"1989 -1998 A collective of artists, specialising in large scale installation and performance work, usually of a site specific nature."
"Most film students now use DSLRs. But for those who want a digital tool to produce more film–like images, Bolex – one of the classic 16mm camera makers – recently started shipping a digital 16mm–equivalent video camera that's fully compatible with the most desirable vintage C–mount lenses.
The new Bolex camera, dubbed the D16, doesn't just sport a retro look. Its Kodak–produced CCD sensor is very close to Super 16–sized, which is uncommon in modern cameras. Even better, that sensor shoots in RAW at 32 frames per second at a resolution of 2048x1152 pixels. Every uncompressed frame should be sharp, as opposed to the compressed footage even full–frame DSLRs produce. Plus, the Super 16–sized sensor means that the D16 can use C–mount lenses without any crop factor.
The camera is being produced under the name 'Digital Bolex,' but it's actually a joint venture between the original manufacturer, Bolex International, S.A., and Cinemeridian, Inc, a young company of digital wizards that was formed to bring this idea to fruition."
(Kif Leswing, 11 December 2013, Wired.com)
"Expanding on footage of Monk's 1967 tour shot by Christian Blackwood, Charlotte Zwering (Gimme Shelter) has created the definitive filmic portrait of the master bop pianist–composer. This captivating DVD digs deeper into the life of the famously eccentric pianist–composer ...
Straight, No Chaser fleshes out Monk's character considerably – from his harmonic theories to his use of quarter – tones (produced by hitting two adjacent piano keys simultaneously and occasionally even striking the boards with his entire forearm or his foot) to his mysterious relationship with his patron, baroness Nica de Koenigswarter."
(Vlatko, TopDocumentaryFilms.com)
"This is the story of Puhi, an aged Maori woman and Niki, her fully grown but wholly dependent son. The world they occupy is not a world of large events but the rituals of everyday life, traditions and interdependence. 'In Spring One Plants Alone' documents the minutiae of their very enclosed existence. Filmed over a period of one and a half years, it emerges as a rare, haunting and powerful portrayal of their life together. This is the story of their rituals and of their survival. The small and disconnected instances that we encounter form a lone vision of the rifts and the bond between an old woman and her disturbed son."
"In all of these experiments, aborted works, happenings, events, the motif of the car crash is crucial. Ballard sought to understand the role that automobile styling, and mass consumerism, plays in our lives. His sights were set on what he saw as the built–in death drive that technology embodies, the effacing of identity, the shutting off of our neurological systems. Our willingness to submit to the amniotic bliss of the technological womb. Of course, today we know where all this would eventually beach: his 1973 masterpiece, Crash. But in 1971 Ballard was still pushing the farthest limits of his obsession, refining riffs and routines, expanding the parameters of the car crash as far as popular culture would allow. Crucially this was far beyond the stuffy confines of 'literature', which Ballard has never had much time for, and into visual art and film: the realm of the popular imaginary."
(Simon Sellars, 10 August 2007, Ballardian)
Fig.1 dir. Harley Cokeliss, "Towards Crash!", 1971. 16 mm Eastmancolor transferred to video, sound, 17:34 min. Courtesy the artist. © BBC TV 1971.
"Meshes of the Afternoon is one of the most influential works in American experimental cinema. A non–narrative work, it has been identified as a key example of the 'trance film,' in which a protagonist appears in a dreamlike state, and where the camera conveys his or her subjective focus. The central figure in Meshes of the Afternoon, played by Deren, is attuned to her unconscious mind and caught in a web of dream events that spill over into reality. Symbolic objects, such as a key and a knife, recur throughout the film; events are open–ended and interrupted. Deren explained that she wanted 'to put on film the feeling which a human being experiences about an incident, rather than to record the incident accurately.'
Made by Deren with her husband, cinematographer Alexander Hammid, Meshes of the Afternoon established the independent avant–garde movement in film in the United States, which is known as the New American Cinema. It directly inspired early works by Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, and other major experimental filmmakers. Beautifully shot by Hammid, a leading documentary filmmaker and cameraman in Europe (where he used the surname Hackenschmied) before he moved to New York, the film makes new and startling use of such standard cinematic devices as montage editing and matte shots. Through her extensive writings, lectures, and films, Deren became the preeminent voice of avant–garde cinema in the 1940s and the early 1950s."
