The Place of Poetics Within Documentary Filmmaking: The Art of Fact [1 ed.] 1527518728, 9781527518728

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The Place of Poetics within Documentary Filmmaking

The Place of Poetics within Documentary Filmmaking: The Art of Fact Edited by

Keith Marley

The Place of Poetics within Documentary Filmmaking: The Art of Fact Edited by Keith Marley This book first published 2023 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2023 by Keith Marley and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-1872-8 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-1872-8

This book is dedicated to my late father, Keith Walter Marley, and my late mother, Olwyn Marley.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contributors ............................................................................................... ix Preface ..................................................................................................... xiv Chapter One ................................................................................................ 1 Poetics in Documentary: Exposition as Expression Keith Marley Chapter Two ............................................................................................. 16 From Free to Slow: A Journey through Documentary Form Jeremy Bubb Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 35 Aesthetics and the Truthfulness of Documentary Things: An Experimental Approach to Ethnographic Filmmaking Julie Patarin-Jossec Chapter Four ............................................................................................. 50 Abstraction, Narrative, and Time in the Poetic Documentaries of Stan Brakhage Jacqui Griffin Chapter Five ............................................................................................. 62 Planting Sounds: Re-framing the Acoustic Environment in Tree People (2014), the Story of the Colne Valley Tree Society Geoffrey Cox Chapter Six ............................................................................................... 75 Rolling Thunder Review and the (Re)presentation of History Karen D Thornton Chapter Seven........................................................................................... 85 Poetic Leaps, Inventions and the Production of Reality in the Making of Town of Strangers Treasa O’Brien

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Chapter Eight .......................................................................................... 105 Investigating the Making of Cinematic Silence in Chantal Akerman’s D’Est Hasmik Gasparyan Chapter Nine........................................................................................... 124 Exploring the Good Possibilities of Unform within Documentary Film Huw Wahl Chapter Ten ............................................................................................ 142 Designing Reality: Creative Sound Design in Documentary Filmmaking Edward Tristram Chapter Eleven ....................................................................................... 154 Environmental Change in Poetic Documentary Film Martin Holtz Chapter Twelve ...................................................................................... 171 A poet who climbed or a climber who writes poetry: The Poetry of Cinema and Movement in the Rock-Climbing Documentary Martin Hall and Tom Kirby Chapter Thirteen ..................................................................................... 189 Meanwhale: The Box, The Whale, The Film and a Father— Andrew Kötting’s The Whalebone Box David Spittle Chapter Fourteen .................................................................................... 212 Unearthing Artefact 93: Capturing the Creative Process Kyle Barrett

CONTRIBUTORS

Kyle Barrett is a Lecturer and award-winning filmmaker at the University of Waikato, Aotearoa-New Zealand. He is the editor of ReFocus: The Films of Mary Harron, author of “A green room scuffle in screen production research: Glass Shards as an ‘electromentary” published in the Journal of Media Practice and Education, and co-author with Wairehu Grant of “Tauranga Music Sux! DIY Punk Culture in Aotearoa” a chapter in TransGlobal Punk Scenes The Punk Reader: Volume 2. You can find the full documentary of Portrait of an Artist: Alice Francis on Vimeo. Jeremy Bubb is an independent filmmaker, artist, Senior Lecturer in Filmmaking, and Chair of NAHEMI, his current work synthesizes traditional film language with multi-screen storytelling techniques and is currently making a documentary called ‘Love Lost’, about memories and dementia. His works include: In search of a Past, Screenworks, Volume 11.1 https://screenworks.org.uk/archive/volume-11-1/in-search-of-a-past The Missing Page: place as Palimpsest and Foil. The Journal of Arts Research. https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/655507/938178 Palimpsest, a four-screen art installation for Changing the Landscape. https://jebubb.wordpress.com/palimpsest/ Geoffrey Cox is a Senior Lecturer in Music and Music Technology at the University of Huddersfield, is a composer, filmmaker and researcher specialising in sound and music for documentary film. His works include:

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Cox, G & Corner, J. (Eds). (2018). Soundings: documentary film and the listening experience. University of Huddersfield Press. Cox, G., (2018). ‘Shape, Form, Colour’ … and Music: Abstraction, Meaning, and Nostalgia in 1960s Scottish Industrial Documentary. Music and Letters, 99(3), 386-426. Cox, G. (2017). 'There Must Be a Poetry of Sound That None of Us Knows...': Early British Documentary Film and the Prefiguring of Musique Concrète. Organised Sound, 22(2), 172-186. Hasmik Gasparyan is a filmmaker and Lecturer in Directing for Film and Television at the University of York, UK. His works include: ‘Investigating the Making of Cinematic Silence’ 2019 – research by creative practice British Library EThOS: Investigating the making of cinematic silence (bl.uk) Director of Documentary Film ‘Narara and Kiko’ (2018). Martin Hall is a Senior Lecturer and a Course Leader for Film Studies and Media & Communication at York St John University who publishes regularly on the American Independent Cinema, European Art Cinema and Mountaineering in film. His works include: Hall, Martin and Hall, Jen eds (2023) The Mountain and the Politics of Representation Liverpool University Press. Hall, Martin ed. (2022) Woman in the Work of Woody Allen. Amsterdam University Press Hall, Martin (2020) ‘Khaki-tinted glasses: Nostalgia and memory at wartime in TV’s M*A*S*H’ in Journal of Popular Television. Martin Holtz is Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of Graz in Austria and has published two books: American Cinema in Transition: The Western in New Hollywood and Hollywood Now (2011) and Constructions of Agency in American Literature on the War of Independence: War as Action, 1775-1860 (2019).

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Thomas Kirby is a lecturer and program leader in film production at The University of Salford. He writes on documentary and spectacle. Alongside he teaching and research he works as a freelance filmmaker specialising in the climbing documentary. His works include: Kirby, T. (2016). Fishermen to architects: how is new immersive technology shaping the 21st century documentary? Cineaction!, 97, 60–65 Kirby, T. (2015). Documentary spectacle and immediacy. Avanca Cinema 2015, 2015, pp. 1117-1123. Kirby, T. (2012). Carrington. https://vimeo.com/409770382. Keith Marley is a documentary filmmaker and senior lecturer and Programme Leader of MA Film at Liverpool John Moores University. His works include: (2022) fleur de sel (documentary film) https://www.aspera.org.au/fleur-del-sel (2019) Expanded Documentary: The aesthetics of pleasure https://journals.openedition.org/inmedia/1748 (2017) The Art of Fact: An exploration between theory and practice in documentary filmmaking (PhD Thesis) https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/7607/3/2017MarleyPhD.pdf Treasa O’Brien is a writer, artist and filmmaker based in the West of Ireland where she teaches film practice in ATU Galway and Galway University. Her film Town of Strangers is available to rent from IFI@Home in Ireland and is distributed by New Wave Films in the UK. Recent publications include The Routledge Handbook to Radical Politics (edited by Ruth Kinna & Uri Gordon), Legacies of the Magdalen Laundries (edited by Miriam Haughton, Emilie Pine and Mary McAuliffe, Manchester University Press), The New Internationalists: Activists and Volunteers in the Refugee Crisis (edited by Sue Clayton, Goldsmiths Press) and a forthcoming chapter in Representing Mothers and Motherhood on Screen (edited by Susan Liddy and Deirdre Flynn, Routledge 2023). Website: https://treasaobrien.com/

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Julie Patarin-Jossec Ph.D. in sociology, professional diver and documentary filmmaker. Among various affiliations and positions, she is consultant in underwater operations in space companies developing space habitats and analogue training programs. Her works include: 2021, La fabrique de l’astronaute : ethnographie terrestre de la Station Spatiale Internationale [Manufacturing the astronaut: an Earthly ethnography of the International Space Station], Editions Petra. 2020, “Photography, Space Artefacts and the Ethnographic Self”, Journal of Narrative Politics, vol. 6, no. 3. 2020, « La sociologie comme elle s’apprend », https://youtu.be/8E1KX5hOfw8 David Spittle is a poet, filmmaker and essayist currently working at Tyneside Cinema; selected films are on Vimeo and his poetry collections are published with Broken Sleep Books, Black Herald Press and HVTN press Karen D Thornton is Programme Leader for BA Film and Television Production at the University of Bradford. Her main area of interest is in the representation of class in contemporary screen practices. Her works include: Thornton, Karen D (2018) ‘Power Politics and the Representation of Poverty: The Nottingham City Community Protection #Givesmart Campaign’ in Visual Culture in Britain 19:2, 237-254 Scott, Karen D and White, A M (2003) ‘Unnatural History? Deconstructing the Walking with Dinosaurs phenomena’, Media, Culture & Society 25 (3). Scott, Karen D (2003) ‘Popularizing Science and Nature Programming: The Role of ‘Spectacle’ in Contemporary Wildlife Documentary, Journal of Popular Film and Television 31 (1).

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Edward Tristram, Senior Lecturer in Post Production Audio. Thinking Ahead Podcast, IESO https://podcasts.apple.com/ph/podcast/thinking-ahead/id1594174382. Huw Wahl is a filmmaker currently working on an arts council funded film exploring the art of engineless sailing (www.windtideandoar.com), and is research associate at the University of Manchester on the NERC/ESRC/ AHRC-funded funded Creative Adaptive Solutions for Treescapes Of Rivers project. His recent films include The Republics (2020) (https://therepublicsfilm.com), Everything Lives (2016) (http://hctwahl. com/el.html), and Action Space (2016) (http://hctwahl.com/as.html). His chapter ‘Showcasing Conflict: Notes and Observations on Photographic Representation in Israel and Palestine’ features in the book Visioning IsraelPalestine, Encounters at the Cultural Boundaries of Conflict edited by Gil Pasternak and published by Bloomsbury in 2020.

PREFACE

The idea that documentary is a reflection of reality suggests that film acts as a mirror held up to society in order to produce authentic and objective representations of particular events, people or places. The purpose of this book is not to debate issues around authenticity and truth in documentary film (there are many publications that already do this admirably), rather this book aims to analyse the means of expression that filmmakers use to explore and represent the real world in ways which are not always easily explicable and tangible. For some filmmakers and scholars, the idea that aesthetics be the central focus of documentary film production problematizes the very essence of documentary, in that information and knowledge exchange should be seen to take precedence over form and style. Again, debates around the essence of what documentary film should do or should be are not of primary concern here, rather the central premise of this book acknowledges that all documentary film is a form of mediation, which acts an expression of an individual or institutions of production, which will, and do, have an impact on how the world is represented in film. In any analysis of style and aesthetics in documentary film, the focus on how a film speaks to its audience, over what is being said, will always be of primary concern, and is therefore a concern which is in evidence in all of the chapters in this collection. The contributions to this collection are from documentary filmmakers and scholars who discuss how and why the poetic form is of crucial importance to either their own filmmaking or the filmmaking of others. The purpose of this book is not necessarily to provide the reader with a specific definition of a documentary poetics, in fact it is this very lack of specificity that I hope the reader will find interesting: in that documentary poetics is a multiaccentual term that will mean different things to different people. As such, a documentary poetics can manifest itself in film a whole host of ways. From my own personal perspective, I see a documentary poetics as an approach to filmmaking that utilizes a variety of aesthetic techniques, in order to create a film that is both evocative and impressionistic, and as such,

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becomes a film that inherently disrupts the formal associations between documentary film and empirical objectivity. Keith Marley 2023

CHAPTER ONE POETICS IN DOCUMENTARY: EXPOSITION AS EXPRESSION KEITH MARLEY

‘Much of the attraction of, and debates and controversies around the documentary genre, derives from being a hybrid form, straddling both conflicting paradigms within the social sciences on the one hand, and the aesthetic dimensions of art and entertainment, on the other.’ Wayne in Austin and de Jong (2008:7).

Prologue At its core, there is a tension inherent within the very nature of documentary film: on the one hand it is associated with instruction and information, on the other with aesthetics and art. It is this very tension that has allowed documentary to develop into such a rich and varied form. Within this chapter, the focus is firmly on the aesthetic qualities associated with the documentary form. That is not to say that the informative or expositional potential of documentary is not important, however in this instance, it is how documentary film can speak to its audience that is of primary concern here. Many scholars have argued that documentary’s association with information and exposition has suppressed its aesthetic development. Bill Nichols claims that documentary can thus be labelled as a ‘discourse of sobriety’ (Nichols, 1991, 68), whereby its emphasis on exposition and seriousness has restricted the expressive and lyrical potential of the film form. Renov suggests that the sober nature of documentary representation has resulted in what he calls, ‘aesthetic straightjacketing’ (Renov, 1993, 35), whereby innovative forms of representation are largely absent, with the formal characteristics associated with exposition and observation dominating the landscape of documentary. Beattie echoes Nichols’ and Renov’s concerns

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by claiming that documentary’s focus on the objective and the didactic denies the audience a sense of viewing pleasure: ‘one effect of the imposition of a representation of a rational truth as the core of documentary is to reduce documentary to the realm of the serious where pleasure and associated conceptions of fun are weakened or attenuated – to the point that documentary is characterized as a discourse of sobriety’ (Beattie 2008: 29). Sobriety, however, has not always been associated with the documentary form: its development in the early 20th century was a period of fervent experimentation, where the initial links between Modernism and documentary were firmly established, especially in Continental Europe and the Soviet Union. Many of the films produced during the 1920s and into the 30s now exist as iconic examples of a documentary poetics and are rooted in the semiotics of meaning construction, realised through the fragmentation, deconstruction and abstraction of actuality footage. In many ways it was the Modernist avant-garde who encapsulated John Grierson’s often quoted description of documentary as being the creative treatment of actuality. Perhaps the best-known poetic films produced in this period are the City Symphonies. This sub-genre of early documentary emerged with the production of Julius Jaenzon’s New York (1911), however among film critics, it is perhaps Sheeler and Strand’s Manhatta that is seen as the first recognised city symphony, with Ruttman’s Berlin: Symphony of a Great City (1927) providing the name for the genre. Other films of note include Vertov’s Man With a Movies Camera (1929), Cavalcanti’s Rien Que Les Heures (1926), Ivens’ Regen (1929) and Vigo’s A Propos de Nice (1930). All of these films aimed to capture the atmosphere of a city with the use of rhythmic editing becoming a significant device in their aesthetic approach. The filmmakers were not necessarily concerned with capturing the real, rather they aimed to express the rhythm, mood and atmosphere associated with the contemporary city. Footage of everyday life would be gathered and then abstracted through the editing process into dazzling creative expressions of everyday life within a city. Dawn to dusk was often the only obvious plot, with the use of montage creating symbolic associations through the juxtaposition of images. For example, Vigo’s Nice, acts as a scathing critique of bourgeois culture in Southern France, realised through using images of the decadent British and Russian bourgeoisie, contrasted with images of extreme poverty in the back streets of Nice’s old town, using this juxtaposition as a way of drawing attention to the social inequalities that were inherent in the modern European metropolis.

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It was the potential to create novel representations of the world that attracted so many avant-garde artists to the revolutionary potential of film and the documentary image. It was artists such as Dziga Vertov who set about using film as a tool for revolution, a revolution both in terms of the political and the perceptual. For Vertov, perceptual revolution could only be achieved by a rejection of the illusionary fiction film and for it to be replaced with factual filmmaking in order to ‘develop a new theoretical concept based on an aesthetic attitude totally different from that which governed the obsolete bourgeois film’ (Petriü 1993: 15). Vertov’s aim was to capture life unawares through the filming of everyday life and then transfigure that reality through montage in order to construct a more meaningful whole by showing life as it is. Many of the creative techniques used in Vertov’s films have become staples of a more experimental approach to documentary representation: slow motion; time lapse; freeze frame; split screen; dissolves; compositing images and rapid montage often feature in experimental film works and have made an important contribution to the emergence of a documentary poetics: ‘Vertov located the expressiveness of the object photographed in the expressiveness of its movement. Faces, trees, clouds, a falling drop of blood became, in the rhythm of Vertov’s series of images, a metrical language of the document – became film poetry.’ (Richter, 1986, 50).

Poetics in Practice Nichols’ links the emergence of a documentary poetics with the Modernist avant-garde. He states that the poetic mode of documentary is an associational form, which, ‘sacrifices the conventions of continuity editing and the sense of a very specific location in time and place that follows from it to explore associations and patterns that involve temporal rhythms and spatial juxtapositions’ (Nichols, 2001, 102). Films that fall within this mode are more concerned with creating a lyrical impression rather than imparting knowledge or information about specific events, people or places. Nichols argues that these documentaries have the potential to produce ‘alternative forms of knowledge’, rather than simply providing a ‘straightforward transfer of knowledge...or the presentation of reasoned propositions about problems in need of a solution’ (Nichols, 2001, 103). Poetic films do not necessarily offer a particular discourse or perspective on the world, rather emphasis is placed upon the creation of a particular mood or atmosphere; as such, representational strategies are seen as expressive, where the spectator is being enticed into seeing and hearing the world anew. This stands in opposition to the more conventional informative approach of documentary

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film, where the spectator is presented with a much more obvious discourse or perspective. In developing my own approach to documentary filmmaking, I was initially very interested in the expressive potential of montage. Much of my early documentary work made no attempt to offer a sense of logical continuity or clear exposition. Rapid successions of largely disjunctive sounds and images became a regular structuring device for my early work. In many ways I tried to make my films difficult in their interpretation by audiences. This approach was very much influenced by the work and writings of the Russian Constructivists. Their aesthetic approach was based on ‘the juxtaposition of different materials to produce a more meaningful structural whole’ (Petric, 1993, 3-4). Thus, in the context of documentary film, footage is often rendered as defamiliarized via aesthetic devices, which results in the depiction of actuality in unusual ways and presents the viewer with new ways in which they can perceive the world through film. According to Petric, this process of defamiliarization is achieved through zatrudnenie (making it difficult) and oestranenie (making it strange), which closely relates to the Brechtian concept of Verfremdungseffekt: a distancing device that aims to draw attention to the formal constructed nature of the filmmaking process itself. Ultimately it is the formal experimentation of actuality footage that encourages a more expressive mode of representation in documentary film, an approach that Renov argues is often repressed in most documentary filmmaking, claiming that the ‘expressive is the aesthetic function that has consistently been undervalued within the nonfiction domain’ (Renov 1993: 32). This idea of making the familiar strange became the central focus of my practice led PhD thesis, The Art of Fact: An exploration of the relationship between theory and practice in documentary filmmaking (Marley 2017). One of the major aspects of my PhD was a focus on creative sound design of actuality-audio, which is an area of documentary filmmaking that is surprisingly underdeveloped. Elements of the discussion below are explored in greater detail in my PhD thesis.

Sounding the Documentary Aesthetic innovation in sound design is much less prevalent in documentary film as opposed to fiction. According to John Corner the ‘aesthetic (as distinct from the cognitive) possibilities of sound in documentary are in most cases not mobilized at all.’ (Corner 2003: 98). My claim here is that the relationship between image and sound in documentary is hierarchical in that the visual tends to dominate over the aural. Of course, dialogue is a

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central feature of many documentaries, with the ubiquitous use of voiceover and interviews, however in terms of aesthetics, soundtracks are often constructed according to well-established conventions and as such are not afforded the same significance as the construction of the visual track. Examples of this reductionist approach to sound design include the use of a wild track consisting of diegetic sounds, or the addition of music to certain scenes, beyond that the subtleties of sound design are often not the primary concern of most documentarians. We talk of “seeing” or “viewing” a film and we would seldom refer to “hearing” a film. As Chion claims, ‘although sound has modified the nature of the image, it has left untouched the image’s centrality as that which focuses the attention...[it] has not shaken the image from its pedestal. Sound still has the role of showing us what it wants us to see in the image’ (Chion 1994: 144). It is in the area of sound that myself and my production partner, Geoffrey Cox (University of Huddersfield), have tried to exploit by producing innovative representational strategies in an attempt to draw the audience’s attention to the audio elements of our films. In order to hail the attention of the viewer/listener, careful attention has to be paid to the way the image track is structured and composed so that ‘in order to allow the audience to concentrate more on the sonic elements of the production, I propose that the filmmaker adopts a certain kind of approach that does not draw the audience into the search for meaning via narrative development and its logical resolution’ (Marley and Cox in Cooper et al. 2008: 54). In essence, I often try to “free up” the cognitive processing of the viewer/listener by reducing the complexity of the visual track in order to allow focus on the aural signifier. Chion argues that the viewer requires more time to process the visual signifier, as opposed to the aural: ‘the ear analyzes, processes, and synthesizes faster than the eye...the eye perceives more slowly because it has more work to do; it must explore in space as well as follow along in time’ (Chion 1994: 10-11). An example of this approach can be seen in some of the sequences in A Film About Nice (Marley and Cox 2010). In many of the shots, especially those around the beach and sea, the shots are held for a relatively long time and there is minimal animation within the scene. These include images of waves lapping on the beach or a drifting boat glistening in the sunshine. The visual track has a degree of simplicity, which contrasts with the complexity of the composition of the audio track. Here location sounds are multilayered in complex patterns and are occasionally processed in postproduction, using reverb, delay and equalization. Here Cox and I were attempting to limit the attention the viewer requires to process the image, in

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order to allow the listener to focus their attention on the detail of the sound. Cox articulates this process by stating that our ‘aim here was to encourage the listener/viewer to concentrate on the sound, even to adopt Pierre Schaeffer’s concept of “reduced listening” where one listens to the sound, so as to focus on the traits of the sound itself, independent of its cause and meaning’ (Cox in Cooper et al. 2008: 58). A Film About Nice went on to win ‘Best Sound Design’ in The Maverick Movie Awards, Hollywood, California in 2012. This encouraged Cox and I to develop aesthetic approaches to the design of actuality sounds as a way of using audio as a poetic device. Two subsequent films of ours have further explored the intricate design of diegetic sounds: Mill Study (2017 Cox and Marley) and The Mill (2020 Cox and Marley). Mill Study acted as an initial pilot film for the longer film, The Mill. Cox and I were particularly interested in capturing the dynamic mood and atmosphere of Spa Mill in West Yorkshire, England. Situated in the Colne Valley, the mill represents one of the last working remnants of the Northern textile industry that played such an important role in the spread of industrialization across the globe. Cox and I approached the mill owner, asking if we could make a film that aimed to capture the atmosphere of the day-to-day workings of the mill. The workings of the mill itself provided a rich landscape of interesting visual and sonic signifiers. Cox and I had to explain to the mill owner that the film we would produce would not follow in the traditional style of documentary and would therefore not go into any detail explaining the yarn making process – rather we wished to adopt a more poetic approach, which would capture the atmosphere of the workplace. The incredible complexity of the soundscape of the mill would allow Cox and I to focus on its subtleties and allow us to treat the aural signifier with as much, if not more, significance as that of the visual. The film would follow in the tradition of other industrial symphonies, which had emerged in the 1930s and were informed by the approach of the city symphonists. Notable examples of industrial symphonies include Joris Ivens’ Philips Radio (1931); Bert Haanstra’s Glas (1958) and Paul Dickson’s Stone into Steel (1960). All of these films incorporate a rhythmic montage style of editing and the cinematography often adopts unusual compositions reminiscent of the constructivist photographer, Rodchenko. The overall aesthetic closely relates to the concept of ostranenie, which presented the everyday activity of the mill in an unfamiliar way, achieved through abstract compositional style, using extreme close up macro photography and unusual camera angles, along with a subtle treatment and layering of diegetic sounds.

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The overall aim of the film is to encourage not only reduced listening, whereby the listener focuses on the sonic qualities of the audio track rather than its referential quality, but also to encourage what I call enhanced viewing. Here the viewer is encouraged to focus on the compositional, geometric and rhythmic qualities of the image, achieved through a process of defamiliarization, whereby the abstract compositional aspects of the shots distance the viewer from its referential aspects. This defamiliarizing approach also informs the way that the audio track is treated. This is achieved by using high quality microphones placed in close proximity to the machines so that sounds can be recorded in extreme close up, producing a recording of tremendous clarity and detail. As a result of this approach the listener accesses sounds that would normally be imperceptible to the human ear, adding to the “making strange” of the working environment of the mill. Here it is my claim that through the adoption of a more abstract approach to documentary filmmaking, the viewer/listener experiences an enhanced impression of a specific environment, whereby a sense of realism is achieved through the non-realist filmic techniques described above. In this instance, “enhanced” refers to the viewer/listener experiencing a sensorial rather than cognitive vignette of the everyday life of a working mill. This idea is closely related to Vertov’s concept of kino pravda whereby the representational strategies Vertov deployed act as the ‘elaboration of a new “vocabulary” [of film]’ (Michelson 1984: xxviii). Mill Study follows a simple narrative arc: the film begins with a fairly slowpaced montage of external shots of the mill, while interior diegetic sounds are layered over the image to give a sense of the indoor space. Each shot is of an equal length, in order to develop a measured and metronomic structure to the piece. The atmosphere in this short section is a tranquil one. This comes to an abrupt end when the image jumps to extreme close ups of heavy machinery, combined with a pounding audio track composed of mainly synchronous diegetic sounds. Here Cox and I aimed to express the intensity of the mill, through juxtaposing this sequence with that of the previous tranquil exterior sequence, rather like we did in the early stages of A Film About Nice. The editing process was particularly complex in this section, both in terms of audio and video footage. Matching the rhythms and movements of the machines was a challenge, as we wanted to create a definite 3»4-time signature here. This metered style of editing was used to encourage the viewer/listener to “lock into” the rhythms of the mill, as well as drawing attention to the stylistic approach of the filmmakers. The film was divided into various movements, echoing the symphonic approach. Our production notes included:

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• • • • • •

The geographic context of the mill (external shot sequence) – tranquil Interior “hectic rhythmic section” – chaotic Establishing the machines using medium shots of machines – calmer Balletic section with introduction of humans to the scene – graceful Surreal section with use of macro photography and high shutter speed – ethereal Closing sequence, minimal movement within the frame – stillness/emptiness

By dividing the film into movements, it allowed Cox and I to focus on creating specific atmospheres for each movement (such as “ethereal”, “graceful”, “chaotic” and so on). This is where a strict formalist approach provides the tools to convey a particular atmosphere. Here Cox and I try to show the mill to the viewer/listener, rather than tell them about the mill. Beattie’s (2008) concept of documentary display, which focuses on the aesthetic functions of documentary, is of particular relevance to our approach here, in that Cox and I aimed to shift the documentary text away from the sober discourse that Nichols (1991) speaks of, toward a text that aims to entertain and provide sensuous pleasure for the viewer/listener. Beattie claims that if a documentary filmmaker focuses on display, then knowledge production becomes visceral, subjective and affective, rather than merely cognitive. It is my argument here that the avant-garde nonfiction has the ability to signify in particular ways through the use of poetic and reflexive techniques, which ultimately draw attention to the process of meaning making itself, whereas the discursive capabilities of the more conventional styles of documentary, such as what Nichols referred to as the expository, observational and interactive modes, are limited in their signifying capabilities. This deeper level of signification allows the viewer/listener to engage with documentary in a different way when compared to a more conventional approach of filmmaking, as Platinga points out: The avant-garde nonfiction film encourages an interplay between two ways of viewing the film. On the one hand, the spectator perceives the referent through the iconic, indexical images (and perhaps sounds); on the other hand, style makes referentiality difficult, and becomes itself the primary object of interest. When we view an avant-garde nonfiction, we constantly slide between seeing the images as either a window on the world or a sequence of non-referential images...these films are reflexive in a specific way in that they are fundamentally “about” the documentary and are “about” representation itself (Platinga 1997: 176-179).

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This sliding between seeing the images as windows on the world and a sequence of non-referential images is particularly evident in the “Surreal Section” of Mill Study from 6’13” to 7’43”. Here I used an 85mm macro lens so that I could achieve extreme closeup images of the detail of some of the mill’s machines, and, by opening up the aperture to its widest setting, I was able to capture a very shallow depth of field, which rendered the background as a blur. I also used a very high shutter speed of 1/2000 of a second, which meant that the movement of the yarn was now visible to the camera’s eye, whereas the human eye was not able to capture such highspeed movement. These cinematographic techniques, coupled with a precise, often symmetrical compositional style, gave the sequence an abstract lyrical quality, which is very much in keeping with the poetic mode of documentary. The abstract quality was augmented by the soundtrack, which adopted similar processing techniques to the image, for instance the closeup macro photography was matched with close up audio recordings. Here Cox and I were able to isolate some of the individual sounds that were imperceptible to the human ear, rather like the fast shutter speed provided images that were imperceptible to the human eye. For Cox and I this section operated as the very manifestation of Vertov’s kino-eye meeting his radioear: “Film Eye” builds “film things” out of shots according to the “theory of intervals.” This theory is based on the perceptual relationship of one-shot composition to another; on the transition and juxtaposition between visual impulses. This connection between shots based on “intervals” is very complex, and consists of many interactions. Among the most important are: (1) the interaction of shot scales (close-up, medium-shot etc.), (2) the interaction of angles, (3) the interaction of movements within shots, (4) the interaction of light and dark, (5) the interaction of shooting speeds. Depending on these factors, the filmmaker decides: (a) the order and (b) the duration of each separate shot (in feet or frames). In addition to the relationship between any two shots (intervals) one must also consider the relationship of a single shot to all other shots; for they all must be integrated into a “montage battle” (Vertov in Petric 1978: 36).

Mill Study addresses all of the five interactions that Vertov highlights above, with the movements of the machinery providing perfect fodder to create a montage battle. For Cox and I, to perfect this approach to filmmaking, precision and attention to detail is absolutely key in terms of: the composition of shot scale; the way that camera angles are composed; the way that the movements within the frames are captured; the exposure of the shot in order to produce particular shadows and highlights and the shutter speed and frame-rate calculations in order to produce specific visual effects.

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The only way to get close to Vertov’s kino-eye is through the careful consideration of all the factors he outlines in the quote above. Where Cox and I are in a privileged position, however, is that developments in contemporary sound technology have allowed us to explore the concept of Vertov’s radio-ear, in a practical context, something which primitive sound technology prevented Vertov from doing: We are promoting propaganda using facts, not on the level of vision alone, but on that of hearing too...If, with respect to vision, our kinok-observers have recorded visible life phenomena with cameras, we must now talk about recording audible facts. We’re aware of one recording device; the gramophone. But there are other’s more perfect; they record every rustle, every whisper, the sound of a waterfall, a public speaker’s address... Technology is moving swiftly ahead. A method for broadcasting images by radio has already been invented. In addition, a method for recording auditory phenomena on film tape has been discovered. In the near future man will be able to broadcast to the entire world the visual and auditory phenomena recorded by the radio-movie camera (Vertov in Michelson 1984: 56).

These prophetic words were penned in 1925, a full 34 years before the invention of the synch-sound radio-movie camera. Where Vertov did have a limited opportunity to explore the potential of sound design, he organized audio footage, or sound facts, much in the same way as he organized his images: ‘we did not limit ourselves to the simplest concurrence of sound and image but followed the line of maximum resistance – under existing conditions – that of complex interaction of sound with image’ (Vertov in Michelson 1984: 111). It is within the complex interaction of sound and image that my praxis has been realized. Some of the ideas discussed above have been explored further in an extended cut of the mill film: The Mill (Cox and Marley, 2020). After spending many years exploring the potential of montage as poetic device, I felt that I had reached some kind of creative cul-de-sac. I still had a profound interest in making films that would capture the “essence” of a particular place, and whereas montage had been a useful creative device for capturing the dynamism of, say, a cityscape or the mechanized workings of a mill, how might one, for example, capture the essence of a more sedate, slow moving place? In 2017, I visited the Île de Ré off the Atlantic coast of France on vacation. I was quite taken aback by the atmosphere of the island; despite it being a very popular tourist destination, there was this all-pervasive sense of

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serenity and peace. The place had a deep and profound effect on me; it had a beguiling quality to it, a quality that I find difficult to describe in words. I knew immediately that I would return to the island to make, what I would call, an island symphony. I returned in the summer of 2018, with production assistant Marc Sturgess and set about filming around the island. I began to gather shots around the island that I would describe as having a minimalist compositional style. For example, many shots focused on the vast expanses of both sea and sky, with little else in the frame in terms of movement or content. The topography of the island certainly made for pleasing compositions, with little need to search for the next appropriate shot. The challenge was to find a suitable structure for the film, one that could encapsulate the serene atmosphere of the island. My preferred style of editing (montage) is one which is implicitly disruptive and distracting, whereas, in this instance, I needed to adopt a more sedate and nondistracting form of editing in order to more faithfully represent the atmosphere of the island. It was at this point that the writings and films of Andrei Tarkovsky helped to shape and structure the overall film. Tarkovsky rejected the idea that editing is that which creates the rhythm of a film, rather he states that it is the ‘distinctive time running through the shots that makes the rhythm of the picture; and rhythm is determined not by the length of the edited pieces, but by the pressure of time that runs through them’ (Tarkovsky 1986: 117). Tarkovsky embraced André Bazin’s belief that the long take, in terms of shot duration, allows the spectator to engage with the image in a more significant way, thus allowing the viewer to choose what they wanted to see, rather than that choice being dictated through montage. Tarkovsky was critical of the approach of montage pioneers, such as Kuleshov and Eisenstein, claiming that their films acted as an onslaught, presenting the audience with riddles and puzzles, while all the time imposing the ideas of the filmmakers on the audience. What interests me most about Tarkovsky’s approach to filmmaking is the all-pervasive sense of “slowness” associated with it, which, in his own words, ‘allows everyone to interpret and feel each separate moment in his own way…it separates from its author, starts to live its own life, undergoes changes of form and meaning…[allowing] the audience to bring personal experience to bear on what is in front of them’ (Tarkovsky 1986: 118). His ideas connected with “time pressure” running through the shot itself, became a significant structuring device within the Île de Ré film, a film which I hope has the potential to encourage a transcendental mode of viewing.

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It was Paul Schrader in the 1970s who first introduced the term transcendental style with regard to a particular aesthetic in filmmaking. For Schrader, this style of filmmaking, ‘is a mile marker on the journey to stillness’ (Schrader 2018: 30). The purpose of transcendental style is to encourage a meditative state in the viewer, achieved through aesthetic means that can be linked to a form of slow cinema discussed above. If transcendental style is that which encourages the viewer to experience film beyond usual sensory experience in order to induce a meditative state in the viewer, then the implicit disruptive nature of the cut in editing must not be used because distraction and disruption are not conducive to reaching a meditative state. It was at this point in my thinking that I decided to explore the potential impact of the long dissolve. I felt that this would become an obvious solution to the issues associated with a more disruptive form of editing. I also opted to use a musical score as a poetic device as a further way of producing a meditative aesthetic. Tarkovsky states that music, ‘does more than intensify the impression of the visual image by providing a parallel illustration of the same idea; it opens up the possibility of a new, transfigured impression of the same material: something different in kind’ (Tarkovsky 1986: 158). However, for Tarkovsky, music is not simply an appendage to images, rather it should be conceived as part of a whole, whereby music becomes, ‘completely one with the image that if it were to be removed from a particular episode, the visual image would not just be weaker in its idea and impact, it would be qualitatively different’ (ibid.). As such, I wanted my film to be authored not just of my own direction, but authored by another, one who is able to harness the impact of the images and creatively respond to those images, in order to invigorate the film with new life, whereby the work of the composer, ‘can be like somebody breathing’ (Tarkovsky 1986: 159). Ultimately, I wanted the creative process of another to breathe new life into my film. There was to be no direction given to potential composers, apart from that they respond to the images in a way that represents how the images made them feel. Three composers responded to the call out I made: Andy Nicholson, Howard Kearey and Paul Moylan. While Nicholson and Kearey produced excellent scores, it was the subsequent conversations I had with Moylan about the image sequence that encouraged me to work more closely with him. It seemed to me that Moylan immediately grasped the idea of transcendental style. In fact, when I asked him about his initial feelings toward the film, he used terms such as “transported” and “transcendence”. It was Moylan’s score that I ultimately went with when distributing the film.

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I was delighted with the score Moylan had produced. After he had finished the mastering of the composition, I conducted an informal interview with Moylan for the writing of this chapter. During the interview he said that he was first struck by “the trance like state” he was in once he started to watch the film unfold. He noted that the film had a cathartic effect on him, allowing him to come to terms with a recent traumatic event in his own life, saying that “it allowed his brain to stop working”. He felt that the film had the potential to have a therapeutic effect on both him and the audience, especially at a time where we were all going through the trauma of living through a global pandemic. He said he approached creating the score like he would construct a DJ set, whereby the DJ blends sounds together in order to creative a narrative whole. In fact, Moylan stated that it was the visual blends that had helped “hook him into the film” and it was these visual transitions that became crucial to the way he responded musically. He began to treat the visual blends as sections where he could write discreet pieces of music for each blend, however the challenge was how to then connect all these discreet sections together to create a convincing whole. It was here, where I suspect his DJ skills in beatmatching helped him achieve that convincing whole. Moylan said he found solace in the creative process in the context of lockdown, which was something that I had also experienced when editing the film during the pandemic. He said that the creative process quickly became a positive experience and had helped him to cope with the sense of isolation that lockdown had created and helped to give him a positive focus during what was a challenging time in his own life. It is my claim here that the poetic approach can have both a significant impact on the filmmaker as well as the audience, in that the making and the subsequent viewing becomes a pleasurable experience for all involved. If the poetic potential of documentary film can have this therapeutic effect on the very people who make them, then hopefully poetic films can also have a therapeutic effect on the audience, whereby their experience of watching and listening to such films contributes to a sense of wellbeing and ultimately becomes a pleasurable experience: By encouraging an audience to see and hear the lyrical potential of documentary, a film can operate more on the level of evocation via the filmmaker’s focus on the aesthetic, as opposed to the expositional potential of documentary film. As such, the filmmaker can elevate the audience to a more active and informed reader of audio-visual texts. It is through the particular formal qualities of a documentary film, that one can achieve pleasurable learning (Marley 2019: 5).

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On a final note, one may ask what drives the documentary filmmaker to make an attempt to represent actuality in poetic ways? What purpose does poetic documentary serve? Might one even claim that adopting a poetic approach is a form of artistic self-indulgence, as John Grierson once claimed? Is art and poetry merely a vehicle for the artist or the poet to communicate the abstract nature of their own existence and being? Is there an innate desire in all of us that simply to wants us to be understood? If understanding others is the key to civilisation, then can poetics provide the vocabulary for a language that increases a shared understanding of the world? To seek one’s own truth (and there can be no other, no ‘common’ truth) is to search for one’s own language, the system of expression destined to give form to one’s own ideas. Only by collecting together the films of different directors do we arrive at a picture of the modern world which is more or less realistic and has some claim to be called a full account of what concerns, excites and puzzles our contemporaries: an embodiment in effect, of that generalised experience which modern man lacks and which the art of cinema lives to make incarnate (Tarkovsky 1986: 87-88).

If a documentary poetics can provide that vocabulary, then long live the art of fact.

Bibliography Austin, Thomas and de Jong, Wilma, eds. (2008) Rethinking documentary: new perspectives and practices. Buckingham: Open University Press. Beattie, Keith Beattie. Documentary Display: Re-Viewing Non-Fiction Film and Video, London: Wallflower Press, 2008. Corner, J. (2003) Television, documentary and the category of the aesthetic’ Screen 44:1 pp. 92-100. Cooper, D. et al (2008) CineMusic? Constructing The Film Score Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press. Marley, K. (2017) The Art of Fact: An exploration of the relationship between theory and practice in documentary filmmaking (PhD Thesis). Marley, K. (2019) “Expanded Documentary: The aesthetics of pleasure.” Inmedia: The French Journal of Media Studies ‘Documentary and Entertainment’ 7.2 pp. 1-15 Michelson, A. (1984) Kino Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov USA: University of California Press. Nichols, B. (1991) Representing Reality, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

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Nichols, B (2001) Introduction to Documentary Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Petriü, Vlada. Constructivism In Film, Cambridge: The Press Syndicate, 1978. Platinga, C. (1997) Rhetoric and Representation in Nonfiction Film Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Renov, Michael. “Toward a Poetics of Documentary”, in Renov, Michael ed. (1993) Theorizing Documentary, London: Routledge, 1993, 12-36. Richter, H (1986) The Struggle for Film: Towards a socially responsible cinema. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Schrader, P. (2018) Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Dreyer, Bresson California: University of California Press. Tarkovsky, A. (1986) Sculpting in Time Austin: University of Texas Press.

CHAPTER TWO FROM FREE TO SLOW: A JOURNEY THROUGH DOCUMENTARY FORM JEREMY BUBB

Abstract In this chapter, I will look at the journey from Free Cinema to Slow Cinema practices via observational modes through the lens of poetic approaches to documentary. I will plot a journey of progression and make connections with a variety of documentary forms and filmmakers, including Jean Rouch and Colin Young. I will analyse three films as case studies and determine their use of slowness, look at the crossover of poetics, identify shared histories, and discuss the significance of ethnographic filmmaking in shaping these forms. I will conclude by summarising how changing documentary practices and form, have influenced what Jonathan Romney categorised as Slow Cinema, a term that itself has contributed to the way in which we consider films of slowness.

Introduction This book is a welcome examination of the creative practice of documentary, which explores the innovative aspects of factual screen storytelling and investigates to what extent this should be recognized as an artistic practice. The term Poetics alludes to the Poetics of Aristotle, which was developed to analyse poetry and related forms. Andrew Ford notes that, “Aristotle begins by declaring poetics a distinct field of enquiry (methodos) that encompasses questions about the nature of poetry, its “kinds” or genres, the effects each genre can produce, the essentials of well–constructed plot, the constitutive parts of each genre, as well as unspecified related topics” (Ford 2015, 2).

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The Poetics provides a system for analysis of creative dramatic forms which is vital to expanding knowledge and understanding, enabling development and progression of practices. While Aristotle’s exercise focused on tragedy, many of the analytic tools can be adapted to address aspects of the moving image. Apart from the very useful elements that refer to story, several of which can be applied to documentary, catharsis is an element worthy of mention. Although it is not clearly explained and there are contradictory views of its true meaning, it seems to indicate purgation and cleansing, suggesting that drama arouses intense emotions, taking the audience through an emotional experience, and finally allows a rebalance to a normal state. This is something that many of the filmmakers mentioned in this chapter have aimed to achieve through their use of the documentary form in an attempt to represent reality. The significance of The Poetics for the cineaste and practitioners alike is that it provides an approach to the analysis of a creative process, a method of dissection of form and function to demonstrate the purpose of the whole, enabling us to theorise and focus on the making and production of the moving image and not just the reading of cultural products, which tends to be the emphasis for many of the related theories. It is important for those engaged in film practices to reflect and share their understandings and experiences of the moving image through the lens of production, to help inform a comprehensive knowledge of the subject area.

The Beginnings Technology has always been a key factor for the documentary filmmaker, documentarist, Jean Rouch, wrote, “In the 1920s, when Flaherty and Vertov were trying to resolve the same problems that today’s filmmakers face, camera equipment and technicians were elementary, and the making of a film required more craft than industry. The camera used for Nanook, forerunner of the “eyemo” had no motor, though it did already have a reflex viewer through coupled lenses. The camera of the “cine-eyes” that bought us “Man with a Movie Camera” was also hand-cranked, and continually rested on a tripod” (Rouch 1974, 38).

By the post-war period, there was a substantial change in technology that helped solve the issue of the moving camera when lightweight image and sound recording devices, which had been developed by the military, were being used by filmmakers. The influence of this advancement, which cannot be underestimated, resulted in a revolution in documentary practices, changing the look, perception, and status of films, eventually prompting a

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revaluation of ethnographic filmmaking, which had developed a negative image. The origins of ethnography were associated with colonial inequalities and ‘the arrogant assumptions that its privileged intellectual class made about who has the right to tell stories about whom’ (Ruth Behar 2007: 529). Given this history, it is difficult to see how ethnography has any relevance to the contemporary world, although slow cinema, is a form that depends on an ethnographic or anthropologic approach. Lightweight cameras and 16mm newsreel stock helped establish the British Free Cinema movement in the 1950s, led by Lindsay Anderson, Lorenza Mazzetti, Karel Reisz, and Tony Richardson. These filmmakers worked outside the established film and television institutions using low-paid or non-paid crew to develop their radical style, often shooting handheld, in black and white. The name Free Cinema came from the freedom to operate without pressures of box office demands and mainstream media, which they saw as conservative, and consisting of patronising representations of the working class. “Their films attempted to rehabilitate an objective, critical, yet respectful and often affectionate portrayal of ordinary people at work or at play” (Duplin n.d.) Free Cinema was a label of convenience at the time, which identified a group of filmmakers working in a particular way and slotted into a wider cultural influence in the UK. In the late fifties, there were several theatre, TV, film writers, and novelists who were producing a new wave of work aimed at challenging the existing cultural order, leading to the recognition of the Angry Young Men, Kitchen Sink Drama, and British Social Realism. These movements reflected a changing society in Britain and examined the complexity of the class system from a working-class perspective. Meanwhile, at the same time in New York, some Direct Cinema filmmakers, who were working with similar methods had found their home in Drew Associates. This was an association of established filmmakers founded by Robert Drew, an employee of Life Magazine, an ex-World War II fighter pilot, employed to write about his experiences of being shot down and held captive behind enemy lines. While at the magazine, he took up the Neiman Fellowship at Harvard in 1953, to study American History, he researched the modern novel, drama, and TV, and concluded that television journalism was too focused on text and interviews and that real-life did not get enough screen time. He thought word logic should be dropped in preference for visual dramatic means and that this could create a whole new dimension in journalism. In an interview, Drew described this new visual form of journalism as,

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“…theatre without actors, plays without playwright, it would be reporting without summary and opinion, it would be the ability to look in on people’s lives and deduce certain things, and prove that it could only be gotten by personal experience.” (Drew n.d.).

Drew Associates continued to build a reputation for creating engaging films developing Direct Cinema techniques, and like the Free Cinema filmmakers, were shooting on 16mm lightweight cameras and sound equipment. One of their early films of significance was Primary (1960), which documented the Wisconsin Primary election between Hubert Humphrey and John F Kennedy. It had a huge impact on documentary filmmaking, demonstrating an unrestrained use of camera with synchronised sound, it is still considered today as a significant example of Direct Cinema. Jean Rouch wrote, “The classic example of this style is now undoubtedly the shot in Primary where Leacock follows the entrance of John F. Kennedy. Since then (1960), camera manufacturers have made considerable efforts to improve the balance and manageability of their products. And today all cameramen who shoot direct cinema know how to walk with their cameras, thus transforming them into “living cameras” (Rouch, 2003).

The filmmakers attached to Drews Associates soon moved on, Albert Maysles went on to work with his brother, developing their own methods of observational filmmaking. Jonathan Vogels wrote, “Despite sometimes being dismissed as condescending, the brothers never expressed anything but positive feelings toward the people they filmed, even if they did not admire every activity in which those people were engaged. They faced the truth and tried to present that truth as authentically as they could. A self-proclaimed “religiously committed documentarian,” Albert has asserted that the “essential thing about our work is not making believe, but finding out”” (Vogels 2005).

Don Pennebaker and Richard Leacock went on to set up on their own, to make short films on musicians and document life on the streets of New York. In 1964 they made a short film called Audition at RCA, the film features jazz vocalist Dave Lambert and four young singers he assembled for an audition at RCA studios in New York. Leacock describes the freedom of their work at that time: “The important thing was that we were experimenting. All the rules were new. We were, in fact, developing a new grammar which was entirely different from that of silent filmmaking and of fiction film-making” (Leacock 2005).

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Some years later in the mid-80s, I was fortunate to meet Don Pennebaker and able to benefit first-hand from his experience during his residency at Chapter Film Workshop, a film group in Cardiff. During this time I was making a film called ‘It Ain’t Necessarily’. So, funded by the Gulbenkian Foundation about the connection between South Wales and the USA, focusing on the cultural exchange between Paul Robeson, a Communist Party member, who was actively involved in campaigning for Welsh miners rights during the1930s, and matinee idol Ray Milland, from Neath, who, at the same time left South Wales for California, becoming an established Hollywood star and receiving an Oscar for Lost Weekend (1945). Pennebaker, who has family roots in Wales and starred in my film, introduced himself to our group of filmmakers with a screening of many of the early short films he made in the sixties with Richard Leacock. He screened Audition at RCA, which was particularly memorable as it has a vibrancy, an exciting film aesthetic that uses Direct Cinema techniques, with a handheld camera, lens flare, focus racking, off-screen dialogue, and conversation. It used a ‘new grammar’ of filmmaking, as described by Leacock, and included an evocative use of jazz music, even though it was made over twenty years before, it remained fresh and exciting, it was a film that chimed with my interests and ambitions in documentary filmmaking.

