various failures #4: sensations quest

one of my first post film school shorts circa 2001 drawing heavily from Orson Welles' adaptation of Kafka's The Trial and Jim Morrison's notes on film found in The Lords and the New Creatures.

The Far Vision

Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective,
an eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which
does not respond to the name of everything but which must
know each object encountered in life through an adventure of
perception

~ Stan Brakhage, Metaphors on Vision



Wherever your opinion falls in regards to a technological singularity, it’s difficult to argue that at present our technology has not significantly altered our methods of communication, organization and recall. These changes in our information processes are begetting changes in every industry and culture in the modernized world and yet the worlds of information technology and cinema seem to me to be the ones worth concentrating on here. This is because while the one is the source of these changes, the other is a mirror, capable of giving us perspective. The fact that at present that perspective is seemingly hopelessly mired in the linear is the crux of the problem. Regardless, both are driving forces in our culture towards a hive mind i.e. a collective consciousness. Cinema has always been a vast edifice of memories but our ever growing immersion in a second life via technology is now if not challenging that edifice then working in tandem with it, creating the possibility of new streamlined perceptions that are both exciting and dangerous. Imagine for instance a post intellectual perception in which we would no longer be concerned with the amassing of knowledge but the experience of it, a possibility dependent on myriad factors not the least of which is our ability to free ourselves from the shackles of narrative but a possibility none the less. Are we not in many ways creating a collective memory through our online interactions here on The Auteurs or through sites like Facebook, Flickr and our personal blogs? A collective consciousness in the form of flow based interactions on Google Wave or Shareflow? And while the digital revolution may have democratized the world of filmmaking it has also seemingly, paradoxically narrowed not only the playing field but the field of vision of the so called revolutionaries, a phenomenon, I believe to be directly related to the non-linear technology we have embraced while still slaves to a linear perception. I am not suggesting that these interactions are alone set to drastically change us as humans but I believe the seeds are being sown at the root level to completely upend our perception and therefore our experience of time. There is a shift occurring from the linear to the spatial that should not be ignored.


This concerns me at this early stage first and foremost as a filmmaker because for me cinema is an essential tool in the forming of social, cultural and political perception. Given this is mostly accomplished through propaganda whether it be of the political or lifestyle variety the fact remains that much of how we perceive the world is informed by cultural/historical narratives reinforced by cinema and to a larger extent, cinema’s bastard child; media in all her permutations. As a lover of cinema I have long enjoyed the pleasures of both narrative film and documentary but as a practicing filmmaker I can’t shake the power experimental cinema holds over me. The immediacy and rawness of emotion evoked in the best examples of the form are integral to my continued fascination but the true power of experimental cinema for me has always resided in the intangibles; that which I cannot locate absolutely in a strip of unspooling celluloid or line of resolution is the alpha and omega of my addiction, those moments when time is mastered and sculpted not into a perception guided by narrative but pure, direct experience. More often than not I find these experiences in experimental film where the intention, the theme, the emotion is unencumbered by trite storylines or clever structure. And it is with experimental cinema that our greatest chances for an evolution of perception lay.

From Muyenbridge’s work with the persistence of vision to Melies showing us the man in the moon to Eisenstein and the birth of formalism, the experimental, the avant-garde, the underground has existed within cinema since its inception. In fact, cinema itself was the experiment, only later did it beget the entertainment that supports and reflects life, that now however pervasively dictates it for many of us. It can be argued that cinema changed the world as much as the automobile or the splitting of the atom. For me it is most obviously the tool mankind has created to teach himself the art of non-linear perception (the process of creating a film, narrative or otherwise is and has always been non-linear) led sickeningly astray by advertising executives. However this proto-spatial perception we are designing for ourselves is long on knowledge and short on experience, a problem exacerbated by cinema’s reliance on narrative, a problem whose remedy relies in cinemas true non-linear nature.


If we look at the history of the best experimental film, it’s not hard to see the social and political corollaries, the concerns and pressures that formed the work and methods of filmmakers like Deren in the 40’s (female identity, social rituals.) Anger in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s (homosexual identity, occultism) but too often these works were marred by a reliance on Freudian symbolism, the non sequitur, psychosexual themes and metaphors that read today as clearly as any Hollywood narrative (perhaps a reason why modern student filmmakers emulating them often fall flat.) It wasn’t until Brakhage made his central metaphor that of visual perception that we were given a language with which to articulate direct experience on celluloid and as much as his work was a part of the larger movement of Modern Art it was more importantly the ground work for a spatial cinema that has yet to be fully realized but whose time has come.


