Film Manifestos

Read on line article "Be Realistic: demand the impossible, or, A Secret History of Film Manifestos" by Scott MacKenzie (www.incite-online.net/mackenzie.html)

This is rather short, even briefer than the summer I heard him give in person, but was interested in  "Peggy Ahwesh, Craig Baldwin, and Keith Sanborn produced works that recycled the detritus images of contemporary culture into found footage films".

Phantom Images and Modern Manifestations

In book Fugitive Images; from photography to video, edited by Patrice Petro, University of Wisconsin, 1995. (from UofR Library).

"Phantom Images and Modern Manifestations: Spirit Photography, Magic Theater, Trick Films, and Photography's Uncanny" by Tom Gunning (page 42-71).

Notes:
Page 43, Freud, "unheimlich" = uncanny in translation.
Balzac theory that objects are constantly shedding their image like a skin.
Page 45, "the uncanny effect of repetition"
Page 48, William Mumler, commercial spirit photographer, tried for fraud.
Page 52, rationale for mediums being women.
Page 53, "...Claimed all they did was to hold the sensitive, receptive mediums, one spirited, the other photographic, was sufficient to form a latent image".
Page 56, Katie King (medium) ... "retires into a dark chamber (camera obscura) and produces a double of herself which emerges into the light"
Page 58, ectoplasm: term coined by Dr. Richet.
Page 60, Maskelyn, "Spiritualists ... put on a good show, one that was enthralling visually that it could be presented without serving as evidence for supernatural events".
Page 61, Robert-Houdin, exposed spiritualist, Houdini took name from him, he built a studio but when things got tough, he sold it to MELIES.
Page 64: "For Melies, spirit photography results less in communication with the dead than in an exchange of identities between image and model".
Page 65, Paul Coates, author of the early classic work on spirit photography, Photographing the Invisible, indicated that these spirit forces may actually need to consult existing photographs in order to create thee images. .... to refresh their memory".

Reader in animation studies second half

Finished "A Reader in Animation Studies" (and bought a copy).

Notes:
"The Thief of Buena Vista: Disney's Aladdin and Orientalism" by Leslie Felperin.
Page 138, Edward Said and orientalism notes.
Page 139, "it's conceivable that [Antoine] Galland himself wrote the story [Aladdin], drawing as much from European sources as oriental ones"

page 140, Pathe Freres - first film version, 1906
Page 141, "in many ways, the Aladdin story severs as a trope for the animation process itself... western technology is the genie which Aladdin/the animator commands".
Mr. Magoo / UPA version discussed.

"Animatophilia, cultural production and corporate interests: the case of Ren and Stimpy" by Mark Langer.
 Page 145, re cultural capital, [Bordieu] defined capital as 'the set of actually useable resources and powers'. Capital can be either economic, cultural, or social ... thus artists and industrialists can both belong to an upper class ... an artist will have much cultural capital but less economic capital"

Page 145, history of the rise of mainstream animation studios in 60s and 70s.
Page 147, discussion of "hip", "taste", and "culture".

"Francis Bacon and Walt Disney revisited" by Simon Pummell.
(article very anti-Disney)
Page 173, "a careful viewing of much of Disney's work reveals the contrast of a potentially disruptive and problematic dynamism of form then laid over with the sickly colours of a rigid sentimentality.".

"Body consciousness is the films of Jan Svankmajer" by Paul Wells.
Page 177 "The body as the site unto which humankind projects its desires, its fear, and uncertainty".
Michal O'Pray suggests that the level of address is located within further discourses where surrealism conjoins with animation of post Modernism.

Page 178, the four 'R's : reproduction, representation, regulation, and restraint.

Page 184, Mechannibalism: (body as machine feeding other people), "hot the body is reduced to a mechanism".

"Eisenstein and Stokes on Disney: Film animation and omnipotence" by Michael O'Pray.
Page 196, "never been a  purer expression of the union of music and movement ... story in Silly Symphonies was quite immaterial" [Borodin].
Len Lye mentioned.
Page 201, Animation is often at its best when we marvel not only at the subject matter, so to speak, but at its means of achievement. We are conscious of technique her in the way that we are often not in mainstream narrative film".

"Towards a post-modern animated discourse, Bakhtin, intertextuality and the cartoon carnival" by Terrance R. Lindvalt and J. Matthew Melton.
Page 204-205, Self reflective comment on filmmaking: -speak to audience, - relationship to creators
Page 205, about filmmaking - McCay's "Little Nemo",. "Starewicz "Revenge of Kinematograph Cameraman", (bugs become voyeurs throuigh watching film), Film Flam Films (1927 Felix), Porky's Preview (1941). Original Movie (Tony Sarg, 1922), Making Em Move (1931), Film Film Film (1969), History of Cinema (1958), Sigmund (1984).
Page 208, Errol Flynn on Bugs, "Cleverly inverts the concepts of reality and illusion by allowing the cartoon to pass judgement on the live action film, even denying its plausibility.".
Page 213, Emile Cohl and "the incoherents", anti-rationalist group.
Page 212-216, live action (animators) and animation mixtures. 
Page 217, "Wizard of speed and time"
Mock classical narrative paradigms, but they do affirm personal narratives.

