Responce 6

Response to Nostalgia. I really enjoyed the films we watched yesterday, including Nostalgia. I really felt its simple structure, style, color, and shots (really shot) worked very well for the film. I was almost surprised how much I liked this film. I think the camera placement and choice to burn the photographs on top of a burner was just ingenious and the voice over was just incredibly powerful. It was very humorous at times, but the photographers words just carried so much weight and history it moved this simple film along so well. I also thought it was very cleaver how the filmmaker played with time, memory, and placement in order to create this strange spatial space. It turned what could have been a very simple film (which in many ways it is) to a really though provoking work.

1. To me, Fuses, and some of the other films we are watching is getting a little to far out of my taste and league for avant garde. Making homemade porn and manipulating the film stock just isn't enough for me to call this true cinema, even with its unique editing style. The content didn't bother me, but the fact that this is somehow distinguished in the history of experimental film annoys me. To me, at its core, its just porn with some interesting colors. I really didn't feel any sense of narrative or anything, even with everything we've learned so far and how to approach films differently, this film still just did nothing for me.

2. Structural film tries to capture the sense of the mind or conscience, rather than of they eye. Four of its typical characteristics are the fixed camera, looped film, flicker, and rephotography.

3. The central metaphor to this is the metaphor of consciousness.

4. Sitney is able to argue this because Warhol's films were often very long or had a very small amount of visual action taking place in front of the camera to capture or, more appropriately, hold the viewers attention. It challenged the viewer to pay attention for as long as possible, often attempting to outlast the viewers focus. His films attempted to access the inner workings of consciousness.

5. a. Warhol will often just create a simple scene, set the camera up, and attempt not to adjust anything. He believes that what he capture will automatically be art and not require any more direction, lighting, etc.

b. Warhol sets up the camera and challenges the audience how long they can truly pay attention (tapping into that idea of consciousness) where someone like Snow takes much more consideration in his set up and preparation.

c. Some filmmakers were trying to understand just how the eye perceives physical and real information and then, subsequently, how the mind takes that information and interprets and understands it. Warhol wanted to see how long the mind could be focused on something so simple or minimal and what they mind took out of it or why it got distracted. Structural films, on the other hand, were trying to created an altered state of consciousness.

d. Because, structural films often did not use visual metaphors and forced the viewer to simply interpret exactly what they were seeing in a very simple, physical, and logical way. These films tried to access a very specific state of mind.

6. Consciousness.