The Documentary Form Evolves In 1960, when Jean Rouch was in Paris shooting A Chronicle of a Summer, he too was benefiting from the use of lightweight technology, developing his approach to Cinéma vérité. Rouch’s vérité, which pays homage to Vertov’s Kino Pravda, provokes a truth rather than being the truth. Vertov’s manifesto states, “I am the cine-eye, I am the mechanical eyes, I am the machine that shows you the world as only a machine can see it. From now on I will be liberated from immobility. I am in perpetual movement” (Vertov 1963). Chronicle of a Summer, similar to the Free Cinema films was also made at a time of social change, except Rouch’s focus was a different group of people, and concentrated on the growth of consumerism in France. He takes us into the lives of Parisiennes intending to reveal who they are and explores a particular representation of reality. “The presence of the camera is a kind of passport that opens all doors and makes every kind of scandal possible. The camera deforms, but not from the moment that it becomes an accomplice. At that point, it has the possibility of doing something I couldn’t do if the camera wasn’t there: it

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becomes a kind of psychoanalytic stimulant, which lets people do things they wouldn’t otherwise do” (Rouch 1971).

Rouch explored the freedom of the camera and was fully engaged in experimentation and expanding an understanding of the documentary form creatively, but he was working in contrast to the Direct Cinema filmmakers, his films encouraged interaction between subjects and filmmakers. Documentary historian Erik Barnouw described the differences as follows, “The direct cinema documentarist took his camera to a situation of tension and waited hopefully for a crisis; the Rouch version of cinéma vérité tried to precipitate one. The direct cinema artist aspired to invisibility; the Rouch cinéma vérité artist was often an avowed participant. . . . Direct cinema found its truth in events available to the camera” (Barnouw, 2005).

Rouch’s approach showed distinctive interest in rituals, social groups, it took on an ethnographic approach. In 1966, he attended a conference in Sydney, where he met Colin Young, who was presenting a paper on the Pacific Region, which was written in collaboration with Anthropologist Edmund Carpenter. While Young never trained as an Anthropologist, he had many respected associates in the field and saw the importance of the discipline concerning the documentary form. Later that year he would return to the US and establish the renowned Ethnographic Film Program at UCLA, which became a major influence in ethnographic documentary filmmaking. In 1975, Young wrote a paper called ‘The Principles of Visual Anthropology’, central to his ideas was the idea that ethnographic filmmakers should refrain from directing their subjects when filming on location, instead the camera should follow their actions as they went about their tasks. Editing should have a light touch with the aim of giving audiences access to the view the filmmaker had experienced. “Young’s concept was a cinema based on engagement and one that was attached and created an ‘intimate, sympathetic relationship between the film-maker and the subject – not the eye of the aloof, detached, observer but someone watching as much as possible from the inside’” (Henley 2018, 289).

An important feature of Observational Cinema praxis in its classic form consisted, in effect, of an invitation to the audience to consider the filmmaker’s own experience of the life of the subjects as a sort of ‘open channel’ through which they too could have an experience of that life. They were looking to share with an audience a sense of physical experience and participating in the subject’s life, it should not be a disembodied recording

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but a reflexive manifestation that uses gesture and looks to create an onscreen relationship between subjects and filmmakers. Young thought that the filmmaker should gently reveal their presence if necessary, as this supported the fiction that the observational approach was objective. This was different from Rouch’s methods – they disagreed on the use of language in documentary filmmaking, Rouch’s subjects conversed with the filmmaker, conducted interviews, and often used voice-over. Young’s approach, and that of the Observational filmmakers, was more subtle – they advocated that if conversation evolved as a natural part of the process this was acceptable, but it should not stand outside of the temporal flow of the film. “Rather, the ‘conversation’ between film-maker and subjects in Observational Cinema could be initiated by either party and, all importantly, would arise – or at least would appear to arise – in the normal ebb and flow of the events being represented in the film” (Henley 2018, 297).

This was in contrast to the Direct Cinema filmmakers. Henley observed that, “While Direct Cinema film-makers worked to the general principle that they themselves should not speak unless spoken to, in Observational Cinema as it developed at UCLA, linguistic exchanges between the film-makers and subjects could be initiated by either party” (Henley, 2018, 296).

In engaging in casual and natural conversation the Observational filmmakers were aiming to go beyond the praxis of the ethnographic filmmakers of the time, who while observing their subjects, creating detailed studies, and having interaction off-screen, on-screen there would be no reference to this. In the films of Rouch, the engagement between filmmaker and subjects was heavily ‘filtered’ through the sensibilities of the filmmaker, while the through the lens of the observational filmmaker, “We look in on life as it is lived. Social actors engage with one another, ignoring filmmakers. Often the characters are caught up in pressing demands or crisis of their own. This requires their attention, drawing it away from the filmmakers” (Nichols, 2017, 133). Colin Young noted that this created “congruency between the subject as experienced by the film-makers and the film as experienced by the audience” (Henley, 2018, 300).

The Influence of Art Cinema Before his involvement in the creation of the Ethnographic Film Program at UCLA, Colin Young taught in the School of Theatre, Film, and Television,

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teaching such filmmakers as Francis Ford Coppola, Paul Schrader, and Barry Levinson. His passion for drama filmmaking would not leave him and he encouraged his Ethnographic filmmaking students to study the films of Ozu, Kurosawa, the French New Wave, and others. Young knew that these filmmakers provided an important grounding in cinematic understanding, experimentation, and a ‘restrained’ style that could be transposed to the documentary genre. He said in an interview, “They left us space to fill and we participated” (Young 1995, 103). This invitation to audiences to participate in creating meaning was central to the aesthetic to which Young wanted observational filmmakers to aspire. Ozu’s system was a pared-down approach almost eliminating camera movement, dissolves, and fades, and used a low angled camera that almost avoided a human point of view. His work tells stories of Japanese society through families, human relationships, and often concentrates on minor characters as much as major ones, bringing evenness and equality to his storytelling. In many cases, these filmmakers were creating fictionalised ethnographic case studies. Robert Bresson, another filmmaker recommended by Young who used an observing eye, static shots and committed to a paring down of the cinematic elements, also rejected a theatrical style in performance in favour of an ‘automated’ approach. Bresson thought that his style would emphasise the all-important mood and feel of a film, which would deliver a more truthful representation of reality. In Pickpocket (1959), he wanted the audience to hear and feel the experience of a pickpocket as he went about his organised and premeditated crimes. In a television interview, he said, “We can’t imitate life. We have to find a way to reproduce it without imitating it. If we imitate life, it’s not real. It’s fake. I think using a mechanism like this (automation) can lead to something like life, and even real” (Bresson, 1975).

These influential films were not only developing a new cinema that examined the visual representations of reality, space and time, but were also reacting to the ‘bombardment of sound and image’, and the ‘fetishism of technology’ by the use of a paired down cinema aesthetic. This approach is later referred to in an address at the 46th San Francisco International Film Festival in 2003, by Michel Ciment as a “cinema slowness”. In reference to the work of Theo Angelopoulos, Abbas Kiarostami, Aleksandr Sokurov Tsai Ming-liang and others, Ciment commented that, “a number of directors have reacted by a cinema of slowness, of contemplation, as if they wanted to live again the sensuous experience of a moment revealed in its authenticity”.

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Three Docs Three documentary films come to mind, which help to plot the journey from Direct Cinema to Slow Cinema. The first is a film that sits between Observational and Slow – this is Bread Day (1988) by Sergei Dvortsovey. This film has many of the Observational filmmaking tropes but also displays Slow Cinema characteristics. Dvortsovey, a Kazakhastan filmmaker, who graduated from the Moscow Film School, previously trained as an aviation engineer for Aeroflot, his film was made during Perestroika and benefitted from the dismantling of the Soviet state. Bread Day appeared at many international documentary film festivals, such as Leipzig, Cracow, Toronto, and Amsterdam, where it received a nomination for the prestigious Joris Ivens Award. It reflects on the changing face of the USSR at the time by focusing on a former worker’s encampment called Township 3. The village, now forgotten and inhabited only by pensioners and goats is too minor for a bakery; the only way to ensure the essential weekly delivery of bread is for the villagers to push a heavy train carriage along a badly maintained track to meet the mainline train and load up the cargo of weekly bread. When they return to the village, by taking the arduous journey back along the same dilapidated track, they begin the process of distributing the bread to the villagers. This section of the film is shot with a static frame, displaying all characteristics of Slow Cinema, and showing how the bread is shared amongst the small community of Township 3, revealing the tensions amongst the individuals, surveying their responses and quarrels. This is intercut with a collection of static frames of goats, all struggling to survive the challenging conditions of snow and extreme weather, creating a subtle metaphor of life in Township 3. The film uses slowness in an interesting way – it opens with a wide shot of a snow-covered scene, with two elderly people standing on the side of a railway track, waiting. Off-screen, we hear the sound of an engine, a clanging of wheels hitting the points announce the arrival of a train in picture, and it gently comes to a halt. In Observational fashion, without edits, the shot size remains the same, subtlety adjusting to reveal the engine pulling a carriage, while the camera maintains a neutral eye. The frame defines a performative space, through which individuals and dogs move in and out, fostering a sense of surveillance and intrigue in the audience. This is achieved through the use of a lens that conveys a neutral view of proceedings – it is probably a 50 mm lens, which is often employed in documentary filmmaking to reduce the optical effect on a scene and is considered to represent what the human eye sees naturally. Due to the amount of light available at this time of day and the reflective nature of the

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snow-covered ground, light bounces all around and illuminates subjects evenly. This amount of light creates a wide depth of field, resulting in focus preserving its sharpness throughout. The movement of the subject within the frame or movement of the camera to the subject creates an acceptable tolerance within the margins of focus. The camera follows the two-hour journey, in which five villagers and their dogs push the train carriage along the track to the sound of gentle conversation and the crunching of snow underfoot. The continual take lasts for approximately seven minutes, without cuts, and keeps running even when the group takes a small break to catch their breath. This approach to representing reality, where the camera sustains an observing eye, recording people’s lived experiences has its roots in Observational filmmaking, as characterized by Colin Young, and has become a feature of Slow Cinema. It is also evident in Direct Cinema, as discussed earlier, where the objective was to place the audience alongside the subjects by bringing them closer to the activities of the everyday. We see this in the Free Cinema films, for example, at Covent Garden Market London, in the film, Every Day Except Christmas (1957), or at Margate Funfair in O Dreamland (1956) or, in the world of teenagers in south London, in the Lambeth Boys (1959). The approach, however, in Direct and Free Cinema is more emphatic and brings a sense of immediacy. There is a heightened impression of witnessing reality, which is created through the use of a hand-held camera where camera shake is acceptable and adds to the unexpected and unplanned nature of filming. These filmmakers also used available light when necessary, working in low-light, and employed lenses designed to bring audiences closer to the action, which affected the depth of field. This meant that considerable effort was required in achieving sharp images, by racking or pulling focus, which became a characteristic of the poetics of this type of filmmaking. It created a dynamic in the frame resulting in a sense that cinematographers were ill-prepared for what was happening before them as stories unfolding unpredictably before their eyes. In contrast, many Slow Cinema filmmakers prefer to work with a broad depth of field, and a camera style more attuned to developing a contemplative mood. The result is that focus is sharp throughout and maintains an overview of locations and settings, thus enabling surroundings to provide a context for subjects and stories. It could be argued that this is a more democratic approach to framing and draws on the traditions of art photographic practices rather than cinematic ones, which can be found in the work of photographers such as Jeff Wall, Stephen Shore, Thomas Ruff, and others.

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A film that, even though being shot on 35mm (with some 16mmn content), develops slowness to a point of self-consciousness, and also draws on the traditions of photography practice, is La Quattro Volte. It was released in 2010, the same year that Johnathan Romney coined the phrase ‘Slow Cinema’ in his Sight Sound article. For a large majority of the film, images appear as moving photographs, any movement happens within a defined frame and creates a tension within its perimeters. Long static takes create an awareness of the pictorial dimensions and organisation of a structured frame, creating a critical view within the audience. While this engaging film takes on the tropes of documentary filmmaking, it is, as film critic Mark Kermode described, “organised drama” (Kermode 2010). Nonetheless, the static framing throughout the film imbues an observational eye, which invites an audience to witness extraordinary rituals and performative events. Augusto Corrieri remarked, “One at a time, human, animal, vegetal and mineral matter each become the main subject, the ‘actor’ or actant in a performance of relational mattering; it is a meditation on death-in-life, on how beings and things come to be made, to exist and to perish, to affect each other, in ways that are gentle, comical, surprising and endearing” (Corrieri 2019).

This metaphysical theme within the film is enhanced by the visual structure of each frame, which is influenced by classical composition, creating a Renaissance feel about the images, with colours of the landscape helping to highlight natural hues of the land. A New York Times review described the film: “Using the sweeping perspectives afforded by the precipitously hilly terrain, he (Frammartino) composes frames with the skill of a painter and the wit of a silent-film maestro” (A. Scott 2011). Frammartino’s early influences are his love for drawing and sketching. He is a trained architect and went on to working with art installations, which in his opinion, “require a conception of both the cinematic and architectural spaces” (Frammartino 2011). Frammartino’s framing, along with its slowness, is a key part of the film’s success. The fundamental theme of the film’s image structure is the relationship between people and location. Frammartino points out that in western culture, man is at the centre, and mainstream film language is focused on the use of close-up, mid-shot, and wide shot, and centred around the human being, whether they are film stars or documentary subjects. In his filmmaking, Frammartino aims to address this by creating a balance between individuals and their everyday surroundings in an attempt to break the dogma of the human being in the central role, he is interested in the aesthetics of how a human figure relates to the landscape, and less concerned about the rules of filmic language.

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“The human being is removed and made to blend in with the background and what was in the background is brought to the foreground, thereby giving way to a pleasant surprise: the animal, vegetable, and mineral realms are granted as much dignity as the human one. I believe that cinema is a tool that, more than any other form of expression, can highlight the connection between these realms. Finding this connection has been a cinematic adventure” (Frammartino 2011).

The film is set in Calabria, the home of Pythagoras, where his teaching focused on doctrines of metaphysics and transmigration of souls. Frammartino points out that nature in Calabria is not hierarchical and all beings have a soul, which can be identified in the eyes of animals. He claims, “I am not the creator of this film in the usual sense I was simply the intermediary between matter and form” (Frammartino 2011). Frammartino aims to put man’s role in perspective and liberate our traditional perspective. The region of Calabria is known for charcoal making, one of the oldest human activities in Italy. The film opens with swirling smoke patterns from a burning woodpile covered in a soil layer, which is left for several days in anoxic conditions. We see workers maintaining the smoking mounds by pounding them with fire beaters, the characters are intended to appear as a part of the image and are purposefully dressed in dark charcoal attire to blend into the image and not take too much importance within the frame. “I have tried to avoid having characters enter or exit from the sides of the frame. I wanted them to appear directly from the centre of the shot: men come and go through doorways, the kid appears from his mother’s womb, the old shepherd and his flock are eclipsed from view behind a hill. I like the idea of the picture giving birth to character” (Frammartino 2011).

The film’s title Le Quattro Volte comes from the idea that each of us has four lives which fit inside one another. “Man is mineral because his skeleton is made of salt; man is also vegetable because his blood flows like sap; he is animal in as much he is endowed with motility and knowledge of the outside world. Finally, man is human because he has the gifts of will and reason. Thus, we must know ourselves four times” (Frammartino 2011). Similarly, filmmaker Xiao Xiao also returned to the place where he grew up, a small village in China to make his film Turtle Rock (2017). He was driven by notions of nostalgia, and in an interview, Xiao Xiao said, “After I was born, my grandmother and uncle raised me in this village till I was six, of school age. After I went back home with my parents, I returned to the village every year and stayed for a while. Turtle Rock is my hometown spiritually” (Xiao Xiao 2020).

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His beautifully shot black and white Slow Cinema film is named after the turtle-shaped rock situated at the entrance of the Tuan Yu Yan village. Legend has it that a giant turtle entering the village was about to turn into a semi-god but was struck by lightning, its head and body were ripped apart and were transformed into stone. Turtle Rock is filmed on a Sony DSLR camera in black and white, to recognise a sense of history that stretches back generations, and to highlight the fact that small villages in China are disappearing fast as young people move away to work in the cities or study at Universities. As with previous examples of filmmaking, technology is key in delivering a particular aesthetic to the screen. The quality of the black and white imagery is noticeable, the filmmaker has been able to shoot in low-light situations, sometimes using illumination only from a fire to create high-quality frames, which is a significant technological development. The landscape, as in many examples of slow cinema is an essential factor in the story of Turtle Rock, the ritualistic activities of the people are set against extraordinary backgrounds, highlighting a community at one with their surroundings. Once again, the frame is generally static, movement within the frame happens through a defined space, or in a manner that establishes equity between human activity and nature. Editing moves us through a combination of photogenic frames at a steady pace reflecting a slowness that generates a contemplative mood. As is the case in Le Quattro Volte, village people are set against spectacular picturesque landscapes, emphasising the cycle of bucolic life and the rhythm of rural activities, which gently raises questions of the nature of survival for such communities in a modern world. “I had in mind a relatively slow cinema before shooting: slow story-telling, and slow-moving images. It is because the lives there are “spontaneous” in terms of natural rhythms – people follow the seasons in farming activities, and they go by the sun in their daily schedule. It is a slow lifestyle of cycles” (Xiao Xiao 2020).

Le Quattro Volte and Turtle Rock were made seven years apart – by then, technology had moved on. A whole new generation of sophisticated digital cameras had been developed during this time, increasing the portability and agility of film production. This now enables filmmakers to access communities and locations with minimal impact and less intrusion, but able to produce high-quality imagery, which will inevitably increase the types of films produced, aesthetics explored, and voices heard. Le Quattro Volte was made for 1 million euros and took on some of the demands of fiction film production, namely, a cast list, 35mm film equipment, and the necessary crew, which is evident in the high-quality images we see on the screen.

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However, it also has the characteristics of documentary production, in that it concentrates on one location, uses non-actors, focuses on rituals, and as well as this, explores notions of slowness as an integral part of its aesthetic. It is the hybrid nature of the production that is such a success, creating a powerful piece of filmmaking that demands attention. In comparison, Turtle Rock takes full advantage of the more recently developed sophisticated camera design, enabling Xiao Xiao to operate the camera and record sound by himself. He worked on a ‘no budget’ production and took over two and a half years to shoot his film, with no real distribution strategy. It is a film that was made with commitment, attrition, and passion, that is validated by the category of Slow Cinema and tells a very personal story of the place where he grew up. Tacitly, it is also a political film, highlighting the concerns of the village elders, who face a growing threat to their survival in an ever-changing modern-day China. “It is a documentary of a lifestyle without targeting any regional audience – I believe it is comprehensible for all, but with very different angles” (Xiao Xiao 2020). It is an example of the potential of Slow Cinema as a cinematic form to foster new voices that deliver powerful messages through a synergy of image and content.

Conclusion Technology has been central to the development of filmmaking just as the development of the portable easel and collapsible paint tube was to the 19thcentury artist, which enabled them to take their canvasses out into the landscapes, changing the face of painting and our cultural perspective forever. Similarly, the development of lightweight technology has been vital to the progression of forms of cinema. The portability of the camera and sound equipment has been essential to documentary filmmaking of all genres and played a key role in its development from 16mm camera technology to ENGs, HD, to DSLRs, and beyond. This chapter aimed to examine elements of poetics that have been shaped by these technological developments and the creative forces that have influenced them. I have identified a variety of forms of documentary practices over recent decades and discussed how they have mutated and evolved in a world of everchanging communications, media, and social transformations. The poetics of Free Cinema was driven by an economic factor resulting in a necessity to work outside the financial constraints of the mainstream bringing unconventional production methods, culminating in a unique variety of filmmaking with a distinct quality of sound and picture, governed by the use of non-synchronised cameras. (This meant that sound recordists

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would have to post synchronize voices and use tracklaying and editing techniques to ensure that background and ambient audio were constructed appropriately). At Drew Associates, Direct Cinema filmmakers responded to the demands of the news story by highlighting the power of visual narrative and the need to make an impact in a growing competitive news market; while Observational techniques drew on the sciences of anthropology and ethnography and a desire to bring insightful reflections on communities, individuals and societies in transformation. Slow Cinema, on the other hand, has revealed itself in many forms and contexts over time. It has its roots in Art Cinema, where the demands of the mainstream are not applicable, and instead, has an investment in finding new and creative ways of using screen storytelling applications to create an engaging and considered film aesthetic. Slow Cinema also has a direct connection to Observational filmmaking, which is in its DNA and has been able to build on the already established features through the use of increasingly versatile and affordable technologies. This can only facilitate a further and more detailed mining of the notions of slowness to explore new methods of storytelling and representations of reality. About Observational filmmaking, Paul Henley identifies the nature of slowness and how it important it can be when covering an action, “The sense of the film-maker’s presence as a witness could be particularly well achieved by shooting long takes that allowed events to play themselves out within the take at the speed and in the form in which they had occurred in reality” (Henley, 2018, 300).

Production is generally much smaller in Slow Cinema and creative solutions transform into cinematic conclusions in a world where production time and screen time become elastic. Slow Cinema often sits across the genres of drama and documentary allowing the demands of the production to evolve and define the genre as it is being made, facilitating a blend of approaches and applications to making films. Slow Cinema filmmakers often draw on a range of docuentary filmmaking techniques, many of which have been discussed here. The Slow Cinema category provides a useful container into which we can drop several films from past and present to help analyse and provide a home to a variety of examples. It also helps those making films by creating a context to developing work. In 2018, during a Q and A after the screening of Turtle Rock at the Sheffield Documentary Film Festival, I asked Xiao Xiao about the slowness of his film, he replied that Slow Cinema had created a context for him as a filmmaker and it was a style he was thinking

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about throughout the making of Turtle Rock and was a definite influence on the aesthetic of the finished film. Many of the forms of cinema discussed in this chapter have at some point had a manifesto or defining statement of sorts to shape their identity, whether it was the freedom of economics, the need to tell visual stories, or the desire to reflect truthfully on society. As of yet, there is no defining doctrine for Slow Cinema apart from a notion of slowness, which for now might be a label of convenience, just as it was with the Free Cinema movement. In this text, I have attempted to contribute to a deeper understanding of Slow Cinema form by mapping its heritage across various documentary styles. On seeing a Slow Cinema production, whether we like it or not, we immediately recognise the power it holds to reflect on the world in which we live, in a creative, contemplative and effective manner. I look forward to seeing more examples of this type of work in the future and am excited about the possibilities it might present, and the voices we might witness, through the potential new technologies will offer.

Bibliography Barnouw, Eric, The Direct Cinema of David and Albert Maysles, Jonathan B. Vogels, Southern Illinois University Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/roehamptonebooks/detail.action?docID=1354593. Created from roehampton-ebooks on 2021-01-08 10:26:11 (Accessed January 2021). Bresson, Robert, Interview by INA 1975. 3:29. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcOOLfqDcho. (Accessed December 2020). Behar, Ruth, Anthropology: Ethnography and The Book That Was Lost, in Handbook of the Arts in Qualitative Research: Perspectives, Methodologies, Examples and Issues. 529. Edited by J. Gary Knowles and Ardra L. Cole. Sage Publishing. 2008. Ciment, Michel, (20013). The State of Cinema, delivered by guest programmer Michel Ciment at the 46th San Francisco International Film Festival. Corrieri, Augusto, There as Here: Living ecologies of film in Le Quattro Volte, the Journal of Performing Arts, Vol 24, 2019, issue 6. Taylor and Francis online.

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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13528165.2019.168657 9?scroll=top&needAccess=true (Accessed December 2020). Drew, Robert, Interview by Jill Drew, in a collection of short essays called, ‘American Cinema Verite: An Evolving Draft of its Development’. https://drewassociates.com/cinema-verite/ (Accessed December, 2020). Duplin. Christophe, ‘Free Cinema’, BFI Screenonline. http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/444789/index.html (Accessed December, 2020). Ford, Andrew, In “The Purpose of Aristotle’s Poetics”, Classical Philosophy Vol.110, No1 Jan 2015, pp. 1-21. The University of Chicago Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/678678?seq=1#metadata_info_ta b_contents (Accessed January 2021). Frammartino, Michelangelo, Interview by Renzi, Eugenio for New Wave Films, press book for Le Quatro Volte, released Spring 2011. http://www.newwavefilms.co.uk/assets/0/Le_Quattro_Volte_press_bo ok.pdf (Accessed January 2021). —. Interview by Renzi, Eugenio for New Wave Films, press book for Le Quatro Volte, released Spring 2011. http://www.newwavefilms.co.uk/assets/0/Le_Quattro_Volte_press_bo ok.pdf. (Accessed January 2021). —. Interview by Renzi, Eugenio for New Wave Films, press book for Le Quatro Volte, released Spring 2011. http://www.newwavefilms.co.uk/assets/0/Le_Quattro_Volte_press_bo ok.pdf. (Accessed January 2021). —. Interview by Renzi, Eugenio for New Wave Films, press book for Le Quatro Volte, released Spring 2011. http://www.newwavefilms.co.uk/assets/0/Le_Quattro_Volte_press_bo ok.pdf. (Accessed January 2021). —. Interview by Renzi, Eugenio for New Wave Films, press book for Le Quatro Volte, released Spring 2011. http://www.newwavefilms.co.uk/assets/0/Le_Quattro_Volte_press_bo ok.pdf. (Accessed January 2021). Henley, Paul, Colin Young: the principles of Observational Cinema, 2018. Accessed via manchesterarchive.com. 289-300. (Accessed December 2020). Kermode, Mark, 2011. Interview on YouTube, Mark Kermode reviews Le Quattro Volte. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc3PDXapDOs (Accessed January 2021).

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Leacock, Richard, quoted in Vogels, Jonathan B.. The Direct Cinema of David and Albert Maysles, Southern Illinois University Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/roehampton-ebooks/detail. action?docID=1354593.ီCreated from roehampton-ebooks on 202101-08 10:24:48. (Accessed January 2021). Nichols, Bill, Introduction to Documentary (third edition), Indiana Press. 2017. 133 Rouch, Jean, The Camera and Man, in the Studies of Communication, vol 1, issue 1, Fall 1974. PP38. (Accessed February 2021). —. In Ciné-Ethnography, edited by Steven Feld, University of Minnesota Press, 2003. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/roehampton-ebooks/detail. action?docID=310612. Created from roehampton-ebooks on 2020-1216 08:57:38. —. https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/feature-articles/rouch/ taken from: G. Roy Levin, Documentary explorations; 15 interviews with film- makers (1st ed.), Doubleday, Garden City, N.Y., 1971. 136 Scott, A.O., Eternal Complexities of the Very Simple Life, a Movie Review for the New York Times, of Le Quattro Volte. March 29th, 2011. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/30/movies/le-quattro-voltereview.html. Young, Colin, quoted in Colin Young: the principles of Observational Cinema, by Paul Henly,2018. Accessed via manchesterarchive. com. (Accessed December 2020). —. Quoted in Colin Young: the principles of Observational Cinema, by Paul Henly, 2018. Accessed via manchesterarchive.com. From an article later republished in a collection of MacDougall’s essays. All the quotations in the following paragraphs are from this republication (MacDougall 1998e), passim (Accessed December 2020). Vetov, Dziga, In The Camera Man, Studies in Communication Vol 1, issue 1, 1974 by Jean Rouch, pp. 38, an exact reference for this text, and for other Vertov materials quoted later, is not given. French translations of Vertov can be found in Cahiers du Cinema numbers 144 (june 1963), 146 (August 1963), and 220/221 (May-June 1970). (Accessed February, 2021). (Accessed January 2021). Vogels, Jonathan B, The Direct Cinema of David and Albert Maysles, Southern Illinois University Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/roehampton-ebooks/detail. action?docID=1354593. Created from roehampton-ebooks on 2021-0108 10:37:43. P6-7 from ‘Direct Cinema’. (Accessed January 2021).

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Xiao Xiao, Interview with Carol Nahara for Docs on Screen, Interview with Turtle Rock Director Xiao Xiao, Bertha DocHouse, china international documentaries, slow cinema, Turtle Rock. January 2020. https://docsonscreens.com/2020/01/23/interview-with-turtle-rockdirector-xiao-xiao/ (Accessed January 2021). —. Interview with Carol Nahara for Docs on Screen, Interview with Turtle Rock Director Xiao Xiao, Bertha DocHouse, china international documentaries, slow cinema, Turtle Rock. January 2020. https://docsonscreens.com/2020/01/23/interview-with-turtle-rockdirector-xiao-xiao/ (Accessed January 2021). —. Interview with Carol Nahara for Docs on Screen, Interview with Turtle Rock Director Xiao Xiao, Bertha DocHouse, china international documentaries, slow cinema, Turtle Rock. January 2020. https://docsonscreens.com/2020/01/23/interview-with-turtle-rockdirector-xiao-xiao/ (Accessed January 2021).

CHAPTER THREE AESTHETICS AND THE TRUTHFULNESS OF DOCUMENTARY THINGS: AN EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH TO ETHNOGRAPHIC FILMMAKING JULIE PATARIN-JOSSEC

Introduction All the relevance of documentary filmmaking for social sciences is that it unveils a reality that would be impossible to adequately understand through words. The image, furthermore when in motion, has a raw force and conveys a naked truth as no texts could ever do. Visuals unveil “material realities” (Wagner 2006) and allow obtaining a representation of the reality in a way a social scientist could never do using a pen (Lallier 2011). If the ethnographic film, like any kind of documentary film, makes visible a social reality and conveys its meaning through the film medium rather than text, that consequently supposes a process of visualisation. Thus, the ethnographic film, and documentary in general, tend to be seen as “visual proofs that corroborate the interpretation of social phenomena” (Henley 2011). Yet, if the value of the documentary is explicit regarding its authenticity and its truthfulness, the genre also detains an inherent poetical value related to the documentary’s relationship with social reality. Every image, as a part of a documentary film, should be seen as an answer to a question, from a disinterested curiosity or an enigmatic phenomenon desperately seeking a meaning. The very property of the documentary is to open the possibility of interpretation, feeling, and understanding. This chapter emphasizes how the construction of an aesthetical language, for instance through colour editing, questions the articulation of the poetical value of a specific documentary genre (the ethnographic film), its scientific function for social scientists, and the engagement of the audience as a

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prerequisite for participatory practice. In the first section, I introduce the ethnographic film and discuss its poetic nature considering its scientific functions in ethnography and the documentary’s relationship with social reality. As the text will outline, the relationship between aesthetic and scientific reliability is not simple, hence a reflection emphasising the relations between the epistemology of the ethnographic film and the use of cinematic effects in sections 2 and 3. The fourth section explores the experimental practice of developing an aesthetical language based on colours editing in the post-production of an ethnographic film. In addition to a few examples from the experimental ethnographic cinema, the chapter presents one of my documentary projects: an ethnographic film about space design. Ultimately, this chapter aims at a discussion of documentary filmmaking as an art form in the very way it deals with the social reality or the people involved in its making, but also in the way the documentary can be written and produced. Thus, it deploys and defends both a methodological and artistic statement, contributing to understanding the uses of documentary poetics in social sciences.

1. Poetics of the Real While documentary filmmaking appears, in the late 1940s and 1950s, ethnographers such as Jean Rouch (1949), John Marshall (1957) or Robert Gardner (1964) develop a consistent use of the camera in their field and increasingly write about the methodology of this emerging genre (LeroiGourhan 1948). Like the first anthropologists and sociologists who popularised the use of photographs in their fields (such as Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson and Howard Becker), visuals perform a function of instruments of knowledge where words may not always be sufficient. For instance, filming a ritual dance in the Burkina Faso of the 1950s (like in Rouch 1957) makes accessible an unknown social reality to scholars and spectators who, socialised to a different social context than the dancers of the documentary, may hardly imagine the exact gestures, clothes, songs and decors with words. The evolution of technologies since the 1980s, with an increase in sound and picture quality, portability, and wide diffusion (through the internet and mobile technologies) contributed significantly to the expansion of filmmaking in social sciences (Shrum and Scott 2016). In general, ethnographers using video in their work are firstly social scientists who became familiarised to filmmaking techniques and technologies. If any

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scholar in social sciences learns how to write an academic text, film education is rarely included in traditional curricula. Accordingly, starting to film as an ethnographer requires a technical and aesthetic education (i.e. how to use the equipment, from shooting to post-production editing, and how to produce sensitive and meaningful content through images—see Maillot 2012), hence the need for “user-friendliness technologies” (id.) that did not exist a few decades ago. Still today, visual ethnography embraces various practices, methods and even disciplines within the social sciences (Pink 2001). Scholars are prone to use documentary as an instrument of knowledge production and diffusion in disciplines wherein the practice was developed (anthropology and sociology), but also, more recently, in international politics (for instance Callahan 2020). Even within a specific discipline, uses of the documentary can vary from filmed interviews, video-elicitation, experimental work, pedagogical practice or archive documentation. Yet, regardless of disciplines and practices, the aim and motivation generally remain the same: visualising, showing, demonstrating or even exposing the invisible. Inequalities, power relationships, exclusions, disparities: the ethnographer is often driven by a sense of social justice and engagement towards the most vulnerable. Accordingly, ethnographers tend to film the reality of workers (Sebag and Durand 2003), the daily life of a tribe (Anju Prabir 2016; Marshall 1957, op. cit.; Rouch 1949, op. cit.) or of an ethnic and religious minority (Orleansky 2016), the identity-building process of a group dealing with its past (Aleksandrov and Danilko 2009), the disappearance of know-hows and cultures (Cunha 2014; Deveson, Myers and Dunlop 2014; Folgado 2012), the struggle of ordinary people against political violence and persecution (Christie, 1993; Ohanyan 2016), the social portrait of contemporary society through the particular experience of a small group of people (Asfahi 2017; Balikci 1997; Gutierrez 2012; Ismailov 2017), the force of social movements and social commentary (Haase, Naukarinen and Niskala 2008; Henley and Drion 1987; Sebag and Durand 2013) or the concrete and localised ravages of global events for underprivileged people (Ravelli 2017). Along with a keen sensibility for social misery and the visualisation of inequalities, which often rules the engagement of social scientists in their practice, visual ethnography relies on two fundamental principles: the understanding that images are more powerful than words and that these images aim to tell and show “the truth”—as if the vision had finally no context. “Natural” and authenticity, without interference from the researcher, would evidence scientific validity of their images.

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This consideration prevailed in the early years of visual ethnography, while cinema struggled to be legitimated as a serious medium for social scientists. Even Robert Gardner, who would, later, develop a vision of research cinema as a production of “sensitive visual accounts” open to experimental practice beyond the restrictions of documentation (Gardner and Heider 1968), stated in the 1950s that “cinematic recordings of human life are unchanging documents providing detailed and focused information on the behavioural characteristics of man” (Gardner 1957). The documentary film, furthermore when used in ethnography, only aimed to provide “evidence” and documentation of an unaltered and objective reality in order to assert certain intangible knowledge. In the following decades, some visual ethnographers started to regard these beliefs as deeply culturally constructed and as particular to Western thought. Anthropologists then developed a more nuanced understanding of images and their uses. Images could aim at the projection of certain organisations of our visual worlds and, consequently, they could detain various meanings and engage in a plurality of uses depending on their function: statement on the reality or support for deeper culturally-framed meanings (for instance, Collier and Collier 1986). Quite early in the history of their field, visual ethnography has then been subject to epistemological tensions, since Western cultures historically understand the written form as reality and reliable data, opposed to the visual form as a subjective and encoded interpretation—unlike alternative cultures like the Navajo wherein seeing is neither passive nor subject to codification (id.). Ethnographers now acknowledge that images can serve their research because visuals embody specific individuals, events and locations syncretised in general ideas about the reality (Becker 2002). As outlined in the next section, this evolution, i.e. the methods and principles of the production of scientific knowledge where images should convey “truth” has significantly influenced the relationship of ethnographersfilmmakers with aesthetics and the poetic of their cinematic practice. Nevertheless, aiming for validity and reliability do not prevent aesthetic production. The tied relationship between truth, aesthetic and the engagement of documentaries is, in fact, a long-lasting issue, whether they are ethnographic or not (for instance, Rabinowitz 1994). First, because filming without considering and looking for aesthetical images, regardless of the filmmaker’s sensibilities and definition of the beautiful, would be impossible. Second, one could assert that the poetic of the ethnographic film relies on its very relation with social reality, resulting from the relationships between the ethnographer and their informants and aiming to visualise the informants’ experience. Images do not provide visual support to an argument,

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they are the argument (Cambre 2019) because they unveil the experienced reality of the filmed people and, in doing so, invite the public to share a certain representation of the visual world. If the poetic of the ethnographic film relies on its particular narration of such experiences, working the artistic value of the documentaries appears to contribute to the methodological engagement of ethnographers.

2. Scientific Validity and Artistic Editing Examples of flashy and luminescent colours which convey strong emotions flourish in international fictional cinema (Yinan 2019; Kar Wai 2004; Kahiu 2018; Refn 2013—to cite only a few examples). However, similar aesthetical languages are uncommon (if not unwanted or even unsuitable) in ethnographic documentary filmmaking. The uses of colours in post-production have a long history both in fictional and documentary films (ethnographic cinema excluded) and many handbooks of documentary filming suggest colour editing in post-production (including Artis 2014). The reason for this is that working on colours invariably intensifies and supports the storytelling through nonverbal symbolism (among others, Bakony 1974; Bellantoni 2005; Coates 2010; Misek 2010). Colour editing could be especially useful when precarious conditions of shooting refrain from completely controlling the quality of production design. However, colour editing for artistic purpose is traditionally prevented (especially in ethnographic cinema), since that would question the validity and reliability of the images as stated in the epistemology of ethnography. If documentaries aim to provide an accurate representation of the reality, the camera should show people, events, and locations as they are: unadorned and authentic. As the previous section has already outlined, visual methods in social sciences have indeed been institutionalised according to social scientists’ dominant epistemology, praising the “natural” as evidence of scientific validity. As a consequence, art practice and ethnographic knowledge rarely meet (with a few exceptions, for instance, Grossman and Kimball 2011; O’Neil 2012). And yet, the force of the documentary cannot exactly rely on its capacity to deliver an authentic vision of the reality. To a lesser extent, all documentary films are the result of a selection among rushes, of the editing process, and even of a script written at the pre-production stage. The same with social scientific work: all publications result from a selection and an organization of the data. If academic publications would include full-length unedited interviews or if a documentary would include the totality of rushes, the result would be unreadable or unseeable: no one could stand a 200-hour film

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made from unedited rushes, or read the hundreds of pages of an ethnographer notebook without further clarification and organisation. Since it would not be possible to avoid this editing work, authenticity is not related to the rawness of materials. Data treatment and post-production are essential but invariably result in framing effects which are likely to differentiate the initial shot reality and the filmic narrative resulting from the postproduction. There is always a multiplicity of “choices that lay behind the creation of an image”, if not only focus, aperture and framing: “all data, visual or otherwise, are constructed” (Harper 2012, 8). Thus, the documentary is not (really) about filming something real and raw on the fly: it remains a medium through which a certain reality is constructed in its own way (see Niney 2000). Accordingly, the artistic dimension of documentary films, including ethnographic films, directly results from the genre’s claim to produce knowledge and significance about reality. Cinema is documentary through a certain attitude, an ethical and aesthetic finality in its peculiar way to conceive images and their relationship with the world (Durand 2011). Accordingly, the scientific validity of documentary films relies on the imagination it raises, i.e. the forms of subjectivation and visualisation that documentary shares with other artistic practices (Niney 2000, op. cit.). As a matter of fact, ethnographic cinema is all about merging the author’s, the informants’ and the spectators’ aesthetic and political concerns. In order to do so, a particular visual language has to be found, nourished by the relation developed by the ethnographer in the field and their ability to visualise the reality they aim to put on screen in a clear, poetic, yet analytic way. Hence the use of, and reflection about, colours.

3. The Art of Social Engagement The first reason to develop a made-up aesthetical language, for instance, based on colours, is to palliate the three main features of most of the ethnographic films when shot on-the-go: itinerancy, unpredictability and (hence) improvisation. Filmmaking in the field often forces to be creative with limited resources, “getting down and dirty” (Artis 2014, op. cit.) while the context may not provide what the initial project would require. For example, it is sometimes impossible to set-up the proper lights. With the exception of interviews or other events that can be planned ahead of the shooting, the camera accompanies the ethnographer wherever the fieldwork leads them. Consequently, precarious images can result from the fieldwork conditions and the possible unreliability of the technical resources available on-site (if only electrical plugs or luminosity).

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In such a context, creating an aesthetical language allows the documentary to engage with the spectators in an unusual way. While ethnographic films are often participatory and inclusive regarding the informants (for instance Pauwels and Mannay 2011; Ryan and Staton 2020) rather than directly with their intended spectators, developing an aesthetic language leads to building a dialectic between the film’s author, the interviewees and the spectators, like in artworks relying on the implication of the public. Both participative art and ethnographic narrative, the ethnographic documentary acquires here its second justification for building an aesthetical language: developing sociological imagination emancipated from the textual form of academic works. In other words, the aesthetic language of the ethnographic documentary engages to emotional work and to the spectators’ imagination as conveyors of social scientific knowledge. (For further discussion regarding the relationship between writing and filming in social science, especially in ethnography, see Crawford 1992.) Undoubtedly, film theory and the philosophy of cinema largely emphasise the role of the spectator in the reception, understanding and experience of a film. This literature acknowledges that how a spectator perceives the content of a film contributes to what the film actually becomes (to cite only but one: Gravas 2016), while the “filmic fact” results from the film’s impact on its audience (i.e. the system of images combined in every film in their expression of reality—Cohen-Séat 1946). Images, including in motion, are never “just images”: they always convey certain meaning and systems of symbols produced and interpreted according to the socialisation of the author and the spectators—including their education to visuals. This chapter does not aim to discuss reflections and analyses already developed by expert scholars in these fields. It only seeks to benefit from this literature, usually dedicated to fiction, to ultimately rethink the diffusion of ethnographic knowledge through documentaries and their inherent poetics. Visuals, including photographs or motion pictures, are a powerful source of civil knowledge, engagement and reappropriation (Azoulay 2015). That is why encouraging and stimulating imagination through the imaging of ethnographic films challenges traditional and dominant forms of knowledge production, generally ruled by disciplinary traditions and structured by power relations between producers, subjects, and receiver of knowledge (Rimke 2010). While in the writing form, the sociological or anthropological meaning depends on the use of notions and concepts distancing the text from common sense through the solicitation of mental capacities, documentary filmmaking can reproduce this dialectic with a visual language calling a sensible solicitation, created to convey analytical meaning through and with

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the images. Using colours, light, and filters, this rupture with common sense is based on the reactions and feelings of the spectators. Thus, developing a specific visual language as part of an ethnographic film meets “the moral nature” of ethnographic films which, as mediators of the social world, should engage moral responses in filmmakers, filmed people and spectators (Gardner 2007). Indeed, the documentary would then involve the perceptions, emotions and knowledge of the spectators as an integral part of the documentary work. In this process, alike other visual methods used in social sciences (including ethnophotography, photovoice or photoelicitation), the visual elicitation of the documentary breaks with the cognitive authority of the scholar and the distancing with the public— following the principles of public scholarship claimed by many visual scholars and documentary filmmakers. The visual form is commonly accepted as detaining a particular ability to reach and raise awareness within a larger audience than through writings, precisely thanks to the appeals and sensitive force of aesthetical formats: “in representing ethnographic work in visual/artistic form we can reach a wider audience, beyond academic communities, to facilitate understanding, interpretation and maybe even action/praxis in relation to social issues” (O’Neill 2021, 158). If social scientists should remain “committed to anthropological exploration, moral commitment and political reform” (Carrabine 2012), the documentary actively serves their purpose, furthermore with a reinforced aesthetic.

4. Experimenting an Aesthetical Language In discussing a piece of ethnographic cinema that would push the boundary between documentary filming, the traditions of ethnographic practice and visual art, this section focuses on an overlooked genre in social sciences: experimental ethnographic cinema. For the reasons discussed above, experimental film and ethnographic film have long been considered distinct practices (see also Russel 1999). However, Robert Gardner’s Forest of Bliss (1986) is often considered as an experimental ethnographic film as it is based on the filmmaker’s emotional experience of his field (funeral rites in India) and breaks with the usual analytical and descriptive construction of ethnographic films. One could oppose Gardner to Jean Rouch, whose films were rhythmed with a careful description of the filmed events—which has resulted in criticism of Gardner precisely because Forest of Bliss troubled the traditional anthropological narrative (MacDougall 2004). Following Gardner, the experimental ethnographic genre usually refers to researchers who, along with filmmakers like Robert Fenz or Hollis Frampton,

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developed particular attention to aesthetic and sensitive experience in the making of their documentaries. In 2006, Lucien Castaing-Taylor created an institute dedicated to investigate and experiment with the poetic forms of the ethnographic, hence scientific, documentary: the Sensory Ethnography Lab (SEL), at Harvard University. SEL encourages explicitly the encounters between ethnography and visual arts. A few years later, Castaing-Taylor codirected a film entitled Leviathan, an ethnographic documentary entirely built around magnified sensitive experiences, using unusual visual angles and lights, close-ups and innovative sound work (Castaing-Taylor and Paravel 2012). Multiplying bold visual angles to immerse the spectators (for instance Yezbick 2015), sometimes combined with video installations (Grossman and Kimball 2011) using numeric and argentic equipments (Paravel and Castaing-Taylor 2017) or assuming a format of art performances, the contemporary practice of ethnographic filming does not only aim to make visible: it also “makes sensible” through poignant and submerging multisensory experiences. Hence the alternative terms used to qualify some experimental films, such as “film-essay” or “visual pamphlet” (Vogel 1977, cited in Accolas 2015, art, cit.). In fine, scientific films can be artistic but should, first and foremost, propose innovative and critical visualisations. Influenced by practitioners at the intersection of the art video, archive, and social sciences, I have come to consider the post-production of my documentaries as a period to set an aesthetical language that enhances the documentary’s nature to convey meaning and perceptions. Colours appeared to me as a relevant instrument considering how they invariably serve the nonverbal meaning (see above) and how visuals of space programmes tend to be influenced by the technical features of space objects—such as the metallic structures of space stations and space vehicles, the omnipresent national flags of astronauts, the golden strangeness of thermal protections, or the predominant technicity of all the screens, cables and tools used in the preparation of a spaceflight. While these features have also inspired artistphotographers (such as Edgar Martins or Cristina De Middel), colours allow me to deploy a cinematic experience wherein the encounters between the filmmaker, their informants and the public are framed by a common aesthetical scape. Visual artists can, in truth, be a resource in developing an aesthetical methodology as part of ethnographic filmmaking. In my case, the works of Jon Akomfrah, Maria Lax and Todd Hido have been core inspirations. In his immersive video installations, John Akomfrah uses colour saturation and colourful effects on archival records to deploy a visual code that invite spectators to “meditate” (Hasham 2018) on the relationship between humans,

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nature, and colonialism (see especially his exhibitions The Unfinished Conversation, 2012; Vertigo Sea, 2015; Purple, 2018). Colours manifest a dystopian yet actual reality wherein spectators become a part of the artist’s narrative. Like in Akomfrah’s work, creating an aesthetical language frames the experience of spectators and involves them in the documentary’s narrative. Ultimately, it aims to create an organic dialogue between the filmmaker, the filmed people and the spectators in a common imagined environment, unravelling the social reality that has been recorded. In Maria Lax’s work (2020), blue, pink, green or purple lights evoke the strangeness and yet the beauty of daily life in an underpopulated wilderness. Unexplained luminescent rays get through deserted woods or emerge from suburban houses, unravelling the history of a small town where UFO sightings came to embody a fear of fast-changing living conditions due to modernisation. Colours constitute a visual narrative in which heritage, supernatural and modernity merge. My film Ad Astra investigates cultural imaginaries and social agency in the design of future space habitats. It includes interviews with different actors who are involved in the development of space habitats: astronauts, designers, architects, and engineers. Discussing current and innovative ways to conceive daily life, dwelling and working in space settlements, the film relates space programs and collective imaginaries emphasising innovative programs that postcolonial and emerging space-faring nations have been starting to develop in the past years. Similarly to Lax’s photographs or to Akomfrah’s video installations, Ad Astra required a visual narrative which, through colour effects, could induce imaging of colonial imagination, relationship with artificial spaces, modernity and embodiment—i.e. all the important issues covered in my documentary. Using a software (Final Cut Pro), a same interview could consequently adopt filter, saturation or light variations depending on the subject developed by the interviewee. An alternative (and technically-challenging) practice would be to work with celluloid. Using an argentic camera, it becomes possible to shift the work on colours and aesthetical expression from digital post-production to the treatment of film reels, reproducing colour separation techniques such as in the work of Sergey Prokudin Gorsky. Commissioned by Tsar Nicholas II to visually document the Russian Empire between 1905 and 1915, the chemist and photographer expanded a technique then-used by a few photographers worldwide to capture colour images, using glass plate negatives and colour separation filters—for a detailed description of the technique (in Russian), see Prokudin Gorsky, 1909. Following ethnographers who experimented

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with argentic film and digital video (for instance, Paravel and CastaingTaylor, 2017, already cited), I plan to use this technique for a short-film entitled Looking for the Afronauts (currently in pre-production). This second film researches the interrelation of ancestral cosmologies, postcolonial identities and space policy in Austral Africa. Always aiming to experiment with the aesthetic possibilities of the ethnographic cinema through colour imaging, varying techniques and adapting old methods like argentic colour separation is intended to produce a visual experience as much as transmitting new knowledge.

