The Experimental Film List Project

[zedz]

I've just received a very large box of discs from Lux's recent sale. I will venture forth and report back on my discoveries.

[swo17]

Lux had a sale? Is it still going?

[zedz]

Looks like it isn't. This was a couple of months ago as there was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing over getting an international order to work at all and then to get the postage correct. And then the long, perilous journey across treacherous seas. . .

[swo17]

Well please do report back on any worthwhile discoveries

[zedz]

Trilogy (Inger Lise Hansen, 2006-2009)

This is a handsome hardcover book accompanied by a disc containing the three films in the series: Proximity (2006), Parallax (2009) and Travelling Fields (2009).

All three films are visually similar, presenting empty / bleak landscapes upside down, with the horizon dividing the frame at the centre. That seems simple, but the more you look, the more you see how the image has been manipulated to add to the disorientation. The landscape is not just inverted, but it’s sped up, and the camera is tracking laterally, with various degrees of subtlety. Generally, the tracking of the camera is in the opposite direction of the accelerated movement of the clouds in the sky. Combined with the comparatively stationary nature of the distant horizon or architecture / landscape in the centre of the frame, this gives the entire image a weird twisting effect, like the image is a 2D one being twisted in three dimensions, rather than a documentary record of a three dimensional space that happens to incorporate different planes of different kinds of movement at different speeds.

Proximity is the purest of the three films, composed of simply muddy ground (playing the role of the sky) and speeding sky (playing the role of the ground). This is where you get the clearest sense of that signature twisting motion.

Parallax relocates to a brutalist architectural space (spoiler: the roof of a shopping centre) and mixes things up a bit by incorporating more rigidly lateral tracking shots (which function quite differently in and amongst objects than they do with only a distant horizon as a focal point), and when it starts to snow, and the snow falls downwards in the frame, you realize that some of what you’ve been watching has been running backwards as well as upside down and sped-up. It all adds to the uncanny atmosphere, especially when the direction of the snowfall reverses itself.

Travelling Fields continues the expanded exploration of Hansen’s very precise aesthetic, incorporating movement along the z-axis (which is really striking and strange after having acclimatised to the syntax of the previous two films). The landscape this time varies throughout the film, with the initial ruined / unfinished building the most effective, with its isolated pillars hanging like stalactites over the sky-void. Some of the later sections of this, the longest film in the trilogy (9 minutes), don’t work so well for me, but it ends with an amazing approaching storm.

Here's an excerpt from Travelling Fields:
Travelling Fields

[zedz]

Nightcleaners & '36 to '77 (Berwick Street Film Collective)



This handsome A4 box set contains both films on BluRay (look away now, packaging wowsers: in free-floating slotted card holders), along with a thick A5 squarebound book of essays and interviews and an A4 collection of replicas of original newsletters and documents. The overall aesthetic is plain, functional, handmade.

Nightcleaners (1975) is a significant activist documentary about the struggle to organize industrial action among the women who clean office buildings at night. It's built out of classic documentary components: verite footage of the women at work, meetings and protests; interviews with cleaners, bosses and organizers; narration offering political and critical overviews. It qualifies as an experimental film because of the way it draws attention to the artifice of documentary, while having its cake and eating it by simultaneously being an urgent political document with no ambiguity about the truth and importance of its core message. The film begins with a false start and clapperboard reshoot of a banal shot of a secretary answering a phone, immediately drawing our attention to the necessary staging of certain shots and the presence of a film crew in all the subsequent footage 'documenting' the workers' isolation. (The cleaners are assigned different floors and are not allowed to interact on the job, so this attempt at establishing a union is the first opportunity many have had to meet their workmates.) The sound throughout appears and vanishes abruptly (so we have jarring artificial silence rather than naturalistic quiet), and often does not match the visuals. Other voices (such as a feminist commentator) intrude and compete. Ultimately, I don't feel these formal antics outweigh the essence of the film, which for me remains an important activist documentary and record of an invisible 'underclass.'

The follow-up, '37 to '77 (1978), is a different kettle of fish and tips the balance all the way in the other direction. It's an intimate portrait of one of the women in the original film, several years later, when she is no longer working and has lost the community she had experienced during the events of the first film. It's a film of stillness and silences, as footage is slowed down into long-held single frames, or optically zoomed until it threatens to dissipate. or simply goes dark and soundless at times out of seeming exhaustion. Disembodied voices are alienated from the tentative images. Over the long haul (both films are feature-length) it's a hypnotic viewing experience, but it's not for the faint-hearted. It's a film of disintegration, and by this point the Berwick Street Film Collective had itself disintegrated, and the film is credited to individual makers. It was barely shown at the time and only recently rediscovered.

Excerpt from Nightcleaners:
Nightcleaners

[zedz]

6 Films by Emily Richardson

This is a superb collection of works from 2001 to 2008. Richardson’s thing is landcapes (or seascapes) + time lapse, and each of these films explores different aspects and effects of that combination.


