Showing posts with label videos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label videos. Show all posts

On the Cinema of Sharon Lockhart videos and essays

Friday, May 8, 2015

Image from Teatro Amazonas (Sharon Lockhart, 1999)
Film Studies For Free was rather inspired by a characteristically excellent blog essay by Srikanth Srinivasan on the films of Sharon Lockhart (thanks to David Hudson for the tip off). So heres a quick cluster of links to some wonderful Lockhart resources -- videos and essays -- available online in openly accessible forms. If anyone knows of any other high quality online material about this artist, please let FSFF know. 


Blending rigorous aesthetic concerns with an anthropologists sensibility to community engagement and observation, Sharon Lockhart uses film and photography to create poignant, beautiful, and intimate portraits. She carefully manipulates formal elements as she explores certain concepts with regularity: portraiture, the relationship between photography and film, and the combination of fictive or choreographed performances with unscripted, intimate moments. The film Pine Flat and the accompanying color photographs Pine Flat Portrait Studio (both from 2005) present a spare, meditative series of filmic and photographic portraits of a group of children the artist came to know during her nearly four-year stay in Pine Flat, California. Pine Flat is a two-part film focusing on children and adolescents interacting in the sublime landscape surrounding this small rural community. Its determinedly languid pace engages the viewer in a self-conscious reflection on the process of looking and offers a meditation on the subjective experience of time, particularly as an aspect of childrens lives.
Although a generation apart, filmmakers Sharon Lockhart and James Benning have cited each others work as an important influence on their own practice. Join them for a conversation about the process of creating a picture of America and California in particular—that focuses on Lockharts Pine Flat (2005) and films from Bennings California Trilogy (20002001). Pine Flat is Lockharts first project to examine American culture. Bennings 30-year filmmaking career includes more than 36 films. He teaches film/video at the California Institute of the Arts. / Moderated by Walker director Kathy Halbreich. / Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Sharon Lockhart: Pine Flat.
I sat through all 99 minutes of Sharon Lockhart’s Double Tide, shown in a special “Focus” on “40 years of Berlin’s Forum. I knew in advance that there were only two shots in Lockhart’s HD work, so, naturally, I was apprehensive. Remarkably, most of the 100 or so spectators who attended the 10:00 am public screening were also there at the end. Only one human character appears in Double Tide, Jen Casad, a clam digger, and a very few birds. The first shot occurs early morning, and the second late afternoon, and at each low tide, we see Ms Casad enter the static frame with her floating clam basket, ready to search beneath the shallow water. The sound would appear to be direct, it is certainly natural, and, although the camera never moves, the frame is never static. We begin to appreciate all of the effort the clam digger puts into her work, while the fog in the background lifts then reappears, finally to lift again revealing a number of seabirds doing their own search for food. The second shot reveals that we are not looking out to sea at all, but at a forested inlet, and, with the sun setting off-frame left, we can appreciate the changing of the light, and again marvel at the sounds as well as sights of nature. [Peter Rist, ...BAFICI..., Offscreen, Vol. 14, Issue 3, 2010]
I would like here to invoke Sharon Lockharts film Kahlil Haper-Bowers (1993), because it seems to me a brilliant analysis of this visual panic, this disruption of the visual field that lies at the foundation of heteronormative visuality.* In Lockharts film, the body of a young boy, who faces the camera directly, gradually begins to display what at first seem slight discolorations or abrasions of the skin. The film, which gives the impression of being a medical, diagnostic record of a series of clinical visits over time, hovers intently at the point of indistinctness: what are these dark shadows on the skin? Bruises? Lesions? Are they real, genuine dermatological symptoms–or just stage make-up? And, of what condition are these the symptoms: AIDS–or not? As the marks begin to multiply, Lockhart skillfully intensifies the pressure of the visual field around the deviant body, to the point where the spectator is able to experience the stigmatizing gaze in itself. The film brings all of that gazes contradictory elements into play: the quasi-medical, quasi-legalistic imperative to explore the body intimately and diagnostically; where the diagnostic gaze is at the same time a sadistic, invasive procedure that seeks to brand the body it explores; where at the point or punctum of branding the whole visual field suddenly buckles and bends around;** where instead of the stigma acting as a seal, a cauterizing process, a protection against disease, something seeps through the stigma from its other side, something sickening, like a secretion, the secretion of the secret, something that dissolves the membrane separating us from them, a point of merger where the two sides commingle, a point of infection or contagion; a point that is experienced throughout this process entirely at the level of Galtonesque hallucination, of not being sure what it is, of not being able to apply the normalizing categories for the precise reason that at the very point of the stigma the categories hang suspended, leaving the subject floundering, unable to impose the distinction that was the goal of its activity, losing the distinction, losing it all round, becoming for a moment a subject unable to apply the dividing line that is the founding axiom of the heteronormative order, for the duration of the panic unable to successfully abject what is to be abjected in order for the subject to be, and is instead invaded and attacked, in the ricochet of the brand-become-infection that typifies homophobic panic as a visual field. [Norman Bryson, Todd Hayness Poison and Queer Cinema, Invisible Culture - An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture Issue 1, Winter 1999]
Read More..

