Jean Rouch (2003). (ed. & trans. by Steven Feld). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
The politics of visual anthropology (Jean Rouch with Dan Georgakas, Udayan Gupta, and Judy Janda). (pp. 210-225)
[Today I watched Chronicle of a Summer again. One thing that I noticed is that Rouch and Morin were building relationship with in particular four subjects, Marceline, Marilou (depressed Italian immigrant), Landry (African student), and Angélo (a Renaut worker) throughout. In the last conversation with Marilou, Morin said "for a month..."]
Interviewers asked about how Rouch helped some Africans begin careers in film: It appeared that Rouch interacted with some of his subjects. Some of them "created a narration for the film that works at three levels. The first is a description of what you see, the second is a kind of dialogue, and the third is a statement about his own condition." (p. 219)
[This indicates that the line between filmmakers and subjects were not clearly distinguished in his approach to ethnographic filmmaking. ]
About distortion of reality: Rouch said that the camera magnifies the distortion that the presence of an inquisitor brings to the scene. But it does not matter. For him, researchers can change research practices with a camera by showing the film to its subjects and helping subjects become filmmakers, etc. instead of keeping all the information for the sake of researchers' own.
"When the survey is completed, the anthropologist goes back to the university, writes the dissertation, and possibly wins distinction in the field. What is the result for those who were surveyed? Nothing. There is no feedback from the disruption the anthropologist has created. The subjects will not read the survey. With a camera, there can be a far more fruitful result. The film can be shown to the subjects. Then they are able to discuss and have access to what has happened to them. The can have reflection even if the film is bad, for however incompetent the film may be, there will be the stimulation of the image you give of them and the chance for them to view themselves from a distance, up there on the screen. Such a distortion changes everything." (p. 220)
Chronicle of a film (Edgar Morin, 229-265)
Pointing out various reactions to the film Chronicle of a summer, Morin said it marks the failure and the success of the film: Failure, because the film did not gain the sympathy of the majoirty; success, because Rouch and himself "gave the characters the chance to speak and because, to a certain degree, we gave the public a liberty of appreciation that is unusual in cinema" (p. 259). In particular, he emphasized, the film modified the relationship between actor and spectator: "We have emerged from mystery, we have shown ourselves, present, fallible, men among others, and we have provoked the viewer to judge as a human being" (p. 259).
Morin wrote about cinema-verite:
"Cinéma-vérité: this means that we wanted to eliminate fiction and get closer to life. This means that we wanted to situate ourselves in a lineage dominated by Flaherty and Dziga Vertov. Of course this term "cinéma-vérité" is daring, pretentious; of course there is a profound truth in works of fiction as well as in myths. At the end of the film, the difficulties of truth, which had not been a problem in the beginning, became apparent to me. In other words, I thought that we would start from a basis of truth and that an even greater truth would develop. Now I realize that if we achieved anything, it was to present the problem of the truth." (p. 263)
Showing posts with label cinematic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cinematic. Show all posts
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Kino-Eye: The writing of Dziga Vertov
(1984). (Annette Michelson ed. & Kevin O'Brien trans.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
1923. Kinoks: A revolution
Vertov called the camera a kino-eye [cine-eye] and was so obsessed to the amount that he identified himself with the eye:
"I am kino-eye. I am a builder. I have placed you, whom I've created today, in an extraordinary room which did not exist until just now when I also created it." (17)
"I am kino-eye, I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it.
Now and forever, I free myself from human immobility, I am in constant motion, I draw near, then away from objects, I crawl under, I climb onto them. I move apace with the muzzle of a galloping horse, I plunge full speed into a crowd, I outstrip running soldiers, I fall on my back, I ascend with an airplane, I plunge and soar together with plunging and soaring bodies. Now I, a camera, fling myself along their resultant, maneuvering in the chaos of movement, recording movement, starting with movements composed of the most complex combination" (17)
1924. The birth of kino-eye
Vertov further defined the kino-eye:
"Not kino-eye for its won sake, but truth through the means and possibilities of film-eye, i.e., kinopravda["film-truth"].
Not "filming life unawares" for the sake of the "unaware," but in order to show people without masks, without makeup, to catch them through the eye of the camera in a moment when they are not acting, to read their thoughts, laid bare by the camera.
Kino-eye as the possibility of making the invisible visible, the unclear clear, the hidden manifest, the disguised overt, the acted nonacted; making falsehood into truth.
Kino-eye as the union of science with newsreel to further the (p. 41) battle for the communist decoding of the world, as an attempt to show the truth on the screen--Film-truth." (p. 42)
Vertov called him and his colleagues kinoks as opposed to cinematographers. Editor and translator explained this term as "cine-eye men".
1924. On Kinopravda
One of Vertov's newsreels, Kinopravda, was distinct from the traditional newsreels in that Vertov experimented in assembling film footage representing a certain epoch into "harmonious" montage (p. 42). It was not a simple recording of an event. The 14th Kinopravda was totally rejected by the authority because of its obscurity and made Vertov perplexed. Nonetheless, Vertov pointed out young people and workers received it well. He simply noted:
"Kinopravda made heroic attempts to shield the proletariat from the corrupting influence of artistic film-drama. To many, these attempts seemed ridiculous. The paltry number of prints of Kinopravda could serve, at most, some thougsands of people, not millions. But though Kinopravda's role in the creation of an extensive workers' repertoire was small, its propagandistic action in the battle with the commercial movie theater repertoire proved signiticant." (p. 44)
[Here, Vertov hinted at the formulation of the kino-eye movement.]
