Audiovisual Salvage

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2012-01-25T14:47:00.000-08:00

Les enfants désaccordés (Philippe Garrel, 1964)

LWL Wide Angle - FJ Ossang

2011-12-22T09:04:00.000-08:00

The latest installment of my Wide Angle blog for Little White Lies is online now. This month, I have written an introduction to the work of FJ Ossang. Thankfully Ossang's feature films, except for his most recent, Dharma Guns, have been collected in a fantastic boxset issued this year by Potemkine/Agnès b. The set gets my vote for best DVD release of 2011.

Read at Little White Lies

Jeremy Lemos Interview

2011-12-13T08:17:00.001-08:00

Photo by Jacob Boll

Jeremy Lemos is a recording engineer and musician based in Chicago. As a trusted pair of ears and hands in the studio, he has helped artists such as Smog, Jim O'Rourke, Singer and Afrirampo turn out fine, fine records. Out in the field, Jeremy has manned the sound board at shows for Sonic Youth, Pavement, Slint and countless others. This year he has been on the road with Iron and Wine, working hard to make Sam Beam and his group resound in all their glory to thousands of fans.

Beginning his musical activities doing live sound at the Fireside Bowl in Chicago and engineering at Acme Recording, Jeremy later opened Semaphore Recording Studios in 2000 with several fellow engineers, in order to offer an affordable and supportive studio to local acts. There he helped a wealth of bands with recording, mixing and mastering duties. And as if that wasn't enough to occupy one man, Jeremy plays in White/Light and in 2010 issued a debut full-length album with his new group The High Confessions (with Steve Shelley, Chris Connelly and Sanford Parker).

Jeremy first came to my attention through reading the duck's head shaped credits on the sleeve of Jim O'Rourke's masterpiece Insignificance. Jeremy kindly agreed to an interview via email, mostly conducted in between legs of the Iron and Wine tour, in which I picked his brain to find out about recording techniques, capturing a band's live sound and the artists who he feels have developed a distinctive and impressive sound.

Yusef Sayed: What were your first experiences with audio recording and live sound and what tools did you have at your disposal to begin with?

Jeremy Lemos: I had a strange start with audio recording. I didn't really do any home recording at all; I learned in school. I went to Columbia College for Audio Recording, where I had access to professional gear, and then worked in the studios in Columbia. Acme Recording gave me my first studio day job and I remained there for six years.

This all got started when I was growing up in the 'burbs, being in love with music. I frequented the Fireside Bowl as a fan for many years in high school and that's where I fell in love with shows and all the wonderful weirdos hanging out. One day I helped a band, 90 Day Men I believe, carry their amps into the club and I got in for free. That seemed like a good deal to me and may have been the beginning of it all.

The first experiences with doing live sound were at the Fireside Bowl, where they hosted five bands a night, seven days a week - with two shows Friday and Saturday. I was working at Fireside maybe three nights a week. You learn a lot about working fast in live sound! Particularly in a situation like that: no soundchecks, we just set up festival style and threw bands up one after another every night. Soundcraft board and some rusty 58s...it was the best!

YS: What are some of your fondest memories of your time spent working at Acme - can you remember the first session you worked on there?

JL: The first session I ever assisted on was with Martin Atkins from PiL and Pigface. He was doing drum overdubs, for a band called the Impotent Sea Snakes (!), and I still consider him to be one of the best drummers I've ever done a session with - a total machine, he had all the parts mapped out in his head after hearing a song once.

Smog Supper (2003)

I worked at Acme for years and made a lot of records, including two Smog records and a number of Jim O'Rourke's. Doing sessions with Jim and all of his killer band are my fondest memories from the time I worked there. I was so young and was really discovering myself at the time as well. Jim is the most inspiring person I've ever met - I owe my work ethic to him.

YS: Are you able to characterise this work ethic - for instance, is it a matter of the time you will dedicate to a recording project, or your approach to the use of equipment perhaps?

JL: By work ethic I mean working really hard all the time. That guy never stopped, he barely ever slept, and was always working on six things at a time. Sometimes I have trouble relaxing (my wife will agree) because I'm always worried that there is something else I could be doing that might pay off in the future. Watching TV is a dead end; that time you spend never comes back to you in any way.

YS: In 2000 you started Semaphore Recording Studios with Sanford Parker, Eric Block and Elliott Dicks. What initiated this development and what advantages did it provide?

JL: I knew that most people record with a studio rather than a specific engineer. Unless you are already well known, no one will ever call you as an outside engineer but people call up studios all the time and record with whoever answers the phone. So it was a way for us to get more work. We wanted to provide a cheap all analog studio, for people who couldn't afford to record with Steve Abini anymore.

YS: When Semaphore started there must have been a good array of recording equipment that you could all pool. Can you pick out a few items, perhaps some that aren't mentioned very often, that you swear by - whether you've discovered them recently or long ago?

JL: I was really obsessed with optical limiters - the Teletronix LA2A, Urei LA4 and the Manley ELOP - as well as plate reverbs. I had a real plate reverb, a digital plate reverb and a spring reverb emulator. I also had some DBX 118s - they were weird expanders and I got really into using them on drums.

YS: Can you give an example of where we might hear this and can you explain what makes the sound so distinctive?

JL: I'd use those 118s on the kick and snare if they weren't popping out in the mix enough. I would probably use them on almost every record I mixed at Semaphore, but it was probably pretty subtle.

YS: The way you record the drums has always stood out to me, specifically the kick drum, and I would call attention to the recording of Glenn Kotche playing on 'Laminated Cat', on the eponymous Loose Fur record, as a perfect example. At this point, do you tend to have a go-to setup for mic'ing the drums in the studio?

JL: You start to get used to your 'normal' mics and start with those because they have worked well in the past. You listen to it and go from there. If I was starting in my old studio, without having heard the drummer, I would grab an EV868 for the kick, a Sennheiser 441 for the snare top and whatever is around (usually a Shure SM57) for the bottom. Toms are often tricky: I like to use medium condensers and if there is insufficient gear I will double mic them on the top and bottom - SM81s are nice, but AKG 414s are better. I regularly use side address condensers, usually my little AT3525s and my 414 on the floor.

Then, depending on what room I'm in, I like to mic cymbals close (if you need them later later for the mix, usually 81s, or whatever is around, again). For overheads, I use AT4060s, the great tube ones. Then two Stapes omni condensers, now the Avenson Audio STO-2, on the floor in the room for ambience - you have to experiment to get them in the right place - and another room mic coming in on the floor tom side, to help hi-hat bleed, that I really crush for character. I run that one through the 'Nuke' setting on a Distressor, or the 'All the buttons mashed in' setting on the 1176 Peak Limiter, or super smashed on the FMR RNC. Jim would never do that but I love that extra mic to fill the holes. If it sounds like all the parts of the kit aren't glueing together, you can add some of that smashed mic in there to bring it together.

I measure the overheads to be the same distance from the snare and I do the same for the room mics. I would typically delay the room mics 5-9ms, depending on the drummer. After listening to that I would make changes from there. Unless it's jazz, or 'funky', I really don't ever need any more hi-hat than I already have in the snare, rack tom and overhead mics.

Loose Fur Loose Fur (2003)

YS: Not overlooking the fact that each band has their own, unique requirements, what is your recording 'recipe' for the rest of a typical four-piece rock band?

JL: Bass seems different for me every time. If the musician has a nice bass (and it's the right genre) I love a well recorded direct signal. But sometimes I will record a mic and combine it with the DI using a phase aligner - the Little Labs one, or the Radial JDI, will work well. For a mic I like a large diaphragm condenser, the Neumann U87 is nice, or a large dynamic like the Shure SM7.

For guitars I always use two mics and one of them is always a Beyer M160. Guitars never sound right to me unless there is a 160 on it somewhere and I usually use two mics to get more space. Keep the two mics on the same speaker cone (always check your phase) and then the 160 will pick up all the great highs; the other mic (perhaps a 441 or a 421) will pick up things that the 160 won't. Both are capturing the same cabinet, but will sound quite different. As long as they are in phase, you should be able to pan them and widen out your guitar image. If I have lots of room in a mix, I'll widen the pan more; but if there are already thirteen things going on...you have to decide how far you can go.

With keyboards I usually mix it up. If it's a digital keyboard I like to run it through an amp for some air and if it's a nice, old 'real' keyboard I like to get it direct. Of course, these are only starting points and you have to find out what works for each band. Many musicians already have an idea of how they want it recorded and you have to listen to them. They just might know how they want to sound!

YS: You've been on the road for much of this year, with Iron and Wine and spent most of 2010 with Pavement. You seem to revel in learning new tricks regarding live sound. Can you share any epiphanies that you've had this year, which may help budding sound engineers?

JL: One thing I've been doing lately is a lot of wild and quick compression. A good example of this would be when mixing a band in a large, reverberant room. The room you are mixing in has as much to do with your sound as the PA or band does. If you sculpt certain elements of your mix using very fast, radical compression on transient sounds you can make a massive difference in how much unwanted energy is thrown into the room. A good example of this is the very hard 'S's and 'P's on a vocal. Use a very hard compressor with a very fast attack and release time, to crush out the spikes. It's something you would never use in the studio but it will keep all of that energy from floating around a huge room and smearing your mix for the four seconds it decays. Doing things like this has cleaned up my mixes a lot, and when you have twelve multi-instrumentalists on stage I need all the help I can get!

YS: Which bands can you recall seeing recently (who you didn't engineer) who impressed you in terms of their live sound?

JL: There are two ways to think about this: using the left brain and the right brain. My left brain says the L-Acoustics K1 line array system is the greatest PA I've ever heard. It's the clearest, best sounding, longest throwing speaker system of all time - incredible. Right brain? I saw Swans at a festival this year and they really translated through a huge PA in a way I never thought possible. There are two bands in Chicago that I have always been impressed by when I've seen them: Disappears and Anatomy of Habit. I've only been able to hear them play through small club PAs but both have their sound together already, so it really doesn't matter where they play.

YS: Could you identify a few records that you think are representative of exemplary audio recording/production and comment on one or two in particular? While the selections on your website are incontestable, particularly Talk Talk's Laughing Stock, maybe there are some others that that have caught your ears more recently.

JL: It's going to be hard to not talk about Laughing Stock, because it's the greatest record I've ever heard. But a couple of others spring to mind: Muddy Waters' Folk Singer has always impressed me. The echo chamber in the studio sounded great and they weren't afraid to use it. Modern blues sounds so horrible, like modern country, and there used to be such characters! This record is a lesson in getting out of the way and letting the talent do the work.

Frank Sinatra's In the Wee Small Hours is also one of those records for me. It may be the first concept record (LPs were collections of singles until then) and it's just Frank at his peak singing in front of an orchestra. If you ever need a reference point for what an orchestra is supposed to sound like, this is it. It will make you think of Frank much more seriously and you will forget the 'New York, New York's and think of this from now on.

As for recent records I like what John Congleton is doing. The new Disappears record sounds like a million bucks. I'm biased but I love Sanford Parker's production as well. I would be hearing a band do takes through the walls of Semaphore and they wouldn't sound very together, but they would always sound unreal after I walked in the control room and heard what Sanford was doing to them. I also love the soundtrack to The Social Network. I liked it so much I went back and bought all the Nine Inch Nails records, but that was a mistake. Those records are so teenage-angry and the lyrics are really immature. The recent work may be him not wanting to be the focus and have a supporting role, but it works. So I'm waiting for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, can't wait. I'm slipping into fandom and away from engineering but I'm into almost everything on Kranky Records. The last Valet record is great and so is the new solo record from Christina Vantzou.

The High Confessions Turning Lead Into Gold With The High Confessions (2010)

YS: I'd like to ask you whether you can articulate what it is that excites you when it comes to engineering. Are you typically looking to achieve the most natural sounding recording, or is it a matter of finding a way to represent a particular band in a way that is sympathetic to their wider ideas about music, which could include shaping more unconventional and 'unnatural' sound elements?

JL: This is a strange question for me right now. I used to record bands every day, all year round. I was almost always trying to capture what they were doing in the studio as well as I could. I always thought of myself as the guy that could speak to the band and would translate what they wanted to all the gear in the studio. Now that I'm recording more of my own music and not making a living recording other people, I've thrown that out the window. When I was working on mixing The High Confessions, I thought it was funny that we didn't hesitate on trashing the drums! If I had been recording Steve Shelley for a different project and I was only the engineer I wouldn't have dared messing with the drums. But as soon as it was my band we smashed them up, gated them and in some cases replaced them! As a recording engineer I find myself very left brained and trying to be helpful, but as a producer of my own bands it's very easy to switch to the right brain and not worry about any of those things. When I was working a lot with Jim O'Rourke I always thought it was funny that he didn't ever care about things like what mic on the guitar was right or left, and I would always have to document everything down to the inch. I guess that's the real difference between engineer and producer, right?

www.jeremylemos.com

Los Angeles Plays Itself

2011-12-12T11:38:00.000-08:00

Recently, BBC News reported on the growing frustration among residents local to the Hollywood sign about the fact that the number of tourists visiting the area had increased substantially in the recent past. It is believed that GPS and Sat Nav have enabled a greater number of visitors to Los Angeles to find a route which takes them closer to the site, but traffic and footfall is not being regulated.

Those longing to take a snap of the Hollywood sign, preferably with them stood right in front of it - as if that corrugated metal saved by Hugh Hefner has any totemic power that might rub off on them - may dismiss the complaints of the locals, but the report raises an issue that extends beyond mere Health and Safety concerns to the varying perceptions of Los Angeles among tourists and those raised in the city, or those who have lived there for an extended period of time.

The ways in which Los Angeles is perceived is expertly unpacked in Thom Andersen's 2003 film Los Angeles Plays Itself. Little seen - in part because the majority of the film's footage is drawn from around 200 feature films, for which there would inevitably be rights issues if a DVD was even planned - Andersen maps out (pun intended) the limits to which Los Angeles can be understood, or misunderstood, based on representations of the city on film. A riveting blend of film history, film criticism, social history, architectural appreciation, politics and personal reminiscence Los Angeles Plays Itself is an exemplar of film history, which could well have been a template for Mark Cousins' recent fifteen-part documentary The Story of Film (2011). But where Cousins' film seems to have achieved the almost-impossible, by securing fifteen hours of prime time television to educate and entertain viewers with an account of the development of cinema around the world since the 1890s, Andersen demonstrates how much more detailed, wide-ranging and redeeming film histories can be, as well as the endless angles of attack. Andersen spends 169 minutes focussing on one city - not one director, actor, film, genre, studio, or era.

By 'redeeming' I mean that Andersen draws attention to and finds unexpected value in some derided, forgotton and unremarkable films, such as by analysing decor and historical context - A Passion to Kill (1994) among them. Gone in Sixty Seconds (1974), he assures us, is a literalist depiction of the geography of Los Angeles and epitomises Dziga Vertov's vision of cinema - observations that I appreciate as non-narrative centred film analysis. And a perception of the film which ties it nicely with Kiss Me Deadly (1955), making me interested to view the two back to back as tours of areas of Los Angeles. Andersen finds value in the documentary aspects of films, whether fictional or not, and their ability to preserve landscapes which inevitably undergo changes over time. This characteristic of cinema is exemplified in Kent MacKenzie's The Exiles (1961), once a completely overlooked film that Andersen's film helped to rescue from obscurity.

I find it exciting to see the recurring use of a handful of locations, including the Bradbury Building, The Ennis House and Union Station, largely because it perfectly illustrates Andersen's point about voluntary and involuntary attention when watching films and the areas of study that can arise from a shift in the spectator. The focus on architecture here would furnish an imaginative film programme in the future - I know I'll be watching a Bradbury Building series at home.

The choice to develop Los Angeles Plays Itself as a film (with a deadpan and often humorous narration), rather than as simply a written text, makes it more memorable for me. I don't have to track down a couple of hundred films after the fact, to try to determine what Andersen is referring to, thus diffusing the power of the precise, immediate visual illustration of his points which is so meticulous for the entire duration of the film. The physical evidence is clearly laid out. The film is currently available in poor quality, in twelve parts on YouTube and a sample can be found on the DVD of The Exiles. But even a sample of Los Angeles Plays Itself should convince you of its brilliance.

René Vautier's Militant Films

2011-11-28T14:48:00.000-08:00

At the age of 21, René Vautier made Afrique 50 (1950), a film which develops from a travelogue, focusing on the daily struggles and routines of village life in Niger, into a blazing anti-colonial pamphlet; scenes of children playing and bathing in the river give way to a corrosive, insistent condemnation, the cuts between images calling for a resolute community to stand up for change transmuting the action of workers cutting through crops as the energy of the film builds; drawing on the films of Medvedkine in Russia and a call to arms in more ways than one, this 17-minute film, salvaged from Vautier's time filming in Africa in 1950, is still potent and urgent. Vautier was imprisoned as a result of making the film.

The film was screened as part of the Militant Image season at Iniva, in London, organised by Kodwo Eshun and Ros Gray to complement the publication earlier this year of a special issue of Third Text that the pair co-edited. Nicole Brenez was invited to present three films by Vautier and her introduction articulated the significance of Vautier's work, as well as the circumstances in which they were produced, the social aims for which they were intended and the damages suffered by the films. Brenez's enthusiasm for and knowledge of Vautier's work, and of other militant filmmakers whose work has been neglected by cinema histories, including the films of cinematographer Bruno Muel, was galvanising. Persisting through technical hiccups that are more commonly complained of nowadays by those decrying the spread of DCP, Brenez plainly stated something that had immediately crossed my mind: all militant actions have technical difficulties. The English subtitles for Afrique 50, Le Glas (1964) and Frontline (1976) were prepared at VCU in Richmond, Virginia and were only received by Brenez on the day prior to the screening - a sense of collective effort permeated the entire proceedings as well as being demanded in the films themselves; we, as audience members, willing the subtitles to appear, for the films to keep playing.

Le Glas is narrated by Djibril Diop Mambéty and begins by recounting the hanging of three black men in Rhodesia at the behest of Ian Smith, men who had been pardoned by the Queen of England. By intercutting a variety of antique statuettes and masks with bold, black and red paintings depicting the struggle of black Africans - as well as a caustic image of the Queen, complete with speech bubble containing a banal reproach toward Smith - the film is both a audiovisual poem of oppression and a crucial reminder of the injustice it concerns. The film was made for the Zimbabwe African Party for Unity.

