Reading Response 5: Due Oct. 27 @ 5 p.m.

Reading Response 5: Due Oct. 27 @ 5 p.m.

Sitney, “Structural Film”
Visionary Film, Chapter 12

You may find it helpful to read the first few pages of the other assigned reading for this week (James Peterson, “Rounding Up the Usual Suspects”) before tackling this chapter, focusing particularly on p. 72-76. Read that overview, which will review key concepts from the first half of this class, then tackle this chapter and answer the following questions.

1. How is structural film different from the tradition of Deren/Brakhage/Anger, and what are its four typical characteristics? What is meant by “apperceptive strategies”?

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apperceptive

The structural film insists on its shape and what content it has is minimal and subsidiary to the outline. The four characteristics are, fixed camera position, flicker effect, loop printing, and rephotography off the screen.

"Apperceptive strategies" means it is the cinema of the mind rather than the eye. The cinema is more about a experience internally rather than just images shown to the viewer.

2. If Brakhage’s cinema emphasized metaphors of perception, vision, and body movement, what is the central metaphor of structural film? Hint: It fits into Sitney’s central argument about the American avant-garde that we have discussed previously in class.

Again it has to do with the cinema of the mind rather than the eye. Sitney says that Avant-Garde cinema is aboutthe human mind and Brackhage's cinema emphasized metaphors of perception, vision, and body movement, all of which is essential to the mind.

3. Why does Sitney argue that Andy Warhol is the major precursor to the structural film?
He say's that Warhol turned his genius for parody and reduction against the American Avant-Garde film itself. Instead of doing all the things that Brakhage and Anger did, which was not wasting any frame, Warhol did just the opposite, he just walked away from the filming.

4. The trickiest part of Sitney’s chapter is to understand the similarities and differences between Warhol and the structural filmmakers. He argues that Warhol in a sense is anti-Romantic and stands in opposition to the visionary tradition represented by psychodrama/mythopoeic/lyrical films. But for Sitney’s central argument to make sense, he needs to place structural film within the tradition of psychodrama/mythopoeic/lyrical films. Trace the steps in this argument by following the following questions:

a. Why does Sitney call Warhol anti-Romantic?
Sitney say's that the way Warhol uses Pop art, he essentially repudiates romanticism in the form of Abstract Expressionism. Sitney seems to think that Warhol rejects romanticism because he uses Popart.

b. Why does Sitney argue that spiritually the distance between Warhol and structural filmmakers such as Michael Snow or Ernie Gehr cannot be reconciled?
Because Warhol abandoned the fixed camera for in-the-camera editing while Snow and Gehr's camera is fixed in a mystical contemplation in a portion of space.

c. What is meant by the phrase “conscious ontology of the viewing experience”? How does this relate to Warhol’s films? How does this relate to structural films?

"Conscious ontology of the viewing experience" means that the filmmaker is aware of the effect his films have on the viewer. Warhol knows how his films effect people because they are so simple that they have an almost hypnotic trance to them. As far as structural films Warhol challenged people with the length of his films. Other filmmakers did as well but they were apologetic about it. Warhol was not. He knew how long they were and didn't care, he used it to convey his message.

d. Why does Sitney argue that structural film is related to the psychodrama/mythopoeic/lyrical tradition, and in fact responds to Warhol’s attack on that tradition by using Warhol’s own tactics?

5. On p. 352 Sitney begins an analysis of the Wavelength rooted in conveying the experience of watching it; this style of analysis is admittedly hard to read without having seen the film (we’ll discuss this style of analysis in class). Try your best so that you can answer the following question related to p. 354: What metaphor is crucial to Sitney’s and Annette Michelson’s interpretation of Michael Snow’s Wavelength?

The metaphor that is crucialis the very unsteadiness of the forward movement and its perceptible tiny jolts forward.

For the rest of the chapter, focus on the discussions of the following films:

Paul Sharits: T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G

George Landow: Film in Which There Appear Edge Lettering, Sprocket Holes, Dirt Particles, Etc.

James Peterson, “Rounding Up the Usual Suspects”
[Found in "Kreul Articles" folder on your flash drives]

The following questions ask about three reading strategies for the minimal strain of the avant-garde. They are all previewed on p. 77. Your answers should incorporate details from the subsequent discussions of them (see page numbers in the parentheses).

6. What is the reading strategy associated with the “phenomenological schema” (include details and examples from 77-80)?

The reading strategy is outlined n Michaelson's work "Toward Snow" remarking on Michael Snow's work saying it contains " any long take ithout appreciable dramatic action can be read as the inscription of time on the image

7. What is the reading strategy associated with the “art-process schema” (include details and examples from 80-85)?

Critic Paul Arthur says that the "art Process schema" means the description of structural filmas having a simple shape that s the primal impression is just too vague. He goes on to note the earlier work of Brakhage with Mothlight looking at in a new light. Arthur says that the filmbelongs to a new class of films ones that take the attention away from the screen and onto the physical object in the projector.

8. What is the reading strategy associated with the “anti-illusion schema” (include details and examples from 85-90)?

Art critic Clement Greenberg says ny element on screen that does not produce an impression of three dimensional space is read as a demonstration ofhe inherent flatness f the cinematic image.