"In attacking Kinopravda our detractors gloatingly point out that it's made from previously shot, and therefore "random" footage. To us this means that the newsreel is organized from bits of life into a theme, and not the reverse. This also means that Kinopravda doesn't order life to proceed according to a writer's scenario, but observes and records life as it is, and only then draw conclusion from these observations." (p. 45)
1924. Artistic drama and kino-eye
In this note, Vertov more clearly demonstrates the essence of the kino-eye movement, rooted in the grassroots participation from worker correspondents and agricultural correspondents:
"Comrades, I am speaking on behalf of the kinoks group. As most of you know, our group doesn't connect either its existence or its work with what is called "art."
We engage directly in the study of the phenomena of life that surround us. We hold the ability to show and elucidate life as it is, considerably higher than the occasionally diverting doll games that people call theater, cinema, etc. " (p. 47)
1925. The Essence of Kino-Eye
Vertov defined the kino-eye movement: "led by newsreel workers, the kinoks, [it] is an international movement, and its development is keeping strides with the worldwide proletarian revolution" (p. 49).
Organized by film editors, cinema-worker correspondents cooperated in making decisions on distribution and other tasks. Vertov used the term "decoding" in defining the objective:
"The method of radio-broadcasting images, just recently invented, can bring us still closer to our cherished basic goal--to unite all the workers scattered over the earth through a single consciousness, a single bond, a single collective will in the battle for communism.
This objective of ours we call kino-eye. The decoding of life as it is. Using facts to influence the workers' consciousness." (p. 49)
The purpose of cinema became clearer to Vertov:
"We will not prepare for the broadcast of operas and drama. We will prepare wholeheartedly to give the workers of every land the opportunity to see and hear the whole world in an organized form; to see, hear, and understand one another." (p. 56, in 1925)
1958. Love for the living person.
Vertov later in his life had this conversation:
"As a matter of fact, everything I have done in cinema was connected, directly and indirectly, with my persistent effort to reveal the thinking of the 'living person.' Sometimes that person was the film's author-director, not shown on the screen. Sometimes this image of the 'living person' included traits not of a single concrete person, but of several and even many people who had been chosen accordingly." (p. 156)
Here he implied that authors can be multiple in cinema.
1923. Kinoks: A revolution
Vertov called the camera a kino-eye [cine-eye] and was so obsessed to the amount that he identified himself with the eye:
"I am kino-eye. I am a builder. I have placed you, whom I've created today, in an extraordinary room which did not exist until just now when I also created it." (17)
"I am kino-eye, I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it.
Now and forever, I free myself from human immobility, I am in constant motion, I draw near, then away from objects, I crawl under, I climb onto them. I move apace with the muzzle of a galloping horse, I plunge full speed into a crowd, I outstrip running soldiers, I fall on my back, I ascend with an airplane, I plunge and soar together with plunging and soaring bodies. Now I, a camera, fling myself along their resultant, maneuvering in the chaos of movement, recording movement, starting with movements composed of the most complex combination" (17)
1924. The birth of kino-eye
Vertov further defined the kino-eye:
"Not kino-eye for its won sake, but truth through the means and possibilities of film-eye, i.e., kinopravda["film-truth"].
Not "filming life unawares" for the sake of the "unaware," but in order to show people without masks, without makeup, to catch them through the eye of the camera in a moment when they are not acting, to read their thoughts, laid bare by the camera.
Kino-eye as the possibility of making the invisible visible, the unclear clear, the hidden manifest, the disguised overt, the acted nonacted; making falsehood into truth.
Kino-eye as the union of science with newsreel to further the (p. 41) battle for the communist decoding of the world, as an attempt to show the truth on the screen--Film-truth." (p. 42)
Vertov called him and his colleagues kinoks as opposed to cinematographers. Editor and translator explained this term as "cine-eye men".
1924. On Kinopravda
One of Vertov's newsreels, Kinopravda, was distinct from the traditional newsreels in that Vertov experimented in assembling film footage representing a certain epoch into "harmonious" montage (p. 42). It was not a simple recording of an event. The 14th Kinopravda was totally rejected by the authority because of its obscurity and made Vertov perplexed. Nonetheless, Vertov pointed out young people and workers received it well. He simply noted:
"Kinopravda made heroic attempts to shield the proletariat from the corrupting influence of artistic film-drama. To many, these attempts seemed ridiculous. The paltry number of prints of Kinopravda could serve, at most, some thougsands of people, not millions. But though Kinopravda's role in the creation of an extensive workers' repertoire was small, its propagandistic action in the battle with the commercial movie theater repertoire proved signiticant." (p. 44)
[Here, Vertov hinted at the formulation of the kino-eye movement.]
"In attacking Kinopravda our detractors gloatingly point out that it's made from previously shot, and therefore "random" footage. To us this means that the newsreel is organized from bits of life into a theme, and not the reverse. This also means that Kinopravda doesn't order life to proceed according to a writer's scenario, but observes and records life as it is, and only then draw conclusion from these observations." (p. 45)
1924. Artistic drama and kino-eye
In this note, Vertov more clearly demonstrates the essence of the kino-eye movement, rooted in the grassroots participation from worker correspondents and agricultural correspondents:
"Comrades, I am speaking on behalf of the kinoks group. As most of you know, our group doesn't connect either its existence or its work with what is called "art."
We engage directly in the study of the phenomena of life that surround us. We hold the ability to show and elucidate life as it is, considerably higher than the occasionally diverting doll games that people call theater, cinema, etc. " (p. 47)
1925. The Essence of Kino-Eye
Vertov defined the kino-eye movement: "led by newsreel workers, the kinoks, [it] is an international movement, and its development is keeping strides with the worldwide proletarian revolution" (p. 49).