Redshift (2001) focusses on the night sky, with starfields gliding elegantly across the top of the image while the landscape (pyramids, coastlines) flutters and stutters below.


Nocturne (2002) looks at desolate urban settings in the middle of the night, and is mostly very static and eerie, with the time lapse component visible only through distant smears of traffic or the occasional disappearance of a parked car. Like most of these films, Nocturne has an eerie ambient soundscape created by Benedict Drew that seems to work with manipulated wild sound.

Aspect (2004) takes us into a forest, with time lapse materialized as nervous shifting light (sometimes creating abstract, almost 3D textures) and creepily abrupt camera movements. The overall impression is one of pagan sentience.
Aspect on YouTube


Petrolia (2005) – The star of this film is an oil rig, seen in all sorts of contexts, but often glowing on the horizon like El Dorado. Probably the most kinetic film in this collection, and thus the closest to the traditional pleasures of pixillation.


Block (2005) – A bleak tower block captured in glitchy time. The soundscape is by Jonah Fox this time, and it shades more into the sinister. Much of this film (especially the ominous shots of elevators) plays like a J-Horror dream sequence.


Cobra Mist (2008) – A post-apocalyptic littoral / industrial landscape displayed in epic panoramas under racing clouds.

[therewillbeblus]

zedz, are these writeups from the Lux sale, or where’s the best place to purchase them? Appreciate the YT links when they’re available

[denti alligator]

Thanks so much for these write-ups! With any luck I’ll chime in with mine in the coming months.

[zedz]

Yeah, these recent posts have all been Lux releases. I'll try and hold off commenting on other viewings until I've got through these. And I might do a generalized round-up of the ones I'm less enthused by. The three I've covered above are all highly recommended.

The BFI used to carry quite a few Lux titles, and Re:Voir carry some too. Otherwise, you can order direct from Lux here.

[denti alligator]

Do the screen shots above have the right aspect ratio?

[zedz]

Do the screen shots above have the right aspect ratio?

No. They're mostly off Richardson's website, where the stills have been standardized. The two that aren't from there (Block and Cobra Mist) are correct, however.

[denti alligator]

So I saw the new restoration of Man Ray’s films at the NY Film Festival. These are in every way incredible films, and I was impressed (probably more so because I expected not to be) by the Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan “free improv” soundtrack, which worked nicely with these.

The two longest films, L’Étoile de mer and Les Mystères du château de Dé are each lovely, with surrealist jokes and camera “play” that is a delight to see. Unlike the other films, they also hint at narrative elements, even though these never fully come together. There are moments in both films that are breathtaking: the couple dancing on the roof in the latter being of special note.

In a way, I find the non-narrative films, Return to Reason and Emak-Bakia, more satisfying because they lack these conventional gestures toward story. They include most of the same experiments with light, camera, exposure, movement, etc. that characterize the other films, but in a “purified” form. The moments of pure abstraction are stunning (the way the screen fills with squiggles, dots, and visual noise); the play with “photograms” still beguiling; the juxtaposition of unexpected images still surprising. Emak-Bakia takes the cake; it’s also longer, so there’s more time for different sequences, among which the one with the white collar bands deserves highlighting. The way the collars fly away and become white streaks across the black screen is simply beautiful. I suspect this film will make my list.

[swo17]

I've just received a very large box of discs from Lux's recent sale. I will venture forth and report back on my discoveries.

Another huge Lux sale going on for the next few days--half off all books (some of which contain DVDs) and only £5 for all DVDs! zedz' recs above can all be had for table scraps, as can collections of films by Sherwin, Le Grice, Latham, Woodman, and others. Does anyone recommend any other releases?

Shipping isn't cheap but it gets better the larger the order is, so I'd be happy to head up a U.S. group buy if anyone's interested

[therewillbeblus]

I'm interested, and would be grateful for specific recommendations (as well as for the Re:Voir sale, if anyone's been keeping up with them)

[zedz]

There are still some from the last Lux sale that I haven't got around to yet, but these prices are insane. Any of their releases that's down to 5 pounds is worth a punt. The Berwick Street Collective box is 12, but it's a lovely package and well worth it at that price.

[swo17]

I like all the ones I mentioned but highly recommend the Sherwin and Le Grice DVDs. Also the John Smith set though it's unfortunately not discounted (I think I'll pick up the flipbook he designed though!)

[therewillbeblus]

Cool, I'm just trying to conserve shelf space so was looking for top-tier recs. I'll comb through over the next few days and definitely in for a group buy. If the sale deadline is time-sensitive just let me know

[swo17]

I think it ends on the 20th. But also some stuff has already sold out. Let's say if you want in let me know by end of the day Sunday

[swo17]

Reminder: Please PM me tonight if you want in on either the Lux or Re:voir group buys

[zedz]

I know I should have been more active in this thread, but sometimes it feels like yelling into a well (a couple hoots, a hello, and a fuck all y'all).