Conclusion This chapter outlines how the elaboration of an aesthetical language in ethnographic documentaries can serve the heuristics and the moral foundations of ethnography. Discussing the articulation of poetics, scientific validity and participatory practice through aesthetic experimentations, it presents documentary filming as a triple practice. First, the documentary as art; then as a scientific instrument; finally, as a socially-engaged medium. Unlike as at the thresholds of ethnographic cinema, contemporary ethnographic documentary filming does not only aim to document a social reality – it also deploys perceptive, cognitive and political experiences through its particular forms of visualisation. Therefore, art, science and ethics appear as intrinsically related in the process of documentary filmmaking. On the one hand, although the ethnographic documentary would aim to provide valid, reliable and objective images, the genre detains an inherent poetic related to its very way to deal with reality—and the social engagement of ethnographers. On the other hand, visual ethnographers increasingly tend to extend the limits of science and art by investigating experimental ways to make sensitive and perceptive experiences with documentaries. New visual codes, new attention to sounds, and new relationship with the authenticity of images to provide relevant knowledge: the poetic of ethnographic filming becomes part of artistic engagement, to go beyond representation. Especially because it opens a realm of meaning and perceptions, the documentary engages the personal engagement of both the viewer and the filmmaker, capturing their imagination. What the filmmaker may recall while filming is not only the moments of creation—however prolonged that might be in time and space—but also what the moment was about when the image was captured as part of the documentary. The documentary might be

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a crafted, whimsy, narrative of encounters and, when all is showed and put into motions, its aesthetical language can be told.

References Accolas, Sophie. 2015. “Cinéma ethnographique expérimental” Journal des anthropologues 140-141: Online. https://doi.org/10.4000/jda.6154. Artis, Anthony Q. 2014. Shut Up and Shoot (second ed.). Burlington: Focal Press. Azoulay, Ariella. 2015. Civil imagination: a political ontology of photography. London: Verso. Bakony, Ed. 1974. “Non-verbal Symbolism in the Feature Film” Journal of the University Film Association 26 (3): 34-38. Becker, Howard S. 2002. “Visual evidence: A Seventh Man, the specified generalization, and the work of the reader” Visual Studies 17 (1): 3-11. Bellantoni, Patti. 2005. If it’s purple, someone’s gonna die: the power of color in visual storytelling. Burlington: Focal Press. Cambre, Carolina. 2019. “Visual criminology and the social image/s of crime” Current Sociology 67 (5): 645-649. Carrabine, Eamonn. 2012. “Just Images: Aesthetics, Ethics and Visual Criminology” British Journal of Criminology 52 (3): 463-489. Coates, Paul. 2010. Cinema and colour: the saturated image. London: Bloomsbury. Cohen-Séat, Gilbert. 1946. Essai sur les principes d’une philosophie du cinéma. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Collier, John Jr. and Malcolm Collier. 1986. Visual anthropology: photography as a research method (revised and expanded edition). Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Crawford, Peter I. 1992. “Film as discourse: the invention of anthropological realities”. In Film as ethnography, edited by Peter Crawford and David Turton, 66-82. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press. Durand, Jean-Pierre. 2001. “Filmer le social ?” L’homme et la société 4 (142). Online. Gardner, Robert. 1957. “Anthropology and Film” Daedalus 86 (4): 344– 352. —. 2007. “The moral nature of film” Media Ethics 18 (2): 12-33. Gardner, Robert and Karl G. Heider. 1968. Gardens of war. London: Random House. Goody, Jack. 1986. The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Gravas, Florence. 2016. La part du spectateur : essai de philosophie à propos du cinéma. Paris: Presses universitaires du Septentrion. Harper, Douglas. 2012. Visual sociology. London and New York: Routledge. Hasham, Leila (Ed.). 2018. John Akomfrah: Purple. London: Barbican. Henley, Paul. 2011. “Le récit dans le film ethnographique” L’Homme 198199: 131-157. Lallier, Christophe. 2011. “L’observation filmante. Une catégorie de l’enquête ethnographique” L’Homme 198-199: 105-130. Lax, Maria. 2020. Some Kind of Heavenly Fire. Richmond: Setanta Books. Leroi-Gourhan, André. 1948. “Le film ethnologique existe-il ?” Revue de Géographie humaine et d'Ethnologie 3: 42-50. MacDougall, David. 2004. “L’anthropologie visuelle et les chemins du savoir” Journal des anthropologues 98-99: 233-279. Maillot, Pierre. 2012. « L’écriture cinématographique de la sociologie filmique. Comment penser en sociologue avec une caméra ? » La nouvelle revue du travail 1: Online. https://doi.org/10.4000/nrt.363. Misek, Richard. 2010. Chromatic cinema: a history of screen color. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Niney, François. 2000. L’Épreuve du réel à l’écran. Essai sur le principe de réalité documentaire. Bruxelles: De Boeck Université. O’Neil, Maggie. 2012. “Ethno-Mimesis and Participatory Arts”. In Advances in Visual Methodology, edited by Sarah Pink, 153-172. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications. Pauwels, Luc and Dawn Mannay. 2011. The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Methods (2nd edition). Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications. Pink, Sarah (ed.). 2001. Doing visual ethnography. London: SAGE Publications. Prokudin Gorsky, Sergey. 1909. “Ɏɨɬɨɝɪɚɮɢɹ ɜ ɧɚɬɭɪɚɥɶɧɵɯ ɰɜɟɬɚɯ” (“Photograph in natural colors”) Ɏɨɬɨɝɪɚɮ-Ʌɸɛɢɬɟɥɶ (Amateur photographer) 1: 10-16. Rabinowitz, Paula. 1994. They must be represented: the politics of documentary. London: Verso. Rimke, Heidi. 2010. “Remembering the Sociological Imagination: Transdisciplinarity, the Genealogical Method, and Epistemological Politics” International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences 5 (1): 239-254. Russell, Catherine. 1999. Experimental Ethnography. The Work of Film in the Age of Video. Durham: Duke University Press. Ryan, Kathleen M., and David Staton. 2020. “Oral history, visual ethnography, and the interactive documentary”. In The Routledge

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international handbook of ethnographic film and video, edited by Philipp Vannini, 94-104. London: Routledge. Shrum, Wesley, and Greg Scott. 2016. Video ethnography in practice: planning, shooting, and editing for social analysis. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications. Vogel, Amos. 1977. Le cinéma art subversif. Paris: Buchet-Chastel. Wagner, Jon. 2006. “Visible materials, visualised theory and images of social research” Visual Studies 21 (1): 55-69. Filmography Afsahi, Kenza. 2017. 34 mètres d’altitude (34 meters in height). 57 minutes. Documentary. Aleksandrov, Evgeny and Elena Danilko. 2009. The Arrow of Seven Flames. 60 minutes. Documentary. Anju Prabir, Savyasachi. 2016. Miilelam Miiyoh (A season of change). 24 minutes. Documentary. Balikci, Asen. 1997. Pomak Portraits series: Women of Breznitsa”, 42 minutes; Old Ibrahim’s World, 43 minutes. Documentary. Callahan, William A. 2020. Great Walls: Journeys from Ideology to Experience. 29 minutes. Documentary. Castaing-Taylor, Lucien, and Verena Paravel. 2012. Leviathan. 87 minutes. Documentary. Christie, Debbie. 1993. We Are All Neighbours. 55 minutes. Documentary. Cunha, Fabio. 2014. 52 Summers. 57 minutes. Documentary. Deveson, Pip, Fred Myers and Ian Dunlop. 2014. Remembering Yayayi. 57 minutes. Documentary. Folgado, Gabriel. 2012. Ancestral. 15 minutes. Documentary. Gardner, Robert. 1964. Dead Birds. 84 minutes. Documentary. —. 1986. Forest of Bliss. 90 minutes. Documentary. Grossman, Alyssa R., and Selena Kimball. 2011. Memory Objects, Memory Dialogues. 26 minutes. Documentary. Gutierrez, Irene. 2012. Border Diaries. 24 minutes. Documentary. Haase, Antti, Lasse Naukarinen and Janne Niskala. 2008. Rebels with a Cause. 76 minutes. Documentary. Henley, Paul and George Drion. 1987. Reclaiming the Forest. 41 minutes. Documentary. Ismailov, Rodion. 2017. ɉɥɚɰɤɚɪɬ (Third-Class Travel). 82 minutes. Documentary. Kahiu, Wanuri. 2018. Rafiki. 82 minutes. Fiction. Marshall, John. 1957. The Hunters. 72 minutes. Documentary. Ohanyan, Mariam. 2016. Musa Dagh (The Road Home). 53 minutes. Documentary. Orleansky, Irene. 2016. Bal Ej: The Hidden Jews of Ethiopia. 96 minutes. Documentary. Paravel, Verena and Lucien

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Castaing-Taylor. 2017. Commensal. 42 minutes. Patarin-Jossec, Julie. In pre-production. Looking for the Afronauts. Documentary. —. In production. Ad Astra. Documentary. Ravelli, Quentin. 2017. Bricks. 83 minutes. Documentary. Refn, Nicolas Winding. 2013. Only God Forgives. 90 minutes. Fiction. Rouch, Jean. 1949. Initiation à la danse des possédés (Initiation to the dance of the possessed). 21 minutes. Documentary. —. 1957. Moro Naba. 24 minutes. Documentary. Sawbuck productions. 2015a. Mr. MDWST “A real good time”. Cranbrook Art Museum, February-March 2015. 38 minutes. —. 2015b. Mornin. Cranbrook Art Museum, February-March 2015. 2 minutes. Sebag, Joyce, and Durand, Jean-Pierre. 2003. Rêves de chaîne (Dreams of the assembly-line). 26 minutes. Documentary. —. 2013. 50 ans d’Affirmative Action à Boston (50 years of Affirmative Action in Boston). 52 minutes. Documentary. Yezbick, Julia. 2015. Into the Hinterlands. 39 minutes. Documentary. Yinan, Diao. 2019. The Wild Goose Lake. 113 minutes. Fiction. Wai, Wong Kar. 2004. 2046. 89 minutes. Fiction.

CHAPTER FOUR ABSTRACTION, NARRATIVE, AND TIME IN THE POETIC DOCUMENTARIES OF STAN BRAKHAGE JACQUI GRIFFIN

“…the ‘absolute realism’ of the motion picture image is a contemporary mechanical myth.” —Stan Brakhage “Poetry is having to do with the actual process of thought, as absolutely distinct from what I don’t regard as poetry at all, the writer telling you his mind, or something of that sort.” —Stan Brakhage

One of the oldest forms of filmmaking, “documentary” tends to conjure specific generic descriptors such as truthful, factual, or real. However, from the beginning, with the Cinema of Attractions and films likes Edison’s shocking Electrocuting an Elephant through to modern day with films like Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) (and indeed Fahrenheit 11/9 (2018)) documentarians manipulated objective reality to achieve their desired effect. In those instances, the intent was commercial and political. With a director like experimental filmmaker Stan Brakhage, his intent was to take objective reality and make it ambiguous and expressive of “actual thought”, to make it poetic. The chapter therefore is concerned with Brakhage’s attempts to create poetic documentary films, and how an analysis of those films can help expand existing theories around how the term "poetic" has been applied within film studies. In order to explore the debates around poetic film and documentary, I will first briefly overview Bill Nichol’s criteria for documentary from his book Introduction to Documentary. This then leads into the basis for my theory on the predominant features of poetic cinema. This theory purports that while the narrative of a film is fixed a filmmaker can employ tactics in his

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or her presentation of a narrative which may not only be subjective, but may also disregard the momentum of the narrative time in favour of the more ambiguous emotional exploration. This theory synthesises ideas from Maya Deren (particularly her discussion at a 1953 symposium on Poetry and the Film) and Nichols, in order to develop an approach that analyses the place of poetry in documentary. I will identify two major traits of poetic cinema, namely, ambiguity and/or abstraction and the manipulation of narrative time for emotional effect. Finally, through analysis of three of Stan Brakhage’s films I will show how these traits exemplify Brakhage’s approach to the documentary, locate him as both cinematic poet and poetic documentarian, and suggest how to develop existing definitions of the poetic film. To accomplish this, I will look at The Wonder Ring (1955), The Act of Seeing With One’s Own Eyes (1972), and Text of Light (1974). These are three of Brakhage’s early career films, each of which takes a varied approach to entirely different subjects. Through examination of each film, I mean to propose a textual context for what Deren calls the ‘vertical’ or poetic. Furthermore, I intend to offer an understanding of how an emphasis on the ‘vertical’ affects the notion of documentary. Each film expresses the poetic qualities described by Deren to differing degrees. The use of poetic expression in the three films causes each of them to ‘move away’ from the traditional idea of documentary. Pointedly expanding on John Grierson’s 1933 definition of documentary as “the creative treatment of actuality,” Nichols says that documentaries “…draw on the historical world for their raw material…” Offering a more specific argument as to what constitutes documentary, Nichols claims that we can make the following, somewhat mutable, ‘assumptions’ in regard to documentary film: 1. Documentaries are about reality… 2. Documentaries are about real people…who do not play or perform roles as actors do… 3. Documentaries tell stories about what happens in the real world…

Further on, Nichols makes the case for the poetic “mode” of documentary: The poetic mode sacrifices the conventions of continuity editing and the sense of a specific location in time and place that follows from such editing… This mode explores associations and patterns that involve temporal rhythms and spatial juxtapositions… This mode stresses mood, tone, and affect much more than displays of factual knowledge or acts of rhetorical persuasion…We learn in this case by affect or feeling, by gaining a sense of what it feels like to see and experience the world in a particular, poetic way.

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Nichols’ definition of the poetic echoes Deren’s from over half a century prior. The definitions share similar concerns that the poetic film is abstract and expressive and it displays a disregard for cinematic and/or narrative time. Nichols uses the phrasing that “time and space are…discontinuous” while Deren breaks this into her “horizontal” versus “vertical” terminologies. Despite the use of different terminology, Deren’s ideas around poetry preempts Nichols’. A poem…creates visible or auditory forms for something which is invisible, which is the feeling, or the emotion, or the metaphysical content of the movement. Now it also may include action, but its attack is what I could call the "vertical" attack, and this may be a little bit clearer if you will contrast it to what I would call the “horizontal” attack of a drama, which is concerned with the development, let's say, within a very small situation from feeling to feeling.

Deren speaks of the term in an extremely broad sense and frames her words in such a way that they may be applied to any art form, thus allowing her to expand the concept of poetry to include cinema. Deren’s argument centred on an analogy which took the basic geometric concepts of “horizontal” and “vertical” and applied these to narrative and poetic aspects of film, respectively. Deren chose these terms to demonstrate what she saw as different methods of “attack” in each aspect. Deren’s notions around the “horizontal” and “vertical” are very much connected to the passage of time. In the former, the events unfold over the duration of a film, play, or story – “…you have the drama moving forward on the “horizontal” plane of development, of one circumstance – one action – leading to another…” (i.e. the narrative time). Meanwhile, the “vertical” sees the development of plot pause momentarily while a single action, emotion, or thought is investigated further. This is ambiguous by its nature. Crucially, Deren does not see either term as mutually exclusive of the other. So, predominately narrative (i.e. horizontal) films may have poetic (i.e. vertical) moments or even whole sequences, and vice versa. Poetry, to my mind, is an approach to an experience…It is a “vertical” investigation of a situation, in that it probes the ramifications of the moment, and is concerned with its qualities and its depth, so that you have poetry concerned, in a sense, not with what is occurring but with what it feels like or what it means.

Deren uses Shakespeare’s plays as an example to demonstrate the interplay between the vertical and horizontal. A play is essentially constructed of a series of connected events, or “horizontally”. However, Shakespeare’s use

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of soliloquies, in Hamlet for instance, exemplifies moments of poetry or “vertical” attack. Deren points out that Shakespeare’s soliloquies have no bearing on the plot. Rather they allow for a character to more deeply explore a particular emotion or struggle. In a sense, the time of the play stops moving forward (or horizontally) and instead ‘plumbs the depths’ of a character (or moves vertically). Like many theorists, Deren views film as a subjective medium overall. For Deren, a film can be seen as operating on two ‘layers’ of subjectivity, as shown in table 1 below. The first layer is the ‘real world’ of the film and is ostensibly presented with verisimilitude. It is objective, but only in reference to the reality established by the film, or the perceptual illusion of the film. The narrative or, in the case of a documentary, the images and events that are captured occurs in a fixed, chronological order – e.g. ‘A’ happened, then ‘B’ happened, then ‘C’ happened, and so on. This first layer is concerned with events, time, and space within the film and is ‘horizontal’ (objective/dramatic). However, the representation of images and/or events may be manipulated by the filmmaker (resulting in subjectivity). The second, ‘vertical’, layer is subjective in reference to the reality established by the film and deals with the more tenuously grasped concepts such as emotions. Deren claims that the ‘vertical’ (poetic/subjective) may either consume a film from start to finish, or merely be one part of an otherwise ‘horizontal’ (objective/dramatic) film. Crucially, Deren places no levels of value on moments of subjectivity/objectivity or poetic/dramatic, but merely seeks to differentiate between the two. When a film operates solely on this second layer, the sense of narrative time may appear to pause or freeze while a particular feeling is explored more fully. These moments of stopped or stretched time are when Deren’s idea of poetry occurs. The role of time in the moving image occurs as both a natural and phenomenological aspect of the medium. It is natural in the sense that all art is bound in one way or another by time, and phenomenological in the sense that time can be manipulated by the artist. Other art forms allow a viewer to determine the length of time spent looking at one particular work, or even a single detail of that work. Meanwhile, film and video allow only a predetermined number of seconds or minutes in which to absorb the proffered information. However, unlike in the theatre, the exact scenario of a film may be repeated endlessly by the viewer, moment for moment, cut for cut.

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Narrative time plays a key role in Deren’s concept of poetry. Furthermore, Nichols suggests that a manipulated timeline is a key marker of a poetic documentary, saying that time and space in the ‘poetic mode’ are treated as “Discontinuous. Uses images that build mood or pattern without full regard for their original proximity” (Nichols, 2017, 108). Manipulating narrative time is likely to have an effect on the viewer. Films often compress time, allowing for the narrative to occur over a matter of days, weeks, or even years in the course of sitting through a 90-minute film. A filmmaker may prolong or compress narrative time in a film, making the perception of watching appear to cover a much longer or shorter time span than the experience of viewing actually was. Considering the three Brakhage films from the context laid out above, it could be argued that the films are about reality and they portray what happens in the real world, though they take a poetic approach in doing so. Each of the three films discussed here use an unconventional approach to narrative time, manipulating the narrative and/or passage of time to differing degrees. This ranges from the extreme abandonment of narrative in Text of Light to the more familiar use of compressed narrative time in The Wonder Ring. The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes sits between these two, not entirely abandoning narrative but certainly presenting its narrative in a less accessible way than seen in The Wonder Ring. These films were selected out of the hundreds of films that Brakhage made over his career for two reasons. First, the subjects of these films are unique for Brakhage, whose career is largely split between family-focused experimental films (many of which are also documentaries) and hand-painted experimental films. These three films stand out in Brakhage’s oeuvre as neither. Second, while the films use somewhat different visual approaches, there are significant stylistic similarities between them which are often associated with Brakhage films – hand-held camera, an awareness of and use of the focal length of the lens to manipulate the imagery, and a completely silent soundtrack. The Wonder Ring is one of the last remaining visual documentations of a journey on the Third Avenue Rail. As a result of its visual approach, which shifts from hazy to ultra-detailed, it feels reminiscent of a first-person account of a fond memory of a journey past rather than merely a historical account of the rail line itself. The Wonder Ring is a brief, completely silent film depicting the now long-defunct ‘El’ train line in New York City. The film, paid for by Joseph Cornell, stands out as one of Brakhage’s few commissions over his long career. Brakhage uses relatively straightforward footage – details of a train station, views out of a carriage window, and

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passengers. The film is absent of any voice over or social actors which might volley for emotional connection or attention. This allows the viewer to connect more readily to the filmmaker’s voice which conveys a disjointed narrative. Despite a distinctive and established “beginning” at the train station and “middle” on a train (though no discernible “end” other than the cut to black), Brakhage uses editing in combination with aspects of the mise-en-scène to cause time and narrative to become confused. In doing so, Brakhage breaks some of cinema’s conventions. For example, the train moves right to left in one shot and then without warning moves the opposite direction on the next cut. Normally when showing movement of travel in one direction, this directionality should continue between cuts unless there is an indication that the direction of travel has changed. However, in The Wonder Ring, Brakhage cuts between footage of moving train cars and the passing scenery through train windows changing direction readily and without warning. What might usually be considered a mistake by the conventions of both documentary and narrative cinema feels purposeful and evocative; Brakhage uses such discontinuous editing to contribute to the dreamy mood, capturing a nostalgic “moment in time” of the now defunct train line. It is impossible to tell if the film follows a single journey or multiple or if this all over the course of a few minutes or a few hours. Borrowing Deren’s terminology, Brakhage’s manipulation of the narrative timeline moves away from the “horizontal” and approaches the film from a predominantly “vertical attack”. He accomplishes this largely through the devices of abstraction and ambiguity. Abstraction can be seen as an attempt to ‘purify’ a subject matter by ‘moving away’ from its context. According to Steve Park, this ‘moving away’ of abstraction is crucial because it creates a binary between the end result and whatever it exists in opposition to. Park claims that “in poetry, abstraction refers to thought expressed without a concrete image”. The traits of abstraction and ambiguity can also be one of the most difficult to achieve in a medium such as film. This difficulty results from the intrinsic nature of physical photography and film media. An image captured by the camera is indexical in that it relates directly to the physical world it represents. To take a picture of an apple, the apple must exist in the first instance and the photographer or filmmaker has little control over the image other than selecting it. The image offers what can be perceived as objective factual information about the world, especially in the case of documentary. However, Nichols points out that interpretation is extremely important to understanding the information, and that this interpretation can be guided by the filmmaker. For instance, as with

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the example of the apple above, if a filmmaker chooses to only show an extreme close up of the fruit, only a viewer very familiar with apple skin might readily identify it as such. In the case of poetic documentaries, this interpretation can be further “limited by…formal abstractions that lose touch with historical reality,”. Nichols’ “formal abstractions” evoke Grierson’s “creative treatment”. These “abstractions” or “creative treatments” can result in ambiguity in interpretation, a key element of poetic cinema. The Wonder Ring is, when taken as a whole, arguably unambiguous. Brakhage uses a wide, nearly static establishing shot to open the film (outside the now defunct Third Avenue elevated train line). He then moves inside the station, using a close shot slowly tilting up the station steps to reveal a sign that reads “TO TICKET OFFICE”. From here, Brakhage uses predominantly close up detail shots with movement (either in frame or in camera) cross cutting these with a wide static shot of the station platform. Like much of the film, the detail shots only have context in situ, but they do have context. For instance, without the contextual embedding of the whole film, a hazy shot through train windows of out of focus people disembarking while yet another train passes may just look like a myriad of moving shapes vaguely resembling people and objects. Embedded in the overall film, however, the image has meaning. Rather than obfuscating the imagery, additional significance is imbued. The Wonder Ring makes the most obvious use of abstraction techniques at the very end of its five-and-a-half-minute runtime. As the film draws to a close, the speed at which the world flies by outside the train car seems to increase and the world itself increasingly loses focus. This is a use of what Nicky Hamlyn calls defocusing, toyed with throughout the film. The image completely blurs in the final moments just before cutting to black. Hamlyn uses the term “defocus” rather than “out of focus” to indicate not just an intentionality behind the use of non-focused shots, but to remove the innate “value” placed upon focus in “dominant cinema”. In The Wonder Ring, Brakhage’s use of defocus creates a surreal sense of nostalgia by once again playing with existing conventions, in which this kind of blurring of images and editing might indicate a dream or possibly a fantasy sequence. Brakhage carefully uses the shots of The Wonder Ring to bring the viewer on a journey along the line. In isolation, many of Brakhage’s shots read somewhat or even entirely ambiguously; context is only provided through the editing and the construction of the narrative timeline (this will be explored further in the next section). Though not used to the extreme that is seen in Text of Light, Brakhage manipulates the use of focus, light, movement and colour in The Wonder Ring to abstract the images and

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facilitate a dreamy quality to what would otherwise be simply a historical document. In comparing these three films, the most ambiguous (Text of Light) is shot entirely in extreme close up; so extreme in fact that the camera lens is unable to focus, and the result is a blurred image of light dancing across the screen. Once called “Brakhage’s most leisurely work,” Text of Light documents spectral light moving and morphing in a slow and mesmerising fashion. The film’s entire runtime of 71 minutes portrays light passing through a glass ashtray, abstracted beyond the point of recognition. This results in a kaleidoscopic display of light and colour. P. Adams Sitney argues that the ashtray actually becomes “an extension of the lens” which leaves the true subject of the film open to interpretation. Though Brakhage pointed the camera lens at an ashtray, the resulting image abstracts the object to such a great extent that it is perhaps most accurate to suggest that the subject of the film is light. More specifically, the subject of Text of Light could be described as the quality of light that is reflected and refracted by a glass ashtray. Hamlyn argues that the use “defocusing” allows the filmmaker to “liberate” colour, enabling it to become a subject itself rather than merely a quality of another subject. Where Brakhage previously used this technique in The Wonder Ring along with more conventional techniques, in Text of Light it dominates the aesthetic. Here, Brakhage concerns himself first and foremost with images created within the technology of the film camera rather than in recreating something visible without that technology. The characteristics of the lens and the method of filming result in the captured imagery but are also intrinsically linked to the end result. It is an entirely unique experience that cannot be recreated practically outside of the film technology. The focus on light and colour through ‘defocus’ of the subject creates a film fixated on its own technology. The film features a series of colourful shapes and swirls which a viewer may find meaning in but which have no meaning intrinsically attached to the imagery. Indexicality is truly liberated. A viewer could interpret one of thousands of representations in the abstract shapes. However, it is only light and colour, captured in a truly unique way, as will be the preceding and following frames and shots. Within the film itself, Brakhage provides no context for what is presented. Efforts to describe the film often rest on physiological referencing, rather than, for example, descriptions of mood or tone: “Brakhage discovers metaphors for landscapes in the patterns of reflection and diffraction: rivers, volcanoes, and mountains are suggested

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by images so delicate they’re worthy of J.M.W. Turner.” Critics such as Fred Camper seek a point of reference and familiarity in the physical world, thus restoring colour and light to form and reconstructing an abstracted image. Both Text of Light and The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes appear to ‘stretch’ time. Text of Light, with its seemingly endlessly repeating shots of refracted light disregards narrative time, focusing instead on the tonal qualities and interplay of light. It builds a mood that exemplifies nostalgia and wonder, again relying on similar conventional connections as in The Wonder Ring. The interplay between the passage of real time and the lack of any passage of narrative time lulls and almost hypnotizes while the light gently dances across the frames. While it is arguable that “nothing happens” over the course of Text of Light, it is equally valid to say that Brakhage takes a single moment and stretches it across the 70-minute run time, thus allowing the viewer to explore this moment internally. It is perhaps one of the most extreme examples of Deren’s notion of probing the depth of a moment. The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes finds itself somewhere between the extreme lack of narrative time in Text of Light and the present if disjointed narrative time found in The Wonder Ring. Also silent, The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes spends over 30 minutes brazenly staring at death as Brakhage cuts between close ups of multiple autopsies, often showcasing the most gruesome aspects of this everyday hidden occurrence. The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes offers less context than The Wonder Ring; after Brakhage’s trademark handwritten title scrawl appears, there is a quick flurry of blurred images and then there are hands, gloved and ungloved, performing what looks to be an examination of some sort on a person, or perhaps people. Would the “untutored eye”, as Brakhage would call it, recognise that the examination is on a dead body? Possibly not until Brakhage cuts to a wide shot, which reveals a toe tag fluttering at the bottom of the screen. In the same way Brakhage uses abstracted close ups in this film to distance the viewer from the subject matter, he also distances the subject matter through repetition. By the end of the film, any sense of a narrative time within the film has been greatly compressed if not entirely lost; Brakhage presents what feels like countless dead bodies to the camera to be sliced, sewn up, and shuffled on. This contributes heavily to the poetic aspects of The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes. It is through this abandonment of narrative, combined with abstraction, which creates the documentary’s

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hollow, almost stoic tone. Brakhage’s portrayal of the disinterested attitude of morticians comes across largely as a result of the use of repetition to compress time. This results in a complete lack of identity of any of the corpses. In The Wonder Ring, Brakhage used this sense of compressed time to indicate fantasy and here it achieves almost a similar result. While the first reaction to the film is one of repulsion, by the final minutes of this half hour film the mood is more akin to a numbness bordering on indifference. Death may be a reality but for this film it’s just another part of life. The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes significantly explores abstraction while still retaining a sense of the original subject. Though the subject matter of the film is clear from the onset (dead bodies in a morgue), Brakhage often films the bodies in such a manner as to abstract them completely. In showing only intricate details, the subject as a whole becomes changed and sometimes unrecognisable because the viewer lacks a context with which to consider it in its entirety. The use of abstraction in The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes serves two distinct purposes. In the first place, extreme close ups of individual sections of a corpse separate the body part from the whole and therefore arguably separate the corpse itself from the notion of death. These intricate details are viewed individually, and this acts as a separation from the overall representation of actual death, which is often difficult to confront. Secondly, Brakhage isolates various parts of the body through the composition, “cutting off” limbs and heads with the edge of the frame. This reflects the piecemeal slicing of the bodies through autopsy, foreshadowing the eventual depiction of the post-mortem dissection. The film holds off showing any such gruesome subject matter until approximately one third of the way through. Instead, Brakhage focuses on the relatively mundane activities of washing and measuring various body parts for an extensive period of time. When the act of autopsy is finally revealed, most of the view of the cutting is initially blocked and out of focus. When finally showing the dissected body, in focus and fully in frame, it is in such a state of deconstruction that it is hardly distinguishable as a person. Several different corpses are shown, but because of the abstracted technique employed, they become nearly indistinguishable from one another. The use of abstraction here appears to offer a profound statement on both the universality and inescapability of death and utter indifference to it. Brakhage combines this abstraction with the repetitive construction of the frame the poetic device. Despite the changing corpses, these devices reinforce the message of universality: death becomes us all.

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In all three films, Brakhage constructs a disjointed narrative timeline and uses techniques of abstraction. These traits are indicative, though not proof positive, of poetic film. Brakhage uses ‘formal abstractions’ in all three films to such a degree that they begin to move away from Nichols’ modern idea of documentary and more towards Grierson’s “creative treatment of actuality” or Deren’s “vertical attack”. This is most evident in Text of Light which contains the greatest extent of abstractions and manipulations of the three films. Despite capturing ‘reality’ in one sense – Brakhage portrays the technical reality of light hitting an ashtray as seen through a camera lens – there is nothing to convey a sense of plot or story. According to Nichols, a documentary not only portrays the “historical world” but does so with a sense of narrative by “…telling stories or commenting on a situation with the tools of engagement forged by storytelling and rhetoric.” Text of Light, more than either The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes or The Wonder Ring, demonstrates the ‘limitations’ of the poetic mode described by Nichols in sacrificing narrative through ‘formal abstractions’. In this chapter I have attempted to highlight not only the qualities of a poetic film expressed in documentaries by using three of Stan Brakhage’s factually-based films, but I have also sought to demonstrate how a film can ‘move away’ from the commonplace idea of documentary through the use of filmic poetic devices, in particular abstraction/ambiguity and manipulation of narrative time. I showed how each Text of Light, The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes, and The Wonder Ring used these devices to different degrees and for varying effect. In so doing, the loose terms such as “horizontal” and “vertical” or “formal abstractions” are given context. Therefore, while the analysis of these three films shows that Brakhage may indeed be considered a cinematic poet (and indeed, poetic documentarian), the analysis may be extrapolated and applied elsewhere. This analysis expands upon Nichol’s definition of poetic documentary by encompassing notions from Deren and Grierson, using the Brakhage films to provide practical examples. The importance of such a claim does not stem from any perceived value around romantic ideas of poetry. Rather the provision of concrete examples of how the poetic functions within a film, in this case documentary, allows for a more complete understanding of describing any work as ‘poetic’ regardless of value. This additionally lends itself to a deeper understanding of Brakhage’s work. As a student of Brakhage, a man who tried (and supposedly failed) to be a poet in the traditional sense, levelling such an argument contains a personal element. However, it provides a more

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comprehensive context with which to consider his work overall and offers a commonality to his films which may otherwise go unnoticed.

Bibliography Bazin, Andre, and Hugh Gray. ‘The Ontology of the Photographic Image’. Film Quarterly 13, no. 4 (July 1960): 4–9. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.1960.13.4.04a00030. Brakhage, Stan. Essential Brakhage: Selected Writings on Filmmaking by Stan Brakhage. Edited by Bruce R. McPherson. New York: McPherson & Company, 2001. —. Stan Brakhage - Metaphors on Vision. Edited by P. Adams Sitney. Anthology Film Archives, 2017. Camper, Fred. ‘The Text of Light’. Chicago Reader. Accessed 12 August 2020. https://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-text-oflight/Film?oid=1073492. Hamlyn, Nicky. ‘The Roman Numeral Series’. In Stan Brakhage: Filmmaker, edited by David E. James, 113–28. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2005. Nichols, Bill. Introduction to Documentary, Third Edition. 3rd ed. Indiana University Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt2005t6j. Park, Steven. ‘Abstraction’. The University of Chicago: Theories of Media, 2003. https://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/abstraction.htm. Sitney, P. Adams, ed. ‘Poetry and the Film: A Symposium’. In Film Culture Reader, 1st Cooper Square Press ed., 171–86. New York, NY: Cooper Square Press, 2000. https://monoskop.org/images/e/e0/Sitney_Adams_P_ed_Film_Culture _Reader_2nd_ed_2000.pdf. —. Visionary Film, The American Avant-Garde, 1943-2000. Third Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Wahlberg, Malin. Documentary Time. NED-New edition. Vol. 21. University of Minnesota Press, 2008. www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctttsjb1.

CHAPTER FIVE PLANTING SOUNDS: RE-FRAMING THE ACOUSTIC ENVIRONMENT IN TREE PEOPLE (2014), THE STORY OF THE COLNE VALLEY TREE SOCIETY GEOFFREY COX

Prologue In 1997, I moved to the Colne Valley in West Yorkshire and began volunteering with a local voluntary group, the Colne Valley Tree Society, who plant trees in the valley most winter Saturday mornings. A few years later I began working as a music technology lecturer at the University of Huddersfield and gravitated slowly towards digital filmmaking in my own practice and research with a particular emphasis on documentary film sound. Around 2010 these two activities were brought together as I began filming the activities of the Society for what was to become the documentary film, Tree People. Consequently, I began to explore the history of the Society and the local area itself as I became aware of just how much of a difference their tree-planting activities over many years had made to the valley’s landscape. This article explores the relationship between my own aesthetic ideas and goals in terms of documentary film and its associated digital techniques, especially as it relates to the sonic, the subject matter of the film itself, and the historical and social context of the Society and its location.

Introduction Tree People is a 45-minute film documenting the origins, development, activities and achievements of the Colne Valley Tree Society (CVTS), a local voluntary group that has been planting trees in the Colne Valley since

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1964. The valley, lying to the west of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire, UK, is some seven miles long and flanked by the Pennine hills. The film highlights the major transformation to the valley landscape the Society has brought about. It was filmed over a period of about four years, was completed in early 2014 and premiered at an event to mark the 50th anniversary of the Society in April 2014. A primary focus in the film is the creative use and manipulation of location sound and the musical score, performed by me on piano, and local brass band, Slaithwaite Band. This aesthetic thrust has underpinned much of my work in recent years, often in collaboration with filmmaker Keith Marley, and has involved developing strategies for the creative use of sound and music in documentary film (see No Escape, 2009, A Film About Nice, 2010 and Cider Makers, 2007). This article will outline the artistic context and practice of the filmmaking process and thus its aesthetic and ‘political’ stance, and will detail some of the key features of the film itself including its inherent ecological subject matter and how that is couched. These aspects will all be related to the digital technologies employed in its creation. A brief history of the valley in terms of its people and landscape will be discussed to give important context regarding the formation of the Society, and to highlight the poetry of that history, inherent in some of the key sonic strategies employed in the film. Once a relatively barren and scarred post-industrial area, the Colne Valley is, in its lower reaches, now quite heavily wooded, a ‘green lung’ for what is an increasingly densely populated area. This transformation is in no small measure due to the 300,000 trees planted by the Society since 1964; documenting this work is therefore of considerable local historical importance. Though there is a strong implicit ecological and environmental message in the film that may well provide possible encouragement for other groups anywhere in the world, it is not explicitly about this. Rather, it shows what can be done by a group of dedicated local volunteers over many decades who wanted, and continue to want, to make a difference to the environment in which they live – to soften it, to ‘green it up’ and mitigate the ravages of the industrial revolution by planting trees. Thus the film also concentrates on the detail of the landscape of the valley itself, as well as being a kind of audio-visual poem to the beauty of trees themselves. My own background is as a musician and composer, originally as a popular music practitioner, then developing via a deep interest in twentieth-century modernism, electronic music and especially musique concrète, with its notion of the abstraction and use of everyday ‘environmental’ sounds in a musical context. The allied concept of soundscape or ‘anecdotal’ composition

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originated by Luc Ferrari (Caux 2012: 129), where those environmental sounds’ context and source-meaning is maintained within the musical context, is also very important and has not only formed the basis of my approach to creating film soundtracks but also informed the very basis of filmmaking processes and film structures. In general, I view all the sounds used in films I have been involved with from a musical standpoint. I have written about this approach to sound in documentary elsewhere in some detail (Cox 2011, 2013) but mention this to draw attention to the musical concerns that are at the heart of this article (and to some extent the film itself).

Ecology, Film and Music The notion of ecology, of that which constitutes ‘the web of relationships of all living organisms, including humans, with their contextual physical environments’ (Allen 2011: 392), has in recent years seen a growing alliance with musicology, originating perhaps through Schafer’s work in the 1970s on acoustic ecology and soundscape design (Schafer 1994 [1977]) and continued through the work of field recordist / composers such as Chris Watson and ethnographers like Steven Feld. Feld’s ‘acoustemology’, an ‘exploration of [the] sonic sensibilities’ of the people he has studied, is deeply concerned with the relationship of people to their particular sonic environment (Feld 1996: 97). I will return to Feld later to discuss the idea of ‘sense of place’ in relation to Tree People. In 2011 an edition of the Journal of the American Musicological Society was dedicated to the idea of ‘ecomusicology’, which ‘considers the relationship of music, culture and nature […] the study of musical and sonic issues, both textual and performative, as they relate to ecology and the environment’ (Allen 2011: 392). Ecomusicology can be seen as a ‘socially engaged’ musicology, a form of ecocriticism, a ‘field of literature studying cultural products [e.g. film] that imagine and portray human-environment relationships variously from scholarly, political, and / or activists’ viewpoints’ (ibid: 393). Tree People is one of those cultural products; the relationship between its protagonists and their environment is central to the film, highlighted and pointed up by musical / sonic ideas throughout. In simple terms the approach to the ecological concerns in the film might be termed nostalgic. Alexander Rehding notes that ecological topics are often couched in apocalyptic terms, especially in literature and film: ‘this orientation toward crisis makes sense, as it endows the literary products with political relevance, powerful realism, and – in a very literal sense – sublime terror. The earth needs to be saved, right now’ (2011: 410). Musicology, on the

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other hand, is a ‘discipline that is often reluctant to make political commitments’, begging the question of how music studies and composition can respond to this ‘sense of crisis in a way comparable to the other arts’ (ibid: 412). Appealing to the power of memory, an ‘area in which music is known to excel’, is a fruitful potential approach since the nostalgic imagination has always been a part of the environmental movement: on the political level, Green parties were long difficult to classify on the traditional left-right spectrum, since despite their progressive politics, a conservative streak […] often ran through them, which was fed by a romantic idea of a simpler holistic past (ibid).

Furthermore, ‘the commemorative and community-building powers of music in the service of ecological approaches, offer exciting prospects’ (ibid: 413) as opposed to the ‘attention grabbing apocalyptic route’ (ibid: 414). The use of a local brass band in the score for Tree People is aimed at community building and commemoration but this also adds to the nostalgia since Slaithwaite Band, formed as a wind band in 1819, was probably the first in the area (Russell 1992: 662). The nostalgia the film draws on is not quite so straightforward as evoking romantic notions of a ‘simpler holistic past’ however, since the more immediate cultural and indeed living memory of the valley is one of a heavily industrialised, polluted and indeed, largely treeless place and it is from this time that the brass band movement grew and flourished. So this memory is combined with a very different, idealised one of the pre-industrial, rurally idyllic wooded landscape, forming a quite complex interplay between the two.

Nostalgic Complexities in Tree People The transformation of the natural landscape of the area should not be underestimated: once a densely wooded area, the vast forest of Elmet, the last stronghold of the Romano-Britons in England, stretched from York to beyond the Pennines, which before the formation of the peat c5,000 BC were themselves covered in birch-hazel scrub woodland (Beresford and Jones 1967: 44). Climatic change, the pressure of population growth in the middle-ages and then the industrial revolution laid total waste to the majority of this woodland and by 1800, there were over one hundred large multi-purpose mechanised woollen mills in the Colne Valley, deemed at the time as some of the largest in the world (Brook 1968: 71). The smoke from hundreds of mill chimneys coupled with domestic coal fires led to a fairly poisonous atmosphere at times and older CVTS members talk of dense smogs and poisoned soils even in the early 1960s when the woollen industry

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was already in rapid decline. The still-blackened stone walls in the area are testament to this pollution. There is a nostalgic longing for this industrial past locally as it represents a time of great endeavour, full employment and a thriving, bustling community (in the film, part of the nostalgia is actually inherent in the showing of archive film footage of that industrial era). The development of numerous co-operative voluntary societies is another key element of this nostalgia: for two-hundred years or more the Huddersfield area, and particularly the Colne Valley, has seen the formation of many dozens of amateur sporting, musical, naturalist and political societies and the numerous brass bands of the area earned it the name of the ‘land of puff and blow’. It is against this history of amateur endeavour in the valley generally that the foundation of a voluntary society such as CVTS should be viewed. This nostalgic view is heavily tempered however by an understanding that the industrial revolution brought with it great poverty, class exploitation, harsh and short lives, terrible pollution and indeed, a total destruction of the naturally wooded environment. So the first tree planters were, in 1964, facing a sense that that rural idyll was indeed almost mythical. The Kingdom of Elmet, where, as a local legend tells, a squirrel could travel the seven miles from Huddersfield to Marsden, at the head of the valley, leaping from branch to branch without touching the ground (Bentley 1947: 10), is indeed just that, a myth, its cultural memory all but destroyed by hundreds of years of arboreal denudation. So their pragmatic approach was simply to plant trees, to see what would happen. They found that the trees grew. Thus the Society’s ideology of re-foresting the valley was not especially motivated by wider ecological concerns that were in 1964, somewhat politically nascent in any case. Part of the nostalgia in the film thus lies in the power of memory harnessed for the early tree-planters themselves, in their endeavour, belief against the odds, and in the Yorkshire ‘no nonsense’ trait of just getting on with it. As Jack Duce said in 1964, the Society came together with the simple aim to do something about the comparative ‘treelessness’ of the valley: ‘cooperation, not conflict, will solve the problems of the world today. The treelessness of Colne Valley is a problem that can be solved […] it merely needs a start to be made here and to watch the results grow’. Many of those early CVTS members have now died including Jack Duce himself who also said that ‘even if hundreds and thousands [of trees] are planted this year we ourselves will not live to see them reach maturity and beautify our valley, but that is no reason at all for not planting them’ (Colne Valley Guardian, 14th February, 1964: 6). The very apparent tree cover in the valley today is

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a testament to the vision and truth contained in these words, spoken in the film over shots of newspaper cuttings of the Society’s achievements, including the ceremonial planting of the 200,000th tree in 1996, and accompanied by layered sounds of current planting activity and valley ambience. This is a conscious attempt to evoke the ‘power of memory’ and ‘nostalgic imagination’.

‘Equipment for Contact with the World’ Having laid down some context to both the subject matter of the film and to some of its theoretical and philosophical foundations, I will now turn to the notion of sonic and visual digital creativity and strategy and how it relates to this context, its specific relation to techniques used in Tree People and to its ecological concerns. On a simple level, I see digital creativity as divided into two very broad, overlapping areas: first where the digital tools used are mainly functional (such as a digital video camera capturing images) and second, interpretively functional, where the capacities of the digital tools are intrinsic to the detail of the creative act itself (such as a specific software process that suggests or engenders a creative outcome). Both approaches feature in Tree People. The film was made almost entirely by me – filming, audio recording, editing, composing, sound designing and researching – using mostly a small camcorder mounted with an external microphone, a separate audio field recorder, a digital non-linear editor, an audio sequencer and a specific software tool for creatively manipulating audio field recordings. With the exception of the final tool, all were used in a generally conventional way to produce a fixed, linear audio-visual product. What is important from a documentary film perspective is the freedom those tools can engender. Imagine the scene (featured about a quarter of the way into the film and again towards the end): I am slowly ascending a steep hill about a mile long; wet snow is beginning to fall heavily and I’m carrying my planting mattock in my left hand whilst cradling the camera in the other, filming other planters ahead of me and the scenery generally as I walk. The microphone mounted on top of the camera picks up my heavy breathing as I tire, as well as the distant voices of my colleagues; the camera lens dapples with snow. I eventually arrive at the planting site, high on the moor and a good two miles from the nearest road, just as someone is jokily berating a friend – I slowly zoom in on his face as he finishes talking, hold it for a few seconds, thinking of the edit point, then stop recording. I put the camera away temporarily, pick up my mattock and begin planting trees as I have

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done with the group every winter since 1997. Later I might get the camera out again or a separate audio recorder to capture the atmosphere, the planting sounds, then return to planting again. This pattern was repeated numerous times and in several different planting sites over several years. The point here is that the relatively high quality, portability and ease of use of such audio-visual tools enables not only spontaneity, but for that single person to be completely embedded within the scene itself and free from any of the normal ‘circus’ that goes along with making a film. Concomitantly, standardised industry practices can be deemed almost irrelevant. In terms of documentary style Tree People thus becomes, in Bill Nichols’ terms, ‘interactive’ where the filmmaker observes but also becomes actively involved with the subject (1991: 33, see also Cox 2013: 99). This also begins to push the notion of documentary film into the realm of ethnography since as Feld suggests cameras and audio recorders can be seen as equipment for contact with the world, equipment for interchange with the world, equipment for enhancing a way of living with the world. The real joy and pleasure of recording is an enhanced sociality, an enhanced conviviality, an enhanced way of engaging with listening to people, to places, to objects, to all manner of sound-making things, including the sound of myself breathing, myself walking, the sound of my heart beat, the sound of myself recording (Lane and Carlyle 2013: 209).

