[Frameworks] Texts / Works Bridging Early Cinema, Early Video, Early ___

[Jonathan Walley]

There is indeed a candle onscreen, though by the end of the film the image gets pretty hard to make out but the end - its legibility is already compromised by the speedy development process (the film was running at only a few frames per second out from the camera, over rollers, under doors, through processing/fixing/wiping off, and finally out into the room with the projector and screen). The purpose of the candle, as I understand it, was to “prove” that the nested images were created in real time, not the result of multiple optically-printed shots edited together. The candle burns uninterrupted as the images shift from positive to negative and back again, each new layer pushing the previous one(s) back into an ever-deepening nest of images, like a mirror tunnel. 

My recollection is that the film was intended to make the film medium do something that another medium was said to do uniquely (i.e. feedback as a phenomenon unique to video, not to mention video’s immediacy, another trait often singled out in early texts on video art as something distinct to video). 

[from the department of self-aggrandizement, I write about FF in “Identity Crisis…” in October 137).

Lots to say about the implications of this film for emerging critical discourses on video art and TV in the 1970s, and specifically the relationship between cinema and video, especially as the latter seems to have begun to distinguish itself from the blanket term “expanded cinema” (and just “cinema”) as the ‘70s wore on. I might have time later to expound/expand later (as if anyone cares). 

JW

Dr. Jonathan Walley
Associate Professor and Chair
Department of Cinema
Denison University
walleyj at denison.edu


> On Jan 14, 2016, at 3:16 AM, Steve Polta <steve.polta at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> A 16mm print of Tony Conrad's Film Feedback is distributed in 16mm by Canyon Cinema.
> http://canyoncinema.com/catalog/film/?i=680 <http://canyoncinema.com/catalog/film/?i=680>
> 1974, 15 minutes.
> Yeah I think it's a candle but it's basically "the" rectangle. White screen, filmed in negative becomes black, re-projected & filmed, processed again, re-projected/filmed pos/neg/pos/neg/etc. Becomes rectangles within rectangles within rectangles, alternating black/white/black/white, receding. At one point there is a little jam, a little frame line stutter, this (presumable) accidental gesture is re-photographed in subsequent iterations of the series and becomes a major event in this "minimalist" film. Now that I've written this I'm not 100% certain of presence of the on-screen the candle.
> 
> This film recalls (to me) a series of performance films by William Raban titled 2'45 (1973), in which the filmmaker, standing in front of a screen, speaks a short description of the 2'45 project and is filmed—single take—in 16mm sync sound. The resultant married print is then projected (with sound), say a day later, with the filmmaker making the same speech (so he's on screen and in real life; get it?), this combo also being sync filmed. The result is then projected (so there's two of him on screen, rectangle within rectangle, receding) while he speaks, etc etc etc. 16mm feedback loop but not instantaneous; there's about a day lag between segments. No it's not endlessly ongoing; it's a different version on different occasions.
> 
> Steve Polta
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jan 13, 2016 at 3:47 PM, Pip Chodorov <frameworks at re-voir.com <mailto:frameworks at re-voir.com>> wrote:
> I can provide Lemaitre's film if you are interested.
> Isou's film ON VENOM AND ETERNITY is an earlier iteration, Lemaitre went farther into self-recursion (a film about itself).
> Pip
> 
> 
> At 22:47 -0800 13/01/16, Cinema Project wrote:
> In regards to "well-deployed spoilers," I might look into Maurice LeMaître's "Le film est déjà commencé?" from 1952. It was a Lettrist film and supposed staged provocation. There's some accounts/ info on it in Off-Screen Cinema by Kaira M Cabañas.
> 
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