Zavattini on neorealism

Italian Critic, Cesare Zavattini defines the revolution of Italian neorealismo, which was taken to more radical ends by Contemporary Contemplative Cinema.

"Il faut que la distance entre la vie et le spectacle s'annule"

"la véritable tentative ne consiste pas à inventer une histoire qui ressemble à la réalité, mais à raconter la réalité comme si c'était une histoire"

"Il ne s'agit plus de faire devenir "réalité" (faire paraître vraies, réelles) les choses imaginées, mais de rendre les plus significatives possibles les choses telles qu'elles sont, celles-ci se racontant quasiement d'elles-mêmes"

"Chaque moment est infiniment riche. Le banal n'existe pas"

"[Dans la réalité] nous ne sommes ni bon, ni mauvais, ni des saints, ni des démons, nous sommes"

"Aucun autre moyen d'expression n'a comme le cinéma cette capacité originelle et congénitale de photographier les choses qui, selon nous méritent d'être montrées dans leur quotidienneté, c'est-à-dire dans leur durée la plus longue, la plus vraie... Aucun autre moyen d'expression n'a comme le cinéma la possibilitié de faire connaître quelque chose, et au plus grand nombre."

"Il ne doit y avoir de préétabli que ce que nous sommes; et voilà pourquoi le sujet sera substitué par l'homme dans sa totalité, prêt, et en même temps désarmé, devant les faits."

"Il ne faut plus de canons et de règles de style... ; la forme sera dictée par le fait, par la chose advenue et immédiatement exprimée."

Refuser la sacralisation de l'acteur et lui préférer l'homme vrai, avec son prénom et son nom de famille. En un mot, refuser toute voie qui n'est pas celle analytico-documentaire, et privilégier le reflet direct des choses, l'immédiateté, l'actualité, la durée.

"Le cinéma doit raconter ce qui se passe. La caméra est faite pour regarder devant elle."

"Le temps est venu de jeter les scénarios et de suivre les hommes pas à pas avec la caméra"

(Cesare Zavattini, in Neorealismo ecc. 1979)

Lopate's Profane Meditation

Cited by Donato Totaro in his essay on Sokurov's Confession, Phillip Lopate talks about the CCC type of films in his recent collection of essays Totally, Tenderly, Tragically (1998). Lopate refers to such "moving" movie experiences as a form of profane meditation:

"It may sound farfetched to speak of watching a movie as a meditative discipline... but parallels do exist. There is a familiar type of meditation called one-pointedness, which focuses the meditator's attention through the repetition of a single sound or mental image. Yet another meditation practice encourages the sitter to let thoughts fall freely and in a disorientated manner, without anchoring them to any one point. ...At first I used to resist my mind's wandering during such films, thinking I was wasting the price of admission. But just as in Buddhist meditation one is instructed not to brush aside the petty or silly thoughts that rise up, since these "distractions" are precisely the material of the meditation, so I began to allow my movie-watching mind to yield more freely to daily preoccupations, cares, memories that arose from some image association. Sometimes I might be lost to a personal mental thread for several minutes before returning with full attention to the events on-screen; but when I did come back, it was with a refreshed consciousness, a deeper level of feeling... certain kinds of films – those with austere aesthetic means; an unhurried, deliberate pace; tonal consistency; a penchant for long shots as opposed to close-ups; an attention to backgrounds and milieu; a mature acceptance of suffering as fate – allowed me more room for meditation."

Phillip Lopate

fixed firmly on the object in view

"We must try to keep the mind in tranquility. For just as the eye which constantly shifts its gaze, now turning to the right or to the left, now incessantly peering up or down, cannot see distinctly what lies before it, but the sight must be fixed firmly on the object in view if one would make his vision of it clear; so too man's mind when distracted by his countless worldly cares cannot focus itself distinctly on the truth."
- Basil of Caesarea

cross-posted to Chained to the Cinémathèque

Maximalism of screen liberty

Robert Koehler (at the Guadalajara festival) wrote a very interesting article on Lisandro Alonso and the new (minimalist) world cinema. Read the full article at FilmJourney. Here is an excerpt:

A solid survey of recent Argentine films, which starts for me with Lisandro Alonso's La libertad, the film that actually launched a whole new way of making post-narrative films. My Cinema Scope colleague Mark Peranson (...) has noted that La libertad was also one of the first films of its era to break down the division between documentary and fiction. This, more than any other single thing, is what distinguishes the new world cinema, whether it's by Raya Martin, Jim Finn, Pedro Costa or Albert Serra (and others). Alonso didn't start what gets commonly called "New Argentine Cinema" (there were at least two previous "new" periods), but he radicalized it, and offered a new way.

As far as I know (...) La libertad has never screened in Los Angeles. Not a surprise perhaps (it took a while before Alonso's next, Los muertos, made it to Los Angeles). But this means that the most seminal film of the most important film movement of the past seven years hasn't played in the would-be film capital of the world. But its context in Guadalajara is even more important, since La libertad is placed alongside other key films like Martel's La cienaga and Carri's Los rubios as a way of defining what a national film movement actually looks like. The irony is that there's nothing absolutely Argentine about La libertad. Its freedom is a freedom from nationality, time-space, narrative laws, camera laws and the expectations that audiences instinctively impose on themselves. But pay attention to the actual translation of the Spanish title: "Liberty"--a harder, more profound word than "freedom," a word pointing to a greater leap, a commitment to an ideal, an identifier for an equation that even describes its opposition--oppression. Liberty is harder-won. Liberty is that thing that the films that really matter aspire to. This one just has the balls to take it as its own name.

