Unspoken Cinema

ONGOING BLOGATHON CALENDAR for 2008 (at Listening Ear) : here BLOGATHONS OF THE YEAR 2007 (at Listening Ear) : here BLOGATHONS OF THE YEAR 2006 : Film Criticism (Andy Horbal) DEC 1 (deleted blog, backup page here ) Joe Dante (Tim Lucas) NOV 28 Forrest J. Ackerman (Flickhead) NOV 24 (broken link) Hitchcock (Film Vituperatum) NOV 15 Vampires! (Nathaniel R) OCT 30 Aldrich (Dennis Cozzalio) OCT 16 De Palma (Peet Gelderblom) AUG Friz Freleng (Brian Darr) AUG 21 Terry Gilliam (Brendon Connelly) AUG 4 Avant Garde (Girish) AUG 2 Tex Avery (Peet Golderblom) JUL 19 Lana Turner (Self-styled Siren) JUN Leonard Cohen (Jen MacMillan) JUN 25 Hayao Miyazaki (Quiet Bubble) MAY Michelle Pfeiffer (Nathaniel R) APR 28 Angie Dickinson (Flickhead) APR 19 Roger Corman (Tim Lucas) APR 5 Abel Ferrara (Girish) MAR 27 Robert Altman (Matt Zoller Seitz) MAR 3 Code Unknown (Girish) FEB 13 Showgirls (Girish) JAN 4

First, a re-cap of the events thus far that lent themselves to my thought processes (concerning what contemplative cinema entails, mostly) over the last week or so... The discussion of BAFs (boring art films...although the internets offer more suggestions for the acronym) -- specifically how these subtle creatures invite the audience to participate and empathize -- and Marina's dissemination (just below) on acting as a contemplative engagement of its own accord. Last night, quite by mistake, I walked into a film (in a class in a school I don't attend, no less) that challenged a lot of what I thought I knew about non-narrative film, and proved to me yet again that in life there are no real mistakes. The film, Koyaanisqatsi , can be described many ways; I do not think that for our purposes here the film itself serves much use: that's debatable, anyway, as the Glass score undermines the integrity of the "contemplative cinema" definition as outlined on this site. It...

Until now, we've been trying to grasp the essence of 'contemplative cinema' in terms of narration and pace. This was the initial sparkle that drew the author of the blogothon to this kind of film and the prime definition that we accepted. However, as confused as still am, concerning narrativity and speed, I decided to approach the matter from another angle - acting. In his book 'Homo Ludens'[The Playing Man], Johan Huizinga places the problem of play and contest and how they relate. He also talks about the play and its accepted antonym - the serious. Usually, a competition is considered to be serious, yet still in the frames of the play. On the other hand, while the definition of serious is created to exclude the game, the game can easily include the serious. Therefore, the contest and the serious are parts of the game although taken independently they are supposed to exclude it. Now, going back a few decades, Brecht suggests something related, while on his way of r...