(MoMA, 2004)
The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999.
Maya Deren (1943). "Meshes of the Afternoon", 16mm film, black and white, silent, 14 min. Acquired from the Artist.
Fig.1 Anna Reeves (1994), "La Vie En Rose" (short film excerpt) Aotearoa New Zealand, 16mm 7 minutes.
Outtakes from a 16mm colour film [2744]
Outtake from a 16mm documentary called "Horseplay" that was created by Simon Perkins in 1990. The film was shot on location in Waimate in the South Island of Aotearoa New Zealand at Philip and Lee Trusttum's farm. The footage was photographed by Peter Bannan on a CP16 with sound being recorded by Robert Sarkies on a Nagra. The outtakes show Lee, Philip and Robert as well as Vivienne Stone and Peter Leech. Note that the poor image quality is due to the crude transfer process which involved pointing a VHS video camera at rushes being played on a Steenbeck film editing bench.
"While the debate has raged over whether or not film is dead, ARRI, Panavision and Aaton have quietly ceased production of film cameras within the last year to focus exclusively on design and manufacture of digital cameras. ...
'The demand for film cameras on a global basis has all but disappeared,' says ARRI VP of Cameras, Bill Russell, who notes that the company has only built film cameras on demand since 2009. 'There are still some markets––not in the U.S.––where film cameras are still sold, but those numbers are far fewer than they used to be. If you talk to the people in camera rentals, the amount of film camera utilization in the overall schedule is probably between 30 to 40 percent.'
At New York City rental house AbelCine, Director of Business Development/Strategic Relationships Moe Shore says the company rents mostly digital cameras at this point. 'Film isn't dead, but it's becoming less of a choice,' he says. 'It's a number of factors all moving in one direction, an inexorable march of digital progress that may be driven more by cell phones and consumer cameras than the motion picture industry.'
Aaton founder Jean–Pierre Beauviala notes why. 'Almost nobody is buying new film cameras. Why buy a new one when there are so many used cameras around the world?' he says. 'We wouldn't survive in the film industry if we were not designing a digital camera.'
Beauviala believes that that stereoscopic 3D has 'accelerated the demise of film.' He says, 'It's a nightmare to synchronize two film cameras.' Three years ago, Aaton introduced a new 35mm film camera, Penelope, but sold only 50 to 60 of them. As a result, Beauviala turned to creating a digital Penelope, which will be on the market by NAB 2012. 'It's a 4K camera and very, very quiet,' he tells us. 'We tried to give a digital camera the same ease of handling as the film camera.'
Panavision is also hard at work on a new digital camera, says Phil Radin, Executive VP, Worldwide Marketing, who notes that Panavision built its last 35mm Millennium XL camera in the winter of 2009, although the company continues an 'active program of upgrading and retrofitting of our 35mm camera fleet on a ongoing basis.'
'I would have to say that the pulse [of film] was weakened and it's an appropriate time,' Radin remarks. 'We are not making film cameras.' He notes that the creative industry is reveling in the choices available. 'I believe people in the industry love the idea of having all these various formats available to them,' he says. 'We have shows shooting with RED Epics, ARRI Alexas, Panavision Genesis and even the older Sony F–900 cameras. We also have shows shooting 35mm and a combination of 35mm and 65mm. It's a potpourri of imaging tools now available that have never existed before, and an exciting time for cinematographers who like the idea of having a lot of tools at their disposal to create different tools and looks.'"
(Debra Kaufman, 2011, Creative COW)
Fig.1 The Xterà by Aaton (Super16 camera with film magazine).
Fig.2 The Penelope–Delta by Aaton (digital camera with internal full resolution recorder).
"Andy Warhol's Screen Tests were filmed from early 1964 – November 1966. Although the short films became known as Screen Tests, they were originally conceived as film portraits – portraits done on film rather than canvas."
(Gary Comenas)
Fig.1&2 Andy Warhol. Screen Test: Edie Sedgwick (1965). 16mm film (black and white, silent). 4 min. at 16fps.