Frontline, made in conjunction with Brigitte Criton and Buana Kabue, mixes images of apartheid in South Africa with appropriated propaganda films and interviews with politicians, journalists and other talking heads. Conveying the despicable treatment and under-representation of black South Africans under Vorster and Smith, the film is nevertheless a more typical documentary, playful in its pilfering of white-majority self-promotion, yet lacking the feeling of palpable forward momentum in Afrique 50.

Of course, much of this is based on recollection and unfortunately information about Vautier in the English language is scant. Brenez mentioned to me that the filmmaker's text Caméra citoyenne will be translated into English in the future and explained to those at the event that Brittany Film Archives are preserving the work of this prolific, passionate individual and that certain works can be obtained by contacting them. Much of Vautier's work has suffered and it was made clear that the version of Afrique 50 that we were shown was a digitalised copy of a VHS, in turn transferred from a heavily damaged print. For Vautier, however, the scars are part of the films.

Over and above this simple report of a vital film screening, the event led me to consider deeply the absence of so much cinema from our reach and the determination of the key texts and narratives of film history by institutions and commercial interests to which I hold no allegiance. It renewed my vigour for studying film, rooting out suppressed and overlooked works, for supporting the work of others in preservation and restoration the world over, for engaging in dialogue and researching the history of cinema with a view to developing new perspectives and new analytical approaches and for the pleasure of knowledge.

Further reading:

Third Text No. 108: The Militant Image: a Ciné-Geography

Guest editors: Kodwo Eshun and Ros Gray

http://www.thirdtext.com/c/back-issues/108/

Sound in Gummo

2011-10-29T04:41:00.000-07:00

Gummo's torn images, grainy home video, vox pops, found footage and celluloid impressions are matched by a wide-ranging soundtrack, including peculiar voices, slang, ambient sounds, a cross-section of American music and other found audio.

The first few minutes of the film unleash a multi-textured aural field that continues for the rest of the film, keeping pace with the pictorial variance: a cracked, intimate narration introducing the town at the centre of the film; the sound of a tornado; a chainsaw; an a cappella ditty ("My Little Rooster"); a wailing cat, dunked in water; fire crackling; dogs barking; cicadas buzzing and the voice of a young man warning a young woman that there is a lump on her breast. Already, Korine has weaved a raw, elemental, human, playful mix to complement the range of images offered.

Then comes a striking vision which expresses the imagined small-town prowess of two teenage boys, Tummler and Solomon; their cocksure command written on their faces, gliding their bicycles down a suburban road - Korine lending them the soundtrack they would surely be blaring if only they had a car to prowl around in, the song they hear playing in their head (Sleep's "Dragonaut") - the wide shot and the depth of the extended road ahead, showing the distant horizon, illustrative of the flattened, straight-lined, detuned droning riff driving them along and for a moment rendering these boys the masters of their tawdry realm.

There are musical references everywhere in Gummo: the dialogue making reference to The Shaggs (the cat Foot Foot is named after "My Pal Foot Foot"); there is Roy Orbison, found footage of Slayer and other black metal subcultures. Musical snippets are played against degraded versions of the same material - hear a recorded piano lesson double-tracked with a wildly discordant piano extract, Roy Orbison's "Crying" lazily sung by a teen sniffing fumes and later heard in all its splendour in a rain-soaked scene. And there is the quick medley of Buddy Holly's "Everyday" cycling through cassette versions screamed and sung by children on a warped tape and then back to the original; the film as a whole is held together by a similar cyclical structure in place of any linear narrative trajectory - scanning through formats and sentiments across home video, photography and film footage, returning to the tornado and the 'rabbit' with which the film began.

Then there are recurring, regular rhythms within scenes, the sound often being heard before the source is seen: the rhythm of a tennis racket thwacking a ball against a practice wall; the regular creaking of a bed as a young girl jumps up and down; and the machinic processes of the life support keeping an old lady going.

From old folk songs to Madonna's "Like a Prayer", Gummo is infused with America's music in myriad forms, disallowing no genre of music, just as it embraces degraded footage and characters and individuals who would not usually be deemed 'tasteful' to mainstream cinema. It is worth noting that the film features an appearance by Linda Manz, whose character in Dennis Hopper's Out of the Blue armed herself with music and lyrics.

The voice is mined for all of its timbral potential and the limits of articulation are tested. Seemingly inarticulate screams and yells are later revealed as an emotive argument between a deaf couple. This is not the only way the ears are deceived: a scene in which we hear a group of people cheering as someone is beaten to a pulp is unsettling at the audio level, but is rendered ridiculous when viewed - it is in fact a dining chair that is being viciously attacked. Language is stripped back until the sound of a word is lingered on lovingly - "cherries" - and further reduced to ABCs. Confessions are slurred and uneasily squeezed out of mouths and expletives are rife. A section of extended panting and thudding during a fist fight between two siblings renders speech absent. What is immediately noticeable is the predominance of expletives and coarse sexual references spoken by young children and teenagers in the film. The dialogue is noun-heavy - body parts, food, smells - and the story fragments seem predicated on bizarre anecdotes more befitting comedy routines than a feature film (one of Korine's lead characters rattles off Henny Youngman one-liners too).

But to counterbalance this there are several scenes in which these teens conduct comparatively formal, business-like conversations with adults (the cat buyer), and solemn, articulate taped confessions concerning abuse and depression. What is beguiling is the capacity of these 'crude' young people to empathise and offer touching insights into their own emotions and those of others. The same is true of the characters in Larry Clark's films. A scene that will no doubt immediately cause many to rear their backs in a Pavlovian 'moral' outrage - the one featuring a prostitute with Down's Syndrome - is also one of the most tender. The high point of this human warmth, though, is found in the scene where Tummler and Solomon decide against retribution on a rival cat killer, Jarrod, because he has to look after his elderly grandmother (although I wouldn't overlook the fact that they later turn off her life support, they feel that it is "no way to live").

From the silence allowed during the visit to the prostitute, the film whips into a scathing, pummeling death metal excerpt; the hum of a power line segues into a solemn passage from Bach.

It is obvious that Korine is interested in reaching an intuitive union of image and sound, without tried and tested logic, but bursting with vitality and resonance. Gummo eschews the more marketable stamped-on retro of a Tarantino flick from around the same period, or the chaste, 'serious', direct sound film, for which music is taboo. Korine is evidently strongly tied to music - see also his videos for Bonnie Prince Billy and Sonic Youth - and it is the varied strata of the American musical landscape of the past 100 years that he has found illumination in, in startling combination with colourful and scarred images.

LWL Wide Angle - Abel Ferrara

2011-10-26T15:11:00.000-07:00

My third blog post for Little White Lies is about Abel Ferrara and is online now. Ferrara's latest film 4:44 Last Day on Earth premiered in Venice last month. To watch early shorts, interviews about the production of Ferrara's films and to keep up to date with the director's latest projects, check out abelferrara.com

Read at Little White Lies

Two Books About Abel Ferrara

2011-10-24T02:14:00.000-07:00

One of the true delights of this year has been re-reading two books about Abel Ferrara, alongside watching most of the director's films yet again, during the preparation of my forthcoming blog post for Little White Lies.

The first, Abel Ferrara: The Moral Vision, by Brad Stevens is a thorough monograph that digs deep into the history behind all of Ferrara's works that were in existence at the time of its publication in 2003. Through copious email interviews, close viewing of numerous distributed versions of Ferrara's films, the author's own insightful analysis and a valuable resource at the end of the book detailing Ferrara's unrealised projects, Stevens's book provides all of the historical information regarding one of the greatest living directors that any newcomer, or someone familiar with his work, could want. And to bring things up to date, Stevens's later article for the December 2008 issue of Sight and Sound Magazine, 'Sketches of the Ghost' looks at the director's more recent, under-represented features and documentaries including Go Go Tales and Chelsea on the Rocks.

For Stevens, Ferrara's moral vision sees each person, central characters and peripheral individuals alike, on a level plane but women are shown to be a regular, normalising force amidst typically male obsession and violence. Performance and identity, whether the individual is adaptive and fearless enough to confront the vicissitudes of living 'in the moment' or resigned to 'dealing with it' through a mask, is a central concern among the films, according to Stevens.

Stevens's book is an exemplar of the monograph and readers are also pointed in the direction of the author's book about Monte Hellman, another of American cinema's undervalued directors who has recently released a mesmerising feature film, for the first time in 21 years, Road to Nowhere that would form a rewarding double bill with Ferrara's New Rose Hotel, as Stevens suggested to me.

The other book, Abel Ferrara, is by Nicole Brenez and is quite simply the most inspirational piece of film criticism I have read to date. After a three-year course of Philosophy during my time at university I still did not feel strong enough to tackle Hegel. If only I had Abel Ferrara's films and Brenez's book to hand, I think I would have had the courage, as I have now. It seems a perfect turn of events for me that cinema largely considered confused, and badly made, should help me to gain an insight into some of the most dense philosophical concepts that I have struggled with until now, since this combines two of my passions: under recognised film and philosophy.

Brenez meticulously unpacks Ferrara's work to reveal a revelatory body of films that together seem to map out a treatise on the Negative, concerning crime, death, loss, identity, intoxication, capitalism and destruction. Brenez illustrates the use of a particular rhyming, or scheme of echoes that bookend the majority of Ferrara's films, Bad Lieutenant in particular (which Brenez will convince you is the most perfect film, due to the manner in which it is visually structured to reflect its themes). Brenez terms this "anamorphosis" and I previously used screenshots to complement a portion of the text in an earlier blog post. From one image to its echo, a particular concern is taken through a process of exhausting, whether it be the guilt concerning the crimes of the twentieth century (The Addiction), a fear of abandonment (The Blackout), the realities of the capitalist economy (Ms. 45), or unfaithfulness (Dangerous Game). Brenez also analyses the echoes and reversals, clarifications and alternating strategies between the films, for example New Rose Hotel's "figurative repentance" following The Blackout.

The books form a perfect introduction to Ferrara's work, are ever-useful reference points and are a continuing source of inspiration and ideas for further analysis. So, 'recommended reading' may be a little bit of an understatement.

Film International Book Review: The Problem Body

2011-10-04T04:44:00.001-07:00

The new issue of Film International includes my book review of The Problem Body: Projecting Disability on Film (edited by Sally Chivers and Nicole Markotic). Thanks to Liza Palmer for allowing me to contribute to the publication.

Lola

2011-10-02T08:29:00.001-07:00

The Asia Triennial Manchester 11 began last night with a screening of Brillante Mendoza's Lola (2009). While the audience and the festival curator Andy Willis were quick to praise the performances of the two leads, Anita Linda and Rustica Carpio, during the post-screening Q&A with Mendoza, what immediately captivated me were the forces of nature, particularly the pummeling wind and rain, that were captured in the film. Following two grandmothers who are linked by a crime involving their grandsons, the film portrays the loss and the economic hardship on both sides, keeping close to the characters for much of the film, with a handheld shooting style: one of the grandsons has been murdered and so a funeral must be arranged; the other is arrested for the crime and so legal costs must be raised and eventually the offer of a settlement between families. The difficulties faced by each grandmother's family drives their actions and attempts at bargaining, fundraising; the determination and energy of the two protagonists is inexhaustible. Shown within a context of widespread poverty and financial pressure (the game show on TV watched by one of the characters is called 'Credit or Debit') the choice to shoot in the midst of driving winds and torrential downpours gives the sense of people being battered in every respect, a physical manifestation of the economic odds stacked against them. Mendoza also conveys the power of these natural forces through the sound recording; the rushing noise of the weather, its volume, was striking.

With moments that are heartrending and moments that are humorous - I am thinking foremost of the scene in which the grandmother of the deceased glimpses her grandson's body lying on a table and the hilarious photo booth hiccup - Mendoza skilfully weaves emotional punctuation, comedic lightness (a pallbearer falling into the water) and clearly has his dramatic arc mapped onto a seemingly unadorned, documentarist double portrait of hard times in Manila. It was also heartening to be sat in a fairly well attended screening on an uncharacteristically warm Saturday night in early October. With few opportunities to see independent films by directors from the Philippines and my own attempt to get the works of Khavn de la Cruz shown at the upcoming Frequency festival in Lincoln being unsuccessful - I relished the occasion as an introduction to Mendoza's filmmaking.

Taxi Driver - That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore

2011-09-30T00:12:00.000-07:00

Bad Lieutenant (with Original Soundtrack)

2011-09-29T07:12:00.000-07:00

Having been an ardent admirer of Abel Ferrara's film Bad Lieutenant (1992) since the first time I saw it a couple of years ago, I didn't think that it could be improved. It was only recently that it came to my attention that Ferrara intended that Schoolly D's 'Signifying Rapper' be used throughout the film, including during the scene in which the nun is raped. Okay, maybe I was a bit slow on the uptake because it seems to be a pretty well-known fact that the song was used in the film's original release, but pulled some time later due to a rights violation, which arose from the song's use of elements of Led Zeppelin's 'Kashmir'. But with the song removed from all available versions of the film on DVD, I had to look elsewhere.

As soon as the film reaches the scene 'on the streets' at night when LT pretends to apprehend a drug dealer, but simply wishes to obtain a fix from him, the driving sound of 'Signifying Rapper' lends an albeit 'typical' but nevertheless gritty, hard edge to the scene; the energetic music complementing LT's run and flight up the dark stairwell. It deepens the sense that LT here is really setting out his stall, which will lead him to dig deep into the negative. Compared to the ambient sound that is used in the current version, this is far superior and captivating. It would seem that Ferrara's upset with regard to the prevention of the use of the song led him to simply refuse to replace it with any other music.

The use of the song in the rape scene gives the effect that the scene takes up the perspective of the two young men committing the brutal crime. It was surprising to hear the song here instead of the solemn organ music used in the distributed version, but the screams of Christ (LT's screams overdubbed I believe, or at least almost identical, thus involving him in the scene) and the toppling of religious iconography is more powerfully integrated with the audio in Ferrara's original version - more urgent, affecting and cruel.

The song which has soundtracked the rape then becomes LT's theme as he visits the nun in the hospital, the music again linking LT with the deviance, abandon, violence and negativity of the rapists and the drug dealers.

Where quietude really pays off in the film is during LT's collapse into guilt and shame in front of the apparition of Christ. This is a scene that I always find overwhelming and Keitel really does give one of the most incredible, wrenching performances. What is crucial here is the echo of LT's voice within the church. The setting works perfectly here for thematic reasons, visually and aurally. What happens is that LT's voice cries out, blaming another but it is only his voice that returns to him - there is no response from Christ. LT has to reflect on his own behaviour, crime, addiction; he cannot lay the blame on someone other than himself.

Coming Apart (1969)

2011-09-28T06:03:00.000-07:00

Reflections on Coming Apart

2011-09-28T05:40:00.000-07:00

Milton Moses Ginsberg's first feature film Coming Apart (1969) emerged at the tail end of the Sixties. This was the decade in which Warhol had investigated the effects of long-duration, 'static' films such as Sleep (1963) and Empire (1964); in David Holzman's Diary (1967), Jim McBride presented a film diary in which the apparatus of filmmaking was made explicit, with the protagonist documenting his personal life on celluloid; Michael Snow had explored the character of a single room in Wavelength (1967); Tony Conrad had reduced the magical silver screen to a Flicker (1966).

Released on Hallowe'en in 1969, Coming Apart is rarely mentioned today, yet it prefigures the home recording, YouTube diarising, other webcam exploits and the documentation of our daily lives that is so prevalent today. And it bears the traces of the much-considered avant-garde culture with which it was contemporaneous when it was first screened. Moreover, it is a film whose formal approach succeeds in 'reflecting' the dramatic content and is certainly worth taking a closer look at.

The film is a document of the encounters that psychiatrist Joe Glazer (Rip Torn), under the pseudonym of Joe Glassman, has with a number of women, including lovers and former patients. He is using an apartment, away from his wife and workplace, to which he can invite these women. Joe seems to be recording these conversations and sexual encounters in order to evaluate his own psychological condition; he is disturbed by his behaviour and becomes increasingly unnerved by the camera's record of this. The camera is hidden and the women, for the most part, are unaware of its status as anything other than a "kinetic art object". This is a personal document and Joe wants control of its production. As a psychiatrist Joe is used to the position of interrogator and is keen to maintain this position - he scolds one of his patients (Sally Kirkland, whose performance as the damaged, erotic, frantic JoAnn in the film is compelling), for attempting to take his picture. Joe regularly stops and restarts the recording, so the film omits periods of time and action of unquantifiable lengths. So desperate to find a sense of identity, sanity and order, Joe literally controls the film.

Coming Apart, like many of the 'minimalist' and 'structural' films, but also the earliest films, has a technical economy. The film is shot using one camera, always fixed in position but moved from one point to another every so often, and the camera is identified as part of the onscreen environment. We even see it reflected in the glass hanging in Joe's apartment. As opposed to the omniscient eye which looks upon the typical Hollywood film the camera is located firmly within the drama and the function of the recording device is even directly questioned (this tendency is carried on in works such as Tony Conrad's Concord Ultimatum (1977) and The Blair Witch Project (1999)). Of course this seems commonplace now, owing to the endless self-reflexive documentation and bedroom sermons aired across the world wide web, particularly in virtue of the fact that the camera is stationary in the film, reminding me of an example as seemingly unrelated as the guitar 'virtuosos' filming themselves on YouTube.

As a subject of examination the film offers Joe not only a camera, but also a mirror with which he can 'see himself'. The mirror covers the entire wall behind the couch and its edges match those of the camera frame for the most part. The name Joe Glazer suggests both Gaze - looking - and Glaze, the latter given a variation in his pseudonym Glassman (Glass Man). The mirror glass reflects Joe's behaviour and the film captures all that unfolds in front of it and even behind it. As a psychiatrist, Joe must be well-versed in the symbolic resonance of the mirror.

All of the sound is direct but several passages lack a visual element - the screen is blank. The artificiality of the filmmaking enterprise is underlined by the intrusion of technical faults and features into the fiction onscreen. The recording microphone issues feedback and the leader tape is left in the film. Ginsberg uses this material to give the impression that the film is something homemade and amateurish.

Throughout, the film is almost coming apart.

