[Frameworks] A new book: Lost Highways, Embodied Travels & thanks

[Kornelia Boczkowska]

Dear Pip,

Many thanks for your interest, you’ve definitely raised some interesting 
points here. Yes, these questions are actually discussed in the book in 
more detail, but let me clarify some of them here:

Re the corporeal turn (see Chapter 1) – since the book focuses primarily 
on American films, I situate my discussion of these works within the 
corporeal turn in American avant-garde film (see Elder 1997; Osterweil 
2014; Máté 2021) and apply it to the study of “non-body” genres, 
specifically road movies (as compared to “body genres,” hence my 
reference to horror and pornography), through the lens of the mobilities 
paradigm, haptic visuality, cinematic tactility and other approaches. 
Although the corporeal turn was fundamental to the American experimental 
film practice of the 1960s and 1970s, which moved from exploring psychic 
reality to portray the body in extreme circumstances through conventions 
related to horror and pornography, among other things, I’m trying to 
demonstrate that experimental road movies also showcase a multi-sensory 
nature of the film image. I’m sure that body genres were popular in the 
1970s French avant-garde film scene (though I don’t know much about 
that, to be honest), but extending the methodological framework to 
include such works would not necessarily make sense in view of the 
book’s focus on American avant-garde film and mentioning them in this 
specific context would have to be really well justified.

Re pure diary films – I’ve only seen Home Movies at Anthology Film 
Archives, but the AFA staff couldn’t arrange more than one research 
visit for me at the time, so I didn’t discuss it in my book. Travel 
Songs was only mentioned once as a travel film and there’s a distinctive 
difference between how we define a travel film and a road movie – I 
believe Mekas’ film may qualify as representative of the former genre.

As you said, Bent Time is a road movie without cars, so it doesn't 
really fit the definition of the road movie genre, as it functions in 
film criticism and elsewhere (see Chapter 1). Perhaps it's more of a 
walking film? Go! Go! Go! is a city symphony film more than anything 
else, but note that much of the footage was shot through the car's window.

I actually believe At Land can be considered a travel film as it depicts 
Maya Deren’s journey through the psychical spaces of water, air, earth, 
etc. and the psychic spaces of her own self (see Noble 2017). Same for 
Scorpio Rising through its emphasis on the fetishes of mobility and 
riding/movement, symbolically conveyed in the recurrent theme of a queer 
erotic quest (see Baker 2015; Boczkowska 2019).

So it basically boils down to the use of definitions. Of course, this is 
debatable and you have every right to disagree with my understanding of 
these works. Please let me know if you have any further questions/comments.

PS. San Francisco Diary '79 and Amerika sound really exciting, thanks 
for bringing them to my attention! I’ll try to figure out where/how to 
actually see them.

Kornelia

W dniu 12.03.2023 o 05:05, Pip Chodorov pisze:
> Dear Kornelia,
>
> Thank you for this announcement. The book looks great. Many friends’ 
> films are discussed and even one that I worked on, and I look forward 
> to reading it.
>
> I had a question about the focus you describe: "situates them within 
> the corporeal turn in American avant-garde cinema, so far mostly 
> associated with body genres and sexually explicit films.” This peaked 
> my curiosity because when I think of body genres I think more of the 
> French avant-garde films of the 1970s (Klonaris/Thomadaki, Marti, 
> Hernandez, etc). American films encompass so much abstraction, 
> structural, diary, found footage, animation etc. I have always felt 
> that experimental road movies celebrated what you describe in your 
> introduction: “appealing to haptic visuality” and i did not understand 
> the reference to horror and pornography that follows in the same 
> sentence. From the table of contents, much of the book seems to be 
> about motion, viewing and perception which describes the excitement I 
> felt when making my own 16mm “road movies.” So this reference to 
> bodies and sexuality confused me.
>
> Secondly I wondered about the absence of pure diary films such as 
> Taylor Mead’s Home Movies (/NYC to San Diego/) or Howard Guttenplan’s 
> Diary films (/San Francisco Diary/). Although there is not a lot of 
> car footage in those films, they do seem to be about travel and 
> wandering - while you did include Jonas Mekas’ /Travel Songs/ which do 
> not contain much car footage at all, plus they are all shot in Europe 
> (another question then about the Americanness of the road movie). 
> Marie Menken’s /Go Go Go/ is as much a city symphony film as is Henri 
> Chomette’s /Jeux de reflets et la vitesse/ except that this was shot 
> in Paris rather than in New York. If the theme is about moving through 
> space then films like Barbara Hammer’s /Bent Time/ are road movies 
> without cars. If the theme is more about America than Al Razutis’ film 
> /Amerika/ should be mentioned. In this regard, references to /At Land/ 
> and /Scorpio Rising/ as travel films confused me.
>
> But I will read the book first and then maybe these questions can be 
> discussed more carefully!
> Thank you for a provocative study.
> Pip Chodorov
>
>
>
>> Often identified as one of the most genuine and enduring American 
>> film genres, the road movie has never been explored in the context of 
>> experimental filmmaking. To fill this gap, Lost Highways, Embodied 
>> Travels provides the first book-length study of over eighty unique 
>> and often obscure films and videos and situates them within the 
>> corporeal turn in American avant-garde cinema, so far mostly 
>> associated with body genres and sexually explicit films. Drawing on 
>> unpublished archival materials, the book offers a fresh take on both 
>> past and current practices of the experimental film community for 
>> scholars, students, makers and film buffs.
>
>
>
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