In week 2, we observed the distinction between old and new media, if such distinction exists. Natale’s outlines that ‘old media’ is only a constructed perception of a technology in ‘There Are No Old Media’ (2016). However, this makes me wonder, who has shaped this perception surrounding old and new media? How would this serve companies and individuals?

Planned obsolescence, over consumption and capitalism come to mind. If the ‘older’ models of the iPhone function perfectly, why do we feel as if they have become outdated? I feel that it is a twisted (yet well executed) ploy to get us to purchase the latest technology, growing the wealth of the major corporations further. The terms old and new media now feels predatory.

Harvey Salgo (2016) speaks to the environmental repercussions of the old vs new media mindset, and the ways the overconsumption of technology exacerbates climate change. He sates that ‘the market strategy built around rapid style change and shoddy commodities has deep ecological significance especially as it pertains to resource use’ (Salgo 2016, pg 27) speaking to the demand the mind set of old and new has put on production and thus is depletion of our natural resources.

And yet in class I could see that my continuous acquisition of Nintendo consoles over my life contributes to this. The DS Lite, the 3Ds, the Wii and The Switch? Why did I feel the need to buy all of them when they serve the same purpose, and even host the same game? I am left with this question.

~253 Words

• Natale, S 2016, ‘There Are No Old Media’, Journal of Communication, Vol 66 (4): 585-603
• Salgo, H 2016, ‘The Obsolescence of Growth: Capitalism and the Environmental Crisis’, Review of Radical Political Economics, Vol 5 (3), pg 26-45.
• TimeToast (Date Unknown) Nintendo Handheld Consoles, TimeToast website, accessed 10 March 2023, Header Image and Hyperlink, <https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/nintendo-consoles-923c4449-667d-4c75-b6aa-d480458c8d96>

 

Jan 7 2021 – At home. I took this photo because I was bonding with my dad, doing a task that combines both of our interests. I feel deeply melancholy about this now because my relationship with my father has deeply changed and I cant imagine doing this now. He looks happier than I have seen in recent years and I miss this version of him. It was sunny.

The photo includes my father in the back, holding up a rainbow trout that he painted which was much better than mine in the foreground. He has never painted before, so I was surprised. He is smiling happily and has headphones in, probably listening to jazz.

 

Week One taught me that making is both old and new. Tim Ingold in The Textility of Making explains that those who make follow ‘a line already incorporated into the timber [the trajectory of making] through its previous history of growth’’ (Ingold 2010, pg 92) stating that making is not original, nor is it spontaneous in the hands of the maker through the analogy of a timber worker. 

I found this quote to be poignant during week one as each folding step during our origami practice follows the last, relying on the previous ‘wood grain’ to guide the maker in their actualisation of a crane, a box or plane. Moreover, as the historical art has many rules, my yellow box follows the instructions for the same box people have folded for hundreds of years. And yet, I still possess the ability to alter the box to my liking. 

In a very similar way, when comparing digital and physical media later in the week, I came to understand the gratification I feel when engaging in my chosen tactile media, painting, stems from my ability to master the techniques that guide my practice. The techniques of the greats seek to place my work in the intricate mesh of artists who are connected through technique and time, creating a fulfilling non digital hobby.

And thus I feel that Ingolds analogy to be important to the studio thus far as it acknowledges the historical past, previous steps and instructions in making and the influence it can have on our work in the present and how it enriches our understanding of the importance of non digital media.

~272 Words

Ingold, T 2010, ‘The Textility of Making‘, Cambridge Journal of Economics, vol 34, pg 91-102, accessed March 5 2023.

Canon Fodder

The studio I was a part of interrogated what it means for a film to be ‘Canonised’ and made a part of the top 100 films of all time on the 2012 Sight and Sound list. Isabel, Roisin and Shaun (Group One) produced a video with three segments detailing the past, present and future regarding who should have a say in constructing The Canon. In comparison, Alannah, Giorgio and Zoe (Group Two) made a video about who should also contribute to Canon, but both provided different solutions.

Group one suggested that The Canon belongs to all people, not just those with inherited knowledge such as critics. A wider diversity in people adding to the list, a wider range of films and different representations will be included. On the other hand, Group Two suggests there is still importance in the inclusion of critic’s opinions and expertise, opting for a fifty-fifty split between critics and laymen to form the list.