Michael Snow videos and links

Tuesday, January 13, 2015



My paintings are done by a filmmaker, sculpture by a musician, films by a painter, music by a filmmaker, paintings by a sculptor, sculpture by a filmmaker, films by a musician, music by a sculptor ... sometimes they all work together. (Michael Snow)

[N]o other artist has done so much to destabilise our approximation of the visible than Michael Snow. By threatening the very tools we rely on to process what we perceive, the artist creates unnerving yet frequently poetic works. His avant-garde film-making is less about a way of understanding the camera as a device for recording than as an instrument whose structural, material properties can form the main focus of the work. (Tim Clarke)

Today, Film Studies For Free brings you another video gem from the Tate Channel in which the highly distinguished Canadian artist Michael Snow, one of the most influential experimental filmmakers (including of such masterworks as Wavelength [1967)], La Région Centrale [1971], and *Corpus Callosum [2002]) discusses his work. Snow, who will reach the grand old age of 80 this December, gave this illustrated talk at the Tate Modern in London on October 26, 2001, on the occasion of a major retrospective of his work that year at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol. The talk, a very detailed and insightful revisiting of the entirety of his work to that point, lasts just under two hours.

Here also, as is FSFFs wont, are links to further wonderful, freely accessible, online, scholarly Michael Snow resources. Below the list are two other embedded videos: the first, a ten minute overview of Snows work; the second, a video version of Snows 1967 experimental film Wavelength (please read the comments on this post for a discussion of the ethics of reproducing this very poor copy of the film):









Read More..

Werner Herzogs Cave videos and links

Thursday, January 8, 2015

One of the most distinctive filmmakers of our time, Werner Herzog has been called the "romantic visionary" of the New German Cinema movement. His edgy, larger-than-life films fuse the epic with the intimate, redefining the scale and scope of filmmaking to include more than 60 works shot on every continent. He appeared in conversation with acclaimed author and essayist, Pico Iyer at UC Santa Barbara on October 25, 2010. (download the video here)

A 10 minute fragment from a masterclass with Werner Herzog. For 7 Planete Doc Review, with Pamela Cohn with Michałem Chacińskim, 2010. Also see this video.

Film Studies For Free hopes its Werner Herzog-obsessive readers will have a few hours to spare. Theyll need them to watch the above embedded (and linked to) videos, some of the more recent, and most worthwhile of freely accessible online encounters with LAs most interesting resident filmmaker.

These videos, and the critical and scholarly reading below, will help time pass before the Spring 2011 premiere of Herzogs latest (3D) film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams (trailer, related videosecond related video). Dont say that FSFF isnt looking out for you, Herzog-ites!

Scholarly online writing about Herzog:
Read More..

Double Strength Videos and Links in Celebration of Barbara Hammer

Sunday, January 4, 2015



"I have chosen images rather than words for the act of naming myself an artist and a lesbian because the level of meanings possible for images and image conjunctions seemed richer and held more ramifications" Barbara Hammer
Film Studies For Free today presents a tribute to the remarkable American, experimental filmmaker and activist Barbara Hammer. The tribute takes the form of a listing of online videos and scholarly links to studies of Hammers work, as well as of related queer film and politics.

Hammer is seventy-one years old, still making films and still protesting against injustice and censorship. In 2010, she published her wonderful autobiography, HAMMER! Making Movies Out of Sex and Life, which addressed her personal history and philosophies on art (see a review here).

FSFF says, "Thank you, but... keep it up, please, Barbara! Your work and activism is needed now more than ever." (This blog can be a rather greedy and merciless task-mistress at times...)










    Read More..

    Cinema at the Periphery world cinema studies articles and videos

    Thursday, January 1, 2015

    Sequence from Morvern Callar (Lynne Ramsay, featuring Samantha Morton as Morvern and the psychedelic song Some Velvet Morning written by Lee Hazlewood in 1967 and performed by Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra (for more on Ramsays great film, see Scott Tobias, The New Cult Canon: Morvern Callar, The A.V. Club, February 27, 2008; as well as John Caughie, The Angels Share: Morvern Callar and the Difficulty of Art Cinema, video also linked to below)

    With Spring (and a spring) in its step, Film Studies For Free brings you a whole, golden, host of articles as well as little video tasters to the work of some of the worlds leading film scholars on the topic of international (and/or interstitial, or transnational, or peripheral) cinema.

    The videos are recordings of presentations from the Cinema at the Periphery conference held at the University of St Andrews between June 15th and June 17th 2006. While those external to that university can only see the first ten minutes of each presentation, theyre still very informative, and showcase, in miniature at least, some brilliant film studies research.