This focus on the way recording equipment allows contact and interchange with the world continues once one enters the edit suite and the material is revisited. This is especially true of sound which has a strong capacity to be more evocative than the visual; a certain poetry emerges as words and environmental sounds take on enhanced meaning and resonance once reflected upon. Yet this approach begins in the field, as described in the scene above, as audio recorder and camera are operated, directed, switched on and off: this is a creative act in itself – the creative, lyrical approach to the manipulation of audio-visual actuality begins in the field, the moment the equipment is turned on and a poetic sensibility adopted.

A Sense of Place 1. Sounding Objects Feld’s idea of ‘listening to places, to objects’ should be emphasized here since the sonic aspect of Tree People is designed to combine with the images in an evocation of a sense of place as well as focusing on the intrinsic nature of local sounds, for their own ‘musical’ pleasure. This relates to the earlier

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point about the importance to the soundtrack of both musique concrète with its notion of the abstraction of everyday sounds as well as that of the soundscape where those sounds’ context and meaning is retained. Some examples are the deployment of the sound of a mattock digging into the ground or the banging of a tree stake: they are of course used synchronously with their source image in numerous places in the film but are also used over different images but where comprehension of the sounds’ sources is still key, such as a section that uses voice-over to describe planting activities but does not show them. In addition, a more tightly edited mattock thump or stake bang ‘sound object’, perhaps layered in light reverberation, is deployed in a much more abstracted sense to articulate image edit points that may have much less to do with the original meaning of the sound. This continuum of uses of the sounds associated with planting trees, including the actual voices of those doing it, is a feature throughout Tree People; it reframes those sounds in a variety of ways, embedding the activity throughout whilst also forming part of the sense of the place in which it is happening. Another example, used in a similar fashion, is the sound of passing trains and their whistles. The TransPennine railway line runs down the length of the valley and these sounds have a particular physical resonance related to the physical geography as they echo down the valley, day and night, as well as a virtual resonance evoking a quite specific sense of place. I regard these uses of mattock, stake and train sounds as intrinsically musical especially when considered in the light of the notion of perceptual ecology that Eric Clarke defines as explaining and interpreting sounds ‘in terms of “the relationship between a perceiver and its environment”’ (Watkins 2011: 405). Clarke makes no distinction in this context between musical and non-musical sounds. In ecomusicological terms, when combined with actual music, these timbres ‘constitute a virtual environment related in subtle ways to actual environments […] fictionaliz[ing] those places to create many layered musical environments’ (ibid: 415).

2. Musical Evocation The music in Tree People comes in two forms – scored music for piano that opens the film, later transcribed for brass band, and electronic drone chords often derived from piano recording resonances, stretched and isolated using software analysis / re-synthesis techniques. Sometimes the drones are made from digitally atomised and subsequently tightly streamed vocal fragments (the tiny fragments are compacted then considerably sped up), adding a certain roughness to their smooth evolution. In the scene described above for example, gentle, long and steadily evolving drones underpin the ascent

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up the hill and the planting activity itself; they evolve harmonically in a similar fashion to the opening piano music but far more slowly. They have a certain melancholy; they evoke the longevity of the task, of the slow growth of trees, of the long and momentous history of the valley, and even the memory of those Society members who have died. Like trees themselves, the drones have a symbolic quality. This quality relates directly to the idea of a nostalgic approach to ecological concerns mentioned earlier, appealing to the power of memory, an ‘area in which music is known to excel’. So, in a section that juxtaposes archive images of the valley in the late 1950s with the same sites today, the transformative images dissolving from barren to wooded landscapes is accompanied by an isolated, swelling electronic drone and commented on by a reverberated voice of one of the early planters from an archive audio recording, discussing the site shown. So, the echoing memory of the past is evoked then replaced with a surprisingly positive present, suggesting this time that nostalgia can be misplaced, at least in terms of the landscape itself. At the same time, the memory evoked of those who made those early plantings is heightened. The piano music itself is mostly built of gentle, slow-moving homophonic chords, tonal but in places quite chromatically convoluted (revolving around the key of Eb); the music ranging across the piano, sometimes quite dramatically. The block chord approach was also there from the start as I had always imagined brass forces playing it at some point. The music was recorded in my home studio as I looked across the valley and is a straightforward attempt to evoke what I saw – steep cloughs and hills, trees (of course), beauty and ugliness, the rural and the urban, light and shade, rain and sun. At the risk of cliché, the valley really is a place of contrasts and so inscribing that sense of place in the music was important. When transcribed and augmented for the quite large forces of brass band (also recorded on location in the band-room, which overlooks the valley) it inevitably took on a more dramatic form, which deepened both its nostalgic quality as well as a sense of place. As has been mentioned, brass and wind bands have been part of the bedrock of amateur music-making in the valley for 200 years so can be immediately related to, by local residents at least, as being very much of the place, with a cultural memory of them extending deep into the past. On a more generic level, the importance of musical ideas in Tree People chimes with the importance, historically and currently, of music making in the valley. Thus the music evokes past and present simultaneously.

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3. Resounding Voices Running concurrently in those sections of the film that include the brass and piano music can be found the most overt example of the functionally interpretive use of digital tools to evoke both a sense of place and nostalgia as well as ecological concerns. The opening section of the film, which lasts about five minutes, features a montage of close-up and wider shots of tree species and woodlands in the valley, with occasional glimpses of the protagonists. It is an overtly poetic opening, showing the locations and central ‘characters’ whilst emphasising the detail, beauty and poetry of trees. It also sets the tone for the film, indicating this is not a conventional documentary, it is a poetic evocation seeking to go beyond pure naturalism to find ‘larger implications than the surface realities may suggest’ (Anderson in Sussex 1969: 12); it will show more than it tells; it is about pleasurable viewing and listening as much as information; it is deeply concerned with nature and our relationship to it. The pacing and length of the section is determined by the piano music that articulates and flows across edits and reaches its conclusion as the section ends. Unadulterated location sound is mixed in subtly to create a basic sense of space and place, occasionally dropping out completely to draw the listener into a more abstract world. At the same time an almost independent and crucial audio layer is in operation. Whilst filming short interviews on camera with various tree planters I asked them to say the names of the trees planted – ‘oak, ash, Scott’s pine … alder; whitebeam, occasionally; I plant the trees that I’m told to plant’ their voices reflecting the varied make-up of the Society in both accent and diction. I then edited these words into isolated fragments and inputted them to a software process that randomly selected them for playback whilst I manipulated the randomising parameters live. These parameters controlled the rate of change, the range of samples drawn on and whether the whole sample fragment was played or just part of it. Running simultaneously was another software process that took these same samples and sometimes other spoken fragments and tree planting sounds and performed a much more radical deconstruction of the sounds, rapidly chopping them up into isolated phonemes or sonic gestures, reversing them, and changing amplitude and equalization parameters quite dramatically. Again, I controlled these parameters live as well as the mix between the two processes. The output of both processes was then fed through some subtle delay, reverberation and modulation effects to smooth and help gel the whole output. I ran these processes several times, recording my efforts. The final version was then layered into the mix, with further subtle amplitude tweaking, under the piano music. The final result is a bed of disembodied fragmented voices of the tree planters reciting the names of trees they plant

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and the planting sounds they make as a result, that mostly flows independently of all the other audio and image material. Sound and image are linked though by the fact that the images seen during this section are of those trees and people but any actual specific congruence of tree species and person is arbitrary and random. Also since all the sounds were recorded outdoors at tree planting sites, their ambience allows them to bed into the location sounds associated directly with the images already present in the mix. Later in the film this section returns, in somewhat different form, with the brass band music coming to the fore as the fruits of the Society’s fifty-year endeavours are made more apparent with panoramic shots of the valley as well as more close detail of bantering, humorous interactions of the members. Crucially, this time the tree species are augmented by some archive audio of a founding Society member, Wilf Procter, reciting the names of places that the Society has planted in, ‘Broad Oak, Leymoor, Slaithwaite, Paddock … Netherwood; the steep land, facing the valley which runs along below Crosland Moor’; also subject to the same randomised processing. His is a single voice with a distinctive Yorkshire accent and, combined with the lower quality audio timbre inherent in the old recording, enables these fragments to be distinct. So here the collage of voices evokes both place and species, the present and the past, continuity and heterogeneity. They exist in a slightly surreal space separate from the specifics of the locations and people depicted but still obviously connected, sitting somewhere between them and the brass band music that exists in a more conventional musically abstracted space though of itself still evoking the valley as described earlier. Driven by the ‘overwhelming multisensory character of perceptual experience’, we end up with what Feld describes as a ‘multisensory conceptualization of place’ and here, history and ecology also. It is place as both heard, viewed and felt, ‘sounding and resounding’ (Feld 1996: 94).

Conclusion: A Poetry of Sound As long ago as 1930, at the very beginning of the use of sound in documentary film, founding father of the form, John Grierson, suggested that the ‘wide-open world of sound is there for the taking to be built for the purpose of art … in the simple registry of the whispering nuances of life itself … there must be a poetry of sound which none of us knows … meanings in footsteps, voices in trees, and woods of the day and night everywhere’ (1930: 13). It cannot be said that Grierson’s poetic approach became the mainstay of documentary sound production, even in the work

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of the unit he subsequently led at the GPO (with just a few famous exceptions); journalistic approaches and concerns about ‘authentic’ unmediated representation quickly began to dominate and continue to do so today. The germ of his ideas survived nevertheless, as a way to get closer to what he called the ‘really real’ rather than surface reality, an abstract, ‘poetic reality which exist[s] beneath the rational’ (Aitken 1990: 114). As Brecht has said: “realism [doesn’t] show what things really ‘look like’ but how they really are” (Sussex 1969: 12) and as some of the contents of this book collection show: the ‘poetry of sound’ to this end is now known. So, whilst factual and informational ‘telling’ is important in sections of Tree People, it is its combination with and subtle shifts to poetic ‘showing’ that is very much at the heart of the sonic and overall design of the film that aims to embed the very actions of making it into its subject matter as well as to evoke a sense of place, history and nostalgia, and the natural world. Tree People is ultimately a positive film, showing how dedicated human action can engender recovery in a ravaged landscape. It draws on nostalgia to show how the power of memory can be both a positive force for change as well as a complex conundrum. Trees are symbolic in many ways, not least because of their long lives, often outstripping our own and by hundreds of years. Thus, there is a certain melancholy note in the film, especially towards the end, as it becomes clear that many of the pioneering tree people themselves have died and only saw the fruits of their tree-planting labours partially, if at all. This melancholy is present despite their understanding that this was ‘no reason at all to not plant them’. But those fruits of their and continuing Society members’ labours are obvious today and though it cannot be said that a squirrel can now jump from tree branch to tree branch down the valley’s entire length, as in the days of Elmet, with the exception of the sprawl of the valley’s larger villages, it almost can.

Bibliography Aitken, Ian (1990) Film and Reform: John Grierson and the Documentary Movement. London: Routledge. A Film About Nice, Keith Marley and Geoffrey Cox, UK, 2010. Allen, Aaron, S. (2011) ‘Ecocriticism and Musicology’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 64(2): 391-394. Beresford, M. W. and G. R. J. Jones (1967) Leeds and its Regions, Leeds: Leeds Local Executive of the British Association. Bentley, Phyllis (1947) Colne Valley Cloth, Huddersfield: The Huddersfield and District Woolen Export Group.

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Brook, Roy (1968) The Story of Huddersfield, London: MacGibbon and Kee Ltd. Caux, Jacqueline (2012) Almost Nothing with Luc Ferrari, Berlin: Errant Bodies Press. Cider Makers, Keith Marley, UK, 2007. Cole, Matt (2013) Richard Wainwright, the Liberals and Liberal Democrats: Unfinished Business, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Cox, Geoffrey (2013) ‘Listen to Nice’, The New Soundtrack 3(2): 89–105. Cox, Geoffrey (2011) “’Connecting hearing to viewing and knowing to feeling’: sound as evocation in non-fiction film with particular reference to No Escape (Cox, 2009)”, The Soundtrack 4(1): 43–62. Feld, Steven and Keith H. Basso (1996) Senses of Place. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press. Grierson, John (1930) ‘On the Talkie Horizon’, The Clarion, January: 13. Lane, Cathy and Angus Carlyle (2013) In the Field: the Art of Field Recording, Axminster: Uniform Books. Nichols, Bill (1991). Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. No Escape, Geoffrey Cox, UK, 2009. Porter, John (1980) The Making of the Central Pennines, Ashbourne: Moorland Publishing Co Ltd. Rehding, Alexander (2011) ‘Ecomusicology Between Apocalypse and Nostalgia’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 64(2): 409414. Russell, Dave (1992) ‘Music in Huddersfield, c.1820-1914’ in E. A. Hilary Haigh (ed) Huddersfield: A Most Handsome Town, Huddersfield: Kirklees Cultural Services, pp. 653-676. Schafer, Murray (1994) The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World, Rochester VT: Destiny Books. Sussex, Elizabeth (1969) Lindsay Anderson, London: Studio Vista. Tree People, Geoffrey Cox, UK, 2014. Watkins, Holly (2011) ‘Musical Ecologies of Place and Placelessness’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 64(2): 404-408.

CHAPTER SIX ROLLING THUNDER REVIEW AND THE (RE)PRESENTATION OF HISTORY KAREN D THORNTON

Rolling Thunder Review: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (2019)1 re-tells the story of Dylan’s tour, which coincided with America’s lead-up to the bicentennial celebrations sin July 1976, that saw the 200 year anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The tour itself was particularly significant as Dylan gathered together a collection of musicians to play smaller, more intimate venues, rather than the large-scale arenas of his previous tours. This was all to be captured on film to form part of Renaldo and Clara (1978)2, a piece directed by Dylan himself, but shot by a crew of cinematographers who captured the majority of the historical footage which was subsequently used by Scorsese to form the main body of his film. The tour was an eclectic, performative experience with Dylan at the heart of the Review which featured an impressive supporting cast including Joan Baez, Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Allen Ginsburg and Mick Ronson with cameos from other artists such as Patti Smith. Being carnivalesque in structure, with what Sam Shepherd the playwright who accompanied the tour to work on Renaldo and Clara (1978) describes as an “almost a circus atmosphere, a dog and pony sort of thing” (00.37.4300.37.49), it hit mid 1970’s America, and captured something of the spirit of early forms of travelling performance. In this sense it was a remediated experience from the outset, which sought to capture something of the essence of an earlier era in both form and function; bringing affordable, eclectic entertainment to an audience, albeit in this context, authored by a prominent figure in music industry.

1 2

Rolling Thunder Review: A Bob Dylan Story d. Martin Scorsese, 2019, USA Renaldo and Clara d. Bob Dylan, 1978, USA

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As a remediated experience of the travelling review, popular in the early part of the 20th century, Dylan set out on a journey whereby the performers weren’t kept at a critical distance from the audience, as can clearly be seen in Scorsese’s film. The Review also gathered further contributors along the way, including artist Joni Mitchell who was originally billed for one night only, but stayed on to complete the tour. Mitchell relates in archive footage that she “…got sucked into it. You know, just shelved everything, everything else seemed, uh, minorly important compared to this, like, as an experience and an experiment in communal existence” (01.32.55-01.33.01) such was the dynamic nature and atmosphere of the Review. However, reflecting back at the start of Scorsese’s film, Dylan himself appears to struggle when asked to articulate what the essence of the tour was, and somewhat dismissively states “I’m trying to get to the core of what this Rolling Thunder thing is all about, and I don't have a clue, because its not….it’s about nothing. It’s a….it’s just something that happened 40 years ago. And that's the truth of it.” (2.16.26-2.17.11) But what is the truth of it? What is the truth that Scorsese is attempting to engage with and arguably create in the film? This paper examines the constructed reality in Rolling Thunder Review: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese, and considers the ways in which poetic forms of documentary practice can reveal ideological truths in their reflection on historical events. Whilst there is no doubt that the film is not wholly poetic in its approach, through the clever use of editing and the juxta-positioning of various forms of archive footage, Scorsese manages to reflect the tension of a country caught in the flux of change. The tour was post-Watergate, in an era defined by a growth in civil activism and increased social and political awareness. As people took to the streets to protest against the Vietnam War, fight for the civil rights of African Americans and equality for women, it was also the decade which heralded the first LGBT Pride march, almost one-year to the day of the Stonewall riots in 1969. Considering how fundamental the shift was in how people began to understand the rights of others, there are numerous “histories” available to (re)present, and no single defining story. Rather this was an era whereby the possibilities of emerging new cultures were born, and the film combines footage of how the establishment wanted America to be perceived, and the changing realities a more socially conscious population. From the opening of the film, this complex interweaving is up-fronted perhaps not in an overtly aesthetic way, more it is a subtle interplay of elements which strives to create a narrative that is not didactic, but one which is more about producing association and suggestions for the audience

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to reflect upon. The opening credits themselves give something of the tone of what is to follow, with the George Méliès silent short The Conjuring of a Woman at the House of Robert Houdini (1896) playing out before the title of the film is revealed. Popularly known as The Vanishing Lady Méliès film features a magician who makes his female companion disappear and then reappear. But it is the original French title that feels more apt in relation to Scorsese film as he “borrows” the term conjuring, appearing ahead of the words The Rolling Thunder Revue. The word Review is then word replaced with the word Re-Vue, and the placing of the hyphen in the middle changes the meaning from one which simply states the title of the tour, to one which suggests that what will follow will be a re-look at the archive material, casting a new eye over events to perhaps make different connections to, or present alternative understandings of the past3. Replacing this on screen are the words A Bob Dylan Story and then By Martin Scorsese flashes up. All of this suggests that what is to follow is perhaps not what it appears to be. And this is an interesting point, as the casual observer who knows little about Dylan, or the original Rolling Thunder Review (tour) could easily conclude that all which follows is both historically and factually accurate, as the way in which the manufactured footage has been seamlessly blended with original archive material is difficult to distinguish without prior knowledge. But why does Scorsese play around with perception in this context, if only those “in the know” get the conjuring trick he is attempting to pull off? As the film is presented in popular discourse as a documentary, perhaps Hogan’s4 assessment that “Rolling Thunder Review: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese tells a timely poetic truth, if not a journalistic one” is an accurate description of how the audience are supposed to read the film, per say. Perhaps it is of no matter whether they can identify “fact” from “fiction”, as this is not one of the purposes of the film. Rather, it is asking the audience to reflect on the construction of reality and how truth(s) can be presented in the form of visual connections to support differing discourses, with those “in the know” being able to identify these with greater clarity,

3 Vue is also the French word for eyesight/vision/view which supports the suggestion

that the use of the hyphen indicates the film is a re-seeing/imagining of the original material. 4 Mike Hogan “Scorsese’s New Dylan Documentary Is the Rebirth Myth America Needs” in Vanity Fair, July 10, 2019, https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/06/martin-scorsese-bob-dylandocumentary

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perhaps like those who are able to spot Easter Eggs5 hidden in videogames, films and television series. And not to be forgotten, at the heart of this is Dylan as musician and performer. There is a distinction to be made here, as the film plays to an audience familiar with Dylan’s musical repertoire and those familiar with him as someone who plays around with his persona and allows others to do the same. Scarlet Rivera sums this up eloquently in the film when she ““Mr Tambourine Man gives us the opportunity to be whoever we wish to be” (00.54.30-00.54.37) and equally Scorsese gives the audience cinematic materiality in order for us to make the story whatever we wish it to be. An early example of this can be seen straight out of the credit sequence. The film presents archive footage taken at the Bicentennial Day celebrations of July 4th 1976, edited sections taken from ex-President Richard Nixon’s celebration speech, cut with footage of Dylan reflecting on the fall of Saigon in Vietnam and the two subsequent assassination attempts on current President Gerald Ford in September 1975. Overlaying all this is a live performance of Mr Tambourine Man6, a song reputedly about a drug taking, which Dylan has often denied. However the denial is of little consequence as it just adds to the mythology that surrounds him, and his on-going play with the concepts of truth and reality within his own work. Six minutes into the documentary Dylan reflects, “Life isn't about finding yourself, or finding anything, life is about creating yourself, creating things” (00.06.1700.06.22) which is an open acknowledgement that in his view truth is a malleable entity and ripe for manipulation, invention and in the case of this film, also critical reflection. Towards the end of the film, the Review takes a trip out to a Native American Reservation and the footage is intercut with archive film of Chief Rolling Thunder discussing the negative impact of the settlers in their homeland, and how he was given his name as a child because of his love of storms. (01.34.35) Over this archive footage Dylan explains, “This tour was named after Chief Rolling Thunder. So it made sense that we go to the Tuscarona Indian Reservation and play.” (01.35.11-01.35.19) But even the very name of the Review itself appears open to question, as in an earlier interview with Larry “Ratso” Sloman he claimed Dylan changed the 5

Easter eggs are hidden features contained within film, television and video games. In films they are generally references, inside jokes or clues which, whilst adding value for some members of the audience do not undermine the experience of those who fail to pick up on the references. 6 Mr Tambourine Man Bob Dylan 1965

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proposed name from Montezuma’s Review after he himself heard thunder; “he [Dylan] was just kind of trying to think of a name for the tour, when all of a sudden in the sky he heard ‘Boom’. And then from left to right punctuating the sky, ‘Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom’. So he said, ‘Hey, let’s call it Rolling Thunder’. So before we even left, Chesley Millikin, who was on the tour, says ‘Bob, you know what Rolling Thunder means to the Indians?’ And he goes ‘What man?’ and Chesley goes ‘Speaking truth’. And then Bob goes ‘I’m glad to hear that, man’.” (00/27.25-00.28.01) Sloman ends by saying they later found out this was also the code name given to the campaign to bomb Cambodia (1965-68), and concludes “So who knows what the real story is.” (00.28.08) Perhaps here the “real” story is that Scorsese and Dylan are subtly suggesting that the audience need to question everything that is presented before them. Whilst mainstream America was celebrating its bicentennial year, it was advocating a dominant cultural ideology which stripped the Native American’s of their place within their own land. In this context, Dylan claiming that he heard thunder and he named the Review is a demonstration of how easy cultural appropriation is, claiming ownership over something which is not his to have, and the film is critiquing the integrity of an ideology (not of Dylan himself) which advocates making claim to things not rightfully yours. Adding a further layer to this is the almost throwaway line that this was, in fact, the name given to the American bombing campaign on Cambodia. Whilst being factually correct, it was perhaps accidental that both the Review and a bombing campaign both ended up with the same name, but does demonstrate the audacity of a Government administration who took a name, which represented the concept of “speaking the truth” in Native American folk law, as their operational title. In The Politics of Documentary Chanan (2007) argues for the liberation of the camera “now able to follow subjects across social boundaries and borders which previously served to keep it from intruding…to wander into the semi-private spaces and exclusive places of everyday social life, in short, to cross from the public sphere into the private domain.”7 And part of the pleasure of the film is that we do see moments where the protagonists (the musicians, artists, professional entourage, and those passers-by just caught up in the moment) are caught “off guard”, and snatches of overheard conversations are captured, where discreet filming in a public space has revealed these private moments. But maybe these are illusionary too, as 7

Chanan, Michael (2007) The Politics of Documentary BFI: London, p.166

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around 17 minutes into the film Sloman talks to a woman Dylan had a conversation with in the audience and tells her Dylan said to one of the cameramen “’That is hot. That was a hot scene.’” (00.17.18-00.17.22). He asks her whether this was “set up?” (00.17.30). She claims it wasn’t, but the performer in Dylan consciously recognised the cinematic potential of this encounter, giving a valuable insight into an artist who is constantly engaged with shaping the perception of himself; the woman understood the encounter to be a conversation between her and Dylan, whilst he thought of the encounter as a “scene”. Nichols (2001) argues that the poetic form of documentary emerged most successfully within the modernist movements prevalent during the early part of the twentieth century; that more experimental forms of representation were developed and “the filmmaker’s way of seeing things took a higher priority than demonstrating the cameras ability to record what it saw faithfully and accurately.”8 Whilst it cannot be argued that in the conventional sense both Dylan (with the original footage) and Scorsese film using abstract conventions, as has been suggested above, much of the footage is the liberated form associated with the observational mode of documentary practice, where the camera attempts to unobtrusively follow the action, what Scorsese does is invoke poetic realism through the juxtaposition of Dylan’s original footage, archive material and “manufactured simulation” to present (or maybe represent) a version of both Dylan’s and America’s past. Scorsese uses these strategies to create an engagement with a manufactured higher, ideological truth about a historical moment in time, using tangible and intangible evidence to encourage the audience to feel this is an authentic version of history, whilst at the same time signposting that this is just one of many versions. Nichols claims “The poetic mode is particularly adept at opening up the possibility of alternative forms of knowledge to the straightforward transfer of information, the prosecution of a particular argument or point of view…this mode stresses mood, tone and affect much more than displays of knowledge or acts of persuasion.”9 and it is this that lies at very heart of Rolling Thunder Review: A Bob Dylan Story. As the majority of the film re-uses archive material, Bruzzi (2000) makes an interesting point when she considers the relationship both archive and newsreel footage have with “reality”. In New Documentary: A Critical Introduction she draws on the work of Comolli in his critique of Bazin, who argued for the objectivity associated with the camera in the recording of 8 9

Nichols, Bill (2001) Introduction to Documentary Indianapolis; IUP p.89 Nichols, Bill (2001) Introduction to Documentary Indianapolis; IUP p.103

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events. Comolli suggests that as reality has been captured by a form of representation (the camera itself) it is transformed and thus Bruzzi notes “the human eye renders irretrievable the original meaning of the events being recorded”10 and significantly suggests “The fundamental issue of documentary film is the way in which we are invited to access the ‘document’ or ‘record’ through representation or interpretation, to the extent that a piece of archive material becomes a mutable rather than fixed point of reference”.11 It is this “mutability” which is of significance here; both Scorsese and Dylan use the mutability of the footage to create new narrative(s), which provide a reflexive, poetic engagement with both mid 1970’s America and the original artistic Review which Dylan took to the road. But what adds further complexity to this is the use of fake archive, embedded into the film to make it appear authentic, and the contemporary interviews which support this “fakery”. In Williams’ (2005) article Mirrors Without Memories: Truth, History, and the New Documentary she begins by discussing an example which illustrates the ease in which visual imagery can be “manipulated construction”12 and introduces the ways in which postmodernism can be thought to liberate mechanical forms of visual representation from their real-life referent. In the age of digital manipulation and the development of more sophisticated technologies, the ability to render visible what was once merely part of a filmmaker imagination has facilitated a form of visual engagement that allows them to play around with the audiences’ perception of a subject. In other words, filmmakers are able (and willing) to produce forms of engagement which do not solely rely on some form of tangible “reality” to tell a story. And fundamentally documentaries are a form of storytelling, albeit with the caveat that they are asking the audience to believe that what it is they are being told is in some way connected to a truth. But what if what they are being told is partly confection, a recreation of a moment in time told through the eyes of a filmmaker, who wasn’t present at the events?

10

Bruzzi, Stella (2000) New Documentary: A Critical Introduction (Second Edition), London: Routledge p. 12 11 Bruzzi, Stella (2000) New Documentary: A Critical Introduction (Second Edition), London: Routledge p. 12 12 Williams, Linda (2005) “Mirrors Without Memories: Truth, History, and the New Documentary” in Alan Rosenthal and John Corner (Eds.) New Challenges for Documentary (Second Edition), London: BFI p.59

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Bruzzi (2000) suggests “the historical event does not only reside in the past but is inevitably connected to the present.”13 Whilst Scorsese was not actually present at the original Review he was very much a part of American culture at the same time Dylan was embarking on his tour. As a filmmaker at the forefront of the American New Wave, he was producing films that critiqued American culture and embraced techniques that facilitated an alternative form of engagement to those which strictly adhered to classic Hollywood narrative. In this context, it could be considered that Scorsese is using this past historical event to create his own critique of mid 1970’s American ideology and complicit in this is Dylan himself who appears more than happy to go along with the façade. An interesting example of how this works is the inclusion of the famous Hollywood actress Sharon Stone, as her “story” can be considered to critique both past and present culture, linking the two worlds together. Scorsese creates a staged intervention where the present, in the form of actress Sharon Stone, interjects with the past. Reflecting on how she met Dylan and her “role” in the Rolling Thunder Review (tour), Scorsese creates archive footage of her historical presence, to authenticate her story, when in reality she was never actually there. This fabrication creates a sense of discord, and gives the audience space to reflect on why Stone has been embedded within the narrative. What is her function? What is the critical commentary being made here? Her “story” is one of up-and-coming model aspiring to be an actress, who has a chance encounter with a rock star, and is subsequently invited on the tour as a backstage hand. She falls-for a deceit when Dylan tells her Just Like a Woman14 was written about her; a song featured on his album Blonde on Blonde released 10 years earlier, and comes across as eager to both impress, and be impressed. Over an archive photograph which appears to feature a young Stone on the cover of two magazines she asks the audience “Everyone wants to be a movie star don't they?” (01.25.35-01.25.40), and Dylan then recall’s, with little conviction as to the plausibility of such a thing “She, uh, used to tell me uh, someday she’s going to be a famous actress. Uh, okay.” (01.25.42-01.25.50) It is no accident that the actress chosen to “play” this role is Sharon Stone, who became cultural currency through her controversial role in the Verhoeven film Basic Instinct (1992)15. While she has subsequently 13

Bruzzi, Stella (2000) New Documentary: A Critical Introduction (Second Edition), London: Routledge p. 25 14 Just Like a Woman Bob Dylan 1966 15 Basic Instinct (d.Paul Verhoeven, USA, 1992)

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attempted to create critical distance from this, claiming she was duped into the infamous “uncrossed legs” scene, and not giving her consent, she will forever be associated with it. It is a tangible example of the exploitation associated with Hollywood practices of the past and present, an institution in which Scorsese works, but does not condone the practices of. Whilst initially this Easter Egg might feel like a flight of fancy, it creates a direct connection between past and present, and also clearly creates “alternative forms of knowledge to the straight transfer of information”16 as suggested by Nichols earlier, as Stones story is one which can be read in more than one way. In Simulacra and Simulation17 Baudrillard (2004) identified the twentieth century as the starting point for the Third Order in-which we now exist, whereby signs have become completely liberated from the real, and rather than stand in place of the real, have become the real. There is a collapse of the real with the imaginary, and in this epoch we simulate our own truths and present them through mediated discourses which are sold to us as representing reality. Documentary as a concept is complicit in this, as it is a culturally defined entity which uses a series of conventions to convince the audience that what they are engaging with is truthful, authentic, real. Rolling Thunder Review: A Bob Dylan Story is a perfect example of a film commonly labelled as a documentary, that blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction to arguably do what Nichols suggests is part of their remit, which is “like other discourses of the real, retain(s) a vestigial responsibility to describe and interpret the world of collective experience, a responsibility that is no small matter at all. But even more, it joins these other discourses (of law, family, education, economics, politics, state, and nation) in the actual construction of social reality.”18 The crucial aspect here is that Nichols acknowledges the artifice that is inherent in the creation of texts which purport to represent reality, and their ability to also construct, and this is the strength of Scorseses film. Rolling Thunder Review: A Bob Dylan Story not only constructs, but is poetically evocative, or perhaps provocative is a more apt description as Scorsese uses both form and narrative to deconstruct the past and reflect on the present. Filmmaker Julian Temple (2013) discussing his film Glastonbury 16

Nichols, Bill (2001) Introduction to Documentary Indianapolis; IUP p.103 Baudrillard, Jean (2004) Simulacra and Simulation Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser Michigan: Michigan University Press 18 Nichols, Bill (1991) Representing Reality Bloomington: Indiana University Press p.10 17

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(2006)19 suggests “there is a sense in making these films of trying to make sense of your own life and the time you’ve lived through”20 and Scorsese and Dylan whilst working their way through their archive, are trying to make sense of both the past and the present. Effectively using what Bruzzi argues is the mutabability of archive material, the film is a timely, poetic invocation which invites the audience to make connections and reflect on ideological truth.

Bibliography Baudrillard, Jean (2004) Simulacra and Simulation Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser Michigan: Michigan University Press Bruzzi, Stella (2000) New Documentary: A Critical Introduction (Second Edition), London: Routledge Chanan, Michael (2007) The Politics of Documentary BFI: London Hogan, Mike “Scorsese’s New Dylan Documentary Is the Rebirth Myth America Needs” in Vanity Fair, July 10, 2019, https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/06/martin-scorsese-bobdylan-documentary Nichols, Bill (1991) Representing Reality Bloomington: Indiana University Press —. (2001) Introduction to Documentary Indianapolis; IUP Williams, Linda (2005) “Mirrors Without Memories: Truth, History, and the New Documentary” in Alan Rosenthal and John Corner (Eds.) New Challenges for Documentary (Second Edition), London: BFI Rolling Thunder Review: A Bob Dylan Story d. Martin Scorsese, 2019, USA

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Glastonbury (d. Julian Temple, UK, 2006) Temple, Julian (2013) “Documentaries and music” in James Quinn This Much is True: 12 Directors on Documentary Filmmaking London: Bloomsbury p.236 20

CHAPTER SEVEN POETIC LEAPS, INVENTIONS AND THE PRODUCTION OF REALITY IN THE MAKING OF TOWN OF STRANGERS TREASA O’BRIEN

Introduction Town of Strangers (dir. Treasa O’Brien, Ireland, 82mins, 2021) is a film about making a film. It explores the performative potential of auditions, performance of self, shared anthropology, reflexive cinema and the agency of the subject-participant. It is a documentary of the imagination, with many scenes transcending the genres of documentary and fiction. Town of Strangers is a film that searches for methods of working with the other in documentary filmmaking practice to express how we live our lives in our imagination, and how the stories we tell ourselves about our lives are performed as we tell them. These methods are experimental and are practiced as forms of research into how reality, or truth, is produced, rather than found, or observed, through the process of filmmaking. My methodology responds to Lila Abu-Lughod’s (1991, 473) urge to anthropologists ‘to write about lives so as to constitute others as less other’ which I extend as a challenge to film lives so as to constitute others as less other. I made Town of Strangers over a 4-year period, whilst doing a PhD by practice in University of Westminster, supervised by Joshua Oppenheimer (dir. Act of Killing) and Prof May Adadol Ingawanij. I write here as a practitioner as well as an academic, hence I write about my own methodology and experience of filmmaking, in relation to making the film Town of Strangers, made in parallel with the thesis. The thesis and the film are framed as an encounter between filmmaker and subjects, filmmaker and the material, and between the filmmaker and herself.

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When I was making Town of Strangers a major element of my methodology came from the desire to document people performing in and from their own imaginative space. I experimented with methods of ethnofiction, shared anthropology, storytelling, psychodrama, dreaming, memory and fantasy enactment, working with people to perform their selves and encountering them with my own imagination. It is through the active making of the film, the engagement between the participant-subjects and myself, in the fabulation, enactment and performance, that reality in the film is created. Town of Strangers is a documentary that produces reality through the encounter created by the filmmaking itself. It is a making-of of itself. The film’s world includes auditions, observational documentary and magical realist dream scenes. Town of Strangers transcends, rather than joins together, the formal methods and traits of documentary and fictional cinema, going deep into the experience of migration and home through cinematic methods. The term ‘hybrid’ denotes the joining together of two forms, but limits the idea to normative understandings of non-fiction and fiction, or ‘real’ and ‘not real’ rather than something beyond, or else. I use the term documentary of the imagination, a term coined by Joshua Oppenheimer, who is the Executive Producer of Town of Strangers and advised on its methodology from its inception. It might be more apt, albeit less punchy, to call Town of Strangers a documentary of how the imagination performs itself. In this chapter, adapted from sections of my PhD thesis, I draw on Gilles Deleuze’s idea of storytelling as fabulation, reflecting on how my method of using the audition apparatus replaces and expands the traditional documentary interview. I focus on the process, or affect, of telling a story or a dream, rather than on testimonial or on the content of the story or dream itself. I draw on Judith Butler’s theory of identity as performative, Deleuze’s ‘powers of the false’ as well as Herzog’s poetic, or ecstatic, truth. I reflect on how my methods evolve from Jean Rouch’s methods of cinematic ethnofiction, and how the making-of and making-with methods that I used, contributed to the performance of self as a creator of truth(s). This leads into a reflection on how I created the dream scenes with the subject-participants, as a making-with process rather than as an end product. I explore the lines of flight in the film when protagonists took control or intervened in their representation and how my response and methods aimed to nurture such ruptures. My research aims to contribute to a new understanding of the politics of performativity and participation in cinema through a reinterpretation of the agency of the subject as storyteller.

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1 Story-telling as Fabulation Let us begin with storytelling. The opening scene of Town of Strangers reveals the director (me) driving a van through the small town of Gort (population 2994) in the west of Ireland, calling out from a loudspeaker inviting people to an open casting call. I asked them to ‘come and tell me your dreams, lies, memories and gossip’. I used these terms as they have particular potential for fabulating; they are neither true nor false, but they are speech acts (Austin, 1962), that become stories as we perform them. I wanted to get away from testimonials and find a way of accessing the interior psyche of people. The stories that were told in the audition reveal something of the storyteller, how they experience life, and how they interpret the world from their subjective perspectives that was beyond the content of what they said. I asked the auditionees to enact some of those stories, be they memories, dreams or other kinds of stories. I was interested in what might be revealed and produced by the process of telling and inventing, more than I was in the dream content itself. Storytelling, including recalling a memory or a dream, is an act of imagination, in that when we tell stories we are inventing, and when we tell them again, we change them and re-invent them. This is not falsifying; rather, truths are made visible in the process of the telling itself as a creative act. Gilles Deleuze, building on Bergson’s concept of myth-making (Bergson, 1954, 108, cited by Hongisto, 2010, 9), adapted the term fabulation to describe the method of making fiction in cinéma-vérité as a cinema-truth or truth of cinema. The translation of fabulation in the English edition of Cinema II is ‘story-telling’ (Deleuze, 1985/1997, xvii), pertaining to how one fabricates and invents as one tells a story. By speaking, by telling, we are making our identities. One performs one’s self into being, when telling stories in front of a camera, and thus, the production of reality happens. For Deleuze, fabulation is already occurring when people speak on camera, in the way that they invent as they tell stories based on their memories, perceptions, hopes and dreams, and in the way that the person and their story ‘intertwine with one another’ (Hongisto, 2018, 192). When the protagonists in Town of Strangers engage in the speech act of telling their memories and dreams, they begin to ‘make fiction’ but they are not ‘fictional’ (Deleuze 1989, 150).

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According to Ilona Hongisto, ‘making fiction is the creative story-telling act that has an immediate impact on the lives of the filmed subjects’ (2018, 192). These stories originate in our subconscious mind, and are neither factual nor fictional, but they tell us something about the lived experiences of the storyteller. They are stories that we tell about our lives, individually and collectively, stories that reveal something of our character and of our desires as people. But, most importantly, we invent ourselves as performative beings as we tell the stories, and this is how reality was produced during the filmic situation at the auditions. What I discovered through the encounter of asking for, and listening to, these stories, is that, by inviting people to filmed auditions, I was making the stories with the subject-participants. What was ‘real’ was not the content or factuality of the story, but the process of telling itself, including the performative space of the audition and our relationship to one another. As Herzog famously said, if you want facts, read the telephone book (Herzog, 2007). Through the storytellers’ gestures – such as Rosa’s sweetness mixed with her embodied anxiety (furrowed brow, sighing and massaging her shoulders); Rowan’s complex subtext of herself via her facial expressions; Ana’s relaxed and composed demeanour; how Hamid uses the audition room to have his desperate loneliness witnessed – they tell us more about them than the content of their stories does. Sensory and affective storytelling is part of the fabulation of people’s invention of themselves as characters. In other scenes in the film, outside of the audition space, this also occurs, for example, in the expression of how Hamid carries himself as he runs; in Ralf’s hand gestures when he tells stories and his gestures of flying; in Josie’s dance in the Evangelist church when she is thrown to the ground repeatedly. The performance of self is celebrated as something actualised by the act of filming through these embodied movements, in which the protagonists express and invent their realities through their embodied expressions and movements, as much as through their speech. In Town of Strangers, the audition space is set up, with its theatre set of a traditional country kitchen, as a situation to encourage fabulation. My desire to experience people telling stories in front of the camera, was to see what reality might be produced with the protagonists when ‘making fiction’ without being fiction. I used the audition space as a way to allow people the opportunity to perform themselves self-consciously rather than to observe them or ask them for testimonial. The audition was a ruse or an ‘invention’, as Herzog might call it (Herzog, 2002). It is Herzogian in the sense of it being a way to produce a poetic truth of the subject-participant’s sense of themselves as film subjects. The invention of the audition brought about a

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situation in which a (poetic) truth could be created. This truth is not waiting to be revealed, a verb that presumes the truth to be already there. My premise is that truth is created or produced by what we do, not revealed, including documentary filmmaking. Herzog might say truth can be ‘reached’. There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization (Herzog, 1999).

2 The Other as Less Other Lila Abu-Lughod writes that one must accept Geertz’s insight (1973, 8) that all anthropological writings are fictions, but are not fictitious. This echoes the Deleuzian notion of making fiction as different to being fictional as discussed above (Deleuze 1989, 150). Anthropological writings – and I extend this to documentary films – are always, and can only be, interpretive, but that does not mean that they are incorrect or false; to be fictitious would mean to be untrue. As my research project is from the point of view of filmmaking, rather than from ethnography or anthropology, I then rephrase these statements as: all films (even those called documentaries), are fictions but are not fictitious. Abu-Lughod cites Strathern’s description of the difference between anthropologists and feminist scholars, in terms of ‘the nature of the investigator’s relationship to the Other’ (Strathern, 1985, 289, cited by AbuLughod, 1991, 467). For Abu-Lughod, what is critical is the self/other relationship; one that she finds anthropology seems to have a different relationship with, than feminism does, due to its history as ‘a discipline built on the historically constructed divide between the West and the non-West’. It has been and continues to be primarily the study of the non-Western other by the Western self, even if in its new guise it seeks explicitly to give voice to the Other or to present a dialogue between the self and other, either textually or through an explication of the fieldwork encounter’ (AbuLughod, 1991, 467).

This description of anthropology seems to me to be also applicable to the lineage of documentary culture. I wanted to work against this patriarchal and colonial relationship and find ways of filmmaking and working with one another that were at least fair, if not liberatory. Abu-Lughod asks: ‘what happens when the ‘other’ that the anthropologist is studying is simultaneously constructed as, at least partially, a self?’ (1991, 472). This question immediately inverts the self/other relationship: when the other becomes the self, the

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anthropologist can recognise herself as the other, rather than the people she studies. The other is always, at least partially, a self. My position, as author and subject-participant of the film Town of Strangers, is one of insider and outsider; thus I am both anthropologist and other. Anthropologist, Clifford Geertz developed his reflection on ethnography at home, departing from psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut’s concepts of ‘experiencenear’ and ‘experience-distant’ (1983, 57). If you are too inside a culture, then you cannot see beyond its immediacies, while if you are too outside, then you are in danger of becoming too abstract. For Geertz, both positions are a type of confinement. Geertz is against interpretations of culture from the native’s perspective, which he likens to ‘an ethnography of witchcraft as written by a witch’, and he also decries the distant ‘ethnography of witchcraft as written by a geometer’ (1983, 57). Remembering to keep a fresh perspective, to switch between my positions of witch and geometer, and vice versa, especially over time, is key to my process. However, I wish to claim the position of the witch inside the research that Geertz writes against, as these others are at least partially part of my own self. I am also an outsider looking in, constructing myself as an other, as well as a self.

The twin strategies of writing the self, in the third person, as I did in the text of my thesis, and, in the film with cinematic grammar, explore possible ways of responding to Abu-Lughod’s questions: What happens when the ‘other’ that the anthropologist is studying is simultaneously constructed as, at least partially, a self? (1991, 468); and to extend her challenge to ‘write about lives so as to constitute others as less other’ (1991, 473) and apply it to a filmmaking process. The invention of staging myself (or selves) within the film is a way to respond to my adapted version of Lila Abu-Lughod’s challenge: are there ways to film lives so as to constitute others as less other? The construction or invention of my self as an other in the film, a character whom I call ‘T’, is an expansion of what we understand to be first-person filmmaking (Lebow, 2012) but, in this case, I am a subject treated in a similar fashion to the others in the film, hence this might be called third person filmmaking. I do not narrate or take the centre; rather, the audience watch and identify with me as an other amongst others. In this way, my construction of self is a recognition of what happens, or what potential is there, when we consider the other as, at least partially, a self. This process of placing myself within the film in the third person transforms it into a singular plural, a ‘speaking with’ others to make a ‘cinema of we’ (Lebow,

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2012, 2, drawing on Nancy, 2000). Together, we create a sensorial embodiment of our lived experiences, through acts of imagination. The character and story of T is an improvised fiction without being fictitious, through the scriptwriting and performance, and can be read as a Herzogian invention or poetic truth and also operates as a Deleuzian power of the false. The power of the false offers a way to think about how truth is produced, not found. Deleuze explores this idea in cinema, based on the philosophy of Nietzsche and his idea of truth itself as a fiction (Deleuze, 1985/1997, 149). Deleuze refers to Nietzsche’s concept of the will to power, that is ‘no longer subjugated to a model of truth’ (Hongisto, 2018, footnote 1, 198). The power of the false, according to Deleuze, is a claim that truth cannot be found or described; the artist must create it (1985/1997, 146-7). But it must also be shown to be created. This act of showing its own creation is how the reflexive making-of methodology is manifested in the film. One example of this in my interaction with Ralf when I am trying to film him ‘flying’ in front of my amateur green screen. In another scene, the creation of the scene is shown in a reflexive manner when my voice appears from behind the camera and I ask him “is it ok to have cider in the shot?”. What is reflected, or constructed, in this question is the process of creating that scene, and the relationship between Ralf and the filmmaker as something being negotiated in the present moment. This interaction, which includes the encounter between the filmmaker and the subject as they invent a scene, is part of the film’s story and meaning. As I construct, and fabulate the character of my self as T, I am simultaneously constructing my relationship with others. The others, in this case, are inhabitants of Gort, who are not a generic group; they are many and they are complex and they are each particular in themselves. By writing myself into the film as an other vulnerable human being, with my own hybridised identity and my ongoing search for home and community, I become more than a reflexive ethnographic filmmaker; I become one character, amongst others, in Gort. This approach to my self as an other amongst others, or a stranger recognising strangers, aims to make those others less other by horizontalizing the treatment of their selves and myself. The relational aspects between us become more than (but includes) that of director-subject only and include a subject-to-subject or other-to-other relation.