"Restoring the aesthetics of early abstract films" by William Moritz.
Page 221-222, Hans Richter - why he lies about his history.
Page 223, Ruttman's Opus 1 - too complex.
Book of interest: "Viking Eggeling 1880-1925, Artist and filmmaker" by Louise O'Konor.

"Resistance and subversion in animated films of the Nazi era; th ecase of Hans Fischerkoesen" by William Moritz.
Page 230, falsified dates of Nazi-era films. First animated feature "Reynard the Fox".
Page 239, Fischerkoesen postwar mural
http://www.awn.com/mag/issue1.7/articles/moritz1.7.html

"European influences on early Disney feature films" by Robin Allan.
Page 252, choice of Beethoven in Fantasia discussed.
Page 252, "his artists were providing an extended comic strip version with gags appealing t his [Disney's] penchant for anal-erotic jokes and at the same time they were offering the lyrical quality of the flying horses that so touched his aesthetic sense that he wanted this to be matched by appropriate music. Such ambiguities emphasise the difficulty ...."
Page 253, Franz von Stuck (1863-1928) "one of the few artists to depict female centaurs".

"Norm Ferguson and the Latin American films of Walt Disney" by J.B. Kaufman.
Primarily a historical review of the travels of  travels in Latin America, home movies that were taken and recordings made. Mexico had music unions so it got more complicated.

Reader in Animation Studies - first half

Have been reading "A Reader in Animation Studies" edited by Jayne Pilling, John Libbey & Co., Sydney, 1997.
Notes:
1. "What is animation and who needs to know" by Philip Kelly Denslow.
Page 4. "Is digital animation only electronic puppetry?"

2. "Reality effects in computer animation" by Lev Manovich.
Page 6. 3D animation supports Bazin's claim of cinema as complete representation of reality.
Page 7. addition/subtraction (Comelli) in that things are added to build realism while others become less important movement and depth gave way to colour and shade or character.
Page 8. Goals of society of motion picture engineers: showmanship, realism, invisibility.(supports realist cinema).
Unbreakable glass as metaphor for the unseen artifice goal of cinema.

3. "Second order realism and post-modern aesthetics in computer animation" by Andy Darley.
Page 21. Photo-realist painting compared with realist agenda in 3D animation.

4. "The Quay brothers' The Epic of Gilgamesh and the 'metaphysics of obscenity'" by Steve Weiner.
Inspired me to shoot my puppets in floor and two opposing wall set like this:

5. "Narrative strategies for resistance and protest in Eastern European Animation" by William Moritz.
Page 40-45, Soviet subversive animation, films of note:
- The Hand
- Tale of Tales
- Dom (Home)
- Dejeuner sur l'herbe

6. "Putting themselves in the pictures: images of women in the work of Joanna Quinn, Candy Guard and Alison de Vere" by Sandra Law.
Page 48-66, introduced context of Laura Mulvey and feminist guided animation to counteract male gaze.
- Films compared to Tex Avery and directly address stereotypes.
Films of note:
- Body Beautiful
- Girls Night Out by Joanna Quinn
-Wishful Thinking
What About Me
Fantastic Person
Moanologue   by Candy Guard.

Page 66. "Women are depicted as complicit in their own enslavement by mirrors or by society's expectations of what femaleness represents".

7. An analysis of Susan Pitt's Asparagus and Joanna Priestley's All My Relations" by Sharon Cousin.
Page 72. Windsor McCay ... identify themselves as having magical creative powers"
Page 73. "Feminist art is art which acknowledges the difference of being a woman".
- three motifs: Phallus, faceless woman (magician/mother), objects to self.
Page 80 "Praget further claims that because images remain privately interiorized, while language becomes public, we can never show images to the extent and with subtlety that we can language".

8. "Clay animation comes out of the inkwell: the Fleischer brothers and clay animation"
Page 87-88. Use of clay snake discussed in one film.
Look for film "Modeling" by the Fleischer Brothers. (claymation).

9. "Bartosch's The Idea" by William Moritz
Page 94. electronic instrument used called the Ondes Martinet.
Berthold Bartosch
Page 96. Cites numerous reference from "Berlin, Symphony of a city" to woodcuts by Masereel.
Page 103. "You can do anything with soap".

10. "Norman McLaren and Jules Engel: Post-modernists" by William Moritz.
Page 105. Curtis: "the risk of incomprehensibility is an essential ingredient of all avant-garde work".
Page 106. Post-modernism defined with McLaren as po-mo artist.
Page 108. Grant Wood (American Gothic) also discussed as post modern. He had been "dismissed as a regionalist".
Page 109. "If it's not abstract, it couldn't be great" (Oskar Fischinger).
Page 109-110. "Engel ... challenged the status as 'high art' ... referencing the thaumatrope and such ... toys" (for Geremy).

