Structural film anthology Type: boek Titel: Structural film anthology Auteur: GIDAL, P. Jaar: 1978 Onderwerp: Film : Theorie, Esthetica, Kritiek Taal: Nederlands Elsewhere in this essay I shall try to elucidate further this problematic of production versus reproduction. 1976. [Peter Gidal;] Home. When we cannot take hold of or show the thing, let us say the present, the being present, when the present does not present itself, then we signify, we go through the detour of signs. If the final work magically represses the procedures which in fact are there in the making, then that work is not a materialist work. Published by British Film Institute, 1976. This vacuous definition is nevertheless filled, ideologically rigidified, in such a way that few works escape through the gap left, and those works are a conjuncture (happenstance or not) of a whole range of incidents and factors, co/incide/nces which enable this escape from the co/opting 'process' definition (and concreteness). [7] Other examples are Dreyer's purist set pieces of dramatics, straightforward identificatory narratives, the identification merely shifted from the psychological/emotional to the psychological/rationalistic. Structural Film Anthology available in Pamphlet on Powells.com, also read synopsis and reviews. In her new film, The Far Shore, Wieland has attempted to make a genuinely Canadian film (as opposed to a US film), made with Canadian money, technicians, actors, story, distribution and for a Canadian mass audience. (Even here the Brecht of the theatre is mistaken for the Brechtian theoriser.) Devices such as loops or seeming loops, as well as a whole series of technical possibilities, can, carefully constructed to operate in the correct manner, serve to veer the point of contact with the film past internal content. Inhoudsopgave. Search for Library Items Search for Lists Search for Contacts Search for a Library. Comments on: Peter Gidal (ed. 0 Recensies. repression) of the procedures, or an over-determination of the presentedness of the procedures. An avant-garde film defined by its development towards increased materialism and materialist function does not represent, or document, anything. Thus viewing such a film is at once viewing a film and viewing the 'coming into presence' of the film, i.e. [9] (Total is used in the sense of at some point coming to a stop.) 38-44); Sitney’s ‘goal-directed duration’ has clear narrative implications in a film like Michael Snow’s Wavelength, and La Region Centrale, which lacks Wavelength’s clear directional pattern revolves (literally) around the problem of the source, the ‘centre’ of narration, with its unattencded mechanized universally mobile camera, visible only in its shadow, its movements accompanied by aural signals, in the midst of a wilderness. British Film Institute / New York Zoetrope. Contents. When one states that each film is a record of its own making, this refers to shooting, editing, printing stages, or separations of these, dealt with specifically. Process as general definition is in fact vacuous. In Structural/ Materialist film, the in/film (not in/frame) and film/viewer material relations, and the relations of the film's structure, are primary to any representational content. Paperback. COVER TO COVER. Structural Film Anthology [Gidal, Peter] on Amazon.com.au. The two latter concepts are extremely rigidified in late capitalism. David Crosswaite by Peter Gidal ): Structural Film Anthology (1976/1978) In “’Ontology’ and ‘Materialism’ in Film” (Screen v 17 n 1, Spring 1976), Peter Wollen argued that the joint concern of North-American filmmakers such as Paul Sharits and European ones like Godard with a critique of cinematic illusionism diverged in their respective emphases on the machines producing the illusions, the camera, the gate, the celluloid, the printer, the projector, the screen, and on the signifying process designated in those illusions, the discursive processes of films, their codes. Whether he is or not (there are few she's in such a position) is in fact irrelevant. This is the root of the whole problem I am trying to get at. Buku Structural Film Anthology adalah salah satu buku penting yang berisi kumpulan tulisan tentang teori dan sejarah filem struktural. Mike Dunford by Mike Dunford The identification into the narrative is through the thoughts, the ideas about the actions, the decisions, the ratio, instead of the melodramatic unthought motivations of characters propelled by unthought 'fear', 'desire', etc. Peter Gidal’s retrospective manifesto “Theory and Definition of Structural/ Materialist Film”, published in the BFI’s Structural Film Anthology in 1976, envisions a clear and important place for art’s political agency and it is not surprising that his ideas remain influential for many contemporary artists working with film. Structural Film Anthology. Some of Stella's early works could escape this Abstract-Expressionist route, just as many of Johns' and Giacometti's works fail to avoid or solve that problem. The process of the film's making deals with devices that result in demystification or attempted demystification of the film process. Sternberg). What Frank Stella may have verbalised correctly (see footnote 8) did not prevent his work from becoming exactly the Abstract-Expressionist problem, the whole conglomeration of feelings, associations, seductions, repre- sentations which an imagist work demands no matter how 'process'-oriented the production process itself was. It is thus unclear to what extent ‘structural film’ still constitutes, if it ever did, a valid category for the classification of a group of independently made films, and what features might be taken as central to its definition. Jump to navigation Jump to search. The Structural/ Materialist film must minimise the content in its overpowering, imagistically seductive sense, in an attempt to get through this miasmic area of 'experience' and proceed with film as film. Jacques Derrida has clarified what in fact is at stake in a work, in the procedure of constituting a work. Afterword by Ben Brewster. 