[Frameworks] Creative crisis in experimental cinema

[Yoel Meranda]

Hello Albert,

Your post made me think about Joyce Wieland's "Water Sark" where there is a
constant sense of an artist waiting around for inspiration to arrive, while
she is documenting and fragmenting this state of being in the most inspired
way imaginable. It also made me think about Hollis Frampton's "Zorn's
Lemma" where the third episode feels like an admittance that what came
before is incomplete, however encyclopedic it felt (or precisely because it
was). Also made me think about Robert Breer's, for example, "Recreation"
with that funny animated image of the elderly man mechanically pouncing on
a table absurdly expecting something to come out, and of course, as Fred
stated elsewhere, "What goes up", where even the title clearly refers to
the fact that the work itself "must come down".

More recently, Kevin Jerome Everson's "Lago Gatún" deals with creative
crisis on many levels, one of which is around the complexity of creating a
cinematic monument, as the film goes between a sense of structural
completeness within (through repetitions and variations) and the free rein
of the 16mm film grain that is simply refuting any sense of human
structures (or even grasp).

I guess there are many other examples, I would even say that there are few
great films where some form of creative crisis is not part of the work
itself, but that's harder to argue.

Best wishes,


Yoel



On Thu, Jun 2, 2022 at 9:39 AM Albert Alcoz <albertalcoz at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello Frameworkers,
>
> Thinking about the work "No Film" by Kurt Kren I was wondering if there
> are some other films about creative crisis related to experimental cinema
> or artists' videos.
>
> *It was a time when I was desperately unhappy that I wasn’t really doing
> anything, no more films. Wilhelm and Birgit Hein once took a photograph
> from a newspaper, saying that, although the image doesn’t move on the
> screen, it’s still film. I shot a few words – “No Film” – which don’t move
> either but are a film just the same. And so: no film. Question mark.*
> (Kurt Kren) https://kurtkren.info/films-1977-96
>
> In auteur cinema it is easy to think of titles like *8½* by Fellini. And
> in cinema focused on literature there are dozens of titles like *Barton
> Fink* or *Adaptation* to give two examples.
>
> But what about avant-garde cinema and experimental film?
> Any suggestion will be appreciated .
>
> Best,
>
> Albert Alcoz
> http://albertalcoz.com/ <http://www.albertalcoz.com/>
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