Michel Ciment @ Forum des Images

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No Excuses!

Planète cinéma: recent short films

After an article À ceux qui rêvent to the Cinéastes invités section at 24 Images, Sophie Goyette returns to write for them, Planète cinéma, where she highlights six short-film directors to look out for. - D.D.

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- Philipp Mayrhofer (Italie / France)

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- Mariana Gaivão (Portugal)
 

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- Fyzal Boulifa (Royaume-Uni)

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- Suba Sivakumaran (Sri Lanka / États-Unis)

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- -Enrico Maria Artale (Italie

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- Olivier Godin (Québec) 
    - La Boutique de Forge (password: forge)

Moving the Sleeping Image of Things Towards the Light

“A confused mass of thoughts, tumbling over one another in the dark; when the fancy was yet in its first work, moving the sleeping images of things towards the light, there to be distinguished and then either chosen or rejected by the judgment.” – John Dryden

I guess that I’m familiar with Daïchi Saïto’s experimental films. I would have seen All That Rises and Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis at Café Ex and then Never a Foot Too Far, Even at the Blackwood Gallery. But it would be hard for me to correctly recall them. Seeing them were striking and captivating experiences where familiar places were being de-familiarized through light, colors and sounds. Fleeting memories that come to mind include abrupt footage of an old alleyway, colorful light gliding through trees, and two projectors in a gallery flashing light towards a wall.

Saïto is part of the Montreal Double Negative Collective whose poetic and illusion-bashing manifesto includes statements like, “We locate cinema in human experience, in the eye, hand and heartbeat, not in the well-worn tropes that pass for meaning and feeling in conventional moviemaking.” As the recent issue of 24 Images attests, with its feature on the fifty years of video art, Montreal has always had a vibrant alternative film community (cf. Vidéographie 70 by Luc Bourdon). Double Negative Collective builds upon this since it is not only a filmmaking cooperative but also organizes experimental film screenings.

Since Saïto’s works aren’t available, which contributes to a stronger aura around their screenings, a recent publication from Les éditions Le Laps of Saïto’s writing Moving the Sleeping Images of ThingsTowards the Light with a nice preface by André Habib (who also wrote about him for the 24 Images feature on one-hundred contemporary filmmakers) offers a nice aide-mémoire for his films.

“The alternation of brief phrasing of images with black pauses in All That Rises, or the soft flickers in Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis, are what gives life to the films. Breathing in, and breathing out, until the light goes off and we return to the darkness.”

Saïto in his essay (which is available in both English and French) discusses some interesting topics: his background, life, solitude, previous jobs, inspiration, artistic practices and the Double Negative Collective. His first language is Japanese. He is an autodidact with an interest in literature and philosophy. He is an admirer of the Arachi school poets and the Japanese novelists Kenzaburō Ōe and Shiro Hasegawa. And so on.

Saïto who processes his own films (and whose dual projected Never a Foot Too Far, Even allowed one to look at them), writes about their aesthetics, “My films are often characterized by rapid bursts of fleeting images.” And more on this, “Wonders are many in the art of film, and none is more wonderful than this simple fact: the radical gap that exists between the manifestation of a finished film when projected on the screen and the actual physical material – filmstrips – the filmmaker works on.”

Habib, on the other hand, offers some interesting observations on Saïto’s work from a film curator's perspective: it might be better to see them without knowing too much about them to better appreciate the experience and their singularity. Habib compares Saïto’s work to the photogram and highlights their paradox of being both fixed and always in motion. For Habib the Double Negative Collective renews the potential of ways to see in Montreal. I would add that, with Saïto’s work, they also renew the potential to see cinema and life, in general.

John Porter's Visiting Filmmaker's Map of Toronto (2014)

Fitting Andrew Bujalski

The films of Andrew Bujalski can be defined by their transitional qualities, or the difficulties one has in defining his films in relation to any certain period of American independent film. While he tends to get lumped in with the ‘mumblecore’ movement, those films are aesthetically defined by a cold, low-key but distanced approach. Bujalski instead has shot all but one of his films on 16mm film, which brings a warmth to his films that truly hits its peak in Beeswax (2009), as Bujalski explores the suburbs of Austin, Texas. There’s a mid-afternoon-in-summer feel in his work that can occasionally have a displacing effect as you watch one of his films, as the warmth of his films makes them feel much older than they really are.

Coupled with this aesthetic warmth is Bujalski’s affectionate approach to characterization, reminiscent of early Linklater. His characters are more inclined to say what’s important to them in a direct way and are charmingly assertive, compared to the early films of his contemporary, Joe Swanberg. While many mumblecore films use improvised dialogue and scenarios, Bujalski’s films are scripted with a certain type of contemplation that lends itself well to the warmness of his work. Even Bujalski’s Computer Chess (2013), which is more surreal and cartoon-like compared to his previous films, has the ability to add an ounce of pathos to even its most silly characters.