Organized by film editors, cinema-worker correspondents cooperated in making decisions on distribution and other tasks. Vertov used the term "decoding" in defining the objective:
"The method of radio-broadcasting images, just recently invented, can bring us still closer to our cherished basic goal--to unite all the workers scattered over the earth through a single consciousness, a single bond, a single collective will in the battle for communism.
This objective of ours we call kino-eye. The decoding of life as it is. Using facts to influence the workers' consciousness." (p. 49)
The purpose of cinema became clearer to Vertov:
"We will not prepare for the broadcast of operas and drama. We will prepare wholeheartedly to give the workers of every land the opportunity to see and hear the whole world in an organized form; to see, hear, and understand one another." (p. 56, in 1925)
1958. Love for the living person.
Vertov later in his life had this conversation:
"As a matter of fact, everything I have done in cinema was connected, directly and indirectly, with my persistent effort to reveal the thinking of the 'living person.' Sometimes that person was the film's author-director, not shown on the screen. Sometimes this image of the 'living person' included traits not of a single concrete person, but of several and even many people who had been chosen accordingly." (p. 156)
Here he implied that authors can be multiple in cinema.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Dziga Vertov: Defining Documentary Film
Hicks, Jeremy. (2007). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Introduction (1-4)
In this book, Hicks focuses on the question as to "how Soviet journalism inspired his creative transformation of newsreel into the new form of documentary film" (p. 1). Contrary to the general assumption that Vertov obviated performance, Hicks argued that Vertov balanced between "recording and reworking and his greatest works combined with unstaged footage to unleash an influential rhetoric force.
The birth of documentary from the spirit of journalism: Cine-Pravda, Cine-Eye (5-21)
In 1922, Vertov began to work on news series Cine-Pravda with his future wife and his brother Mikhail Kaufman. Hicks commented:
"It is with Cine-Pravda that Vertov truly begins to realise cinema's power to exhort in images. Cine-Pravda no. 1 (June 1922) sets the tone for Vertov's newsreels in its sharply rhetorical style, downplaying the registering of events and instead editing together shots taken at different times and places so as to construct an argument. (p. 6-7)
Hicks argued, "The camera does not record an already existing causal relation, it creates it" (p. 7). He found the root cause of this transition from recording to discursive force, persuasion and exhortation in cinema in Soviet journalism.
"Vertov's transformation of what to become known as documentary cinema is inconceivable outside the context of the Bolshevik approach to journalism. Stylistically and in its approach to information, persuasion and communication, Vertov's film-making of the 1920s extends the model of the Bolshevik newspaper." (p. 8)
Hicks stressed that in stark contrast to the liberal conception of journalism in the West, the Bolshviks never considered objectivity as a primary consideration. Lenin stated "A newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a collective organiser" (as cited in page 8).
Hicks finds the similarity between Soviet Journalism and Vertov's renewal of newsreel as:
"[T]hey start from the fact, but elaborate on it so as to present it as powerfully and as engagingly as possible. Vertov too maintained a similar dual commitment, on the one hand to the capacity of cinema to record as a starting point, and on the other hand to exploring and unleashing its creative, persuasive, analytical potential." (p. 10)
In this context Hicks saw Cine-Pravda as "a revolutionary newsreel entailing a root and branch reassessment of the possibilities of film as a medium" (p. 11)
Hicks saw that Vertov achieved a higher stage with Cine-Eye (1924), which was an "attempt to create a manifesto for a grassroots movement of cine-journalists whose purpose was to transform society, along with relations to creativity and technology" (p. 15)
Hicks finds the background of Vertov's Cine-Eye movement in Soviet journalism which emphasized the worker correspondent movement. This movement in fact began with the situation that the population found the press difficult to understand, thus the Bolsheviks created new dailies aimed at peasants and semi-illiterate strata of the working class by urging them to write letters to the press. Hicks wrote, "This served to encourage reader participation, and at the same time enabled the setting up of an amateur correspondents' network" (p. 17). The Cine-Eye movement is a precisely embodiment of this movement in Soviet cinema. However, Hicks further pointed out that Vertov went a step further and emphasized the participatory model of news-gathering to make this grassroots movement far more effective. Vertov stated that he tried to
"create an army of cine-observers and cine-correspondents with the aim of moving away from the authorship from a single person to mass authorship, with the aim of organising a montage vision--not an accidental but a necessary and sufficient overview of the world every few hours" (as cite in pages 17-18)
Hicks paid particular attention to the use of the Pioneers (Soviet scouts). They are observed and at the same time observers who undertake amateur journalistic research to show every day life. Hicks wrote "Cine-Eye reveals that everyday life, the normal appearance of bread, masks the labour invested in it" (p. 19). The choice of the Pioneers was significant to Vertov, argued Hicks. It represents Vertov's emphasis on teaching the next generation the methods of making cinema. The Pionners, while being filmed, were also learning about filming.
Nonetheless, by 1925 the Cine-Eye movement was close to end because of state control over media to disseminate the views of the Party.
Introduction (1-4)
In this book, Hicks focuses on the question as to "how Soviet journalism inspired his creative transformation of newsreel into the new form of documentary film" (p. 1). Contrary to the general assumption that Vertov obviated performance, Hicks argued that Vertov balanced between "recording and reworking and his greatest works combined with unstaged footage to unleash an influential rhetoric force.
The birth of documentary from the spirit of journalism: Cine-Pravda, Cine-Eye (5-21)
In 1922, Vertov began to work on news series Cine-Pravda with his future wife and his brother Mikhail Kaufman. Hicks commented:
"It is with Cine-Pravda that Vertov truly begins to realise cinema's power to exhort in images. Cine-Pravda no. 1 (June 1922) sets the tone for Vertov's newsreels in its sharply rhetorical style, downplaying the registering of events and instead editing together shots taken at different times and places so as to construct an argument. (p. 6-7)
Hicks argued, "The camera does not record an already existing causal relation, it creates it" (p. 7). He found the root cause of this transition from recording to discursive force, persuasion and exhortation in cinema in Soviet journalism.