For all of the apparent formal divergences from the usual Hollywood film that Coming Apart takes, the setup allows Ginsberg to maintain and even simplify many of the straightforward techniques of the dramatic film. The positioning of the camera and mirror within the room allows a variety of shots to accumulate: close ups, medium close ups, wide shots. Although the lack of complex edits removes the typical shot/reverse shot procedure, the use of the mirror enables us to see the faces of two characters as they are engaged in a conversation. The shots that would ordinarily comprise an edited sequence are mapped along a single plane. In the essay accompanying Kino Video's DVD release of the film, the director describes the visibility of two characters when conversing face to face as being an "odd and pleasing result". The 180 degree line can be traversed whilst maintaining the relative positions of the characters on a particular side of the frame. And what is behind the camera is made visible - the film cleverly tries to expand its playing field to encompass a space beyond the screen in front of us (which even reminds me of the way in which Velazquez used a mirror in his painting Las Meninas), which actually contributes to the 'reality' by removing the sense of a film crew (a comforting thought typical of those perturbed by horror films) and gives the sense of a diary/found document.

It may seem that all of the angles are covered within the formal setup, but the inactive camera is not able to serve the drama all of the time, particularly during much of the sexual activity and when Joe welcomes visitors at the door.

In Coming Apart the viewer is often excluded from the drama, yet drawn into the psychosexual interactions unravelling on the screen. We are not afforded the possibility of assuming the point of view of a particular character in Joe's apartment. We are only identified with the camera itself, invited to take on the character of a machine. We are nowhere to be seen when the camera looks directly into the mirror.

Yet we feel implicated when characters look directly at us - we are both absent and included. We are forced into self-awarenesss, instead of being comfortable in our anonymity. Although nowadays we are happy to share our own lives using social networking platforms, these are transmissions that are usually undertaken with the intention of communicating and we are still concerned when we are the subject of hidden surveillance. It strikes us that Joe's footage was not intended for public viewing - and this may have contributed to viewers' unease in the past. The camera itself is also absent and present. As opposed to the standard documentary process, the characters within the film seem truly unaware of the presence of the camera, which always modifies behaviour. Toward the end of the film, Joe explains to one of his visitors that she is being filmed. Once the apparatus is unveiled, the reality is lost as far as Joe is concerned and we immediately see the girl adapting her actions based on her awareness. Prior to making the film Ginsberg was an assistant on the television series Candid Camera and assisted the Maysles brothers in syncing their verite films. Coming Apart is open in addressing the issue of how behaviour changes once the individual knows that they are being filmed.

The linear start/stop editing of the film is intentional and is handled by Joe. This amounts to self-censorship uncommon in most films. Joe controls what we see and seems to do so according to impulse, rather than design - the editing thus becoming symptomatic of his psychological compulsions and emotional reflexes. This is evident in a fantastic montage of Torn's expressions, in which words are largely removed (see visual essay posted separately above). In the shooting script, published by Lancer (1969) Joe states that it is the expense of the film that leads him to conserve it by switching the camera on and off. The lack of edits serves the actors' performances; conversations and actions unfold throughout uninterrupted takes of several minutes, rather than being composites of discrete sequences from a variety of takes. This gives the dialogue a more natural and 'lifelike' feel. Such 'realism', however, can be off-putting to viewers who are used to the constructed pace of typical movies. Ginsberg has noted the influence of Yasujiro Ozu, whose films are also composed of long takes. Warhol took a more extreme approach in Vinyl (1965), by placing all of the action within a single shot. Coming Apart does not busy itself with building a back story or interweaving storylines. Ginsberg has compared the effect to listening in on the neighbours through the walls: "who needs a back story".

As devices, the camera and mirror allow us to multiply ourselves, to externalise ourselves, but only in a non-physical way. The multiplication of Joe via these devices seems fitting since he already uses two personas that we know of in his personal relationships. However, this self-obsession creates a psychic feedback loop and the film has the effect of amplifying Joe's nueroses. The use of the reflective surfaces exacerbates this tendency. At the outset of the film, Joe's recorded voice is also interrupted by feedback. The film is self-contained and amplifying, rising in intensity towards its peak. It is worth comparing the appearance of the nightime scenes with the visual pattern later achieved in Tony Conrad's Film Feedback (1974) a film which distilled cinema itself down to a self-enclosed, self-referencing mechanism, an endgame.

Film Feedback (1974)

The mirror image and the recorded image are immaterial; their 'reality' and 'validity' can be deceptive. Joe is uncertain how much he can really discover about his psychology by referring to these images. Images can be illusory and appearances can be false. Joe uses this to his advantage: during one encounter with a young model he questions whether the photograph in his hands depicts her breasts accurately - this is obviously a ploy to see the girl's naked body. However, later in the film Joe is duped by a clown which throws off its suit to reveal an alluring woman; this alluring woman dissolves as she strips, leaving a skinny male. This shedding of identities indicates a failure of recognition on Joe's part and frustrates Joe's self-examination whihc only seems to envelop him in multiples of a single, confused identity. Joe must wish he could peel off the layers as easily as the clown.

One of the most conventional scenes in the film is a breakup scene that we may take to be Joe ending the relationship with his wife. Our engagement with the drama is prevented by the camera position which leaves us to stare at the characters' torsos. But this is not Joe's wife anyway, it is one of his preferred mistresses. Joe's real wife appears at the apartment later in the film and informs us of his double life. Joe Glazer/Joe Glassman, Psychiatrist/Photographer.

Coming Apart assumes the form of a film document that was not meant to be seen. Ultimately, the film finds us out, pulls us up on our voyeurism and ultimately denies us any further visual stimulus - the mirror is smashed by JoAnn who may even have killed Joe. We are denied further glimpses into Joe's life and at the end of the film we are left to reflect on our own personalities, instead of focusing on the neuroses of others.

Following the film's release there were few supportive voices behind it. Many derided the film's content as faux-transgressive and little more than a charming time capsule which tells us about the Sixties' sexual revolution. Others picked on the film's knuckleheaded formal execution as comparable to stag films. One dismissive Life reader commented on Richard Schickel's favourable review by protesting that Ginsberg is nothing other than "dirty old man!" Interestingly, Schickel's bold attack on presumed community standards is still worth reflecting on today:

"Still contemporary community standards are in such a shambles that no honest man can say with certainty whether an object of art (or commerce) really violates them." ('Cracking Up on Candid Camera', Life October 17, 1969)

Even in 1969, Schickel was pointing out the possibility that technological mediation and recording could dissociate us further from emotional reality, a question that is still central in web culture today. And on page 2 of the same issue of Life, a politically incorrect advertisement for a Sylvania television prides itself on providing a picture of life "the way it really is".

LWL Wide Angle - Hong Sang-soo

2011-08-24T00:08:00.000-07:00

The second installment of my Wide Angle blog for Little White Lies is online now. The subject this month is Hong Sang-soo.

"Twelve films into his career as a director of feature films, which began in 1996 with The Day a Pig Fell into the Well, Hong Sang-soo has already created a body of work that is cleverly permutational."

Continue reading at Little White Lies

LWL Wide Angle - Philippe Grandrieux

2011-07-18T06:53:00.000-07:00

Little White Lies has published the first installment of a new blog entitled Wide Angle, in which I will be focusing on directors whose works are not typically distributed in the UK. The blog posts will include an overview of each director's work, as well as some useful advice on where to source the films on DVD.

The first Wide Angle post concerns French filmmaker Philippe Grandrieux.

Continue Reading at Little White Lies

Jim O'Rourke Primer

2011-07-15T03:40:00.000-07:00

The August 2011 issue of The Wire is out now. This month's magazine includes a Primer on Jim O'Rourke written by myself. Shortly after publication, I was contacted by Peter Rehberg who kindly cleared up the history of Fenn O'Berg. He wrote:

"I wasn't introduced to Jim at Nickelsdorf in 1997. We met a year before at the Hyperstrings festival in Vienna where we were both performing. At Nickelsdorf Jim came up with the idea of Christian and myself playing with him without announcement in the cellar bar of the festival. That's how Fenn O'Berg started."

I would also like to point out that the image of the Remove the Need album is in fact that of a tape released by Complacency in 1989, which is a different album to the one reviewed, despite bearing the same title.

All being well, corrections will appear in the next issue of The Wire. I want to thank the staff at The Wire for their support throughout the preparation of this article.

AUD10VISUAL SALVAGE #2 - JAPANESE RADICALS VOL. 1

2011-07-07T08:30:00.000-07:00

Kids Dig Xenakis

2011-06-22T05:19:00.001-07:00

McCoy Tyner will not be Contained

2011-06-20T06:12:00.000-07:00

Having watched most of the last series of Later with Jools Holland, something that I had not done in a number of years, the paucity of music that I found to be captivating was unsurprising. Regularly tuning in to see the live broadcast (a truncated form of what eventually becomes the extended, pre-recorded show) I took an interest in seeing how performances changed between editions. In the past, it has been a small delight to witness the few occasions when a Later...virgin would launch into the first chord of their song, confused by the host's introductory tone and thinking it was a cue to begin playing. Something else happened in one recent episode, which I will pick as one of my TV highlights of the year. Where once such a live, on-air occurrence would have been missed by most, the archival nature of the web has ensured that the moment can be relived. Below, McCoy Tyner eludes the constraints of the BBC's showcase format and pushes his jazz playing out of the bounds of the presentation package that Holland manages.

Stanley Kubrick - The Film Fan (Scene 360 Version)

2011-05-23T07:44:00.000-07:00

A revised version of Stanley Kubrick - The Film Fan has been published by the online film and arts magazine Scene 360. The ideas collected across several blog posts have now been consolidated into one piece, which leaves out superfluous details and adds some new critical interpretations.

"Stanley Kubrick is a towering figure in the history of cinema. He has created film images that have left an indelible mark on the public imagination, from the sci-fi spectacle of "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) to the military drills of "Full Metal Jacket" (1987). Kubrick was granted enormous freedom as an artist, nestled away in the English countryside far from prying eyes. As a result, he was often caricatured as a recluse, unengaged with the wider culture, and his imagination wrestled film technology for years before unleashing startling cinematic visions. For all the emphasis given to Kubrick's innovative use of NASA lenses and candlelight in "Barry Lyndon" (1975), as well as the ghostly Steadicam glide of "The Shining" (1980), there has been little attention given to the cinematic influences which inspired his work."

Continue Reading at Scene 360

Experiments in Film 1895-2001: A Report

2011-05-09T09:15:00.000-07:00

Photo by Toby Nicholas Clayton

Aud10visual Salvage #1 - Experiments in Film 1895-2001 was the first in a series of presentations about film which will be taking place in Lincoln and sees the blog moving off the Internet and into local community spaces. The idea is to open up dialogue amongst curious film goers in the city, to meet new people and share insights and responses concerning all manner of cinema. The idea arose as a result of following film culture from various parts of the world - reading books, following blogs and reading festival reports - but always feeling at a remove from it all. While I am generally content to spend a lot of time holed up at home, viewing films on my own, I have come to see great value in engaging with others in order to expand the discourse about film and to test critical ideas in an environment that disallows some of the problems of online conversations and actively encourages involvement. More importantly, I came to realise that I would never find out if there was any interest in an engaged film culture at a local level if I did not attempt to establish a framework to support it, to suggest some points of entry and discussion, even if this began on a very small scale; maybe this would attract others who already carried out similar activities locally that I hadn't yet managed to hear about.

The plan is to share some of my knowledge of film in the hope of stimulating interest 'on the doorstep'; to introduce film works from various eras and countries; to instructively highlight points of overlap and divergence and to be challenged by others. The evening was advertised as a presentation on cinema and clips were used for illustration. The fact that audience members raised questions and that the discussion developed throughout was heartening. Beginning at the beginning, the origins of cinema were discussed in reference to developments in photography, movement analysis and the tradition of magic lantern shows. The Lumieres, G.A. Smith and James Williamson were referred to as a way of showing how and when the basic building blocks of narrative cinema emerged. Once satisfied with some lessons from the pioneers - the earliest experimenters - we considered alternative approaches to filmmaking which depart from the fictional dramas that the average viewer is used to. Our point of reference here was Peter Tscherkassky, whose foregrounding of film's material properties and ability to summon incredible sensory and psychological effects out of photographic processes and re-edited (found) footage tells us to rip it up and start again (or appropriate and try again). The aim was to introduce the audience to experimental film and let's face it: Tscherkassky ROCKS! I could think of no better fuel to start the fire. Any opportunity to spread the word will be savoured. I had hoped to approximate the astonished responses to the first Lumiere screenings and to elicit a feeling of discovery, to offer a history of and a fresh look at film and what it can offer to adventurous viewers - overall, to welcome more people into the cinephile community.

I am thankful for the participation and good will of all those who attended and it was a pleasure to meet some new people. My special thanks goes to Dex and to Ruth of Artscope for supporting the project. The idea is to continue the Aud10visual Salvage series in the near future, to reconvene and welcome others for further community discussions about film.

P.S. The comments feature has now been opened up to anyone. I'll try to deal with the spammers with all my might.

Interview with Koji Wakamatsu (first published 1970)

2011-05-06T04:20:00.001-07:00

by Michel Caen and Roland Lethem
English translation: W.F. Shen

MIDI-MINUIT FANTASTIQUE: What were you doing before working in films?
KOJI WAKAMATSU: I was a gangster.
MMF: What kind of gangster?
KW: I was involved in a gangster organisation in Shinjuku, a district in Tokyo. One day, I was arrested and put in jail. There, I couldn't stop thinking, thinking about all kinds of things...This is what led to my working in films.
MMF: What were your first contacts with cinema?
KW: It's very simple: in Japan, when a big company is on location in town, it must go through the chosen area's gangster organisation, which is in charge of trucks, buses, extras, etc. If the gangsters don't get contacted or if they don't receive the required amount of money, lots of accidents will likely happen during the shooting...For instance, the lighting will break down etc. Therefore I had my first contacts with cinema as a gangster.
MMF: Actually, it was a racket...But besides this, were you really interested in cinema or was it only a gangsterism matter?
KW: I started to be interested in cinema at the age of thirteen. I went more to the cinema than to school, I would bunk off...
MMF: What movies did you like at that time?
KW: I would watch anything. I saw the worst Japanese movies!
MMF: At that time, did you already know about erotic movies?
KW: When I was going to the cinema, I did not imagine that I would become a director. I used to go there because I enjoyed it. And I've been able to watch erotic movies only lying about my age.
MMF: Which motives dragged your career into sex?
KW: It dates back to puberty, a self-revelation...
MMF: Is all of your cinematographic past focused on eroductions?
KW: No, I had been making films for TV for two years before.
MMF: Why are you an independent filmmaker and why haven't you fit yourself into the big five companies system?
KW: These companies lay too many restrictions down on you. I wanted to be free.
MMF: But anyway, you do respect the restrictions imposed by the censorship...
KW: Indeed, as you know it, censorship has two taboos: sex, which can't be shown, and coitus. If I were to include them in my films, it'd be to show the beauty, the greatness and the power of Love. But that kind of justification will never be accepted by the censorship committees...Scenes of bodies description are very often cut out. To me, violence, body and sex are an integral part of life and make up the dynamism of the existence of humankind. If I want to convey it through my films, the authorities are censoring me. From the point of view of the creator, I cannot approve of it and I'm protesting against it with all my might. The films that I am producing - without directing them - follow the same central theme as well. Within the framework of my production company, I never allowed the least cut in any of my films without having first agreed to it.

MMF: What are the average budgets of your films?
KW: I'm spending around 3,500,000 yen per film. I take about seven to eight days to shoot them.
MMF: Is it possible to watch any of your films in Europe?
KW: Two of them are currently shown in Germany. I think that they are distributed by Hansa Films. These are Secret Acts Behind Walls and Blood is Redder than the Sun.
MMF: Most of the films displayed in Tokyo are incomprehensible without an interpreter, except yours. It can be deduced that you attach great importance to the image.
KW: In my opinion, the essence of film is expressing through the image. I don't like shooting a film with overwhelming dialogue. In a frame composition, I'm keen to express personal views. For instance, if one of the scenes includes overexposed frames, it means that I wanted it to remind of the brightness of the sun in summer.
MMF: The two films we saw, directed by you, lasted about sixty-five minutes. Any European or American director would have increased the length of the film at the expense of its rhythm. Not you.
KW: You know about the rhythm and the length of my films. Their lasting 65 or 75 minutes is because it is the ideal length for the best expression of the subjects.
MMF: There is no time to rest during the showing. We're thrown into action from the outset and we're set free only at the very end. Are you against lulls?
KW: It's correct. To me, tension represents the expression of life.
MMF: Does the mix of eroticism and sadism square with something deep to you or is it just a matter of business?
KW: This is a point I would like to insist on in particular. I produced the film of one of my assistant producer Atsushi Yamatoya, a prodigious film, Season of Betrayal, which deals with the Vietnam War. Seeing the work, I knew I had to direct a film myself, a film as I mean it. For the first time, I had the feeling that the artist in me had to direct his film, his own one and not a work for free. The scandal at the Berlin Film Festival (1) clarified the difference between commercial films and mine. During the shooting of Embryo, I didn't think that it would shock people. I was turning an idea into images. But once the editing was done, I felt the power of the film to shock the world and Europe in particular. However, I have to insist, during the shooting, I didn't think it would shock the audience.
MMF: Is there a difference between the public of the Japanese eroductions and that of the American "sexploiters"?
KW: I can't give you an answer because we barely see any American erotic films in Japan. Concerning the spirit in which these films are shot, I believe that overall there are only a few differences. Personally, through the subject of my films, I want to criticise the evil of the present society, which is rarely the case for my Japanese and American colleagues.
MMF: Your films excepted, what is the quality of these productions overall?
KW: It's never a matter of quality.
MMF: Who watches these films and why?
KW: It seems to me that everywhere in the world, the same category of spectators make up the audience: people looking for compensations. In Japan there are a lot of young people.
MMF: Do women watch them?
KW: I can't say there are many. In Japan women supposedly dislike erotic films, but they make up part of the audience of mine.

