Jmac posted an interesting comment in the post on non-narrative criticism, and on her blog (and here too). The point is that when we say that CCC is "non-narrative", we are refering to a "mainstream norm" by contrast, by antithesis, in a negative opposition. So this is the same issue we are currently discussing in the first roundtable (CCC synopsis).
Let's talk about this issue here.
How could we describe CCC in a positive way, narrativewise. What term would better express what CCC does (instead of what it doesn't). Jmac suggests the word "experiential". What do you think? And what are your own propositions?
Subscribe to the RSS feed for the comments of this post to follow the discussion here.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
The Root of Mutism
Silent protagonists in CCC
Why nobody talks? Is it because they can't (natural causes, mental illness, language barrier, vow of silence...) or because they won't (alienation, asociability, incommunicability...)?
I thought there was more actual mute people but only a few use this excuse to justify the absence of dialogue (A Scene At The Sea, Oasis, The Arc...). Or maybe there is nobody around to talk to. After a quick survey there seems to be equal numbers of "can't" (mainly mental disorder or language barrier) and "won't" (mainly physical isolation and social shyness).
Often the auteurs manage a very Spartan environment for their protagonists, in such a way that isolates them in desertic areas or keep them apart from the rest of the community. There are many reasons to this mutism, sometimes an abstracted, "conceited" setting that render dialogue superfluous, but other times the silence is more uncomfortable because the interpersonal relation with other present characters doesn't take place as it normally should. CCC protagonists refuse to talk on purpose. They seem to exclude the world, or feel excluded by it.
Could we say that CCC auteurs are no longer interested in the role of words? They might be through with the constant babbling of classic (theatre-inherited) narration. Or is it our current society that had enough with the long overstated discourses, while mainstream cinema keeps feeding us with an ideal form of reality where every character gets a finely scripted punchlines to deliver at key moments. TV definitely has a passion for excessive verbalisation and a phobia for dead silences... for a contemplative pause. (This consideration is especially interesting vis-a-vis the ongoing writer's strike that brings Hollywood to its knees).
Reygadas sets his latest film in a remote rural region of Mexico, and to accentuate the alienation, they are a non-Spanish-speaking community (Mennonites) who count every word they speak, essentially devoted to spiritual meditation. The protagonists in his previous films were also exceptionally mutic, even within a less drastic environment.
Sokurov and Tsai opt for a foreign country too, a place where the language barrier comes in the way of basic exchanges with their neighbors and friends.
What is this strange discrepancy between a certain minimalistic trend in contemporary art-cinema, and the world of intense communication we live in? Even when the film takes place in dense urban areas, they seem to be awkwardly depopulated, or inhabited by people who lost any communication skills.
Continue reading : Fiant on contemporary mutic cinema
Why nobody talks? Is it because they can't (natural causes, mental illness, language barrier, vow of silence...) or because they won't (alienation, asociability, incommunicability...)?
I thought there was more actual mute people but only a few use this excuse to justify the absence of dialogue (A Scene At The Sea, Oasis, The Arc...). Or maybe there is nobody around to talk to. After a quick survey there seems to be equal numbers of "can't" (mainly mental disorder or language barrier) and "won't" (mainly physical isolation and social shyness).
Often the auteurs manage a very Spartan environment for their protagonists, in such a way that isolates them in desertic areas or keep them apart from the rest of the community. There are many reasons to this mutism, sometimes an abstracted, "conceited" setting that render dialogue superfluous, but other times the silence is more uncomfortable because the interpersonal relation with other present characters doesn't take place as it normally should. CCC protagonists refuse to talk on purpose. They seem to exclude the world, or feel excluded by it.
Could we say that CCC auteurs are no longer interested in the role of words? They might be through with the constant babbling of classic (theatre-inherited) narration. Or is it our current society that had enough with the long overstated discourses, while mainstream cinema keeps feeding us with an ideal form of reality where every character gets a finely scripted punchlines to deliver at key moments. TV definitely has a passion for excessive verbalisation and a phobia for dead silences... for a contemplative pause. (This consideration is especially interesting vis-a-vis the ongoing writer's strike that brings Hollywood to its knees).
Reygadas sets his latest film in a remote rural region of Mexico, and to accentuate the alienation, they are a non-Spanish-speaking community (Mennonites) who count every word they speak, essentially devoted to spiritual meditation. The protagonists in his previous films were also exceptionally mutic, even within a less drastic environment.
