Reading Response 1

1. What are some characteristics of the American psychodrama in the 1940s?

The filmmakers often played the lead role, and their films strove to explore the structure of dreams and/or the mind. There is usually only one human character and he or she confronts their environment and there are usually no human antagonists. If there is, there is only one. The films were made in 16mm.

2. What does Sitney mean by an “imagist” structure replacing narrative structure in Choreography for the Camera?

The film images together create a unified emotional response or abstract theme/idea within the viewer as opposed to being concerned with a narrative account of events.

3. According to Sitney, Ritual in Transfigured Time represents a transition between the psychodrama and what kind of film?

The film is an extension of the trance film which Sitney dubs the "architectonic" film which developed in the 1960s towards myth and ritual.

4. Respond briefly to Sitney’s reading of Ritual in Transfigured Time (27-28); Is his interpretation compatible with your experience of the film?

Sitney mostly recounts the events in the film, gives each character an identity, muses for a few lines on the role of the editing and camerawork in the film, and equates her style to a ritual of sorts. When I saw the film, I didn't see it so much as a ritual, rather I saw it as a dream/trance film. I associate ritual with secret group performances and chanting and repetition (however there is plenty of repeition in this film). In this film I saw a protagonist who expresses emotions of fear and desire as she drifts through a heady dream.

Sitney, “The Magus”

5. Paraphrase the paragraph on p. 90 that begins “The filmic dream constituted…” in your own words.

The "filmic dream" for Anger and Deren is quite similar to each other. The self is split in two: one is behind the camera and sees what the camera sees, and the other self is projected visually for the viewer to see physically. The "viewer" or "dreamer" is BOTH the subject and the object of the dream/film. The film/dream and the images that populate it is a visual metaphor for the processes of the meaning-seeking mind.

6. According to Sitney, what is the ultimate result at the end of Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome?

Firstly, no real, tangible results from the film can be obtained for the viewer without first reading Anger's own program notes. Sitney says the the essential tension of the film is resolved when the Magus unifies its several avatars into a unified, redeemed man. The characters are most themselves when they assume the aura of the gods.

Scott MacDonald, “Cinema 16: Introduction”

7. What were some general tendencies in the programming at Cinema 16, and how were films arranged within individual programs?

The programs at Cinema 16 had a wide range of types of films. The programmers favored diversity in genre in order to deliver a true alternative filmgoing experience for its patrons.

8. What kinds of venues rented Kenneth Anger’s Fireworks?

Microcinemas and art theaters dedicated to exploring the limits of film as an artistic medium.

9. What impact did Cinema 16 have on New York City film culture?

It gave New York cinephiles an avenue for organization and artistic erudition and helped establish New York as a filmmaking and critical studying hub for film.

Hans Richter, “A History of the Avantgarde”

10. What conditions in Europe made the avant-garde film movement possible after World War I?

The availability of equipment helped democratize the production of films. Additionally, the European Avant-Garde of the early twentieth century was in some ways a reaction to the logical, rational mindset that produced the horrible war. The avantgardists strove to deconstruct rationality with films that offered their own unique logics not grounded in everyday life.

11. If the goal of Impressionist art is “Nature Interpreted by Temperament,” what are the goals of abstract art?

To stimulate the recesses of the mind, the nonactive part. to come to the fore of consciousness and to use it to experience and appreciate the art. Abstract art does not want to recreate reality as we perceive it from day to day. Rather it is more representational and suggestive in color and form. Additionally, abstract art is unique to painting, drawing, and everything in between. The equivalent to abstract art in film is avantgarde.