Computer Chess marks an interesting break from Bujalski’s previous work. Shot on a vintage tube Sony AVC-3260 video camera and set in the early 1980’s, the film is also his first to be shot with an outline rather than a script. As the mumblecore genre expands to the noir mystery of Cold Weather, the Manhattan-esque Frances Ha and the horror genre in You’re Next, Bujalski’s Computer Chess is difficult to include in this expansion. It’s a film that doesn’t concern itself with the wealthy, social aimlessness of those films. Computer Chess also experiments with form in a far more conscious way, beginning with a mockumentary approach that feels genuinely convincing. When I saw the trailer for the first time, I was sure it was for a documentary. As well, the mannerisms of the period-piece affect in the film do not resemble the present-day setting mannerisms of traditional mumblecore films.

The transitional effect in the progression of Bujalski’s films feels natural and effortless, yet engaging in new and interesting ways. His first two films, Funny Ha Ha (2002) and Mutual Appreciation (2003), feel very much of a pair. They are immensely successful in establishing Bujalski’s nuanced and conscious approach to characterization. As well, these films feel a part of a lineage of American independent films of the late-1990’s and early-2000’s, films that might not have much in the way of traditional plotting and arc, but have a stronger insistence on thematic unity. With Beeswax, made 6 years after Mutual Appreciation, Bujalski takes a more direct approach to narrative that breaks away from his first two films, while still maintaining a direct approach to characterization. 

Bujalski will be in town as part of The Seventh Art - Live Directors Series presented by CINSSU on February 3rd and 4th at Innis Town Hall to screen Funny Ha Ha and Mutual Appreciation.  

Ben Harrison

Faire Penser le Cinéma: Gérard Courant’s Cinématons

The filmmakers include Michael Snow, Marcel Hanoun, Manoel de Oliveira, Derek Jarman, Jean-Luc Godard, Robert Kramer, René Allio, Roland Lethem, Jon Jost, Philippe Garrel, Wim Wenders, Raoul Ruiz, Maurice Pialat, Peter Kubelka, Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet, André Téchiné, Volker Schlöndorff, Alexander Kluge, Terry Gilliam, Samuel Fuller, Barbet Schroeder, Claude Jutra, Lino Brocka, Marco Bellocchio, Nagisa Oshima, Jean-Pierre Lefebvre, Harun Farocki, Sergueï Paradjanov, Mike Kuchar, Pere Portabella, Jean Rouch, Ken Loach, René Vautier, Nico Papatakis, Gaspar Noé, Pip Chodorov, Gérard Blain, Yann Gonzalez, and Pedro Costa.

The French film critics include Jean Douchet, Serge Daney, Dominique Païni, Pascal Bonitzer, Serge Toubiana, Serge Le Péron, Danièle Dubroux, Yann Lardeau, Charles Tesson, Jean Narboni, Alain Bergala, Olivier Assayas, Michel Chion, Michel Mardore, Alexandre Astruc, Patrice Rollet, Pascal Kané, Noël Simsolo, Jean A. Gili, Jean-François Rauger, André S. Labarthe, Sébastien Bénédict, Jean-Sébastien Chauvin, Jean-Philippe Tessé, Jean-Pierre Rehm, and Michel Mourlet.

Cinématons are three-and-a-half minute screen tests that are shot in close-ups on a static camera with Super 8 film. Courant started making them in 1978 and since then on average has been making around 100 of them a year. The best period for them is the Eighties. First off for purely its visual pleasures: the anachronistic charms of the seeing the period details, the level of creativity in its participants, and for the heightened colors and the grainy texture of its film stock. Secondly for what is at stake in the project and the interesting people that decide to participate. The filmmakers that participate are the more political and challenging directors. While the many Cahiers critics that show up allows one to put a face to the writers of the time. They are also all be in their prime.

But there are more than just these two groups that are being documented. The Cinématons' near 3000 extended subjects, though principally from film, also include people from a wide variety of fields, backgrounds and nationalities. But a running constant throughout them is a creative personality. There are philosophers, writers and photographers. The actor ones are really good especially those in their early career by Sandrine Bonnaire, Laszlo Szabo, Julie Delpy, and Mathieu Amalric.

By filming these individuals there is something more than just their physical presence that's being caught. There is something that comes across between the lines. And that is two-fold: thought and life. By filming Straub or Garrel or Daney there is a certain idea of cinema that is reflected in their practices which is communicated by their presence. It is this ability to capture and incarnate such rich film thinkers and practitioners that make these Cinématons so rich. 

But if this was solely their reason of interest they would at best be just a footnote to film history. What truly makes them more universal than this is how they are able to catch something else that is happening between its images. An ephemeral moment of life is being documented: there are people standing in places who are being themselves - public persona's bleed into private selves. A fleeting observation can last forever.