Experience is the key word here, not entertainment and certainly not knowledge but direct experience devoid of the intellect. An experience beyond the sum of its parts, an experience becoming more and more rare in today’s culture for while we live in a time where the possibilities for sharing our visions are unparalleled the critical thought and support for experimental cinema is simply not there. In fact it hasn’t been since the golden era of the music video, an era that saw the exploitation of experimental film techniques in the service of song narrative and band image effectively moving the form one step forward and two steps back. The advent of the internet and video sharing sites like YouTube have so far only further widened the gap between intelligent discourse and true experimental filmmaking, an occurrence that is completely at odds with the possibilities of the technology at hand and I would argue due not simply to a lack of interest but a lack of exposure, education and support, initiatives that we must foster as we venture forward if there is to be any hope for the intangible.


Moving forward what matters most is that we encourage, nurture and multiply these intangibles by providing a breeding ground for the experimental; a place online and physical where instinct, emotion and experience are placed before form, intellect and tradition. We mustn’t leave experimental cinema to be regulated to the online ghettos of YouTube and the rarified world of art galleries but give it a serious national and international platform where it can if not change the world than at least the viewer’s perception of it. For why do we create art? Is it not to share visions, illuminate corners of human experience, cleanse the palette of the ubiquitous?


The less accessible a work is to the intellect, the greater it is

~ Goethe

You can read the article as it originally apearred in the auteurs garage; http://mubi.com/garage/posts/1872 if you're lucky!

for your consideration: benicio del toro digs thelonious monk

Del Toro initially made a name for himself as being the guy at the audition who demanded doing every role in some alien patois unintelligible to everyone including himself, see his small role in Weir's Fearless as well as the following evidence; his most notorious;



Monk made a name for himself for being a genius piano player and eccentric;



enjoy the music then listen at 3:30 on . . .



Del Toro a fan of Monk? Both simply mumble mouths suffering the occasional Tourette's outburst? Completely unrelated? You decide.

for your consideration

Over the years, my cinematically saturated brain has made more than a few strange connections between actors and their inspirations, directors and their crib sheets, writers and their muses. This is not so much a place to expose homages and rip-offs but more a space to raise questions about more abstract and potentially subconscious influences on the work of film artists in general. Rather than further explaination, I will demonstrate. For your consideration;

When I first saw Kevin Spacey in Seven;



my initial reaction was that he was channelling HAL from Kubrick's 2001;



I've been making this connection for years. How strange then that in 2009 Spacey decides to make his own foray into AI voices with Duncan Jones' Moon;



Mere coincidence? Knowing homage? Spacey a robot? You decide.

various failures #3

I was lucky enough to catch Jim Carroll perform at The Great American Music Hall in San Francisco in 2001 where he performed among other pieces, "a child growing up with the sun" one of my favorite poems. This short short is in honor of that piece and the man's passing late last year. R.I.P.

various failures #2

and one more for this morning. this one more recent and again borrowing from the music of jenna gibbon, in particular her 'love song for serena' albeit in an altered form. this one is a part of my growing series of experiments with tone and mood, those seeking narrative need not apply.

various failures

welcome to the first in a long line of videos from my film school days to present that shall be presented under the banner; various failures. so without further preamble here is a video from 2008 for my girl jenna gibbon's song 'shelter' and yes that is muyenbridges experiments with persistence of vision that I borrow from. public domain is such a blessing.

Damn Your Eyes: Fear and Self Loathing in Peckinpah's 'Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia'

Alfredo Garcia’s head may very well be the most perfect example of the Macguffin in cinema history, the ultimate hook for character and viewer alike. This is after all not a stolen necklace, the great whatsit, Rosebud or Marcellus Wallace’s briefcase but a man’s decapitated head. At the very least it serves as one of the goriest examples of the technique while at the same time functioning as a Rosetta Stone of sorts. Al’s head perfectly embodies the castration anxiety that permeates the film while also illuminating with one grisly image Peckinpah’s allegiance with modern masculinities will to self destruct in the face of emasculation.

Watching this death trip for the first time, it’s easy to take it as a crude meditation on revenge and leave it at that. However, Peckinpah’s personal life (his losing battle with alcoholism and Hollywood) not to mention the unrelenting nihilism of the film complicate the matter. And when you take into account how much control Peckinpah had over the film(the first and only time he had final cut) and the fact that Warren Oates is basically imitating the director to the point that he is wearing his clothes it becomes impossible to see the film as anything but a painful, personal statement.

One thing is certain, thematically everything is deliberate, even if the raggedness of some of the scenes suggest otherwise. Bad framing and stock footage all play their part, strengthening the experience in a way that more polished scenes would have rendered impotent. This isn’t a pretty film, aesthetically or otherwise and it shouldn’t be. It is however a minor miracle in cinema history. This is his Citizen Kane, the one and only time he got to pull out all the stops and make the film he wanted to make and not worry about being neutered by the studios. As a result he gave us a film perhaps more in line with modern masculine anxieties than any other film before or since.