"Vertov's transformation of what to become known as documentary cinema is inconceivable outside the context of the Bolshevik approach to journalism. Stylistically and in its approach to information, persuasion and communication, Vertov's film-making of the 1920s extends the model of the Bolshevik newspaper." (p. 8)
Hicks stressed that in stark contrast to the liberal conception of journalism in the West, the Bolshviks never considered objectivity as a primary consideration. Lenin stated "A newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a collective organiser" (as cited in page 8).
Hicks finds the similarity between Soviet Journalism and Vertov's renewal of newsreel as:
"[T]hey start from the fact, but elaborate on it so as to present it as powerfully and as engagingly as possible. Vertov too maintained a similar dual commitment, on the one hand to the capacity of cinema to record as a starting point, and on the other hand to exploring and unleashing its creative, persuasive, analytical potential." (p. 10)
In this context Hicks saw Cine-Pravda as "a revolutionary newsreel entailing a root and branch reassessment of the possibilities of film as a medium" (p. 11)
Hicks saw that Vertov achieved a higher stage with Cine-Eye (1924), which was an "attempt to create a manifesto for a grassroots movement of cine-journalists whose purpose was to transform society, along with relations to creativity and technology" (p. 15)
Hicks finds the background of Vertov's Cine-Eye movement in Soviet journalism which emphasized the worker correspondent movement. This movement in fact began with the situation that the population found the press difficult to understand, thus the Bolsheviks created new dailies aimed at peasants and semi-illiterate strata of the working class by urging them to write letters to the press. Hicks wrote, "This served to encourage reader participation, and at the same time enabled the setting up of an amateur correspondents' network" (p. 17). The Cine-Eye movement is a precisely embodiment of this movement in Soviet cinema. However, Hicks further pointed out that Vertov went a step further and emphasized the participatory model of news-gathering to make this grassroots movement far more effective. Vertov stated that he tried to
"create an army of cine-observers and cine-correspondents with the aim of moving away from the authorship from a single person to mass authorship, with the aim of organising a montage vision--not an accidental but a necessary and sufficient overview of the world every few hours" (as cite in pages 17-18)
Hicks paid particular attention to the use of the Pioneers (Soviet scouts). They are observed and at the same time observers who undertake amateur journalistic research to show every day life. Hicks wrote "Cine-Eye reveals that everyday life, the normal appearance of bread, masks the labour invested in it" (p. 19). The choice of the Pioneers was significant to Vertov, argued Hicks. It represents Vertov's emphasis on teaching the next generation the methods of making cinema. The Pionners, while being filmed, were also learning about filming.
Nonetheless, by 1925 the Cine-Eye movement was close to end because of state control over media to disseminate the views of the Party.
Russian Cinema
Gillespie, David. (2003). Essex, UK: Longman.
Film and Ideology (103-123)
Gillespie asserted that films in the 1920s follows Bolshevik policies and its view of history and progress. Directors, including Pudovkin, Eisenstein, Vertov, etc. undertook different styles to commit to the Bolshevik cause and used their art to promote it. As Gillespie addressed, in particular, Vertov combined this political perspective with his artistic sense and cinematic authorship in order to "create a utopian vision of the new city through the medium of the camera" (p. 107). This artistic and political ambition, however, came to nothing under the propaganda of social realism determining all forms of cultural production in 1934, Gillespie argued.
Christie and Taylor (1994). The film factory: Russian and Soviet cinema in documents, 1986-1939.
Film and Ideology (103-123)
Gillespie asserted that films in the 1920s follows Bolshevik policies and its view of history and progress. Directors, including Pudovkin, Eisenstein, Vertov, etc. undertook different styles to commit to the Bolshevik cause and used their art to promote it. As Gillespie addressed, in particular, Vertov combined this political perspective with his artistic sense and cinematic authorship in order to "create a utopian vision of the new city through the medium of the camera" (p. 107). This artistic and political ambition, however, came to nothing under the propaganda of social realism determining all forms of cultural production in 1934, Gillespie argued.
Christie and Taylor (1994). The film factory: Russian and Soviet cinema in documents, 1986-1939.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Cinematic authorship
Gaut, Berys. (2010). In A philosophy of cinematic art (pp. 98-151). Cambridge University Press.
In this chapter, Gaut developed his multiple-authorship thesis in cinematic authorship. First of all, he wrote, "Yet the notion of film authorship--so appealing to lay intuition and scholarly understanding alike--oddly mysterious and deeply elusive" (p. 98). Single authorship, predominating the film study, fails to explain the tendency of mainstream films, which is characterized with collaboration, Gaut said. Here, he argued that "we must acknowledge that collaborative films have multiple authors" (p. 99).
(He defined a mainstream film: "one that has at least two people in the key production roles" (p. 106).)
Responding to Livingston's influential argument in the defense of single authorship of mainstream films, Gaut argued that Livingston's dual requirements of expressive/artistic intentions and sufficient control of the work as whole is important; but as Livingston notes that in large-scale commercial films single authorship is not the most common, Gaut finds the irony in L's argument for single-authorship. In particular, in the context of actors' roles in collaboration, Gaut put it:
[A]ctors and many other contributors should count as co-authors of the film, since they typically have expressive sub-plans that mesh, to varying degrees, with the other contributors to the film, just as the director typically has expressive sub-plans that mesh with theirs; and, in the case of those authors who are artists, they typically also have plans to give the film artistically relevant qualities, such as making it beautiful or original, and so on. (p. 122)
Gaut agrees that the director is likely to be the most important contributor of expressive and artistic properties to a film. By saying so, he stressed that multiple-authorship does not require that all the contributions must be of equal importance. Further, as to "sufficient control", Gaut argued, "If the relationship of a film are construed broadly, as in the pattern making example, then other artistic contributors besides the writer-director must count as co-authors." By emphasizing non-hierarchical relationship in lieu of control, Gaut argues a possibility of multiple contribution, and thus, multiple-authorship.