Sokurov and Tsai opt for a foreign country too, a place where the language barrier comes in the way of basic exchanges with their neighbors and friends.
What is this strange discrepancy between a certain minimalistic trend in contemporary art-cinema, and the world of intense communication we live in? Even when the film takes place in dense urban areas, they seem to be awkwardly depopulated, or inhabited by people who lost any communication skills.
Continue reading : Fiant on contemporary mutic cinema
Monday, January 07, 2008
Roundtable 1 : CCC synopsis
To pursue the issue debated by Rosenbaum and Durgnat in the text recommended by Adrian Martin earlier (Obscure Objects of Desire: A Jam Session on Non-Narrative) I propose our first roundtable would take a look at how CCC is "summarized" and sold to the readers in today's press in the form of short capsules, press kit synopsis, or year-end statements.
Please post the best and the worst of what you've read this year on the recent CCC films. Just a few lines. When the author is pressed to extract the "essence" of the film in just a few words. What are the main elements used to represent a "plotless" film. Do they go for an atmospherical suggestion, or try hard to give minor plot points? Do they talk about the form or the content? Do they recommend/diss it for its atmosphere or for its length or for its plastic beauty or for its confused story?
Post anything, whether it comes from the distributor, the auteur in an interview, or from critics in the press or on a blog, or from your own reviews. And let's comment them.
You could also give it a shot and propose your own capsule for a given film (for exemple the ones listed on the sidebar for 2006 and 2007 releases, or older if you prefer). That would be interesting to find new creative ways to describe CCC, more poetical/evocative/artistical, and less conventional/narrative/literary.
(Subscribe to the RSS feed for the comments to receive updates of this discussion)
Please post the best and the worst of what you've read this year on the recent CCC films. Just a few lines. When the author is pressed to extract the "essence" of the film in just a few words. What are the main elements used to represent a "plotless" film. Do they go for an atmospherical suggestion, or try hard to give minor plot points? Do they talk about the form or the content? Do they recommend/diss it for its atmosphere or for its length or for its plastic beauty or for its confused story?
Post anything, whether it comes from the distributor, the auteur in an interview, or from critics in the press or on a blog, or from your own reviews. And let's comment them.
You could also give it a shot and propose your own capsule for a given film (for exemple the ones listed on the sidebar for 2006 and 2007 releases, or older if you prefer). That would be interesting to find new creative ways to describe CCC, more poetical/evocative/artistical, and less conventional/narrative/literary.
(Subscribe to the RSS feed for the comments to receive updates of this discussion)
Blogathon 2008
Contemplative Cinema Blogathon (6-13 January 2008)
CONTRIBUTIONS 2008
- The Wind Blows Where It Will by Tucker (at PilgrimAkimbo)
- Kagadanan Sa Banwaan Ning Mga Engkanto (2007) by Oggs Cruz (at Lessons From the School of Inattention)
- Autohystoria (2007) by Oggs Cruz (at Lessons From the School of Inattention)
- Voices, Tilted Screens and Extended Scenes of Loneliness: Filipinos in High Definition (2007) by Oggs Cruz (at Lessons From the School of Inattention)
- Dialogue vs. Duplicity: Notes on Syndromes and a Century and I Don't Want To Sleep Alone by Ryland Walker Knight (at The House Next Door)
- The Grit of Postsocialist Discourse: Aesthetic Realism in Jia ZhangKe's Platform and Unknown Pleasures by Edwin Mak (at Faster than instant noodles)
- Wrong Move & our institution of high art by Tucker (at PilgrimAkimbo)
- Huling Balyan ng Buhi (2006) by Oggs Cruz (at Lessons From the School of Inattention)
- Blessed are meek - The kite runner (2007) by Acumensch (at aeconomics)
- Voices; Syndromes and a Century and Autohystoria by Dodo Dayao (at Piling Piling Pelikula)
- Zhang Yuedong's Mid Afternoon Barks by Edwin Mak (at Faster than instant noodles)
- Contemplative Films as Art Films by weepingsam (at The Listening Ear)
