Cine no Narrativo - Apuntes Todo PDF

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Module 1 David Bordwell: 4 Types of Non-Narrative Form According to David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, there are four basic modes for organizing a film as a non-narrative formal system: Films in Abstract form organize their elements around the sheer pictorial qualities -- including colors, shapes, and movement in the images -- of their shots. The abstract qualities that are emphasized through comparison become interesting "for their own sake" as new ways of looking at things. In terms of pattern, films in Abstract form feature a "theme and variation" structure that usually begins with an introductory section that shows us, in a relatively simple way, the basic materials and their inter-relationships that the film will frequently invoke. The following segments will present similar types of relationships but with increasing differences. Example: Mothlight (1963, Stan Brakhage) The effects of his collage technique are several: the three-minute silence film was created without the use of a camera by simply pressing moth wings, leaves, and other organic objects between two strips of Mylar tape and then rephotographing it by running it through an optical printer. What's important here is not literal verisimilitude - Brakhage´s aspiration lies in the imagination of what a moth might be seen. Secondly, rhythm is another key element of Mothlight as well. Finally, by virtue of the way it was made and the way it is shown, Mothlight makes explicit reference to the nature of film projection. For the most part, Brakhage does not seem to have composed for the limitations of individual frames, so in projection, long strands of plants and smaller moth wings are generally divided up into multiple images. Ballet Mecanique (Fernand Léger), where human beings are presented as machines and machines as human beings. But much more abstract examples could be chosen, for example, films that show a succession of colors or shapes in a more or less chaotic way. Films in Associational form suggest expressive qualities and concepts by grouping images that may not have any immediate logical connection. The juxtaposition of images or sounds functions to create an association from their comparison. Even though connection made among images may have visual qualities, the comparison of these qualities function to suggest broader concepts or emotions. In addition, associational films also create large-scale patterns that organize the entire film. Example: A Movie (1958, Bruce Conner), a twelve-minute short film divided into four segments in which, through juxtapositions of shots that do not seem to be related to each other -- a often disturbing association of ideas. Categorical films organize their subjects through a process of classification, groupings, and categorization. ● They often begin by identifying the subject. ● Their patterns of development are limited and usually will be simple.

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Example: Olympia (1938, Leni Riefenstahl) shows the 1936 Olympic Games organizing the narration according to the different sports. Films in Rhetorical form organize their elements as the presentation of a persuasive argument. The goal is to persuade the audience to adopt an opinion about the subject matter. Address the viewer directly. The subject will usually not be an issue of scientific truth but a matter of opinion or attitude. If conclusions can not be made scientifically, or beyond question, the film will often appeal to emotion. Example: Lorentz’ documentary The River (1938) is a documentary that sought to convince its audience to support President Roosevelt’s policies regarding the Tennessee Valley Authority through its use of the rhetoric form. The TVA was a government owned corporation aiming to provide solutions to the country’s flooding, electricity and agricultural problems within Tennessee Valley during the Great Depression.

Peter Taberhat: Renegotiating Narrative in Avant-Garde Film Los ejemplos de relaciones entre cine experimental y narración. Los 5 puntos. Taberham exames how avant-garde films guide the spectator’s mental activities in ways that are extremely different to the ways we have in commercial cinema. He concludes five aspects in which the films present challenges to some of the spectator’s basic skills of narrative comprehension: 1. A chain of events may feature, but would not necessarily be linked according to dramatic consequence. They might instead be connected ‘thematically’, or according to graphic interest. 2. Shot-to-shot relations may mark a coherent passage of time, but they might instead be framed within a neutral temporal grid, in which there is no linear temporal progression, flashback or flash forward. 3. Agents often feature, but not prototypical character types. They may be psychologically opaque, with unclear motivations, intentions and thoughts. 4. The film will not typically be motivated by a disruption and subsequent reinstatement of equilibrium. 5. The spectator’s ability to elaborate on the events represented and infer other events that took place may be more restricted than in the case of traditional narrative films.

