"Hukkle" by György Pálfi

"D'Est" by Chantal Akerman is a wonderful film of a woman's travels through Eastern Europe. Her compsition is impeccable and her framing is meaningful and expressive. My only complaint is that this piece is drawn out so long (2 hours?) and it seems excessive. Her idea of life in Russia after the Cold War being slow and boring, there being this constant waiting within the community was expressed thouroughly after the first hour or so. I also saw some shots that I thought were filmed in a very narrative form and felt like the movie was striving to be something of a story of Russia, but not succeeding. I know that this film was used initially as a video installation which seems like a much more feasable idea.

The film "Hukkle" by György Pálfi is a Hungarian film with the same amazing composition and framing (still no dialogue, like "D'Est") but it's much more meaningful to me. I've been wondering to myself if I like this film better because it's more of a narrative than Akerman's piece but I do think both films are on the same wavelength and would work together very well. This could illustrate what narrative brings to Experimental film.

5 consecutive posts post

As one can tell, I'm not too persistent and really have trouble with consistent and consecutive work. Even the 5-day posting assignment is hard for me to follow though with. I've really come to appreciate works like "I Learn Something New Every Day" and "365 videos" because for me it's hard to continally work on one project with as much persistence as some have. Making a project that has to be updated daily and worked on consistently wihtout fail is suprisingly tasking. There's a sort of beauty to making oneself that devoted to a single project and not getting bored or lazy with it. This says a lot for how much motivation I need to make myself focused and even excited to work every day.

Inspired Experimental Film

I guess I don't know where I'd draw the line for the term experimental film. I just saw the new movie Pan's Labrynth by Guillermo del Torro and I'd call that one of the best experimental films I've seen in quite a while. I think this is partly because it reminds me a lot of German Expressionism, in particular The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The shadows were all pretty exaggerated and even almost looked like cutouts and the acting was so over the top that I really felt like that movie was striving for something that a mere fairytale plot could not churn out. I call this experimental film because it reminds me so much of a new way of confronting something far less fantastical than what the meaning conveys. This genre seems like it's very ahead of its time, like an experimental Chronicles of Narnia. I'd highly suggest seeing this movie.

We Can and We Must - "Man Alive" music video, directed by Jason Schumacher

Here is a link to a music video a friend of mine from Stillwater, MN directed. His name is Jason Schumacher and he actually attended UWM for 2 years and studied film. The video is called "Man Alive", music written by We Can and We Must, a band out of Chicago. I really love this aspect of video. Since we've been talking about video in 201 I've really been searching for some aspect of it that I appreciate more than film. I've found that when digital editing is done tastefully, especially when it adds stylization, I'm really fond of what it can provide. This video is about the future in a world gone wrong and the colorization and small amounts of special effects are synched wonderfully with the offbeat music and they really seem to open up this future age. The other thing I enjoy about this video is that I found it profoundly amateur in an extremely heartwarming fashion. Jason has a great sense of vision.

here it is...