- The Hook: Scene Transitions in Classical Cinema by David Bordwell (at David Bordwell's website on cinema)
- Kagadanan sa banwaan ning mga Engkanto (Death in the Land of Encantos, Lav Diaz, 2007) by Noel Vera (at Critics After Dark)
- The Root of Mutism by HarryTuttle (at Unspoken Cinema)
- Phantom Love (2007, Nina Menkes) by Filmsick (at Limiteless Cinema)
- Blissfully His by Nathan Lee (at Village Voice)
- Death in the Land of Encantos (Lav Diaz, The Philippines) By Robert Koehler (at Cinemascope)
- Encounters at the End of the World (Werner Herzog, US) By Jerry White (at Cinemascope)
- Still Light: Peter Lorre's morbid contemplation in 'Mad Love' By Glenn Kenny (at Premiere)
- On Pointing Camera by Dave (at Chained to the cinematheque)
- Paraguayan Hammock (2006) by Oggs Cruz (at Lessons From the School of Inattention)
- Father and Son (Alexander Sokurov) by Mike Grost (at Classic Film and Television)
- Castro Street (Bruce Baillie) by Mike Grost (at Classic Film and Television)
- Rag and Bone (James D. Parriott) by Mike Grost (at Classic Film and Television)
- The Wishing Ring (Maurice Tourneur) by Mike Grost (at Classic Film and Television)
- Chantal Akerman: Walking Woman by Adrian Martin (at Unspoken Cinema)
- Cafe Lumiere: 35mm poetry by Kunal Mehra (at The Wind Blows Where It Will)
- Approaching Colossal Youth by David Pratt-Robson (at videoarcadia)
- Time, Memory, Mystery, Narrative by Tucker (at PilgrimAkimbo). An examination of Andrey Tarkovsky's approach to time in cinema.
- Fate (1994, Fred Kelemen) by Filmsick (at Limitless Cinema)
- Fiant on contemporary mutic cinema by HarryTuttle (at Unspoken Cinema)
- Reflections on urban space, public screen and interactivity by Dong Liang (at Noira-Blanchè-Rougi)
- Andrei Rublev's duration. Speckled faith and running water and horses and a great big bell (part 1) by Ryland Walker Knight (at Vinyl is Images)
- Notes on Variations, Mostly by weepingsam (at The Listening Ear)
- Romney on the Contemplative trend by HarryTuttle (at Unspoken Cinema)
- (your new post here)
ROUNDTABLES
ANTICIPATORY READING
- Are you sitting comfortably? by Jonathan Romney (The Guardian, Saturday October 7, 2000)
- Obscure Objects of Desire: A Jam Session on Non-Narrative by Raymond Durgnat, David Ehrenstein and Jonathan Rosenbaum
- Meditation against Reaction Shots by Carlos Ferrão (at Meditations XXI)
- [Non-]Narrativity (Marina) Blogathon 2007
- “Art-Cinema” Narration part 1, 2 & 3 (Cineboy, a.k.a. Tucker, at PilgrimAkimbo) Blogathon 2007
HELP MENU
- Blogathon 2 Theme Announcement
- CCC Week opening
- Subscribe to the RSS feed for the comments of this post to receive the latest contributions
Sunday, January 06, 2008
CCC week opening
CONTEMPLATIVE BLOGATHON 2
Sunday 6th - Sunday 13th, January 2008
Contemporary Contemplative Cinema (a.k.a. CCC, take note) is mostly known and admired for its distinctive camerawork, pace, silence and visual style (long takes, stationary shots, landscapes). Yet I realize I always come back to narrative typologies when attempting to define this loose family of filmmakers, especially in reference to the mainstream codes of storytelling. Even though I'm usually a visual kind of spectator, with a visual memory and a penchant for mise-en-scene and composition, rather than music, plot and narrative content. But this trend I feel strongly about, without being able to delimited it yet, seems to me now to be a narrative breakthrough after all, rather than a truly visual novelty. Its aesthetism is largely shared with silent cinema mise-en-scene and the cinematography developed by the (modernist) precursors of the 60ies (which we discussed a lot last year).
But on a narrative basis, I believe there is something definitely unique created by these new plotless films. Of course we can argue about the reality of this absence of plot (total or truncated or minimized to the barest), or this non-narrativity (read the discussion by Durgnat and Rosenbaum on this subject here). There is always a form of plot and narration when a succession of images is involved. The question is how much narration there is and what is its role in the "reading" of the film. So we're going to talk about plot drive and narrative strategies specific to CCC (briefly described here).