MMF: There is also an artistic search in your films?
KW: The subject in all my films begins with sex or leads to it. It's not a subject unique to my work, it also the subject of my life. This genre suits me, therefore, very naturally.
MMF: Do some very specific kinds of eroductions exist like in the US, ranging from "Mondoes" to "Roughies", and including "Nudies", "Kinkies" and "Ghoulies"?
KW: 99% of erotic films are "Kinkies" or "Ghoulies". I don't know other genres (2).
MMF: Why don't monsters and eroticism coexist in Japan the way they do in America in films such as Kiss Me Quick or House on Bare Mountain(3)?
KW: In my opinion, traditional Japanese monsters convey very erotic and passionate feelings while images of western monsters are quite dry. In a western mind, they are not erotic. We're not making horror films with them, but suspense dramas.
MMF: Do you consider your films as ordinary ones with extra sex, or eroductions with very strong scenarios?
KW: My films are normal in their category, but their subject is eroticism. I'm not making erotic picutres out of a voyeuristic spirit, but out of necessity.
MMF: Your characters are very ordinary people.
KW: Perhaps I am ordinary then? I'm describing the people who live today, like myself.
MMF: Japan has a tradition of eroticism in art. Are you taking that into consideration while shooting?
KW: The traditional Japanese arts that you know are Noh and Kyogen. But primitive Japanese art depicts harvest-ending festivals and I already find some forms of eroticism in these Denga-ku and Saruga-ku. I'm a peasant and the Denga-ku deeply influenced me. My perception of life is based upon eroticism.
MMF: Do you consider that there is a close relationship between eroticism and violence?
KW: Of course. Within the content of eroticism there is violence. For me, the whip is the symbol of violence and power to me. Flagellation is the sadistic expression of power. The fury of a demon within ("hundo") has to come from one's self to be true and be developed out of a personal temperament so as not to be gratuitous.
SATO JYUSHIN: At the time when Embryo was started, about September-November 1966, Wakamatsu's production company consisted of a few enthusiastic people, who decided to do outdo others. Amongst them prevailed an excitement feeling: they surpassed themselves in imagination and invention and worked with fervour. It is such a violence that is found in the film. Wakamatsu has a vengeful disposition. He always has cravings for vendetta...Actually his main concern is about man's revenge.
KW: ...the takeover.
MMF: Is the work of the Marquis de Sade well known in Japan?
KW: It is read a lot, but not everything is translated. Do you know this book The Story of O? Shibusawa, the translator of Sade and of O, recommended it to me after watching Embryo. I'm halfway; I like it very much, it's very beautiful...

MMF: Do you really think that violence and eroticism really have a revolutionary power?
KW: Without violence nor blood, revolution cannot happen.
MMF: Do you feel concerned about the issue of racism? In your film Violence in the Net, an American couple is facing a Japanese one; but the plot could have happened among Japanese only.
KW: It's simply a film against the American. I hate them.
MMF: there wasn't the feeling that the nationality of the American was at stake. The White is shown to be despicable, of course, but the anti-Americanism is not obvious.
KW: At the end of the movie, the two men are fighting. The American has a weapon. Not the Japanese. The meaning of the fight is the same as in Vietnam. Waging war is slaughtering the world. Thus we have to be against war.
MMF: Can one make a connection between your anti-Americanism and that of Kiyonori Suzuki in Gate of Flesh (4)?
KW: Suzuki and I want to be heard by the public, to let them know our opinions. Anti-Americanism may exist in the average Japanese person. We're trying to make them understand more clearly and my films are successful among the students.
MMF: Are your films still shown in special theatres?
KW: I have two major publics: the one interested in the subjects and wants to understand them (students) and the public of cinematographic voyeurs.
SJ: Each university holds a cultural festival with conferences, debates, etc. This year I displayed six of his films at one of these festivals, with great success. The students found that, in Japan, Che Guevara's revolutionary ideas were represented by Wakamatsu in the field of cinema. They also said that he was the only one in Japan.
MMF: Does a Communist Party exist in Japan and what is Wakamatsu's position about it?
SJ: There are two types of C.P.: the traditional ones - called Yoyogi - and various others including the pro-Chinese - the anti-Yoyogi - where members of Zengakuren are recruited, those who organised the famous street demonstrations.
KW: I'm rising up against Communist Parties, because they refuse freedom to people. I hate them. That's the reason why I don't have dealings with them.
MMF: What do you think about the connection that can be made between your films and the ideology of Che Guevara?
KW: When this connection was made, it wasn't according to a political perspective. Guevara's character is that of the revolutionary hero who, once the revolution is caused in Cuba, leaves the country and causes it elsewhere. You know the famous sentence: "Create two, three, many Vietnams." I want to do the same. (5)
SJ: The situation for Japanese cinema is critical, the quality is appalling. There's no possibility of seeing a good film anymore. It's a state of cultural destitution comparable to the economic misery of the old regimes in China or Cuba. Now is the time to make guerrilla warfare. We must give rise to rebirth. We already started. The dawn will come...

MMF: What do you think about the critics at the Experimental Movie Festival in Knokke, who claimed that Embryo was fascist?
KW: They are stupid jerks. Fools.
SJ: Anyway, between a man and a woman there can only be war. Those who don't understand Embryo are fools, or worse...The situation is hopeless.
KW: I am persuaded that everyone must understand the film. Even without subtitles.
MMF: Absolutely.
KW: There is complicity between a tormentor and his victim. The latter expresses it several times in the dialogue. Her will to flee is due to the fear of losing herself. There are other examples...
MMF: What is exactly the social relationship between the man and the woman? Is it that he is her boss and she's his employee?
HIROSE MICHIKO: The young lady works in a big store, and the man is one of the chief executives. At one point, she says: "What can I do? If I leave this house I will have to sell socks to men in another store again. My life will never change!"
MMF: It seems that Embryo's hero is not powerless?
KW: Indeed, the hero isn't powerless. Everything originates in his Oedipus complex.
MMF: Can you clarify things further? Is he able to make love with the woman or is he unable to have a child with her?
KW: I was often told about man's anguish. But he's not anguished. The subject is the memory, that of a guy who was deceived by his wife. The problem is to know whether the woman accepts the man or not. She is an animal who's always waiting to have kids. Not him, his coming to life is absurd. The embryonic state is the happiest one. The scenes outside the room don't make up a story. The scene of artificial insemination shows the stupidity of the woman: she always wants a kid. Giving birth is a very unfortunate act.
SJ: It's a fear of facing the real world after coming out of the state in embryo.
MMF: How long does the action of Embryo last?
SJ: The shot of the crack shows that it may have lasted a long time.
KW: Time doesn't matter, it may happen in a night, a day, a week or a year. What matters is that the woman is threatened by the whip, that she's opposing it's power, flying into a rage...
SJ: The subject, for Wakamatsu, is that a being is threatened and it is rising up against the situation.
MMF: Do you take part in the scenarios of your films?
KW: First, I give an idea to my fellow workers and assistants, who work on it and turn it into a scenario. After that, I set up the shooting script.
SJ: His assistants have totally different dispositions. As a result, there is a difference between the original idea and the developed idea. Wakamatsu isn't the author of the script for Embryo, it's Masao Adachi. The meeting and the mix of these two personalities probably contributed to the success of the film. On the subject of the accusation of fascism against the film, one should have talked about puritanism instead. Suzuki belongs to the aestheticism of the East. But, all reflections made, Wakamatsu's puritanism is an element that may become a seed of fascism...
MMF: With your new film, which is inspired from the story of the murder of the nurses of Chicago, is it a question of the repeating Embryo on a larger scale, since we are dealing with not one anymore, but eight women?
KW: It is not a continuation, but the same Oedipus complex. The question is to know whether the woman accepts. It's the search for a young lady, for a saint.

SJ: Thus the search for the Blessed Virgin...It's the legend of the search for the Blessed Virgin. Wakamatsu has been a gangster. He's a Platonic puritan. If I am entitled to talk about his private life, I would tell that from a professional point of view, he may have lots of relations with women. But in real life, he is very Platonic and loves purity.
MMF: Are there things that you wish you had done, but for one reason or another, could never undertake?
KW: I'm trying to be a good producer and having my own production company, I hope that it is going to develop in the coming years.
MMF: And outside your work?
KW: I'd like to be Prime Minister so I could change Japan from every point of view. I would also like to know Death, to find the secret about it...
MMF: Do you have a favourite director in western cinema?
KW: I do not admit any other directors but myself.

(Story by Michel Caen and Roland Lethem by tape recorder, with the help of Sato Jyushin and Ishigami Mitsutoshi, the simultaneous translations of Hirose Michiko and the corrections of Nishi.)

Notes:

(1) About Secret Acts Behind Walls cf. Berlin review by M. Delahaye in Cahiers du Cinema
(2) It seems, indeed, that Koji Wakamatsu does not make these kinds of distinctions with precision. It seems obvious that his films belong to the "Roughies".
(3) cf. Articles published in MMF No. 10/11 pp. 86-88 and 90-91.
(4) cf. MMF No. 18/19 pp. 38-51.
(5) By an artistic strategy of guerrilla warfare, Wakamatsu intends to make Japanese cinema production flare up, therefore giving rise to parallel productions with turns of mind similar to his. All in all, to spread out in quality.

The original interview in French and published in Midi-Minuit Fantastique was previously posted here as "Entretien avec Wakamatsu Koji".

AUD10VISUAL SALVAGE #1 - EXPERIMENTS IN FILM 1895-2001

2011-05-05T09:06:00.000-07:00

The Underpass

2011-05-01T12:14:00.000-07:00

A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Possession (1981)

Irreversible (2002)

Let the Right One In (2008)

Based on recent viewing I have been wondering whether anything remotely pleasant has ever happened in an underpass at night.

Johanna Vaude

2011-04-20T12:03:00.001-07:00

Hybride, a compilation of films by Johanna Vaude issued on DVD by Lowave, is one of a number of experimental film collections that I have been watching again and again over the past few weeks. Vaude's work has been championed by the film critic Nicole Brenez whose invaluable writing has pointed me in the direction of a dazzling array of political and poetic avant-garde films. Hybride collects together 6 examples of plastic hybridization, films utilising a wide variety of media. Vaude confidently blends painting, super 8, found footage, digital imaging and more to take us into psychic interiors and the depths of space; to evoke memory and myth; to induce reverie and discomfort, as the films unravel across unnamed dimensions. L'Oeil Sauvage takes us through the eye, inside the mind to encounter sensual hues and dreamlike imagery, each photogram exquisitely crafted with assurance and instinct. In Samourai Vaude uses footage from numerous martial arts films. The familiar spectacle of the disciplined master engaged in a sword fight dissolves as the film begins to impart intricate rhythms and something more exciting than a bloody battle takes over the screen - Vaude opens up the pure radiating energy of the samurai onto the film through incredible editing strategies.

Notre Icare is profoundly unsettling at the outset as a quick succession of media images show countless horrors from around the world. The images are also seen by a male character on screen. Vaude's harrowing montage provokes such sadness and a hundred small shocks ripple out, until the film gets too overloaded and overwhelming. The speed of the editing does not hide anything, proving that rapid-fire editing needn't result in a subject being brushed over. For Vaude, the aim is to draw attention to the prevalence of images of real violence and death within the media and entertainment industry and to prompt us to consider how to respond. In the second half of the film, the man who has watched the clips with us turns inward on himself, calling an Icarus spirit to creativity and light, pushing outward and upward, daring to aim for the sun again. This hopeful message undoes the traditional interpretation of the Icarus myth and it fits with Vaude's dauntless innovation and experimentation with film form too. Hearing Vaude discuss the work in the interview included on the DVD, I am reminded of an acceptance speech that Stanley Kubrick gave in which he suggested that the moral of the Icarus myth might be "forget the wax and feathers and do a better job on the wings".

In fact, the work of Stanley Kubrick was on my mind as I sat down to watch Vaude's films, since I had just finished writing an article about his films. Watching Exploration, I was awestruck to find Vaude's film pushing further through the interstellar system than Kubrick did in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Coincidentally, Vaude has just created a short film entitled I Turn Home composed entirely of sequences from Kubrick's back catalogue and it is posted below.

http://www.johannavaude.com/

How to Report the News

2011-04-14T14:28:00.000-07:00

I wonder if Charlie Brooker is familiar with Peter Watkins' theory of the Monoform and the practices of the MAVM. It's a shame that such a demonstration emerges from the BBC and that the critical message is then ignored in the continuing use of this format for their news broadcasts.

More on Peter Watkins soon.

You Laughing at Me?

2011-04-13T10:18:00.001-07:00

With the UK release of the 4K restoration of Taxi Driver imminent, fans and newcomers will have the opportunity to see the film in all its bold g(l)ory on the big screen for a limited time. The image of Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle, an isolated cab-driving vigilante who faces the intense dread of 1970s New York head on, has become iconic in its grit and grace. But the towering presence of the film in modern culture can blind us to the inconsistencies, many of which appear in Travis' characterisation which scans the dial to find lone poet, ladies man and killing machine in quick succession. This rare opportunity to see the film in cinemas may point up some of the problematic aspects of the film, which fewer and fewer commentators seem willing to address in their haste to rubber stamp and seal off another classic. I hope that the restoration gives audiences the chance to better appreciate the shades of humour throughout the film too. For all its climactic violence and the oppressive sense of alienation in Travis' world, there remain amusing scenes and details that get very little mention within the typical shorthand summaries used in 100-greatest lists and Sunday supplement reviews. By recognising these light comic touches, parts of the film seem to lilt (the score has a romantic, breezy theme of its own) but it is no less scorching as a result. Some of these aspects are perhaps not intended to be humorous, but certain vocal cadences and a bit of literalism are sometimes all it takes.

The first attempt at a chat up that Travis makes in the film is met with disinterest from the counter girl at the porno theatre. Accepting defeat, Travis loads up on candy, popcorn and cola ready for the feature - a porno film! - specifically requesting Jujubes because they last longer. Strange product placement for the confectionary giants too. I guess that this was totally normal in this type of picture house, but as a young innocent I find it amusing.

Comic relief is explicitly built into the film through the appearance of Albert Brooks, who plays Tom and works alongside Cybil Shepherd's Betsy in a campaign office. His pedantic riff on the underlining of words on Senator Palantine's campaign buttons is a treat.

After Travis succeeds in getting a coffee-and-pie date with Betsy, she finds him to be a curious fellow. Comparing Travis to a Kris Kristofferson song, he fails to pick up on the compliment: "I'm no pusher, I never have pushed."

Following a disastrous trip to the movies to see a sex film, Travis tries to apologise to Betsy. She is eager to leave the episode behind her quickly, resisting Travis' pleas and jumping into a taxi. Exasperated, Travis cries: "Jesus Christ, I got a taxi!" Later, Travis does himself no favours by asking if a 24-hour virus was responsible for Betsy's behaviour.

Early in the film, Travis doesn't seem too keen on carrying a firearm, but following a vulgar exposition on the merits of a .44 Magnum by a passenger in his cab he decides to hook up with Easy Andy. Andy swiftly deflates Travis' ambitions by pointing out the practicalities of carrying such a weapon: "they use that in Africa for killing elephants". The dealer's exhaustive list of other products in his supply - everything from grass to a brand new Cadillac - also tickles me every time, not that I'm condoning his operation.

In his hour of need, Travis goes to The Wizard for sage-like advice, only to be offered a barrage of incomprehensible babble about work and identity, before the conclusion: "just go out and get laid....I mean we're all fucked, more or less". Even Travis manages to smile at this, recognising how dumb the advice is. The Wizard admits he's no Bertrand Russell.

But The Wizard's stories from the front line of taxi driving, as well as those of his friends, are a perverse delight. Following a wild sexual encounter in the back of his cab, with a passenger: "she gave me a $200 tip and her phone number in Acapulco".

As vile as his character is, Sport commands an amusing tete a tete with a puzzled Travis as they discuss the services of Iris. Harvey Keitel's godawful haircut in this film has gone unremarked for too long, not that I can get a lot of critical mileage out of it.

The Secret Service Agent at Palantine's rally assures "Henry Krinkle" that he will post him all the details about how to join up, if he is really interested.

The breakfast strategy meeting between Travis and Iris, in which she seems a little too radiant and chirpy for a 12-year old prostitute, is lent a comic tint by Iris' horoscope wisdom and supply of Elton John sunglasses. Travis is assured that Sport couldn't have killed anybody because "he's a Libra".

Jacques Tati's Confusion

2011-03-25T03:15:00.001-07:00

"Here we were, in 1975, being given the chance to make preparations to appear not in an American teen comedy, but in a French film, a Jacques Tati film, and not as a performing band in one scene, but as actors in the entire film with Mr. Tati. A Swiss record company executive had thought there were similarities in sensibility between Tati's view of the world and ours. We were under no illusions as to the relative genius of Tati versus Sparks, but we kept our mouths shut and a meeting was set up in the Paris Hilton. Perhaps Tati, who we doubted had ever heard of Sparks, had accepted the meeting and the inclusion of us in his next film as an attempt to widen his audience. We, of course, never asked him whether it mattered that we weren't actors. The process began. Over the next several months, we had numerous discussions with Tati in his Paris office about the planned film Confusion. It was to be centered in a television studio with Russell playing a television director and me playing some sort of technician. We learned that the oft-debated "auteur" theory in film did at least exist in Tati's world. Attending the meetings were only Tati, his sketchbook and notepad, his personal assistant, and the two of us. Our job during the "collaboration" was mostly to marvel at the brilliance of his ideas. Each meeting would typically begin in the French manner of starting a statement with "no," as in "No. we must be certain we are completely prepared before beginning anything," in effect contradicting a statement that had never been made. As the meetings progressed, it seemed as if there was a basic structure in his notebook on which to hang "gags." I use the term "gags" with some hesitation as these were not modern American comedy-type gags or even silent comedy gags, but more visual playthings or visual puns. A highly decorated military general, wearing numerous colorful battle ribbons on his chest, finds the colors of these ribbons begin to run down his uniform into a pool on the floor. Another character would be shown to leave the frame of the film, much as Tex Avery characters sometimes do, perhaps in order to make you aware that you are in fact watching a film. Jacques, tell us where to stand and we'll do anything."

- Ron Mael, extract from "Memory of Jacques Tati", Sparks Guide Book (2006)

Movie Mutations

2011-03-24T13:58:00.000-07:00

The Spanish publisher Errata Naturae have been releasing a series of titles that threaten to do away with the conventional wisdom "don't judge a book by its cover". The eclectic range of books, many of which are long-established classics, encompassing doses from The Wire and Jean Genet's Miracle of the Rose, appear to be united by the excellence of their content and their striking illustrated covers.