11. "Disney, Warner Bros. and Japanese animation" by Luca Raffaelli.
Page 113. "Events and modes of behavior occurring in our adult world can be explained by comparing them to the drives, needs and games of our childhood".
Page 120. "Disneyan cinema is like this; animistic and egocentric; like a child".
Page 130-131. Anime uses emotional stills with voiced over internal dialogue rather than complex animation like Disney (due to cost initially) or the constant dialogue with basically unmoving (but for lips and mechanical/repetitive movements) of Hanna Barbara (although both needed economical approaches to tv animation).

The Magic Box

 Read "The Magic Box; the eccentric genius of Hannah Maynard, photographer 1834-1918, Canada". by Claire Weissman Wilks, Exile Editions, Toronto, 1980. (borrowed from Gerda).
It is basically a biography of this 19th century Victoria based photographer and her husband who had a commercial portrait studio, did some landscape, and had other contracts such as shooting mug shots. On the side, she did amazing effects shots using foreground or internal camera masks to create multiple exposures as well as using collage and re-photography to build masses of faces. While some of this was often used for promotion, it also contained significant subtext and references to family members, particularly one daughter, who died.
On interest; she created and published images with effects which Georg Melies would only begin to use 5-10 years later. Furthermore, her husband's family business was a shoe store, similar to Melies.

Understanding Animation by Paul Wells

Over past while I`ve been reading Understanding Animation, Paul Wells,Routledge Press, New York, 1998.
Notes:
page 2, Praxiniscope treated as toy, begins tradition of animation association with children.
Emile Reynaud, Theatre Optique, painting on a ribbon.

Page 5, five areas of study, Construction, Distinctive narrative devices, comedy, agenda of representation, and spectator-ship.

Page 9, `See the Brick`Robert Breer says animators darw bricks and tell audience they have hidden bricks. Increases viewer`s observation when they are looking.

Page 10, McClaren quote; `animation is not the art of drawings that move, but rather the art of movements that are drawn. What happens between each frame is is more important than what happens on each frame`.

Page 14, `Blackton`s Haunted Hotel ... south to extend the popularity ... by deliberately mystifying the process`. 

Page 19, Reach through phone, `Create the impossible`.
subversive.

Page 21, Felix, unlike American standard convention, no need to wake up from the dream.

Page 23, DisneyéOswallÉAlice, form and content (mechanism) over surrealism.

Page 24, `realism ... attempts to rid itself of obvious cinematic conventions`. Unmediated.

Page 25, Disneyland `Completely real, becomes identified as `completely fake`(Eco).
- list of hyper-realism characteristics.

Page 26, `realist agenda was an abnegation of animation`s capacity to authenticate fantasy`.

Page 31, dot as primal form - list on page 32 and ànimism

Page 38, artist seen in animation disappears with cel development.

Page 43-46, Good defintions of categories of experimental animation, especially see Moritz qhot on Page 44, `True abstraction ,,, why bother`

Page 47, the Nose, Nikoai Gogal story, pinscreen film in 1963.

Page 48, the uncanny.

Page 51, `Animation ... interogates dominant perceptions of reality and the recieved imagery which apparently represnts it`.

Page 57, Placticine invented in 1897. Key clay animators; Nick Park, Will Vinton, Jan Svankmajer, J Stuert Blackton (Chey chew), Willy Plopkins (Miracles in Mud), Helena Smith Dayten.

Page 64, Puppets and models could be used in a more sophisticated way and fulfill their capacity to mediate the `consciousness`of the animator through their metaphoric role as neo-humans.`

Page 89, metaphor, preferred meaning, attendent meanings.

Page 91, Quay listed as American. uncanny discussed again.

Page 92, `Fabrication in animation may, therefore, be understood as the redefinition of materiality and the physical world by the preconscious imperatives of the artist filmmaker. A child`s playroom is this, not merely the location of childhood experience, but the context where all the anxiety and trauma of becoming a human being may be expressed by the artist through the reappropriation of apparently innocent objects.`.

Page 130, Disney, captivation rather than entertaining, resists gags.

Page 133, The literal can become the figurative.

Page 136, signifier-signified. Comic objects ideas. 

Page 140, Tex Avery on adult themes.

Page 142, #8 Tex Avery and Bertolt Brecht.

Page 159, in animation, symbols might be of equal status to each other.

Page 170, comic rule of three.

Page 192, spinach is Popeye's talisman.

Page 219, George Pal, crass caricatures of Jasper, regretted.

Page 228, Two spectatoral reactions to animation, empowerment and denial.

Sound by Artists

From the Dunlop Gallery book library, read article from "Sound By Artists", edited by Dan Lander and Micah Lexier, Art Metropole and Walter Phillips Gallery, Toronto/Banff, 1990.
"The Sound of One Line Scanning" by Bill Viola (page 39-54).
Notes
Page 42: "There is something immortal in the echo".
1896, Nikola Tesla shattered windows with resonant frequency aimed into the building and the earth.
Page 45: Video - there are no still frames.
Page 46: radio heard by kids through their braces, thought to be speaking in tongues.
Page 51, Brain researcher A.R. Luria studied subject "S" who had perfect memory, very interesting story.