Gaut defended multiple-authorship from the ontological aspect of film. He argued that "films are moving pictures with sound, which incorporate mechanical recordings of performances" (p. 126). Nonetheless, tarnished by the literary paradigm, which uses a quite different medium, cinematic authorship has been wrongly understood, Gaut argued. Further, Gaut continued to stress, "The film actor, then, co-determines (with the screen writer, director, or whomever) the character she plays in a film.
Gaut further refined multiple authorship. Gaut discussed: (1) different degrees of creative powers in collaborative artistic activities; (2) different degrees to which different collaborators are in agreement with others. Gaut points out, "The collaborators may also either be aware of , or be completely unconscious of the fact that they are in agreement or in conflict" (p. 128)
[Which is true in VTW projects. Collaboration sometimes breaks.]
Therefore, Gaut argued that films should be multiply classified, not only by directors but also actors, cameramen, editors, etc. In particular, Gaut argued, multiple-authorship successfully explains the "contradictory text" of a film, in which authors do not have the same views and interpretation, which results in different results from the director's intention. Defending multiple-authorship, Gaut put it:
"Sub-plans can refuse to mesh with each other, sometimes spectacularly, but a multiply authored film can result, and it may be an artistically successful one, sometimes precisely because of this lack of significant mesh." (p. 132)
Finally, interesting to see his comparison between film-making and jazz music performance, which show "a set of strong musical personalities who converse with each other through their playing and create music richer than any could make on his own." (p. 132). For him, both are one of the "dramatic individualism" (p. 132) and a synergistic outcome.
In this chapter, Gaut developed his multiple-authorship thesis in cinematic authorship. First of all, he wrote, "Yet the notion of film authorship--so appealing to lay intuition and scholarly understanding alike--oddly mysterious and deeply elusive" (p. 98). Single authorship, predominating the film study, fails to explain the tendency of mainstream films, which is characterized with collaboration, Gaut said. Here, he argued that "we must acknowledge that collaborative films have multiple authors" (p. 99).
(He defined a mainstream film: "one that has at least two people in the key production roles" (p. 106).)
Responding to Livingston's influential argument in the defense of single authorship of mainstream films, Gaut argued that Livingston's dual requirements of expressive/artistic intentions and sufficient control of the work as whole is important; but as Livingston notes that in large-scale commercial films single authorship is not the most common, Gaut finds the irony in L's argument for single-authorship. In particular, in the context of actors' roles in collaboration, Gaut put it:
[A]ctors and many other contributors should count as co-authors of the film, since they typically have expressive sub-plans that mesh, to varying degrees, with the other contributors to the film, just as the director typically has expressive sub-plans that mesh with theirs; and, in the case of those authors who are artists, they typically also have plans to give the film artistically relevant qualities, such as making it beautiful or original, and so on. (p. 122)
Gaut agrees that the director is likely to be the most important contributor of expressive and artistic properties to a film. By saying so, he stressed that multiple-authorship does not require that all the contributions must be of equal importance. Further, as to "sufficient control", Gaut argued, "If the relationship of a film are construed broadly, as in the pattern making example, then other artistic contributors besides the writer-director must count as co-authors." By emphasizing non-hierarchical relationship in lieu of control, Gaut argues a possibility of multiple contribution, and thus, multiple-authorship.
Gaut defended multiple-authorship from the ontological aspect of film. He argued that "films are moving pictures with sound, which incorporate mechanical recordings of performances" (p. 126). Nonetheless, tarnished by the literary paradigm, which uses a quite different medium, cinematic authorship has been wrongly understood, Gaut argued. Further, Gaut continued to stress, "The film actor, then, co-determines (with the screen writer, director, or whomever) the character she plays in a film.
Gaut further refined multiple authorship. Gaut discussed: (1) different degrees of creative powers in collaborative artistic activities; (2) different degrees to which different collaborators are in agreement with others. Gaut points out, "The collaborators may also either be aware of , or be completely unconscious of the fact that they are in agreement or in conflict" (p. 128)
[Which is true in VTW projects. Collaboration sometimes breaks.]
Therefore, Gaut argued that films should be multiply classified, not only by directors but also actors, cameramen, editors, etc. In particular, Gaut argued, multiple-authorship successfully explains the "contradictory text" of a film, in which authors do not have the same views and interpretation, which results in different results from the director's intention. Defending multiple-authorship, Gaut put it:
"Sub-plans can refuse to mesh with each other, sometimes spectacularly, but a multiply authored film can result, and it may be an artistically successful one, sometimes precisely because of this lack of significant mesh." (p. 132)
Finally, interesting to see his comparison between film-making and jazz music performance, which show "a set of strong musical personalities who converse with each other through their playing and create music richer than any could make on his own." (p. 132). For him, both are one of the "dramatic individualism" (p. 132) and a synergistic outcome.
Types of authorship in cinema
Livingston, Paiseley. (2009). In Cinema, philosophy, and Bergman: On film as philosophy (pp. 63-83). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Livingston three key issues of mainstream large-scale film-making. (1) individual and joint/collective authorship: he emphasizes these two forms of authorship in lieu of the predominant notion of individual authorship. (2)authorship and value: one of the reasons for discussing authorship is the link between certain kinds of values and intentional activity. (3) authorship and unity: Livingston argues, "only the maker of a large, strongly unified life work or oeuvre complet truly qualifies as an author" (p. 68). [This view makes him distinct from Gaut, who argued for multiple authors within a single work of art.]