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3 Making-of and Making-with I explored shared anthropology and cinematic ethnofictional methods as way to dream with, or make cinema with, the subject-participants. Ethnofiction, also known as ciné-ethnography, as practiced and written about by Jean Rouch, is a method of filmmaking in which subject-participants act out their own lives using improvisation. In Town of Strangers, I worked with people to make scenes in which they improvised their performances of self. Rouch came from a background of anthropological/ethnographic studies, and pioneered ciné-ethnography as a reflexive cinema methodology that included participative strategies. These are evident in his African films Moi, Un Noir (1958), Jaguar (1968) and Coco Rico Monsieur Poulet (1974), and in his French films La Pyramide Humaine (1959) and Chronique d’un Été / Chronicle of A Summer (1960). By having the protagonists invent characters loosely based on themselves, or on their peers, the cinematic apparatus gave rise to subjects reflecting on themselves (De Groof, 114). Rouch called this collaborative process ‘anthropologie partagée’ or shared anthropology. Shared anthropology includes methods of collaborating and showing the film-in-progress to the participants and taking on feedback, and the filmmaker demonstrating a reflexivity around their position and process and how it affected the situation (Rouch in Feld, 2003, 18-20). The process of making ethnofiction is generative, and explores methods of shared authorship, re-enactment and ‘ethnodialogue’, to include the participants in the process of the storytelling and performance. Rouch’s methods of improvisation of the self, with the protagonists of the films, aimed ‘to document not only a culture but to illuminate the interior lives of the people who make up that culture’ (White, 2003, 101-12). Witnessing, as film viewers, the interior life of a subject / character in action enables an audience to relate to them, thereby Rouch’s method could also be understood as a method towards making the lives of others less other. It is through the protagonists’ storytelling and role-playing that the audience understands their reality as subjective. In Town of Strangers, it is through the storytelling of the auditionees, as well as through their subsequent scenes of role-play and self-improvisation, that an audience may share in how they see the world, rather than the audience being the world that sees them. Rouch’s process involved spending time with his protagonists, without filming, or filming by himself without a crew, which he described as ‘the art of patience, and the art of time’ (Rouch and Fulchignoni 2003, 151). He was open to ‘accidents’ (McIntosh, 1978), as part of the improvisation

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method, and as an effect produced from the time he spent embedded with his subjects, not planning everything, but filming spontaneously. In Town of Strangers, many of my planned shoots failed in their original intentions, and I salvaged moments from around those accidents to invent scenes in the edit that caught a certain energy and became the reality of the making-of process of the film, reaching poetic truths rather than observational facts. This accidental filming, arising from the methodology of cinematic ethnofiction, is pertinent to the improvisatory and generative nature of my ethnofiction method. My filmmaking methodology is informed by, but extends from, cinematic ethnofictional methods of shared ethnography, participant improvisation, spending time together, and being open to accidents. What I have discovered is the potential to use methods of shared ethnography as a way to make visible some of the making-of process as part of the ethnofiction method, rather than as a ‘behind-the-scenes’ look. The process itself is what is revealed as the place where cinema-truth is being made. The making-of process performs itself as the production of reality, not a subsidiary part of it. Town of Strangers is influenced by Jean Rouch’s ciné-ethnography or ethnofiction cinema, not just in its formal mixing of genres, but also in its methods of working with protagonists to express their interior experiences through the performance of self. Rouch came to the conclusion that ‘fiction is the only way to penetrate reality’ (Eaton, 1979, 8). Rouch created characters and stories in collaboration with the participant-actors of his films, who improvised from their own selves and lives, in films such as Moi, Un Noir (1958), Jaguar (1968) and Cocorico Monsieur Poulet (1974). His method of ciné-ethnography included improvisation, and shared ethnography in the sense of collaboration and playing back the material and discussing it with the people he filmed. In Chronicle of a Summer, the whole film is an improvised event that produces its own reality through the making-of of itself. It is through these performative situations that identity is constructed as reality because of, and for, the film. Judith Butler’s theory of performativity, as elaborated on in Gender Trouble (1990) is premised upon Foucauldian ideas of knowledge production and on linguistic ideas developed by J.L. Austin (1962). Butler sees (gender) identity not as a pre-found phenomenon but as a performative act. That is, identity, through the rituals of speech and acts, is generated into being by its enactment. Through the repetition of certain rituals, it is brought into being. Thus, it creates itself. Butler’s theory of performativity is helpful to understand the performative nature of

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film. A film is necessarily performative, in that it generates its own identity through its acts, and/or its filmic utterances. Through its own iterative, creative and reflexive gestures, a film generates its own constructed truth. Deleuze viewed the work of Jean Rouch as that which consciously produced a reality through fabulation. In Rouch’s films, Deleuze recognises that it is through the subjects’ invention of themselves as characters, that they become real (1985/97, 150), which can be related to Butler’s theory of identity as performative. When the subjects act as characters, it is not important whether they are acting or not acting, or whether it is documentary or fiction; it is the borders in between and beyond these states that are releasing their potential to create something new, through the method of invention itself. In Rouch’s Moi, un Noir (France, 1958), Nigerian migrant workers living in the Ivory Coast perform as themselves through improvising scenarios from their lives and from how they dream their lives could be. The central subject, Oumarou Ganda, added a voiceover two years later that is not in sync with the film. His voiceover is a jazz-like narration of the film, where he not only plays himself as himself, but also invents himself as the Hollywood actor Edward G. Robinson. He gives personas to his friends including Dorothy Lamour, Lemmy Caution / Eddie Constantine and Tarzan. The subjects invent their personas and stories on screen because Rouch and his camera are filming them. So, it is the situation of the film itself that is providing the impetus to fabulate. In Town of Strangers, the notion of the real as something that is inventing itself, or being produced, through role-playing and storytelling, is influenced by Rouch’s ethnofictional methods and by Butler’s theory of identity as performative. Ethnofiction as a method of improvising the dream/memory scenes with subject-participants was a framework for producing the meaning of the scene. For example, when Elham and Adel tell the story of their sea-crossing to their daughter Habiba, the storytelling became possible because of the filmic situation. This scene came about as a result of a group of 8 international people living in Gort, participating in a workshop based on methods of Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed. The filming encounter provided a situation for them to be witnessed as we listened and then workshopped the story in groups and showed it back to them. Elham and Adel later told me that the process for them was honouring and cathartic, and that they valued the chance to share their story. They fabulate the story as they tell it. It is shot in the theatre where we had held the auditions, not in their home or bathroom. It is a set that is obviously provisional and not meant to be realistic, similar to how I allowed the kitchen set perform in the audition scenes. This bathroom, that is not quite

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a bathroom, like the kitchen in the auditions that is not quite a kitchen, is an invention, a method of drawing the audience’s attention to the production, or construction of reality in the scene. Places, and objects, too, perform. The props perform domesticity but we catch them in the act. They are performing as props at the same time as they are making the fiction of being a domestic setting. This scene was generated through the fabulation of storytelling, and through repetition and improvisation of the telling of a memory. Like Rouch’s ethnofictions, we are watching the performances of the characters. The process of devising and improvising Elham and Adel’s story, through a collaborative workshop, is an expansion of Rouch’s shared ethnography methods. My intention here is not to observe or record testimonial, nor it is it to create a dramatic reenactment or representation of a family at home, nor of the family at sea at another moment. It is self-consciously the (re)presentation of Elham and Adel becoming actors in their own story on a film set, in the present moment. In this sense, the method generated a situation in which Elham and Adel performed themselves, interacting and responding to the actuality of Habiba’s embodied self in relation to them. Together we produced the reality of their storytelling to her. The process of filming makes visible that which was not there to be observed. Hamid told me about a recurring dream he has in which his father reprimands him. Listening to Hamid, I could hear that the voice of his father was still something very strong in his judgment of himself as a success or failure as a person. I invited Hamid to enact his dream. The space became a space for Hamid to work through his experience of self-judgment, through coming into contact with his father, played by a friend of his, John. In Hamid’s dream scene, he co-directs as well as acts in his own story, and this is what we are watching rather than a hermetic fictional scene. Hamid chose the situation, he chose how to play himself, he chose who acted as his father, he chose where to place the furniture and, crucially, he chose when to stop. The ‘acting’ in this scene is awkward; John, a first-time actor, who is playing the role of Hamid’s father, is overstatedly theatrical, and Hamid is understated, shy. And yet we are witnessing Hamid making fiction in the Deleuzian sense. He is inventing himself in this moment. Hamid is rehearsing his own dream and memory, and it is through watching him, in the process of this performing and directing, that we understand the potential for Hamid to self-actualise and to confront his father. But he chooses not to. Hamid denies the audience (and himself) the pleasure of catharsis or resolution that is expected from narrative cinema.

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The dream situation itself is a ruse to produce the reality of Hamid’s relationship, and cathexis, with the material we are working with; in this case, his dream of his father, which is also a memory. They are not professional actors and so their ‘bad’ acting is ‘good’, because it is authentic, and we empathise with them. When we can see ‘bad’ acting and empathise, then we are seeing a documentary of the person self-consciously trying to act as themselves, like Hamid and John do in Hamid’s dream scene. We see the border between the person acting, and the role they are playing, and it is this border, or gap, that is most revealing. We are watching the truth of the person trying to act. Through their sometimes stilted, or overly melodramatic acting, we learn certain documentary or anthropological truths about the people acting. Authentic acting of one's self in documentary is when people are able to re-live their own moments, such as when Elham and Adel are telling the story to Habiba in the bath scene. We empathise with them here because we can see that they are not actors, but that they are reliving their own moment. This makes their performance, though obviously enacted for the camera, also authentic. ‘Hammy’ acting also has its own charms and poetic truth, such as when Hamid and John try to enact Hamid’s dream. John cannot get angry enough, and Hamid is ambivalent. John’s acting, or unwillingness to act more angrily towards Hamid, reveals his tenderness towards Hamid and his unwillingness to hurt him. Hamid’s acting reveals how his politeness and his denial get in the way of the potential of the scene for catharsis. Hamid’s ambivalence about surrendering to the action becomes part of the truth of the performance. The ethnofictional methods I used, such as acting out one’s memories or dreams, illuminated the revelation of self through performance. These methods draw on Rouch’s cinematic ethnofiction as performative ritual, in which the person both performs and observes themself, such as when Hamid confronts his friend John as though John was his father. Through the imaginative and embodied story-telling of the subject-participants in Town of Strangers, their imagination produces a reality that is the becoming of their creative acts of fabulation on film. Memory is here revealed as a process of telling. To remember is to fabulate. The stories we tell ourselves about our own lives have the power of being our own personal folk tales and family myths. They are here made public, ritualised and exorcised through the act of filming as a production of reality with the potential for cathartic process.

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4 Lines of Flight The performance of self as a creator of truth, rather than the reality of self being observed, is something I encouraged and watched out for in the making of Town of Strangers without trying to push it too much as an agenda. I was interested in filming the process of performing the self, which was being created by the filmmaking encounter. The subtext of a person’s story often became the truth of their character rather than the story they appeared to be telling. There are echoes of this subtext of the performing self in Shirley Clarke’s Portrait of Jason (USA, 1967) which Deleuze describes as a film that creates its own truth (1985/1997, 154). Actor Jason Holliday performatively improvises his character via the camera’s presence throughout the night, and through his storytelling and role-playing, he ‘invents himself’ while performing (Hongisto, 2010, 12). Hongisto sees, in Portrait of Jason, how ‘fabulation as a story-telling function provides resistance to the present social orders’ (2011, 13), because ironically, the film gives Holliday the platform and fame that he had been longing for. In Town of Strangers, a moment where such a resistance to the social order opens up, is in Rowan’s audition. She begins with a framing of her memory/dream/gossip/lie (we do not know which) as a story: ‘My story? Well, I was at the bus-stop…’ However, her real story is produced in the gaps and subtext of the apparent story she is telling. Ostensibly, it’s a story about a man who has various identities, but the story that is communicated beyond the words is the mystery of why Rowan is so fragile and why her children have been taken from her, which she mentions only in passing. Her demeanour and performed incredulity at this man, as a character who lies and invents within her story, belies the subtext of her story as a potentially horrific tale of sexual harassment and betrayal. As she builds her story of the lying man, she unravels and reveals a story about herself, creating a different truth from the one she seems to be telling, through her affective performance of self. In the audition, we travel to the place of the other through performance (Hachero, 2016, 167); in this case it is when Rowan takes control of her representation by ‘looking back’. When Rowan’s audition is drawing to a close, Rowan embarks on a Deleuzian ‘line of flight’ that is made possible by the situation of filming, in the moment when she says ‘It’s for the record anyway, it’s there – that’s my story’. She looks around the room, moved by her own story perhaps, and then looks straight into the camera.

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Deleuze and Guattari (1987) theorised a line of flight as a ‘movement of deterritorialization and destratification’, which challenges the status quo and shifts the power dynamic in a situation. Hongisto (2011, 11 citing Smith, 1998, xi–liii) draws on Daniel Smith’s reading of Deleuzian fabulation as ‘resistance … that creates a line of flight on which a minority discourse and a people can be constituted’. This line of flight is a rupture in the film that challenges the audience’s voyeurism and the pleasure of looking. They cannot look at Rowan in the same way that they looked at her a second ago; Rowan has shifted the structure of the gaze. Hachero (2016, 166) observes that, as camera subjects, we make choices about our self-portrayal. He quotes Jean-Louis Comolli (2002, 135): ‘“With an unconscious but certain knowledge, the subject knows that being filmed means exposing oneself to the other”’. In this moment, I believe Rowan is conscious of the risk she has taken in exposing herself, and that her look both acknowledges that exposition and challenges it. Comolli (2002, 136, cited by Hachero, 2016, 166) posits that people have a ‘charge’ when they return our gaze on camera and that we, as an audience, are altered by them. Rowan’s look is charged, and she has chosen, at that moment to take control of how she is portrayed. Rowan seemingly meets the viewer’s gaze and creates a moment of discomfort and connection simultaneously. Eric Hynes writes of a moment in Joshua Oppenheimer’s Look of Silence (2014), when the lead character Adi looks into the camera, as a moment when ‘he sees us’ and ‘he sees himself being seen’ (Hynes, 2015). Rowan sees us, and sees herself being seen, in this moment in Town of Strangers. Rowan’s motive for coming to the audition is unclear, but her demeanour suggests that she may have come to the auditions in order to be witnessed, and to see herself. I included this moment – a moment of self-consciousness of the gaze of the audience – in the cut deliberately, as a strategy towards making her otherness less other. Rowan disrupts the visual pleasure for the audience, who have been suspending their disbelief, that is, suspending their knowledge of ‘real’ time unfolding to enjoy ‘losing’ themselves in an alternative cinematic time and space. The suspension of disbelief relies upon surrendering one’s critical faculties, and believing momentarily, something usually unbelievable for the sake of enjoyment. In a fiction film (or a performative documentary that borrows a fictional cinematic grammar), the audience knows that this is an actor, that monster is a special effect, and so on, and at the same time they choose to immerse themselves in the fictional world within the film. Norman Taylor (2012, 66) posits that immersion or suspension of disbelief and actual disbelief can co-exist. This dual immersion and disbelief is also

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crucial to engaging with the reflexive and performative making-of documentary film that is making itself real as it undoes reality. In the scene where I am heard speaking with Chloe as she looks in the mirror, Chloe performs herself as shy and subdued, but when her little sister tries to come in, a fiery side of her character, something she did not show on the camera, but that I had often witnessed off-screen, was revealed, created by the situation of filming. In this line of flight with Chloe, the audience’s passive observation of Chloe’s gaze on herself via the mirror, is disrupted by the reminding realisation of the film as a performative situation. These moments are unplanned; they are failures or Rouchian accidents that I am open to, in the moment, and actively looking for when editing. It has become a conscious part of my ethnofiction method, learned from experience, to stay open and welcoming to such accidents, and actively seek to use them in the editing process, to construct meaning with them. Similarly, looks to camera become part of the mise-en-scène of the performative making-of film, as a production of its own reality. These moments in the film – such as Rowan’s look to camera, Chloe’s sudden outburst between takes, Hamid’s observation of himself as he directs his own dream scene – cross a threshold, deterritorializing the hermetic world of the documentary for a moment of resistant rupture into the otherwise sealed world of the film. Once these happen, nothing is the same. They change the energy of what comes next. These moments are those where the making-of film as a performative production of reality are most active. Immersion and disbelief are simultaneously possible, as an audience shares in the reality of the filmmaking situation itself, as their encounter with the real. The performative making-of as a conscious filmmaking method reveals that it is the process of telling the dreams and memories that creates meaning, not the presentation of the content of the dream itself. It is in this process of telling – or fabulating – that the subject, and the reality we engage with, is produced.

Conclusion The building of fiction, and the unravelling of it, is a performative makingof method that works with people’s imaginations, that I discovered through the ritual processes of making and unmaking the film Town of Strangers over a four-year period. When I invited some of the people I selected from the auditions to create scenes with me based on the ‘dreams, lies, memories and gossip’ that they told me, I did not know what might happen, but I knew that I wanted them to be collaborative agents in their own representations

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and inventions. I searched for methods that were suitable to this task, that were open and liberatory. These are not re-enactments, but rather performative enactments in a fantastical space, that is also a safe space to improvise and imagine one’s dreams and memories, such as I created with Elham, Hamid and Ralf. I was exploring ways of documenting the stories that people tell about themselves, the fantasies and the memories that we hold in our subconscious mind. What I discovered was not a method to make the subconscious conscious, but that these dreams and memories were not pre-existing realities waiting for me to find ways to film them. They are performative, in that they invent themselves through the act of fabulation, and through the act of filming itself. Through telling, improvising and enacting these stories, we perform them into being. By inviting the participants to enact their dreams or memories, we are documenting the process of imagining, rather than the content of the story itself. I relate the Deleuzian concept of the powers of the false with Werner Herzog’s notion of ecstatic truth and then extend that to understand my own methods of invention as the production of reality rather than the observation of fact. How people responded to my invitation, to invent and to fabulate together with me, revealed my own desire to invent and to fabulate with them, and to invent scenes arising from their stories. By telling and enacting stories, dreams and memories, they invent their own personas and identities because the camera is there to be encountered. Making, or approaching, fiction in order to unravel it as documentary could be called an inverse fabulation, where the action we are witnessing is the storytelling of the protagonists in relation to the fiction they are inventing, thus creating a documentary of the process of imagining. What the film offers, is the acknowledgment of the performative crossings on their behalf, ones that I also make through my fabulation in the editing of these stories. This active fabulating embraces the collaborative agency and power of the shared process and experience with the subjects (and crew). Often, I planned one thing, and something else happened that I followed instead, and in the edit especially, I am again in a performative encounter with the material. My own fabulating, as an author, inventing and improvising in the moment, deviating easily from plans, and generating scenes from the subconscious of the material in the edit, produces reality via the performative making-of documentary film.

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The making-of and making-with as methods may allow for a greater agency – including resistance – by the subject-participants, and allows for a creativity beyond the director’s or the subject’s individual authorship or intention. This also creates a space for challenging the director’s control of the filmic situation, or rupturing the sense of her complete or hermetic authorship. I tried to make room for these interruptions as part of the process of filming as encounter, in the pro-filmic situation and in the edit. These ruptures are emblematic of the dynamic process created between my authorship and the unravelling of my directorial intentions. They are conscious and unconscious; I tried to unearth the unconscious from the material and make something of it, another kind of produced reality. My methods are experiments in becoming closer to subject-participants while also claiming my responsibility for their representation via my authorship. These are methods of speaking with (Nancy, 2000) and speaking nearby (Chen & Minh-ha, 1992). The methods were determined, to a large extent, by the relationship I had with each protagonist. Some were arrived at through careful planning and research, and others were arrived at through ethnofictional methods of improvisation, intuition, accident and failure. The strategies I have used to come closer to the subjects within the world of the film, are to invite and to make space (and time) for collaboration with the subject-participants, and to include myself as one other amongst others, in the written practice and in the film itself, through the representation and performance of myself. The film, and the research, propose that the makingof genre itself is a fabulation of sorts, a story of its own making, that generates itself into a production of reality, because of the film being made. Through methods of working with subject-participants to perform their selves, I aim to develop a language of cinema that is not based on binary notions of fiction and documentary, or of true and false, but to produce a cinema self-conscious of itself as the production of reality through performance itself. The poetic leaps, dream scenes, memory scenes, improvised fictions, enactments and fabulations that we made together as well as those I made while editing, are inventions, in the sense of how Herzog sees inventions, or fabrications, as ways to reach (not observe or reveal) truth. Through such inventions, documentary cinema, and perhaps all creative acts, are shown to be the production of, rather than the observation of, reality. One could go so far as to say that the whole film is a fabulation of my dreaming with the people with whom I made relationships, rather than being a production of their dreams.

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Bibliography Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1991. ‘Writing Against Culture’. In Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present, edited by R.G. Fox. Sante Fe, NM: School of American Research Press, p137-162. Austin, J. L. 1962. How to do things with words. London: Oxford University Press. Bergson, Henri. 1954 (1932). The Two Sources of Morality and Religion. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble, Routledge. Chen, Nancy N., & Minh-ha, Trinh T. 1992. ‘“Speaking Nearby”: A Conversation with Trinh T. Minh-ha’. Visual Anthropology. No. 8 (1), Spring. 82-91. Comolli, Jean-Louis. 2002. Filmar Para Ver. Ediciones Simug. De Groof, Matthias. 2013. ‘Rouch's Reflexive Turn: Indigenous Film as the Outcome of Reflexivity in Ethnographic Film’. Visual Anthropology 26 (2). 109-131. Deleuze, Gilles. 1997 (1985). ‘Chapter Six: The Powers of the False’. Cinema 2: The Time- Image. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 126-147. Deleuze, Gilles. 2005 (1983). Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. Continuum. Deleuze, Gilles. 1997 (1985). Cinema 2: The Time-Image. University of Minnesota Press. Deleuze, Gilles & Guattari, Felix. 1987 (1980). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Eaton, Nick. 1979. Anthropology-Reality-Cinema: The Films of Jean Rouch. British Film Institute. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. ‘Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture’. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books, 3-30. Hachero Hernández, Bruno. 2016. ‘Fabulation and Performance of the Killer in Joshua Oppenheimer’s Documentaries’. L'Atalante: Revista de estudios cinematográ cos. No. 23. 159-170. Herzog, Werner and Cronin, Paul (ed.). 2002. Herzog on Herzog. London: Faber and Faber. Herzog, Werner. 1999. Minnesota Declaration. Accessed 20 May, 2021. https://www.wernerherzog.com/complete-works-text.html#2. Herzog, Werner. 2010. ‘On the Absolute, the Sublime and Ecstatic Truth’. Arion 17 (3) Winter.

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Hongisto, Ilona. 2010. ‘Documentary Fabulation: Folding the True and the False’. In Unfolding Media Studies, edited by Jukka-Pekka Puro & Jukka Sihvonen, 9-17. University of Turku. Hongisto, Ilona. 2018. ‘Realities in the Making: The Ethics of Fabulation in Observational Documentary Cinema’. In Storytelling and Ethics, edited by Hanna Meretoja & Colin Davis. 190–199. Routledge: New York. Hynes, Eric [2015]. ‘The Look of Silence: See Me’. Museum of the Moving Image Reverse Shot. 17 July. Accessed 17 June 2022. http://reverseshot.org/reviews/entry/2070/look_of_silence. Lebow, Alisa (ed). 2012. The Cinema of Me: The Self and Subjectivity in First Person Documentary. Columbia University Press. Murphy, Mekado. 2007. Werner Herzog is Still Breaking the Rules. New York Times, 1 July 2007. Accessed 17 June 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/movies/01murp.html. Nancy, Jean-Luc. 2000. Being Singular Plural. Translated by Robert Richardson & Anne O’Byrne. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Rouch, Jean. 2003. Cine-Ethnography: Jean Rouch. Translated and edited by Steven Feld. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Smith, Daniel W. 1998. ‘Introduction: A Life of Pure Immanence Deleuze’s Critique et Clinique Project’. Essays Critical and Clinical. London: Version. xi–liii. Strathern, Marilyn. 1985. ‘Dislodging a worldview: challenge and counterchallenge in the relationship between feminism and anthropology’. Australian Feminist Studies. No.1 (1). 1-25. Taylor, Norman. 2012. Cinematic perspectives on Digital Culture: Consorting with the Machine. Palgrave MacMillan. White, Jerry. 2003. ‘Arguing with Ethnography: the Films of Bob Quinn and Pierre Perrault’. Cinema Journal. No. 42 (2) Winter. 101-124.

Filmography & TV Chronique d’un été /Chronicle of a Summer. Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch. 1961. France. 90’ Coco Rico Monsieur Poulet. Jean Rouch. 1974. France. 93’. Conversations with Jean Rouch. Ann McIntosh. 1978. Documentary Educational Resources, [video programme]. Available from http://www.der.org/films/conversations-with-jean-rouch.html [Accessed 17 Feb 2018]. Jaguar. Jean Rouch. 1968. France. 110’ La Pyramide Humaine. Jean Rouch. 1961. France. 90’ Moi, Un Noir. Jean Rouch. 1958. 70’

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Portrait of Jason. Shirley Clarke. 1967. USA. 105’ The Act of Killing. Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn & Anonymous. 2012. Norway/Denmark/UK. 159’ [director’s cut] The Look of Silence. Joshua Oppenheimer. 2014. Denmark/ Finland/ France/ Germany/ Indonesia /Israel /Netherlands/ Norway/ Taiwan/ United Kingdom/ United States. 103’ Town of Strangers. Treasa O’Brien. 2021. Ireland. 82’

CHAPTER EIGHT INVESTIGATING THE MAKING OF CINEMATIC SILENCE IN CHANTAL AKERMAN’S D’EST HASMIK GASPARYAN

The need for silence in an age of noise is timely and relevant. However, the notion of silence in cinema, its meaning, negative and/or positive interpretations, and considerations for further discovery has not to date been explored and articulated extensively. The key concerns in the published literature on the topic are the relative nature of cinematic silence and its intrinsic connection to sound. This chapter will look at directorial approaches applied by Chantal Akerman to create cinematic silence in the experimental documentary D’Est (From the East, Akerman, 1993, Icarus Films). As Robert Bresson notices, silence is a compositional and emotional element in the film: one shouldn’t seek the poetry in the film dialogue, but in the images; or the musicality in the soundtrack, but in filmic construction.1 To analyse poetics and musicality in Akerman’s work, the chapter will focus on the influences on her art, and four crucial elements for cinematic silence construction – extended duration, inactive image, sound contrast and repetition – that derive from the recent research “Investigating the Making of Cinematic Silence” by the present author and documentary filmmaker.2

Introduction to Akerman’s way of explaining things and influences The career of Chantal Akerman started with the explosive Saute ma Ville (Blow Up My Town, Akerman, 1968), an experimental black and white short inspired by Jean-Luc Godard’s New Wave film Pierrot le Fou (Pierrot 1

James Quandt, Robert Bresson (Cinematheque Ontario, 1998), 102. Hasmik Gasparyan, Investigating the Making of Cinematic Silence (The University of York, 2019).

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the Madman, Godard; Georges de Beauregard, 1965). In Saute ma Ville Akerman plays as a Chaplinesque teenager who, after performing a number of domestic rituals (cooking, cleaning, polishing shoes and eating), blows herself up in a kitchen. The minimalistic style of the director is self-evident in this 13-minute work. The film uses asynchronous sound, so that the culmination is not seen but only heard against a black screen; repetitive ritualised movements in narrow spaces (domestic work in a kitchen); on screen and off-screen (inner/psychic or sexual) explosions; and a camera placed at the director’s eye level. In numerous interviews, Akerman has commented on the significant role her family history played on her cinema: in particular, she has focused on her Jewish Polish immigrant parents and her mother’s silence about the horrors of the Holocaust. She noted that she “wanted to fill this noisy silence with silent noise, in a space-time. I wanted to make films”.3 The director’s Jewishness is portrayed in her films through the extensive use of rituals, life song performances, kitchen settings, a sense of homelessness and, of course, the use of silence. Possibly, by invoking a “noisy silence” Akerman refers to one of the nine silences introduced by writer and psychotherapist Paul Goodman, the silence caused by a trauma, and as a result the reluctance to share the horrors of past events.4 During her career, Akerman “composed” over 50 films and video works in a wide variety of genres touching diverse topics, but even in her more commercial work, she remained true to her signature minimalistic, hyper-realist and “anti-illusionist” style.5 Later, in an interview with Elisabeth Lebovici for the 31st edition of Mousse Magazine, the director reflected that: “At the beginning I thought that since she [her mother, Nelly Akerman] didn’t have any voice, I would be speaking for her, but it turned out not to be so true, it was just my way of explaining things”.6 Chantal Akerman started her filmmaking career in the late 1960s, a time when active discussions on the aesthetics and meaning of silence, as well as technological innovations improving the quality of sound in music and film, drew attention to the importance of silence in art. In the 1960s, Susan 3

Marion Schmid, Chantal Akerman. (Manchester: University Press, 2017), 2. Paul Goodman, Speaking and Language: Defense of Poetry. (New York: Random House, 1971), 15. 5 Schmid, Chantal Akerman, 1. 6 Elisabeth Lebovici, No Idolatry and Losing Everything that Made You Slave, 20112012. Accessed July 10, 2018. http://moussemagazine.it/chantal-akerman-elisabethlebovici-2011/. 4

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Sontag, a critic of modernism, claimed that “the art of our time is noisy with appeals for silence [...] One recognizes the imperative of silence, but goes on speaking anyway.”7 In the context of silence, Sontag’s two essays are of particular significance: Against Interpretation (1964), which is a writer’s rebellion against the act of interpretation of an artwork, where Sontag argues for the primacy of form over content; and The Aesthetics of Silence (1969) where the writer discusses the mediation of art as a form of spirituality. In the latter essay, Sontag considers the agency of silence as part of the artist’s ‘spiritual project’ for liberation (from themselves, from history, from the artwork), and a way to point to transcendence, as “behind the appeals for silence lies the wish for a perceptual and cultural clean slate”.8 Sontag’s ideas evoke composer John Cage’s views on the non-existence of silence, and silence being not just an acoustic event but rather a change of mind. In his Manifesto for Silence: Confronting the Politics and Culture of Noise writer Stuart Sim, while discussing Sontag’s and Cage’s aesthetics of silence, highlights the unity in the thinker’s attention on […] the symbiotic relationship between silence and the opposite (speech, noise, sound, however we want to characterise it), and [how] each seeks to keep the two in fruitful interplay. Even if there is agreement that absolute silence is an impossible condition and that noise in some form will always be present to our consciousness, silence continues to be, at the very least, a useful term within artistic discourse – a ‘boundary notion’, in Sontag’s phrase.9

In the late 1960s, significant technological changes in film sound developed by Dolby Laboratories improved the dynamic range of a film soundtrack to allow for more subtle ‘acoustic close-ups’,10 very low and soft sound effects: e.g. the ticking of a clock in an empty room, footsteps in the snow, water drips, etc. As a result, this made the creative use of the contrast sound vs silence finally possible. In this context, the complex and relative nature 7

Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation, 1964. Shifter magazine accessed February 28, 2019. http://shifter-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Sontag-AgainstInterpretation.pdf. 8 Susan Sontag, The Aesthetics of Silence; 1969. Shifter magazine accessed June 28, 2018 https://interrelevant.wordpress.com/2013/12/15/aesthetics-of-silence/. 9 Stuart Sim, Manifesto for Silence: Confronting the Politics and Culture of Noise (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007) 110. 10 Bela Balazs, “Theory of the Film: Sound”. In Film Sound: Theory and Practice edited by Weis, Elisabeth and Belton, Joan, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985): 116- 125.

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of cinematic silence prompts a number of questions: is the silence perceived by the audience the same silence experienced by the characters in the film? Does this silence ‘exist’ in the story or in the cinema? Silence is never a neutral emptiness, but rather a product of contrast, and consists in subjecting the listener to noises.11 These might be environmental noises, which exist in the soundtrack (wind, room tone, or bird song), or noises that exist in the cinema (people breathing, slight movements, etc.). Even though there are exceptions where Paul Theberge’s ‘complete silence’,12 absence of sound on a soundtrack has been deployed-by Jean-Luc Godard in Band of Outsiders (Bande à Part, 1964, Columbia Films), Jacques Tati in Playtime (1967, Specta Films), Mike Figgis in Leaving Las Vegas (1996, Lumiere Pictures), Abbas Kiarostami in The Chorus (Hamsrayan, 1982), Stanley Kubrick Kubrick in 2001: A space Odyssey (1968, MGM, Stanley Kubrick Productions)) and Lynne Ramsay in Ratcatcher (1999, Pathe Pictures International, BBC Films) – it normally has a disruptive effect on the audience. When deployed, complete silence draws attention to the constructed nature of the soundtrack (Godard), or to create scenes of interrupted life (Kubrick, Ramsay), or to make the audience experience the protagonist’s deafness (Kiarostami), or experience of being drunk (Figgis). Apart from these examples of complete silence, in most cases silence in films is portrayed through some sounds in the soundtrack. However, since the ‘sound’ of silence escapes a clear categorisation (described as ‘internal and external’,13‘internal’14 or ‘insounds’15) Sontag’s ‘boundary nature’ and ambivalence in relation to the acoustic effect of silence is again relevant. These significant insights on the role and meaning of silence in art, including the aesthetic and technological changes, had an impact on emerging filmmakers like Akerman. Her cinema is consequently rich with contrasts and oppositions (e.g. presence and absence, movement and immobility, external and internal, stasis and movement, day and night, past and present, expectation and reality), which suggest and explain the contrast 11

Michel Chion, Audio-Vision. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 57 Paul Theberge, “Almost Silent: The Interplay of Sound and Silence in Contemporary Cinema and Television”. In Lowering the Boom edited by Beck, Jay and Grajeda, Tony, (University of Illinois Press, 2008), 51-67. 13 David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction. Tenth Edition, (NewYork: McGraw - Hill Companies, 2013), 288. 14 Chion, Audio-Vision, 222. 15 Isabelle Delmotte, ‘Insounds’: human sonic permeability and the practice of cinema sound design within ecologies of silences. PhD diss., (Lismore: Southern Cross University, 2013). 12

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of images and sounds of trains, open windows, busy roads, footsteps, onscreen and off-screen explosions that we encounter in most of her films. Akerman’s main characters remain almost always silent, such as Jeanne Dielman (Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels, Akerman, 1976, Paradise Films), Anne Silver (Les Rendez-vous d’Anna, Akerman, 1978, Centre du Cinema et de L’Audiovisuel de la Federation WallonieBruzzelles), Ariane (La Captive, Akerman, 2000, Gemini Films) or the location/landscape itself in D’Est, and this creates an ambiguous aura around them, and suggests the need for the pregnant silence to be broken. To understand Akerman’s intentions, the consideration of directorial methods applied and examination of the narrative devices used to involve the audience intellectually and emotionally in one of her complex and multilayered documentary works D’Est (From the East, Akerman, 1993, Lieurac Productions and Paradise Films) will follow. Influenced by developments within the French New Wave, Akerman chooses a hybrid form combining documentary and fiction and explains: “After the documentary is shot and edited, if it does not open a breach into the imaginary, if fiction does not slip into it, for me, it is not a documentary. As for fiction, if no documentary aspects slip into it, then I find it difficult to think of it as a fiction film.”16 Interestingly D’Est has not only “opened a breach into the imaginary”, but it is Akerman’s first film that moved from cinema screen to art gallery as an art installation project Bordering on Fiction (1995) two years after its official release.

Akerman’s extended duration and inactive image in D’Est D’Est takes the form of an essay portrait of Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of Perestroika in the Soviet Union. As in her early essay film, News from Home (Akerman, 1977, Institut National de L’Audiovisuel and Paradise Films), Akerman applies a non-expository17 mode of storytelling. Unlike the “expository” where argumentative logic and verbal commentary are used to convince the audience, News from Home and D’Est include no verbal commentary and have long static and tracking shots where the location itself becomes the main silent protagonist of the story. Maria Walsh suggests that D’Est can also be seen as an extension of the last sequence of News from Home, where in the final ten

16

Schmid, Chantal Akerman, 99. Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 31. 17

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minutes, after almost 70 minutes of mainly static shots, the camera moves up to the New York skyline.18 The human and mechanical traffic structured around a sense of the absence of Akerman’s mother and/or Akerman herself is present in both works – News from Home and D’Est – where the director’s meditative and evocative camera is capable ‘to tell’ a story through framing and movement. D’Est is structured as a chain of seemingly separate parts. The 107-minute film consists of 67 shots (about 50 static and 17 tracking shots), and mainly out of sync sounds that often counterpoint rather than complement the image. As sound helps the spectator to imagine beyond the reach of their vision19 and defines the on-screen and off-screen space to give a sense of distance and perspective, understanding how Akerman creates that filmic space through sound and image is essential. The first 27 minutes of D’Est can seem as “le temps mort” (dead time) or empty moments.20 These are moments in which it seems that “nothing happens”.21 The chain of static long takes of interior and exterior locations is accompanied by mainly diegetic sounds. These include a radio playing a German song in a café; the sound of passing cars, trains, lorries and trams, horse-drawn carts; the Polish language concert by the sea; the open-air night concert in the Russian language; birds chirping; a light breeze; footsteps of people walking on a wet/dry pavements; the crunching sound of footsteps in the snow; a tractor engine and metal buckets in the hands of potato pickers in a field. This image-sound orchestration moves the viewer through East Germany, Poland, Ukraine and Russia by creating an anonymous and hypnotic filmic space. Akerman, through her minimalistic style, in which “less is more”, creates space for silence to enter in her work. As Susan Sontag notes: ‘Everyone has experienced how, when punctuated by long silences, words weigh more; they become almost palpable. Or how, when one talks less, one begins feeling more fully one’s physical presence in a given space’.22 Known as one of the ‘difficult directors’23 Akerman demands her audience to put the pieces together on their own and expects 18

Maria Walsh, Intervals of Inner Flight: Chantal Akerman’s News from Home. (Journal Screen, Vol. 45(3)), 2004, 190-205. 19 Mehrnaz Saeed-Vafa and Jonathan Rosenbaum, Abbas Kiarostami (Urbana: University of Illinois Press), 2003, 114. 20 Laura Rascaroli and John David Rhodes, Antonioni: Centenary Essays (London: BFI/Palgrave Macmillan), 2011, 9. 21 Ivone Margulies, Nothing Happens: Chantal Akerman’s Hyperrealist Everyday (Durham and London: Duke University Press), 1996, 23. 22 Sontag, The Aesthetics of Silence, 1969. 23 Schmid, Chantal Akerman, 13.

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them to fill what is missing to the limits of their imagination and intellectual experience. Akerman’s subjects in the film remain “mute”. The potato pickers gradually approach the camera, commenting on and reacting to the presence of the crew, “Are you taking photos?” (translation from Russian by the present author). But even when it is possible to hear the potato pickers, the director and her crew stay invisible and voiceless. Moreover, the director’s decision not to provide any translation and subtitles for the viewer allows no room for the subjects’ self-representation. The potato pickers are instantly associated with the gleaners of feminist New Wave filmmaker Agnès Varda (Gleaners and I, 2000, Ciné-tamaris). Thus, the focus of attention moves to the subject’s body, posture, gestures, and to the human face, which Akerman’s patient and curious camera studies in thorough detail as “an expressive landscape”.24 By designing her own silence on screen, which becomes ‘a stretch of time being perforated by sound’25Akerman uses cinematic silence as a device to focus the attention of her viewer on particular feelings – departure, helplessness, hopelessness, uncertainty, waiting – a Beckettian “Waiting for Godot”.26 Time is an essential requirement in order to gradually build up tension, provoke curiosity, raise a question, hear/see beyond the image/sound, to provoke attention or boredom. Similarly, time is needed for the generation of silence. Film critic and screenwriter Paul Schrader finds that French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s works that cover two perceptual periods in the history of cinema – “Cinema 1: Movement-Image” (until after World War II) and “Cinema 2: The Time-Image” (post-World War II) – help to understand the “phenomenology of perception through time”.27 Schrader simplifies Deleuze’s theory, by pointing at the main idea of the shift in perception from movement-image to time-image based on the edit (or for our purposes here the cut) that is led not by the action but “by the creative desire to associate images over time”: “Man exits one room, enters another – that’s movement-image editing. Man exits one room, shot of trees in the wind, shot of train passing… [or] Man exits one room, the screen lingers on the empty door. That’s time-image editing”.28 As a result, the “time-image” aims to reach not only the conscious mind by telling stories, but also to the unconscious (memories, fantasies, and dreams). The latter is 24

Schmid, Chantal Akerman, 98. Sontag, The Aesthetics of Silence, 1969. 26 Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, 1953. 27 Paul Schrader, Transcendental Style in Film (Oakland: University of California Press), 2018, 3. 28 Schrader, Transcendental Style in Film, 4-5. 25

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a world and work that involves the presence of silence. This partly explains the prevailing use of prolonged, uncut and almost silent shots in the slow cinema of Chantal Akerman, Bela Tarr, Andrey Tarkovsky, Michelangelo Antonioni, to name a few. Schrader while describing Tarkovsky’s long take writes: The Tarkovsky long shot is more than long. It’s meditative. The psychological effect of slow cinema’s “long take” is unlike any other film technique. Film techniques are about “getting there” – telling a story, explaining action, evoking an emotion – whereas the long take is about “being there”.29

The roots of slow cinema, where the film style itself becomes the subject matter, rather than narrative causality and action, derive from avant-garde films of late 1960s such as Michael Snow’s Wavelength (1967), or Andy Warhol’s Empire (1964). One of the early examples of experimental slow cinema that took inspiration from these works is Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1976, Paradise Films), a 201-minute-long film, where the daily routine of a middle-aged widow is portrayed with meticulous precision. Hence, the audience is left puzzled why they are made to watch what this woman is doing for so long.30 Ivone Margulies notes that Akerman expressed her intention to use “duration as a presence rather than for mood”, and argues that “it is the nature of the image … that invites us to enter a diegetic process”. It can be argued that equally it is the nature of the almost silent sound of daily life (washing dishes, Jeanne’s slow or fast footsteps in a flat, her abrupt or peaceful movements and gestures) combined with the extended real-time shots that create an invitation for the audience to enter into Jeanne’s uneventful everyday. It is hard to imagine that the same effect of presence, or Schrader’s similar comment on “being there” in relation to Tarkovsky’s long take, would be possible to create with accompanying music. It is worth considering that the primal role of John Cage’s famous composition 4’33 (1952) is on listening, rather than on silence. This becomes a durational frame through which the artist makes the audience listen to whatever is there; by placing a still camera for an extended duration of time, in order to observe possible audio and video events in filmic space to create suspense and/or add an element of unpredictability. This economy of shots, the focus on the banal events of life for an extended duration of time – a “dead time” or “temps mort” – allows space and freedom for the spectator and the listener to respond and to scrutinise the limited information on screen, and forces them to see 29 30

Schrader, Transcendental Style in Film, 8. Margulies, Nothing Happens: Chantal Akerman’s Hyperrealist Everyday, 68.

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beyond and ‘between the images’ (as proposed by Ivone Margulies).31 Equally, between and beyond the sounds: to hear/feel the silence that hides something beyond the seen surface. To make silence heard and felt requires a re-focus of attention on the part of the viewer/listener. The loaded image, where there is too much action or diverse information is less likely to open a space for silence to emerge. A way of ‘emptying’ the image can be achieved through the use of a static camera, of empty space/landscape and of passive, monochrome colours, since the less dominant image is capable of bringing attention to what is beyond the visual – the immobile, static shot to emphasize silence works most efficiently with uncut extended takes. An unobstructed camera gaze is similar to a person observing carefully or staring at the object silently from outside. This unmotivated stare makes each sound more palpable and distinct. Silence created through empty spaces can have different roles in the film construction. For example, in Frederick Wiseman’s observational documentary it works where the main protagonist is often a public institution: a prison in Titicut Follies (Wiseman, 1967, Zipporah Films, Inc.), the eponymous Hospital (Wiseman, 1970, NET) and National Gallery (Wiseman, 2015, Gallery Film). In such films, deserted corridors or shots from the doorways are necessary elements to create a breath, a silence. In Michelangelo Antonioni’s features such as Blow up (1966, MGM) or L’Avventura (1960, Cino Del Duca), the ambience of the locations give an impression of what the protagonist feels inside. In Patrick Keiller’s documentaries London (1994, BFI Productions) and Robinson in Space (1997, BBC) the hypnotic landscapes represent absence. Akerman’s art becomes a form of her own thinking: here the choice of prevailing static shots is almost instinctive. These prolonged silent and static staring (not looking) shots in pursuit of truth become a way of steering the audience’s attention. Sontag’s definition of “staring”32, as steady, unmodulated and “fixed”, describes Akerman’s camera glance. The interior shots in the first 27 minutes of D’Est are long, static, frontal, and clearly 31

Margulies, Nothing Happens: Chantal Akerman’s Hyperrealist Everyday, 4. Sontag, Styles of Radical Will, 1967 – here Sontag considers ‘the difference between looking and staring. A look is voluntary; it is also mobile, rising and falling in intensity as its foci of interest are taken up and then exhausted. A stare has, essentially, the character of a compulsion… Traditional art invites a look. Art that is silent engenders a stare. Silent art allows—at least in principle—no release from attention, because there has never, in principle, been any soliciting of it. A stare is perhaps as far from history, as close to eternity, as contemporary art can get.’ 32

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staged in a kitchen setting, reminiscent of the iconic Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). They include a silent young woman in an orange dress sitting on a green sofa with a piece of white paper in her hand looking straight into the camera. The window is open, and a soft breeze moves the white curtains behind her. The off-screen sound of a Polish song (overlapped from the previous shot) is playing. An old woman is sitting in a living room next to a table with two sets of teacups. Through the open window a distant noise of passing cars can be heard. Then there is a side view of an old man through the kitchen door eating at the table; we hear the sound of the cutlery while he is eating and drinking, and cars passing in a distance. Another old woman, neatly dressed with an apron on, is sitting at the table and looking to the side – the soundtrack contains only room tone. Apart from the shot with the old man that is sitting sideways, the other three shots are frontal. For Akerman, making films is about frontality: the filmmaker facing the “Other”: the subject and the viewer. Akerman often quotes the French philosopher of Jewish origin Emmanuel Lévinas: When you see the face of the Other, you already hear the words ‘Thou shalt not kill’ (‘You shall not kill’)’. These frontal staged static shots, which are present also later in the film, are silent dialogues between the filmmaker and the ‘Other’: director-subject and director-spectator.33

Thus, the only camera movement in the first 27 minutes is more than a minute long, tracking from right to left, a side view of an old woman with a plastic shopping bag walking behind the row of cars. This poses questions for the audience. Where is she going with this bag? What journey are the audience being taken on? Is this the woman connected to the man we saw sitting on a bench and looking purposeless? Will they meet later in the film? A ‘walking woman’ has been extensively repeated in most of Akerman’s films (e.g. Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), Rendez Vous Avec Anna (1978), La Captive (2000)). Hence in D’Est too, the transformed image of an old ‘walking woman’ with a shopping bag, with hardly perceivable footsteps on a pavement in a noisy street (as opposed to the sound of the high heels in the above mentioned films), instantly evoke the series of Walking Woman (1961-1967) by Akerman’s favourite experimental artist Michael Snow.34 Through repetition, the artist creates their own style, which they improvise in themes and variations throughout 33 Elisabeth Lebovici. No Idolatry and Losing Everything that Made You Slave. (Mousse Magazine, 31st ed.) 2011-2012, accessed July 10, 2018. http://moussemagazine.it/chantal-akerman-elisabeth-lebovici-2011/. 34 Michael Snow. Walking Woman, a series of artworks, 1961-1967.

