Handmade Films: Questioning and Integrating Cinematic Technology

Artigo publicado enquanto investigadora na Universidade de Aalborg, Dinamarca.

Cinematic motion by hand

The general goal of my research is to find out what is questioned whenever an animated film is made by an author who chooses to have maximum control over the device automatisms. I am trying to understand in what ways that specific kind of film relates with Cinema and the History of Art as a whole and, more specifically, how its filmic discourse is built within cinematic codes, workings and machinery. This paper, in particular, aims to establish that each time an author makes a film by suspending both automatic ‘motion’ and image recording functions—that which is often known as “cameraless” film—a process is initiated that simultaneously questions not only Cinema, within both expression and technology, but also the ontological position this same technology occupies in current media.

Spiral jetty, thirty seven years later: the cinematic time of James Benning

This article considers cinematic time in James Benning’s film, casting a glance (2007), in relation to its subject, Robert Smithson’s 1970 earthwork Spiral Jetty, and his film of the same name. The radicalism of Smithson’s thinking on time has been widely acknowledged, and his influence continues to pervade contemporary artistic practice. The relationship of Benning’s films with this legacy may appear somewhat oblique, given their apparent phenomenological rendition of ‘real time’. However, closer examination of Benning’s formal strategies reveals a more complex temporal construction, characterized by uncertain intervals that interrupt the folding of cinematic time into the flow of consciousness. Smithson’s film uses cinematic analogy to gesture towards vast reaches of geological time; Benning’s film creates a simulated timescale to evoke the short history of the earthwork itself. Smithson’s embrace of the entropic was a counter-cultural stance at the end of the1960s, but under the shadow of ecological disaster, this orientation has come to appear melancholy and romantic rather than radical. Benning’s film returns the jetty to anthropic time, but raises questions about the ways we inhabit time. His practice of working with ‘borrowed time’ is particularly suited to the cultural and historical moment of his later work.

The horizontal spread of a vertical malady: cosmopolitanism and history in Pernambuco’s recent cinematic sensation

Brazil’s recent cinematic sensation, O som ao redor/Neighboring Sounds (Kleber Mendonça Filho, 2012), displays an effective integration of form and content, as exemplified by its vertical figuration that crystallizes the devastating effects of property development and global capitalism. This chapter will attempt to unravel a two-way drive within this vertical motif: a movement off the ground, resulting in global cosmopolitanism; and another into the ground, in search of the social history and film history at its base. As I hope to demonstrate, despite the characters’ late postmodernist disconnect from local context and history, O som ao redor offers a perspicacious insight into regional and national history that contributes an original and exciting addition to Brazilian and world cinema.

Tempered CINEMATIC

A cinematic piece that features bowed piano strings, timpani, bass drum, cymbals and double bass. A moody, evocative piece that evokes cinematic-orchestral pieces for dramatic scenes.

Alien wailing cinematic score

A short composition featuring unusual soundscapes to create an eerie cinematic piece suitable for science fiction styled projects.

Ambient cinematic celeste (dreamy)

A short composition that is dreamy in style and features synth strings (modelled on 1970s ambient styled synths), celeste and percussion.

Ambient cinematic guitar rock

A short instrumental that is ambient in style and would suit cinematic types of projects. Guitar, bass, drums and a synth pad feature in this composition.

Ambient cinematic guitar, bass, synth pad

A short instrumental that is ambient in style and would suit cinematic types of projects. Guitar, bass and a synth pad feature in this composition.

Ambient CINEMATIC SHORT

A creaking door, an ambient ethno underscore, a couple of synths and you may just have your moody composition.

And on (piano and acoustic guitar cinematic style)

and on is a short instrumental featuring a nylon stringed acoustic guitar with an echo, chorus and tap reverb added to the tail, piano, and two synth pads.