    Theyve been newly publicised on the occasion of the publication of the conference book Cinema at the Periphery by Wayne State University Press, part of its series on Contemporary Approaches to Film and Television, under the general editorship of Barry Keith Grant. The book is edited by Dina Iordanova, David Martin-Jones, and Belén Vidal.

    As FSFF always endeavours to add value to the free resources it links to, it decided also to assemble an accompanying list of related, high quality, freely accessible, online articles:

    The clips can be viewed using Quicktime player 7, VLC player or similar MP4 player. Just click on the pictures to access.
    The clips are currently set to stream at a quality of medium (512Kbps) - they are also available to watch as low (56Kbps) or high (2Mbps)

    Dina Iordanova and Keith Brown
    Dina Iordanova and Keith Brown
    University of St Andrews
    “Introduction and welcome”
    (8min 16sec)
    Mette Hjort
    Mette Hjort
    Lignan University, Hong Kong
    “Homophilic Transnationalism: The Advance Party Initiative”

    Rod Stoneman
    Rod Stoneman
    Huston School of Film & Digital Media, Galway, Ireland
    “Dimpsey at the Edge”

    Duncan Petrie
    Duncan Petrie
    University of Auckland, New Zealand
    “Small National Cinemas in an Era of Globalisation”

    Sheldon Lu
    Sheldon Lu
    University of California at Davis, USA
    “Emerging from Underground and the Periphery: Independent Cinema in Contemporary China”

    Lucia Nagib
    Lucia Nagib
    Leeds University, UK
    “Japanese Cinema and Local Modernity”

    Laura U. Marks
    Laura U. Marks
    Simon Fraser University, Canada
    “Geopolitics Hides Something in the Image; Arab Cinema Unfolds Something Else”

    Faye Ginsburg
    Faye Ginsburg
    New York University, USA
    “Black Screens and Cultural Citizenship”

    Dudley Andrew
    Dudley Andrew
    Yale University, USA
    “Turbulent Waves, Stagnant Seas: Awash in World Cinema”

    Bill Marshall
    Bill Marshall
    University of Glasgow, UK
    “Deleuze, Quebec and Cinemas of Minor Frenchness”

    John Caughie
    John Caughie
    University of Glasgow, UK
    “The Angels Share: Morvern Callar and the Difficulty of Art Cinema”

    Pam Cook
    Pam Cook
    University of Southampton, UK
    “Out from Down Under: Baz Luhrmann and Australian Cinema”

    Patricia Pisters
    Patricia Pisters
    University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
    “Filming Tanger: Migratory Identities in North Africa”

    Hamid Naficy
    Hamid Naficy
    Rice University, USA
    “Interstitial, Transnational, and National-Iranian Silent Cinema”

    Kristian Feigelson
    Kristian Feigelson
    Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris, France
    “A Visual Map of the Film World”
    Read More..

    This and that Perkins Rich on Kuchar Bros Westerns Fan Videos Timecode Kubrick and the Coens

    Friday, December 26, 2014


    Trailer for It Came From Kuchar - As Alexandra Juhasz writes at Media Praxis: [This] documentary does little more than let the brothers, their films, and fans speak for themselves. And what more do we need? Inventive, life-long bohemians making their work outside dominant structures and to an international fanbase of crazed cineastes. As I implied regarding Fig Trees recently: it becomes an increasingly rare pleasure to see work that resides outside the dumbed down regime of the popular.

    Having been briefly out of action, Film Studies For Free is sorting through its in-tray and to-do lists. Below are some assorted bits of online news and links that it wanted you not to miss:

    In this audio interview Emmy Winner Charlotte Robinson talks with B Ruby Rich, American Scholar and Film Critic about Director Jennifer M. Kroot’s documentary “It Came From Kuchar.” Long before YouTube, there were the outrageous, no-budget movies of underground, filmmaking twins George and Mike Kuchar. George and Mike grew up in the Bronx in the 1950’s. At the age of twelve, they became obsessed with Hollywood melodramas and began making their own homespun melodramas with their aunt’s 8mm camera. They used their friends and family as actors and their Bronx neighborhood as their set. Early Kuchar titles featured in this film include “I Was A Teenage Rumpot” and “Born of the Wind”. In the early 1960’s, alongside Andy Warhol, the Kuchar brothers shaped the New York underground film scene. Known as the “8mm Mozarts”, their films were noticeably different than other underground films of the time. They were wildly funny, but also human and vulnerable. Their films have inspired many filmmakers, including John Waters, Buck Henry, Atom Egoyan, Guy Maddin and Wayne Wang (all are interviewed in this film). Despite having high profile fans, the Kuchars remain largely unknown because they are only ambitious to make movies, not to be famous.
    Read More..