Use of Montage 1. Gramatical a. refer to Parataxis, A Movie 2. Aesthetical 3. doble operation of appropriation and re-montaje a. refer to The Duchamp Effect and The Benjamin Effect

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Module 2 Problemas terminológicos, ¿por qué decimos experimental y por qué decimos vanguardia?

BIOSCA: The historical evolution of the word ¨Avant-Garde¨ Three meanings have acquired at different historical phases, each one of them has attributes and connotations from previous ones. The first one, which dates back to the Medieval Age, is of military origin and designates the soldier's rank, the troop's head. From this primitive use the tolerant-combative character will survive that is attributed to its components. The second meaning is of a political sign, and finds itself in revolutionary speeches, beginning with the French Revolution and the political upheaval at the end of the 18th century, later. In many ways, the military has become a metaphor, given that the revolutionary combat is piling up in the political arena and not necessarily in the battlefields. The last avant-garde meaning comes from a major development, because it is situated in the field of aesthetics and alludes to the fight against classical artistic ideas. The 60s will be the scene of a double manifestation: on the one hand, a new sensitivity to reality, the demand for truthfulness and a renouncement of rigid narrative structures; on the other, resurgence of the radical aesthetics of the avant-garde in the counterculture, political struggle, nonconformity and experimentation on domestic media, abstract and theoretical cinematography.

The experimental film VS the avant-garde film The experimental cinema is not based on norms in traditional modes of representation whereas avant-garde cinema is the one that is positioned within the avant-garde that emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century; that is, cubism, futurism, surrealism, etc. Avant-garde cinema was and will always be avant-garde. But experimental cinema may or may not continue to be so. The experimental film ceases to be so when its speech is accepted by the cinematographic world (creators, spectators, critics, exhibitors and other characters that comprise it).

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Module 3 Antonio Weinrichter: Montaje vs Montage, Implication Through a comprehensive research, Antonio Weinrichter distinguishes between two types of montage: 1. Montaje a. a technique applied to narrative cinema to render the diegetic effect, in which the transformation from shot to shot works according to a semantics of continuity, rather than juxtaposition or contrast. At the same time, the syntagmatics created by these montaje codes chains the image, turning each element of it into a subsidiary of the narrative. This is what Burch calls linear representation. b. The construction of the montaje is the conformation through which the cinema pretends to simulate reality as such by composing a simulacra order of itself, as a conformation without visible scaffolding, 2. Montage / Film Collage a. The analogy with collage will have to be looked for in avant-garde cinema, whose essence lies in fragmentation, heterogeneity, and intertextuality. b. The construction of the montage is the embodiment of a story of the world from the cinematographic vision as alien to reality itself. c. refers to found footage

Fred Camper's six characteristics that most experimental films share No one has come up with a satisfactory name for this set of works. Several filmmakers expressed their disagreement with the names in use: • "Vanguard". Stan Brakhage declared that it seemed too European to him. • "Experimental". Someone said he performed many experiments on a film, but left them all in the editing room. In addition, it leads to confusion. • "Independent". At that time Disney was considered independent; now it tends to mean narrative fictions not produced by a big studio. • "Not dependent". Term proposed by the editor of Canyon Cinema News during the 70s, in the sense that this type of work is not subject to any guidelines. It never became public domain.