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their work. In D’Est again Akerman “plays” with her “walking woman” to address the issues of meaning, perception and movement, as Snow improvised with his cut-out image of a ‘walking woman’ for over six years. Anne Eakin Moss finds a resemblance of the same image of a ‘walking woman’ with a shopping bag, with Kopchishka’s mother leaving the market, or Kopchushka grown old in Vertov’s Kino Eye (1924).35 Furthermore, Moss argues that Akerman not only applies “Vertovian techniques”36 in D’Est, but also transforms these techniques by substituting the collective of kinoks with individual and gendered camera”. The director’s off-screen silent ‘ghostly presence’37and her camera’s ‘game of hide and seek’38 suggest that ‘Akerman’s camera aims to register not just the world [Vertov’s approach of ‘life as it is’], but also the world’s reaction to her and her camera’.39 Neither the old walking woman nor the man sitting on a bench appear later in the film. One soon realises that there is no one human protagonist in the film. The image of a ‘walking woman’ during the first 27 minutes is significant, as it becomes an overture and an introduction for the main theme that will develop later: a theme of movement, dislocation and displacement. The following 15 tracking shots of train stations, bus stops, “kiosks”, and endlessly waiting people (some shots are more than eight minutes long) are repetitive. Despite the fact that there is only one circular shot in the entire film, the frequency and length of the changing tracking shots produce an illusion of the camera panning around. When the camera is sliding from right to left while people are walking to the right, it feels almost as if the camera moves back and forth. The way Akerman narrates with her camera is reminiscent of Snow’s camera movement trilogy: Wavelength (1967), Back and Forth (1969) and Central Region (1971). Snow’s experiments 35 Anne Eakin Moss. A Woman with a Movie Camera: Chantal Akerman’s Essay Films. In The Essay Film edited by Papazian, Elisabeth and Eades, Caroline. (London and New York: Wallflower Press) 2016, 167-192. 36 Ibid., 167-192. Vertov used eight techniques for invisible camera: 1) filming unwares; 2) filming from an open observation point set up by the kinok-observers; 3) filming from a hidden observation point; 4) filming when the attention of the subjects is diverted naturally; 5) filming when the attention of the subjects is diverted artificially; 6) filming at a distance; 7) filming in motion; 8) filming from above (162-163, 1984). 37 Schmid, Chantal Akerman, 103. 38 Moss, A Woman with a Movie Camera: Chantal Akerman’s Essay Films, 174. 39 Ibid., 174.

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with camera movement independent of any story and the extended duration of a moving image to make the spectator aware of the passage of time, are his narrative techniques to build suspense. Akerman further explores the potential of camera movement/stasis by looking at it beyond mere experiment, but as an essential part of her cinematic language. The people waiting for buses or trains are clearly not happy with the presence of the camera, and they express their irritation either through body language (turning around, pretending that they do not see the crew, or walking away from it), or vocally. It can be heard: “What are you filming?”, “How long is there still to wait?”, “Are we supposed to smile?”, “You better ask before filming…”, “Take your desired shot and go away from my sight” (the translation from Russian by the present author). Once again Akerman chooses not to provide any translation of her subjects’ words, instead, an asynchronous off-screen sound is used: the sound of a cello playing. This emphasized distance expressed through contrast between the sound of the cello, imaginary, dreamy, beautiful and close to fantasy, with the realism of the image, the clear annoyance of the filmed subject with the presence of an off-screen apparatus and Akerman, is almost unbearable. This juxtaposition creates a space “in between” image and sound. An old woman stepping forward is yelling in Russian: “I am an invalid of the Second World War and waiting for more than an hour here. Shall I show you my pass? Are you filming all this chaos? How nice!” (the translation from Russian by the present author). It feels almost as if her screaming has silenced the cello. The spectator becomes the one who is ‘waiting’ too. Following Andre Bazin, Akerman’s “images [and sounds] are important not for what they add to reality but for what they reveal in it”.40 This endless waiting in lines, the sound of moving feet and passing cars relate to dislocation, evacuation and become reminders of people waiting in concentration camps. Again, the traumatic past of Akerman’s own family assumes a voice, shape, colour, movement, glance in almost hallucinatory and ‘most indirect [of forms] of autobiography’.41 As Akerman describes: 40

Andre Bazin, The Evolution of Film Language, In The French New wave: critical landmarks edited by Graham, Peter and Vincendeau, Ginette. (London: Palgrave Macmillan), 2009, 70. 41 Alisa Lebow, Memory Once Removed: Indirect Memory and Transitive Autobiography in Chantal Akerman’s D’Est. In Camera Obscura 52(18), (Duke University Press), 2003, 35-72. https://www.academia.edu/3676782/Memory_Once_Removed_Indirect_Memory_ and_Transitive_Autobiography_in_Chantal_Akermans_Dest.

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‘When you look at a picture, if you look just one second, you get the information, ‘that’s a corridor’. But after a while you forget it’s a corridor, you just see that it’s yellow, red; that it’s lines; and then again it comes back as a corridor’.42 The repetitive and endless drone of the sounds of the urban environment, the road noise of passing cars, people crowding, and hammering of footsteps, detaches the viewer not only from the image on screen but from the sound as well. The fine border between present, past and dream almost disappears, and the audience creates its own associative sound and image narrative.

Musical and architectural aspects of composition in D’Est – contrasts and repetitions Akerman’s filmic composition can be compared with the work of experimental composers such as John Cage.43 Her sound and image tracks welcome dissonances, noises, oppositions, variations of a main theme repeating in a loop, and not clear narrative structures. She carefully uses silence as an essential musical component in almost all her films. By looking through rather than at sounds and images, Akerman draws attention to “little” sounds or “acoustic close-ups” (footsteps in the snow, a car passing, the cawing of a crow, the turning of the disc of the telephone, the ringing of the bell of the tram) and seemingly “unnecessary” images (e.g. cutting salami, putting lipstick) where “nothing happens”, yet at the same time, everything matters. These “unintentional”44 sounds and images connect with intentional ones (a cello; a song on a music player; a female voice telling memories about the pianist woman; a young man playing on a piano while the TV is on; a song playing from unknown source; another song on a dancefloor) by forming a loop. After 27 minutes of mainly static shots, the overlapping “double-voiced” pattern becomes apparent in the film. Almost as musical phrases, the constant repetition of intentional and non-intentional – documentary and fiction create a unique narrative. Tracking shots that slide, scan and wander back and forth or in a circle alternate with two-four static interior shots. The careful organization of repetitions in the form of

42

Margulies, Nothing Happens: Chantal Akerman’s Hyperrealist Everyday, 43. Kristine Batler, Bordering on Fiction: Chantal Akerman’s D’Est, Postmodern Culture. Project MUSE, 6(1), (Johns Hopkins University Press), 1995. doi:10.1353/pmc.1995.0042. 44 Richard Fleming. Listening to Cage: Nonintentional philosophy and music. 2016, accessed July 15 2018 https://www.cogentoa.com/article/10.1080/23311983.2015.1088733. 43

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echo and/or variations define the content and move the story. Lawrence Kramer argues that ‘repetition is a basic structural feature of most music and poetry’.45 This is also true for the art of cinema, where various repetitive silent phrases recall a familiar theme and give an impression of the continuous unfolding. This patterned structure that involves repetitive motifs, for example, the routine behaviour in Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975), often reveals the essence, the hidden layer, that is the core meaning of the film. Schrader points out on the leitmotif “planimetric compositions with a central corridor or road” taking away from the camera in works of Ozu.46 The characters may walk through these or not, the aim is “to make the viewer aware of context” (ibid. 14). As Delmotte observes, “Cinematic silences, with or without audible signals, are space builders. However, sound designers often have to battle to impose silence as a rich terrain on which to build sounds”.47 Technological enhancements have had a significant impact on the way silence is portrayed in film: the way sound design practitioners approach silence, the rich interactions between the representations of silence in cinema, the space where these scenes are presented, and the audience. In D’Est Akerman uses also a two-voiced sonic repetition in one of the sequences where again the image and sound clearly do not correspond to each other. The tracking shot of the city at night accompanied by the female voice recounting her memories in Russian with no translation about “Her, a great woman pianist”. Two minutes later, the same female voice tells us again, almost as an echo, about “Her” in parallel to the first voice. This nostalgic narration in Russian language becomes a form of music itself. The extensive use of Walter Murch’s “locational silence”48 is applied to highlight a shift in location and the effect of a sudden transition from loudness to silence. This “sound-silence contrast” and earlier described “extended duration”, the two different types of cuts, correspond to Schrader’s description of a “smash cut” (as a form of aggression) and a ‘delayed cut’ (as a form of passive aggression).49 Even though both can be seen as directorial manipulations, Schrader notices a significant difference 45

Lawrence Kramer, Music and Poetry. (London: University of California Press), 1984, 25. 46 Schrader, Transcendental Style in Film, 14. 47 Delmotte, ‘Insounds’: human sonic permeability and the practice of cinema sound design within ecologies of silences, 112. 48 Walter Murch. Touch of Silence, In Soundscape edited by Sider, Larry, Freeman, Diane and Sider, Jerry, (London. New York: Wallflower Press), 2003, 95. 49 Schrader, Transcendental Style in Film, 18.

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in them: “manipulating film time to create suspense and manipulating time to create boredom” (ibid.): the first “depreciates the viewer’s participation” and the second, “demands it” (ibid.). Despite the difference in purpose and nature of manipulation through the cut, both techniques are capable of creating the effect of cinematic silence. Even though the coupling of loud and soft sounds has been applied by the film creators before Dolby innovations, it is accepted that this creative strategy is especially powerful with the great potential of the dynamic range.50 Akerman further explores the “locational silence” and her almost silent scenes become relative to one another. The viewer can become accustomed to a scene with repetitive, prolonged humming and droning sounds that can be easily ignored. A subsequent transition to a new scene with “silent sound” can consequently feel louder or quieter in relation to the previous scene and requires a listening adaptation51 e.g. the circular three minutes shot in a train station and interior sequence in a waiting hall. Akerman conducts her film not only as a director-composer and poet, but also as a director-architect. She lets her subjects walk out of the frame without cutting to follow them, which creates nervousness in the audience as they wonder “what can I not see?” and therefore they are left to try to hear what they cannot see. In addition, the doorways and hallways help Akerman to frame her shots. Frederick Wiseman (Titicut Follies, 1967; Hospital, 1970), documentary filmmaker whose subjects involve public institutions (a prison, a hospital, a school, a library), often used hallways and doorways as transitional sequences not only to tell more about the building itself (i.e. a hospital, a prison, a school), but also to provide moments of silence.52

Concluding remarks This film analysis draws attention to the use of cinematic silence in Chantal Akerman’s D’Est: “a portrait of a landscape and a landscape of many

50

Mark Kerins, Beyond Dolby (Stereo): Cinema in the Digital Age, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 2011, 61. 51 Jean-Francois Augoyard and Henry Torgue, Sonic Experience: A Guide to Everyday Sounds. (Montreal; Ithaca: McGill-Queens University Press), 2005, 40. 52 Maria Garcia. La Danse; and the Rhythms of Institutions: An Interview with Frederick Wiseman, Cinéaste 35(2), 2010 12-16. https://www.jstor.org/stable/i40079434.

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portraits”.53 To address the issue of the fundamental dialectic role in cinema of contrasting and joining of sound with image,54 Akerman applies her “way of explaining things” through the act of repetitions and rendered pauses: marching in the snow in straight lines or wandering in circles; looking through and listening through the sound and image. These create the dynamic participatory filmic space for silence to enter. The “leftovers”55 of conventional narrative (the images between the images) and, it can be argued, equally, the sounds between the sounds, are Akerman’s preferred points of exploration and source of narrative economy. The director’s constant (silent) off-screen presence embarks us on an ambiguous game of “hide and seek” or “cat-and mouse”. Does Akerman try to “fill the gap” of silence on screen or does she take us to that “strange and wonderful [silent] place [space] where the film becomes our own creation”?56 The boundaries between on-screen and off-screen sound and silence confuse. The film becomes not only the director’s, but the audience's creation. “Often when people come out of a good film they would say that time flew without them noticing, what I want is to make people feel the passing of time. So I do not take two hours of their lives. They experience them. You are facing yourself”.57 It is evident that Akerman was influenced by new ideas about the cinema, which motivated her use of long takes, repetitions, unobtrusive interplay between image and sound to capture “unimportant” quotidian. Her tactic of letting the space breathe through silence makes the audience almost feel the created reality on a physical level. Technological advances continue to have a huge impact on the development and quality of film sound we experience today in the cinema. Nevertheless, Akerman is reluctant to embrace the 53

Lebow, Memory Once Removed: Indirect Memory and Transitive Autobiography in Chantal Akerman’s D’Est, 2003. 54 Noel Burch, On the structural use of Sound, In Film Sound: Theory and Practice edited by Weis, Elisabeth and Belton, Joan, (New York: Columbia University Press), 1985, 200. 55 Margulies, Nothing Happens: Chantal Akerman’s Hyperrealist Everyday, 4. 56 Murch, Touch of Silence, 100. A quote from Walter Murch: ‘The ultimate metaphoric sound is silence. If you can get the film to a place with no sound where there should be sound, the audience will crowd that silence with sounds and feelings of their own making, and they will, individually, answer the question of, ‘Why is it quiet?’ If the slope to silence is at the right angle, you will get the audience to a strange and wonderful place where the film becomes their own creation in a way that is deeper than any other’. 57 Chantal Akerman. Chantal Akerman: From Here, Interview by Beck, Gustavo in Icarus Films, 2010.

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perfect seamless and immersive cinematic experience that is increasingly possible today and she uses cinematic silence as a strong narrative tool to refine her cinematic language. D’Est is about the passage of time – from day to night – that has no clear closure. With this in mind, the final scene is abrupt, the moving image and soundtrack cut suddenly and leave the viewer with open questions and awareness of the filmic surface.

Bibliography Akerman, Chantal. Chantal Akerman: From Here, Interview by Beck, Gustavo in Icarus Films, 2010. Augoyard, Jean-Fr. and Torgue, H. Sonic Experience: A Guide to Everyday Sounds. Montreal; Ithaca: McGill-Queens University Press, 2005. Balazs, B. “Theory of the Film: Sound”. In Film Sound: Theory and Practice edited by Weis, Elisabeth and Belton, Joan. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. Batler, K. Bordering on Fiction: Chantal Akerman’s D’Est, Postmodern Culture. Project MUSE, 6(1), Johns Hopkins University Press. 1995, doi: 10.1353/pmc.1995.0042. Bazin, A. The Evolution of Film Language, In The French New wave: critical landmarks edited by Graham, P. and Vincendeau, G. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Bordwell, D and Thompson, K. Film Art: An Introduction.10th Edition, New York: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2013. Burch, N. On the structural use of Sound, In Film Sound: Theory and Practice edited by Weis, El. and Belton, J, New York: Columbia University Press 1985, 200-209. Chion, M. Audio-Vision. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Delmotte, I. “Insounds’: human sonic permeability and the practice of cinema sound design within ecologies of silences”. PhD diss., Lismore: Southern Cross University, 2013. Fleming, R. Listening to Cage: Nonintentional philosophy and music, 2016. Accessed July 15 2018 https://www.cogentoa.com/article/10.1080/23311983.2015.1088733. Goodman, P. Speaking and Language: Defense of Poetry. New York: Random House, 1971. Garcia, M. 2010 ‘La Danse; and the Rhythms of Institutions: An Interview with Frederick Wiseman”, Cinéaste 35(2), 2010, 12-16. https://www.jstor.org/stable/i40079434. Gasparyan, H.R. Investigating the Making of Cinematic Silence: University of York, 2019.

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Kramer, L Music and Poetry.London: University of California Press, 1984. Lebovici, E. No Idolatry and Losing Everything that Made You Slave. Mousse Magazine, 31st ed. 2011-2012, accessed July 10, 2018. http://moussemagazine.it/chantal-akerman-elisabeth-lebovici-2011/. Lebow, A. Memory Once Removed: Indirect Memory and Transitive Autobiography in Chantal Akerman’s D’Est”. In Camera Obscura 52(18), Duke University Press, 2003 https://www.academia.edu/3676782/Memory_Once_Removed_Indirec t_Memory_and_Transitive_Autobiography_in_Chantal_Akermans_De st. Margulies, I. Nothing Happens: Chantal Akerman’s Hyperrealist Everyday. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1996. Moss, A. E. A Woman with a Movie Camera: Chantal Akerman’s Essay Films. In The Essay Film edited by Papazian, El. and Eades, C. London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2016. Murch, W. Touch of Silence, In Soundscape edited by Sider, Larry, Freeman, Diane and Sider, Jerry, London. New York: Wallflower Press 2003, 83-102. Nichols, B. Introduction to Documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010. Quandt, J. Robert Bresson. Cinematheque Ontario, 1998. Rascaroli, L and Rhodes, J. D. Antonioni: Centenary Essays. London: BFI/Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Saeed-Vafa, M. and Rosenbaum, J. Abbas Kiarostami. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003. Schmid, M. Chantal Akerman. Manchester: University Press, 2017. Schrader, P. Transcendental Style in Film. Oakland: University of California Press, 2018. Sim, S. Manifesto for Silence: Confronting the Politics and Culture of Noise. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007. Sontag, S. “Against Interpretation”, 1964, accessed February 28, 2019 http://shifter-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/SontagAgainst-Interpretation.pdf. Sontag, S. “The Aesthetics of Silence”, 1969, accessed June 28, 2018 https://interrelevant.wordpress.com/2013/12/15/aesthetics-of-silence/. Theberge, P. “Almost Silent: The Interplay of Sound and Silence in Contemporary Cinema and Television”. In Lowering the Boom edited by Beck, Jay and Grajeda, Tony, University of Illinois Press, 2008. Walsh, M. “Intervals of Inner Flight: Chantal Akerman’s News From Home”. Journal Screen, Vol. 45(3), 2004.

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Filmography 2001: A space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick. 1968. Stanley Kubrick productions: MGM. Back and Forth, directed by Michael Snow. 1969. Band of Outsiders, directed by Jean-Luc Godard. 1964. Anouchka Films, Orsay Films: Columbia Pictures. Blow up, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. 1967. Premier Productions. Bordering on Fiction, directed by Chantal Akerman. 1995. Walker Art Centre. Central Region, directed by Michael Snow. 1971. Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre. D’Est, directed by Chantal Akerman. 1993. Icarus Films. Empire, directed by Andy Warhol. 1964. Gleaners and I, directed by Agnès Varda. 2000. Zeitgeist Films. Hospital, directed by Frederick Wiseman.1970. Osti Films. Jeanne Dielman, 23 Commerce Quay, 1080 Brussels, directed by Chantal Akerman. 1975. The Criterion Collection, Janus Films (USA). La Captive, directed by Chantal Akerman. 2000. Gemini Films. Leaving Las Vegas, directed by Mike Figgis. 1995. Lumiere Pictures. Les Rendez-vous d'Anna, directed by Chantal Akerman. 1978. Centre du Cinéma et de l'Audiovisuel de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, Hélène Films, Paradise Films. London, directed by Patrick Keiller. 1994. BFI Production, Koninck Studios. L’Avventura, directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. 1960. Cino Del Duca. National Gallery, directed by Frederick Wiseman. 2015. Idéale Audience, Gallery Film. Pierrot le Fou, directed by Jean-Luc Godard. 1965. Playtime, directed by Jacques Tati. 1967. Films Georges de Beauregard, Rome Paris Films, Société Nouvelle de Cinématographie (SNC). Ratcatcher, directed by Lynne Ramsay. 1999. Pathé Pictures International, BBC Films, Arts Council of England. Robinson in Space, directed by Patrick Keiller. 1997.British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Koninck Studios. Saute ma Ville, directed by Chantal Akerman. 1968. The Chorus, directed by Abbas Kiarostami.1982. Kanun parvaresh fekri. Titicut Follies, directed by Frederick Wiseman. 1967. Zipporah Films, Inc. Walking Woman, artwork by Michael Snow 1961-1967. Wavelength, directed by Michael Snow. 1967.

CHAPTER NINE EXPLORING THE GOOD POSSIBILITIES OF UNFORM WITHIN DOCUMENTARY FILM HUW WAHL

Thirty spokes meet in the hub. Where the wheel isn’t is where it’s useful. Hollowed out, clay makes a pot. Where the pot’s not is where it’s useful Cut doors and windows to make a room. Where the room isn’t, there’s room for you. So the profit in what is is in the use of what isn’t.” —Lao Tzu – Tao Te Ching, translated by Ursula Le Guin Film is prosaic Poetry only Because poetry is Essentially Prosaic: what is Quotidian still is The stuff of our daily Bread. —Stephen Watts, I Am a Film

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Introduction During the making of my film The Republics,1 a collaboration with the poet Stephen Watts, I recorded a spontaneous conversation between us in Italy about the petroglyphs we had visited the previous day. These are some 300,000 ancient stone carvings in the Valcamonica region, dating as far back as 8,000 BC. The discussion covered questions surrounding language and symbolism, and I made the observation that his book of prose-poetry ‘Republic Of Birds/Republic Of Dogs’2 – which we were using as a rough guide to our filming – contained the structure of prose, but the rhythm and breath of poetry. I was thinking about the question of form in art, and particularly in my own work where I often struggle to verbalise how on occasions, documentary has the ability to shift the shape of the world and reignite into it a sense of possibility. We had spoken a lot about how film could work with poetry, and so I asked him what he thought about form, in relation to the whole collaboration. He said: I think it’s really difficult to hold on to something that is purely anarchic, that is purely… allowing the possibility of whatever form, or allowing the possibility of no form (…) I sort of sense that if there’s not a good balance between form and unform, especially if we completely eradicate the good possibilities of unform, then the earth will completely collapse, or our place in the earth will completely collapse.3

Contemplating this call towards other possibilities of form, which felt deeply rooted in the way the petroglyphs had spoken to us the previous day in a language entirely their own, I unexpectedly experienced one of those rare moments of clarity that a practitioner sometimes has while making. Stephen’s words stirred something for me about the filmmaking process that often eludes any verbalisation or description; the thing that on some very elemental level allows me in those instants to go with the world, rather that battle against it. Unform seemed to be a key to understanding this better. In this essay, I use my practice as a filmmaker and the films and ideas of others to consider how experiences and concepts of unform and the formless might refine this sensation further. I am interested in how unform can be actively explored within documentary filmmaking, to allow fresh and different perspectives on a practice that has been historically overly

1

The Republics, directed by Huw Wahl (Caspar Pictures, 2020). Stephen Watts, Republic Of Birds/Republic Of Dogs (London: Test Centre, 2016). 3 The Republics, 01:14:30. 2

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dependent on questions of truth, veracity and distance (Herzog 19994), rather than imagination, process, and participation.

Unearthing unform In English literature it’s rare to find the word ‘unform’ used in anything but a pejorative way. Often utilised in the past tense to describe an object or thought in partial development, it signifies the lack of a more reliable, defined and bounded state. In a more conceptual use of the word, Lyotard invokes it to speak of the Kantian sublime, where Das Unform is the “feeling of something formless” caused by a “retreat of rules and regulations”5. This goes part way in explaining the effect of unform, but misses its intensities and pits it against ‘form’ – as if one is a complete state and the other a deficit. The Collins Dictionary definition gets closer to Stephen’s meaning when it describes unform as a transitive verb which acts “to make formless”6. This expression of unform as an action – ‘to unform’ – rather than an end state, a lack of something (rules or regulation) or a binary opposite of form, has echoes of an entry by George Bataille in his short but unique Critical Dictionary,7 which beautifully problematizes the verb ‘unform’, and is worth offering in full here: A dictionary begins when it no longer gives the meaning of words, but their tasks. Thus formless is not only an adjective having a given meaning, but a term that serves to bring things down in the world, generally requiring that each thing have its form. What it designates has no rights in any sense and gets itself squashed everywhere, like a spider or an earthworm. In fact, for academic men to be happy, the universe would have to take shape. All of philosophy has no other goal: it is a matter of giving a frock coat to what is, a mathematical frock coat. On the other hand, affirming that the universe

4

Herzog famously argued against “superficial truth” in his MINNESOTA DECLARATION, declaring provocatively that those who confound truth and fact are ploughing “only stones”. Werner Herzog. Minnesota Declaration. Walker Arts Centre, Minneapolois, Minnesota, 1999. 5 William Slocombe, Nihilism and the Sublime Postmodern (United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis, 2013), 60. 6 Collins English Dictionary (Glasgow: Harper Collins, 1991). 7 Georges Bataille, Allan Stoekl, Donald M Jr, and Carl R Lovitt. Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939 (Minneapolis: Mn University Of Minnesota Press, 2017).

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resembles nothing and is only formless amounts to saying that the universe is something like a spider or spit.8

Formless, rather than being the end result of unform, is imagined not as a static state opposed to the formed, but rather a process which has been designated ‘no rights’. This is of particular interest in documentary, which can often be preoccupied with the ‘mathematical frock coat’ rather than the ‘spider or spit’.9 In Formless: a user’s guide10, the art historians and critics Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind E. Krauss suggest that ‘formless’ is not a description of something, but an operation which rather than opposing modernist terms such as form and content, serves to displace them, and in this sense is an operation of slippage.11 Karen Rosenberg has a more straightforwardly transgressive interpretation of Bataille’s use of formless: “the sense was that art making should be an act of debasement and destruction: a breaking down, rather than a building up”.12 Although I think there is great merit in the breaking down of many things in our contemporary world often blanketed in terms like late-capitalism and neoliberalism – which could be interpreted as exhibiting a kind of “reactionary return to form”13 – I sense that the notion of slippage and operation that Bois and Krauss hit on is closer to what unform and formless has to offer. Not to throw out the idea of destruction of that which must be replaced, if we are to survive on the planet, but to point more towards unform as movement, rather than any end or fixed state. Following Bataille, the good possibility of unform contains within it the possibility of flow and flux, which might bring change in the overall structure of things. To Stephen, and throughout the filming of The Republics, this seemed to be at the core of his interpretation of poetry, in breath and in rhythm. Poetry experienced as a state of flux rather than a fixed structure, where flows the fountain of life and of language in all its many forms, written and felt. We might best think then of unform as 8

Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, 382. Bataille, Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939, 382. 10 Yve-Alain Bois and Rosalind E Krauss. Formless: A User’s Guide (New York, Ny: Zone Books, 1997). 11 Bois and Krauss. Formless: A User’s Guide, 15. 12 Karen Rosenberg, “A Throwaway? Not from This Angle.” The New York Times, October 4, 2012, sec. Arts, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/arts/design/adisagreeable-object-at-the-sculpturecenter.html. [Accessed 02 April. 2019]. 13 Johan Siebers, email sent to author, April 19, 2019. 9

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Bataille’s operation. A process that rather than being pointed to, created or pinned down, can be set in motion, but with little control over what emerges.

The hylomorphic model The ‘academic men’ that Bataille speaks of, for whom to be happy the universe would have to ‘take shape’, are perhaps best represented in the documentary field by the notion that documentary reveals some objective truth or uncovers only facts. This position negates the problematic history of documentary in terms of whose truth is being told, and through which gaze; it continues the idea that we operate in a binary static between subjects and objects. A good number of practitioners and makers have always carried the knowledge that this binary isn’t really how the process of creation works, or even how they see the final ‘product’ of their work. In “The Materials of Life”14 the anthropologist Tim Ingold talks about the act of making as a process of growth, where the artist ‘joins forces’ with the materials of making and the ‘worldly processes’ that are already in motion, bringing them together, splitting them apart and anticipating what might emerge.15 This, he explains, is a more humble ambition than that of the hylomorphic model, which is expanded upon in his essay The Textility of Making16: To create any thing, Aristotle reasoned, you have to bring together form (morphe) and matter (hyle). In the subsequent history of Western thought, this hylomorphic model of creation became ever more deeply embedded. But it also became increasingly unbalanced. Form came to be seen as imposed by an agent with a particular design in mind, while matter, thus rendered passive and inert, became that which was imposed upon.17

We can see this impositional approach to material critiqued by the writer Alan Watts, who spent his life bringing eastern philosophies to western audiences: “A tree is not made of wood; it is wood. A mountain is not made of rock; it is rock.”18 For Watts, the emphasis of being is on growth rather than imposed human ‘mechanisms’ and definitions of natural material 14

Tim Ingold, “The Materials of Life”, Multitudes, 2016/4 (No 65), p. 51-58. DOI: 10.3917/mult.065.0051. https://www.cairn-int.info/journal-multitudes-2016-4-page-51.htm. 15 Ingold, “The Materials of Life”, 51-58 16 Tim Ingold, “The Textility of Making” Cambridge Journal of Economics 34 (1) (2009): 91–102. https://doi.org/10.1093/cje/bep042. 17 Tim Ingold, “The Textility of Making”, 92. 18 Allan Watts, Tao: The Watercourse Way (Pelican Books, 1979), 50.

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centric to the human experience. In the documentary film My Architect19 – which explores the life of the late architect Louis Kahn through a personal journey by his son Nathaniel Kahn to all of his completed buildings – a piece of archival footage touchingly demonstrates the relationship that artists often develop with materials. It shows Kahn teaching his students about architecture, and how if you want something to have presence, you have to consult nature itself. If you think of brick for instance, you say to brick, ‘what do you want brick?’, and brick says to you, ‘I’d like an arch’. And if you say to brick, ‘look arches are expensive, and I can use a concrete lintel over you, what do you think of that, brick?’, brick says… ‘I’d like an arch’.20

This knowledge that the artist carries about material and form, demonstrated here in a playful way, is succinctly pinpointed by Ingold when quoting Paul Klee; “‘Form is the end, death’, he [Klee] wrote. ‘Form-giving is life’.”21 This echoes in Stephen Watts’s warning that without the good possibility of unform, the world, or our place in it, will collapse, and is something he repeats in a different part of The Republics while looking out to Canary Wharf from Wapping in London, and gently holding some rocks he has picked up from the shores of the Thames. “…for all that people think that the world will be determined and continue and be safeguarded by material… it’s far more likely that material, or gross misuse of material will destroy our world completely. Whereas good use of that deep spirit, is what will allow the world to remain… or our world to remain.”22

The modernist philosopher, art critic and poet Herbert Read who spent his life writing about art and artists, was, like Klee, preoccupied by questions and considerations of both form and unform. Slipping for much of his life between modernism and romanticism (especially in his poetry and particularly in his novel The Green Child) he eventually discovered the work of Jung and began a journey towards more mystical revelations. In To Hell with Culture23 a film I made about Read’s poetry and writing, the teacher and academic Jerry Zaslove describes him rather aptly as a ‘mystical anarchist’, because of his journey from western philosophy to more existentialist 19

My Architect, directed by Nathaniel Kahn (Mediaworks, 2003). My Architect, 00:47:10. 21 Ingold, “The Textility of Making”, 2009. 22 The Republics, 00:37:00. 23 To Hell with Culture, directed by Huw Wahl (Caspar pictures, 2014). 20

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psychology. In his last book, The Forms of Things Unknown,24 primarily influenced by his reading of Jung’s concept of the unconscious, Read wrote that, Conscious renunciation of form is often falsely interpreted as inability to give form, as incompetence. Actually the breakdown of consciousness, carrying the artist backward to an all-embracing participation with the world, contains the constructive, creative elements of a new world vision.25

This articulates a very similar position to Ingold’s, that instead of reading creativity from a final form and tracing it back to an original idea in the mind of the creator, we should rather read it as a flow of material that brings the form of work into being.26 Read expresses this through his new discoveries in Jung and in the collective unconscious, a ‘new world vision’, comparable with Ingold’s proposition of ‘finding the grain of the world’s becoming’.27 By the end of his life, Read understood that creativity was not a pull between the romantic and the modern, between form and unform, between subject and object – he was no longer using such binaries in his writing – but rather it was a participation in the world and a to-ing and froing of matter, material and form; a flux state as is the world itself. Having turned to Read and his dedicated study of art over many crucial decades, we are reminded that in artists and their work we find many examples of how unform and the formless operate, not as oppositions to form, but actions outside of “binary logic”.28 For example, Mike Dibb’s seminal film ‘Seeing Through Drawing’,29 brings our attention to the work of Picasso, as described by the art historian Philip Rawson. A figure will start off very, very solid and plastic at one end, and at the other end will become a kind of firework display of flat diagrammatic forms. And Picasso was largely responsible for the destruction of the old idea that one has to accept a specific view of the world – particularly the camera’s eye view – as absolute. He personally felt free, almost in an anarchic way, so to speak, to do what he wished, with natural appearance.30

24

Herbert Read, The Forms of Things Unknown (Ohio: Meridian Books, 1963). Read, The Forms of Things Unknown, 197. 26 Ingold, “The Textility of Making”, 97. 27 Ingold, “The Textility of Making”, 91. 28 Bois and Krauss. Formless: A User’s Guide, 16. 29 Seeing Through Drawing, directed by Mike Dibbs (BBC, 1977). 30 Seeing Through Drawing, 01:54:15. 25

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This is the process of unforming and imagination in operation within the work of art. And it is important to note that refusing to accept the fixed gaze of painting can also be applied to using a camera. The camera may record an image in a different way to painting and this process may well be mechanical, but it is through the creative fusion of non-human and human, camera and camera person, the poetic association and the editing, that documentary can reject the hylomorphic model. Dai Vaughn, a filmmaker with an in-depth knowledge of the practical and technical elements of the art of film and how they could be utilised towards the poetic, said that documentary is “conceived as prose but perceived as poetry”31: All film aspires toward the poetic in that it has neither a wholly predetermined syntax nor a precise, delimited symbolic vocabulary. But to grant a film documentary sense is to respect in its images the density, the plenitude of the pro-filmic: a plenitude which defies its reduction toward the symbolic (form – HW) and thus defies also, by implication, its articulation into a simple, linear statement approximating to the condition of prose.32

In thinking about Stephen’s book The Republic Of Dogs/The Republic Of Birds, instead of trying to figure out which camp it sits within, prose or poetry, we could instead, as Bois & Krauss suggest, contemplate and bathe in its operation. So too with documentary. Freeing ourselves from the hylomorphic model that Ingold demonstrates has progressively devalued the ‘textility of making’, we can move into understanding documentary as a process rather than a fixed object, which contains within it the good possibility of unform. So what might this look like in practice?

Unform in documentary The French anthropologist Jean Rouch is surely one of the clearest examples of a filmmaker who understood how far documentary could be expanded in different directions. From docu-fiction to what we might now loosely term ‘essay-film’, his movies manage to show us new perspectives both in the world but also reflexively in the act of making, and the interaction of the ‘subjects’ – or better ‘participants’ – with the process itself. He continually experimented with these fictive and reflexive elements in his work,33 which resulted in creations co-constructed between filmmaker and participant 31 Dai Vaughan, For Documentary (Oakland: University of California Press, 1999), 81. 32 Dai Vaughan, For Documentary, 81. 33 Michael Renov, Theorizing Documentary (New York; Routledge, 1993).

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exemplifying the ‘shared anthropology’ or ‘participatory ethnography’ he developed. One clear example comes in his landmark film Chronique d’un été,34 which as well as being one of the first films to use a hand-held 16mm camera with synchronised sound recording, saw Rouch and the sociologist Edgar Morin utilise a spontaneous, open and critical medium of enquiry to unform and reform perceptions of society and interactions between the people within it. Chronique d’un été is a brilliant mixture of constructed scenes, reveries, screen-back, vox-pop and conversational group interviews, questioning and exposing not only its participants (it begins simply with the question posed to strangers on the street: ‘Are you happy’) but the filmmakers themselves, through various reflexive techniques. In 1963, Rouch spoke of using the camera as a catalyst, placing his protagonists in situations with dramatic possibilities, where “something uniquely valuable can happen”.35 In thinking about form and unform, Rouch’s films do not treat lived reality as a fixed experience to be represented in a correct form; they purposefully unform it, allowing spaces for spontaneous associations and reveries to occur. One incredibly memorable scene follows Marceline Loridan-Ivens as she walks the streets of Paris, through the place de la Concorde, and recounts in monologue her deportation to Birkenau Nazi concentration camp, her father’s death in Auschwitz, and her return to France after the war. Filmed from the back of a Citroen 2CV we see her from the front or side, though she does not look at the camera because she is deep in thought. Marceline is not acting, but the scene is constructed as a way to elicit her memories, and as she speaks in an apparent reverie we can see that she is in a kind of ‘movie scene’ which holds drama and tension whilst also feeling the full force of reality – the profilmic as Vaughn would say – loud and clear. This technique is both structured and open, and exemplifies the improvisational possibility Rouch wanted to crack open in his filmmaking. Sometimes things happen, sometimes they don’t. The possibility here I would suggest is directly related to unform and gives it the space it needs to thrive. Marceline is both conscious she is being filmed and at the same time in a kind of internal trance, being held by a filmic moment of unform. At a similar time in Iran, the poet Forough Farrokhzad was making the short film The House Is Black.36 A cross between a documentary and a film34

Chronique d’un été [Chronicle of a Summer], directed by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin (Argos Films, 1961). 35 Mohammad Ali Issari, and Doris A Paul, What Is Cinéma Vérité? (Metuchen, Nj: Scarecrow Press, 1979), 80. 36 The House Is Black, directed by Forough Farrokhzad (1963).

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poem, it shows a leper colony near Tabriz in north-western Iran. In the journal Camera Obscura, Sara Saljoughi37 writes that the film in its unprecedented new form heralded the kind of filmmaking that was to come six years later in the Iranian New Wave. In a mix of part observational documentary mode, staged scenes and free-form associative editing it attempted to project a new set of social relations brought to life through the poetic.38 Imagining something that was not, yet could be. The film’s combination of the sacred (scripture), the elite (New Poetry), the modern (cinema), and the other (the lepers) does not clearly articulate the shared basis of a future collectivity, but it does strongly foreground its possibility. And in the film’s refusal to name what might be found in common to form a collectivity, it dares to say that we do not know what it looks like.39

In the film Farrokhzad quotes from the Old Testament, the Qur’an, and her own poetry whilst juxtaposing images of the human body in many different states of disease. There are many jump cuts between diseased body parts, animals, places, colony grounds and flora40, all the time somehow containing within them a loving and care-giving gaze. Filmmaker Jem Cohen places it in the contemporary genre of ‘essay film’ which for him, epitomises unform. “The essay film is the name given to the unnameable and undescribable. Its wildest strength is that it takes you to the edges of cinema where something simply can’t be pinned down.”41

He continues to describe The House is Black as “a collision of poetry and the industrial that opens up into an extraordinary hallucination.”42 In it we 37 Sara Saljoughi, “A New Form for a New People: Forugh Farrokhzad’s the House Is Black.” Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 32 (1 94) (2017): 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1215/02705346-3661982. 38 Saljoughi, “A New Form for a New People: Forugh Farrokhzad’s the House Is Black.”. 39 Saljoughi, “A New Form for a New People: Forugh Farrokhzad’s the House Is Black.”, 18. 40 Saljoughi, “A New Form for a New People: Forugh Farrokhzad’s the House Is Black.”. 41 Jem Cohen, “Jem Cohen: The Former Ice-Cream Seller Chronicling an Overlooked America.”, interviewed by Sukhdev Sandhu, The Guardian. March 30, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/mar/30/jem-cohen-counting-museumhours-documentary-film. [Accessed 15 September 2020]. 42 Cohen, interview.

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see those things which ‘cannot be pinned down’ given room to breathe, rather than being boxed in and categorised or objectified. Unform is alive in the rapid montage, asynchronous sound, and suggestive correlations of word and image, which do not aim to tell us something directly or in the traditional documentary sense about the colony, but rather treat poetry as a political intervention in image and sound. As a film striving to imagine a collectivity that does not yet exist, and yet dares not to name or solidify, the imagination within the formless, the unform, is brought to the fore, and into a space where it had not previously existed. In making The Republics with Stephen Watts I began developing a better understanding of how the filmmakers above may have reached this space in film, where unform is allowed to occur and exist within the making itself. It also helped me better grasp what I believe are the earlier articulations of this space by the artist and filmmaker Maya Deren, who in a panel discussion in 1953 titled ‘Poetry and Film’ voiced her ideas about the ‘vertical attack’ of poetry in film. She saw this attack as an investigation of a situation that “probes the ramifications of the moment, and is concerned with its qualities and its depth, so that you have poetry concerned, in a sense, not with what is occurring but with what it feels like or what it means”.43 Thinking this through as she spoke, she then pitted this again the ‘horizontal attack’ of drama, in a move that exemplifies the dualistic thinking of the modernist context within which she worked. At the time of making these thoughtful comments she was laughed down and mocked by the men who sat with her on the symposium panel (Arthur Miller, Dylan Thomas and Parker Tyler), who presumably had not grasped the brilliance of her insights into the interconnections between poetry and the film medium. Vaughn names the strands she refers to as “the mimetic and analogical” – which we might call the narrative structure or grounding framework – and the “poetic” – which relies on “juxtaposition, association and the play of ambiguities”.44 Again, we could easily fit these definitions into the notion of unform. Despite the modernist polarities she worked within and that we also see in Herbert Read’s early discussions of modernism and romanticism, Deren’s comments help to frame the movement between form and unform and theoretically contextualise the later more fluid work by Rouch and Farrokhzad. She also, by using the word attack, is I believe feeling from a maker’s perspective for an adequate way to describe a ‘happening’ or

43

Maya Deren, quoted in “Poetry and the Film: A Symposium 1953” Ubuweb. http://www.ubu.com/papers/poetry_film_symposium.html. [Accessed 3 April 2019]. 44 Dai Vaughan, For Documentary, 204.

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‘occurrence’; which in my experience is the moment of unform in film. In my film with Stephen Watts, this was brought out in the act of walking.

Walking with unform In The Republics I began with the aim not of illustrating the poems of Watts45 but instead allowing a free play between my material imagery and his words, and his word-imagery and my image-words, to converse together. The space that this occurred in was often while walking. We walked through the landscapes of the book as we talked about their meanings, feelings, and associations. Sometimes we didn’t speak much at all and the moving visuals came as the primary mode of experiencing – Stephen pointing to things for example, explaining why they were important for him, or me finding compositions I was drawn to – and at other points the word took president, as in our discussion on the mountainside where I didn’t film but only used a microphone to record our discussion; or when we were remembering certain points in the book and how they related to the places we explored. We also made a studio recording of the poem, which Stephen performed in two complete non-stop readings. Although this was perhaps a more formalistic part of the filmmaking process, we allowed space for spontaneity in his pacing and flow, and the way he read, which lay the foundation for the more ‘experimental’ or ‘free-form’ parts of the process. This was the balance I sought between form and unform in a formalistic sense – before our in-depth discussions on the subject – and the footing with which we set off on the journey. Although it was, like Vaughn’s or Deren’s descriptions, quite dualistic, it paved the way to a more ‘Rouchian’ space of unform as we progressed in our filming. What helped me discover this was a better understanding of Stephen’s perspectives on poetry. As Stephen and I navigated the flow between more narrative structures, for example where will the walk begin and end, and the poetic, the space of unform itself, we nourished the atmosphere that appears in the spirit of his writing which is a place where results are unknown. As a writer who sometimes works when walking, composing poems in his head or jotting down ideas, it’s movement that gives him the life to write. This is the spirit I too had hoped would soak into the making process and the resulting film. Affirming this has been the case, the writer Sukhdev Sandhu said of the film ‘It’s so precise and yet so

45

Though it’s important to add that on occasion illustration through image and its relation to the spoken word is necessary and good.

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free. Rooted – and vagrant. Or rather: seeking. It prickles and trembles.’46 This prickling was, I think, reached because after some initial filming sessions where I was preoccupied with direction both literally and conceptually, I let go and stopped trying so hard. I think of this as a little like waking up and trying to remember a dream. If you try hard to recall it, the dream image tends to fade, shift or retreat, and the harder you try the fainter the image gets. Yet if you let go, stop trying, and just lie there, the images might begin to flow back, you maybe sense something, feel something. Though you cannot put your finger on it, something is coming together. Suddenly then, there the dream is! Bright and shining and clear. Did it come from a space of unform? The space of imagination? Or was it sent to you? However it arrived it came of its own accord, because you gave it the space to be. This is what I learned about walking with unform when I walked with Stephen.

Documentary as participation, unform as a way To return to Ingold and the hylomorphic model, it underlines that the problem lies in the difficulty – especially in Northern and Western thought – of articulating unform without pitting it against a supposed opposite: form. The philosopher A.S Whitehead suggests this as an issue of language when we want to speak of philosophical assertations. Words and phrases must be stretched towards a generality foreign to their ordinary usage; and however such elements of language be stabilized as technicalities, they remain metaphors mutely appealing for an imaginative leap.47

Therefore to really experience unform, to make that imaginative leap needed in the filmmaking process, and to grasp momentarily the way in which unform appears, we must head into the realm of intuition, non-binary thinking, the non-discursive, and the imagination.48 A great proponent and explorer of these realms was the writer Alan Watts, who I want to return to for a moment in light of his spending an entire life pursuing a route to thinking differently through the bringing of eastern 46 Sukhdev Sandhu, “The Republics reviews”, http://www.therepublicsfilm.com [Accessed 21 October, 2020]. 47 Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, an Essay in Cosmology, by Alfred North Whitehead (Cambridge: The University Press, 1929), 4. 48 I am indebted to Joan Siebers for in depth email conversations on unform that highlighted these realms to me.

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philosophies to the west. Watts was particularly interested in Taoism which he said was process, nature, and the unification of everything as one. Think of it, he said, as “just a name for whatever happens”49 rather than as something that can be pointed to directly or categorised by our minds. Resonating with Whitehead, Watts speaks of Standard Average European (SAE) languages having sentence structures wherein a “verb (event) must be set in motion by the noun (thing)”,50 thereby making it hard to use it to pose metaphysical problems. It is thus that an ideographic language is a little closer to nature than one which is strictly linear and alphabetic. At any moment, nature is a simultaneity of patterns. An ideographic language is a series of patterns and, to that extent, still linear—but not so laboriously linear as an alphabetic language.51

As Stephen Watts points to in my film and his own work, poetry is somehow on the same boat, because it does not use language in standard defined way, it bends language – or let us say, it reinvents it. This, perhaps, upends our linear notions and shows us something unintelligible through other means of communication and experience. It is also suggestive of how film is capable of unearthing unform in a language not tied to the same grammar we use in spoken prose, but instead one of association, image and imagination. It might therefore help in unearthing the operations of unform in film if we imagine it stemming from a similar root as Tao, where there is a possibility to discover it in the creative process of giving it the room to exist and breathe, just as the dream memory once we stop pushing at it, appears more clearly. Here too, in the processes of film, image, poetry and their journey together, lies the element of participation which Herbert Read introduced earlier on in this chapter. This is key in both the operation that unform can be and the connectedness of all things in the work of Alan Watts. Instead of form being something we add to material, let us think of it as the process of ‘mutual arising’ that is described by proponents of Tao. In this sense, unform is the operation of connecting to the world’s processes, and as such participating in it, going with it. Allan Watts’s description of Tao could also be attributed to the arising of unform in that it “may be attained but not seen, or, in other words, felt but not conceived, intuited but not categorized, divined but not

49

Allan Watts, Tao: The Watercourse Way, 38. Allan Watts, Tao: The Watercourse Way, 11. 51 Allan Watts, Tao: The Watercourse Way, 7. 50

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explained.”52 It (both Tao and unform) is the “course, the flow, the drift, or the process of nature”.53 This is carried in the descriptions of the maker by Ingold as a wayfarer, “whose skill lies in their ability to find the grain of the world’s becoming and to follow its course while bending it to their evolving purpose.” The Republics was my journey into exactly this process of wayfaring, and as such I make no claim other than being a filmmaker who knows when a film and its making has affected their own visions. It grew my concept of what film can be, and the potential it has, and has surely changed my process forever. This development seeped into the film and has been picked up on by viewers like the Québécois filmmaker Olivier Godin who draws it out as follows: While respecting a chronology, which has everything to do with the principle of travel, Wahl succeeds in giving birth to a formless coherent whole, which strives to symbolize nothing, nor romanticising anything, but rather embraces different forms, to discover and explore the poet who does not want to be captured, who keeps advancing, moving forward…(…) in its heterogeneous quality, the film thus remains standing on the surface of the voice, closer to its musicality and for this reason, the film is honest and inviting. (Godin 2020).54

What I found in making The Republics and working with a poet, is that embracing unform is perhaps surprisingly something that documentary filmmakers are particularly good at; having learnt that good work comes from intuition, imagination and the poetry of the process, rather than the technics of truth or fact. Unform came to life for me in the process of making. The final ‘product’ or ‘work’ is, as it often seems to occur, hard for the maker themselves to engage with. It is in the process that they truly find 52

Allan Watts, Tao: The Watercourse Way, 41-42. Allan Watts, Tao: The Watercourse Way, 41-42. 54 Translated from the original French by the author with help from Godin: “Tout en respectant une chronologie, on le devine, qui a tout à voir avec le principe du voyage, il n’en demeure pas moins que Wahl réussit à accoucher d’un tout cohérent, sans forme, qui s’évertue à ne rien symboliser, ne romantise rien non plus, n’ose pas aller trop loin dans le poème pour en déterrer une thèse, épouse plutôt différentes formes, pour mieux foncer, chercher son sujet, son sujet, lui qui ne désire pas être capté, qui marche tout le temps… (…) dans sa qualité hétérogène, le film demeure ainsi sur la surface de la voix, debout, sensible à sa musicalité et pour cette raison, le film devient honnête et invitant.” Godin, Olivier, “To hell With Culture”, Horschamp, 2020. https://www.horschamp.qc.ca/spip.php?article953. [accessed 12 February, 2021]. 53

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what they were searching for. What I can say from my own experience is that the non-spaces that Ursula Le Guin points to in her poetic translation of the Tao Te Ching – an extract of which I begin this chapter with – are, in documentary film, the non-places where the good possibilities of unform may appear. This is how we will experience the dream returning to us, without any effort, and in all its becoming and power.