"SMPTE was founded in 1916 to advance theory and development in the motion imaging field. Today, SMPTE publishes ANSI–approved Standards, Recommended Practices, and Engineering Guidelines, along with the highly regarded SMPTE Journal and its peer–reviewed technical papers. SMPTE holds conferences and local Section meetings to bring people and ideas together, allowing for useful interaction and information exchange."
(Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers)
1). SMPTE Universal Film Leader
2). CinemaScope Release Film Leader
3). Universal Film Leader
4). 'Cincinnatus SMPTE Film Leader Test', Internet Archive.
5). Cincinnatus, 'SMPTE Film Leader (Test)', Internet Archive, Creative Commons license [QuickTime 35.4 Mb]
6). Technical document on the Universal Film Leader by the European Broadcasting Union.
"In the late 1950s major breakthroughs began to occur in the technology available to filmmakers. These occasioned what can be thought of either as something totally new under the artistic sun or merely as new ways of doing old things. What they permitted was the synchronous recording of sight and sound outside the confines of soundstages and studio back lots. Virtually anything that could be seen and heard could now be captured on sound film almost anywhere. These new technical possibilities did not dictate the uses to which they would be put, however. One of those uses was that of the Americans who called what they were doing direct cinema. Another was that of Frenchman Jean Rouch, who coined the term cinema verite (film truth) to apply to his own work."
(Jack Ellis and Betsy McLane, 2005, p.208)
Jack Ellis and Betsy McLane, A New History of Documentary Film, (2005), 208–325.
Fig.1 Albert (right) with David Maysles on the set of 'Grey Gardens' (1975).
"After having made four well–received feature films, among them Mean Streets (1973), an uncompromising story of petty criminals in New York City's Little Italy, and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), the tale of a single mother's journey to self–sufficiency, Martin Scorsese stepped back briefly from his commercial film career to make a small, deeply personal documentary. Shot on 16mm film in the Manhattan apartment where he grew up, ItalianAmerican is the record of a conversation between Scorsese and his parents, Charles and Catherine. In three–quarters of an hour, the three manage to cover a great deal of ground, most notably the parents' experiences growing up in the rough–and–tumble New York tenements during the early years of the twentieth century. Scorsese's presentation of his parents is highly particularized and subtly nuanced, yet he also manages to make their words speak for the larger immigrant experience. When the setting shifts from the living room to the dining room and everyone sits down to dinner, the mood becomes looser and more animated, with Scorsese and his mother moving into the kitchen for a quick lesson on how to make tomato sauce–or 'gravy,' as Catherine (and an entire generation of Italian Americans) would call it. Throughout, the affection that the three Scorseses have for each other is palpable, as is the respect with which the son presents his parents' story. At the end, Catherine's recipe for her tomato sauce scrolls by on–screen, making ItalianAmerican not only a historical record, but also a family legacy."
(The Museum of Modern Art)
1974. USA. 35mm print, colour, sound, 49 min. Original 16mm materials on indefinite loan from the artist. Preserved in 35mm with funding from the Celeste Bartos Film Preservation Fund.
"Standard Gauge is an autobiographical account of a few years in the film career of its maker. Such, at least, is its ostensible form and purpose. The material from which the film is composed is pieces of 35mm motion picture film, a width known in former times as standard gauge, that its maker collected while working in and around the commercial motion picture industry. The pieces are a miscellaneous assortment, and include narrative features, trailers, newsreels, commercials, and pieces of head and tail leader. ...
By examining the shards of the industry frame by frame, it discovers some of the means and themes of experimental film living, so to speak, in Hollywood. And at the same time, the film engulfs and usurps the material of the commercial motion picture industry, turning it into its subject. Thus Standard Gauge proposes a kind of mutuality or interdependence between two kinds of filmmaking that by conventional standards are thought to be divided by an unbridgeable chasm. By means of a mutual interrogation between 35mm, the gauge of the industry, and 16mm, the gauge of the independent and amateur, Standard Gauge proposes to unify film of every kind."
