[Frameworks] Jungle scenarios

[Albert Alcoz]

Thank you all very much for all these good suggestions.

Definitely I like these threads, it helps me remember that I am part of a
community with similar affinities around cinema. It also helps to remember
that in Frameworks there is a lot of knowledge about cinema and people
willing to share it.

There is no doubt that each person has their personal criteria regarding
experimental cinema, artists' video, heterodox documentary, etc. but I
think that promoting these threads helps to discover titles that I know
absolutely nothing about.

Several people have asked what the reason was for asking this question. It
was not to curate any film screening, it was to research films for an
academic article as I did recently concerning "experimental perspectives
from the deserts"
<https://www.revistaatalante.com/index.php/atalante/article/view/1035/1553>
.

Perhaps I was more interested in the jungle as a landscape and experimental
cinema as a tool capable of approaching it from unique aesthetics and
methodologies.

All the best,
Albert Alcoz

On Mon, Apr 29, 2024 at 7:21 PM Fred Camper <f at fredcamper.com> wrote:

> Sorry, Arindam, I *did *mean my response about *Gabriel *to be sent to
> the list. Thanks for replying. *Gabriel* interested me as a record of
> what interested Martin. I don't like Smithson's film as a film but it is
> interesting too as a document of his work. Serra's films are actually
> pretty good as films, in my view. So there is no obvious pattern here. I
> agree that even an aesthetically bad film by a great artist can be
> interesting.
>
> Of course I am not trying to control what gets posted here. A curator
> dealing with putting together a subject-oriented program can use this list
> as a resource. It's just that personally I don't choose to see films
> because of their subjects, but because they might offer good cinema.
>
> Fred Camper
> Chicago
> On 4/29/2024 11:19 AM, Arindam Sen wrote:
>
> I agree that Gabriel is by no means a great film.
> Having seen it once, I had only partial recollection of the scenery which
> I thought to be the jungle. The film is a lot of things that Martin
> otherwise would consciously avoid while painting.
>
> Artist films get a lot of attention not because of the films’ merit but
> because they are perceived as some noble adventure of an artist who usually
> is reputed as a painter, sculptor, or a musician. But that doesn’t make
> their films good or bad by itself, and not many of these artists are
> setting out to make aesthetically distinguished work when working with film
> (which is absolutely fine). Smithson is a great artist and film is integral
> to his practice, he is not just trying out a new media, as perhaps is the
> case with Agnes Martin. Same goes for Carolee Schneemann or Richard Serra.
> Their films are fascinating.
>
> On Mon, 29 Apr 2024 at 17:52, Fred Camper <f at fredcamper.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 4/29/2024 6:16 AM, Arindam Sen wrote:
>>
>> Also perhaps Agnes Martin's *Gabriel *could be added to the list.
>>
>> Was this not shot entirely in the Northern New Mexico she lived in? This
>> region can be quite beautiful, but is in no way a jungle.
>>
>> While reading these I was reflecting on why I personally dislike these
>> threads, looking for films based on subject matter. Unlike most, I don't
>> like most films. I look for films of great aesthetic merit, films that, to
>> paraphrase Paul Strand writing on photography in 1923, can stand alongside
>> the best paintings in museums. Such values have nothing to do with subject
>> matter; any subject can make a great film, wheras most films of all types
>> show little or no sense of using cinema with that level of complexity.
>> Agnes Marin is a sublimely great artist; I think I hold her in higher
>> esteem than even most of her admirers do.* Gabriel, *unless I missed
>> something on my one viewing, is a worthlessly bad film, simply artless
>> pictures of the rural scenes that might have inspired her to her great
>> abstract paintings, and with the cloying cliche of a young boy as surrogate
>> for the viewer. Like some other great twentieth-century artists (Robert
>> Smithson comes to mind), she had zero understanding of how to use the film
>> medium.
>>
>> Fred Camper
>> Chicago
>>
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