Page 19 - Studio International - October 1972

in the forties, and renewed activity in the U.S. in concerned with the processes of making and relationship between this film phenomenon and
the early fifties. But it was really in the late perceiving. structuralism as a linguistic, anthropological, or
fifties that avant-garde film-making began to In an essay significantly entitled 'Art as other discipline.)
accelerate, and in the sixties what is known as Technique' Victor Shklovsky, the Russian Most of those identified in one way or
the New American Cinema was born and formalist literary critic, argued that the purpose another with this tendency work out of New
continues today. of art is to 'rid us from the automatism of York — Michael Snow, Ernie Gehr, Tony
Of the fairly recent avant garde most of the perception' by ways of techniques which Conrad, Joyce Wieland, Ken Jacobs, and Hollis
film-makers are or have been involved in the 'defamiliarize'11 or make the familiar seem Frampton — with George Landow and Paul
other arts as well. And the concerns and strange and thus force our attentions in new Sharits in the Midwest, and Peter Kubelka in
problems of the larger avant-garde art context ways. Elsewhere he speaks of the importance of Vienna. In critically examining some of their
are shared by them and brought to bear in film, technique being 'revealed' or 'laid bare' or works, one becomes very much involved in form
which is examined on its own terms. Just as 'displayed'. For Shklovsky it is not the object and the awareness of form, recalling Victor
painters have been preoccupied with what the perceived that is of importance but how it is Shklovsky's comment when he speaks of
essential properties of their art are, and with all perceived. What is of consequence here is his 'technique laid bare'. Concomitant with this,
of the problems, solutions, and possibilities linking of technique and perception, for it is the form and content become bound together with a
evolving out of that, a similar tendency is technique which constitutes the artistry and consciousness of film itself.
manifested in much recent film. makes us see. Of Ernie Gehr's History (I970), Michael
As the critic Clement Greenberg pointed out In an interview, film-maker Hollis Frampton Snow remarks in Film-Makers' Cooperative
a decade ago, the modernist tendency in the arts has commented: 'As a general footnote, I should Catalog No. 5: 'At last, the first film!' Snow's
is toward self-criticism, each of its own say that I think of my films in part as an effort to observation is not at all facetious or enigmatic.
discipline. Alluding to the process of reduction reconstruct the history of films as it "should have If one were to examine critically and
to the essential materials'of each art, he writes : been".'12 Film in its early years was thought of as methodically the materials of film, History
'It quickly emerged that the unique and proper an epistomological tool or toy. For Meliès it was becomes a logical first, for it deals with film's
area of competence of each art coincided with all a way of capturing magic shows, for the Lumière primary elements : light acting on film
that was unique in the nature of its medium'. brothers, news events and daily life, and for emulsion. Customarily, one thinks of
And in a specific reference to painting : 'Realistic, Porter and Griffith, drama and narrative. It was emulsion as registering a representational or
naturalistic art had dissembled the medium, thought to be a recording device, a tool of figurative image; if small and fine enough one
using art to conceal art; modernist art used art to realism and naturalism, and was able to move then ignores the grain, but if it is obtrusive, as
call attention to art'.10 beyond photography into time and motion. in John Cassavetes's Faces, one may think
Like the tendency exhibited in painting and Avant-gardists of the past have questioned many of the conditions under which it was shot, the
the other arts, recent film-makers have chosen of these assumptions, especially film's evolving kind of stock used and the blow-up from 16mm
modes of reduction of the technical-formal role in drama, narrative and realism, but even in to 35mm, and then attempt to ignore the grain
options available to them. Their work asks what their questionings and explorations have and concentrate on the images and illusions
film is and what its irreducible elements are. maintained certain other epistomological which it is constituting. But here, one is
They are questioning not merely its traditional assumptions. For instance, light has most often confronting a pure and primary film illusion.
function of recording 'reality' but the very basis been thought of as light in the service of a haptic With very black pulsating grains and
of its three-dimensional illusionism, calling illusion. shimmering grains of white, the entire screen is
attention to, among other things, the surface of The historical questioning by much of the in constant motion and when one looks for a
the screen, the paradox of the co-presence of its current avant garde has been substantially point of focus, the only areas which the eye can
real two-dimensionality and its illusory different. Putting aside assumptions about what gravitate toward are the two right-hand corners
three-dimensionality, and how the very film can do to reveal something else, the of the screen where light seems to be seeping
materials of film are harnessed to create both film-makers deal instead with an ontology of film. through. The overall movement and general
kinds of images. As with minimal art and much This is not to intimate that each of the lack of focal rest is analogous to the experience
that has followed it in contemporary painting film-makers working along these lines today is of a Pollack canvas. In the constant eye scanning
and sculpture, through acts of honing down the consciously concerned with this kind of which takes place, the perceiver is made aware
materials involved and often through revealing investigation. Rather, that the aesthetic milieu of the frame as it bounds the image. The
the process of making, through the rejection of and the convergence of interests and certain continuously oscillating field may assume
metaphor, symbol, myth, traditional narration, kinds of sensibilities have brought forward those various representational patterns for the
and, much of the time, traditional illusionism, ontological questionings in film as they have in viewers. Many perceive the illusion of colour.
the locus of attention returns to the work as the other arts at this particular historical The images created by the grain, shifting and
such, as object and as art. The work demands moment under the influence of modernist changing in time, only suggest film's virtual
that the viewer experience it in the present time concerns. three-dimensionality, but constantly reaffirm
and in the given space. A considerable body of contemporary work its actual two-dimensionality. History asserts
However, the perceptual demands on the can be described as sharing certain that form can come out of film's intrinsic
viewer are far from reduced. In fact, more is technical-formal characteristics. In his article, properties : through emulsion and light in time,
demanded, because these works are concerned 'Structural Film', P. Adams Sitney enumerates its form becomes its content, and one responds
with the ontology, materials, and processes of these characteristics: to its images on both a sensuous and an
film itself. The viewer is confronted with the g.. . a fixed camera position (fixed frame from the intellectual level as an immediate experience of
work and he must look at film as he has never viewer's perspective), the flicker effect, and loop film.
had to look at it before. He is forced to ask printing (the immediate repetition of shots, History, by the nature of what it is and does,
questions about film's materials and processes exactly and without variation). Very seldom will becomes one of a kind, while the flicker film
and in confronting them is confronting himself. one find all three characteristics in a single film, constitutes a genre, small and little known as it
The operation becomes acutely reflexive. He is and there are structural films which avoid these is, even now, over a decade after the first such
asked to respond sensuously and analytically to usual elements.'13 work was made. The genre is identified
film devoid for the most part of traditional (Sitney's use of the term 'structural film' primarily with Peter Kubelka, credited with
content and whose content is largely its form. becomes misleading when applied to these the first two, Adabar (1956) and Arnulf Rainer
And inasmuch as this is the case, these works are works, and it should be stressed that there is no (1958-60), and with Tony Conrad and Paul

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