Masochism of the Margins by Cyrus Tabe

This was a documentary film about the interesting character of Craig Baldwin, ATA, and the underground experimental film scene. ATX was facing eviction from their 20+-year-old complex in San Francisco because of an increasing rental price. Craig Baldwin and the ATA team were able to cut a deal and remain in the complex for the foreseeable future!

            This film was super interesting, as it gave viewers an idea of two things. Firstly, the underground experimental art scene, and how it can be intertwined in such a way with a big city like San Francisco. Secondly, how the business world is affecting art and is truly affecting the way it operates. It would be really nice to see the government step in, and help artists like Craig and the ATA team. It is essential for art to flourish in an efficient society, and evicting an artist and institute that has spent over 20 years in a big hub like San Francisco promoting the underground culture of art and film is not correct in my eyes.

            I believe this film should be viewed by as much as the public as possible to give light to this problem in a capitalist society!

The Soundtrack of His Face by Scott Stark

Mr. Starks film was particularly interesting to me. Predominantly because of the technique he used, was very similar to the printing technique we have been using with PF2.  It truly again captured all my senses, by coupling pages of a book, to create interesting intense pounding musical notes.

Something that really intrigued me that seemed to go un-answered in the Q&A section was the choice of colors. The film maker really only used black, red, white and sometimes grey colors. These colors contrasted very well and really added a certain intangible factor to the film.

An area that I believe the film could be improved upon is the soundtrack. I really like the idea behind the soundtrack, but completely disagree with the execution. The interesting pounding noise was okay, as it went with the film. However, the rhythm frustrated me and was really random. When he asked in Q&A about why he choose this rhythm, his answer didn’t really draw any conclusions, thus, leaved me wanting more! However, I really enjoyed this film. Was one of the best experimental films that I have viewed.

All Over by Emmanuel Lefrant

This film engaged my senses by bringing an interesting shower of dots, with an unusual splotchy soundtrack. The colors intrigued me by the way they were outlaid and created on the film. Interesting red, blue and pink colors were introduced in these spots and appeared randomly.

When viewing the film, it really reminded me of a class I took my first semester at SMU, The Science of Randomness. This film made me think about this class in terms of the butterfly effect. As it would be very difficult, if not virtually impossible to replicate this film due to the randomness of both the color, the spot size and to a lesser extent the soundtrack.

            As you can see I really enjoyed this film, however, I have a couple of critiques. Firstly, the soundtrack. I really enjoyed the randomness of the soundtrack, however, it didn’t engage my senses as much as the visual film did. It was lacking a certain intangible effect on emotions. Secondly, the film didn’t progress in any manner. It would be nice to see the film lead to somewhere. Maybe the film could have started slower, and led to a climatic point. Although I do critique the film, it was very interesting and overall very engaging!

Dallas Medianale "Ultraseeing at the Nasher"

Sunday's screening at the Nasher Sculpture Center was fascinating and instructive.  The wide variety of films shown offered a new perspective on many of the techniques we've explored in class.  This was my first experience watching color 16mm and I was impressed by the vibrance and  smoothness of the films.  

• Chromophonie, by Alexandre Vitkine, was a fascinating study in color and sound.  The interference and moire patterns created amazingly complex and I was left wondering what method was used both to create the image and to colorize it.   
• Matrix III, by John Whitney, was interesting not just because of the early computer graphics, but because of the soundtrack by Terry Riley, regarded by some as one of the founders of minimalism in music.  
• All Over, by Emanuel Lefrant, was an exercise in chemically treated black leader.  The patterns and colors created on the film seemed like cells, or photographed bubbles at first.  The program notes offered less detail than I would have liked on the process involved.  
• The Sound of His Face, literally a filmed biography, Scott Stark used the same printing techniques we explored in using the PF2 to create visual rhythms.  

Overall I really enjoyed the screening and wish I could have attended more this semester.

Helen Hill's Recipes for Disaster

http://www.angoleiro.com/cine_texts/recipes_for_disaster_hill.pdf

Camera Lucida

I like this essay because it poses the photograph as record of something that existed. Nothing more, nothing less. And perhaps that is one reason that I find myself so drawn to film. You're creating a record of something that existed in the real world. With digital photography and photoshop, you can piece things together and easily create things that never existed in the real world. But with film, if you want to play a trick, you have to make the trick exist. George Melies and his magic tricks, he had to create them in real life. Now we can computer generate anything we want, and it makes everything less exciting. Maybe that's why magician acts and elaborate makeup are still exciting. We know that they're not real things, but we don't know exactly how they came to be, and so it's fascinating and exciting.

I guess this reading just made me realize how disappointed I am with digital media. We can't trust images anymore, which is what Barthes was so excited about. 

"Impotent with regard to general ideas (to fiction), its force is nonetheless superior to everything the human 
mind can or can have conceived to assure us of reality-but also this reality is never anything but a contingency"

We've now lost that in a way, which brings me a kind of sadness. 

Tom Gunning and the Cinema of Attractions

I wonder if Tom Gunning is actually writing about cinema, and its effects on the viewer, rather than how critics and history have treated audiences. He spends a good portion of the introduction discussing the audience, and how critics, and thus historians, have portrayed their reactions to film. We don't have interviews with audience members to record their reaction, only those who were paid to write about it.

I think this essay is more about how present people have a tendency to look back on past people, and  think that they were somehow less intelligent, less aware, and that's insulting to our ancestors. Sure, the essay is built up around that one specific moment with the film of the moving train, but that is merely one instance of a fairly common misconception.

Audiences today are just as credulous as those in the past, humanity has not changed much, just because we've seen more films does not mean we cannot be astonished by the same cinema of attractions as our predecessors.