One of the most recent books to be added to the catalogue is Mutaciones del cine contemporáneo, a translation of the English-titled Movie Mutations, previously published by BFI Publishing. This collection of correspondence and essays written by a number of passionate film critics had its genesis in a series of letters initiated by Jonathan Rosenbaum and printed in the French film magazine Trafic in 1997. Beginning with the first round of letters, intended to gain an insight into the shared tastes of a number of critics born in the 60s in various parts of the globe, each correspondent reveals their own highly personal encounters with cinema and their experiences within film culture. These enthusiastic writings are a continuing source of consolation and inspiration to me and in many ways signal the subsequent online film culture that began to emerge with the development of the World Wide Web.

The new edition, which includes a preface by Pere Portabella, reminds me of one enduring issue that limits the sphere of my own interaction within film culture, even in the untethered realm of the web: language. Despite the admirable efforts of websites such as Senses of Cinema to translate articles into a variety of languages, the numerous critics providing English-translations of many splendid works and the free (but limited) translators provided by Yahoo! and Google, I am aware that significant works of film criticism are being published the world over that remain inaccessible to me at present. Perhaps this is not a bad thing. It prevents some of the most energetic areas of the film culture from becoming mapped, dispatched and judged quickly; allowing radical concepts to flourish unharmed in their own original language. Those of us who are severely limited in our command of any language other than English are also encouraged to get off our backsides and learn a new language, to go to other cultures to learn and not expect English to be the default.

Learning other languages is the most obvious and ideal solution to my predicament; it is valuable regardless of my own personal idiosyncratic interests in film and of course the ability to speak more than one language is the norm for millions of people the world over. However, it is not reasonable to expect that I will be fluent enough in French, German and Korean to relish some of the most exploratory recent film texts anytime soon. Of course, there is a similar issue regarding subtitling of films in English but this is a different topic to be discussed another time. I will say that I have enjoyed many films without the aid of subtitles, although there is no choice when it comes to film writing. My frustration is borne out of the realization that I am as enthusiastic about film criticism as I am about the films themselves. Especially when the texts are of the calibre of those continually produced by the finest English language critics - Kent Jones, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Adrian Martin, Brad Stevens, Chris Fujiwara for example. The fact that I am denied supposedly groundbreaking texts by Roger Tailleur, Nicole Brenez and Shiguehiko Hasumi partly due to my own laziness urges me to change my ways and do the hard work necessary in the years to come, to appreciate these texts in their original language.

My own shortcomings also lead me to pursue alternatives, which I hope are based on mutual exchange rather than simply taking and not giving. The web affords the possibility of kickstarting correspondence with individuals with similar interests all over the world. Out of love, a cinephile fluent in French might translate essays for me and I may post them a tattered copy of a rare text by Raymond Durgnat. Then there are the attempts to develop methods of film analysis and criticism that are not essentially language-based. I have attempted this a couple of times in the past year on this site, once for Abel Ferrara's The Blackout and once for Tim Hunter's River's Edge. Film analyses, love letters to the cinema should take all manner of forms, not simply words on a page. I am always excited to read critics who draw inspired comparisons between film and other visual art forms, as well as music. This excites me about the possibility of purely illustrative film critiques, or a sound work that explores the character of a film, or a group of films, through audio sampling. After all, Kent Jones has aksed whether films can think and Nicole Brenez writes of films talking to one another. Film criticism can overlap with film programming with the effect that some of the best film analyses consist of a choice of a handful of films to watch back to back, letting the films do the work. Double bills have fascinated me for a long time and the possibilities that they afford for allowing films to echo and append one another.

Each medium should utilise the qualities that are unique to that medium in order to communicate and may resist translation into words. Therefore, we should expect that only another work of art within the same medium will be able to clarify or criticise another. This is not to undermine the wealth and imagination of the film writing that I am fond of and it does not thwart my own attempts at film writing. I am forever thankful to have come across Manny Farber and Gilberto Perez in my lifetime. But I do encourage alternatives. Let it mutate.

The Heresy of Zone Defense

2011-03-20T11:22:00.000-07:00

"Henceforth, it has always seemed to me that the trick of civilization lies in recognizing the moment when a rule ceases to liberate and begins to govern - and this brings us back to the glory of hoops. Because among all the arts of disputation our culture provides, basketball has been supreme in recognizing this moment of portending government and in deflecting it, by changing the rules when they threaten to make the game less beautiful and less visible, when the game stops liberating and begins to educate. And even though basketball is not a fine art - even though it is merely an armature upon which we project the image of our desire, while art purports to embody that image - the fact remains that every style change that basketball has undergone in this century has been motivated by a desire to make the game more joyful, various, and articulate, while nearly every style change in fine art has been, in some way, motivated by the opposite agenda. Thus basketball, which began this century as a pedagogical discipline, concludes it as a much beloved public spectacle, while fine art, which began this century as a much beloved public spectacle, has ended up where basketball began - in the YMCA or its equivalent - governed rather than liberated by its rules."

Dave Hickey "The Heresy of Zone Defense" (1995)

Salvage Work

2011-03-20T04:01:00.000-07:00

Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

"Even the most seemingly radical online enthusiasts seem to flock to retro references. The sort of 'fresh, radical culture' you expect to see celebrated in the online world these days is a petty mashup of preweb culture. Take a look at one of the big cultural blogs like Boing Boing, or the endless stream of mashups that appear on YouTube. It's as if culture froze just before it became digitally open, and all we can do now is mine the past like salvagers picking over a garbage dump."

- Jaron Lanier You Are Not a Gadget

It is easy to overestimate the amount of culture and historical information on the World Wide Web - more specifically, the variety of culture and historical information - given the figures that often result after a typical web search. If you want to know why Winston Churchill was not re-elected after World War II, or hear the mimicking skills of a Lyre bird, there are articles and videos at your fingertips. However, it is a recurring feature of my time spent on the web that I do not find what I'm looking for. Perhaps the knowledge and resources that I hope to find are there, but do not conform to the rules of optimum search returns: keywords and various constraints in the creative, idiosyncratic use of language and graphics on personal websites. Maybe the sites that will reshape the cultural landscape will make us work to find them and not be in cahoots with Google. This is simultaneously comforting and frustrating. In the meantime, I felt the need to start putting some resources on the web myself - not strictly personal items, such as holiday snaps and original music, but information concerning films, music and cultural events that have shaped my own thinking and to do so in a way that reflects my own encounters with that culture rather than as cold, hard facts.

I share Lanier's misgivings about online culture but I maintain that further mining of the past is a valuable cultural task. This is not to encourage lame parodies and more bands reforming to play one of their albums. Indeed, I'm sure that Lanier champions re-use as long as it is done mindfully and creatively, refracted through the energetic activities of a new generation. Countless items buried under the garbage dump will still be radical if we dredge them up today. I believe that we have not seen it all before just as I trust that they do make 'em like that anymore. Still, if culture had frozen just before it became digitally open, then it would take many generations to find all that is valuable, taking into account not just previously unearthed treasures, but revised opinions on the same old preweb culture. I do not place all of my faith and leisure time in the web and frankly I wouldn't mind if new art forms did not emerge out of it. I'd happily stick to visiting the cinema, the public library and buying music from knowledgeable record shop owners and still feel that my own well being and social benefits can result from these pastimes. However, the web has certainly helped me to unearth more invigorating culture. Lanier champions the web as the springboard to exciting, new cultural forms that may rival what we are used to in the way of movies, music and literature. Of course he does, since he has lived and thought within this culture for decades. I do not rely upon this sense of relentless progression and versions and we cannot say that it will categorically improve our culture. Context is liable to get lost for one thing. Lanier encourages not only access to past culture via the web, but also the emergence of 'new' culture. Perhaps I am tired of the imagined slope of constant progression - cultural, political or otherwise. And no I do not think that we have come to the end of history. But maybe the "fresh, radical culture" will not develop online, at least while advertisers continue to rule the roost.

I am interested in the past; though I would embrace any incredible, forward-thinking online culture growing out of the maelstrom of the web I'm not sure that this could even happen without continuing to go back and roam through the unmanned territory of the past and add to the pile of artefacts salvaged from the past - to draw a clearer picture. The tireless, forward projection of technology and web culture has undoubtedly exacerbated the Pick N' Mix, York Notes approach to culture, science, social and political history which comforts millions of visitors on the information superhighway each day. Blogs like this one may not provide a rich educational locus on the web, but I hope it acts as an intriguing roadmap. Without using the advantages of the web to help us rethink our past (offline) culture, filling in gaps and redistributing our attention (hell, even holding our attention!) across different cultural items, we may not have the intellectual and creative momentum to thrust us into 'new' modes of online culture, which Lanier hopes will emerge. Significantly, Lanier will readily recommend 19th century literature to those hoping to understand the development and the possible future of the web. So there is no mistaking that Lanier would not see us jettisoning the preweb culture either, a situation that is unimaginable and dangerous anyway.

The development of modern computers and the internet arose out of fresh, imaginative ideas. However, it is not a given that our relationship with our computers and the web fosters fresh, imaginative ideas. In fact, Lanier seems to show that it is often detrimental by discussing the trend of trolling and the way we happily shoehorn our idiosyncrasies into the templates of social networking sites. I stand by Lanier in promoting more positive, fair use of the web and greater individualism but do not assume that it will singlehandedly promote a change in behaviour and culture. Rather, the web needs to keep sending us back into our local communities, the library, the secondhand bins and our memories and then to welcome us back with our stories from the front, reporting on lost artefacts previously undiscussed and new ideas to be thrown into the conversation and providing us with tools for relating these experiences and hopefully transforming them into a a more fruitful online culture. We need better salvagers, with more tolerance and stamina so that we can gain a different perspective on the past and cultures over the world - hopefully more clarity and reliable information. In turn, this may change our typical views on the culture that we do return to endlessly.

"It had always, since my earliest encounters with contemporary art, been my experience that the greatest pleasures and the most profound surprises that came from art were those that flowed from a wholesale change of outlook. Finding that the thing most despised became revalued as the most cherished, that the thing least understood became transparent, that the thing most easily enjoyed was revealed as maudlin, that the thing most fervently believed was upended - these were the most exhilarating moments that cultural engagements could provide."

- Tony Conrad

It is comforting to return to pleasures from the past, as a culture and as individuals - to discover episodes of our favourite childhood cartoon on YouTube and to feel that our favourite band were always there and will always be. But this can also prohibit the possibility of surprising yourself, of shifting your perspective, if it is clung to like a safety blanket. Being downright stubborn and unimaginative should not be the only sense in which we have an 'identity'.

I support salvagers and I am one, but the key for me is to try and get an increasingly varied amount of items into the cultural discourse, in order to avoid as far as possible an agreed spread of interest and ossified canons. Culture is not only dependent upon the items in our midst, but our ability to discuss them in an articulate, passionate way, to accept disagreement. Radical culture does not thrive where there is mass appeal, unified responses and extra dates added due to phenomenal demand. This is when a limited number of businesses thrive. Radical culture is a series of ecstatic utterances made in small circles, all over the world. We might hope to see inventive, community-bridging cultural projects, without global advertising and corporate backing, without loss of the context on which much of this culture may thrive. Radical culture is not simply to be hijacked, to end up in fragments in a number of mindless, shitty viral videos. Stendhal syndrome should replace stress as the major condition of our time. It is to be expected that Lanier would place his faith in technological development driving new ways of thinking and social progress, but maybe the work needs to be done on our ways of thinking first (including the notion of progress) which I believe it is possible to do offline. But I guess that it is too late to simply stop and rethink this whole web culture.

The act of salvaging, of mining the past, is a contributing factor in improving our ways of thinking and approaching web culture in the future. The pessimist in me would argue that this would risk reducing more and more vibrant, unmined culture to fragments, barely recognisable with no sense of value. Alternatively, it could initiate any number of cultural shifts that enrich our culture and wrestle it back from advertisers and money men. It might get us to roll our sleeves up, to dig deeper and work hard at a specific cultural site, and regain our sense of preservation, scholarship, passion and creativity instead of skimming over everything, half-bored, dissecting it and parcelling out our opinions quickly in 140 characters. Surely this culture will be just as beneficial to the web as 'new' culture and may even prompt that 'new' culture, allowing previously unseen wonders from the past and web-generated innovations to stand side by side; to learn from the past by keeping it close at hand.

Entretien avec Wakamatsu Koji

2011-03-16T14:09:00.000-07:00

An interview with Japanese filmmaker Koji Wakamatsu, originally published in issue 21 (April/May 1970) of the French film magazine Midi/Minuit Fantastique.

Admittedly, this post favours French speaking visitors to Audiovisual Salvage. However, it is my intention to provide an English translation in due course. But the fact of the matter is that French film fans, writers and programmers are doing a grand job of championing Wakamatsu's incendiary films, whereas film distributors, programmers and 'in rep' reviewers in the UK seem to keep patting themselves on the back for having heard of Kurosawa (Akira that is, we need even more work to make available more Kiyoshi Kurosawa films). Of course, some of Wakamatsu's films have been shown at the BFI in the past, but any hopes of finding the director's work on DVD here, with English subtitles from all good retailers, or advertised at your local cinema, will soon be dashed, should you get excited to look after reading this post. Your best bet is the French DVD boxsets issued by Blaq Out. Not to put all of the blame on the plain unwillingness of the distributors and exhibitors, Wakamatsu himself evidently retains control over many of his films and can be selective in their release. The French DVDs include a humorous anti-piracy warning with Wakamatsu threatening to beat up anyone putting the films online. Still, all of this means that film fans in the UK, especially those with a keen interest in Japanese cinema, are likely to be missing out.

The urgency of Wakamatsu's low-budget filmmaking, the potency of the sexual, political and violent imagery that he clashes together and drives at the viewer could be a lot of use in this play it safe, backward-glancing era. Wakamatsu's life and career trajectory from gangster, to pink film director, to radical producer and suspected terrorist leaves us with potent images and stories that should not be hidden away in an unattended corner of cinema's history. Wakamatsu's crazed and bloodied images aim at a revolution against authority, a response to the socio-political environment in which he operates, emitting jolts that will still affect viewers today. Though many of Wakamatsu's films respond to the specific political climate within Japan throughout the 60s and 70s, and specifically the affect on Japan's leftist activists, there are histories and visions to be seen throughout his body of work that will wipe the all-knowing grin of the faces of any 'edgy' counterculture enthusiasts. Jazz-aficionado film fans are also advised to listen to Yosuke Yamashita Trio ripping the screen up in Ecstasy of the Angels - our culture is stagnant without this riotous sound, just as much as film culture is impoverished without Wakamatsu in our vocabulary!

Wakamatsu is still creating highly charged films today. For those readers who are unfamiliar with this tireless filmmaker, do yourself a favour and duck your head into the underground, talk to cinephiles willing to trade, travel where you can to see these films, scour the internet for articles, until you return with a hammered psyche, bearing shots from Secrets Behind the Wall, The Embryo Hunts in Secret and United Red Army and ready to revise the calcified mainstream histories of film; to reinsert the most radical works into the cultural discourse. At Audiovisual Salvage, I will present more elusive gems from Japanese cinema history in the future and will be discussing Wakamatsu's work further.

Another invaluable resource for French speaking film fans and those intrigued to learn more is the video below: A conference held at La Cinematheque Francaise in November 2010, concerning the work of Koji Wakamatsu and Masao Adachi, introduced by Nicole Brenez.

Here is some more fuel for non-French-speaking Audiovisual Salvage readers eager to learn more: a clickable link to Wakamatsu & Adachi's Red Army/PFLP: Declaration of World War (1971). The image quality is not the best, but the history presented and the style of its delivery is fascinating.

Modes of Viewing

2011-02-11T09:52:00.000-08:00

De Filmkrant recently published an article by Girish Shambu, The 21st-Century Cinephile. Reading the article prompted the following piece, which examines the numerous ways in which we all view films and experience other types of art. Here the discussion about the ways in which we watch films and write about them opens into a wider discussion about viewing conditions and about the values we each seek in art. As may be expected there are more questions here than answers and so I welcome any comments from readers.

A discussion regarding modes of viewing is likely to spill into a larger argument about what constitutes the work of art.

Recently I have considered the extent to which seeing a film in the cinema has affected my impressions and memories of that film. Certainly I can recall many occasions when I have visited the cinema to see a film - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Blair Witch Project, Elephant, Performance, Wavelength, There Will Be Blood, Still Life and The Social Network readily come to mind. For each of these outings I can remember the cinema, the year, the company I had and my seating position (recently, at the very back because you never know if you will be the target of Butterkist missiles).

Except for the odd breach of social etiquette, I have enjoyed all of my trips to the cinema. This enjoyment is largely the result of fulfilling my desire to see a film that I have awaited and have not previously seen - I don't tend to 'chance it' and rarely have a companion, so the social element is not so strong. But are my feelings toward the films I have seen at the cinema intrinsically linked to the mode of presentation? In most cases, no. When we are talking about films, analysing them, weighing up their merits and flaws, how often are we making judgements based on the mode of viewing? Put another way, how often do we say "You have to see that film while it is on at the cinema because x, y and z"? Don't we usually say "You have to see that film" and if prompted "because x, y and z"? The latter seems to encourage a relativism of viewing modes and the urgency of tone can often suggest that we are being encouraged to see the film however we can. We look forward to buying the film on DVD and hope that it will be released soon. The popularity of DVDs (and now Blu Ray discs), exemplified in the sales of James Cameron's Avatar soon after its ridiculously successful big screen run, suggests that we readily accept the switch in viewing mode. We look forward to revisiting the film, not the film in the cinema.

If we are not particularly interested in the space around the image (multiplex/aeroplane/living room) when we are considering and discussing films, what difference is there between the films in the mind of the person who saw it at the cinema and the person who watched it at home? Devoid of the viewing context and spatial relations around the image, aren't our ideas of the film the same? Does the mind have its own aspect ratio? Perhaps the sound is turned up in my version. This is something that we cannot measure and so we can only hope to distinguish between qualities of the ideas and the the resultant comments and writings.

Perhaps it would be worth conducting research into film criticism across the years, in order to record the number of references to the mode of viewing. Writings from the pre-Home Video era could then be compared to modern film criticism, written by individuals who have grown up watching more films on TV and DVD than at the cinema. The question that I would be interested in answering is this: what measurable differences between the writings can be said to be the specific result of the writer's typical mode of viewing? Are there any glaring omissions in contemporary film analysis that could be said to arise from the fact that young writers have not seen the 'classics' on the big screen? I have never come across an essay with the title 'Voyeurism in Powell's Peeping Tom, when watched on DVD'. There are reviewers who specifically compare DVD editions of films, but how many people change their opinion about a film when they have viewed it in a different format? More often than not, we choose the films we like and then hope to see it in the best quality possible.

