比紀錄片還陌生：前衛的姿態

本單元試圖以「紀錄的原初」為關鍵字，介紹1960年代末至70年代初期，北美風起雲湧的前衛電影運動浪潮中，三位重要作者及其作品。他們分別是約拿斯．梅卡斯（Jonas MEKAS, 1922-2019）、喬依絲．威蘭（Joyce WIELAND, 1930-1998）與賴瑞．高譚（Larry GOTTHEIM, 1936-）。

他們皆以個人視角與實驗態度進行影像創作，當攝影機擁有無限可能，電影的定義也隨之拓寬。事實上，三人的前衛之姿，也代表著電影最純粹的模樣。

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Solidarity

Combining political awareness, a unique aesthetics, and a sense of humour, Solidarity is a film on the strike at the Dare Cookie factory in the early 1970s, with an organiser's speech on the labour situation serving as the soundtrack. Hundreds of feet and legs are seen marching and picketing, with the word 'solidarity' superimposed on the screen.

Dripping Water

'I can imagine only St. Francis looking at a water plate and water dripping so lovingly, so respectfully, so serenely. [WIELAND's then-husband Michael] SNOW and WIELAND's film uplifts the object, and leaves the viewer with a finer attitude toward the world around [them].' – Jonas MEKAS, New York Times, 1969

Handtinting

'A film made from outtakes from a Job Corps documentary which features hand-tinted sections… full of small movements and actions, gestures begun and never completed. Repeated images, sometimes in colour, sometimes not. A beautifully realised type of chamber-music film whose sum-total feeling is ritualistic.' – Robert COWAN, Take One

Water Sark

'I decided to make a film at my kitchen table, there is nothing like knowing my table. The high art of the housewife. You take prisms, glass, lights and myself to it. "The Housewife is High". Water Sark is a film sculpture, being made while you wait.' – Joyce WIELAND

1933

'The film was made in 1967. You find out, if you don't already know, how naming tints pure vision.' – Michael SNOW 'The repeated images are such that they appear to be different each time; to be expanding. 1933 has a machine-mechanical doll rhythmic-like structure.' – Robert COWAN, Take One

Corn

I wanted to offer a rich experience of phenomena and associations from a continuous moving image the length of a roll of film. The transformation of ears of corn into sustenance takes place within a space/time theatre of light and shadow. The sinuous dance of steam rising from the cooked ears is a counterpart to the fog of Fog Line.

Fog Line

The fog lifts, but doesn't go from white to full clarity. It just shows a piece of time, a section of a slowly changing process in the landscape and in the mind of the viewer, for whom the mental fog could also lift. The lines of the wires relate to the controlling mind rather than the imagination; the implications of this contrast go right through my work.

Barn Rushes

I noticed a play of moving light between the slats of an old barn I passed every day. The film is made from a car window of eight passes across the barn, each the length of a 100-foot roll of film. The barn manifests itself: It is both passive, as I am with the camera, and active, almost alive.

Thought

The last of my continuous shot silent films. A very limited field of view with small sliding and focused motions, but lots to see in the snow. My previous films had grown out of formal ideas without much conscious concern with meaning, but I was becoming aware of the implications of these works, so I gave it this title.

Harmonica

This film is popular for the vibrant energy of Shelley the performer, the music, and the autumn landscape. As with the previous films, I myself am passive; the driver, the car, and Shelley are the creative forces. He is the first of many avatars, doubles of me, that led to my later attraction to ceremonial possession.

Stranger than Documentary: The Faces of Avant-garde

Seeking the 'original forms' of documentaries, this programme selects 17 films by three iconic filmmakers of the avant-garde film movement in North America during the late 1960s to 1970s. They are Jonas MEKAS (1922–2019), Joyce WIELAND (1930–1998), and Larry GOTTHEIM (1936–).

Combining personal perspectives with experimental attitudes towards filmmaking, these filmmakers created moving image works with immense possibilities and broadened the definition of cinema. In essence, their avant-garde practices represent cinema in its purest form.