Livingston argues for two conditions of cinematic authorship: sufficient control over the production of a work plus an intentional act to express the author's own attitude. In this regard, he presented various types of cinematic authorship: individual authorship, individual authorship in the context of a collective film-making process, and joint authorship amongst equals. In particular with joint authorship, Livingston borrowed the term "mashing sub-plans" used by Michael E. Bratman (Faces of intention: Selected essays on intention and agency, 98-103, Cambridge University Press, 1999):
"In many cases where two or more persons jointly author an utterance or work, they intentionally generate or select the text, artefact [sic], performance, or structure that is the work's publicly observable component; in so doing, they act on meshing sub-plans and exercise shared control and decision-making authority over the results; furthermore, in making the work or utterance, they together take credit for it as a whole." (p. 74)
Livingston contended that individual authorship is indeed rare in large-scale commercial film-making, for film-making is a collective process in which people depend on each other's skills. And yet, he stressed that there should be one who control over the overall process. In this respect, Livingston distinguishes himself from Gaut (1997, 2010), who argued for multiple authorship in mainstream authorship, in part, because actors also contribute to creating artistic properties that deserves recognition as one of the work's multiple authors.
Despite his agreement with Gaut that most films are not individually authored and various artistic contributions merit appreciation, Livingston limited the word author to " a person who has played the role of the dominant coordinating collaborator in the creation of the work, provided, that is, that the work has been made by this person with the aim of expressing his or her attitude (or, in the absence of any expressive content, with the aim of endowing the work with artistic quality)" (p. 77). One of the reasons why Livingston disqualify actors' performances as authorship is that they do not play controlling and expressive roles in the making of the work, although their performances are successfully "mashed" with the director's intention and expression.
In short, Livingston emphasized, in the notion of cinematic authorship, overall control and expressive or artistic intentional design in the making of a work. Nonetheless, he does not exclude other types of cinematic authorship, namely, in non-hierarchical forms of artistic collaboration. He leaves the door open to this field. [I think that PV can fall into this category.]
Livingston three key issues of mainstream large-scale film-making. (1) individual and joint/collective authorship: he emphasizes these two forms of authorship in lieu of the predominant notion of individual authorship. (2)authorship and value: one of the reasons for discussing authorship is the link between certain kinds of values and intentional activity. (3) authorship and unity: Livingston argues, "only the maker of a large, strongly unified life work or oeuvre complet truly qualifies as an author" (p. 68). [This view makes him distinct from Gaut, who argued for multiple authors within a single work of art.]
Livingston argues for two conditions of cinematic authorship: sufficient control over the production of a work plus an intentional act to express the author's own attitude. In this regard, he presented various types of cinematic authorship: individual authorship, individual authorship in the context of a collective film-making process, and joint authorship amongst equals. In particular with joint authorship, Livingston borrowed the term "mashing sub-plans" used by Michael E. Bratman (Faces of intention: Selected essays on intention and agency, 98-103, Cambridge University Press, 1999):
"In many cases where two or more persons jointly author an utterance or work, they intentionally generate or select the text, artefact [sic], performance, or structure that is the work's publicly observable component; in so doing, they act on meshing sub-plans and exercise shared control and decision-making authority over the results; furthermore, in making the work or utterance, they together take credit for it as a whole." (p. 74)
Livingston contended that individual authorship is indeed rare in large-scale commercial film-making, for film-making is a collective process in which people depend on each other's skills. And yet, he stressed that there should be one who control over the overall process. In this respect, Livingston distinguishes himself from Gaut (1997, 2010), who argued for multiple authorship in mainstream authorship, in part, because actors also contribute to creating artistic properties that deserves recognition as one of the work's multiple authors.
Despite his agreement with Gaut that most films are not individually authored and various artistic contributions merit appreciation, Livingston limited the word author to " a person who has played the role of the dominant coordinating collaborator in the creation of the work, provided, that is, that the work has been made by this person with the aim of expressing his or her attitude (or, in the absence of any expressive content, with the aim of endowing the work with artistic quality)" (p. 77). One of the reasons why Livingston disqualify actors' performances as authorship is that they do not play controlling and expressive roles in the making of the work, although their performances are successfully "mashed" with the director's intention and expression.
In short, Livingston emphasized, in the notion of cinematic authorship, overall control and expressive or artistic intentional design in the making of a work. Nonetheless, he does not exclude other types of cinematic authorship, namely, in non-hierarchical forms of artistic collaboration. He leaves the door open to this field. [I think that PV can fall into this category.]
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Women's Cinema as Counter-Cinema
Johnston, Claire. (2006, reprinted). In S. Thornham (Ed.), Feminist Film Theory: a reader (pp. 31-40). New York: NY University Press. (Originally from Johnston, C. (1973). In Notes on Women's Cinema. London: Society for Education in Film and Television (pp.24-31))
Johnston criticizes that, despite changes in the image of man in cinema, the primitive stereotyping of women remained with little modification, which she relates to sexist ideology in cinema. As a result, she argues, the dominant ideology inscribes women as ahistoric/eternal/unchanging entity while placing men inside history. Therefore Johnston asserts that women as women are absent in cinema and their fetishistic images are only portrayed in relation to male narcissism. Further, she writes that the star system relies on the fetishisation of woman, arousing the collective fantasy of phallocentrism.
