Through the mists of several weeks ago... at least three

Now I feel it pertinent to point out that this blog is the phoenix of another, one significantly less successful. Yes, already. The posts I'd done for that one were elaborate by my standards and made me feel like a technical marvel, a machine with a conscience who's just found out he's better than a human at his own game. That is of course until the computer tookethed away.

Therefore I expect this one to be a blithering mess, a little (even more) incoherent, and not altogether condusive to tertiary education at all, partially because of my anger to rush over the stuff I feel I've already got down. Despite what advantageous observations I could bring to the each text in relation to texts studied in the weeks afterward, I will avoid any anachronisms if only for the honorable intention of not tearing a hole in spacetime. Having said that... Who's ready to Reflect?!

Joseph Cornell's Rose Hobart (1936) could be considered the first fanvid. It is a hybrid of collage and film, assembled from strips of celluloid recovered from the cutting-room floor of George Melford's East of Borneo (1931). I want to suggest that it is not quite a montage. Its aim appears to be primarily experimental, with no clear 'through-line' or persistence of ideas, of visual cues. Any connections between shots, despite how we long for them and search for them in myriad ways, are made at our own peril. To its merit, it is an independent attempt at filmmaking, one free from the shackles of the hollywood systems of commerce and narrative cinema, let alone the 'rules' of filmmaking (shot/reverse shot, 30° rule, etc).

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BRAINWAVE: Please include for possible film No. 5: North By Northwest, Children Of Men.__


What I found immediately disconcerting was the choice of music to accompany the image. I understand this may have been added later, and could only act in a default relation to the movement-image to give it some degree of currency, of flow. Concerning currency, watching the film as we do in a state of ever-presentness, I could not resist the observation that the film was nonetheless playing on our perceptions of narrative-making, our intention of making meaning. We are frustrated as for the length of the film we do not know what is going on, but soon come to the realisation that perhaps Cornell is using film as another medium with which to direct adoration to Rose.

There are a few factors at play that combine to distance us from comfort. I want to focus less on why they are present (that is, because of their mechanical necessity or unavoidable concession) and more on how they contribute (or don't) to my reading of the film. The odd otherworldly blue tint - seen in early Weimar cinema but not in East of Borneo - seperates us further than time or a rudimentary narrative. The music, although grating, is on a loop: it doesn't go anywhere. If the film is to immerse is in a dreamlike state, or to show us such a state, this is complemented by the different temporal registers of a few of the shots. Some are slow, some are extended, repeated.

My next point, which may be a little convoluted, is very important. What we are viewing here occurs at different speeds through time, despite being played back to us at a constant rate. This is not an Actuality (documentary). We cannot believe in participating in the same space as Rose as we ourselves cannot travel through time. Also we don't see primarily in blue. The world is distorted and oblique. To illustrate my point further I'll attept to include a similar and more recent exercise in this sort of "non-worldly" filmmaking:


Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.


If Cornell's practise was to make his film look atiquated, a sort of retro filmmaking to make it appear as a silent film, then what is this? Future-post? I'll leave that to you. Nice song too.