1. It is created by one person, or occasionally a small group collectively, working on a minuscule 4

budget most often provided out of the filmmaker's own pocket or through small grants, and is made out of personal passion. 2. It eschews the production model by which the various functions of filmmaker are divided among different individuals and groups: the filmmakers are producer, director, scriptwriter, director of photography, cameraperson, editor, sound recordist, and sound editor, or performs at least half of those functions. 3. It does not try to offer a linear story that unfolds in the theatrical space of mainstream narrative. 4. It makes conscious use of the materials of cinema in a way that calls attention to the medium. [Examples: scratching or painting directly on the film strip; cutting rapidly and unpredictably enough that the editing calls attention to itself; the use of out of focus and "under" or "over" exposure; extremely rapid camera movements that blur the image; distorting lenses; extreme tilts of the camera; placing objects in front of the lens to alter the image; time lapse photography; collaging objects directly onto the film strip; the use of other abstracting devices such as superimpositions or optical effects; printed titles that offer a commentary that's different from simply providing information or advancing the narrative; asynchronous sound; the cutting together of spatially disjunct images in a way that does not serve an obvious narrative or easily reducible symbolic purpose.] 5. It has an oppositional relationship to both the stylistic characteristics of mass media and the value systems of mainstream culture. [Thus in a found footage film using footage from instructional films, the original will be credited to create some form of critique of the style and meaning of the original.] 6. It doesn't offer a clear, univalent "message." More than mainstream films, it is fraught with conscious ambiguities, encourages multiple interpretations, and marshals paradoxical and contradictory techniques and subject-matter to create a work that requires the active participation of the viewer.

James Peterson´s three types of mental schemes James Peterson's work focuses on the spectator's activity, which is based on identifying images, categorizing them and integrating them into knowledge. He proposes three types of mental schemes to carry out this process: 1. Prototype: to identify individual objects, they are essential to recognize images. 2. Template (pattern, template): to identify patterns; fill in missing pieces; predict, anticipate and remember We have many schematics for sequences of events, but few for surface, visual, detail patterns. This is a problem: avant-garde viewer must attend to patterns of: texture-color-shape-movement instead of the patterns of commercial cinema: dramaturgy-stage-events 3. Procedural: putting what we have learned into practice

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Module 4 Antonio: The Compilation Documentary and The Found Footage Cinema / Archival Cinema Las dos definiciones de Found Footage que da el profe. The documentary of compilation and the cinema of found footage are the two forms of cinema that work with non-narrative montage (general meaning). The documentary of compilation associates itself with the notion of archive, historical memory and reading of content, whereas in the case of the cinema of found footage, notion of collage and montage (The Duchamp Effect), allegorical use of material, and reinterpretation. The true meaning of archival cinema designates a double operation: appropriation and semantization. The traced image opens up to new meanings and associations that relate it both to the new context in which it appears and to its origin story. This is an open process, since the new meaning acquired by the image is circumstantial and nothing prevents the image from being reused for a different operation. The new compilation thus defines an active and dynamic process of semantic transformation, pulverizing the notion of the archive as the depository of a fixed historical evidence to establish what we have called the new paradigm of the archive. The idea of the archive must be approached conceptually: it is a semantic deposit, a repertoire of meanings, a lexicon.

William Wees: Recycled Images Según William Wees, ¿cuáles son las tres formas de apropiación?

1. Compilation: Fragments are traced to support a speech. The images represent the reality to which they allude. 2. Collage: The footage is used to create metaphors, provoke critical awareness, underline that it is a representation built by someone. 3. Appropriation: The footage is used for decorative purposes. The surface of the image is worked on, without looking for new meanings, the value of the material as a historical object is lost. NOTE: Re-contextualization is unavoidable but it does not always have the same value. The historical sense of the appropriate material: in 1. Compilation, it is understood literally; in 2. Collage, critically / dialectically; in 3. Appropriation, it loses.

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Module 5 Vicente Domínguez´s Digital Essay -

Defined as audiovisual artistic work of hyper-individual authorship created with popularly accessible computer tools (hardware and software) from the Downloadable Digital Database

