Justin Remes
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231169639
- eISBN:
- 9780231538909
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231169639.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Conducting a study of films that do not move, this book challenges the primacy of motion in cinema and tests the theoretical limits of film aesthetics and representation. Reading experimental films ...
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Conducting a study of films that do not move, this book challenges the primacy of motion in cinema and tests the theoretical limits of film aesthetics and representation. Reading experimental films such as Andy Warhol's Empire (1964), the Fluxus work Disappearing Music for Face (1965), Michael Snow's So Is This (1982), and Derek Jarman's Blue (1993), it shows how motionless films defiantly showcase the static while collapsing the boundaries between cinema, photography, painting, and literature. Analyzing four categories of static film: furniture films, designed to be viewed partially or distractedly; protracted films, which use extremely slow motion to impress stasis; textual films, which foreground the static display of letters and written words; and monochrome films, which display a field of monochrome color as their image—the book maps the interrelations between movement, stillness, and duration and their complication of cinema's conventional function and effects. Arguing all films unfold in time, it suggests duration is more fundamental to cinema than motion, initiating fresh inquiries into film's manipulation of temporality, from rigidly structured works to those with more ambiguous and open-ended frameworks. The text's discussion integrates the writings of Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Tom Gunning, Rudolf Arnheim, Raymond Bellour, and Noel Carroll.Less
Conducting a study of films that do not move, this book challenges the primacy of motion in cinema and tests the theoretical limits of film aesthetics and representation. Reading experimental films such as Andy Warhol's Empire (1964), the Fluxus work Disappearing Music for Face (1965), Michael Snow's So Is This (1982), and Derek Jarman's Blue (1993), it shows how motionless films defiantly showcase the static while collapsing the boundaries between cinema, photography, painting, and literature. Analyzing four categories of static film: furniture films, designed to be viewed partially or distractedly; protracted films, which use extremely slow motion to impress stasis; textual films, which foreground the static display of letters and written words; and monochrome films, which display a field of monochrome color as their image—the book maps the interrelations between movement, stillness, and duration and their complication of cinema's conventional function and effects. Arguing all films unfold in time, it suggests duration is more fundamental to cinema than motion, initiating fresh inquiries into film's manipulation of temporality, from rigidly structured works to those with more ambiguous and open-ended frameworks. The text's discussion integrates the writings of Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Tom Gunning, Rudolf Arnheim, Raymond Bellour, and Noel Carroll.
Justin Remes
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231169639
- eISBN:
- 9780231538909
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231169639.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter studies textual films—works that forgo conventional cinematic imagery in favor of letters, words, numbers, and other forms of handwritten or typographical text. It focuses on Michael ...
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This chapter studies textual films—works that forgo conventional cinematic imagery in favor of letters, words, numbers, and other forms of handwritten or typographical text. It focuses on Michael Snow's So Is This (1982), a film consisting entirely of individual words, displayed one at a time, gradually forming a series of statements that are alternately philosophical, inappropriate, and false. By drawing attention to the differences between cinematic reading and more conventional forms of reading, the film foregrounds the unique ability of cinema to structure duration. For example, readers of the script can set their own pace by choosing to skim certain passages, while reading others more carefully and deliberately. In So Is This, however, “The number of frames per word and spaces between was precisely indicated. It's composed.” Because of this careful structuring of cinematic temporality, readers of the script are forced to accept Snow's pacing.Less
This chapter studies textual films—works that forgo conventional cinematic imagery in favor of letters, words, numbers, and other forms of handwritten or typographical text. It focuses on Michael Snow's So Is This (1982), a film consisting entirely of individual words, displayed one at a time, gradually forming a series of statements that are alternately philosophical, inappropriate, and false. By drawing attention to the differences between cinematic reading and more conventional forms of reading, the film foregrounds the unique ability of cinema to structure duration. For example, readers of the script can set their own pace by choosing to skim certain passages, while reading others more carefully and deliberately. In So Is This, however, “The number of frames per word and spaces between was precisely indicated. It's composed.” Because of this careful structuring of cinematic temporality, readers of the script are forced to accept Snow's pacing.
Frances Smith
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474413091
- eISBN:
- 9781474438452
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474413091.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
There have always been teenagers. But it was only in 1904 that American psychologist G. Stanley Hall’s ground-breaking publication, Adolescence: its Psychology and its Relations to Physiology, ...
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There have always been teenagers. But it was only in 1904 that American psychologist G. Stanley Hall’s ground-breaking publication, Adolescence: its Psychology and its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sex, Crime and Education, established the existence of a hitherto undocumented period of ‘storm and stress’ between childhood and adulthood (Hall 1904: 2). As the case studies in later chapters will demonstrate, it is this sense of liminality that motivates my interest in the construction of identity found in the Hollywood teen movie. Here, I address both the evolution of the on-screen teenager in Hollywood cinema and, in tandem, the various ways in which film scholars have conceived the teen movie as a genre. With this understanding of how the field has developed over time, I explain how this book aims to rethink the Hollywood teen movie.Less
There have always been teenagers. But it was only in 1904 that American psychologist G. Stanley Hall’s ground-breaking publication, Adolescence: its Psychology and its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sex, Crime and Education, established the existence of a hitherto undocumented period of ‘storm and stress’ between childhood and adulthood (Hall 1904: 2). As the case studies in later chapters will demonstrate, it is this sense of liminality that motivates my interest in the construction of identity found in the Hollywood teen movie. Here, I address both the evolution of the on-screen teenager in Hollywood cinema and, in tandem, the various ways in which film scholars have conceived the teen movie as a genre. With this understanding of how the field has developed over time, I explain how this book aims to rethink the Hollywood teen movie.