"BAC is an International Contemporary Art Center with special focus on the Baltic Sea Region. The center runs an exhibition program in the Björkanders Warehouse in Visby and an Artist–in–Residence Program that support individual artists and the production of new works."
(International Contemporary Art Center)
[Image from William Kentridge' 16mm and 35mm film 'Journey to the Moon', 2003]
Arthur and Corinne Cantrill
Cantrills Filmnotes is a review of independent film and video, with emphasis on experimental film, video art, digital media, and associated work in performance and installation art.
Publishing History: It was edited and published between 1971 and 2000 by filmmakers Arthur and Corinne Cantrill in Melbourne, Australia (although some issues were edited in the USA in 1973–'75 and Germany in 1985 while the editors were living there.) The final issue is octuple issue #93–100. Past issues have covered activity in Australia, New Zealand, U.S.A., Canada, Japan, The Philippines, Indonesia, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Austria and England.
Editorial policy: To document innovative work in Super–8 and 16mm film, animation, video, digital art, installation, sound and performance art.
Articles are in the form of writing by the artists discussing their work, interviews, and critical writing (in that order of frequency), with much visual material, in the case of films, mainly frame enlargements. Books reviews are included in each issue.
Physical dimensions: The magazine is 'landscape' format: 270 mm x 210 mm, 72 pages, well–printed, with 8 pages in colour. There is no advertising. [Note that all] back issues are still available.
The publication of Cantrills Filmnotes was assisted by the Australian Film Commission from issue #45/46, Oct. 1984 until issue #91/92, Dec. 1998.
Contact address:
Cantrills Filmnotes
Box 1295
Melbourne GPO
Victoria 3001
Australia
Telephone and Fax: +61 3 9370 1983
Email: acantrill@netspace.net.au
"It's a long time since I've seen a film as genuinely disturbing as A Little Death. The title refers to the phrase 'un petite mort'. French slang for orgasm. This surreal film explores all the ambiguity of that phrase to devastating effect. A couple are making love. Or rather having sex – the hostility between them is palpable. The moment of climax flings them both into another dimension where the emotional savagery of their relationship is played out for real. Luscious colour photography gives way to crisp black and white, as Davison crashes through their bed into an identical room where everything, including her lover, is literally two–dimensional, bleached of life but tilled with an almost impersonal hatred. The tension that previously simmered beneath the surface is unleashed in images of extraordinary violence. Brophy, trapped in the 'wallpaper' of this unnatural room, can only scream as she takes her revenge. This ambitious script is well supported by its technically immaculate execution. It is tightly constructed, beautifully edited and the superb soundtrack is unusually effective, an integral part of the film rattler than (as too often happens) an afterthought. Much of the power of the film has to do with its purely visual logic, it didn't start to make sense to me until I stopped trying to figure out what was going on and just let the images wash over me. This is one of those rare films that can stand repeated viewings (providing you can) and serious philosophical debate, despite the fact its violent take on gender relations is more than a little disturbing. A Little Death is an uncommonly brave and passionate piece of filmmaking that stays in the mind long after it's been seen."
(Pavement magazine, 1995)
Fig.1 Simon Perkins and Paul Swadel (1995). "A Little Death", James Wallace Productions: 16mm, 11 minutes. [A Little Death externalises conflict between characters through the use of physical obstacles and camera perspectives. The film is an evolution of the "Into The Void" project.]
Fig.2 Natalie Robertson (1995). Josephine Davison is confused to find herself on a photocopied floor.
"Deleuze's notion of time–image cinema describes a revolutionary and political cinema. To understand time–image cinema, we must contrast it with movement–image cinema, 'in which frame follows frame according to necessities of action, subordinating time to movement.'1 Clearly, Sans Soleil is nothing like movement–image cinema. The film has no action or plot that could subordinate time; instead, Marker claims that the only qualification these images have for being included in the film is that they quicken the heart. These images span many different time periods from World War II to the present, and a scene is just as likely to cut to West Africa or San Francisco as it is to cut to a different angle within the same room. In the film, an unnamed and unseen narrator reads the fictitious letters of Sandor Krasna, a traveling cameraman (a thinly–veiled alter–ego for Marker)."
(B.C. Holmes)