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15 Principles of Digital Essay (it is XX) about ideas. an object of the digital media age. digital. Therefore, for the construction of digital essays, any present or future digital content support is allowed. 4. LCDs are the natural screens. 5. The Downloadable Digital Database (internet, dvd's, cd's, which implies various screens and devices) is the source. 6. The author is a composer of fragments and objects from the Downloadable Digital Database to which he adds a joint, a link (the idea). 7. The author is, preferably, individual (hyperindividualism), and must be self-sufficient (he must know how to move through any form or support of the Downloadable Digital Database, and manipulate them -text, image and sound- with the simplest and most affordable tools) 8. excludes the Institutional Mode of Cinematographic Production. Consequently, the recording or filming of fictional situations is strictly “prohibited”. 9. Digital photo cameras, webcam images, mobile phone cameras, and, at the extreme of sophistication, mini-cam's dv can be used. 10. An manipulation job. Consequently, the BASIC OPERATIONS for the creation, composition or construction of a digital Essay are the following: SEARCH, SELECT, COPY, CUT, SUPERPOSE AND PASTE. 11. Neither documentary nor fiction, but includes both narrative modes, extracted from the Downloadable Digital Database, quite naturally, as fragments of the whole. 12. The content of the digital cinematography database (cinema on DVD, through the internet –p2p, emule, etc.-) is a privileged material for essay composition digital 13. admits without any problem long fragments of text. i.e. the Digital Essay is a work that is seen and read (and, of course, heard). 14. may include hypertext or hypermedia links. 15. 15. rigorous study and research are inescapable moments before any digital essay.

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Module 6 Las 6 cosas que ha hecho el arte. ¿Qué es lo específico del cine que no tiene el resto del arte?

The visual arts of the 1960s 1. Abstract art: art that does not attempt to represent an accurate depiction of a visual reality but instead use shapes, colours, forms and gestural marks to achieve its effect. a. Abstract film (refer to Module 1): 2. Collage (from French, glued or glued): In the film, as Bruce Conner contends, collage is montage. According to Peter Bürger, a general theory of the avant-garde must start from the consideration of the avant-garde work as an inorganic creation. a. It foregrounds the technique of parataxis, which -- basically means the placing of clauses or phrases one after another, without words to indicate coordination or subordination -- breaks off the syntactic and narrative connections that sustain the grammar of traditional art. b. The montage and collage produced by the avant-garde, according to Bürger, are types of contemporary artistic production that have abandoned their connection with artisan production. This assertion is based on the fact that the assembly producer does not gives shape and meaning to a matter, as the craftsman does, but groups different objects that already have meaning, exploring different assembly alternatives 3. The Duchamp Effect (the ready-mades): This consists principally of an act of selection and reduction applied to already existing elements, with the focus on ‘exhibitionimmanent’ aspects such as presentation, communication, documentation, and dissemination. It aims to achieve a radical revaluation of artistic production a. Bicycle Wheel of 1913, a wheel mounted on a wooden stool. Fountain of 1917, a men’s urinal signed by the artist with a false name and exhibited placed on its back. 4. The Benjamin effect: In the age of Production, works of art had an ‘aura’ – an appearance of magical or supernatural force arising from their uniqueness. It is connected to the idea of authenticity that any reproduced artwork never fully presents. The impact of mechanical reproducibility is that the authenticity, integrity, and uniqueness is devalued. *The two effects explained above overlap in that they both affirm that for artists, it is perfectly legitimate to take an element from another artist and put it somewhere else, causing it to cease to be what it was and to acquire a different meaning. However, Duchamp works with the resignification of the object; it is based on the appropriation, resignification. On the other hand, Benjamin says that you can work with existing objects, making copies; it is based on the concept of reproduction. 5. The perception of Modernist: a. Medium specificity implies that a medium carries information, which is its own materials. An artistic work can only work with what is specific to it. In the case of cinema, the specificity lies in physical properties of film, such as camera, projector, light, screen, movie theater. b. The problem engendered by the modernist precept is that an artistic medium works with the physical limitations of the medium, the two dimensions of the screen. In cinema it is complicated since it is difficult to establish which elements

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are specific to cinema. The theater teaches us how characters are placed in space, literature teaches the narrative part. c. P. Adames Sitney defined structural cinema (materialist; experimental genre) as ´cinema where a structure prevails'. For example, Wavelength is a single 43minute shot, which automatically zooms from time to time. The content as such (fiction) is killed. The structure is where the interest and the will of the artist is exhausted. Therefore, the work is responsible for a machine, not an artist. 6. Post-medium The opposite of point 5. I...