Reading Response 3

1. Post your response to Brakhage's Prelude: Dog Star Man.

In the beginning I saw some superimpositions of fire mixed with car headlights, and I saw this as fire being something from man's past, something primal, and headlights being man's present and something modern, and Dogstarman is going to be mixing the two. I also saw the footage of the mountain mixed in with images of the sun and the moon to say that climbing this mountain is going to be a very large job to tackle.
Even a mountain seems small in comparison to the sun. He then mixes in footage of blood cells, as if to say, something as tiny as blood cells are what will allow dogstarman to climb such a huge mountain.


Sitney, “Apocalypses and Picaresques”

2. Why does Sitney argue that synechdoche plays a major role in Christopher Maclaine’s The End, and how does the film anticipate later achievements by Brakhage and the mythopoeic form?

The End is a film about the end of the world, and synecdoche is representing a part for a whole. The film itself is a synecdoche, the film itself is a part of the end of the world. Brakhage took things like direct address and indirect narration from MacLaine and used them later in his own films.

3. What are some similarities and differences between the apocalyptic visions of Christopher Maclaine and Bruce Conner?

They both take on a sort of comedic or hopeful aspect at one point, Conner's moving in and out between the terrible and the ridiculous, while MacLaine's film gives gradual inklings of hope right before the end of The End.

4. Why are the films of Ron Rice (The Flower Thief) and Robert Nelson (The Great Blondino) examples of Beat sensibility and what Sitney calls the picaresque form?

They portray the absured, anarchistic visions while providinga portrait of the Beat City of San Fransisco. The picaresque elements of their films makes them able to have a series of episodes, the middle of which could be endlessly expanded.

Bruce Jenkins, “Fluxfilms in Three False Starts.”

5. How and why were the “anti-art” Fluxfilms reactions against the avant-garde films of Stan Brakhage and Kenneth Anger. [Hint: Think about Fluxus in relation to earlier anti-art such as Dada, and Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain."]

They emulated old Hollywood films and sight gags that were used in old Chaplain films and other slapstick comedies. They also use the space of the film and overall just use it in ways that slightly poke fun at the others, they aren't trying to be entirely serious and introspective, but rather ironic. They also replaced the super personal aspects of Anger and Brakhage's films with things that were more institutional, or nothing at all.

6. What does Jenkins mean by the democratization of production in the Fluxfilms?

He means that things could easily be reproduced, and instead of slaving for hours over a few frames (like Anger or Brakhage) they could produce film 'by the yard'.

7. Why does Jenkins argue that Nam June Paik’s Zen for Film “fixed the material and aesthetic terms for the production of subsequent Fluxfilms”? How does it use the materials of the cinema? What kind of aesthetic experience does it offer?

It showed that one didn't have to have much of anything to create a film. Just some clear leader and some dust and the film could make itself. It uses the materials of the cinema by using a projector, some clear leader film, and waiting to see what you see... something different everytime.