Both provided discussion of the difference between ‘favourite’ and ‘best/greatest’. Whether it is dividing the films by decades, by continent, by box office success and more, popular vote, both groups acknowledged that art in itself is difficult to define and difficult to pit against each other.

From group one, I thoroughly enjoyed the forms in which the three sections took. The past shown through old movie clips, the present as represented as someone of today’s population and the future as an ambiguous messy amalgamation of uncertainty, celebration, unease and disdain. I felt this was representative of the general sentiment of the class over the last twelve weeks.

 

A Different Studio: Translating Observations 

Video One: Mina’s video titled An Unheard Conversation clearly demonstrates the beauty in the action of observing rather than the observation itself. She employs a main character in which we borrow the point of view of to perceive a conversation between two friends. In doing this, we take on her facial expressions and project them onto the interaction to understand the encounter as well as how we feel about what we see ourselves.

I believe keeping the opening shots focussed and tight on the subject matter teaches a lot about the place her main character is viewing. By removing the landmarks of this well known place, I believe that it removed the assumptions and pre-established ideas we have about the place letting the strangers and their interactions with the space teach us about the role it plays within the place alone.

By removing any dialogue or music the audience is deprived of vital information needed to make sense of our surroundings. However, I was able to imagine the sounds of the place due to the carefully chosen clips of the guitar player and the birds in the background.

It is the main character’s headphones that intrigued me the most. As there was no noise change when she took them off, I interpreted this moment as a separation between the audience’s point of view and the main characters, as maybe we are then to view her as we are the view of the other two girls. I initially thought our vision was as one, but we ultimately view her as she views others by the end of the piece.

 

Video Two: Charlie’s video titled Serial Knitters speaks to the idea that one can miss observations right in front of them if we don’t look up from our established routines. However, whilst the didactic provided helped me to come to these conclusions, I independently understood the short film to be a celebration of the observations of others in common spaces, such as a laundromat. These meetings are made by chance; crossing paths and observing people that you don’t usually see. And for me, that was the beauty I found in this video. 

 

For both videos in the translation observations studio, I was pleasantly delighted by how they depicted one’s relationships with their surroundings and the other people that inhabit places. It was their skilful construction of the setting through the eyes of the main characters and their own position within the space that elaborates the complexities within the space and the stories that exist beyond our own point of view. This is what I believe to the idea that runs through both videos and the studio they were made in.

For my final assignment, Ben, Connor and I made a manifesto in the form of an infomercial. The advertised book ‘How to Make the Greatest Film of All Time’ as written and promoted by protagonist Henry Pellicule (Viv Dobbie-Glazier) exhibited a satirical approach to the task as we felt this tone was fitting for our indifference and anarchical attitudes towards The Canon. We felt presenting the commonalities between the films, and their makers, on the list in a productive manner would highlight the absurd narrow criteria for a success the list promotes.

Ben and Connor were excellent group mates for this task. The formation of our final project happened in a spur of writing and an afternoon of filming as we clearly outlined the aesthetic, tone and contents of our script after two weeks of planning. It was beneficial to riff off each other and note all ideas as we combined, including even the most outlandish ideas we had such as live performance and flash mobs.

The impetus for our manifesto was a general dissatisfaction with the list and all it contains/represents. This enabled my group to pick and choose what we included in our manifesto which allowed for a broad scope of creativity to be employed. In the beginning. We were very much plagued by choice. The first few stages of brainstorming saw a push and pull of Connor and I’s ideas which were initially vastly different. I found this frustrating as I joined the group with preconceived notions of what I wanted the final project to say and feel like and thus conflict arose as I was close minded.

Therefore, it was imperative that I trusted my group mates. At the core of our group dynamic is ultimately a friendship. Not all working relationships have to be friendships, but this dynamic gave me the freedom to trust in Connors’ more developed vision of the final product. Thus, our group slowly moved forward combining ideas.

