Sunday, October 07, 2007

THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP (1983, Heinz Emigholz, A+)

THIS IS MY COMMENT IN TWILIGHT VIRUS’ BLOG:
http://twilightvirus.blogspot.com/2007/10/phantom-love.html

เธอไม่มา แล้วหนังของเธอจะยังมาอยู่หรือเปล่า หนูอยากดูมากๆเลยค่ะ

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THIS IS MY COMMENT IN GIRISH SHAMBU’S BLOG:
http://www.girishshambu.com/blog/2007/10/in-city-of-sylvia.html#comments

--Thanks for the link mention, Girish. I like Ray Carney a lot. I learn a great deal from his writing, though I usually love the films he dislikes. A friend of mine once organized a program of Ray Carney’s recommended films in a Thai university auditorium to show films directed by John Cassavetes, Elaine May, Tom Noonan, Michael Almereyda, Gillian Armstrong, Jane Spencer, Charles Burnett, and Mike Leigh. It was wonderful.

--If IN THE CITY OF SYLVIA is released as a DVD in the future, I hope its DVD will also include UNAS FOTOS. After reading about it, I think UNAS FOTOS seems to be much more than an ordinary “making-of” documentary to accompany its parent movie. This reminds me of two making-of documentaries I like a lot: IN PUBLIC (2001, Jia Zhangke), which is a location scouting video for UNKNOWN PLEASURES (2002); and THE EIGHTIES (1983, Chantal Akerman), which seems like a preparation process for GOLDEN EIGHTIES (1986, Chantal Akerman). These making-of documentaries don’t explain straightforwardly about the creation of their parent movies, and they may be even a lot harder to understand than their parents.

--I’m usually curious at films which are composed of still photos or static shots. Apart from UNAS FOTOS, I also wish I could see SCHINDLER’S HOUSES (2007, Heinz Emigholz), which is composed of static shots. I read about this film from Where The Stress Falls’ website. It seems to be very interesting. So far I have seen only one film by Heinz Emigholz—THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP (1983, 20 minutes, silent). This film shows pages or images from many books. The film’s editing is very fast. You can only have a very brief glimpse at these still images which seem to be unconnected to each other and randomly put together. I hadn’t seen anything quite like this film before. This film really tested my patience in the first viewing, but I ended up liking it a lot.

--As for the topic of male gaze, I think I have no real opinion about it. But I observed that even among my gay friends, our reactions to a film are usually different from one another. I always love films which celebrate male bodies, especially the short films by Thunska Pansittivorakul, but some of my gay friends don’t like this kind of films. Our reactions are also different when the film deals with female bodies. Normally I don’t have problems with films which tend to objectify women, especially the films of Alain Robbe-Grillet. I may not get that kind of pleasure out of gazing at those beautiful women, but the films of Alain Robbe-Grillet still offer great pleasure to me in other ways. But a gay friend of mine seems to have troubles with some films I love—LA BELLE NOISEUSE and AN ARIA ON GAZE (1992, Hisayasu Sato), because of the ways female characters are treated in these two films. To sum it up, I don’t think I have problems with the male gaze in most films, but some of my friends might have.

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Some added information:

You can read more about THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP at:
http://www.kunstaspekte.de/index.php?tid=10990&action=termin

You can read more about “making-of” documentaries at:
http://www.cineaste.com/parthur.htm

My friend who organized a program of Ray Carney’s recommend films has a Thai blog at:
http://www.twilightvirus.blogspot.com/




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