January 25 reading response questions

Sitney, “Ritual and Nature”

1. What are some characteristics of the American psychodrama in the 1940s?
Dreams, ritual, dance, sexual metaphor, a quest for sexual identity.

2. What does Sitney mean by an “imagist” structure replacing narrative structure in Choreography for the Camera?
The imagist structure is the vertical structure we talked about in class. It is
expanding on a single moment vertically instead of horizontally, where the
horizontal movement would be a normal narrative structure.

3. According to Sitney, Ritual in Transfigured Time represents a transition between the psychodrama and what kind of film?
Mythopoeic

4. Respond briefly to Sitney’s reading of Ritual in Transfigured Time (27-28); Is his interpretation compatible with your experience of the film?
Because we only viewed this film once, I suppose I never really understood the
relationship between “the widow” and her pursuer throughout the film. I feel like reading this description of the film helped me to better understand it, by putting it concretely into three parts and explaining the relationships within the film.


Sitney, “The Magus”

5. Paraphrase the paragraph on p. 90 that begins “The filmic dream constituted…” in your own words.
This paragraph talks about the idea of a dream sequence in these films can be
used to call attention to the medium, or have it act reflexively. It allows the
filmmaker to express what they think without consequences because in the end, it was just a dream.

6. According to Sitney, what is the ultimate result at the end of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome?
Everyone in the film are subsumed in the Magus’ power and glory and become
divine through the Magus.


Scott MacDonald, “Cinema 16: Introduction”

7. What were some general tendencies in the programming at Cinema 16, and how were films arranged within individual programs?
Cinema 16 generally liked to show avant-garde films as well as political films that were turned away from major theaters due to censorship restrictions. However, the most popular form was that of the documentary, scientific, or educational film. Films that ‘educated’ the audience were chosen instead of ones that just simply entertained. They also expressed individual personal expression.

The films were arranged within individual programs by Vogel in an Eisensteinian or ‘dialectical’ manner so that the way each film was juxtaposed with the one before or after it forced the audience to think.

8. What kinds of venues rented Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks?
Universities and Film Societies (Wilmington Film Society!) as well as a few individuals. However, there were some outliers, like the U.S. Naval Hospital…interesting.

9. What impact did Cinema 16 have on New York City film culture?
Vogel helped to co-found the New York Film Festival. Also, those who attended Cinema 16 saw the films that were being made, and that they had a place to be seen, so many filmmakers in New York began to create and experiment with new and abstract ideas with film.


Hans Richter, “A History of the Avantgarde”

10. What conditions in Europe made the avant-garde film movement possible after World War I?
Political and economic unrest which caused new ideas to be accepted and desired.
The opposition against conventional film, and the desire for something new and ‘un-canned’. The artistic climate of Europe helped avant-garde to flourish – the different movements in other art forms (Cubism, expressionism, Dadaism, abstract) helped fuel the same for cinema.

The influence of new technique and new art on the public due to the growth of mechanical and energetical things that people realized were not only rational, but provided comfort and beauty to life.

11. If the goal of Impressionist art is “Nature Interpreted by Temperament,” what are the goals of abstract art?
The goals of abstract art are to ‘overcome pure individualistic emotional expression and to find instead the way for the expression of universal feeling… [an] elimination of the uncontrolled, creation of norms, discipline and control of the whole.’