The scripting phases were a testament to this (my newly developed) opened mindedness we all shared. I had to detach from the lines I wrote for it to be edited to make it consistent with Connor and Ben’s sections which honestly hurt my pride at first. But I truly believe both Connor and Ben are far more funny than I am, so I separated my idea and self worth and the edits were made. I believe the script was then consistent at the end of the day and the moment I saw it for the first time I was very happy with the end product.

Whilst filming, Connor and I were able to switch roles effectively to direct specific scenes we wanted. As our friends and the two of us (as Ben couldn’t be there) were well versed in the equipment, we were able to shoot our manifesto with ease. And due to a smaller crew than the studios warrant, I was able to use the ‘God Mic’ to communicate with Viv and the headsets to communicate with the camera operators. However, it was the freedom we gave our camera crew that produced some of my favourite shots in the final product – where the subject is slightly out of focus, the product isn’t centred and Viv’s head is out of frame. Rather than mimic these imperfections we desired, it was far more effective and fun to slowly provide less instruction to the camera operators throughout the video to create this look and I am delighted at the final product.

Moreover, directing Viv’s performance was really difficult as I found that I couldn’t describe what I wanted without performing it myself. Although this was effective at the moment, it was time consuming and taxing on our bodies due to the nature of the repeated yelling and straining the performance called for.

The lack of representation and constantly being left out of The Canon, as analysed in the research stages, felt discouraging as it only left me with the exhaustion and anger at the exclusivity of The Canon which drove me to a more light hearted final manifesto for my own sanity. 

In the establishment of our ‘final message’, I believe that the infomercial conventions paired with the satirical tone called for a less complex analysis of The Canon. We mostly took note of the optics of The Canon; who were the makers and their privileges that bought them to make films? And what is the mark that privilege has left on the film rather than a deeper analysis of the canon. I think this could be one of the faults of our manifesto and I only realised this after viewing some of last year’s manifestos which sought to make a big important statement. Whilst ours aims to create the same sort of discourse around The Canons legitimacy and longevity, it was hard to ignore the lack of a larger louder dramatic political statement in our work.

However, it is the form of our video that makes this difficult. I believe that even though manifestos do not usually manifest as an Ad for a product, I am pleased with the ‘shouty’ and deranged performance from Viv as to me, this is a hallmark of the manifesto. I wanted it performed with gusto, an all consuming commitment to the guidelines made and a fervid attempt at convincing or teaching the audience and I believe we achieved this.

The formation of our manifesto stemmed from the realisation that not only can anyone be canonised (dah) but anyone can make and deliver the manifesto and thus we grounded this idea in an unconventional setting for a manifesto, the infomercial. Despite the rigidity of our information the video provides, I like how the video and its form is unconventional in itself.  

It was my politics class which led me to the greatest realisation of The Canon during this process. In that class and in a discussion of alternatives to democracy, we spoke about how alternative models of the future are inconceivable to our minds because it is nothing like what we have seen before. There is no path to follow as the status quo has always been predetermined. And I feel this way about The Canon. When we viewed many of the manifestos, they did not provide a solution to the problem which I once considered a flaw of the manifesto, a trait that deemed it useless and a questionable unfounded demand for change. But after this politics class I realised that the inherited history of The Canon only speaks to one narrative, the narrative of the straight white male and their creative voices that has largely been unchanged and unchallenged widely and accepted until recently. This meant that the internal struggle I felt to come up with solutions to this lack of representation dissolved, as new ways forward are difficult to see when the past has remained constant. And thus, concluding our manifesto with no solutions was freeing. I was allowed to be angry at the systems in place and emancipated from answers required to solve it.

In the completion of our manifesto, I hope that the audience understands that the video is satire and I hope they have a giggle. We intend that the audience is fooled by the nonchalant opening and they are engaged by the slight changes in camera motion that begin Henry’s descent into madness.

I also hope that they get tired of the concept of lists as I have after making this video. Whilst we didn’t make any explicit commentary on the list on purpose, I think the absurdity of the list we made will make the audience think of its inappropriate nature as it singles out many people in a modern audience. I do hope the tone of the video conveys that it is a manifesto and not just an infomercial. I’m not sure how well versed the general public is when it comes to manifestos, as I wasn’t familiar with them myself before the class.

