Page 42 - Studio International - November December 1975

dominant cinema, with no production capacity of its own. function of Sitney's exegesis of a 'new romantic
The English film culture has not been studied, a film affirmation in recoiling against the tremendously crucial
culture which has existed in the field of structural/ aesthetic attack that Warhol made' is precisely to be
materialist film since 1966. The works of the European embedded in dominant ideology as located in the
avant-garde experimental film of the late fifties and the specific arena being discussed : film (Sitney, Film Culture,
sixties have also not been studied. Thus at its most radical Spring 1972, p. 24). The ideological direction of Sitney's
Screen switches from an analysis of John Ford or Orson arguments is not mentioned here as object of my
Welles to 'reading' (literally reading words) and even criticism, as it coincides with the ideological weight of
seeing some Godard, Brecht and Straub, in all the works he discusses and therefore he becomes in fact
ideological blindness. Witness to this well-founded the most adequate spokesman for and exegete of the
polemical statement is the total lack of knowledge shown films he deals with, with notable exceptions. (I shall also
in discussion with Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen, when not attempt to elucidate the dominant ideology here in
the following 'absurd' 'dialogue' took place (through no specific terms). Structural film became merely another
fault of PW & LM) : aesthetic mode, another formalism, in fact, with a vague
Screen : Nevertheless, the importance of language and set of rules and self-definitions yet without important
the way it is used in your film is very different function or meaning outside its mere differentiation per se
from the kind of irrational, mystic overtones of from previous modes. I see structural/materialist film of
the Anglo/Saxon avant-gardes, such as course within a materialist function if it is to operate
Sharits, Wieland, Frampton, and soon. I see usefully. Some such works of structural/materialist film
your film as closer to a materialist conception of are the following :
language such as eg modern French theories of Little Dog For Roger, Yes No Maybe Not, (Malcolm
writing. Le Grice)
Wollen : That's an absolutely false characterization of Wavelength, Back and Forth, Central Region (Michael
those films. For instance, Hollis Frampton's Snow)
Zorns Lemma (1971) is based on mathematical Trees in Autumn, TV, Szondi Test, Auf der Pfaueninsel
transformations in relation to the alphabet ... (Kurt Kren)
Screen : Which again comes out of mysticism and Diagonal (William Raban)
Kabbala. Adebar, Schwechater (Peter Kubelka)
Wollen : But by that token Kabbalism is also very strong eg Process Red, Zorns Lemma (Hollis Frampton)
in Robbe-Grillet. I would say Kabbalism runs The problematic Erlanger Programme (Roger Hammond)
very strongly through all that French thought. Deck (Gill Eatherley)
You can see how, for instance, Jabès and Jewish Film No. 1 , Man With a Movie Camera (David
thought feeds into Derrida. There is a very strong Crosswaite)
streak of Kabbalism in Tel Quel . . . I see Zorns Word Movie, 3 min section Razor in Fluxus (Paul Sharits)
Lemma on the Straub side of the interface My own Clouds, Hall, Room Film 1973
rather than the Brakhage side, though it does Green Cut Gate (Fred Drummond)
have a neoplatonist aspect concerning light. To make distinctions between works is a matter of
Screen : Maybe we should talk about that some other clearly contextualizing the problematic, and each work's
(Screen, Autumn 1974)
time.' 6 a, b operation within it. Each work must be brought forth to
To add to their misfortune, Screen's editors wrote an clarity from the multilayered inscriptions that it is. Using
introduction, ending with the following statement : the term structural/materialist is dangerous as well, as it
'The interview with PW 8- LM can be described as refers to structural film. Equal emphasis must be put on
polemical in the sense that the ideas discussed in it as the Materialist 'half' of the term (and a dialectical
well as the film itself may appear totally aberrant when materialism, not a mechanistic materialism is necessary).
seen in the context of British film culture at the present The term structural film took as basic assumption the
time.' Apart from the coy non-normative use of the word contexts of merely three or four works and devolved a
aberrant, the statement unmasks Screen's editors' thesis from them, works not all of more than minor
complete repression of the film culture existent. So years importance. Perhaps the same can be said at this
of study have brought the total repression of th'e film juncture of my definition of structural/materialist film.
culture at present, and a weak, though obsessive, The 'theory' was meant for more than parochial
grasping at the British Film Institute's Parthenon of definition of these (above) works.
heroes. Meanwhile, we are told by Screen's editors : One creates a work. One also creates, in varying
'... the purpose is not to provide a more correct or degrees, a negation of past work, of historically
"scientific" description than either the naive self- constituted bases for tradition. The structural/materialist
evident plot summary or the critical "interpretation" can film and production of meaning in film, is the production
provide — on the contrary ... Heath's article (on Welles) is of film itself, in its (thought or 'unthought')
thus an extension of a tradition of work on the American theoreticalness, and (thought or 'unthought') ideological
narrative cinema exemplified by the Cahiers du Cinema intervention. To crucially intervene in film practice, the
study of Young Mr. Lincoln . . .' (Ben Brewster, Screen, 'unthought' must be brought to knowledge, thought.
Spring 1975.) The set of relations between film practice, theoretical
Enough., 7 practice and film as theory, can then be brought forth to
operate in clarity. © Peter Gidal
Structural Materialist Film; End
Structural/materialist films are at once object and 'The concept of structure's import vis-à-vis representational content's
procedure. Some are clearly, blatantly wholist, others import, led to the notion of shape taking precedence and confused the
work as obvious fragments, non-beginning-non-end issue nearly irreparably. Slight shifts become major theoretical
film. Both rely upon an aesthetic that tries to create interventions which change the locus of meaning of the work being
produced, and the axis along which it operates in time. This is not mere
didactic works (learning not teaching, ie operational obsessive Talmudic of French academic (what analogue)
productions not reproductive representations). At the preoccupation. It is not just a matter of 'the cabalistic jargon of Jewish
same time there is attempted avoidance of empiricism, writers (of the fables of antiguity)'. (John Boswell, Vicar of Taunton,
and the mystic romanticism of higher sensibility 'On History', A Method of Study or An Useful Library, 1738).
Althusser's concept of the most absolutely essential importance of the
individualism. This romantic base of much American correct usage of the word bears remembering ; the correct formulation is
structural film has been elucidated by P. A. Sitney. necessary to close the gap between advanced theoretical practice and
Visionary film-making is precisely the post- Blakean mire the dominance of idealist speech. (Louis Althusser, Reading Capital,
London, 1970)
that Structural/Materialism confronts, whether this
2 By the word film-maker, though, I do not mean to imply that the
confrontation is brought to speech or not. 'Unconsciously producer (same) is inserted as mythical figure, as shadow symbol of the
thought' processes define themselves in practice. One 'real', as mirror. Anonymity is indeed prerequisite; but a superficial
must go on after Warhol, not revert to a reinvigorated anonymity imitated into existence through eg 'coldness' (ie heavy
atmospheric intervention) functions precisely as the opposite of its
pre-Warholian stance ; one ought to be, by now, tired of
supposed intention. Anonymity must in fact be transformationally
expressing the same old thing ... 'trying to express when
created, dialectically posited into the filmic eventiveness itself. That is,
there is nothing to express'. To ignore the ideological anonymity must be the result, at a specific instance ; it too must be
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