Except for a small band of people who are vehemently against watching films outside of a cinema, the transition from viewing on the big screen to viewing on DVD at home is made smoothly by the rest of us. We do not need any medication to ease us into one of these modes. Kubrick's images of space in 2001: A Space Odyssey do not seem to be underwhelming even on my small TV.

Yet many of us seem pretty averse to watching films on our mobile phones. David Lynch famously raged against this possible trend. In a recent interview, Kent Jones claimed that it would be despicable to watch a film on a mobile phone, given the choice, but not if it is the only access to a particular film. Is watching a film on our phone taking it too far? What is it?

There are no commonly accepted optimal conditions in which to experience any work of art. As such, we must live our individual lives as art lovers on a case-by-case basis.

Many of us are interested in art and have favourite works, whether it be something by Michelangelo, Van Gogh, or Rothko. Yet many of us have never seen the original art works. Unless we are actively engaged in art history, well travelled, affluent, we rely on books and other reproductions. Until we get the opportunity, or the inclination to go to an exhibition, we are fairly content with our reference books. When we do have the experience of going to a gallery to see our favourite art works, we can be surprised. The dimensions of the painting may not be as expected; the tonality of the colours and the texture may not accord with our preconceptions - "Those reproductions were so dark" we might say. The social context may be integral to shaping our experience and understanding of some works, e.g those in public spaces such as a church. There is something to be said then for actively venturing out to art galleries in order to experience numerous works of art and we are likely to have our feelings and knowledge about the work shaped by those occasions. As with the cinema though the other visitors in the gallery may ruin things for us.

But what of going to the cinema? What benefit and enjoyment do I get out of going to the cinema, as opposed to watching the film on my DVD player at home? As someone who is interested in visual arts other than film, I will enjoy the opportunity to see images on a large scale, where detail is likely to be more noticeable and I can immerse myself in the images without concern for interruptions, or distractions - again, social etiquette withstanding. I am allotted a defined viewing space for 2 hours, not milling about with members of the public, feeling hurried along. Since I have an interest in sound and audio recording, I will have the opportunity to hear the film in a way that I could never do at home, without incurring the wrath of my neighbours and subsequently the local Council. The experience of seeing Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World at the cinema seemed necessary to approximate the vast space of Antarctica as closely as possible and to fully reveal the mindblowing Weddell Seal calls, comparable to EMS analog synthesiser tones and immaculately recorded by Douglas Quin.

So I do not mean to devalue the cinema experience. Also, the current trend in consumer electronics and home entertainment clearly shows that we are trying to get as close as possible to the viewing conditions of the cinema (big screen, powerful surround sound system). Perhaps it would be ideal for us to feel that we have our own private cinemas, to which we can invite a select number of friends and where we could screen any movie of our choosing, from a vast collection covering many genres, eras and countries. I, for one, would love that. I'm not sure that the members of the cinema audience these days are as bothered about being part of an audience as they may have been in the past. I would presume that the strength of a given community prior to the fact played a huge factor here. Going to the cinema was a popular pastime for many years, but the spread of television soon kept people indoors. With those readers who romanticise the experience of watching a film with an audience I must part company. Of course, it is better to laugh along with someone at a comedy, but a small group of my closest friends will do just fine. The point for me is that there is a unity of purpose and concentration at the cinema, as there is in a house of God. It is respectful toward the artwork to give your full attention to it and I am happy to submit to the filmmaker's vision. But not everyone is bothered about this.

With many people aspiring to own a 42" LED TV, Blu Ray player and a 7.1 sound system it may appear that the general public do value the qualities that seeing a film in the cinema affords us. Or is "aspiring" the key word here. For many consumers, these products are simply aspirational. How many people are going to rush out and purchase these goods so they can watch Jacques Tati's Playtime or the aforementioned Kubrick film? The bestsellers charts indicate that the public are actually watching Grown Ups. The film acts as a demonstration of the product to friends, or a form of basic entertainment. For others, trying to get as close to the condition of viewing the film in cinema may simply be a result of nostalgia. The younger generation are more likely to desire the equipment for the purposes of playing video games, the popular art form of their age.

Do all films need to be viewed on such equipment? Thousands of films have mono soundtracks and no purpose is served by surround sound when viewing them. Many films are now shot on low-tech digital video cameras and the clarity of the images captured will not withstand reproduction on a huge HD TV. There is no agreed condition for viewing any given film and each case is unique - the film and the viewer. This brings to mind another curious phenomenon in this digitally proactive and restorative age: the artwork's transcendence of the artist and the historical conditions of its production. When I see the digitally remastered, blemish-free release of a Hitchcock film, I relfect to myself "Is this image clearer and more defined than Hitchcock ever saw it? Were the presentations on cinema screens back in the 60s therefore inferior to watching on Blu Ray at home? Would Hitchcock care? Robert Burks? Does it matter what the various intentions behind the work were?"

I would guess that the majority of us 21st-Century Cinephiles tend to compromise constantly, as we move along a path toward having our own home cinemas. But each of these home cinemas will be different. As a ravenous film fan, I am often confronted with the desire to see a certain film that I can only view on a bootlegged, poorly subtitled DVD-R. In these situations, my own personal judgements about the qualities I value when viewing a film come into play: the degree of contrast and brightness in the image, the clarity and balance in the audio mix - each of which I have developed my own gauge for over the years. And my ability to distinguish and appreciate discrete elements of the work keep developing. For each of us, this is unique. That is why I may not be able to watch a pirated copy of a film which you have seen and enjoyed immensely. For years I had a VHS copy of Greaser's Palace, which I cherished because it was my only way of seeing this film which I had read great things about and I was happy with the quality of the copy. VHS seems fine to me, since I grew up with the format. To someone of a younger generation, this may be intolerable, "no way to appreciate a film". I will be happy to watch an Andrew Bujalski film on my TV, but would prefer to experience the ecstatic truth that Herzog illuminates at the local cinema. These are my choices, determined by my own aesthetic interests and also informed by my knowledge of the artist and their intentions. It's a mixture of these things. While I never watch films on a laptop, I didn't think twice about watching 8 films on the last long haul flight I took, on a small screen attached to the seat in front of me, like the smoker who will head out into the snow, rain and wind for a nicotine fix.

Whatever we typically seek in our encounter with a work of art, we will try to orientate ourselves in such a way so as to maximise this element.

The budding sound engineer will be inclined to seek out the 180g remastered audiophile vinyl copy of The Stooges' Fun House, more so than the inspired songwriter who may be happy to hear the record on his iPod. To the tape op, the latter mode of listening will be anathema because the sound has been compressed and digitally encoded in such a way that it does not faithfully represent the original mode of recording, the dynamic range in the music. This will not be as pleasant on his ears, or as informative if he is to pursue the more scientific avenue of sound engineering. For the songwriter, the interest is more likely to lie in the chord progression, the lyrics and the peculiarities of the singer's delivery. Each is interested in certain qualities of the work more than others. For others who do not pursue an art form themselves and do not typically 'analyse it to death' there may be myriad reasons for spending time with the art work.

There are probably a few film fans in the 'Cinema good, iPad bad' camp will go about their day listening to their favourite music on an iPod which does less justice to the music than has ever been possible in history. They may be passionate about the proper conditions for watching a film, but may pay little attention to the modes of listening to music and audio recording. Many film fans will argue that the best condition in which to watch a film is in the cinema, in the dark, in silence, for the duration. What I share with these individuals is not only the respect toward another individual (the artist), but a willingness to surrender the comforts of my home environment, my opinions and my quotidian concerns for a couple of hours in the hope that I will have a blast. I may have an experience that is strange, challenging, shocking, funny, informative and electrifying. But most of my favourite films I have seen only on DVD at home, viewed on a moderately sized analog TV and I honestly don't feel the need to see the majority of them at the cinema. I have given these films the same respect and attention. So what if I have paused them to take a piss? I have watched and watched these films; replayed scenes; copied out dialogue; covered the TV screen to focus solely upon the audio track after reading Michel Chion. I cannot undertake these investigations in the cinema.

And when I end up writing about the films that fascinate me most, it will probably be unique to some extent because I watch these films in all sorts of ways. Other viewers and film critics have their own take on these films and that must be partly the result of their own modes of viewing. This must be built into the writing somehow, even when it is not explicitly stated. This must account in part for the massive amount of varied film criticism that has been written over the past 50 years.

"However useful videos, laser discs, and DVDs are as tools in analyzing sequences, their omniprescence in film departments as textual substitutions for film are as crippling in some ways as using Cliff's Notes instead of texts in literature courses."

- Jonathan Rosenbaum Movie Wars (2000)

"I had an interesting conversation with Monte Hellman when I saw him in London a couple of weeks ago. He was talking about a retrospective screening of a 35mm print of COCKFIGHTER that was in terrible condition, with faded colour. Monte apologized to the audience after the screening and told them that, if they wanted to see his film as he intended it, they should buy the DVD. Somebody came up to him later and told him that they would rather watch a bad 35mm print than a good DVD. In Monte's words: "It's completely insane; as if there were something magical about 35mm. It's an attitude that shows a lack of respect for the intentions of the artists..."

- Brad Stevens posted on davekehr.com on March 9 2011

Happy New Year

2011-01-02T12:15:00.000-08:00

"Actually, humanity cannot advance or retreat, for humanity cannot act: there is no collective entity with intentions or purposes, only ephemeral struggling animals each with its own passions and illusions. The growth of scientific knowledge cannot alter this fact.

Realism requires a discipline of thought that may be too austere for a culture that prizes psychological comfort above anything else, and it is a reasonable question whether liberal societies are capable of the moral effort that is involved in setting aside hopes of world-transformation."

2011 began for me reading the final section of John Gray's masterful Black Mass, a sobering read which looks at the effects of Utopian and apocalyptic thinking throughout history and finally argues against historical teleology and accepts the plain insolubility of numerous ethical and political dilemmas.

The traumatised economy in the UK and much of the world has transformed the wild abandon of the credit daze down to a stock-still austerity and nostalgia. And so AudioVisual Salvage wishes readers a Happy New Year, with a sharp awareness of many of the concerns that lie behind the smiles.

Filmmaker Jafar Panahi has been sentenced to 6 years imprisonment and will be denied any opportunity to direct or produce films for 20 years, as a result of a criminal trial in Iran. This has been well documented amongst the cinephile community and mainstream media. In light of this news and as a gesture of support for the filmmaker, I would like to offer my Region 2 dvd copy of Panahi's film The Circle as a gift to somebody who would like to see it and who does not have a copy. In order to enable many individuals to see this film (and in imitation of the film's own structure) it would perhaps be fitting to allow the film to then pass from person to person, throughout the world and eventually land back where it started, at which point the situation may have changed.

We cannot change the world, but we may inspire many people, and support one great filmmaker. Email me

The Holy Bible

2010-12-19T11:05:00.001-08:00

Never has a rock record stared the twentieth century in the face so hard. No other modern record deals intelligently with the consequences of two World Wars, the rise of television media and consumer culture, vanity's power, the impoverishment of language and humanity's taste for retribution.

Equally informed by the history of European Fascism, the literature of J.G. Ballard, the philosophy of Michel Foucault and the frames of the Zapruder film, The Holy Bible also contains personal reflections on anorexia and self-obsession.

The sound is skeletal, abrasive and punctuated. Drawing on albums by Magazine, PiL, The Skids and Simple Minds, James Dean Bradfield and Sean Moore dismiss ornamentation in favour of hard, metallic shards. Lyrics are dissected by Bradfield's voice, often disembodied and cold, but so assured and enraged. This record instils guilt, but this is necessary.

"So damn easy to cave in, man kills everything."

A record can still be an educational text, a poetry anthology, an urgent musical monster, an essential part of existence. Not quickly compressed, clipped, downloaded and dissed, The Holy Bible taught me more about twentieth century history at age 17 than all of my History and Sociology lessons in secondary school and it is still a constant source of inspiration. The album fuelled my curiosity. The Holy Bible showed me how much can be done with a rock lyric, which so few individuals seem to be attempting today. It is a real shame that music fans outside of the UK are unlikely to be familiar with the following words:

"Prejudice burns brighter when it's all we have to burn. The world lances youth's lamblike winter."

But then ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayit'sworldwouldfallapart.

The album did, however, top BBC Newsnight's poll of the viewers' favourite albums in August 2005, beating Radiohead's OK Computer and Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. The Manics had always wanted to communicate to the masses, since their beginnings in a small Welsh mining town, and continue to pursue their manifesto to this day.

I first received a copy of The Manic Street Preachers' third record for Christmas and it was during the festive season, some years later, that my friend and I both got hold of the 10th Anniversary Edition which we both cherished and discussed, while our respective families were feasting on turkey leftovers.

It is for this reason that The Holy Bible is always my go-to record at Christmas. On the surface, this sounds fairly straightforward, but for those who are fully aware of the world, as depicted within the record, it may seem too much of a bummer. Coincidentally, the last time that the Manics performed publicly as a four-piece with Richey Edwards was just before Christmas in 1994. Edwards disappeared in February 1995 and has not been seen since. His car was found abandoned at a service station at the Severn Bridge.

Edwards hit his intellectual stride whilst submitting words for inclusion on the album and he openly stated in an interview on Swedish TV that the holy book in all religions is supposed to deal with the truth about the world. Thus, The Holy Bible was named.

"Life is lead weight pendulum died. Pure or lost, spectator or crucified."

The samples included within the songs also create a rich portrait of a scorched century: a pimp discusses prices with a john, a Republican television anchor announces a $1000-plate gala for Ronald Reagan, the mother of a victim of The Yorkshire Ripper publicly scolds the murderer, a documentary narrator explains proceedings at Nuremburg, and J.G. Ballard aims for a literary emetic.

I do not expect that another record will take over my life in the way that The Holy Bible did, not least because teenage years of angst, confusion and insecurity are the most fertile ground for rock n' roll obsession. There are only a certain amount of records that sneak in through the window between the ages of 13-18 and leave an indelible impression on the music fan that nothing and no one can remove. Moreover, the raging intelligence of the record has not been matched since, for all I've heard. It certainly isn't there when I turn on the TV for Top of the Pops - get this, it used to be found on prime time television. TOTP isn't even there anymore. The Manics were the ultimate army against mediocrity and banality, who knew that rock n' roll was not yet bankrupt; that they could still communicate their art to the UK, unfettered.

Popular culture is carrion, carrying on and on.

"Who's responsible? You fucking are."

Slovenly (Part 1)

2010-12-08T03:40:00.000-08:00

photo courtesy of Marshall Astor

An unfortunate oversight in the history of American alternative music of the 1980s, Slovenly have not even gained from fan-authored content on the internet. The freedom offered by web writing means that interest in this California band can potentially be renewed and AudioVisual Salvage decided to dig up some more of the group's history. I have been fortunate enough to have the opportunity to discuss Slovenly with guitarist Tom Watson.

The current SST Records back catalogue is host to a wealth of influential bands - The Minutemen, Husker Du and Black Flag to name a few. In its heyday in the early to mid 1980s, the label also released seminal records by Dinosaur Jr. and Sonic Youth. Those with an interest in American underground and alternative rock are more than likely to own a record bearing the SST logo and the trials and travails of several of the aforementioned artists were covered in Michael Azerrad's book Our Band Could Be Your Life.

Between 1987 and 1990, however, the prestigious label was on the wane and certain bands had become disenchanted with the administrative arm of the label. Numerous disputes ensued concerning rights and royalties, which permanently fractured the label. During this period, Slovenly produced a triumvirate of brilliant records that are sadly languishing out of print today.

"They were this beautiful band, making luscious soundscapes for a lead singer who basically sounds like he's talking. He'd recite these half-songs/half-poems. There's a lot of powerfully emotional stuff. Every time I listen to it, I think, 'Wow, it's pretty crazy how much I've gotten out of this.' It doesn't sound too far from the things I've attempted." - Jeff Tweedy (Wilco)

It was with this quote, in the October 2004 issue of Spin magazine, that my own interest in Slovenly began. My proclivity to check out the music favoured by those whose records have knocked me flat led, at this point in time, to a band about which I could unearth very little information. The records themselves were almost impossible to track down, even with the aid of the now prevalent internet auction and retail sites. Six years later and the situation has barely altered. A combination of licensing and rights issues, lack of critical recollection and plain bad luck seems to have kept this great band from wider attention.

All of the members of Slovenly collaborated in a variety of combinations throughout their high school years in the 1970s. Guitarist Tom Watson's earliest foray was a collaboration which included Rob Holzman on drums and Mark Vidal (soon to be Earl Liberty) on bass. These two later decamped to join Saccharine Trust for the recording of their first album Pagan Icons, which was released shortly thereafter on SST. During the same period Watson was called upon by more school friends, Steve Anderson, Scott Ziegler and Bruce Losson to play bass for their group The Convalescents.

"We all went to the same school together, Mira Costa in Manhattan Beach, so we all knew each other...they were trying to get their band going and needed a bass player and I joined even though I had never played bass before. I was just happy to be in a band and writing our own songs."

In 1978 The Convalescents became Toxic Shock, a punk group who played shows in the Beach cities of LA alongside better-known locals such as The Descendents and Red Cross. The band's first 'real' show saw them supporting Minutemen and Saccharine Trust at a bar called Capone's in San Pedro.

"I remember having to wait out back in the alley for our turn to play because we were too young to be inside."

Soon after graduating to larger gigs at the Star Theater in Pedro, and the Vex in east LA, Toxic Shock were asked to record a song for a compilation that documented the grassroots of some of the west coast's underground scene of the late seventies and early eighties. Keats Rides a Harley was organised by 100 Flowers (later known as The Urinals) on their Happy Squid label and included one track each by many of the diverse bands of the time, such as The Meat Puppets, Earwigs, Tunneltones, The Gun Club, S Squad and Human Hands. Toxic Shock contributed "Sensationalism", which was the only song ever to be released on record during the band's existence. In control of the recording sessions was future Slovenly producer Vitus Matare, keyboardist of LA garage punk group The Last.

Before long, the wide-ranging musical tastes of the band members soon caused Toxic Shock to break away from the common punk template and Watson in particular felt restricted within the band's simplistic punk rock.

