1. Film Final Exam: French Film 1920's
Terms
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copy deck
- cut up technique
- collage that uses specific words, sentences, paragraphs cut from books. so named to define the variation possible within the game. different combinations of words forces you to think of the words differently
- Return To Reason (1923)
- Man Ray film
- automatism
- automatic writing, painting, poetry (ie. give someone a stack of paper and tell them to write while watching a movie) The idea being that distraction from a secondary activity would open up your subconscious.
- What was the fountain
- urinal placed on the wall
- Describe the images that show up in Emak Bakia?
- There are abstract flashes, patterns, light, and suddenly a lot of realistic imagery. a banjo player, a dancer, a woman in a car, wearing goggles and a leather hat, extreme closup of sheep, pigs, car drives over, woman gets out of car over and over again, sometimes fading away. sometimes she disappears as her feet touch the ground.
- What is surrealism about?
- movement in painting, literature, and film that attempts to represent the subconscious, wanted to figure out how to tap into unconscious thoughts, feelings, desires
- multiple-movie viewing
- watching several movies, but disjointed, different cuts of varying lengths of time, going back and forth between. idea being, if you put these things together and see them in a different way.
- avante garde
- french film movment in the 1920's, started in Paris and continues to today. refers to a group of artists and intellectuals who challenge norms relating to art and culture. (Would could be considered art, what deserves a place in a museum, what would we call a movie made without a camera?) artists interested in changing ideas about aesthetics and encouraging social reform, acceptable behavior, and everyday life
- What do Man Ray's analogies involve in his films like Emak Bakia?
- most of them have to do with light, crystal reflections, electric lights, flowers reflecting sunlight, blurred light, light reflecting off of a turning shiny object
- Surrealist Techniques
- automatism, collage, cut up technique, exquisite corpse, flaneur, multiple-movie viewing
- What was French film all about?
- avante garde, cutting edge, ahead of the crowd, doing things differently, challenging norms
- Man Ray
- American photographer living in Paris, produced collages of visual shapes and patterns, films began literally as collages
- What was Man Ray interested in?
- Wanted to figure out how to make a movie without using a camera. he would roll out film stock and sprinkle sand, tacks, and spreens onto film stock and expose it to light
- How did avante garde film makers contribute to modern film?
- preserved the great films of the past by referencing them in their projects, changed ideas of what film could do and look like
- exquisite corpse
- have several people write a word on the same page, folding to cover their word before passing on the paper.
- collage
- photographs, images, cut up and put together
- In which category of experimental filmmaking would Man Ray's film 'Return to Reason' best fit?
- Pure visual form.
- Emak Bakia (1926)
- Man Ray Film. Mirrors the feel of a poem. he uses alot of repetition in his patterns, his words move, nothing stays still at all, seems to have an obsession with moving billboard announcements, uses fading between some scenes, some scenes change abruptly
- What was significant about 'the Fountain'?
- This work, by Marcel Duchamp, was significant because it was a urinal. A urinal was not considered worthy of being art at the time. It is the opposite of refined and technical. people wonder whether it has a place alongside the mona lisa. It's title makes people think of a urinal in a different way, as a possible means of consumption rather than waste disposal
- What did avante garde artists do?
- created new art forms, challenged established artistic norms, manipulated shapes and colors, combinations and comparisons
- pure visual form
- shapes, patterns, textures that don't try to tell a story. Highly experimental.
- Marcel Duchamp
- artist who created a famous avante garde artwork called 'The Fountain'.
- Where were avante garde films typically shown?
- Films shown in museums and privately at people's homes. Considered to be art.
- What objects can be identified in 'Return to Reason' by Man Ray?
- Tacks, nails, sand, grit, merry go round lights, smoke, a sign with the word 'dancer', a spring, a page with illegible typing, a criss cross paper shape, a woman's breasts, torso.
- What were the french avante garde artists not interested in?
- they were not interested in reproducing reality
- What does the title of 'Return to Reason' mean?
- relates the human body to a collection of textures, patterns, and shapes. Relates carousel movement with the turning of a woman's torso, and the word dancer helps.
- What was not the goal of the avante garde filmmaker?
- to tell a story. they were not interested in narratives. a narration was considered too conventional. they tried to change everything that was expected from film at the time, and avante garde films were very abstract
- surrealistic fantasies
- have characters that seem to be telling some kind of story, but ultimately are operating according to dream logic. Logic not linear. wished to create an experimental cinema that focused on visual senstation (get you to feel a texture) not interested in telling a conventional story
- flaneur
- aimless wandering, walking. Some people would be blind folded, walked around, taken on the subway, brought to a new place, allowed to see, and asked to describe what they saw around them. this idea is about the way that most people don't pay attention about their surroundings, and this would force people to pay attention. not interested in telling a conventional story
- What characteristics of Man Ray as an artist are visible?
- He liked to use negative images of his positive images repeated in the film. Chaos of shapes, patterns, reason
- What form of avante garde filmmaking does Emak Bakia represent?
- his movie is actually a good example of a combination of pure visual form and surrealistic fantasy. Typical of Man Ray's style.
- Surrealism
- a subcategory of the avant garde, the term surrealism can mean any fantastic style of representation
- What was the avante garde interest in time and dreams?
- interested in the way time feels to us on a day to day level, representing how 2 hours can feel like 5 minutes, or vice versa, with art. (in terms of film)
- What are the two types of avante garde filmmaking?
- pure visual form, surrealistic fantasies