Within this context, Johnston proposes the concept of counter-cinema as an alternative strategic use of film as a means to disseminate feminist ideas. Looking at emerging feminist cinema, Johnston sharply notes that women's cinema has taken its aesthetics from television and cinema vérité techniques (e.g. Three Lives, Women Talking, Portrait of Jason), which is depicting images of women talking to camera about their experiences, with little intervention by the film-maker. [This approach is very similar to PV] Refuting the possibility of capturing the reality, Johnston emphasizes in expressing women's oppression that "It has to be constructed/manufactured. New meanings have to be created by disrupting the fabric of the male bourgeois cinema within the text of the film (p.37)". In this way, she warns the danger of developing a non-intervention cinema. She argues such cinema promotes a passive subjectivity at the expense of analysis.
On the other hand, she writes, "[A] desire for change can only come about by drawing on fantasy" (p.37). With this respect, she delineates the counter-cinema as a collective work for a desire for change by sharing skills and developing sisterhood. Through the collective methods, she argues, one may truly come to understand how cinema works and demystify the workings of ideology.
Johnston criticizes that, despite changes in the image of man in cinema, the primitive stereotyping of women remained with little modification, which she relates to sexist ideology in cinema. As a result, she argues, the dominant ideology inscribes women as ahistoric/eternal/unchanging entity while placing men inside history. Therefore Johnston asserts that women as women are absent in cinema and their fetishistic images are only portrayed in relation to male narcissism. Further, she writes that the star system relies on the fetishisation of woman, arousing the collective fantasy of phallocentrism.
Within this context, Johnston proposes the concept of counter-cinema as an alternative strategic use of film as a means to disseminate feminist ideas. Looking at emerging feminist cinema, Johnston sharply notes that women's cinema has taken its aesthetics from television and cinema vérité techniques (e.g. Three Lives, Women Talking, Portrait of Jason), which is depicting images of women talking to camera about their experiences, with little intervention by the film-maker. [This approach is very similar to PV] Refuting the possibility of capturing the reality, Johnston emphasizes in expressing women's oppression that "It has to be constructed/manufactured. New meanings have to be created by disrupting the fabric of the male bourgeois cinema within the text of the film (p.37)". In this way, she warns the danger of developing a non-intervention cinema. She argues such cinema promotes a passive subjectivity at the expense of analysis.
On the other hand, she writes, "[A] desire for change can only come about by drawing on fantasy" (p.37). With this respect, she delineates the counter-cinema as a collective work for a desire for change by sharing skills and developing sisterhood. Through the collective methods, she argues, one may truly come to understand how cinema works and demystify the workings of ideology.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Performance Ethnography
Denzin, Norman. (2003). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
The Call to Performance (pp. 3-24)
In crafting an emancipatory discourse, Denzin turns to a performance or art-based approach to culture, politics and pedagogy and explores performance autoethonography and performance art as vehicles for enacting a cultural politics.
Denzin defines cultural performances as contingent events in the flow of everyday life while performance as an interpretive event, an act of intervention and a form of agency that brings culture and the person into play. He argues that if the world is a performance, we need a model of social science that is performative. To him, performance questions an conventional ethnographic textualism, which turns culture to words or books, and instead put culture into action or motion. He also notes that unlike the conventional ethnography, it values intimacy and involvement as forms of understanding and makes sites of oppression visible.
Denzin pays particular attention to performance autoethnographers, who insert their own experience into the cultural perfomances they study and turn the personal into political. Performance autoethnography, he observes, becomes a civic, participatory and collaborative project. With members of community, the performer creates community-based interpretations and community actions for social change, much as Du Bois's all-black theater did (p. 17).
The Cinematic Society and the Reflexive Interview (pp. 57-76)
In his critique about Trinh's film Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989), Denzin discusses a reflexive documentary interview style. To him, reflexivity centers on representation. His summary about Trinh's reflexive and dialogic interivew text includes:
--It makes the audience responsible for interpretation.
--It resists all dichotomies (male/female and so on).
--It foregrounds difference not conflict.
--It uses multiple voices.
--It presents silence as a form of resistance.
Denzin states that Trinh creates the space for viewers to appraise critically the politics of representation by challenging the traditional rules of a unbiased gaze and letting the audience actively participate in the interpretation process.
Critical Performance Pedagogy (pp. 222-241)
Denzin writes, "[Performance ethonography] is a way of being moral and political in the world. Performance ethonography is moral discourse. In the discursive spaces of performativity there is no distance between the performance and the politics that hte performance enacts. The two are interwined, each nourishing the other, opposite sides of the same coin, one and the same thing" (p. 224)
"A genuine democracy requries hope, dissent, and criticism" (p. 224).
"Performance (auto)ethnography is the future of ethnography...The reflexive ethnographer becomes the guiding presence in the ethonographic text" (p. 224).
Performance Ethics (pp. 242-262).
"As praxis, performance ethnography is a way of acting on the world in order to change it" (p. 228).
"Performance texts provide the grounds for liberation practice by opening up concrete situations that are being transformed through acts of resistance" (p. 229).
"Through performance and participation, the scholar develops a 'participatory mode of consciousness' (Bishop, 1998:208) and understanding. This helps shape the participant-driven nature of this form of inquiry and folds the researcher as performenr into the narrative and moral accountability structures of the group" (p. 239).
(Bishop, Russell. "Freeing Ourselves from Neo-colonial Domination in Research: A Maori Approach to Creating Knowledge" International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 11: 199-219.)
The Call to Performance (pp. 3-24)
In crafting an emancipatory discourse, Denzin turns to a performance or art-based approach to culture, politics and pedagogy and explores performance autoethonography and performance art as vehicles for enacting a cultural politics.
