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

[Andy Ditzler]

I'd recommend The Cut-Ups, film by Antony Balch in collaboration with
William Burroughs and Brion Gysin. On two occasions (Documenta in 2007 and
my own screening in Atlanta 2009), it drove the audience into active
rebellion. (Since I had associated screening rebellions with past eras, I
was quite surprised to see one take place!) It was the repetitive
soundtrack: "Yes, hello," and a few other phrases, spoken in overlap by
Burroughs and Gysin, unrelenting for twenty minutes. After awhile,
impatient viewers started audibly throwing the phrases back at the screen
('HELLO!!"), while the rest of the audience nervously laughed or otherwise
audibly squirmed. Among other things, the film - as screened publicly - is
a great prank. In a long early-70s profile in Cinema Rising, Balch
described similar discombobulation at the film's early London screenings.
However, a more recent screening at MoMA (which placed the film in a much
different historical and audience context) garnered no audible reaction at
all.

The other day reading P. Adams Sitney's book Eyes Upside Down (p. 174), I
came across a reference to a film I haven't seen but mean to track down:
"Herbert Jean deGrasse's hilarious Film Watchers (1974) hurls abuse at
typical avant-garde film audiences."

"Reactionary right-wingers" might have the majority of exactly the kind of
protest you describe. What about thinking of this in larger terms too - the
reactions in the U.S. to Last Temptation of Christ or, especially, Marlon
Riggs' Tongues Untied, which most saw on public television - no screen to
tear down, but plenty of invective, much of which I have always suspected
was triggered by the film's form as much as its content.

Andy Ditzler
Founder and curator, Film Love: www.filmlove.org
Co-founder, John Q collective: www.johnq.org



On Tue, Jan 12, 2016 at 10:33 PM, Jesse Malmed <jesse.malmed at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I'm looking for texts and works that draw connections (and erase them too,
> sure) between early cinema and the beginnings of video. And, for that
> matter, with other nascent technologies and their shared tendencies. Camera
> tricks, formal inventiveness, actualities, etc.
>
> Also, while I've got you — I was thinking about the (perhaps apocryphal,
> cunningly Gunningly so) stories of genuine fears about the Lumière train's
> first projection and the stories of the outraged audience at an early
> showing of L'Age D'Or throwing ink at the screen in protest. Ink on the
> screen is a pretty amazing gesture (it is about to not go without saying
> that I am obviously staunchly in the camp of artists over reactionary
> right-wingers) even/especially with its scale of potency to poetry. Are
> there other related stories you'd like to share? Torn down screens? Shadow
> puppets between the projector and the screen? Well-deployed spoilers?
>
> *JM*
>
> --
> *// // // J E S S E  M A L M E D *
> 505.690.7899 // jesse.malmed at gmail.com // live to tape
> <http://livetotapefestival.tumblr.com/>
> jessemalmed.net <http://www.jessemalmed.net> // deep leap
> <http://www.deepleap.net> // nightingale <http://nightingalecinema.org/>
> // trunk show <http://trunk--show.com> //
> projective verse <http://urbanhonking.com/projectiveverse/> // bad at
> sports <http://badatsports.com/tags/jesse-malmed/> // acre_tv
> <http://acretv.org/> // western pole <http://westernpole.tumblr.com>
>
> *
> <http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/trunk-show-jesse-malmed-raven-falquez-munsell-bumper-stickers-eric-fleischauer/Content?oid=15719804>Trunk
> Show in Newcity
> <http://art.newcity.com/2015/05/30/portrait-of-a-gallery-trunk-show/>** /
> **JM on WDCB
> <https://soundcloud.com/wdcbnews/the-arts-section-chicago-fest>** /**
> Live to Tape in the Reader
> <http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2015/05/14/live-to-tape-fest-is-like-if-weird-al-yankovics-uhf-were-a-gallery-installation>
> / **Trunk Show in the Chicago Reader
> <http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/trunk-show-jesse-malmed-raven-falquez-munsell-bumper-stickers-eric-fleischauer/Content?oid=15719804>
> / JM in the Reader
> <http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2015/01/20/the-next-month-is-the-time-to-catch-the-thriving-local-experimental-video-art-scene> /
> Gapers Block
> <http://gapersblock.com/ac/2015/01/25/jesse-malmed-the-film-studies-center/>
> / South Side Weekly
> <http://southsideweekly.com/yes-to-humor-no-to-laughs/> / Chicago Tribune
> Best of 2015
> <http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/ct-best-art-2015-ent-1213-20151209-story.html>*
>
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>
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