White Light Cinema at the Nightingale — Friday, 8pm
Part cinema verité, part city symphony, part essay on humans living
in an urban reality, and part celebration of digital egalitarianism,
Huang's film is surprisingly cohesive and concise in it's focus. Casting
the city of Guangzhou (the least famous city of 10 million people in
the world) as the dominant manipulator of human behavior, the filmmaker
allows the viewer to make connections between the chaotic behavior of
a scam artist pretending to be hit by a car, a group of men swimming
in protest of an oppressive government, a black market dealer of bear
paws and frozen anteaters, and countless other actual occurrences that
are at once absurd and commonplace. Compiled from what is purported
to be over 1000 hours of footage shot by amateur videographers, DISORDER
is a seesaw between anxiety and gleeful wonderment. The sequences are
bridged by asynchronous sound, bleeding from one event to the next,
and the most common through-line is a never-ending parade of apathetic
authority figures. “It will lead to paperwork, we have bigger problems”
would be an apt alternate title for this modern masterpiece, if that
didn't sidestep the greater argument being made here. By shedding light
on the magnificent number of situations people get into for which there
is no logical resolution, Huang renders these occurrences mundane. The
man seeking relief from a health inspector for the roach in his meal
is just as crazy as the man threatening to jump of a bridge unless the
police help him get relief (from what we never really know). Life as
a system of orderly events is not just an illusion, but is the most
illogical thought of all. (2010, 58 min, Video) JH - Cine-File.info
An archive of my reviews on Cine-File.info, a Chicago guide to Independent and Underground Cinema.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Friday, May 13, 2011
The Cinematic Formula: Hollis Frampton (Experimental Revival)
Doc Films (University of Chicago) — Monday, 7pm
Watching any one of Hollis Frampton's structuralist masterpieces takes commitment and patience, but seeing six of them in a row? That's either going to lead to an inspired collective mental breakthrough or the first theater-wide brain-eye melt of the spring. Focusing on Frampton's output from the 1960's, the highlights of this program are ARTIFICIAL LIGHT (1966) and MANUAL OF ARMS (1969). Each film is silent and uses the hypnotic pattern of visual repetition and textural optic variation, a mode that would be perfected in the next decade. But if the creation of an internal cinematic language is the goal in some of his later work, then these two films celebrate the inclusiveness of the human gesture. In MANUAL, various performances for the camera by 14 "actors" walk the line between over-indulgence and rhythmic serendipity, always tripping towards joy eventually. Body movement from one edge of the frame to the other and an emphasis on the light/dark dichotomy of black-and-white film emphasize each beat, and the difference between the 14 sections is like the same note played on a different instrument. Sequential fades from one face to another create the content of ARTIFICIAL LIGHT, and 21 repetitions of the sequence make the form. After the first round (which is shown upside-down), a variety of interventions are performed: negative, hand-drawn clown makeup, still shots in sequence, a flicker of colors, and so on. At each variation, despite the film's formulaic premise, or perhaps because of it, an ascending tone is struck as faces emerge from the chaos, glances are exchanged, and the power of the close-up is realized. Also Screening: HETERODYNE (1967), PALINDROME (1969), STATES (1967), and SURFACE TENSION (1968). (1966-69, 98 min total, 16mm) JH - Cine-File.info
Watching any one of Hollis Frampton's structuralist masterpieces takes commitment and patience, but seeing six of them in a row? That's either going to lead to an inspired collective mental breakthrough or the first theater-wide brain-eye melt of the spring. Focusing on Frampton's output from the 1960's, the highlights of this program are ARTIFICIAL LIGHT (1966) and MANUAL OF ARMS (1969). Each film is silent and uses the hypnotic pattern of visual repetition and textural optic variation, a mode that would be perfected in the next decade. But if the creation of an internal cinematic language is the goal in some of his later work, then these two films celebrate the inclusiveness of the human gesture. In MANUAL, various performances for the camera by 14 "actors" walk the line between over-indulgence and rhythmic serendipity, always tripping towards joy eventually. Body movement from one edge of the frame to the other and an emphasis on the light/dark dichotomy of black-and-white film emphasize each beat, and the difference between the 14 sections is like the same note played on a different instrument. Sequential fades from one face to another create the content of ARTIFICIAL LIGHT, and 21 repetitions of the sequence make the form. After the first round (which is shown upside-down), a variety of interventions are performed: negative, hand-drawn clown makeup, still shots in sequence, a flicker of colors, and so on. At each variation, despite the film's formulaic premise, or perhaps because of it, an ascending tone is struck as faces emerge from the chaos, glances are exchanged, and the power of the close-up is realized. Also Screening: HETERODYNE (1967), PALINDROME (1969), STATES (1967), and SURFACE TENSION (1968). (1966-69, 98 min total, 16mm) JH - Cine-File.info
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)