A few new experimental films

[inlieubeaulieu]

This new film was shot as part of a 50ft Super 8 challenge (shooting a single cartridge of Super8 with only in-camera editing) for a 50th B-day party for the format at the NW Film Center. Kodak provided the film, LightPress provided the telecine. Processed at Spectra Film & Video.
https://youtu.be/oKgtpyf6rGc
I shot this with my Beaulieu 5008s Multispeed, with an Angenieux 12-120mm lens (for an extra long zoom)

[carllooper]

Thanks Miles.

Have you posted this one before?

I'm sure I've seen it before, but could have been someone else's work I'd seen.

Not that it matters any way. I can watch water any number of times. In water is a sense of something fundamental. I always think of quantum physics when looking at water. The wave nature of light. But there is also water in itself - the basic material in which the simplest forms of life find the simplest of wombs. And in which more complex forms find an ideal environment in which to evolve. And if life leaves the water it does so by folding a skin around such, creating new versions of such, in which to produce new forms of life.

There's a moon around Jupiter (Europa) sporting a thick layer of frozen water (ice), but under which may very well be a temperate zone, where the water is liquid. Theories have the liquid zone being 100 km thick. And in which there might be some form of marine life, yet to be discovered. Or just as easily, no forms of such: just water.

Interesting to think that a colony might be set up on Europa. An underwater city of some sort built! I remember a film I saw as a kid: Captain Nemo and the Underwater City (or a title something like that). Began with a sailing ship coming to grief, and bodies floating under the surface of the water, (terrible sight as a youngster) but some of whom are rescued by the inhabitants of the underwater city. I have no idea how they were resusitated but the inhabitants of the underwater city managed it somehow. In fact I think I interpreted their return back to life as being some sort of arrival in an afterlife (so dead I was sure they must have been). I can't recall much else. My lasting impression is of water - a very deep blue water. And a sense of it's incredible weight, bearing down on this domed city and threatening to flood the inhabitants ... the city made of glass, for reasons that now dawn on me as a completely ridiculous way to make an underwater city.

It's interesting being able to remember one's earlier incarnation as a child. I recall my senses being far more highly charged than they seem to me now. There's something quite magical about that - recalling one's ability to be completely overwhelmed by a sensory experience. I think there's something to be explored in that - perhaps to recover this sense of the sensory may very well require short-circuiting one's "intelligence" in some way. To work against expectations and assumptions (inside the heads of market research focus groups as much as inside our own heads) in order to see (hear, touch etc) what is outside of such.

cheers
C

ps. the title of that film was correct, I must have been 7 yrs old at the time - it's a 1968 movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_N ... water_City

[inlieubeaulieu]

I've made a number of films featuring water (as for the Déjà vu, as I definitely shot this about 4 weeks ago)
Unlimitless: https://youtu.be/UhiCj4dvXTA
Hornhautverkrümmung: https://youtu.be/bzqH3nc9xX4

I am endlessly fascinated by the satellites of Saturn and Jupiter. Io, Europa, Enceladus, Ganymede, etc. are all fascinating in their own ways (and nearly all of them the possibility for life!). Can't wait for NASA's future missions

[wahiba]

They all looked terrible to me. The emporer has no clothes on.

Fife Robertson described this type of art as PHony ART -

[inlieubeaulieu]

thank you for your reply. I would love to see some of your work.

[carllooper]

They all looked terrible to me. The emporer has no clothes on.

Fife Robertson described this type of art as PHony ART -

The emperor, despite having no clothes , remains the title character of a famous story.
And if the emperor's claim to fame was not already cemented in this way, he would still be useful as a life drawing model.

There is no such thing as phony art. Just phonys, or pharts, such as Fyfe Robertson.

Art remains art regardless.

C

[carllooper]

"Experimental Film" is a somewhat peculiar category insofar as all films have their foundation in experimentation. And in this sense we might say all films are experimental.

But perhaps by "experimental film" we mean those works which are particularly experimental - that work specifically in and around the foundations of cinema. A kind of "beginning from scratch" approach. A reboot. Whether it results in something new or something old it doesn't really matter.