"I liked playing live and being part of the early underground music scene that was going on, but I was getting restless on bass, I wanted to play more guitar. I think we all started to grow out of that version of music and got inspired by new bands that we started hearing, like The Fall, Wire, The Raincoats, Pere Ubu."

Toxic Shock recorded an entire album's worth of music, in a cassette edition of approximately 20, but this is unreleased to this day. Always one to engage in a variety of musical collaborations, Watson had also spent some time away from his high school bands, making an altogether different music with another school friend, Tim Plowman.

"We spent a lot of time listening to Prog, Glam and Krautrock, as well as Minimal and Electronic music at his place and started to collaborate as a duo - him on piano and synth, me on guitar and a bunch of effects. He introduced me to another future Slovenly collaborator, Lynn Johnston, a sax player who lived nearby in El Segundo. We would spend hours jamming together, making our own sort of free-art-jazz improv over at Lynn's place. I think that phase was an essential part of where some of the roots of Slovenly's music originated. These improvised jams over at Lynn's place continued long after Slovenly was going as a band and I think it kind of kept us in check - a sort of musical conditioning."

Eventually, Watson and his Toxic Shock bandmates Ziegler, Anderson and Losson, as well as new addition Plowman, found themselves making music together Happy to create without any clear-cut plan to become a touring, recording band, the friends' improvised music found its unique sound when the sum of their myriad inspirations was wedded to Anderson's found-lyric articulations.

"Steve would talk-sing old Toxic Shock words or just read out of whatever he could grab and soon happened to pick up the children's book of fables called Slovenly Peter, which was on a stack of books at my house."

The band soon performed original material live under the name Slovenly Peter, before changing to slovenly. However, soon Rob Holzman replaced Losson on drums and this finished the line-up. Often sonically akin to Captain Beefheart, Television, Pere Ubu, Wire, The Fall and the No Wave angular clang, Slovenly forged a group sound that is ultimately singular. The early incarnation of the band was halted for one year ('80-81) when Watson and Plowman enrolled to study Electronic Music at the University of Utrecht's Institute of Sonology in Holland.

"At the institute there was a lot learned about sound and recording, but mostly it opened our minds to the inclusion of using pre-recorded tapes and source audio in our music. Our experience in Holland widened our scope to include some "musique concrete" moments on our records."

Watson and Plowman can be heard performing together on Richard Lerman's Travelon Gamelon, which was released on Folksways Records in 1981. The album centres around music created using amplified bicycle spokes, performed live at Melk Weg in Amsterdam.

"I think that year or so was also a period when all of us went through heavy music listening, lots of great music of the time sparked all of our desires to create something of our own. If you could tally all of the music that we all began to become inspired by, it would be an enormous and diverse list. It pretty much included everything, each one of us leaning in a slightly different direction and the sum was the difference, the negative space, or something like that."

Stanley Kubrick - The Film Fan (Part 3)

2010-12-06T13:38:00.000-08:00

Look familiar? Victor Sjöström's 1920 film The Phantom Carriage was programmed at last weekend's All Tomorrow's Parties festival in Minehead, UK. I left the room for two minutes only to be told on my return that I had just missed seeing the inspiration for The Shining's most iconic sequence.

River's Edge

2010-11-21T08:19:00.001-08:00

Doctor Chance

2010-11-12T16:40:00.001-08:00

"To tell a funny story that happened - they premiered "Dr Chance" at the London Film Festival. After the film - there's about a thousand people in the house - me and Ossang got up on the stage and they opened the floor to questions. The whole audience sat there like that. Like that. Not daring to move a muscle. Cause no one could understand what the fuck had just gone on."

Joe Strummer couldn't articulate what is going on in Doctor Chance. The little known feature film by F.J. Ossang sees the Clash frontman cast as a pilot outcast. Rather than defiantly refusing an explanation in the spirit of punk posturing, Strummer's recollection points to a failure of language to codify and simplify certain artistic works.

It should be quite straightforward. Doctor Chance is full of references to film history, as well as the wider pop-culture landscape: a small cinema presenting an F.W. Murnau retrospective; the voice of William S. Burroughs drawling a collapsed language; a storyline centred around a guy, a girl, a gun and a car; literature and Lucky Strikes; The Stooges and Sergei Eisenstein.

Internet blogs are full of commentators offering opinions, butting heads and contributing their two cents - happy to express their views from their private stations, in the hope of finding camaraderie or the opportunity for a good squabble. It is less often that writers valiantly grapple with language, in an attempt to talk about works that resist adherence to cinematic norms, or condensation into a witty paragraph. How can we recommend or trash a film that we can say so little about? Have a look at the number of followers and comments relating to Ossang and Doctor Chance on Mubi, an online film forum not lacking in hyperbole and critical diatribes.

I like being baffled by a film. I am interested in the works that stick with me for weeks, without my knowing why. That is when the fun begins - images linger, looking to be married up with words. As opposed to being a consumer guide, film writing has the ability to heighten a film experience before or after the fact - not banalise or prejudice it. If you do not want to passionately laud a work, or denounce a hallowed classic with the help of some second-hand opinions and a few minutes thought, why not openly struggle? Battle for words, be interrogative rather than prescriptive, try and try again. Why the fuck can I not get my head around Doctor Chance - is this a failure in me, in the film, or no failure at all?

Doctor Chance can be held up as a Rorschach Test, to see what language tumbles out of the viewer in response. We should not be as hesitant as the London Film Festival audience was. The film itself promotes the power of language and the central character Angstel holds literature above all endeavours.

The advantages of specialist, personal arts writing on the web are obvious. In mainstream publications, writers are forever reintroducing the subject to initiate the uninitiated before slipping in a quick twist on a traditional perception of that subject. When I pick up a magazine article to read about an artist whose work I am interested in, half of the article is full of shit that a quick glance at any previous article (now easy to do online) would tell me. The internet offers total freedom from press-release-templated arts writing; it offers a platform for film lovers to discuss what they have been watching, compare notes and take a wild stab at communicating their thoughts and feelings about a particular work. I am hopeful that there is poetry out there and believe that the general civility of the online cinephile culture can allow this to flourish.

Ossang's film encourages the attempt to slam words together, to send an electric shock through language. Just as the director melds film noir, punk, poetry and landscapes, so our written responses should be creative, not cretinous - Creaticism?

Strummer continued:

"I had no fucking idea what the film was about! I was trying to get hold of it as it was. Then I felt, this is the proper behavior for a rock n' roller - to get involved in this type of thing."

Links

An Interview with F.J. Ossang at Dissidenz

Excerpts from Joe Strummer Interview by Judy McGuire

Art Theatre Guild Screenings (Part 1)

2010-09-26T08:48:00.000-07:00

The Art Theatre Guild was the subject of the first AudioVisual Salvage post and I would like to return to it again, in order to illustrate the diversity of films that were distributed by the company. Between 1962 and 1992 the ATG distributed numerous films from outside of Japan, as well as producing and supporting many features by Japanese filmmakers. Ten ATG theatres were established in 1962 throughout Japan in order to screen a wealth of cinematic works previously unseen in the country's picturehouses. This coincided with the spread of television in homes across Japan and a steady decline in cinema attendance, as well as the emergence of young directors whose interests would push Japanese cinema into a new, vibrant period.

The following list of films distributed by the ATG represents the array of films that were accessible to filmgoers - including creative filmmakers, writers and other artists - in the 60s. The list was published with accompanying first-screened dates and other useful notations in the previously referenced retrospective catalogue published as part of Viennale 03. Whether used as an entry point for further research into this fascinating area of film history, or as a viewing list for the adventurous film fan AudioVisual Salvage would like to present the Art Theatre Guild screening guide as part of an ongoing series of posts about the company. English titles are used where available, along with the director's name. Titles in bold signify films both produced and distributed by the ATG. The accompanying illustrations are taken from one of the original ATG catalogues, published to coincide with the release of Toshio Matsumoto's Funeral Parade of Roses.

Mother Joan of the Angels (Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Poland 1961) Le Testament D'Orphee (Jean Cocteau, France 1960) The Pitfall (Hiroshi Teshigahara, Japan 1962) Two Cents Worth of Hope (Renato Castellani, Italy 1952) Frenzy (Alf Sjoberg, Sweden 1944) Umberto D. (Vittorio de Sica, Italy 1952) Wild Strawberries (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden 1957) The Man (Kaneto Shindo, Japan 1962) Aleksander Newskij (Sergei Eisenstein, USSR 1938) All My Children (Miyoji Ieki, Japan 1963) Baltic Express (Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Poland 1959) Love At Twenty (Shintaro Ishihara, Marcel Ophuls, Renzo Rossellini, Francois Truffaut, Andrzej Wajda, France 1962) Cleo from 5 to 7 (Agnes Varda, France 1962) Innocent Sorcerers (Andrzej Wajda, Poland 1960) Shoot the Piano Player (Francois Truffaut, France 1960) Ivan's Childhood (Andrej Tarkovsky, USSR 1962) She and He (Susumu Hani, Japan 1963) The Seventh Seal (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden 1957) Elektra (Michael Cacoyannis, Greece 1962) The Girlfriends (Michaelangelo Antonioni, Italy 1955) Ivan the Terrible (Sergei Eisenstein, USSR 1945/58) That Kind of Woman (Sidney Lumet, USA 1959) Last Year at Marienbad (Alain Resnais, France 1961) The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Tony Richardson, Great Britain 1962) Through a Glass Darkly (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden 1961) The Long Absence (Henri Colpi, France 1960) Viridiana (Luis Bunuel, France 1961) Passenger (Andrzej Munk, Poland) The Unsent Letter (Michail Kalatosow, USSR 1959) Shadows (John Cassavetes, USA 1961) On the Bowery (Lionel Rogosin, USA 1961) Resurrection (Michail Schwejtser, USSR 1960) Advise and Consent (Otto Preminger, USA 1962) This Sporting Life (Lindsay Anderson, Great Britain 1963) Sunset of a Clown (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden 1953) The Lady with the Dog (Jossif Chejfitz, USSR 1960) The Real End of the Great War (Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Poland 1957) 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, Italy 1963) The Organiser (Mario Monicelli, Italy 1963) The Guns of August (Nathan Kroll, USA 1964) Silence Has No Wings (Kazuo Kuroki, Japan 1966) The Sun Shines Bright (John Ford, USA 1953) Diary of a Chambermaid (Luis Bunuel, France 1964) Patriotism (Yukio Mishima, Japan 1966) Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, USA 1941) King and Country (Joseph Losey, Great Britain 1964) A Lesson in Love (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden 1954) The Condemned of Altona (Vittorio de Sica, Italy 1962) Pather Panchali (Satyajit Ray, India 1955) Juliet of the Spirits (Federico Fellini, Italy 1965) Il Bel Antonio (Mauro Bolognini, Italy 1960) Manual of Ninja Martial Arts/Band of Ninja (Nagisa Oshima, Japan 1967) The Moment of Truth (Franceso Rosi, Italy 1965) The Loved One (Tony Richardson, Great Britain 1965) A Man Vanishes (Shohei Imamura, Japan 1967) Pierrot Le Fou (Jean-Luc Godard, France 1965) La Riviere Poeme De Colere (Kota Mori, Japan 1967) The Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, USSR 1925) The War is Over (Alain Resnais, France 1966) Fahrenheit 451 (Francois Truffaut, France 1966) Death by Hanging (Nagisa Oshima, Japan 1968) The Servant (Joseph Losey, Great Britain 1963) Loin du Vietnam (Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, William Klein, Claude Lelouch, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais, Agnes Varda, France 1967) The Inferno of First Love/Nanami (Susumu Hani, Japan 1968) Masculin, Feminin (Jean-Luc Godard, France 1968) Hitler - Never Heard of Him (Bertrand Blier, France 1963) Diamonds of the Night (Jan Nemec, CSSR 1964) Human Bullet (Kihachi Okamoto, Japan 1968)

The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Pierre Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton, Under the Direction of the Marquis De Sade (Peter Brook, Great Britain 1966) Farewell to the Summer Light (Yoshishige Yoshida, Japan 1968) Le Petit Soldat (Jean-Luc Godard, France 1963) Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (Nagisa Oshima, Japan 1969) When Twilight Draws Near (Akio Jissoji, Japan 1969) Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors (Sergei Paradjanov, USSR 1964) Who Are You, Polly Magoo? (Willam Klein, France 1966) Double Suicide (Masahiro Shinoda, Japan 1969) Boy (Nagisa Oshima, Japan 1969) Funeral Parade of Roses (Toshio Matsumoto, Japan 1969)

Tony Conrad

2010-08-19T17:20:00.001-07:00

The best piece of news that I heard recently was that Tony Conrad was booked to make an appearance at the ATP Nightmare Before Christmas. So, it was with much disappointment that I received yesterday's update that Conrad had pulled out of the festival. I often recall the occasions on which I was witness to Conrad's earth shattering music in a live setting, as well as some of his finest film works, when they were projected in the UK. For those of you who have not yet had the opportunity to hear the man's music, I recommend you head over to the Free Music Archive which is hosting a number of live sets from 2009 for download.

I was fortunate to see two live performances in 2008, once in London and then in Tokyo. The first was a weekend-long event hosted by Tate Modern, where Conrad presented many of his film and video works including The Flicker, Film Feedback and Straight & Narrow. The screenings were supplemented by introductions and question-and-answer sessions, in which Conrad was very open and enthusiastic about the ideas and experiences which fed into his work. Across two nights the discussion covered curried film, power structures in TV, the political climate of the First Intermediate Period in Egypt and much more.

The live music presented at the Tate was possibly the most inspiring performance I have seen to date. In the Turbine Hall, Conrad and his musical collaborators unleashed a sonic tornado, sweeping up strings and scratching the fuck out of vinyl, bringing the Western harmonic system to its knees. In addition, a drilled film was prepared and projected in the course of the set. The storm settled into a mesmeric drone which held many to the floor, supine and spread out while others freely wandered experiencing the variations in the sound from varying positions in the venue.

The weekend also coincided with the publication of the first book focusing on Conrad's work and its place among the varying cultural activities of the American avant-garde of the 60s, Beyond the Dream Syndicate: Tony Conrad and the Arts after Cage by Branden W. Joseph. I would also highly recommend the stunning Buffalo Heads book, in which many previously unpublished materials by Conrad have been collected.

The second time I caught Conrad in a live setting was three months later on the other side of the world, on the back of a 12 hour journey and having not slept for roughly 24 hours. The opportunity to see Conrad play again was made possible by the wonderful Johan Wellens of Tiliqua Records who took me over to Super Deluxe in Tokyo, where Conrad performed with Keiji Haino. The persisting image I have from this night was Conrad's violin tackling a sewing machine in a duel, while Haino plucked and hammered all manner of curious instruments. Only, the set ran too long, there was a train to catch and I needed sleep. Still, I felt so far away from my normal existence, immersed in holy sound. I left Tokyo a week later clutching an original vinyl copy of the monolithic Outside the Dream Syndicate, the minimalist masterpiece Conrad created with German band Faust.

Conrad's writings and musical works continually challenge and affect me to a great extent. They foster an agitation of mind and a creative impulse. Ever investigating the structures at work in music and film, as well as the mechanics of media and knocking me back every time I put Four Violins in the CD player, Conrad's energy and intelligence is singular; his importance in the trajectory of avant-garde art after John Cage is ridiculously underacknowledged (guess who gave the Velvet Underground their name). Still, Joseph's book, Conrad's ongoing re-presentation of almost inaccessible past musical activities and his engagement in all manner of musical collaborations and festivals (recent appearances with Genesis P-Orridge and at the No Fun Fest) should go a long way to change this.

"It had always, since my earliest encounters with contemporary art, been my experience that the greatest pleasures and the most profound surprises that came from art were those that flowed from a wholesale change of outlook. Finding that the thing one most despised became revalued as the most cherished, that the thing least understood became transparent, that the thing most easily enjoyed was revealed as maudlin, that the thing most fervently believed was upended - these were the most exhilarating moments that cultural engagements could provide."

One Year of AudioVisual Salvage

2010-08-18T15:18:00.000-07:00

With several forthcoming posts currently in the preparation stage, it only recently occurred to me that the AudioVisual Salvage blog has turned 1 year old. The candle burned out by itself, before I had chance to make a wish for the site.

What began as a blog aimed at covering all manner of under recognised films and records has, over the course of the past year, widened its scope to take in familiar names and works. There are plenty of folks out there doing great work, across myriad sites and blogs that I feel it best to let the ideas fly and revel in cultural overlaps, rhymes, symbiosis and synergy - to resist specialisation and an authoritative tone.

The emphasis on film texts in recent months is the result of a heaving bookshelf bearing the magnificent weight of Manny Farber, Raymond Durgnat and Nicole Brenez to name only a few. With a couple of interviews currently in the works, AudioVisual Salvage will soon be focusing on the sonic spectrum once more. As a precursor to the intended exploration of musical works, I would like to make special mention of the recent Viva Negativa! Tribute to the New Blockaders series on Important Records. In particular, the sleeve art of the third volume is a thing of wonder! (see above).

I hope those who of you who have ventured onto the site have found something that you can enjoy reading, before navigating your way onto the porn or poker. Those following and commenting give me much inspiration and I hope to hear from more of you in year 2.

The Blackout

2010-08-16T14:55:00.000-07:00

Illustrating Brenez on Ferrara

2010-07-18T07:27:00.000-07:00

AudioVisual Salvage will be presenting a series of visual essays commencing in 2010, which aim to give an image-centred alternative to language-based film criticism. A recent example of this practice is Craig Keller's 'The Pialat Code', which can be found in the booklet accompanying Maurice Pialat's A Nos Amours, recently released on DVD by Eureka! Masters of Cinema.

Prior to throwing out words altogether, I have used screenshots to supplement a passage from one of the finest works of film criticism by Nicole Brenez. Her monograph on Abel Ferrara is without doubt one of the most intelligent, challenging and creative film texts I have read. Furthermore, the text lends itself to illustration.

"Ferrara's films are structured like passages through the looking-glass; it is a matter of passing from the recto to the verso of a given situation or image. This gives rise to a typical narrative structure of Ferrara's work. Films are organized upon a single major fold, where the beginning finally meets or "touches" the ending to offer a striking comparison, or a more gradual pleat, where the major fold is progressively translated throughout in a series of small folds (akin to a pleated skirt) over the entire structure of a film. Ms .45 is a representative example of a film with a major fold joining the start and end, while The Addiction and The Blackout offer models of the pleating structure."

