Week 3

1. The PRologue was a little lengthy in my opinion, but non the less it was gorgeous to look at. Watching it I felt as if Brakhage was trying to visually represent his fascination with the human body and how it fits in together with nature as a whole. There were many close up shots of different parts of the body juxtaposed with shots of nature, in these something was always there to tie the two shots together. Sometimes the shapes were similar, and other times it felt as if the first shot was a puzzle piece included in the second one and vice versa. Although there didn't' seem to be any sort of narrative to this prologue, it did seem to hint at the rest of Dogstar man, if only slightly. Some images reminded me of what I had read about the piece. The use of colors was awesome.
2. To represent the suicide of john, Maclaine shows the viewer close up of people, like the head of the bum, the hands of the piano player, and Joh's legs. These are smaller parts of a whole concept. This film anticipates Brakhages work through its use of both black and white as well as color film stock, the foreshadowing use of metaphors, the themes of doom and redemption, as well as the attempt to use direct address and indirect narration.
3. Both filmmakers partly relied on looping and metaphors to get their visions across. MacLaine developed the sense of hopelessness over the course of his film, while Conner played the emotions of his viewers, switching his film's tone from humorous, to erotic, to violent. Conners films also brought attention to the medium of film itself, while MacLaine's did not.
4. I'm not too familiar with the concepts behind the beatnik movement, but from what I understood while reading this chapter the two films are resemblance of Beat sensibility because the heroes are often mediators who exist in the real world and the allegoric one. The films were created very minimally, the editing was sparce, the music seemed random, and the lighting was uneven. The films didn't submit to any particular standards. As far as picaresque form, the stories resembled and followed a semi narrative structure of an adventure story. There is a hero in both who discovers and explores his environment.
5. Through the use of direct film manipulation, juxtaposition of images, and sometimes no images at all in a response to the avant garde cinema, these artists rebelled against the previous model.
6. That people collaborated on each others films. Even though having many artist work on one movie created less of a personal effect, this method allowed for the films to be better and communicate more to their viewers.
7. Zen For Film fixed the material and aesthetic terms of production by managing to avoid the standard forms of production and editing, as well as the focus on images themselves. His work brought the medium of film to attention on an extreme level. When the audience is presented with nothing on the screen except a few dust particles and scratches, they have no choice but to think about the film medium, there's nothing else to do.