The violence is nothing new, nor the requisite over cranked scenes of said carnage but there is a terrible truth in this film that only exists as mere sketches in the rest of his work. This is not just the standard Peckinpah boilerplate about living honorably in a dishonest world, the price of revenge or man’s inhumanity to man but a confession of blinding fear at being seen for what one truly is and a fuck you to those that would judge. More than that, it is a study in self loathing and losing on one’s own terms.

Warren Oates as the stand in gives the best performance of his career, doing Peckinpah via Fred C. Dobbs but whatever romanticism the allusion may inherently possess, Peckinpah kills with the fatalistic realism of poverty in and around Mexico City. From the start Oates’ Bennie is a self serving opportunist looking for a way out of his dismal life, grinning like a fool and entertaining the tourists that wander into his cantina. When the chance to make some money off another man’s head presents itself, via two very menacing homosexual killers, Bennie takes it. All the better that the head belongs to his girlfriend, Elita’s now deceased lover. This first half of the film is standard threatened male psychodrama with Bennie literally seeking to cut the head off Elita’s boyfriend but as the couple hit the road their relationship takes center stage, playing out in what some have called “turgid melodrama” but where above all else their love for one another is made obvious and heart achingly believable by Oates and Isela Vega’s candid performances. These scenes are essential in revealing Bennie’s true nature. We see him for the first time as more than just a heel, possibly even once a decent man who is only able to escape his self loathing with the bottle or in the company of the one person who does not judge him, Elita. Bennie’s compulsive wearing of sunglasses, even to bed, his inability to hold his own gaze in the mirror and the numerous lines of dialogue he spits at the men he either mows down in his quest for the head or watches die at others hands; "Damn your eyes! Don’t’ look at me with your goddamn fucking eyes!" are all symptoms of his aversion to judgment, to being seen. With Elita there is no judgment, just frank honesty. Even when he reveals to her that he intends on cutting her dead lovers head off for money, Elita doesn’t judge him. She threatens to leave but she does not judge him. Unfortunately for her she does not leave him either.

As if this confession is not enough to test their relationship, Peckinpah chooses to stage a strange rape scene a few minutes later in which Elita passively accepts her fate, telling Bennie “It’s okay. I’ve been here before. You don’t know the way.” This is without a doubt the most controversial scene in the film and while most critics seem to be at a loss as to why Peckinpah chose to include it, it appears to be the moment on which the rest of the film turns. It is this scene and not Elita’s death later in the film that sets Bennie on his kamikaze course. Guarded by a guitar playing, gun wielding biker, Bennie is forced to watch his lover accept her rape as par for the course and he takes an inordinate amount of time making up his mind weather or not to accept it too. You can see the struggle in Oates’ face as he chokes on it and finally refuses it. Meanwhile, Elita’s participation in her own rape is an obvious attempt to take control of the situation and hopefully save their lives, not the misogynistic indulgence many have seen it as. For Bennie however Elita’s strength and co-operation is an unbearable emasculation. Everything that follows is a vivid illustration of a man lost in his masculine role. Not until Elita’s death does he see a direction to follow, a chance to redeem his masculinity. Make no mistake about it, the violence that dominates the rest of the film is as much about attrition as it is revenge.


When Bennie does finally get the head it becomes clear that he can no longer hide from the truth of his petty existence. Here is a man talking to a head in a sack. A head that has cost him what little happiness he had and that will cost him everything else by the time the credits roll. There are no other options for Bennie. He has come face to face with himself and the only respite is death. It’s telling how Peckinpah frames the graveyard scenes where Bennie prepares to decapitate Alfredo Garcia’s head; all close ups of Bennie from the neck up, never Alfredo. In fact we never see the head outside of its burlap sack despite being in Bennie’s possession for the last half of the film. It is after all the ugly truth of masculinity, the monster in the bag, Bennie’s albatross as he drives stubbornly toward his redemption.


Finally, I think it’s important not to overlook the strange echo of the film’s prevalent themes that Robert Webber and Gig Young’s portrayal of two homosexual killers provides. Little is made of the duo’s sexual orientation perhaps because of the times in which the film was made but more likely by design. Regardless, Robert Webber’s final gasp for his dead lover is so unexpected that it begs to be considered a relevant aspect of Peckinpah’s intention. If Bennie is the figure of redeemed primitive masculinity refusing emasculation then are Webber and Young’s duo to be seen as the new masculinity, modern, emasculated but just as brutal, just as effective? A reality that perhaps Peckinpah recognized but could not or would not accept.