If I was to continue this piece into the future, I would like to explore what it means to put films on a list and what it means to inherit history without questioning its consequences. To keep our script concise, we did not include these elements but what The Canon means for society and the world it builds for readers and viewers for film was an integral part of this course. I would do this by extending the script and run time to include this. I would also aim to add some graphics to the video elaborating on the book as a product itself, possibly adding some ‘buy one get one free’ phrases adding on some more useless items that could be used to describe the aforementioned faults with lists and inherited history. And if I was to remake the video, I think it would be fun to do it in a seventies aesthetic as it would challenge my production skills as well as connote and sell the likeness to an infomercial more.

 

~1507 words

LINK TO OUR MANIFESTO: Here!

Vimeo Link: Here!

(Google Drive link above. Video will also be on the Vimeo)

Assignment 2:

 

See part one: Here

See part two: Here

 

By Olivia Hough

Part II (5 of 15% total)

The Canon depletes the artistry of femininity and plasters men upon gravestones of excellence.

 

The canon is tired

It needs to go to bed

 

Film and its greatness is elderly and sagging, dragging upon the loose skin of veterans who have been long forgotten, whose photos still hang on halls without followers or people to adorn them with awards like yonder years.

Canon Fodder Assignment 2 – By Olivia Hough

Part I (10 of 15% total) – 1200-1500 word reflect

MANIFESTO!

MANIFESTO!

MANIFESTO!

In weeks 3-5 of Canon Fodder, I became inspired by the many manifestos we viewed and read, and increasingly spiteful for The Canon (Sight and Sound 2012) and the issues I have with its formation and inclusions. My issues on inclusion, exclusion, form, criterion, and rules remain at the front of my mind when I think of The Canon.

Firstly, I struggle to distinguish between short films and feature length films but more specifically, what divides them within the context of The Canon. Other than their length and structure, I deeply feel that the forms are closely enough related that they should be regarded as the same.

The Street (Caroline Leaf 1976) highlighted the quality I look for amongst films to consider their greatness. Emotion. I was completely invested in the story of The Street and I couldn’t understand why it was excluded from The Canon. It moved me, captured me, and even had me watching it again. If art and film’s purpose is to make people feel, then The Street was the greatest film I had seen in class yet. It asked me to interrogate what I consider great compared to what The Canon deems as great.

Thus, one of my greatest issues of The Canon is highlighted by Dogma 95 (1995), and that is the idea of Rules. I find Dogma 95’s list of arbitrary rules dictating what makes something worthy of The Canon an evil and twisted necessity. The manifesto lends itself to the idea that as a true artist, one should refrain from personal taste. Not only does this sound exhausting but it also sounds elitist. I believe that any value scale frustrating because art, in my opinion, cannot be objectively judged. It confines peoples creatively as they try to adhere to the rules and aims to elevate a group of people based on their exclusive knowledge. Even though the Canon is not built upon Dogman 95 exclusively, those tyo agree with the list become esteemed in some sort of film classism in which, in my opinion, as encouraged The Canon to remain somewhat the same for many decades.

And yet I try to define the greatest films by their ability to create an emotional response? I keep my own lists on Letterboxd? I’m confused and conflicted with myself. But I think the greatest issue is the universality of such value judgements and forcing a criterion upon other people; telling them what should be considered great. My list is for me! And believe me, The Canon is not for me.

In Schrader’s article ‘Canon Fodder’ he outlines said criteria for an objectively great film. Beauty, strangeness, unity of subject and from, tradition, repeatability, viewer engagement, morality and so on (Schrader 2006). Whilst this clarified the Canon for me and provided me a lens to understand the films through, it did not make many of the old films any more interesting or thrilling to me. It did not turn Citizen Kane into a film I wanted to see again or Vertigo a masterpiece. No matter the criteria, it is up to my personal taste. People will disagree with The Canon as long as it exists.

The short films Bygone Dull Care (Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart 1949) and Dimensions of Dialogue (Jan Svankmajer 1982) were both well-constructed and excellent short films which blew my mind. Whether it was really their technical skill or just the breath of fresh air these shorts offered me compared to the ancient feature length films we had seems so far, their production felt more impressive than any of the other films I had seen so far – despite their lack of a traditional narrative. It was almost because of this that I fell in love with them.