Bibliography Corrigan, Timothy. The Essay Film: From Montaigne, After Marker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Georges, Bataille, Allan Stoekl, Donald M Jr, and Carl R Lovitt. Visions of Excess: Selected Writings, 1927-1939. Minneapolis, Mn University of Minnesota Press, 2017. Bishop, Claire. Artificial Hells: Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. London: Verso, 2012. Bloch, Ernst, Jack Zipes, and Frank Mecklenburg. The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: Selected Essays. Cambridge, Mass.: Mit Press, 1988. Bois, Yve-Alain, and Rosalind E Krauss. Formless: A User’s Guide. New York, Ny: Zone Books, 1997. Child, Abigail. This Is Called Moving; A Critical Poetics of Film. Alabama: University Alabama Press, 2005. “Jem Cohen: The Former Ice-Cream Seller Chronicling an Overlooked America.” 2015. The Guardian. March 30, 2015. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/mar/30/jem-cohen-countingmuseum-hours-documentary-film. [Accessed 15 September 2020]. “Unform Definition and Meaning | Collins English Dictionary.” www.collinsdictionary.com. Accessed September 13, 2021. https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/unform. [Accessed 14 February 2021]. Bollig, Ben, and David M. J. Wood. “Film-Poetry/Poetry-Film in Latin America. Theories and Practices: An Introduction.” Studies in Spanish & Latin-American Cinemas 11 (2) (2014): 115–25. https://doi.org/10.1386/slac.11.2.115_1. Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit, Michigan: Black & Red, 1967. Debord, Guy. Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. London: Verso, (1988) 2011. Deren, Maya. “Poetry and the Film: A Symposium 1953” Ubuweb. http://www.ubu.com/papers/poetry_film_symposium.html. [Accessed 3 April 2019].

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Epps, Brad. “The Unbearable Lightness of Bones: Memory, Emotion, and Pedagogy in Patricio Guzmán’s Chile, La Memoria Obstinada and Nostalgia de La Luz.” Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 26 (4) (2016): 483–502. https://doi.org/10.1080/13569325.2016.1229661. Fisher, Mark. Capitalist Realism: is there no alternative? Winchester: Zero Books, 2009. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of freedom: ethics, democracy, and civic courage. Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1998. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder, (1968) 1972. Gidal, Peter. Materialist film. London: Routledge, (1989) 2014. Godin, Olivier. “To hell With Culture” Horschamp. 2020. https://www.horschamp.qc.ca/spip.php?article953 [accessed 12 February, 2021]. Ingold, Tim. “The Textility of Making.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 34 (1) (2009): 91–102. https://doi.org/10.1093/cje/bep042. Ingold Tim, “The Materials of Life”, Multitudes, 2016/4 (No 65), p. 51-58. DOI: 10.3917/mult.065.0051. https://www.cairn-int.info/journal-multitudes-2016-4-page-51.htm. Helke, S. (2016). Cinema of transformation in times of danger. Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, 6: 2, pp. 183–88. Helke, Susanna. “Short Subject: Cinema of Transformation in Times of Danger.” Journal of Scandinavian Cinema 6 (2) (2016): 183–88. https://doi.org/10.1386/jsca.6.2.183_1. Herzog, Werner. Minnesota Declaration. Walker Arts Centre, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1999. Nathanial, Nathan, director. My Architect. Mediaworks, 2003. Mohammad Ali Issari, and Doris A Paul. What is Cinema Verite? Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 1979. James, David E. To free the Cinema, Jonas Mekas & the New York underground. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992. Vlieghe, Joris. “Rethinking Emancipation with Freire and Rancière: A Plea for a Thing-Centred Pedagogy.” Educational Philosophy and Theory 50 (10) (2016): 917–27. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2016.1200002. Macdonald, Scott. Avant-Doc: Intersections of Documentary and AvantGarde Cinema. New York Oxford University Press, 2014. Daniels, Jill, Cahal Mclaughlin, and Gail Pearce. Truth or Dare: Art & Documentary. Bristol: Intellect books, 2007. Read, Herbert. The Forms of Things Unknown. Ohio: Meridian Books, 1963. Renov, Michael. Theorizing Documentary. New York; Routledge, 1993.

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Rosenberg, Karen. 2012. “A Throwaway? Not from This Angle.” The New York Times, October 4, 2012, sec. Arts. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/05/arts/design/a-disagreeableobject-at-the-sculpturecenter.html. [Accessed 02 April. 2019]. Russell, Catherine. Experimental Ethnography. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999. Sandhu, Sukhdev. “The Republics reviews” The Republics. 2020. http://www.therepublicsfilm.com. [Accessed 21 October, 2020]. Slocombe, William. Nihilism and the Sublime Postmodern. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis, 2013. Vaughan, Dai. For Documentary. Oakland: University of California Press, 1999. Watts, Allan. Tao: The Watercourse Way. Pelican Books, 1979. Alfred North Whitehead. Process and Reality, an Essay in Cosmology, by Alfred North Whitehead. Cambridge: The University Press, 1929. Saljoughi, Sara. “A New Form for a New People: Forugh Farrokhzad’s the House Is Black.” Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 32 (1 94) (2017): 1–31. https://doi.org/10.1215/027053463661982.

CHAPTER TEN DESIGNING REALITY: CREATIVE SOUND DESIGN IN DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKING EDWARD TRISTRAM

Introduction This chapter is not solely aimed at the seasoned sound design veteran but can also be an informative resource to any documentary filmmaker that wishes to breathe life into their documentary through the art of designing sound. Documentary filmmaking has been one of the primary forms of entertainment that focuses on fact. The ability to capture reality is a powerful tool to educate as well as to entertain. Storytelling is paramount to the success of a documentary but what about aural storytelling? Can reality be designed to enhance the viewing experience without aural inaccuracies? In this chapter, I will be making extensive references to Chion’s work on causal listening (Chion, Gorbman, and Murch, 1994, p26-29). In his publication, Chion discusses the categorical identification of causes through casual listening. A human is able to categorise the difference between an adult male and a female child through speech alone. This principle can also be applied to the identification of other categories of sound. Through the analysis of timbre and rhythm, a sound can be identified as “something mechanical”. This temporal perception can be exploited with creative sound design to achieve any number of artistic goals. For context, I will be attempting to answer this through the analysis of two documentaries that are renowned for their use of creative sound design.

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Glossary of Terms Sound Design The use of sound design in filmmaking has existed since the birth of audio synchronisation. The art of manipulating audio to create life began with Murray Spivack’s work on King Kong (1933). “The trouble with the roars of living animals,” Spivack said, “lies in the fact that audiences recognize them. Even the most terrifying notes would be recognized. Also, the majority of roars are too short. The elephant, with the longest roar of which I know, sustains the sound only eight or nine seconds. Kong’s longest continues for thirty seconds, including six peaks and a threesecond tail.” (Boone 1933, 21) This analytical approach to designing the roars of this fictional beast is what this chapter will be referring to in “sound design”. There will not be any love-struck apes in this chapter. Yet, the level of critical thinking and analysis that Spivack applied to his sound design is something that inspires me on every project that I work on. Additionally, the term “sound design” in this chapter will not be referring to any musical devices. My aim is to use the term “sound design” as a statement to cover any sound that has been sonically altered or layered to serve a scene.

Hyperrealism Hyperrealism in the context of sound design forms a key element of entertainment in filmmaking. ‘Larger than life’ sounds in a production can exaggerate events. The aim being to hyperbolise, not fabricate. This does not mean that sounds cannot also be created to enhance a subject. Footage of a train passing through a scene may contain the original source recordings, but the sound designer may also choose to add an extra layer of air from a deodorant can. The recording of the aerosol on its own may be classed as a surrealist endeavour, but when contextualised in a sound mix, the benefits of the addition become immediately apparent. The original sound has been hyperrealistically exaggerated. Reality has now been designed without sacrificing fact.

Atmos I will also be using the term “atmos” throughout this chapter. Throughout my career in sound, I have used the term atmos to describe a ‘bed’ of

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ambience: Wind blowing in the trees, crowds bustling through a marketplace, waves crashing onto the shore. These sounds are used to build the bedrock of a scene without drawing too much attention to the core of the sound. When a solid bed of atmos has been established, a scene will be enriched with a sound field that is full of life. This colloquialism is not to be associated with “Dolby Atmos”.

Leviathan: Submerging Expectations of Reality ‘Leviathan’ (2012) is a sensory documentary that focuses on the North Atlantic fishing industry. Filmed off the coast of Massachusetts, the documentary was directed by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel of the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University (‘Harvard Filmmakers’ Messy World – The New York Times’ n.d.). The production element of Leviathan that aids the sensory experience is that it is filmed entirely using GoPro cameras. The cinematography is designed to assault the senses: audiences are subjected to scenes filmed in near-total darkness, suffocating underwater scenes, and moments where they find themselves staring into the lifeless eyes of the catch of the day. It is a sensory experience that does not wish to soberly document the day-to-day duties of the fisherman. The use of a GoPro to film a documentary without the aid of narration to carry exposition is a poetic endeavour in itself. This leaves the documentary filmmaker(s) with a plethora of technical limitations, one of which is the audio. GoPros are miniature cameras which are designed to be worn upon a person to give the audience a point-of-view account of the ensuing events. The GoPro has been particularly popular with extreme-sportspeople who, through the use of this camera, can give audiences a safe view of their dangerous craft. The video that is recorded by a GoPro from the time of the filming of the documentary can film up to 1080p (‘GoPro HERO Session’ n.d.) but due to a number of factors: the size of the on-board microphone; the design choice of sacrificing moving-parts for increased robustness; and the need to conserve recording space; the audio is usually recorded at a lower sample rate (32kHz). A sampling frequency of 32kHz is below the smallest sample rate needed for a human to hear the full range of frequencies available (44.1kHz). This will result in audio that has a limited frequencyband and thus will not be fully-representative of what the audience is able to hear. This technical limitation is a key issue in building a soundscape that is both accurate and entertaining to viewers.

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“We recorded with a sound device and we recorded hours and hours of sound but we realized that the sound coming from the little GoPro camera, especially when it was in its plastic case, was—I guess most filmmakers would have gotten rid of it, but we decided to work with it…It’s so disturbing…” (Cook 2012)

The decision to use the original source recordings was a conscious decision in the post-production process. This artistic choice has been implemented throughout the film, leaving the sound designer to work with the myriad recordings from the “sound device”. These external recordings have allowed the sound designer to layer sounds that contain the full range of perceptible frequencies. The documentary focuses on distinct ‘characters’: The boat, the sea, the aquatic life, and the fishermen. Each of these subjects contain their own sonic signature that is allowed to be imprinted throughout the film. Without the use of narration, the sound design must play a part in ‘nudging’ the viewer to focus on what the filmmaker wants to portray. The sound design of the boat (and accompanying machinery) is hauntingly organic in its sonic imprint. The machines hauling the nets contains a pitch that dominates the sound-field but ‘drops back’ into the mix to hover on the edge of perceptibility. This sound then plays on the mind to become an organicsounding ‘wail’, disrupting the ability to effectively categorise the sound source. Without narration, the sounds can now be open to interpretation. During my viewing of the scene, I interpreted the wail as the machinery sympathising with the impending death of the fish. It forced me to consider that the machine is simply the thrall of the operator, lamenting the orders forced upon it but ultimately powerless to obey. This level of sound design plays off the musical device of building tension through sustained notes. (Hischak 2015). This musical technique is masterful in building tension in a scene which offers little foreshadowing. The sense of unease persisting throughout the haulage. The second key example of creative sound design in the machinery lies not in the editing of sound but in the use of panning. This is represented by a dramatic increase in volume in the left channel once the cameraman looks away from the machinery (to the right). For many sound designers, it would be natural to reduce the volume of a sound source once it is out of frame (unless a specific need called for the viewer’s attention to be grabbed). This creative decision forms part of the narrative without the need for dialogue; a machine operator’s ultimate responsibility is the machine (and in this case, its cargo). The machine is demanding the attention of the operator and

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therefore, the viewer. The revision of this concept of an unbalanced sound field will be further explored in this chapter. During a number of scenes, the camera falls below the churning waters of the North Atlantic in a suffocating display of cinematography. The sound design plays a key role in subverting the expectations of the viewer by utilising two creative techniques: 1. Increasing the amplitude of the layers of sound and an increase of lowfrequencies as the camera comes closer to the water. 2. Removing the low-frequency elements from the layered sound as the camera drops below the surface of the water. This stark change in sound is jarring to the viewer as the ‘real’ GoPro audio takes centre stage as the camera breaks the water-line. The human ear has not evolved to function underwater. The expectation of the viewer is that sound will be ‘muffled’ when underwater. This example has replaced the sound with ‘tinny’ audio from the camera. This shift from the hyperreal creates an air of surrealism that has ‘flipped’ perceptions of the sonic landscape. This is evident in the closing scene where the camera is held upside-down; dipping in and out of the water whilst the birds fly below and the depths span out above. This auditory immersion subverts the expectation of sonic layering and forces us to revert to our survival instincts. The rich soundscape is completely removed upon submerging, only returning when the camera comes above the waves. The result is a passage of shots which have the effect of making the viewer breathless. Prior to the asphyxiating final visit to the abyss, a previous underwater scene attempts to invoke a more visceral response from the viewer. At 50.00 minutes, the camera is submerged for a substantial length of time, wherein the sound designer paints a sonic landscape. This aims to compliment the visual landscape which is filled with fresh blood and the discarded corpses of the fish that were unfit for consumption. The sound design in this particular scene contains a ‘bed’ of layered sound that occupies a low/lowmidrange frequency band. The discarded remains of the aquatic life ‘scrape’ past the camera and add a harshness to the bed of sound created by the careful layering and EQ-ing of the atmos. This bed of frequencies is punctuated by the addition of the sound of machinery, panned to the extreme-right of the sound field. These ‘spots’ of sound are also EQ’d to cut through the mix and become immediately noticed amongst the rich texture of sounds. The two sounds that are heard are:

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1. A metallic knocking that repeats at a set tempo. 2. A droning sound which is indicative of a winch or rope being hauled. These two sounds fit into the aural profile of the boat/machinery and are exaggerated to bookend the bloody visuals found during this scene. The overloading of sensory information would not serve to improve the scene and the sonic intrusion of the machinery does not intrude on the visual complexity. This addition to the sound field is representative of the ‘active offscreen sound’ principle (Chion, Gorbman, and Murch 1994). An active offscreen sound will attempt to pique the curiosity of the viewer, unlike a passive offscreen sound that would serve as a neutral filler to the overall atmosphere (e.g. a cityscape or a layer of birdsong in a forest). Films like Psycho are based entirely on the curiosity aroused by active offscreen sound: this mother we keep hearing, what does she look like?” (Chion, Gorbman, and Murch 1994). When considering ‘Psycho’ as an example of active offscreen sound, there is a “payoff” to reward the audiences’ curiosity (even though the payoff in ‘Psycho’ is especially gruesome). When contextualised in Leviathan, the sound of the machinery demands the attention of the viewer, but there is no payoff for the audience. Due to the imbalanced sound-field and the feeling of being submerged, there is an added feeling of tension. Casual listening allows the majority of viewers to identify the sound as mechanical, yet only the most seasoned fishers would be able to identify the process behind the sound. Through a creative, yet extreme manipulation of an established principle, a sense of tension has been set. This, in a scene which contains no dialogue, narrative, or music to influence the viewers’ perception. The humans in Leviathan are also creatively represented in the sound design choices. Throughout the opening quarter of the documentary, the humans have no sonic identity (apart from some ‘futzed’) dialogue between the fishermen. This changes when the ‘main’ fisherman is revealed to the audience. This scene uses a focus pull to reveal the main character, pulling the camera back from a close-up of his arm to eventually show his face. This visual reveal is drawn out over several minutes with an element of ambiguity surrounding the shot. How can a connection be made with a human that until this moment, has been a potential participant of the emotionless slaughter of the past 35 minutes? The answer lies in the sound designer choosing to focus on an element of the sonic landscape that is inherently human: music. During this scene, there is diegetic music present

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from a radio (unseen in the frame) where the deliberate design of this music creates a poetic introduction to the character. The music begins quieter than the ‘atmos’ and is filtered in a way that forces it to share a sonic space with more dominant frequencies in the sound field. The relationship between the music and the drone of the machinery is now blurred. The filter is then ‘eased off’ and the level of the music increases until the song is a dominant aspect of the scene. This technique of utilising EQ has more roots in the surreal than the hyperreal. Yet, this alters reality to both serve the narrative and to also represent the concept of selective auditory attention (Best et al. 2008). These examples highlight the level of creative sound design that can be applied to an already-creative filmmaking experience. Leviathan is able to use a technological limitation to its advantage in its storytelling and counteracts this lack of visual fidelity with a soundscape that is rich and powerful. The designed sounds seem to fight against the harsh, ‘tinny’ sound of the camera audio and the result is an aural onslaught that does not relent. The creative design of the audio has stemmed from source recordings, but the end result is disconcerting. This level of poetic thought in sound design does have its downfalls. When the focus on poetic discourse and hyperrealism through sound design is so stark, accuracy can suffer. In the documentary, the visual cues of splashes, seabirds, and metallic impacts are all subject to the same level of aural incongruity. One could argue that the avant-garde allows a certain degree of artistic leeway, but it is also pertinent to consider where to draw the line. When designing sound for documentaries, creative inclusions need to lie in a foundation of fact. Without this foundation, the hyperreal crosses over into the realm of fantasy.

Planet Earth II: Iguana Vs Snakes An example of hyperrealistic sound design features in the award-winning sequence “Iguana VS Snakes”. This scene is featured in the documentary Planet Earth II. This television series received plaudits for its cinematic approach to documentary filmmaking and also received a British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Television Craft Award for “Best Sound, (Factual)” (‘Television Craft in 2017 | BAFTA Awards’ n.d.). Planet Earth II is an experience where audiences can embark on a cinematic adventure across our planet. The documentary is filmed in such a way that it appears more as a work of cinematic fiction rather than fact. With narration from Sir David Attenborough and a score composed by notable

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film composer Hans Zimmer, it is hard to imagine the resulting production being anything less than resplendent. How can hyperrealistic sound design add anything more to this imposing roster? To identify the hyperreal, the real must first be established. The true reality of the scene lies in the acknowledgement of two factors. First, the camera is at such a distance that these animals would not be able to be close-miced. Second, a predator (such as a snake) would not usually attempt to draw attention to itself when stalking its prey. These two factors would represent ‘true’ reality based upon the laws of physics and zoological behaviour. With this foundation of truth now established, the exploration of the hyperreal can begin. The camera is filming from a distance but the framing of the subject matter implies proximity. A predator (in this example, a snake) would not be inaudible when travelling over surfaces. These two statements allow a poetic exaggeration of the sound design without sacrificing reality. There are three main questions that I ask myself during every sound design project: 1. Where do you want your audience to “be”? 2. How do you want them to feel? 3. Where do you want their attention drawn to? The design of placing an audience member is a powerful tool in the sound designer’s kit. In this scene, the camera uses a mixture of zoomed and tracking shots to cover the chase scene. The visuals have placed the audience close to the action but where would you aurally place the audience? The Foley in this scene has remained faithful to the visuals but the lack of reverb has given the sounds a ‘dry’ timbre. This is key in pushing the sound design to the sonic foreground as applying reverb allows a sound to ‘sit’ behind other sources in a mix. Hyperrealistic reverb exaggerates the reflections of a recording space to allow a sound to seamlessly blend into a mix. This scene has pushed hyperrealism in the opposite direction. The acoustic reflections of the surrounding area are now attenuated. The audience is now so close to the action so that the sound has not had a chance to reflect. All that remains is the source. Now the task of manipulating emotion can begin.

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The key antagonist(s) in the scene are immediately identified as the snakes. The sound designer has chosen a hyperrealistic approach to this scene which highlights the key factors of a snake’s movement: · · ·

The slither The hiss The strike

The sound of the snake moving over the gravel is one of the most prominent sounds in the mix. This subverts the image of the silent predator; this stalker is not concerned with staying hidden; a sense of fear has now been established. This is key in building tension and a sense of dread in the viewer. Through general observation, it can be safely assumed that the diminutive Galapagos Racer Snake would not weigh more than a shoe (‘Galapagos Racer’ n.d.). Yet the sound of the snake sliding off a rock and hitting the floor contains layers of Foley that implies a weight far greater than reality. This weight-gain technique has now given the added impression of an antagonist who is anything but diminutive. Extra attention is also given to the opening shot of the sequence where the snakes notice their prey and all ‘snap’ towards a fixed point off-camera. This sudden movement demonstrates a sharp inclusion of the ‘slithering’ sound design. The unexpected speed and movement of the snakes now share sonic similarities to a ‘hiss’. The threatening element of the scene has been firmly established before the narration has uttered a word. It is now pertinent to consider the treatment of the most recognisable element of a snake, the hiss. When observing the general perception of a snake, it is virtually impossible to imagine a snake without a hiss. To accentuate this, the sound designer has chosen to introduce a hiss during the constriction scene. This ‘shock’ moment of the sequence shows the protagonist (the hatchling) caught in a seemingly-inescapable situation. The first snake hisses as it strikes the hatchling and further hisses are heard during the mass-constriction of the prey. This decision skirts the line between the hyperreal and the surreal as snakes will hiss as a defensive mechanism rather than an offensive hunting technique. Even domesticated snakes will hiss as a sign of stress or annoyance before employing further defensive tactics. The increased volume of the hiss can be classified as hyperreal, yet the choice to use a hiss as an offensive action is a factual inaccuracy that is overlooked for the sake of engagement.

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This surrealism extends to the climactic moment of the scene where the hatchling is climbing to safety up a rock and a snake suddenly strikes. This slow-mo shot has the visual cue of the snake launching through the air, mouth-agape but the hiss has returned with a heavy layer of reverb applied. The hiss ‘tails off’ as the snake falls out of shot. The hyperrealistic sound design has allowed the sound editor to push the boundaries of reality and design a scene that has solid roots in fact, yet is as grandiose as fiction. The visual cue of the snakes’ mouth being open now has a corresponding sound. The hyperrealistic sound design used throughout this scene has shown that through sonic exaggeration, audience engagement can increase dramatically. Viewers watching the ‘Iguanas Vs Snakes’ scene would have enough visual information to be entertained, but would the scene be as effective without the exaggerated sound design? The hyperrealistic sounds have been contextualised to add weight to the drama of the unfolding events with only a single example of factual inaccuracy in the scene. The forsaking of accuracy can be forgiven when contextualised in the visual cue of the snake striking. Such a prominent visual would be criminally under-represented without an aural cue. I confess that the addition of the hiss did not garner a positive reaction with me (due to my experience in keeping snakes), but upon consideration I found myself stumped at what other options the sound designer had. Snakes hiss and snakes strike. There may be an inaccuracy in the temporal placement of the hiss but the scene would have certainly suffered without it. This does not mean that hyperrealism in documentary filmmaking can be treated with the same level of heavy-handedness. Scenes that are edited less-like an action movie will need to be treated with more care in how the sound field is exaggerated but the same level of creative thought will no-doubt yield positive results. When discussing hyperrealism and poetic exaggeration, there is an important consideration that can be overlooked. When a subject has been exaggerated by design (whether aurally, visually, or through an established narrative), there is an inherent risk of the subject falling victim to demonisation. This has been apparent in the critical response to “Iguana Vs Snakes” where critics and viewers have complained about the sequence adding to the perception of snakes being portrayed as ‘evil’. Whilst it would be agreeable to employ caution when dealing with a wild (or domesticated) animal, snakes have been needlessly killed and displaced by humans whose negative perceptions have been reinforced by popular media. Growing up in Wales, I was subject to urban myths of the ‘Common Adder’ and its “reign of terror”. I was advised to pay caution to sand dunes, long grass, short grass, open spaces, bushes, and various other dwellings of this deadly viper. The

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truth that was never discussed was that the common adder has killed 100 people in the last 100 years, with only 1 death occurring between 19501972. Whilst these deaths are regrettable, the fear of this snake as a masskiller is not justified. This fear of snakes is ingrained in society, with the media focusing on deadly (and often man eating) snakes. Is it ethical to add documentaries to that long list? The Galapagos Racer snake poses virtually no threat to humans and yet, through the use of creative sound design, reality has been shaped for the purpose of entertainment, but at what cost? These ethical considerations can be a stark by-product of poetic endeavour.

Considerations These examples have shown that reality can in fact be designed without sacrificing the roots of authenticity. Documentary filmmaking focuses on storytelling and whilst there is separate conversation to be had about subjective versus objective coverage of a topic, the basic tenet of a documentary is truth. Hyperbolic storytelling is commonplace in society and outside of a production, sound can play an integral part in any anecdotal recalling. A sudden clap with an onomatopoeic exclamation can add a sense of drama and tension to a story amongst friends whilst still remaining faithful to the original truth. No basic fact has been omitted or fabricated, yet the story has been enhanced through an organic example of designed sound, akin to a film composer painting a picture of time-and-place through instrumentation and tonality. Aural delineation of a subject allows a sound designer to accentuate elements of the sonic landscape to maximise the impact of a scene. Sound design is a craft that is often overlooked during documentary filmmaking. It is easy to associate the term with lightsabers, dinosaurs, and spaceships. There have been occasions where my role as a sound designer has been met with hesitation amongst filmmakers who seem to recoil at the very utterance of the job title. The word “design” implies fabrication; the documentary is true yet the sound is a lie. These facile considerations ignore the efforts of the editor, the narrator, and the composer (amongst many others in the filmmaking process). Every step of the production process contains a designed element which is there to tell the story. Sound plays a significant part in our sensory experience in life and it is there to be used. Hyperreal sound is able to invoke emotion through the subconscious and through contextualisation of these elements, therein lies a powerful tool in breathing life into a production.

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Bibliography Best, Virginia, Erol J. Ozmeral, Norbert Kopþo, and Barbara G. ShinnCunningham. 2008. ‘Object Continuity Enhances Selective Auditory Attention’. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105 (35): 13174–78. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0803718105. Boone, Andrew R “Prehistoric Monsters Roar and Hiss for Sound Film” Popular Science 122, no. 4 Chion, Michel, Claudia Gorbman, and Walter Murch. 1994. Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen. New York: Columbia University Press. Cook, Adam. “Heavy Metal: An Interview with ‘Leviathan’ Co-Director Véréna Paravel” Mubi, August 28 ‘Galapagos Racer’. n.d. Galapagos Conservation Trust (blog). Accessed 9 September 2021. https://galapagosconservation.org.uk/wildlife/galapagos-racer/. ‘GoPro HERO Session’. n.d. Accessed 9 September 2021. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1236582REG/gopro_chdhs_102_hero_session.html. ‘Harvard Filmmakers’ Messy World - The New York Times’. n.d. Accessed 9 September 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/02/movies/harvard-filmmakersmessy-world.html. ‘Heavy Metal: An Interview with “Leviathan” Co-Director Véréna Paravel on Notebook | MUBI’. n.d. Accessed 9 September 2021. https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/heavy-metal-an-interview-withleviathan-co-director-verena-paravel. Hischak, Thomas S. 2015. The Encyclopedia of Film Composers. Rowman & Littlefield.

CHAPTER ELEVEN ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE IN POETIC DOCUMENTARY FILM MARTIN HOLTZ

One of the most important channels of communication used by environmentalist movements is the documentary film. As a popular medium, film not only reaches large audiences, its inherent aesthetic qualities of combining visuals and sound are forceful instruments to illustrate, inform, illuminate, but also manipulate. Because of its immersive nature, film can powerfully, if not shape, then certainly inform and influence an audience’s outlook and opinion. In this way, environmentalist documentaries are concerned with their participation in a cultural discourse of constructing a normative relationship between humans and nature by pointing out what is wrong with this relationship as it is, what the effects of this detrimental condition are, and what needs to change in order to approach a mutually beneficial relationship (cf. Garrard, 2004, 5-14). Ever since An Inconvenient Truth (Davis Guggenheim, 2006) I believe we can recognize an overall aesthetic tendency in environmentalist documentaries that reflects more general discursive patterns of the movement. Films like The 11th Hour (Leila Conners, Nadia Conners, 2007), GasLand (Josh Fox, 2010), Chasing Ice (Jeff Orlowski, 2012), After the Spill (Jon Bowermaster, 2015), Before the Flood (Fisher Stevens, 2016), and An Inconvenient Sequel (Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk, 2017) follow what Bill Nichols describes as an “expository approach” (2010, 167-171), striving to reach their viewers by assembling and presenting scientific data delivered by an authority figure of sympathy. They strive to be objective, fact-oriented, committed to unequivocal, scientifically quantifiable truth. They feature interviews with scientists, politicians, and activists, and they visualize data-based effects on the planet of the changes we have caused, culminating in clear accusations and direct appeals to the audience for change.

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This contribution intends to highlight a simultaneously alternative and complimentary incarnation of the environmentalist documentary film, one that Bill Nichols classifies as “poetic”. It is alternative in so far as that it eschews a reliance on scientific data and a claim to undistorted objectivity. The poetic approach to film stresses the medium itself as constitutive of meaning. Rather than pretending a transparent reflection of reality, the medium emphasizes its own mediation of that reality, its deliberate construction in the act of depiction. With its roots in Russian montage cinema of the 1920s, which itself was informed by literary theories of Russian formalism, particularly Victor Shklovsky’s concept of defamiliarization, poetic documentary film can be said to foreground the cinematic apparatus in favor of a fidelity to the recognizable world. Stylistic defamiliarization rearranges the depicted world in subjectively distorted visions, representing the artist’s desire to see the world anew and spawn new associations (cf. Nichols 2010, 128-131, 137-141, 162). As Nichols writes, “the poetic mode is particularly adept at opening up the possibility of alternative forms of knowledge to the straightforward transfer of information, the prosecution of a particular argument or point of view, or the presentation of reasoned propositions about problems in need of solution” (2010, 162). It is this aspect of defamiliarization, of conveying alternative forms of knowledge and experience by making the familiar appear in a new light, that holds a tremendous potential for activism, as it potentially challenges conventional assumptions and vividly encourages in the viewer a recognition and insight heretofore ignored. This striving for stimulating a change of outlook on behalf of the viewer also complements a more scientifically oriented approach to environmentalist documentary film. In fact, Macdonald (2013, 20), Ingram (2013, 47), and Ivakhiv (2013, 88) agree that for activist ecocinema to be effective, it needs to set itself apart from conventional film aesthetics and aspire to involve the viewer in alternative participations in audiovisual experience that resists passive consumption in favor of insightful, mind-broadening contemplation. In order to illustrate the capacity and scope of how poetic environmentalist documentaries utilize the means of cinema to construct alternative views of the world, three films shall be analyzed: two films often credited with pioneering a poetic approach, the New Deal propaganda films The Plow that Broke the Plains (Pare Lorentz, 1936) about the Dust Bowl and The River (Pare Lorentz, 1938) about Mississippi floods, as well as Koyaanisqatsi (Godfrey Reggio, 1982) depicting modernity’s “life out of balance” in a collage of images. The reason for this selection lies not only in the historical significance and aesthetic uniqueness of these films but also in their disparate ideological positions. Hageman points out that the probing of

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ideological ambivalences is essential to an ecocritical analysis of cultural artifacts so that “we begin to shift gears from taking comfort in ideology returning just what we expect of it to the discomfort of noticing the real disorder in ecology, society, and ourselves that we had thought of as consistent” (2013, 65-66) and exercise “our ability to think irreconcilable elements, whether antitheses or antinomies, together, at least for a time and to analyze their significance” (2013, 83). The ideological disparity within and among these films not only testifies to the multiplicity of environmentalist positions but also to their essential discursive constructedness, an analysis of which helps us to appreciate the way poetics, ideology, and activism in film are interlinked. The analysis will show that all films use the defamiliarizing techniques of the medium, particularly montage, in order to create experiential metaphors that succinctly capture a state of humannature relationships which is mutually harmful and destructive and requires change.

The Plow that Broke the Plains Both The Plow that Broke the Plains and The River were conceived as propaganda films for Roosevelt’s New Deal policy during the Great Depression. The New Deal represented a massive intervention into the nation’s core economic values of the free market, which is why its policy of governmental regulation required astute persuasion. In consequence, the New Deal film program recruited talent from established left-wing documentary/propaganda film groups like the Worker’s Film and Photo League (WFPL), Nykino, and Frontier Films, which were in turn strongly influenced both ideologically and aesthetically by Soviet agitprop cinema (cf. Barsam, 1992, 144-149, Eldridge, 2008, 79-80, Böger, 2001, 183-187, Geiger, 2011, 88-103, Snyder, 1994, 21-31). Roosevelt’s administration was hoping to use their expertise to present government intervention in economic matters as in line with, rather than revolutionarily opposed to, traditional American cultural ideals of entrepreneurial capitalism. However, as many scholars have pointed out (Barnouw, 1993, 115, Böger, 2001, 194195, Alexander, 1981, 98-101, Snyder, 1994, 30-31, Barsam, 1992, 145, Eldridge, 2008, 166-167), the films convey an ambiguous ideological position due to the different political convictions of their makers. While director Pare Lorentz was an avid supporter of the New Deal policy and its aim to salvage capitalism, many camera operators, in particular Leo Hurwitz, Ralph Steiner, and Paul Strand, all recruited from socialist film organizations, were more critical of capitalism’s inherent ills. This tension pervades the films.

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In general, the films aim to present the industriousness of the American people as a positive force of progress, but one that needs the right amount of moderation and discipline, which is provided by the government. Industriousness can become a problem when it escalates uncontrollably. A misguided, corrupt form of progress is the result, which the films present as dominated by self-perpetuating machinery. This argumentation is reminiscent of Henry Adams’s influential conception of the dynamo as the icon of incalculable and potentially apocalyptic forces set off by the machine age, which he addressed at the turn of the twentieth century in his influential essays “The Dynamo and the Virgin” and “The Law of Acceleration” (1973, 379-390, 489-498; cf. Marx, 1973, 345-350): “Man has mounted science and is now run away with. I firmly believe that before many centuries more, science will be the master of man. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Some day science may have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide by blowing up the world” (Adams qtd. in Marx, 1973, 150). This apocalyptic scenario is contrasted with a return to a nostalgic pastoral ideal of the “middle landscape”, as championed by Puritans, Jeffersonians, and Romantics, which endorses the creative interaction of humans and nature in the establishment of a garden that is neither “wild” nor “civilized,” but in between (cf. Marx, 1973, 23, 88). In this way, government intervention is portrayed as not only proto-environmentalist, albeit with a clearly resource-oriented sustainability, but also in line with American cultural traditions, conservative rather than revolutionary (cf. Garrard, 2004, 49-50, Merchant, 2002, 34-35, 69-71, Martinez, 2014, 4, 23, 109). The Plow that Broke the Plains was produced at the behest of the Resettlement Administration, which had the task of relocating and supporting farming families affected by the Dust Bowl and other economic and ecological disasters. Nichols lists the film as an expository documentary (2010, 149) as it features explanatory voiceover and references to maps, figures, and numbers, but for long stretches its aesthetics are geared towards poetic distortion of depicted reality for an affective experience, which has been described as such by many scholars (cf. Eldridge 2008, 168, Barsam, 1992, 155, Snyder, 1994, 36, Geiger, 2011, 104). The film uses composition, editing, and voiceover to illustrate an uncontrolled escalation of progress that springs from industriousness but leads to destruction and standstill. The voiceover has a tendency to repeat certain phrases, particularly the phrases that characterize the land, such as “high winds and sun, and little rain,” followed by “farmer, plow at your peril”. This is not just an ominous warning, but an overall aesthetic principle. Repetition occurs not only on

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the aural but also on the visual level. Objects, movements, and concepts are echoed throughout the film in different contexts, variations, and states, and with every reappearance a successive state of corruption is introduced. In this way, repetition and variation show how the persistence in a wrong form of progress is detrimental to the land and people’s lives on it. Repetition is joined by escalation as the second major aesthetic principle to illustrate the pitfalls of unchecked progress. The opening of the film indulges in shots of the empty land, with leaves of grass swaying in the wind while the voiceover hints at the fragility of this pastoral idyll. A lone cowboy on horseback climbs a hill, surveying the virgin land in a stylized image of benevolent conquest and control over natural resources. With him the first cows appear, at first spread out, then in increasingly crowded and layered compositions until they dominate the frame. The montage suggests an uncontrolled escalation of growth and frenzy, which in effect destroys the romantic tranquility of the opening images. In the ensuing sequence, the successive mechanization of agriculture is depicted. Escalation of growth and motion is here joined by the increasing dehumanization of those processes. As the machines that work the land are becoming bigger and bigger, they increasingly dwarf the humans that bustle about them or sit on them in a parodistic echo of the cowboy in the opening, until the machines seem to move automatically without any human interaction (cf. Keil, 2014, 109-111). One telling sequence juxtaposes the arrival of machines across a hill with the incredulous looks of a motionless farmer family, which implies that technological process comes at the cost of a human standstill. The machines advance, but the humans do not, and their advancement becomes increasingly divorced from human control. A central visual motif in this respect is the wheel, whose automatic movement is prominently shown in numerous shots. As size and motion escalate, the third sequence features an associative montage that links escalation with the irresponsibility of capitalism and the destructiveness of World War I. The war is heralded by a montage of headlines proclaiming a simultaneous boom of the wheat market and massive stock market investment in agriculture. The headlines make way for shots of tanks rolling over the hills of Europe and ripping up the countryside with their deadly projectiles. These are intercut with tractors and their wheat cannons whose plows are “breaking the land” as well, the juxtaposition suggesting in effect a visual equivalence of destructive machinery. As the montage accelerates, shots of a jazz drummer (representing the hedonistic jazz age frenzy) and a ticker tape (representing the profit-

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oriented stock market) are interspersed, culminating in the ticker tape machine’s fall from the pedestal by the force of its own volition, the dynamo spiraling out of control as it were. In this way, the poetic montage associatively establishes a causal interrelation between laissez fair capitalism, mechanized slaughter, and destructive agriculture, whose uncontrolled surge towards self-destruction is conveyed by the acceleration of the editing and compositional frenzy culminating in collapse. The results of irresponsible “progress” are presented in apocalyptic images that reverse the principles of escalation and feature subverted echoes of the earlier sequences. The crowdedness of the grassy plains is replaced by shots of empty desert land, and motion is replaced by stasis. Broken wheels no longer spinning are lying in the sand next to machine corpses, bones, and a screaming baby as an icon of humanity’s victimization by progress. Static human figures are forlorn in the dusty landscape. If movement is shown, it is a perverted kind of movement: the slow and aimless survey of the broken land, ineffective Sisyphean shovel work, a flight from a dust storm, and ultimately a caravan of cars escaping the Dust Bowl only to end up immobilized in Okie camps. The ending is remarkably apocalyptic, as the camera pans across dead trees standing in the desert in a perverted echo of the pastoral opening, but as Garrard points out, “Apocalyptic rhetoric seems a necessary component of environmental discourse. It is capable of galvanising activists, converting the undecided and ultimately, perhaps, of influencing government and commercial policy” (2004, 104). In this case of course, it is not so much influencing government policy as embodying it, even if the solution of governmental regulation is implied rather than shown. The poetic elements of the film aspire to create audiovisualized metaphors for the undisciplined nature of progress. Accelerated montage and increasingly crowded compositions that stress destructive and self-perpetuating movement of machines suggest escalation that has slipped human control. Repetitions of visual and aural motifs in modified contexts suggest a successive corruption, which culminates in the termination of movement and the inevitability of depletion and decay. This distorted condensation of human interaction with the land transports an alternative form of knowledge in so far as that it presents basic tenets of the American economy and industry, namely the belief in unlimited growth, in the validity of human agency and control, and in the land as an unlimited resource, as irresponsible and untrue.

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The River While The River emerges from the same ideological context as The Plow that Broke the Plains and follows a similar aesthetic strategy of visualizing escalation and successive corruption, it crucially adds a solution to the portrayed problem that is expressed in terms of disciplining progress and striving for balance. In this way the film embodies a firm equilibrium/problem/solution structure of the documentary genre, which David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson make out as classically effective propaganda (2013, 364-368). As in The Plow that Broke the Plains, escalation via montage and composition as well as repetition via voiceover manifest themselves from the beginning. The film opens with shots that successively build from clouds to single drops of water to small rivulets to waterfalls and finally to the wide expanse of the Mississippi that carries along the camera while the voiceover lists the names of rivers that flow into the Mississippi and the regions it connects. As the size of the water escalates, naturally, harmonically, until it reaches a romantically stylized grandeur and majesty, the Whitmanesque catalogue of American geography associates this grandeur with regional communities, suggesting that while every locality is distinct, there is something that connects them all: the river is a unifying symbol of a national identity, but also a potential national problem that concerns everyone (Eldridge, 2008, 171). The following sequences present human industriousness surrounding the river in an ambiguous fashion. In the South, the cotton industry emerges and grows along the Mississippi dyke “a thousand miles long, from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, from Baton Rouge to Natchez, from Natchez to Vicksburg […]”, as the voiceover informs us in another instance of cataloguing the nation’s scope. The rolling cotton bales and the spinning paddle wheels of the steamboats along with an accelerated montage indicate a similar sort of unstoppable escalation of industry as the prior film. But progress is soon stopped by premature collapse in the shape of the Civil War. The film presents the South as twice-destroyed, once by the War and once by the destructive monoculture of cotton, both leaving the land destroyed and the people in poverty. The film Moving North depicts the burgeoning lumber industry. A montage sequence shows one falling tree after another being put on chutes to sail downhill into the river until hundreds of tree trunks stacked on top of each other and swimming in the water fill the screen, as the voiceover repeats the

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catalogue of place names that benefit from the lumber. The escalation of size and (downward) motion repeats the dynamics of the opening sequence. There is even triumphant music accompanying the spectacle. But the irony is all too apparent, as the destructiveness of this “misdirected energy” (Barsam, 1992, 155-156) becomes clear. The “graveyard” of tree trunks ends up being cut to size by circular saws as a particularly vicious incarnation of the wheel. The point of this sequence, however, is the tension between the attractiveness and the irresponsibility of the industriousness that is displayed (cf. Alexander, 1981, 142). The film manages to simultaneously illustrate the seductiveness of misguided progress by utilizing cinema’s enthralling poetics of escalating motion and expose its sinister implications by highlighting its excess. These sinister implications culminate in the ensuing sequence. As the voiceover leaves no doubt about the blame of the impending ecological disaster, telling the viewer that “we did this”, “but at what a cost” and “with no regard for the future”, we are seeing repeated shots of tree stumps in another display of apocalyptic imagery reminiscent of the ending of The Plow that Broke the Plains. With the trees gone, the soil can no longer absorb the rain water, and the result are torrential floods. The flood echoes the opening in the way the montage builds towards an escalation of water masses, with the crucial twist that the lack of discipline displayed in the industry sequences is now taken up by the river. The river becomes excessive and transgresses its boundaries, breaking the levies and wreaking destruction, as a sort of vengeful mirror of human misbehavior. The catalogue of place names now becomes a roll call of cities victimized by the flood as shots of affected communities assume longer and longer perspectives to convey the geographical extent of the disaster (cf. Bordwell and Thompson, 2013, 367). In order to convey the human extent, the film intercuts long shots with close-ups of suffering sharecropping families as the voiceover informs us that “Poor land makes poor people”. In order to harness human and natural transgression, the solution of the problem emphasizes discipline and the importance of the government as a regulatory force. Under the guidance of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the energy of motion and growth is transformed into a more constructive direction. Compositions now suggest order and balance instead of escalating chaos. Members of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) are shown marching to work in formation, the choreography suggesting a disciplined humanity. The dam they built is an icon of disciplining nature. Water is compartmentalized into neat boxes of individual waterfalls, creating patterned grids where there was chaotic mass and motion.

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Technology is shown to contribute to order, besides the dam also in the form of electricity masts as an emblem of a static, patterned “machine in the garden”, following Leo Marx. As human energy is disciplined, so is technology and so is nature. Both are shown to be controlled as resources. The human hand moves the lever to make the electrical current flow. And it is now this human-controlled current that connects the catalogue of place names listed by the voiceover. We end on an evocation of the pastoral garden, a life in unison with nature in which Man is undisputed ruler (cf. Böger, 2001, 109). One crucial shot shows a perfect compositional balance between houses in the foreground and wooded hills in the background, visualizing the ideal of the middle landscape. Just as The Plow the Broke the Plains, The River depicts the transgressiveness of an inconsiderate industry in audiovisualized metaphors of escalating size and motion via montage and composition that culminate in apocalyptic images of destruction. More so than in the earlier film the seductiveness of irresponsible resource harvesting is expressed via the cinematic spectacle of sound and motion in the apparent celebration of industriousness, which makes the criticism all the more striking. The solution stresses discipline, the attractiveness of which is conveyed in compositions that emphasize order and equilibrium. Escalation is replaced by compartmentalization, patterns, frames, and statically balanced shots, while the editing emphasizes human interaction with nature and technology that is characterized by assured and measured control thereby advocating a kind of sustainability that harks back to the idea of the garden, nature cultivated to serve as a permanent resource for humanity.