0 Reviews. Annette Michelson, discussing the New York filmmakers, notes that their films represent a break with the previous concern of American ‘alternative’ cinema from Maya Deren on to counterpose to the dominance of narrative in the Hollywood film a dominance of the poetic, reaching its apogee in the hypnagogic imagery of Brakhage, and that this break tends to throw filmmakers back on to problems of narrative (Anthology, pp. $12.50 (paperback). Such presentation of production functions in certain drawings of targets by Jasper Johns (for example), distancing the object as object, as created text, towards which the various marks added to each other, negating, erasing, produce further elaborations towards an as yet unfulfilled total surface. Peter Gidal. Form is meant as formal operation, not as composition. Malcom LeGrice by Peter Gidal, Gordon Gow, Jonas Mekas This is an absolutely crucial point.'. This is a list of horror anthology films History. Fringe Online, Home / / Writings / Books / Structural Film Anthology (1976). Email to friends Share on Facebook - opens in a new window or tab Share on Twitter - opens in a new window or tab Share on Pinterest - … the system of consciousness that produces the work, that is produced by and in it. Search. British Film Institute, 1976 - Experimental films - 140 pages. The re-translation back into language (words) would seem to negate the necessity of narrative-deconstruction being undertaken on, or in, film, rather than in writing. Birgit and Wilhelm Hein by Birgit Hein The following review of Structural Film Anthology appeared in Screen, Winter 1976/77. the isolated chosen area of each film's work, of each film's production. There exists also the problem of the 'sensitive' artist, ever-present in the final object, which can be one end the means to which is an art which may record its own making. The aesthetics of Abstract-Expressionism in fact could produce an imagist object which never separated itself from individualist psychological origins, whereas the 'same' aesthetic base could function in certain works as production itself presented, distanced. New York University Press. Buku ini … Genuine theory is required if that necessity is not continually to project the filmmaker into the reproduction of ideology. Capitalist consumption reifies not only the structures of the economic base but also the constructs of abstraction. This may have occurred despite the artist’s own notions of his or her work, but the escape should rather be ‘an adequate solution of questions correctly posed in terms of materialist practice and theoretical embodiment’ (p 7). Structural/ Materialist film attempts to be non-illusionist. Kurt Kren by Malcolm LeGrice File:Gidal Peter ed Structural Film Anthology.jpg. Thus, if a character is somewhat more complex, or if the acting is of a higher order, or if the lighting cameraman does most of the work, then the director rationalises the work which would seem to imply that he is as taken in by the phantasy as the viewer. Rather, the text itself is elaborated and constituted in such a way that the whole work process of reading the marks necessitates a reading of differences and a dialecticisation of the material procedures which produce the marking one is confronted with. Wat mensen zeggen - Een review schrijven. Theory and Definition of Structural/ Materialist Film. Afterword by Ben Brewster The attempt is primary to any specific shape, otherwise the discovery of shape (fetishising shape or system) may become the theme, in fact, the narrative of the film. Find items in libraries near you. From inside the book . Structural film anthology However, the essay is complex and open to other readings. However, it cannot be said that the immediate of season or anthology is to dispel the kind of confusions that dominated Edinburgh. Also, form must be distinguished from style, otherwise it serves merely in its reactionary sense to mean formalism, such as: this formal usage (e.g. Anthology of writings by and about structural filmmakers, published to accompany season of films at the National Film Theatre in 1976. In dominant cinema, a film sets up characters (however superficially deep their melodramas) and through identification and various reversals, climaxes, complications (usually in the same order) one aligns oneself unconsciously with one or more characters. A study is urgently needed on the theme of narrative versus non-narrative form and on the inadequacy of the mechanistic deconstruction approach which ends up illustrating rather than being, which ends up static, time denying, posited as exemplary rather than relative, contradictory, motored into filmic, durational transformation through dialectic procedures. It is the cinema of consumption, in which the viewer is of necessity not a producer, [6] of ideas, of knowledge. One of the virtues of both the season and anthology is the fact that Gidal aimed catholically to include representations of most work has been labeled ‘structural’ and most kinds of discussion of such work; he is at pains to point out that inclusion in either does not represent an endorsement on his part, and in his introduction, ‘Theory and Definition of Structural/Materialist Film’, he attempts to define the tendency of contemporary filmmaking he would support, singling it out with the qualification ‘materialist’ and including a much smaller group of filmmakers and by no means all of the work of all of them. Hence the two quotations which close Gidal’s film Condition of Illusion: first a protest from Althusser against ideologies which purport to theoretical status but are merely adapted to a goal pre-determined outside them; then a passage from a novel by Samuel Beckett on the continuing necessity to speak despite its radical impossibility. The specific construct of each specific film is not the relevant point; one must beware not to let the construct, the shape, take the place of the 'story' in narrative film. Hence immediately there is a taxonomic problem. It is a first attempt to bring together texts from