#non-narrative

Saṃsāra | dir. Ron Fricke (2011)

This is the fourth installment in our “Psychotronic Cinema” series. (What is psychotronic cinema?) More than anything else, I am reviewing Koyaanisqatsi because it delights me that it (and the second in the trilogy, Powaqqatsi) are in The Psychotronic Video Guide. It is such an odd addition, and it makes me wonder what about it is, in fact, “psychotronic.” The film is not generically of a piece…

Parts of my commonplace books. More images than written.

What do you recommend from the genre?

Thing's ive seen so far:

As a follow-up to my previous blog entry, I will now share what I have learned about non-narrative film.

I must admit, I am not exposed to this kind of film. I thought that independent (indie) films are the ones that only a few appreciate.

So we had an assignment where we were asked to share our favorite non-narrative film. Well, at first, I was thinking of which movie I've seen that is non-narrative? Well, I guess there is none.

Also, I thought about the essence of the film. Is there something to appreciate if there is no story at all?

Well, to my surprise, I can say that I liked the Anima Mundi by Godfrey Reggio. It shows us the similarities of animals based on how they act. Also, it gives us a clearer view of the species by capturing them close-up.

Just to give context, non-narrative basically focuses on aesthetics. It can show us multiple videos compiled that were recorded at a good angle. Non-narrative may have a theme and connection to each, but it doesn't tell a story at all. Think of it as you observing the flow of a river and its surrounding. But you want to capture that spot or scene in a beautiful manner. That is how non-narrative in my understanding.

Lastly, I watched Citizen Kane, a really old movie. The story is about a rich man who died and said his last word, "Rosebud." Because he is a well-known person, that stirs curiosity and leads to someone trying to decipher the last message. In the end, it goes back to the day that he was away with his family and the sleigh that was being burned has Rosebud on it. We can say that the story revolves around the "Rosebud," and not about the character at all.

DYSPLA is very proud to have exhibited American dyslexic filmmaker Stan Brakhage’s Window Water Baby Moving at the DYSPLA International Moving Image Festival this month. Regarded as one of the most important experimental filmmakers of the 20th century, for DYSPLA, Brakhage represents the very inception of the ‘Dyslexic Aesthetic’.

He was one of the first artists to push the boundaries of the visual image, and to expand our view of what film can be. He wasn’t just simply a filmmaker, but an artist with a real love for his craft; a practitioner of what he often referred to as ‘pure cinema’.

His inclusion in our festival has given an all-important additional contextual layer to the curation. Not only is he an artist from a different era, who paved the way for those after him, but the experimental artistic aesthetic of Window Water Baby Moving helped in giving our film festival an innovative art gallery feel.

Brakhage’s goal was the liberation of the eye itself, the creation of an act of seeing, previously unimagined and undefined by conventions of representation, an eye as natural and unprejudiced as that of a cat, a bee or an infant. There were few filmmakers who went so far to train audiences to see differently, and that’s why DYSPLA was so excited to have Stan Brakhage’s work included at DIMIF.

It is perhaps unsurprising that Brakhage's films are usually both silent, and lacking in traditional story-telling - thus focusing the viewer’s attention on the pure visual experience. In that, they become more analogous to visual poetry than to prose or literature. Brakhage often referred to his films as ‘visual music’ or ‘moving visual thinking’.

His films however, are not completely devoid of narrative, and DYSPLA’s choice of Window Water Baby Moving was not coincidental. The film tells a story of birth; a story of expectation, anticipation, pain, relief and joy - a story which connected immediately with our audience and exemplified part of the ‘Dyslexic Aesthetic’ which DIMIF sought to capture and showcase.

“How many colours are there in a field of grass to the crawling baby unaware of ‘green’? How many rainbows can light create for the untutored eye? Imagine a world alive with incomprehensible objects, and shimmering with an endless variety of movement and innumerable gradations of colour. Imagine a world before the ‘beginning was the word’.” - Stan Brakhage (Metaphors on Vision, 1963)

*Image Courtesy of the Estate of Stan Brakhage and Fred Camper.