A film about Misael, who cuts trees and shapes them into logs for sale. A film, really, about what Misael does--searching for his trees, wandering, taking a shit, finding, chopping, shaving, napping, stacking, moving them to a distribution point, returning to his base camp labeled "Los errantes," finding an armadillo for dinner, killing it, cutting it up, building a fire for the grill, grilling it, stacking the loose brush from his woodcutting, burning the brush, finishing the grilling, eating the armadillo (the hard shell forms a dish, as the dead tail wags back and forth), looking into the camera as lightning approaches. Active progressive verbs for an active progressive film that moves forward at every moment, considers every moment precious and immediate and the one thing right now--right. now.---that matters and nothing else. There are few films that encompass a world, a state of existence so purely and totally. Many have noted that Alonso's film is one of those ultimate affirmations of Andre Bazin's ideal cinema, the emphatic assertion of the real on screen. It allows the eye to pay absolute attention to what Misael is doing, because what he's doing not only is what counts, but what defines him. So in that sense, you have the essence of character. But there's the matching factor that almost nothing is even close to being "acted." Certainly not "written." La libertad is arranged and choreographed, an attentive contemplation on a human in nature. The big lie, by the way, is that this is ''minimalism." (The same way we hear Apichatpong Weerasethakul described as ''minimalist.") No--this is maximalism, a cinema containing everything needed for its own value and purpose, and that has the effect of growing in the mind, either as the viewer recalls it, or sees it again.

Robert Koehler

The Pleasures of Contemplation

At OffScreen, this is a film review by Michael Crochetière about Robin Schlaht's first dramatic feature "Solitude" (2001). Here is my selection of highlights typically depicting the contemplative aspect of filmmaking :

(...) the fragmented, ambiguous backstories and paradoxical motivations of the lead characters, the idea of emotional detachment, the motif of observation and the folly of trying to understand the heart of another. At its heart, Solitude is about personal journeys, about everyday lives filled with small victories and moments of what Henry David Thoreau called "quiet desperation".

Solitude is a film without an inciting incident (unless one considers the arrival of Michele at the abbey, an event which occurs before the film begins). The film's structure is episodic, consisting of highly resonant privileged moments spelled by intervals of quiet reflection. Schlaht believes that these negative spaces - moments of uneasy stasis, hesitation or indecision - ultimately define his characters. (...)
Without the advantage of interior monologue Michele is most dependent upon a subdued yet charged environment which speaks eloquently for her in a language drawn from the rhythms, sounds and images of monastic life and the natural world.

With a confluence of elemental images (e.g. glass, water), Solitude speaks eloquently of dark metaphysical forests, personal boundaries and the invisible barriers that divide us. (...) We watch through the windshield as Michele engages in small talk with Geraldine, the bursts of dialogue separated by long uncomfortable silences. (...) As in Yasujiro Ozu's silent codas, these transitional sequences draw meaning and weight from the scenes that precede and follow them, speaking volumes for the characters which inhabit them.

The film's penultimate scene consists of another remarkable long take. In the forest, Michele breaks down beneath the weight of her solitary struggle. As the shot progresses, we come to understand that these are tears of redemption, that we are witnessing a deeply transformative moment. (...) In a film dominated by tableau framings, Schlaht saves one of his few close-ups for a moment when two emotionally isolated characters finally make contact. He elects to shoot Michele's epiphany in shallow focus as a means of 'isolating the character from the outside world and directing our attention towards her internal emotional process.' The scene becomes almost impressionistic, its use of tonal gradients and iridescent light conveying her fragile emotional state.

By design, Solitude is the antithesis of the tightly constructed narrative. The characters' backstories are fragmentary, the exposition gradual and ambiguous. Schlaht derives his strategy from the film's location: "It was partly due to the nature of being on retreat at the abbey. The asking of questions is not encouraged. Very few questions are asked in Solitude and even fewer are answered. The characters are so involved in the process of observing and interpreting or misinterpreting ... that it seemed appropriate to invite the audience into that same process. Not knowing keeps one engaged."

For Schlaht, the movie screen is a contemplative and cognitive space, a philosophy that's grounded in his background as a documentary filmmaker. Films such as Sons and Daughters (1994) and Moscow Summer (1996) are deeply affecting social documents that resonate with an intrinsic respect for his subject, the exquisite black and white imagery (often shot in slow motion) inviting the viewer to consider the importance of the gestures and inflections of everyday life. His move from documentary to narrative fiction is marked by a less formalized approach to the same humanistic values and concerns. The episodic structure remains, as do the meditative non-verbal sequences. (...) However, Solitude ultimately achieves a transcendence for its characters by other means, primarily through, as Andrei Tarkovsky writes, "a poetry born of pure observation...that does not signify or symbolize life, but embodies it."