Denzin defines cultural performances as contingent events in the flow of everyday life while performance as an interpretive event, an act of intervention and a form of agency that brings culture and the person into play. He argues that if the world is a performance, we need a model of social science that is performative. To him, performance questions an conventional ethnographic textualism, which turns culture to words or books, and instead put culture into action or motion. He also notes that unlike the conventional ethnography, it values intimacy and involvement as forms of understanding and makes sites of oppression visible.
Denzin pays particular attention to performance autoethnographers, who insert their own experience into the cultural perfomances they study and turn the personal into political. Performance autoethnography, he observes, becomes a civic, participatory and collaborative project. With members of community, the performer creates community-based interpretations and community actions for social change, much as Du Bois's all-black theater did (p. 17).
The Cinematic Society and the Reflexive Interview (pp. 57-76)
In his critique about Trinh's film Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989), Denzin discusses a reflexive documentary interview style. To him, reflexivity centers on representation. His summary about Trinh's reflexive and dialogic interivew text includes:
--It makes the audience responsible for interpretation.
--It resists all dichotomies (male/female and so on).
--It foregrounds difference not conflict.
--It uses multiple voices.
--It presents silence as a form of resistance.
Denzin states that Trinh creates the space for viewers to appraise critically the politics of representation by challenging the traditional rules of a unbiased gaze and letting the audience actively participate in the interpretation process.
Critical Performance Pedagogy (pp. 222-241)
Denzin writes, "[Performance ethonography] is a way of being moral and political in the world. Performance ethonography is moral discourse. In the discursive spaces of performativity there is no distance between the performance and the politics that hte performance enacts. The two are interwined, each nourishing the other, opposite sides of the same coin, one and the same thing" (p. 224)
"A genuine democracy requries hope, dissent, and criticism" (p. 224).
"Performance (auto)ethnography is the future of ethnography...The reflexive ethnographer becomes the guiding presence in the ethonographic text" (p. 224).
Performance Ethics (pp. 242-262).
"As praxis, performance ethnography is a way of acting on the world in order to change it" (p. 228).
"Performance texts provide the grounds for liberation practice by opening up concrete situations that are being transformed through acts of resistance" (p. 229).
"Through performance and participation, the scholar develops a 'participatory mode of consciousness' (Bishop, 1998:208) and understanding. This helps shape the participant-driven nature of this form of inquiry and folds the researcher as performenr into the narrative and moral accountability structures of the group" (p. 239).
(Bishop, Russell. "Freeing Ourselves from Neo-colonial Domination in Research: A Maori Approach to Creating Knowledge" International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 11: 199-219.)
Saturday, February 7, 2009
The Cinematic Society and The Reflexive Interview
(Norman Denzin. (2003). In J.F. Cubrium & J.A. Holstein (eds.), Postmodernism Interviewing (pp. 141-155). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage)
In writing "we inhabit a secondhand world" (p. 141)where we experience only representations of the world, Denzin names the contemporary society postmodern cinematic society--"the society that knows itself through the reflective gaze of the cinematic apparatus". The birth of cinematic surveillance in the early 20th century, he explains, made the society exceptionally prone to listening and looking, and this tendency brought about interview society as a consequence of the advent of cinematic realism such as color and sound as well as the emergence of journalistic reporting in mid 1920s. He observes expansions of the use of interview in all sectors of social life and studies such that "the interview society has turned the confessional mode of discourse into a public form of entertainment" and "a public commodity".
He categorizes into four formats the machinery of interview that the interview society takes: objectively neutral format, entertainment and investigative format, collaborative or active format and reflective interview format. By reflexive interview format he means careful interpretation of hidden meanings by paying attention to details and deconstructing the interview itself.
In reviewing "technological apparatus that produce truthful statement" from M. Trinh (1991, When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender and Cultural Politics. NY: Routledge; p.39), he agrees with Trinh on the influences of documentary interview style on the culture of cinematic society: that is, a filmmaker-as-interivewer sculpts the illusion that viewers watch unmediated reality by using the apparatus and this became predominant cinematic practice in American culture, in particular TV commercials and news. Echoing Trinh's emphasis on reflexive reading, Denzin reminds us that reality is socially constructed and writes, "Filmmaking and documentary interviewing thus become methods of "framing" reality".
In writing "we inhabit a secondhand world" (p. 141)where we experience only representations of the world, Denzin names the contemporary society postmodern cinematic society--"the society that knows itself through the reflective gaze of the cinematic apparatus". The birth of cinematic surveillance in the early 20th century, he explains, made the society exceptionally prone to listening and looking, and this tendency brought about interview society as a consequence of the advent of cinematic realism such as color and sound as well as the emergence of journalistic reporting in mid 1920s. He observes expansions of the use of interview in all sectors of social life and studies such that "the interview society has turned the confessional mode of discourse into a public form of entertainment" and "a public commodity".
He categorizes into four formats the machinery of interview that the interview society takes: objectively neutral format, entertainment and investigative format, collaborative or active format and reflective interview format. By reflexive interview format he means careful interpretation of hidden meanings by paying attention to details and deconstructing the interview itself.
In reviewing "technological apparatus that produce truthful statement" from M. Trinh (1991, When the Moon Waxes Red: Representation, Gender and Cultural Politics. NY: Routledge; p.39), he agrees with Trinh on the influences of documentary interview style on the culture of cinematic society: that is, a filmmaker-as-interivewer sculpts the illusion that viewers watch unmediated reality by using the apparatus and this became predominant cinematic practice in American culture, in particular TV commercials and news. Echoing Trinh's emphasis on reflexive reading, Denzin reminds us that reality is socially constructed and writes, "Filmmaking and documentary interviewing thus become methods of "framing" reality".
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