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"Ms .45 recounts the progressive metamorphosis of a young woman, Thana, into an implacable avenger. The film takes us from an ordinary scene (a fashion preview in a garment factory) to its nightmarish revision (the fancy-dress office party that ends in bloodshed). Its ending thus elucidates its seemingly casual opening: the fashion preview poses human costume as an ordinary disguise for a social mise en scene of bodies entirely founded on relations of power and submission (the regal and contemptuous buyer, the cunning dresser, mistreated models, and passive workers). The final fancy-dress party, which puts the studio staff back into the scene, develops the film's underlying postulate all the way to the end: relations between people, especially sexual relations, can only be criminal."

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Brenez's book has encouraged my attempts at a purely visual analysis of film and Abel Ferrara's works are rich with the rhymes, mirroring and metamorphosis which make the plunge into this wordless criticism seem applicable. This is nothing new. In Issue 5 of the invaluable online film magazine Rouge (overseen by Adrian Martin, who translated Brenez's book from the French), a number of film writers and film makers were invited to express themselves with a single image. It interests me to think what insights we can gain into a film, or a series of films, through the comparison of stills alone and what this might add to the already rich history of film criticism. Something aside from the plates typically used to give a visual interlude to books of film history. It is unlikely that we could intuit Brenez's remarkable analysis from the images used above, but this should not prevent us from applying different methods to film analysis, nor from accepting the possibility of this yielding valuable results.

Special mention should be made of Greg Ferrara's Unexplained Cinema blog, which sets an incredible precedent.

Marilynne Robinson

2010-06-06T05:58:00.000-07:00

Marilynne Robinson is the only novelist whose work I can recall recommending to anybody in the last two years, though it is her non-fiction collection of essays The Death of Adam that I would suggest as a starting point. While there are enough cultural critics and writers eager to have their say in all sorts of contemporary debates as crude as Religion vs. Science, there are so few who argue passionately for better thinking all round: against assumptions, evasions, even plain knuckleheadedness.

I often worry when I speak of the magnificence of Robinson's words, because of her religious faith - as if the people I typically encounter are all firmly on the side of brute atheism like it's the highest level of achievement amongst 'intelligent' people. This is in all likelihood an unfounded assumption of my own, one based on the prevalence of anti-God, or anti-Christian sentiments in contemporary culture from Bill Hicks to South Park. Though it came to mind while watching the recent film American - The Bill Hicks Story, that I admire the late comedian for his similar disappointment in contemporary thought, his anger at lazily-formed opinions.

I'm through with worrying. The reason Robinson's writings won me over were for their sheer scholarliness. Never have I encountered a writer so thorough in her academicism, who understands that to speak about religious and political questions troubling culture today, one has to return to the source materials. But who wants to read Das Kapital when someone has already done the legwork and can give you a summary? In Robinson I encounter a writer who reflects my sense of awe when considering the totality of human history and thought, including Philosophy, Religion, Science, Politics, and Aesthetics. I share with Robinson a concern for the negative effects on academic thought brought about by popular writers on science who seem more concerned with getting a book published and becoming authorities on a given subject than in rigorous thought alone.

Last week, a new collection by Robinson was published. The contents of Absence of Mind were presented first as a series of lectures at Yale university in 2009. Video footage of these lectures can still be found on the Yale website. The subject of the lectures is the unsatisfactory treatment of our inward experience in contemporary evolutionary psychology and parascience, and the popularity of 'debunking the myth' literature amongst other trends, which is in danger of impoverishing the complexity of human thought and our own trust in it.

"I want to overhear passionate arguments about what we are and what we are doing and what we ought to do. I want to feel that art is an utterance made in good faith by one human being to another. I want to believe there are geniuses scheming to astonish the rest of us, just for the pleasure of it. I miss civilization, and I want it back." (The Death of Adam, p.4)

Just for the pleasure of it. Why does everything have to be done for a practical end? To revel in the mysteries of thought and the imaginations that we each have is a privilege in itself. I'm ready to leave my hard-won, half-assed ideas at the door and be reminded of how much more beautiful and difficult human thought and civilization is to try to comprehend.

Plastic Bag

2010-05-13T11:50:00.000-07:00

It has been a long time since I heard the news that Werner Herzog had completed his own version of Bad Lieutenant, but I am heartened to see that the UK cinema release is imminent. It was around this time last year that I made the pilgrimage to Manchester's Cornerhouse cinema to witness the spectacle of Encounters At The End Of The World. For me, Herzog's documentaries are enhanced by the director's narration. Herzog's voice is one of the most captivating and consoling that my ears have been privileged to hear, in person as well as through the medium of film.

And so while Sight & Sound magazine devotes a good section of its current issue to Herzog's take on a story previously brought to the screen by Abel Ferrara, AudioVisual Salvage has instead chosen to post a short film by Ramin Bahrani, Plastic Bag. The film traces the life of, you guessed it, a plastic bag whose life is so full of awe, sadness and hope which is felt because of a wonderful voiceover by Herzog. The short film has been given a lot of praise in recent months and it also offers a moving picture of our world without the expected didactic tone. It is likely to remind you of at least one other film, that I don't need to name, but I would also like to take the opportunity to point readers in the direction of Bahrani's own feature films Man Push Cart and Chop Shop.

5 Essential Film Books

2010-05-11T08:10:00.000-07:00

Nicole Brenez by Alexia Villard

The June issue of Sight & Sound magazine reveals the results of a critics' poll of the Best Film Books of All Time. Several years in the grip of a fervent cinephilia has alerted me to many key texts that have shown up in the poll, many of which S&S editor Nick James seems to have been surprised by, or previously unaware of. There are many works of engaging analysis, interpretation and intelligence that have led me to a similar position to Argentinian critic Quintin in Movie Mutations, holding certain critics in higher regard than the filmmakers themselves. Still, I echo James surprise at the absence of other works, one of which is represented in AudioVisual Salvage's own list below. Since several of the individuals polled were not given their dues, and couldn't possibly vote for their own book, the choices cover contemporary critics, while the emphasis in the poll seems to have been on pre-90s publications. James suggests that the result of asking critics of a particular generation to take part was that the books that were discovered in their youth (1965-1975) are represented more than any other. So, as a film fan in his mid-twenties, let me pay respects to a number of writers working today, to emphasise the vitality of current film writing and the inspiration that it has given me, as well as make up for a few glaring omissions.

Essential Cinema: On the Necessity of Film Canons
by Jonathan Rosenbaum

Jonathan Rosenbaum was the first film critic to catch my attention - aside from UK television staple Mark Kermode - a writer who I came across as a result of cross-referencing quotations in essays by the music journalist Alan Licht. As a reader and film fan previously unacquainted in film criticism and theory, what I found admirable in Rosenbaum's writing was how down to earth it was, so full of recommendations of films discussed with such passion and honesty and completely free of press-release praise, impenetrable theoretics, or cliché. Not hesitant in identifying faults in favourite films, or glimpsing extraordinary moments in oft-reviled films, Jonathan Rosenbaum taught me the value of viewing and writing with passion, being unafraid of condemning a 'classic' if necessary, and of seeking out films in the far corners of the globe - away from Hollywood, American Indies and the 5-star rating system. Essential Cinema restates the value of forming canons in a culture where we like to be able to view what the hell we like, based on whims and personal taste. As a lifelong fan of lists I admire Rosenbaum's attempt to identify a sustantial list of essential viewing for the intrepid film fan, not only to educate and inform viewers of the wealth of material from the past, but to champion the works of those liable to linger away from the limelight, figures making the most important films of our time. Rosenbaum was also responsible for instigating the collection of letters published in Movie Mutations (see below) which deserves special attention.

Physical Evidence: Selected Film Criticism
by Kent Jones

Totally overlooked in S&S's published poll (although he was one of the critics polled), it seems that no critic admires Kent Jones' writings as much as I do. Editor at large for Film Comment and longtime friend of Martin Scorcese and the late Manny Farber, Kent Jones' first collection of essays Physical Evidence sits on my shelf ready for referencing at all times. This collection of essays on films and filmmakers from John Carpenter to Olivier Assayas, shares similarities with the content of Rosenbaum's book, but Jones' voice is of course singular. It is reassuring that Jones seems fully in touch with contemporary music and popular culture, and strives to negotiate the complexities of context when discussing cinema. A critic who rejects the prescriptivism and the bullying mentality of the consumer-guide film critics, Jones has even wondered if films can think themselves.

Film as a Subversive Art
by Amos Vogel

For those attracted to films that seek to challenge the status quo, in terms of form and content; to upend traditional structures and haemorrage the medium of cinema in a surrealist fashion; and that demand that we face the bare facts of life, death, sex, shit, piss and blood, then Amos Vogel's celebrated compendium of subversive cinema is a must. Presented in a concise manner, covering developments in underground cinema in response to changing cultures and politics throughout the world, Vogel's book also contains a great number of capsule reviews which is to film as the Nurse With Wound list is to music.

Herzog on Herzog
Paul Cronin

The Director on Director-type book is a subcategory of its own and several were mentioned by the S&S critics - Godard on Godard, and Sirk on Sirk being popular choices. For me, this collection of interviews with Werner Herzog is essential reading for everybody, not only film buffs. Herzog's concerns are with living, creating and battling through life's roadblocks to reach an "ecstasy of truth". No talk of technical specifications, or theories of the image are found here. Instead, Herzog on Herzog offers us a glimpse into the working methods and ideas of a passionate, unrelenting, self-assured human being. "Inspirational" does not do justice to this book.

Movie Mutations: The Changing Face of World Cinephilia
edited by Jonathan Rosenabum and Adrian Martin

And lastly, a book centered around the critics themselves. In 1996, Jonathan Rosenbaum kickstarted a series of letters between some of the best young film writers across the world, in an attempt to account for their similarities in taste despite their varying backgrounds and locations. What came back was a collection of superb, personal responses that will bring consolation and a feeling of community in the cinephiliac. Also collected here are a number of brilliant essays and conversations covering certain filmmakers and trends in distribution and film criticism. This book captures the spirit of cinephilia in the late-90s, at the outset of the DVD and Internet age, and led to a branching out and global correspondence amongst writers of all ages that continues today.

La Vie Nouvelle

2010-05-09T08:49:00.001-07:00

A close relation of The Shining's tracking shot finale can be found in Philippe Grandrieux's astonishing second feature La Vie Nouvelle.

Following an unsettling meeting between a prostitute and a violent, self-absorbed client we are placed in the hallway of a quiet hotel corridor and are carried toward the window, out the window, afloat in a bleak, built-up, urban sprawl. We have escaped the claustrophobia and threat of the bedroom, but the view ahead is of little comfort.

In what is one of the most emotionally and physically affecting films of the last decade, Philippe Grandrieux has created a visually innovative depiction of human prostitution, self-abandon, control and violence that is sublime and unnerving in equal measure. The film excites on a visceral level, composed of images that seem hard-won, but that are absolutely necessary. Few scenes in film history have overwhelmed me as much as the thermic camera sequence, which leaves us in the dark with no exit, in a dungeon of cannibalism. And few death scenes are as grisly as Roscoe being attacked by a pack of savage dogs.

La Vie Nouvelle is a film given the utmost attention in its development at the audio and visual level. The soundtrack, composed by the group Étant Donnés and edited by Valérie Deloof, feeds in and out of the mix - throbbing to heighten techno-bliss, Dionysian euphoria; to numb; to disturb. Trust me, the shitty speakers on your computer are unlikely to compute Grandrieux's technical mastery, should this be your default mode of viewing. With little chance of seeing the film at your local cinema or film society, this is best seen with the aid of the best technology you can afford. I can only hope to commandeer a friend's home cinema system sometime in the future.

The film is available in an adequate DVD edition in France and I would recommend that readers order a copy from Amazon France. There are no English subtitles on the disc, but for those who are not encouraged enough by the promise of an emotional and sensory pummeling, there are very few lines of dialogue in the film (many of which are spoken in English anyway). Language seems futile amongst a terrifically image-driven plunge into the deepest pulsations of consciousness - across the spectrum of desire and fantasy, violence and death.

Nicole Brenez has declared Grandrieux's film, along with its predecessor Sombre, "the most advanced point of cinematic research" and it is hard for me to disagree. Grandrieux offers up vibrant images to the viewer; effects feelings of dread and awe in a dazzle and blur of visual tactics and with a currency of colliding bodies, probing humanity's nightmares as well as capturing the desolate landscape bathed in an obscured sunlight.

Stanley Kubrick - The Film Fan (Part 2)

2010-04-24T05:47:00.001-07:00

It is my view that, far from being self-enclosed works, Stanley Kubrick's late films became increasingly suffused with visual tropes inspired by certain films produced in Hollywood, Europe and Japan, as well as experimental cinema. Furthermore the films through which Kubrick refracted his cinematic taste seem to come together in Eyes Wide Shut. This final film seems to bear the traces of not only the director's own previous work, but myriad recollections of the cinematic past. For all of the emphasis given to Kubrick's innovative use of NASA lenses and lighting in Barry Lyndon, as well as the Steadicam glide of The Shining, there are numerous nods to other films that have not often been discussed.

In The Shining, there are several points of reference that should be considered. First is Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad. Thematically, both films deal with recurrence, memory and the passage of time and present this visually within the setting of a stately mansion/hotel wherein a significant event occurred which continues to haunt the memory of the locale and those within it. The camera's tracking movement throughout the corridors of the mansion in Resnais' film is mirrored in the Steadicam-scanned labyrinth of the Overlook Hotel.

The sinister 'rival' at Marienbad is equalled by the sinister bathroom attendent of The Cold Room (Grady), and the gardened grounds of each location are akin. Marienbad seems like a fitting visual reference point for Kubrick, who nevertheless replaces stony-faced performances with growing hysterics and floods Resnais' monochrome with terrific primary colours. Based on Stephen King's novel, Kubrick has managed to find a filmic template into which he can install the screenplay - and a template that is not only visual, but also thematic to some extent. As with the crossovers amongst Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, Burgess' novel and Matsumoto's Funeral Parade of Roses, there are opportunities for surprising coincidences.

Kubrick went on record stating his fondness for particular European films, notably Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night and Max Ophuls' La Ronde and Madame De. Marienbad was surely viewed throughout the gestation of Kubrick's chiller. However, there are two other probable reference points that are related to one another - two minimalist masterpieces of experimental cinema.

The camera observes a group of photos on the far wall and, tracking in, gradually centres on one image - an image at once innocent, nostalgic, stunningly sinister and premonitory. This is the way that The Shining ends. This simple tracking-in-revelation reminds me of the zoom-in-revelation dynamic of Michael Snow's Wavelength - arguably, the most famous Zoom in the history of cinema. In fact, it's closer to the later WVLNT (Wavelength For Those Who Don't Have The Time). Moreover, Snow's film is troubled by an unexplained murder, thus strengthening the tie with The Shining.

Another famous director-film buff, Martin Scorsese, beat Kubrick to it by copying elements of Wavelength and Snow's <---> (Back and Forth) in the last five minutes of Taxi Driver.

The bold red, white and blue colour scheme of The Shining is also reminiscent of Snow's Presents.

Another experimental filmmaker, who is a fan of Snow's films, and of whose work I can find traces in The Shining is Chantal Akerman. In particular, her masterpiece Jeanne Dielman in which we can see a similar boxed image, squared and still. In both The Shining and Jeanne Dielman, the minimalism and space in the shots, as well as the passing-the-time activities of Dielman and the Torrance family leads to a spiritual mood, out of which the impending violence is felt as more disruptive and disturbing.

Whether a conscious reference to Akerman's visual orderliness and Jeanne Dielman's recurrence-violence, or a telling example of the look of a lot of American and European cinema in the 70s and 80s, partly indebted to Ozu (see Manny Farber's 'Kitchen Without the Kitsch'), Kubrick's film seems firmly located within a continuum of arthouse and experimental cinema that can perhaps be traced back to Andy Warhol in the US, rather than reclusive and apart from it.

Many of Kubrick's corridor shots and the way that they are lit recall Ernie Gehr's Serene Velocity as much as the hallways in Marienbad. In his book On Kubrick, James Naremore also suggests that Kubrick was notable for using art cinema conventions in commercial productions.

The bathtub fright in Room 237 is executed in a similar manner to Henri-George Clouzot's Les Diaboliques. Indeed, Clouzot's film also deals with the act of murder and its terrifying repercussions. In Eyes Wide Shut, there is also mystery surrounding the death of Mandy/Amanda and, in particular, the identity of the body and suspicions of murder.

Eyes Wide Shut often seems to confirm Tom Gunning's claim that Kubrick was the last of the Viennese auteurs. This is due not only to its source text being Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle, but also its luxuriantly furnished shots and elegantly danced camera moves, especially in the evening party scene early in the film. Viewed with Ophuls in mind, it is difficult to disagree that there are striking visual similarities.

It is the family resemblance to this particular Viennese filmmaker that characterises much of the production design of Eyes Wide Shut, a look that was criticised by some on the grounds that the setting didn't look like New York. The presence of yellow taxicabs and Manhattan-like sidewalks seems to have prompted the criticism. However, the narrative content of the film suggests that much of what we witness is a dream, or is at least ambiguous about whether it is reality or a dream that we are following.

Significantly, it appears that Eyes Wide Shut dreams of almost all of Kubrick's other films: the seemingly wealthy and well-costumed attendees of the orgy recall the brief glimpse of a tuxedoed man and bear-suited companion engaged in a private, probably sexual, act in The Shining; the macho jocks who march toward Bill Harford, taunt him and shove him into a nearby car suggest Alex and his droogs; some of the costumes in Rainbow Fashions appear to have been rescued from the Barry Lyndon wardrobe; maybe it is not too much of a stretch to see a trace of Paths of Glory in Harford's conversation with Ziegler in the billiards room. This view would perhaps fall in line with the image of Kubrick as a relentless innovator, self-referencing, only influenced by his own previous movies. But if we choose to see a nod toward Ophuls' aesthetic here, we also find a reminder of Marienbad's haunting hallways.

I hope that the similarities pointed out here help to re-position Kubrick inside the overlapping circles of experimental and commercial cinema, rather than left outside of them, and suggest that Kubrick utilised tropes and visual flourishes from the history of cinema in order to enrich his work.