But there are also those experimental films which are unhappy occupying the cinema. Or unhappy with what does occupy the cinema. That operate against the typical fare otherwise available there. Sometimes as if they had no other reason for being other than to be in opposition to typical cinema. Such films might be somewhat negatively defined - by what they are not, more than what they are. In the limit this cinema might be a hyper-critical one. Not only against conventional cinema but even against radical ones, and in the limit against it's own methods - and if successful at it, would actually vanish. A bit like the time traveller, who travels into the past, to assassinate their own grandfather. A modernism or post-modernism that erases itself in the name of some mad truth.

Back on Earth will be those experimental films, unconcerned with attaining the keys to an ivory tower. A cinema much more interested in playing in the rain, even if it means falling over in the mud. That cinema which is unafraid to get it's hands dirty. Indeed one which welcomes any opportunity to get bruised and battered. To feel the world. Like Wender's angels who chose to become mortal. A cinema no less in search of a mad truth (or a mad falseness) but where it would be something rather than nothing that would be the result and origin.

It is this second form of experimental cinema which evolves. Or makes evolution possible. Even if it always returns back to it's foundations (as any new work must always do) there is always the next day when it goes out for a longer walk. And if it throws it's foundations into question (as it always must) it is nevertheless able to do so without imploding. It is able to hold itself up by it's own bootstraps. It's creative energy is such that it is always able to escape any black holes it has otherwise engineered. It is always capable of the last laugh.

But what is this domain that the experimental cinema is able to explore?

It is perhaps the nature of the universe, or the nature of an image, prior to those who will claim it, or damn it. It is perhaps that which is fundamentally visible without yet to whom it would be visible. A world in which the viewer, or an audience, (as much as the artist) are not yet a part. A world in which there is not yet subjectivity. But not yet objectivity either. For there are not yet these categories into which such a cinema might later evolve. It is a universe still in it's early stages. And the structure of which may very well be inexhaustible. It is a world in which the future is always the future. It is one which is always pregnant. A womb and/or a seed.

C

[wahiba]

thank you for your reply. I would love to see some of your work.

All made by me. Subjects all of personal interest. No claims in respect of anything for these movies. Only egotistic bit is uploading them to YouTube

Amateur movies home transferred by hi-8 camcorder.

No artisitic or any other claims whatsoever for subjects, movies or music.

Sound tracks all off copyright free CDs.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 3F0DB0CEBE

[inlieubeaulieu]

here's another new PHART: https://youtu.be/GzEnQxE-eAc
A sort-of sequel to Solaristics.

[nikonr10]

thank you for your reply. I would love to see some of your work.

All made by me. Subjects all of personal interest. No claims in respect of anything for these movies. Only egotistic bit is uploading them to YouTube

Amateur movies home transferred by hi-8 camcorder.

No artisitic or any other claims whatsoever for subjects, movies or music.

Sound tracks all off copyright free CDs.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... 3F0DB0CEBE

Hey guys Thank you for sharing , Thats film and Film making not to everybody liking/ so be it .
Keep shooting Film That's why we come on here to share and learn . Artisitic /Amateur , FIlmmaking is filmmaking .

[wahiba]

Definitely PHART.

Mind you, Picasso et al made a few bob from phart.

[nikonr10]

Definitely PHART.

Mind you, Picasso et al made a few bob from phart.

The Nazis called alot of work from that time as sick Art , 20/ 30 /40s Picasso and many more , That same sick Art is now very high value.
So what do we really know ? And what makes Art History / sure theres also alot of sad stuff there call Art in this Age . But bad taste is not new .

Art is Art / bad art good art, very few make Art History . You have to start from somewhere ? even one's that did .

[carllooper]

here's another new PHART: https://youtu.be/GzEnQxE-eAc
A sort-of sequel to Solaristics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzEnQxE ... e=youtu.be

Excellent work.

Carl

[inlieubeaulieu]

I just wanted to post an update that Spatial was officially selected to show at the 42nd NW Filmmakers' Fest. If anyone is in Portland and would care to see it on the big screen it will be playing tomorrow at 7pm at the Whitsell Auditorium in the Portland Art Museum as a part of the second short-film program.

[Nicholas Kovats]

Congratulations!