Europe, Britain and His definition of differance (with an 'a') is useful precisely because it clarifies an aspect of work which previously was latent but not brought to speech, not adequately theorised, and which therefore always fell back into the ideology of illusionism and unseen subject (the artist). Published by British Film Institute, 1976. Gidal is right to emphasize the low level of theorization of other kinds of film than narrative, and his criticisms of Screen’s neglect in this respect are quite justified; but to demand of theory that it make possible a true reflexiveness in film as opposed to the false reflexiveness of the representation of the process is precisely to make the impossible demand – that theory should enable one to ‘watch oneself watching’ (p 10). Signs represent the present in its absence; they take the place of the present. Thus deconstruction exercises, in their limited way, are not irrelevant as sociological insight into certain filmic operations. Theory and Definition of Structural/Materialist Film by Peter Gidal This is a crucial distinction for a (dialectically) materialist definition of structural film. The subject of the work is not the invisible artist symbolically inferred through the work's presence, but rather the whole foregrounded fabric of the complex system of markings itself. Structural Film Anthology Internally clean, edges slightly age-toned, no ownership markings, binding tight. Production of relations (shot to shot, shot to image, grain to image, image dissolution to grain, etc.) Abstract Film and Beyond . Roger Hammond by Peter Gidal This is extremely important as each moment of film reality is not an atomistic, separate entity but rather a moment in a relativistic generative system in which one can't simply break down the experience into elements. Experimental Cinema Noticias y recursos de cine experimental. That is why Structural/ Materialist film in fact demands an orientation of definition completely in opposition to the generally used vague notions concerning 'Structural Film'. Identification is inseparable from the procedures of narrative, though not totally covered by it. 140 pages. We haven't found any reviews in the usual places. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders. We shall designate by the term differance the movement by which language or any code, any system of reference in general, becomes historically constituted as a fabric of differences ... Differance is what makes the movement of signification possible only if each element that is said to be 'present', appearing on the stage of presence, is related to something other than itself but retains the mark of a past element and already lets itself be hollowed out by the mark of its relation to a future element. The ramifications of the crucial question are very limited. One becomes posited, formed, constituted, in fact, as the subject of the self-expression and self-representation through the mediation of a repressive ideological structure. The individual also thus becomes posited as static, as essence, as ideal (or referring to the possibility of such). STRUCTURAL FILM ANTHOLOGY By Peter Gidal. Such film mitigates against dominant (narrative) cinema. The content thus serves as a function upon which, time and time again, a film-maker works to bring forth the filmic event. Our whole formation towards, and in, filmic enterprises, is dominated by such ideological strangleholds. Published to coincide with the series of 18 programmes, Structural Film Retrospective, at the National Film Theatre, London, in May 1976. Fred Drummond by Verina Glaessner, Fred Drummond The problematic centres on the question as to whether narrative is inherently authoritarian, manipulatory and mystificatory, or not. This anthology of texts about what have been termed Structural Films attempts to bring together some of the more important essays and articles on those films which have formed the core of film work in this field since its inception. Type Book Author(s) Peter Gidal Date 1976 Publisher British Film Institute Pub place London ISBN-10 0851700535. *FREE* shipping on eligible orders. Michael Snow by Simon Hartog, Annette Michelson, Peter Gidal, Michael Snow The individual becomes posited as unitary, 'free' view, centred in deep perspective space away from the screen, and invisibly solidified, ever-present. $2 (paperback). ; 8.2 X 5.8 X 0.4 inches; 140 pages . The commercial cinema could not do without the mechanism of identification.' Peter Gidal. Votes: 5,752 It is a first attempt to bring together … Good+. Paul Sharits by Paul Sharits, Peter Gidal Each film is a record (not a representation, not a reproduction) of its own making. No pagination. Movies. It is as if the political and aesthetic sides of her projects were separable. The blind stamp of the Australian artist Leonard Hessing appears on the front endpaper. Preview. The mechanism of identification demands a passive audience, a passive mental posture in the face of a life unlived, a series of representations, a phantasy identified with for the sake of 90 minutes' illusion. Peter Gidal by Deke Dusinberre But by 'deals with' I do not mean 'represents'. Hence the relapses into narrative and allegory noted by Michelson and Dusinberre, and Gidal himself adds another danger: emphasis on the pure act of making the film, whether documentation of it, representation of it by marks of its absence (leader to represent the time of the changing of the magazine, etc) or marked attempts to suppress personal intervention in the process (as in minimal painting and sculpture), merely re-establish the artist as object of identification. Sharits’s aim to emulate Rembrandt in making great works of film art is simply the other side of the coin. By Michael Snow. This 'escape' is not a displacement (which would therefore create a misunderstanding, or a theoretical gap, elsewhere) or a suppression, but an adequate solution of questions correctly posed in terms of materialist practice and theoretical embodiment. Deconstruction exercises, maintained filmically (i.e.