I'm surprised by the number of sketptics we got last year, and how easily this suggestion of a trend was brushed off and forgotten. I know the word "contemplative" was an issue, though I still don't see anything wrong with it, and I noticed its growing (albeit rare) recurrence in CCC reviews. So the contemplation may come to mind when talking about some of these films. I'd like to read more anti-contemplative sceptics to better grasp the misunderstanding around this trend (which seems so natural to me I can't even explain it to myself). Anyway, this year, we'll move past this superficial consideration. Let's talk about these films now.
Well, if we failed to make sense of this trend as a new "stylistic movement", as the coherence between film styles too far apart is yet to demonstrate, then maybe we could try this time to see in there a new "narrative mode". Again this is a game play you may or may not want to take part in. And this blogathon is certainly not restricted to this nominal topic.
We are all here this week to celebrate Contemplative Cinema, (or to criticize and deconstruct it), in all its forms, whatever you want it to be. Welcome everyone, thank you very much for your future participation, I hope you'll enjoy it like last time around.
You may post your contribution(s) on this team-blog (you have until next Sunday to do so) if you requested to join (give me an email address where I can send an invitation, and open a Blogger account if you don't have one already). Or else you can notify us of your blogpost by leaving a link to your blog in the comments of this post or anywhere on the blog. I'll compile a list linking to all the contributions.
All contributions are listed here.
If you're not writing a post, you may join the discussions that will hopefully develop everywhere on this blog and on the participants' blogs.
Don't forget to use labels for further researches, and to put a link to your blog in your post. You may also use a CCC banner on your blog to link back here, if you want.
Since it's a collegial blog all suggestions and initiatives are most encouraged (opening roundtables, games, polls, volley-posts in reaction to another post, spawning a new topic from an idea arising in a comment-discussion...), so don't hesitate to create new posts here, however small or insignificant, be creative or territorial, there is no boss (I'm just the housekeeper here). Make yourself at home, treat this place like if it was your own blog. I'd like to see how an event-blog could be run by a spontaneous group of strangers (which we couldn't fully experience last year).
But on a narrative basis, I believe there is something definitely unique created by these new plotless films. Of course we can argue about the reality of this absence of plot (total or truncated or minimized to the barest), or this non-narrativity (read the discussion by Durgnat and Rosenbaum on this subject here). There is always a form of plot and narration when a succession of images is involved. The question is how much narration there is and what is its role in the "reading" of the film. So we're going to talk about plot drive and narrative strategies specific to CCC (briefly described here).
I'm surprised by the number of sketptics we got last year, and how easily this suggestion of a trend was brushed off and forgotten. I know the word "contemplative" was an issue, though I still don't see anything wrong with it, and I noticed its growing (albeit rare) recurrence in CCC reviews. So the contemplation may come to mind when talking about some of these films. I'd like to read more anti-contemplative sceptics to better grasp the misunderstanding around this trend (which seems so natural to me I can't even explain it to myself). Anyway, this year, we'll move past this superficial consideration. Let's talk about these films now.
Well, if we failed to make sense of this trend as a new "stylistic movement", as the coherence between film styles too far apart is yet to demonstrate, then maybe we could try this time to see in there a new "narrative mode". Again this is a game play you may or may not want to take part in. And this blogathon is certainly not restricted to this nominal topic.
We are all here this week to celebrate Contemplative Cinema, (or to criticize and deconstruct it), in all its forms, whatever you want it to be. Welcome everyone, thank you very much for your future participation, I hope you'll enjoy it like last time around.
You may post your contribution(s) on this team-blog (you have until next Sunday to do so) if you requested to join (give me an email address where I can send an invitation, and open a Blogger account if you don't have one already). Or else you can notify us of your blogpost by leaving a link to your blog in the comments of this post or anywhere on the blog. I'll compile a list linking to all the contributions.
All contributions are listed here.
If you're not writing a post, you may join the discussions that will hopefully develop everywhere on this blog and on the participants' blogs.
Don't forget to use labels for further researches, and to put a link to your blog in your post. You may also use a CCC banner on your blog to link back here, if you want.
Since it's a collegial blog all suggestions and initiatives are most encouraged (opening roundtables, games, polls, volley-posts in reaction to another post, spawning a new topic from an idea arising in a comment-discussion...), so don't hesitate to create new posts here, however small or insignificant, be creative or territorial, there is no boss (I'm just the housekeeper here). Make yourself at home, treat this place like if it was your own blog. I'd like to see how an event-blog could be run by a spontaneous group of strangers (which we couldn't fully experience last year).
Every contribution is welcome, don't be shy!
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