In my pervious reflection, I noted a lack of diversity in The Canon noting the exclusion of women, people of colour and queer people, and yet now my grievances lay with a lack of form and genre diversity. Why do all the films on the list feel the same? They’re old, by men for men, centred around war and action.

Jesse Wente speaks to a revolution, one of which that takes place within the film industry surrounding stories and the change in who are the emerging story tellers of today (Wente 2019). The manifesto reminded me of the power of cinema and the ways representations and the stories we tell affect people and society.

So in a bid to broaden my horizons, I was excited to view a MIFF (Melbourne International Film Festival) film! Connor and I chose to view Neptune Frost (dir. Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman 2022), a sci-fi, Afrofuturist Queer film to combat everything I hated about The Canon. I was ready to make my point, state that this was the best film I had ever seen and wrap my argument up in nice big pink bow – I wanted to prove diversity is better. And don’t get me wrong, diversity is better – but Neptune Frost alone is…not. Or so I thought.

The film was so different from anything I had seen before that I didn’t understand the conventions they employed. We were perpetually confused and honestly disappointed. This only showed me that The Canon, the status quo and the accepted has narrowed my ability to understand other types of cinema. I’m so used to dissecting the male gaze, analysing the three-act structure, recognising the tropes and reused plot lines that I ultimately dubbed Neptune Frost a bad film because it didn’t have the qualities that I have been fighting against for six weeks. I felt hypocritical.

In the manifesto ‘A Queer(’s) Cinema’, Manuel Betancourt states that ‘the queer imagination can surely move beyond what’s been done’ (Betancourt 2019, pg 17) and the celebration of films made by minorities is what The Canon so desperately lacks. Betancourt continues ‘queer cinema must push against decades of tradition to create itself anew’ (Betancourt 2019, pg 15) and this was exhibited in Neptune Frost. It was revolutionary in its conception and execution. Despite my cluelessness, it taught me that the queer experience is universal, and the fear of oppression and judgement, hate and joy that comes with being queer still imprinted on me. Through everything I didn’t understand, the desire for acceptance still reached me. And upon reflection, Neptune Frost grew on me.

The Canon has ebbed and flowed over the years with minor changes, but remains reminiscent of a whiteness, maleness and straightness of an outdated world and the stories it ranks no longer reflect what I, a queer woman of the 21^st century wants to watch. Whilst these films were revolutionary in their making, why not make a ‘most influential films’ list, and have the Sight and Sound list reflect societies values and interest of today? I believe The Canon provides a narrow view of the world, one that is disinterring, misrepresentative and exclusive.

The film ‘Manifesto’ (dir. Julian Rosefeldt, 2015) ignited a desire to create and perform my own manifesto. The power and drive I felt in Cate Blanchett’s performance is something I hope to channel in my own manifesto. The manifesto as a political and outrageous statement of beliefs is right up my alley, and I would be enthralled to make an unconventional film (short film, unconventional narrative) to dismantle the canon with my words, and with the form of my final piece too. I hope to make something that the grandfathers of cinema would be appalled to see. Let’s break some rules.

~ 1252 words

 

(see part 2 here)

 

References

Caroline Leaf (1976), The Street, short film, National Film Board of Canada.

Dogma 95, “Manifesto”, 1995, Dogme95.dk – A tribute to the official Dogme95, accessed 28 August 2022.

Jan Svankmajer (1982), Dimensions of Dialogue, short film, YouTube.

Jesse Wente, “Doing All Things Differently” in Film Quarterly vol. 72 no. 3, Spring 2019, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2019, pp. 42-43.

Lambart E & McLaren N (1949), Bygone Bull Care, short film, National Film Board of Canada.

Manuel Betancourt, “A Queer(’s) Cinema” in Film Quarterly vol. 72 no. 3, Spring 2019, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2019, pp. 15-17.

Paul Schrader, “Canon Fodder” in Film Comment, vol. 42, no. 5, September-October 2006, pp. 33-49

Various, “The Greatest Films of All Time”, Sight & Sound, September 2012, pp. 39-71.

Wells, O (1941), Citizen Kane, film, New York: Mercury Theater for RKO Radio Pictures Corp.

