Invisible Cinema

Experimental is experiential!

Experimental cinema is experiential! 

The term "non-narrative" (in 2008?!) just doesn't seem right . . .  :)

Look closely:

experiment:
1348, from O.Fr. experiment, from L. experimentum "a trial, test," from experiri "to test, try" (see experience). The verb is 1481, from the noun.

experience:
1377, from O.Fr. experience, from L. experientia "knowledge gained by repeated trials," from experientem (nom. experiens), prp. of experiri "to try, test," from ex- "out of" + peritus "experienced, tested." The v. (1533) first meant "to test, try;" sense of "feel, undergo" first recorded (1588.***)

From the Online Etymology Dictionary

***Better late than never!

Coming into focus . . .

"I am not talking here about going to the movies.  I am talking about making cinema.  I am talking about the life of vision.  I am talking about cinema as one way of living the life of a poet.  I am talking about film as poetry, as philosophy, as metaphysics, as all else it has not yet dared to become.

Einstein said, 'The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the source of all true art and science.'"

*

"Zen has nothing to do with bright ideas.  It is seeing the transcendental in the commonplace.  Except that there is no commonplace.  Every thing is uncommon.  To the true poet nothing is trivial.  'If he breathes into anything that was before thought small, it dilates with the grandeur and life of the universe,' said Whitman, who breathed into grass.

Zen is poetry in action.  It is the reality one creates out of what already exists.  It is the big movie of existence, which is the everyday spectacular, made out of innumerable haiku moments frame by frame.  Zen is seeing the light in everything you see."

*

"Poetry is an act of love, it asks no rewards!"

*

from:  Seeing the Light by James Broughton.

(P.S.  Now, darlings, I'm really back.)

xoxo
J

Experimental cinema/Narrative cinema 2008!

Happy 2008!  For the new year, I plan to begin editing my next video, but before I can get started, I'd like to outline some of my observations about experimental cinema & narrative cinema.  It's a bit difficult to block out some of the media, that is so heavily reliant on narrative cinema/documentaries, and I think that I have a different perspective on cinema in general.  I hope that this discussion promotes more understanding. 

1. yin and yang
You guys in narrative cinema can be the yang, okay!  You be the sun, and experimental cinema will be the moon!  We are two sides of the same coin.  Experimental cinema is NOT the other cinema.  We are the other half of cinema!  When some of the writers in the media ask, "Where are all the art films?  Where are the audiences for art cinema?  Where are the next "Antonioni"s?  Where are all the women who make films?"  We can answer, "Over here!  In the yin!  Experimental cinema!!!"

2.  form and content
Your top ten lists?  Go ahead with placing the mystery of cinema into a concise numerical form if it makes you happy.  Seriously, I love awesome writers, and I do not care how you label yourselves.  But let's look a bit closer.  Your IndieWire list for example, that's all narrative cinema.  Cinema differentiated ONLY by CONTENT.  Experimental cinema radically changes FORM.  Experimental cinema has exquisitely evolved into a complex system of formats!  Here are a few highlights:

live video performance, enhanced by the invention of new softwares, i.e. Module8 and Jitter, used by artists such as Luke Dubois, Chika, Nisi Jacobs, Andy Graydon, and Zach Layton.

applied materials:  hand painting, collage, sewing on the film strip, polarized light experiments used by Courtney Hoskins, Jennifer Reeves, Lewis Klahr . . .

animation:  Martha Colburn, Tim Reardon, Xander Marrow

single frame films:  Joel Schlemowitz

pioneering video inventions:  Cori Archangel, Ken Jacobs

experimentation with film loops and non-camera filmmaking:  Bruce McClure, Luis Recorder, and Sandra Gibson

I'm getting tired now . . . :)

3.  non-commercial (free!) and commercial

Of course, experimental cinema, YouTube, and the blogosphere are non-commercial.  It's an assumption that when we make experimental film/video works, they will be non-commercial.  Isn't non-commercial art radical, right now in NY, where the cost of living is exorbitant?  When I make a film, I do it for the sake of doing it.  That's quite different than making a film and hoping Miramax picks it up, you know.  I think that the proliferation of non-commercial cinema is more radical than any thematic subject on your top ten list.  (IMHO :)

4.  "non-narrative" and narrative

To say that an experimental video is "non-narrative" is like saying that Henry Ford's invention of the T-model automobile was a non-horse & carriage buggy!  Or it's like saying that Rimbaud wrote non-novels.  Grouping all short films together is misunderstanding cinema.

5.  inaccessible and accessible

I can tell you that experimental cinema will not come to you, you have to come to it.  I don't want to hear that people don't care about the avant-garde, or that it's too hard, or that no one will pay you to write about experimental cinema, or that it's difficult for the general movie audience to see experimental cinema.  If you are a cinephile, you have to find a way to inform yourself!  (All other people need not worry about it.  :)  If you live in NY, San Francisco, London, Paris, Barcelona, etc. you do not have any excuses.  If you do not live in a major city, try UbuWeb, YouTube, and this blog for names & links to new experimental works.  We all have to work it, including me!

6.  feminine and masculine

Enough with how there are so few women making films in Hollywood!  Women form a large percentage of experimental cinema!!!  You know, the innovative, non-commercial, right-brained, intuitive, poetic, and very free of hierarchies form of cinema. Hello?

Oh, I think that I've said enough now.  I love how you inspire and provoke me.  Listen or don't listen.  It's time for me to make another video now . . .

As Rumi once said,

"When the ocean surges, don't let me just hear it.  Let it splash inside my chest!"

xoxo

J