out of order, and in her judgment you deserved a detention. I don’t see anything wrong with assigning you a detention. And I think you should prove yourself. You should show you can take a detention when given it.

Michael: I should prove that I’m a man and that’s what I intend to do by doing what I feel, in my opinion, is what i—is right.

Mr. Allen: Well, are you going to take the detention or aren’t you? I feel that you should.

Michael: I’ll take it, but only under protest.

                                                           The camera, our “narrator”, moves between Michael’s view, the teacher’s view, and it’s own point of view—which includes close-ups of Mr. Allen’s hands and Michaels face. Michael’s mouth and by extension, his words, are his only way he is able to explain himself, yet we see him constantly cut off. The significance of then cutting to Mr. Allen’s hand aims to show us where the power lies. According to Benson, “The administrator’s tactic of seeming to agree with the student, seeming to take his side, is particularly insidious. It is in bad faith and makes nonsense of the language by which the student is attempting to understand his reality (Benson 120).” You begin to feel, through the switching viewpoints, sympathy for Michael and his words as they fall on deaf ears. It evokes a certain kind of understanding for anyone that has experienced something in a similar institution.

The documentaries that Wiseman creates are intriguing because they do not disclose an intended meaning that the audience should be conscious of regarding American institutions. Wiseman allows the film to “speak for itself”. The interpretations of the film are free to vary, and in fact, do vary. Wiseman has become skilled at editing enough different aspects of institutions in the film so that neither advocates nor detractors have a clear case” (Curry, 37). This ambiguity has provoked much controversy in “what the critics have to write about rather than from the films themselves” (Curry, 37). Despite Wiseman having creating numerous films, the three that have stirred up the most debate are Titicut Follies, High School, and Primate. It has been said that, “High School’s worst fault…is depicting boredom in one of Philadelphia’s best public schools” (Curry, 37). Wiseman captures the lack of novelty within American institution, and is able to find a “delicate balance…between fact and fiction” (Curry, 37). However, there was positive reception as well. Wiseman sent High School to a colonel in the Pentagon who said “it reminded him of a John Cheever short story. [The] experience ran counter to cliché, as it always does” (Spotnitz, 18). The subjects in his film also had a positive reception of the film, and it was only until they “read the reviews and the reviews were critical of their institution, they turned against the film. Essentially, they were responding to the way they’d been characterized in print, rather than trusting their initial response to the film” (Spotnitz, 19). This film rarely has public screenings in Philadelphia to avoid legal repercussions that he encountered with his filmTiticut Follies (Benson, 143). However, beyond Philadelphia, his film has been shown “without restrictions and was broadcast on WNET, New York’s public television station” (Benson, 143). The documentary High School is an insight into an institution that exists throughout the county, and those who dislike it are often those involved. The raw display of life within this high school has captivated audiences, and made the subjects uncomfortable as they watch the unfiltered consequences of this traditional institution.

In describing his own work, Wiseman coined the term, “reality fictions.” His films “though based on real events, are constructed fictions presenting a theory about the material being considered (Benson 107).” Though thoughtfully crafted, Wiseman leaves the meaning of the film to be discovered by the viewer’s own experience. The power behind giving it a name so simple as High School reflects that same idea behind the filmmaking. High school is a widely understood experience. Thus, the generic name implies it is not necessarily about North East High School but about the structure of any similar institution and the effects of those structures on those within it.

http://www.pbs.org/pov/highschool/video_interview.php#.UkyPMHAaorw

Atkins, Thomas R. “Fredrick Wiseman’s America: Titicut Follies to Primate.”The Documentary Tradition. 2nd edition. Ed. Lewis Jacobs. New York: Norton, 1979. 536-550. 

Benson, Thomas W. and Carolyn Anderson. “The Politics of the Double Bind:High School.” Reality Fictions: The Films of Frederick Wiseman, 2nd Edition. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002. 107-146 (Chapter 3).  

Curry, Timothy Jon. “Fredrick Wiseman: Sociological Filmmaker?” Contemporary Sociology 14.1 (Jan, 1985). 35-39.

Ferguson, Gretje. “The Unflinching Eye of Fredrick Wiseman.” American Cinematographer 75 (Jan, 1994). 75-77. 

Lewis, Jon. “The Shifting Camera Point of View and ‘Model of Language’ in Wiseman’s high School.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 7.1 (1982), 69-78.