But I've watched another excellent Lux title, so here's my book report.


Perestroika (Sarah Turner, 2009)

This is an elaborately structured memory / diary film, where the diary, the memory, and the structure turns out to be the parameters of the therapy for one or more traumas. The complexities of the narrative and underlying situation take a while to parse, and there are formal cues to help you along (e,g, different layers of the narrative have different sound / image relationships), but essentially the narrator / filmmaker Sarah Turner is reenacting, twenty years to the day after the fact, a rail trip across Russia.


Almost all of the footage is shots looking out the train window, with Sarah only a ghostly presence occasionally caught in reflection and her colleagues entirely invisible. If you're a fan of the ways trains process landscapes, there's a lot to enjoy on a visual level. If you're not, you might go a little stir crazy. Is it hot in here, or is it just me? Before too long, all that space, and all that time, and all those rules push Sarah to the brink of an existential vortex.


At some point, the nature of what we're watching changes - or we're told it changes: is that the same thing? - and penultimately even the essential linearity of the film (the one thing we thought was guaranteed) begins to break down.

It's a bold and involving film, and I highly recommend it. The set also contains Perestroika Reconstructed, a subsequent condensation of the original film with additional 'sequel' material added. I haven't ventured there yet, and am a little trepidatious as to what it will do to the careful (dis)equilibrium of the parent film.

[therewillbeblus]

Thanks zedz, I don't always comment but I promise you're not yelling into a well. Many people here, myself included, have picked up experimental film titles based on your writeups. I still don't really know how to process my experience watching experimental cinema, certainly with enough confidence to write about them often. But I very much appreciate your thoughts, and in order to really feel motivated to participate in this project I'm going to need more of these - or a shortlist (read: long list) of titles to prioritize during a binge. I have too many to just casually engage in this project with a time line. Unfortunately I don't think I ordered this one though!

[brundlefly]

Ditto everything twbb said (except that I did order this one, nyah-nyah), and Sadako Yamamura no doubt sends her regards. Your summaries and suggestions are invaluable. It's not just that narrative films are easier to write about; story and traditional performance and a canon make it easier to write lazily about them, and to frame one's own preferences as authority. Appreciating non-narrative material beyond me-likee/me-no-likee or sensual burbling takes actual knowledge and discipline.

I went through most of Friedrich's films last year, and though "Sink or Swim" has long been a favorite, I think I'm always going to think of it as an essay film; I was relieved to see you include it based on its structure, which is as legitimate as it is for me a loophole. Because I'm still seeing it as a personal narrative told in a multi-faceted way. Similarly, when I watched my first Benning films this year for the '70s project, I instantly fell in love -- but with his storytelling, his comic timing, and his sense of color and composition and place.

[zedz]

I went through most of Friedrich's films last year, and though "Sink or Swim" has long been a favorite, I think I'm always going to think of it as an essay film; I was relieved to see you include it based on its structure, which is as legitimate as it is for me a loophole. Because I'm still seeing it as a personal narrative told in a multi-faceted way. Similarly, when I watched my first Benning films this year for the '70s project, I instantly fell in love -- but with his storytelling, his comic timing, and his sense of color and composition and place.

Yeah, I think it's important to understand that experimental cinema encompasses a legion of possible forms, some of which are narrative, or documentary, or musical. They're full of stories, comedy and conventional beauty - but still miles away from commercial narrative film.

To generate an absolutely ridiculous metaphor, if cinema is the African continent, commercial narrative film is like, I dunno, the DRC: the great big country in the middle. It borders on several other countries - let's say the Republic of the Congo is European Arthouse and Angola is documentary - but there are all these other countries representing all these other traditions and forms of cinema, some of which don't border on commercial cinema at all. If the Central African Republic is commercial animation, and Chad is arthouse animation, and Niger is abstract animation, then maybe we can find Lis Rhodes somewhere in Algeria? Most of the countries in the continent fall under the umbrella of "experimental film," even though some of those countries are sparsely inhabited, seldom visited or in perpetual dispute like Western Sahara (the perfect spot to locate the "is this even cinema?" chimeras). Two experimental realms may have even less in common with one another than they do with Titanic. The DRC might be big, but it still only represents one narrow model of what a country might be. We have a whole continent (and offshore islands!) to explore.

Now that I have totally violated Xenia Kashevaroff's "one rule" *, I think I ought to lie down.

*

SpoilerShow

"Xenia told me once that when she was a child in Alaska, she and her friends had a club and there was only one rule: No silliness." - John Cage, Indeterminacy

[swo17]

I've been writing up a lot of experimental films, just not in this thread. And of course, any recommendation from zedz is worth its weight in gold