Williams S $ Uzeyman A (2022), Neptune Frost, film, Melbourne International Film Festival.

 

Here are the links to both parts of my first assignment for Canon Fodder!

For Part 1 Click Here!

For Part 2 Click Here!

Truth

The first two weeks of Canon Fodder have taught me to interrogate what is true and what we accept to be truth from knowledge holders whilst illuminating the flaws in the film Canon.

The sequential viewing of Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché (dir. Pamela B. Green, 2018) and Forgotten Silver (dirs Costa Botes and Peter Jackson, 1995) was to be one of my greatest lessons at university so far. Be Natural cast Alice Guy-Blache into the limelight after her contribution to early cinema, film narrative and her production house Solax were buried under the men that followed her in a tale as old as time. Despite her milestones in film history, she is not on Sight and Sounds ‘Greatest Films of All Time’ list. In parallel, Forgotten Silver seeks to document and uncover the works of Kiwi Colin McKenzie and the technical advancements he made to film and cinema which also became buried (physically and metaphorically) in an effort to preserve his vision of his four hour feature ‘Salone’. 

Whilst Guy-Blache’s story was true, Forgotten Silver was fake (TO MY SHOCK AND HORROR). Upon viewing, I accepted both films as truth as I naively onboarded the information I was given – rather than critique it. To me it ultimately highlighted how easily the white male story tellers were able to rewrite history and for their narrative to flourish unchallenged. The Canon, and the greatness it represents, speaks to a history of whiteness and maleness; a knowledge bank passed down through generations of critics, film makers and students accepting history from the lone perspective of white men.

 

The battle between Vertigo (dir. Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) and Citizen Kane (dir. Orson Welles, 1941) and which one deserves the top spot on the Sight and Sound’s “The Greatest Films of All Time’ list was a contest I did not overly care for. I was underwhelmed at both films’ greatness as I found their subject matter dated. Owen Gleiberman eagerly critiques both films in his article “‘Vertigo’ over ‘Citizen Kane’?’ stating that Citizen Kane may have fallen to the second position on the list due to its inability to relate to more modern audiences stating ‘for a movie to be the greatest of all time, it can’t be a monument. It has to be a movie that you feel close to’ (Gleiberman 2012 para. 4) and I agree. I felt disconnected from the story and confused by the film’s structure. He continues to state (and I paraphrase) that Vertigo’s place on the list was a choice to ‘fanboy… academics’ (Gleiberman 2012 para. ) and thus I reach my main issue with the list, it feels incredibly dated. Even though I am unsure if a films ability for it to ‘age well’ should effect it placement on the list in an academic sense, my personal taste was not too fond of both films.

However I did enjoy the composition of the shots in Citizen Kane and the use of colour in Vertigo, but in my opinion, beauty alone can not put either film on a pedestal. it was mostly the only positive feedback our class gave the films.

L’Avventura (dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960) and Robert Koehler’s “What makes Antonioni’s L’avventura great” opened my eyes to why these films top the list beyond my personal prejudice against old films (that’s too harsh, I’m sorry). Koehler speaks to L’Avventura’s revolutionary nature. The lack of a conclusion, the disappearance of a protagonist and the extended empty shots were appalling – in a fantastic way. Even though I thought the film was slow, I began entranced in the lore of its opening at the Cannes film festival and the dramatic good and bad reactions it conjured.

And whilst I think about the fairness of the list, I am confronted with inner turmoil. Even though Citizen Kane, Vertigo and L’Avventura were not what I consider great on their own but their revolutionary nature is what makes them great. Their ability to invent, shock and wow people, their legacy is their greatness. And yet, Alice Guy-Blache was revolutionary in her technical ability and her narrative style… but where is her spot on the list?

 

 

References:

Gleiberman, O (2012), ‘Vertigo’ over ‘Citizen Kane’? Why the new Sight and Sound critics’ poll is full of itself’, Entertainment Weekly <https://ew.com/article/2012/08/07/the-sight-and-sound-poll-is-full-of-it/>

Koehler, R (2012), ‘What Makes Antonioni’s L’avventura Great’,  BFI.org.uk<https://www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-sound/features/l-avventura-michelangelo-antonioni-1960-greatest-films-poll>