Koyaanisqatsi In its cryptic avant-garde approach, Koyaanisqatsi is among the most significant pre-2006 documentaries with an environmentalist theme, even if documentary film is not the label most readily used by critics. Too radical is the defamiliarizing impetus of the film’s depiction of a “life out of balance”, which, as the final credits inform us, is one of the meanings of the title taken from the Hopi language. Of course, defamiliarization is precisely where the force of the film lies, its concern being the documentation of the apocalyptic state of Western civilization in ways that trigger insights and realizations via the filmic mediation of the familiar in unconventional ways. This is how director Godfrey Reggio describes his approach: “And I was trying to show that that very thing that we call familiar is itself a technofascistic way of living. So I tried to see it from another point of view, I tried

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to see it as a life-form, albeit a nonorganic life-form, that has a life absolutely independent of our own” (qtd. in Morris, 2007, 124). The different point of view is already indicated by the title, which not only represents the view of an “Other” to Western civilization, but also an Other historically victimized by it. Morris recognizes a “great moral force in this otherness” (2007, 123) because the association with a historical victim’s point of view more resonantly exposes the hostility of the familiar. This appropriation of Hopi culture is of course not without its own problems as it potentially instrumentalizes said culture in another form of exploitation for the sake of elevating a critical self-inspection with the ethical authority of victimhood. In fact, the film has been criticized for condescendingly catering to simplistic New Ageism (Dempsey 2-3). Yet, the aesthetics of the film, regardless of the title’s problematic cultural overtones, in particular the manipulation of time, with fast-motion and slow-motion sequences, the array of unusual perspectives, lenses, and the associative montage, all of which in combination with the hypnotic music by Philip Glass, constitute a uniquely filmic approach to defamiliarization. Ramsay likens this approach to Barthes’s concept of “zero degree writing” intended to “demystify bourgeois culture” (63), while Varner describes the film’s perspective as a “mechanical stare” that exposes the automatization of human existence under the growth of technology (4). Dempsey laments that the critic’s translation of the film’s “message” into language only results in a “trite verbal formula” (7), but the point of the film is less a message (even though a message “for another way of living” (another title translation) may be its logical consequence) than the reconfiguration of the experience of our world. The film attempts to make a different perspective on the world felt by staging it as experience. This is the alternative knowledge that its poetics provide. As Reggio puts it: “What you give up is the specificity of one thought, one idea, unmistakably getting your point across, which people can agree or disagree with. But what you do get is the richness of an experience that can stay in the conscious and the unconscious mind and can be continually revisited and serve as a source of inspiration for the viewer” (qtd. in Dempsey, 1989, 8). In many ways, the ideological position and aesthetic approach of Koyaanisqatsi are aligned with those of The Plow that Broke the Plains and The River. They are united in conveying the detrimental effects of a technology that has emancipated itself from human control on nature and people’s lives. They illustrate these effects in an aesthetic of acceleration and escalation culminating in destruction akin to Henry Adams’s dynamo. They use montage for associative repetitions with modifications to illustrate a process of successive corruption (Morris uses the term “inexacted

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repetition” (2007, 124) in this context, which I will return to). Yet, Koyaanisqatsi can be said to reverse the implications of the earlier films. Where particularly The River champions the harnessing, controlling and compartmentalizing of nature to create a balanced order of sustainability, Koyaanisqatsi identifies precisely this imposed human patterning as the problem that afflicts nature and our existence. What is the solution in The River, is the source of all problems in Koyaanisqatsi. The first sequence shows nature untouched by human interference. It starts out with static shots of rock formations and gradually introduces movement, first as the camera glides from a bird’s eye perspective over the landscape, then by the play of light and shadows as time lapse photography captures the effects of sunrise and sunset and clouds traveling across the sky. Then steam rises from the ground as water condenses, and dust is raised by the wind. Even before any living creatures are shown, the film suggests an existence of kinetic energy in nature, a, for lack of a better word, spiritual force emanating from it. In further shots we see plants sprout and birds fly, but the film then returns to the more cinematic shots of waves and cloud formations, as the water reflects the light, and clouds form and disperse in ever-changing and unpredictable ways, almost dance-like. The sequence visualizes the spectacle of nature as an unrestricted, chaotic force of energy in which movement is constant, without pattern, yet entirely harmonic. Morris speaks of a “lively irregularity” (2007, 126) here, and this conflation of life with irregularity is precisely the point. Nature is “alive” (beyond any notions of a conventional biological definition of life) because there is no regularity forced upon it. The regularity appears with the advent of humanity. As the camera flies across the earth, suddenly lines appear, and we see an agricultural field with neat rows and rows of cultivated plants. Humanity does not enter the picture in the flesh, as it were, but with the effects it has unleashed upon nature: geometrical patterns. Patterned regularity becomes the major aesthetic motif of the film’s visual approach to characterizing human interaction with nature. The agricultural fields already indicate that the disciplining of the land is accomplished by violent means of reshaping nature. This penetrative force finds its most violent incarnation in the subsequent depiction of an open coal mine. The creation of regularity is directly connected with resource harvesting. As explosions are shown that cut into the earth, technology makes its appearance in the form of giant trucks to transport the coal, dwarfing the humans that disappear into them, with one of them in turn disappearing in a giant cloud of black smoke in a perverted echo of the clouds in the first sequence. Pipelines, electric towers, dams, and factories

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appear in escalating succession, all of which creating patterns in the landscape, disciplining nature with a giant grid that imposes itself onto its raw energy. The grid is the film’s central symbol for the human patterning of nature. The film is divided into sequences that illustrate the incarnation of grids in various forms. While the resource sequence demonstrates the violence utilized to establish patterns in nature, the subsequent military sequence demonstrates the ends to which the patterns are established. Stock footage shows rows of tanks echoing the rows of plants in the harvesting sequence and connecting the regimentation of nature with the regimentation of the military. Varner points out how the militarization of society is a motif in the film, as it associatively links the military’s penchant for regimentation to a general organizing principle of Western civilization (2017, 9-10). The regimentation of natural resources that culminates in the most sophisticated technological arrangement of modern weaponry has the ultimate purpose of destruction. And so we are shown an array of exploding rockets in slow motion from military test footage, ending with the nuclear bomb tests in the Mojave Desert and another perverted (mushroom) cloud. This sequence establishes the aesthetic trajectory of subsequent sequences and the film’s overall argument. At first, the grid is shown in its various manifestations, then the effect of the grid is illustrated by suggesting a compression and hence destructive corruption of the natural creative energy that exists in nature. This compression by regimentation is then shown to increase or escalate, which culminates in an explosive release. If the military sequence implies a deliberate (if no less sinister) purpose of detonation, subsequent sequences suggest the dreadful inevitability of explosive annihilation. The longest and most meaningful sequence in this respect concerns the depiction of urban civilization. The grid is ubiquitous in the city. Probably the most iconic visualization of the film’s central concern is a repeated shot of clouds being mirrored in the reflective window grid of a skyscraper. This image captures the compartmentalization of nature’s raw, irregular energy most succinctly. The most dominant incarnation of the grid is the actual street grid as it occurs in most North American cities. Various shots, mostly from Los Angeles and New York document the ubiquity of regimented traffic, with the isolation of people in their cars vividly shown in telephoto lenses. As the film speed is increased to fast motion, cars become blurred lines of light, a literal pulse of the technological organism that is the city. The fast motion aesthetics are an important feature of the film’s defamiliarization approach. For Varner, timelapse photography is both a metaphor for the necessity of adjusting our limited human capacity of

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perception in order to make ecological change visible and a perceptual concretization of the mechanically regulated existence that we have fallen into (2017, 6), as fast motion emphasizes habitual limitations of our movements and trajectories. Ramsay concurs that fast motion both visualizes “the fact of entrapment” and the “excess of movement” (1986, 66) generated by the grid. Here again, the “compressive effect” of the grid is illustrated. As energy is regulated, it builds up pressure to burst out at the seams, and this pressure is conveyed by the frenzy of fast motion. Not least, the fast motion aesthetics in combination with extreme lenses, unusual angles, and colorful lights also constitutes a seductive and enthralling spectacle. Dempsey points out that this approach has drawn criticism, as the film seems to succumb to the same sort of “vacuous eye-vividness” (6) as the commodity aesthetics it tries to attack. But the seductiveness of the imagery is course precisely the point. As Reggio puts it, “The Beast doesn’t come as a baglady, it comes as a seducer, it comes bejeweled” (qtd. in Dempsey, 1989, 6). The film captures the aesthetics of commodity capitalism to illustrate its manipulative power, but undermines its purpose by highlighting its detrimental effects. Shots of people moving in grid-like formations, most conspicuously when they are waiting in queues and standing on escalators (i.e. being moved rather than moving themselves) are intercut with products on assembly lines, most conspicuously articles of consumption like Twinkies or sausages. This juxtaposition is undoubtedly blunt in its associative ramifications but undeniably effective. The metaphor of the assembly line communicates the merging of consumer and consumed under a capitalist regime of regimentation and the inescapability of “doing work” even in moments of leisure (Varner, 2017, 2). The profitability of consumption requires the conformity of product and consumer alike. Morris recognizes in this logic and aesthetics of production the impetus of repetition, but one that is inexact (2007, 124) and this inexactness signifies the corruptive nature of regimented repetition. A decisive shot in this respect shows rows of sausages as they exit machines, echoing the rows of plants in the agricultural sequence, as human hands enter the frame and pick out and throw away the faulty products to ensure a smoothness of production. This shot metaphorically captures the attendant violence involved in the human “overprocessing” of nature (Morris, 2007, 125) and more generally in the process of “inexacted repetition” (2007, 124) that dominates Western civilization as portrayed in the film. Repetitiveness is also the central characteristic of the grid, as the film links shot after shot of instances where the grid becomes apparent as the structural principle of our society. Besides city streets and elevators, the grid appears in the form of supermarket aisles,

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bowling alleys, arcade games, malls, and, significantly, the cinema. The shot of an audience watching a movie is an uncomfortable but effectively productive confrontation with the spectator’s own enmeshment with the grid, the most direct challenge to recognize one’s participation and critically reflect it. The malicious culmination of society’s adherence to the grid is expressed in two ways. The first emphasizes the lack of empathy among people who are separated by the grid. In one sequence the film utilizes slow motion and long lenses for close ups of people’s faces set off against the background of blurry passersby. Some of these faces look into the camera, bewildered, annoyed, curious, flattered, but mostly without an easily discernible emotional reaction. Some are made up to look pretty, well-dressed, professional, some are derelicts aimlessly wandering the streets or being carried off in a stretcher. The point is the isolation between them, accomplished by the montage. Each one of them seems to exist in their own sphere – there is no shared experience, no communal spirit. One woman is shown sitting in a limousine rolling up her window, which makes her face disappear for the reflection of a skyscraper. Tiny moments of connection, like a handshake, are rare and rendered precious by the visual emphasis. The second way of expressing the maliciousness of the grid returns to the recurrent aesthetic motif of explosion. The final shot of the film shows the lift off of a rocket, a presumed pinnacle of technology, the processing of natural resources in a perfectly regulated arrangement. As it soars, it explodes, the effect of the grid reaching its logical conclusion. The camera lingers on the explosion and follows a flaming piece of metal as it tumbles to the ground. It is reasonable to consider this piece of metal as a conclusive metaphor for the state of Western civilization as the film envisions it. As energy is contained within a technological grid, its pressure builds until it explodes. The creative energy of nature has been turned into the destructive energy of civilization, as entropy reestablishes irregularity and the remains of order fall into decline. Like The Plow that Broke the Plains, Koyaanisqatsi ends on an apocalyptic note. The film takes over from its predecessors the strategy of visualizing abstract concepts in concrete imagery. The central conflict that is visualized is between a natural disorder that harbors a creative, harmonic, spiritual energy and a man-made artificially imposed order that is linked via montage to resource harvesting, the disfiguration of nature, and the regimentation of our existence, but also carries a seductive, invigorating beauty. This universal regimentation is shown via fast-motion photography and associative montage to contribute to an acceleration and escalation of energy, the

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compression of which eventually leads to explosive destruction. The implications of Koyaanisqatsi move away from the advocacy of discipline in the interaction with nature of the earlier films. The film is less solutionoriented and more concerned with the defamiliarization of experience. It lays the ground for a raised consciousness from which activism can sprout, but it eschews the preachiness of a message.

Conclusion This contribution started with the suggestion that today’s environmental documentaries are very conscious of supporting their messages with an objective, scientifically sound argumentation and harbor an according skepticism of the subjective distortions of poetry, which may smack of the “alternative facts” rhetoric that opponents of environmentalism are all too happy to embrace. What I hope to have shown is how a poetic approach to the medium which uses its distortive capabilities with a reflexive explicitness is a potential gain for the effectiveness of stirring an audience to (self-)critical insight. The main benefit that a poetic approach to environmentalist documentary supplies is an alternative perspective on nature and our place within it. By defamiliarizing our perception of the world, poetic films challenge viewers to realize aspects about their existence that are otherwise ignored due to the soothing limitations of comfort, habit, and ideology. The tools that the medium has at its disposal allow for an experiential quality of such alternative perceptions, not only communicating awareness but making it felt. The most important device in this respect is montage, because of its ability to create associative links between images and concepts, broadening an awareness of the significances and ramifications of actions and events and their consequences. The concreteness of the mise-enscene intensifies the impact of these metaphorical dynamics. Abstract concepts such as acceleration, escalation, corruption, decay, isolation, order, and chaos can be rendered audiovisually concrete by film. The ability of the camera to provide alternative perceptions of time and space contribute further to an appreciation of the complex nature of our relation to the environment. The confrontation with an alternative perception of the world aided by the poetic mediation of film can effectively prompt an audience to an insight and awareness that is the basis for critical reflection, activism, and change.

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Bibliography Adams, Henry. 1973. The Education of Henry Adams. Ernest Samuels (ed.). Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Alexander, William. 1981. Film on the Left: American Documentary Film from 1931 to 1942. Princeton UP. Barnouw, Eric. 1993. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. 2nd rev. ed. OUP. Barsam, Richard M. 1992. Non-Fiction Film: A Critical History. Bloomington: Indiana UP. Böger, Astrid. 2001. People’s Lives, Public Images: The New Deal Documentary Aesthetic. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson. 2013. Film Art: An Introduction. 10th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Dempsey, Michael. 1989. “Qatsi Means Life: The Films of Godfrey Reggio”. Film Quarterly, No. 42.3. 2-12. Eldridge, David. 2008. American Culture in the 1930s. Edinburgh UP. Garrard, Greg. 2004. Ecocriticism. London, New York: Routledge. Geiger, Jeffrey. 2011. American Documentary Film: Projecting the Nation. Edinburgh UP. Hageman, Andrew. 2013. “Ecocinema and Ideology: Do Ecocritics Dream of a Clockwork Green?”. Ecocinema Theory and Practice. Stephen Rust, Salma Monani, Sean Cubitt (eds.). New York, London: Routledge. 6386. Holtz, Martin. 2018. “The Relationship between Nature and Technology in Three New Deal Documentaries: The Plow that Broke the Plains, The River, and The City”. Modernities and Modernization in North America. Ilka Brasch, Ruth Mayer (eds.). Heidelberg: Winter. 289-305. Ingram, David. 2013. “The Aesthetics and Ethics of Eco-Film Criticism”. Ecocinema Theory and Practice. Stephen Rust, Salma Monani, Sean Cubitt (eds.). New York, London: Routledge. 43-61. Ivakhiv, Adrian. 2013. “An Ecophilosophy of the Moving Image: Cinema as Anthrobiogeomorphic Machine”. Ecocinema Theory and Practice. Stephen Rust, Salma Monani, Sean Cubitt (eds.). New York, London: Routledge. 87-105. Keil, Charlie. 2014. “American Documentary Finds Its Voice: Persuasion and Expression in The Plow That Broke the Plains and The City”. Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video. Barry Keith Grant, Jeannette Slonlowski (eds.). Detroit: Wayne State UP. 103-121.

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Martinez, J. Michael. 2014. American Environmentalism: Philosophy, History, and Public Policy. Boca Raton, London, New York: CRC. Marx, Leo. 1973. The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America. OUP. Merchant, Carolyn. 2002. The Columbia Guide to American Environmental History. New York: Columbia UP. Morris, Mitchell. 2007. “Sight, Sound, and the Temporality of Myth Making in Koyaanisqatsi”. Beyond the Soundtrack: Representing Music in Cinema. Daniel Goldmark, Lawrence Kramer, Richard Lippe (eds.). Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: U of California P. 120-135. Nichols, Bill. 2010. Introduction to Documentary. 2nd ed. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana UP. Macdonald, Scott. 2013. “The Ecocinema Experience”. Ecocinema Theory and Practice. Stephen Rust, Salma Monani, Sean Cubitt (eds.). New York, London: Routledge. 17-41. Ramsay, Cynthia. 1986. “Koyaanisqatsi: Godfrey Reggio’s Filmic Definition of the Hopi Concept of ‘Life Out of Balance’”. The Kingdom of Dreams in Literature and Film. Douglas Fowler (ed.). Talahassee: Florida State UP. 62-78. Snyder, Robert L. 1994. Pare Lorentz and the Documentary Film. Reno, Las Vegas, London: U of Nevada P. Varner, Gary Matthew. 2017. “Koyaanisqatsi and the Posthuman Aesthetics of a Mechanical Stare”. Film Criticism, No. 41.1. 1-14.

CHAPTER TWELVE A POET WHO CLIMBED OR A CLIMBER WHO WRITES POETRY: THE POETRY OF CINEMA AND MOVEMENT IN THE ROCK-CLIMBING DOCUMENTARY

MARTIN HALL AND TOM KIRBY

Watching the rein of our rope, That lead between the last grey overhang Redden like a vein in the sinking sun. And breathed again.1

Regarding any understanding of the poetic nature of documentary cinema I imagine many chapters in this volume will refer to Lindsay Anderson’s famous comments about the seminal and genre defining work of Humphrey Jennings when he famously championed the documentary filmmaker, one of the key members of the British Documentary movement, as, “the only real poet the British cinema has yet produced”.2 In Anderson’s view, the Griersonian tradition, “into which Jennings only fitted uneasily – was always more preachy and sociological than it was either political or poetic”.3 Thus, we land on a compelling definition or understanding of a certain tendency of the documentary cinema to be poetic. This relationship between documentary cinema and the poetic gets particularly strong in the tradition of sport documentaries but most compellingly in that of the rock-climbing documentary.

1 Edwin Drummond, A Dream of White Horses (London: Diadem Books,1987), lines

15 – 18. Lindsay Anderson. “Only Connect: Some Aspects of the Work of Humphrey Jennings”, Sight & Sound 23.4 (1954, pp. 181–186), 181. 3 Ibid. 2

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Lindsay Anderson’s own phenomenally important contributions to the documentary tradition came along after Jennings’ work, here in the Free Cinema Documentary Movement, a group led by Anderson, Karel Reisz and Tony Richardson, for whom the Griersonion documentary’s biggest failing was its inability to formulate expressions and individual attitudes towards subjects. Anderson wrote that, When John Grierson first defined the word “documentary”, he called it “the creative interpretation of actuality”. In other words the only vital difference between making a documentary and making a fiction film is that in documentary you are using “actual” material, not invented situations and actors playing parts. But this actual material still has to be interpreted, worked on creatively, or we are left with nothing but publicity.4

This Free Cinema group then would not be seen to produce simple ‘publicity’, but would practice artistic and, most importantly, poetic, interpretations of documentary subjects. Publicity is something which one might assume to be a major concern of the rock-climbing documentary but this is a devaluation of the climbing film. What is interesting for this study is the persistent repudiation of rock-climbing films in greater documentary cinema discourses. Indeed, sport in and of itself is suspiciously absent in a good part of documentary film studies. Interestingly, in 2008, Emma Poulton and Martin Roderick suggested that, “scholars from the sociology of sport appear to have given sport in film more critical attention than their film studies counterparts. If we are correct, such an inference presents some interesting questions about why sport is marginalized by experts of visual culture, but particularly film studies”.5 This has been observed elsewhere and as such it has been contended, too, that, broad-spectrum sport documentaries have been seen to “constitute a significant part of the documentary tradition […] they remain on the fringes of the nascent discipline of documentary studies”.6 In particular, the exploration of sport documentaries is one fraught with difficulties and with interdisciplinary overlap. The intention of this piece then, is to rationalise for the poeticism of the rock-climbing documentary.

4

Lindsay Anderson. “Free Cinema”, Universities and Left Review, 5 (1957, pp. 51– 52), 52. 5 Poulton, Emma and Roderick, Martin, ‘Introducing Sport in Films’, Sport in Society, Vol. 11, No. 2/3, (March/May, 2008, pp 107-116), 108. 6 McDonald, Ian, ‘Situating the Sport Documentary’, Journal of Sport & Social Issues, v31, n3, (August, 2007, pp.208-225), 208.

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Lindsay Anderson later revealed that: Probably all my work, even when it has been very realistic, has struggled for a poetic quality - for larger implications that the surface realities may suggest. It is enjoyable to work naturalistically. In fact, its unusually easier to do. But I think that the most important challenge is to escape from or get beyond pure naturalism into poetry.7

In his notes to the National Film Theatre Free Cinema programme, writing about documentary film making, Lindsay Anderson insisted that, “Independent, personal and poetic these may be [...] defined as the necessary characteristics of the genre”.8 John Hill also concludes that, “it was, thus, ‘poetry’ which completed the Free Cinema equation”.9 Anderson defines the poetic quality in his own work as those, “larger implications than the surface realities may suggest”.10 Similarly, looking at a different understanding of the cinematic as poetic, post-War French poetic realism bares consideration as a method of creating these poetic, non-sensational visual cultures. Indeed, “poetic realism promised far more integrity. For example, it promised authenticity in its sets”11 and once more, like Grierson we are considering the all-important relationship between the poetic and the authentic. Taking a poetic ideal to the documentary genre was integral to the works of the Free Cinema directors. Anderson strongly insisted that these documentaries all offered insight and interpretation of their subject, claiming that, “these films are not intended as picturesque films... nor as simple slices of life. Slices, if you will but cut with a bias. All of them say something about our society, today”.12 We might transpose this claim once more onto the climbing film suggesting that these texts are not meant as simple depictions of an arguably really very picturesque pursuit but are more significant than that, in that they say something about societies.

7

Klaus Wildenhahn. “Approaches to the Legend”, Journey to a Legend and Back: The British Realistic Film, (Berlin: Volker Speiss, 1977, pp. 11–23), 11. 8 ‘Free Cinema Manifesto’ Facsimile [20/04/2010]. url: http://www.bfi.org.uk/ features/freecinema. 9 John Hill. Sex Class and Realism. (London: BFI Publishing, 1986), 129. 10 Wildenhahn, “Approaches to the Legend”, 11. 11 Andrew, D, Mists of Regret: Culture and Sensibility in Classic French Film, (Princeton University Press, 1995), 5. 12 Anderson. “Free Cinema”, 57.

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Mountain summits or routes have developed into a conceptual space that requires adherence to particular rules such as the production of evidence, generated through written reports, publications, photographic images and films: this is the chief reason why mountaineering and climbing “has such a strong literary heritage”.13 Prior to the use of tools such as film, mountaineers reported their successes based on “their word as a gentleman” and trust was bound in the masculine ideals. And yet it is the mediated cinematic space in which these feats have come to be seen as the broadly celebrated achievements that they are. Regarding the significance of film to the world of climbing, speaking of the BBC film Rock Athlete (1980) Ron Fawcett, a British climbing legend who was arguably the first to translate his particular sporting talent into a career, suggested that, “it got me recognised. For the first time I became well-known outside the small world of extreme rock climbing […] it gave me a profile that I could exploit to earn my living and climb full time, making me in effect the first professional rock-climber”14 – all this because of the success of film. In addition, even mountaineers such as the eminently well-known Chris Bonington speak of a “boost in income from newspaper rights and the sudden rush of lectures” (2017, 98) when, as a result of his climbs, “every national newspaper ran a banner headline” (2017, 97). There is a particular point of interest wherein public perceptions of these climbing feats became attuned to their significance and it is through the evaluation of climbing films that I intend to detail and define this shift of climbing into the popular imagination. Writing in 2003, Peter Donnelly suggested that, “while climbing may be one of the oldest of the so-called ‘extreme’ sports, recent events, such as the 1996 Mount Everest tragedy, have made it one of the best known, and images of climbing are now everywhere” (291). For all that the sport documentary is maligned at worst or forgotten at best, the rock-climbing documentary, at the date of writing this, has had no academic treatment as documentary form. The rationale for this chapter has come, in part from the success of the film, Free Solo, released in 2018, which has gone on to enormous acclaim including an Oscar, a BAFTA, 7 EMMYs and many more awards. There are lots of other climbing films which, whilst they might not be as ‘death-defying’ as Free Solo, they are 13

Gifford, T, ‘Early women mountaineers achieve both summits and publication in Britain and America’, In: Gomez Reus, T., and Gifford T. eds. Women in Transit through Literary Liminal Spaces, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 91 – 106, 2013), 92. 14 Fawcett and Douglas, Ron Fawcett - Rock Athlete: The Story of a Climbing Legend. (Sheffield: Vertebrate Publishing, 2010), 104.

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just as accomplished and certainly as significant. However, they have not seen the same recognition as Free Solo and these films’ potential impact on the public is being lost. This impact includes particular historical origins, fascinating links to European art cinemas, significant attention towards representation and gender equality, and also a message of sustainability and ecological consciousness. Stephen Lyng has defined much of the key work in this area such as when he suggested that “the voluntary pursuit of activities that involve a high potential for death, serious physical injury, or psychic harm – activities that I have termed as edgework – has acquired special cultural significance in the contemporary western world”15. In exploring the phenomenological success of a film like Free Solo, it is arguably the edgework in this ‘death-defying’ film which has leant it the previously unseen success and indeed the ‘cultural significance’ that has distinguished it from other climbing films. As climbing featured in the 2021 summer Olympics for the first time ever, it is clear that there is a growing demand for a study of this kind as interest, participation and media attention are set to rise dramatically. It has been observed that sport documentaries in the whole are, “still awaiting rigorous and systematic analysis of its defining features, politics, aesthetics, and the genre’s modes of production”.16 These films have not, as yet, been studied academically, and looking at climbing as a thread that links the documentary mode with poetics has never been explored, in fact, the sport documentary as a whole, McDonald claims, has, “received scant regard from cultural critics, sociologists, and historians in sport studies”.17 There are several texts which consider relationships between sport and cinema but mountain sports and climbing in particular are a marked absence from these studies. There are rock-climbing films which deal with, and deliver to us, an honest and uniquely up-close look at the current state of the world’s wild places and celebrate them in ways which are inspirational. This inspirational look at people and societies, like Anderson suggests of the poetic Free Cinema that “all of them say something about our society, today”18, so too can we consider the climbing film. Indeed, Bill Nichols points out that, “documentary 15

Lyng, Stephen, ‘Edgework, Risk, and Uncertainty’ in Jens O. Zinn ed. Social Theories of Risk and Uncertainty: An Introduction, (London: Wiley Blackwell, 2008), 107. 16 McDonald, Ian, ‘Situating the Sport Documentary’, 208. 17 Ibid. 18 Anderson. “Free Cinema”, 51.

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has become the flagship for a cinema of social engagement and distinctive vision”19. As Donnelly has suggested that “while climbing may be one of the oldest of the so-called ‘extreme’ sports, recent events, such as the 1996 Mount Everest tragedy, have made it one of the best known, and images of climbing are now everywhere”20, we have Jimmy Chin, Elizabeth Vasarhli and Alex Honnold to thank for a more recent interest in the potential impact of climbing documentaries. In 2017, Alex Honnold, an American ‘free climber’, scaled the 3000 ft, around 900 meters, of Yosemite National Park peak, El Capitan. An amazing and remarkable feat in and of itself but Honnold’s achievement was compounded by the fact that he did this without any ropes or any protection of any kind. This achievement was documented in the film, Free Solo, which has gone on to enormous acclaim. It is here then that one can build a fascinating picture of the significance of the climbing documentary as these texts rely so heavily upon the outdoor environment and the natural world, sustainability and ecological consciousness naturally become primary concerns for these filmmakers. Many of these films explore the notions of sustainably minded access to climbing and in demonstrating this mindful approach to the filmmaking as much to the climbing itself. Beyond Free Solo and The Dawn Wall (2017), there are examples such as The Sharp End (2007), which explores climbing Prachov Rocks in the Czech Republic, where no chalk or even metal climbing aid protection is used in order to preserve the rock itself. Seeing the local climbing techniques required to ascend these rock formations, such as tying knots in short loops of rope which are then forced into cracks, builds a specific sense of the respect which climbers have for their own natural environments; a respect which ought to be better shared. And yet, with one final reference to Lindsay Anderson’s compelling work on documentary cinema, “the most important challenge is to escape from or get beyond pure naturalism into poetry"21. Edwin Drummond, a “a sort of alpine poet laureate”22 became well-known for protest climbing, such as when he scaled the Nelson’s Column in 1978

19

Nichols, Bill, Introduction to Documentary, Bloomington (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2017) 1. 20 Donnelly, Peter, ‘The Great Divide: Sport Climbing vs. Adventure Climbing’ in To the Extreme: Alternative Sports, Inside and Out, edited by Robert E. Rinehart, and Synthia Sydnor, (New York: State University of New York Press, 2003), 291. 21 Qtd in Wildenhahn, “Approaches to the Legend”, 11. 22 Daniel E. Slotnik, ‘Edwin Drummond, 73, Who Turned Climbing Into Activism, Dies’, The New York Times, available:

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or the Statue of Liberty in 1980 to protest the wrongful incarceration of Black Panther Elmer Pratt waiving a banner proclaiming “Liberty was framed. Free Geronimo Pratt”. In 2019, for an evening celebrating Drummond after his death, Paul Diffley produced the film, A Dream of White Horses, in tribute to Drummond and his climbing partner Dave Pearce who first climbed the route on the cliffs of Gogarth in Wales, in 1968. The film, importantly, is a re-enactment of the first ascent of the eponymous climb, using original climbing gear and clothing whilst the narrator reads words by Drummond himself. Keith Fleming, in the film’s voice over, rather poetically suggests that Drummond was a climber who would “go seeking of greater illumination”. As early as 1947, the World Union of Documentary defined the term including the notion of ‘reconstruction’ for the specific purpose of eliciting an emotional response when they suggested that: all methods of recording on celluloid any aspect of reality interpreted either by factual shooting or by sincere and justifiable reconstruction, so as to appeal either to reason or emotion, for the purpose of stimulating the desire for, and the widening of, human knowledge and understanding, and of truthfully posing problems and their solutions in the spheres of economics, culture and human relations.23

Building upon Grierson’s famously poetic distinction of the documentary mode as the “creative treatment of actuality” climbing films are habitually guilty, and indeed guilty seems the appropriate word, of reconstruction, oftentimes in order to illustrate events from the past as do compilation films which are often constructed from archival footage or photography, much like Diffley’s White Horses (2020), including the film that was once “the highest-grossing documentary (sport or otherwise) in UK cinematic history” (McDonald, 2007, 219) Touching the Void (2003). Much in the same way that Richard MacCann has suggested that “the important thing is not the authenticity of the materials but the authenticity of the result”.24 Climbing as poetic is something for which we can make a simple case. In the documentary mode itself, beyond the wonderful work on Edwin https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/obituaries/edwin-drummond-dead.html, (2019). 23 Qtd in Manchel, F, Film Study: An Analytical Biography. (Fairleigh: Dickinson University Press, 1991), 245. 24 Qtd in Smith, P, The Historian and Film, (London: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 57.

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Drummond, the enormously popular ‘Reel Rock’ franchise, spearheaded by award-winning climbing filmmakers Josh Lowell and Peter Mortimer, who most notably directed The Dawn Wall (2017) amongst many others, having promoted the release of their own climbing films, began a tour of similar films focussed on climbing. For the Reel Rock 13 presentation, in the short documentary Up To Speed, Zachary Barr presents an exploration of speed climbing following its announcement for inclusion in the Tokyo 2021 Olympics. Speed climbing, described as “not proper climbing” by the documentary’s host, entails climbers ascending a pre-set, artificial indoor climbing route of just 17 moves which was first set, and importantly has not changed, in 20 years. Jacky Godoffe, the route setter and designer of the route which will be used for the pointed out that, for him there is a distinct aesthetic concern in the physicality required to climb the route and the movement these climbers must utilise as the best athletes climb 15 meters in under six seconds, “the aesthetic is very important to me. It makes them laugh, it makes them dream!” These is an accent of ‘dance’ to the way these climbers perform, and the same too can be said of other athletes on the wall. Indeed, Barr introduces Jacky in this film by suggesting that he is “a true artiste […] whose meticulous process strives to create poetry in motion”. The claim that this author intends to make then is that movement, specifically that of climbing, and aesthetics in sport can, and should be read as art, just as one would read dance, and thus be perceived as ‘poetic’. Dimitris Platchias made it abundantly clear in 2003 with his contention that “sport can legitimately be read as art”25 when in an article for the European Journal of Sport Science he set out to demonstrate that “the main objections to the claim that sport is an art form fail”.26 To some extent we can relate this to the work of Werner Herzog, particularly in relation to his ‘Minnesota Declaration’ (1999), a 12-point manifesto on truth and fact in the documentary tradition, expressing his preference for a “poetic, ecstatic truth”27 in documentary filmmaking, something which this author suggests we see keenly within the climbing film. There is an argument that, in the same way that Herzog is “anxious to be treated as a poet, not a documentarian”28, there is a requirement of ‘intention’ for sport to be perceived as art. To that same end, Platchias does observe that a major detraction to the claim that sport is 25 Dimitris Platchias, ‘Sport is Art’, European Journal of Sport Science, V3, N4, (Nov 2010), 2. 26 Ibid. 27 Werner Herzog, Minnesota Declaration, available: https://www.wernerherzog.com/complete-works-text.html#2, (1999). 28 Ames, E, Ferocious Reality: Documentary according to Werner Herzog, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), 10.

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art comes in the suggestion that the participants “lack intention to be elegant or graceful and thus are unable to use more “appropriate” means to give aesthetic pleasure”29 requiring a sense of decided intention for this artistry of movement. He later goes on to suggest that: It has also been argued that an attempt of the kind that the artistic is that which is intentionally created or performed for aesthetic value fails—that is, the intention to give aesthetic pleasure is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for something to be art.30

Other commentators have similarly supported the artistic and thus poetic understanding of sport, such as Mareen Kovick who stated that “sport is truly a human artform, for it is not just the product of man’s abilities which is on display; it is man”,31 and went on to consider sport, much like the world of dance, suggesting that “skilled movement, no matter where performed, can be an artistic performance, that sport is a basic form of artistic expression”32. In fact, comparing climbing to dance makes some sense here. For example, in her book on Dance Composition, Jacqueline M. Smith-Autard refers to Ken Robinson when she too suggests that “to compose a dance is to create a work of art”33. Smith-Autard leans on Robinson’s understanding to strengthen her claim pointing to his definition of art thus: “It involves putting your imagination to work to make something new, to come up with new solutions to problems”.34 With regards to the climbing film then, and to A Dream of White Horses in particular we are watching a re-enactment of a ‘first ascent’, a work of ‘route finding’, pioneering and innovation wherein two athletes come up with new solutions to the problems of ascending, and in this way, with intention, these are artists in a poetic documentary, about a poet. The addition of this work being about a climbing poet, with a voice over composed from poetry does lead one closer into the world of visual or kinetic poetry than into dance. Indeed, Norbert Bachleitner, in his work on 29

Platchias, ‘Sport is Art’, 4. Platchias, ‘Sport is Art’, 10. 31 Maureen Kovich,ௗ’Sport as an Art Form’,ࣟJournal of Health, Physical Education, Recreation,ௗV42 N8 (1971),ௗ42. 32 Ibid. 33 Jacqueline M. Smith-Autard, Dance Composition: A practical guide to creative success in dance making, (London: Methuen Drama, 2017), 1. 34 Robinson,ௗKen,ࣟThe Element, (Viking, New York, 2009), 67. 30

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forms and theory of digital poetry suggested that ‘the poetic’ and ‘the visual’ do overlap in a way analogous to dancing and movement, and thus for this study, climbing and sports: In a wider sense, visual poetry includes each combination of words and images and the arrangement of words as image. Furthermore, digital programming may be used to set words in motion. This is what ‘Kinetic poetry’ does. Words are let loose in a physical, quite literal sense, “they become actors and dancers on the stage of the computer screen”35.

And yet, on the other hand, this idea of re-enactment and interpretations of reality does lead one back towards the art cinema and to post-war French poetic realism in particular. In the same way that “American Cinema has always invested in maximum shock effects, in bursts of song, violence, eros, or language. Poetic realism diffuses such energy in a warm mist of style”.36 What is interesting here is the full circle journey on which we return to John Grierson’s ‘creative actuality’ in describing the poetic and for climbing there is of course a great sense of necessity for recreating, re-enacting and re-interpreting events and ascents. Considering the sheer impact of the successful, Oscar-winning climbing film Free Solo, one might consider the comparison with French cinema’s poetic realism as particularly compelling and noteworthy. Indeed, if Dudley Andrew’s description were not taken from 1995 the quote might easily be mistakenly attributed to Free Solo, A Dream of White Horses, and to the climbing film in general: “It would be up to poetic realism to prove that serious cinema, taken with the seriousness generally accorded to literature, could at the same time be as irrefutably alluring as Hollywood films.”37

Perhaps the perception of the climbing film as ‘poetic documentary’ will afford this now exceptionally large body of hitherto unexplored filmmaking the ‘seriousness’ it deserves. The second key area of examination of the use of poetics in the climbing film is the landscape itself. Without the landscape, the climbers would have no crag or cliff face to climb upon, so it is critical to the activity of the climb. 35

Norbert Bachleitner, ‘The Virtual Muse. Forms and Theory of Digital Poetry’, Theory into Poetry: New Approaches to the Lyric, edited by Eva Muller-Zettelmann, and Margarete Rubik, (Amsterdam: BRILL, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/yorksj/detail.action?docID=556819. Created from yorksj on 2021-11-16 17:17:25.), 303. 36 Dudley Andrew, Mists of Regret, 6. 37 Ibid, 7.

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The landscape is where the climber ‘performs’; it is the stage which the climber takes to, to perform their craft of the ascent – the space for the dance. Within the climb, the stage shifts route to route, but in each of them the landscape contributes a critical part to the narrative of the film as a whole. In A Dream of White Horses, it could be seen that the location of the sea cliffs of North Wales create a natural amphitheatre for the climbers, with the sea crashing below on the rocks: “Even on calm days the dark underside of the arch and the steep back wall of the zawn [Cliff face] still exude a quietly menacing presence”.38 There is a tension and danger to the space. However, the question is open about how has the landscape been captured by the filmmakers and how might the concepts of heritage, and beauty contribute to the poetics of the climbing film? Before addressing these two concepts, it is worth taking a step to consider how the landscape is captured, and what the landscape means within documentary film. Newland places a key aspect of landscape in the experience – “as opposed to just things to be framed”,39 while Harper and Rayner see that “all notions of landscape are produced by human interpretation”.40 There is a level of human engagement with the landscape through the filmmaker in their experience of that landscape. For the audience, it is their engagement with the presentation of that landscape in a visual sense; it is a shift taking a physical space and then presenting it on a screen for the audience to view.41 This presentation of the landscape is important in the documentary film – the landscape is the place where the filmmaker has taken the audience. This could be onto glaciers in Chasing Ice (Orlowski, 2012), or the surface of the Moon in Apollo 11 (Miller, 2019) or into the middle of the oceans of the world in Maiden (Holmes, 2018). In the climbing film, the landscape is not just there as a backdrop for the action to take place on. It is the stage on which the climber performs upon – the amphitheatre in which the climber goes to perform in. The performance of the climber is unique to each crag and route. It is not the

38

Panton, S. North Wales Rock: Selected Climbs in North Wales, 2nd Edition, (Hinckley: Cordee & Ground Up Productions, 2009), 418. 39 Newland, Paul, ‘Introduction: approaching British rural landscapes on film’, British Rural Landscapes on Film. (Manchester University Press, 2016, pp. 1-23), 6. 40 Harper, G. & Rayner, J, Cinema and landscape, (Intellect: Bristol, 2010), 16. 41 Horton, A, ‘Reel landscapes: cinematic environments documented and created’, Studying Cultural Landscapes, Robertson, I. and Richards, P. (eds) (London: Arnold, pp. 71-92, 2003), 71.

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same as a running race which can be replicated track to track around the world – the stage for the climber is always shifting. It is in this ever-shifting stage which the filmmaker works to create a piece of poetic art, which captures both the performance, the landscape and the performance in the landscape, as Jim Perrin elegantly comments: “On Agony Crack my body’s like a flag of silk, streaming round the jut of that neb”.42 Furthermore, just as the amphitheatre features the spectacle of death as a component, so there is this danger in the performance of the climber in this amphitheatre of the landscape, the danger that is inherent within landscape but also within the sport itself.43 To address how the landscape and the movement of the climber creates the poetic object, there are two areas to address: the heritage, and the beauty. Through these two elements, the filmmaker synergises the movement and the landscape together creating a notion of poetics in the climbing film. Looking firstly at heritage, from the early days of climbing and expeditions there has been an ever-continuing history and heritage that surrounds the crags and routes. It is this subject which filmmaker Paul Diffley strives to address in his film A Dream of White Horses (2019) and the history behind the route which gave the film its name. In the film, Diffley seeks to recreate the first ascent of the route drawing in the writing and poetry of Ed Drummond. The film opens with a number of ‘slide images’ and the sound of a projector is heard as each one changes. It presents to the audience a portal to the first ascent of ‘A Dream of White Horses’. The first ascent of any route is a dream for a climber but for ‘A Dream of White Horses’, a classic amongst climbers, this is more coveted. This with the final ‘slide images’ the image goes from still into motion, starting the reconstruction of the film. The second element to address in the combining of elements to create a sense of the poetic, is in addressing the concept of beauty and the landscape; how the geography has been captured. Through A Dream of White Horses, the beauty of the landscape has been captured. In the selection of lenes, framing and composition of the landscape and the climber in the landscape it builds to the poetic. Part of this poetic is created through the effective use of scale. As the climber moves across the cliff, the audience sees a wide angle shot with the climber filling the frame and then the landscape behind disappearing into the distance. The audience get to see a close-up from the 42

Perrin, J, The Climbing Essays, (Glasgow: The In Pinn, 2009), 10. Langseth, T. and Salvesen, Ø, ‘Rock Climbing, Risk, and Recognition’, Frontiers in Psychology, 9, (2018), 1793. 43

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privileged position of the climbing camera man hanging halfway up the cliff. The use of the wide-angle lens specifically aids this positioning. It creates the illusion with the perspective effect of the climber being larger in the frame then they are, showing in more detail the movement of the climber but not losing the landscape behind, reminding the audience of the position of the climber in the situation of the cliff face. This shot shows the importance of the climber and the landscape which are creating an image for the audience to see and engage with, the one needs to serve the other. Following this, the audience see a series of shots stepping away from the climb to show the coastline, giving a broader scale and situation of the route. The landscape that this one specific route is situated in, the sea roaring below, the ever-moving changing element against the fixed rock. These shots are important in positioning the climb within the North Wales coastline – a unique amphitheatre of performance. The audience then get to see the scale of the route from a new positioning. This is a wide shot of the cliff showing the full size of the route and the two in proportion, small climbers making their way up. This demonstrates to the audience the scale of the landscape of the route and the scale of the route still to be climbed. But these shots are not just informational to the audience, it shows the beauty of the cliff face and the draw that the climbers had to the cliff in the first place to find a route across this cliff. The most striking still in the film is the image capturing the landscape which leads to the name of the route: ‘A Dream of White Horses’, referring to the aesthetic of the water as the sea crashes into the cliff where spray is created: this spray then turns in to an impressionistic shape of white horses attempting to ride out of the waves and the rock. While in a motion image the audience gains the impression of the horse, through the still frame, the horse becomes frozen, giving all the chance to see and comprehend. The showing of the beauty of the natural landscape of the sea and cliff interacting with one another, creates a poetic romance to the film building on what the artistic work that is found in the landscape. It is then down to the skill and patience of the filmmaker to capture this moment for the audience to comprehend. The concept of heritage can also be seen in other climbing films such as The Dawn Wall as Tommy Cardwell attempts to climb the ‘Dawn Wall’ on El Capitan in Yosemite Valley, however, the heritage is very different to that of ‘A Dream of White Horses’. The Dawn Wall follows the attempts of a first ascent by Tommy Cardwell and his climbing partner Kevin Jorgeson. The heritage of the route ‘Dawn Wall’ comes from the fact that it has never

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been climbed before. There is a mystery to the film of ‘can it be climbed’, questioning whether it is physically possible. The ‘Dawn Wall’ is a face which many climbers have looked upon and wondered whether it is even possible to climb, and the film is built upon the narrative of writing the heritage of that first ascent and the poetry of the struggle therein. The beauty of the landscape is captured in a visually stunning way within The Dawn Wall, showing both the detail of the rock, but crucially placing the climbers into the landscape; not isolating them but clearly integrating the landscape as a critical player in the narrative of the piece. To start, there is the natural beauty of the grand ‘El Capitan’ rock formation, and the specific cliff face that makes up the ‘Dawn Wall’. This is the same landscape which has inspired Tommy Caldwell to attempt the climb but also filmmakers Lowell and Mortimer to capture the cliff and the climb. The landscape of the ‘Dawn Wall’ does have an inherent beauty that the filmmakers used to their advantage in establishing the landscape. The being that in the landscape that makes up El Capitan, the ‘Dawn Wall’ is where the first light of the day falls, thus providing the route with its name. As the sun rises, the filmmakers, through time-lapse footage, capture the sun cascading across the route, the curtain of darkness is peeled back from the landscape and the wall is presented to both the climbers and to the audience, ready to be climbed. In the opening of the film, the audience are introduce firstly to the character of The Dawn Wall. This is done through several aerial shots moving through the valley presenting the audience with the rock feature. In these shots there is no music – it is simply allowing the landscape to draw the audience into the narrative. It creates a quiet poetic opening, that contrasts many sport films which see the need of adrenaline to draw an audience in. Lowell and Mortimer depend on the beauty of the landscape. This establishing of the landscape and presenting its beauty is a core part of the narrative – it shows the beauty and appeal of the ‘Dawn Wall’, showing the sublimity of the landscape – Tuan sees that the mountain peaks bestow the concept of the sublime providing a “visual specificity”.44 This establishing of the beauty in The Dawn Wall enables the climbers to be placed in the landscape on the stage to which they perform. The climbers who the audience see second, camped out halfway up the face in small free hanging tents.

44 Tuan, Yi-Fu, Romantic Geography, (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013), 46.

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One section of the route is known as The Traverse. This 90-meter section is key to the whole route and it follows a natural band of lightly shaded rock, a clear line for the audience to trace across the cliff. The poetics of the beauty here is captured in the contrast of the large and the tiny. The route is 915 metres of climbing but to achieve this feat, Kevin and Tommy must depend on a sequence of millimetre-sized holds. The filmmakers show this poetic contrast through extreme wide shots where on the screen the climber is filling a small few centimetres of the frame, to extreme close ups where the frame is filled with a hand or a foot delicately and perilously balancing and pulling on these tiny holds. The two shots depend on each other to show the scale of the challenge, the cutting between creates a poetic dance in how the cliff, allows itself to be climbed, but the challenge in doing so. The interplay between the landscape and the climber creates the poetic nature which can be seen in both The Dawn Wall and A Dream of White Horses. In suggesting that, “Documentaries are a set of choices – about subject matter, about the forms, of expression, about the point of view, about the stories line”.45 Aufderheide highlights how there are choices taken by filmmakers in the making of, and, through personal expression, is where there is capacity for the poetic approach to the landscape can be situated. In the climbing film in the integration of the landscape into the narrative the filmmaker does not use the landscape simply as a space for the climbers to perform in but, through the highlighting and expression of the heritage, and beauty, the documentary filmmaker poetically presents their interpretation of the landscape for an audience to see and engage with as seen in both the landscape of the Gogarth sea cliffs in A Dream of White Horses and the imposing walls of El Capitan as in The Dawn Wall.

Bibliography ‘Free Cinema Manifesto’ Facsimile [20/04/2010]. url: http://www.bfi.org.uk/ features/freecinema. Ames, E, Ferocious Reality: Documentary according to Werner Herzog, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012). Anderson, Lindsay, “Free Cinema”, Universities and Left Review, 5 (1957, pp. 51– 52). Anderson, Lindsay, “Only Connect: Some Aspects of the Work of Humphrey Jennings”, Sight & Sound 23.4 (1954, pp. 181–186). 45

Aufderheide, P, Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 127.

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Andrew, Dudley, Mists of Regret: Culture and Sensibility in Classic French Film, (Princeton University Press, 1995). Aufderheide, P, Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction, (Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2007). Bachleitner, Norbert, ‘The Virtual Muse. Forms and Theory of Digital Poetry’, Theory into Poetry: New Approaches to the Lyric, edited by Eva Muller-Zettelmann, and Margarete Rubik, (Amsterdam: BRILL, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/yorksj/detail.action?docID=556819. Created from yorksj on 2021-11-16 17:17:25.). Donnelly, Peter, ‘The Great Divide: Sport Climbing vs. Adventure Climbing’ in To the Extreme: Alternative Sports, Inside and Out, edited by Robert E. Rinehart, and Synthia Sydnor, (New York: State University of New York Press, 2003). Drummond, Edwin, A Dream of White Horses (London: Diadem Books,1987). Fawcett and Douglas, Ron Fawcett - Rock Athlete: The Story of a Climbing Legend. (Sheffield: Vertebrate Publishing, 2010). Gifford, T, ‘Early women mountaineers achieve both summits and publication in Britain and America’, In: Gomez Reus, T., and Gifford T. eds. Women in Transit through Literary Liminal Spaces, (London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 91 – 106, 2013). Harper, G. & Rayner, J, Cinema and landscape, (Intellect: Bristol, 2010). Herzog, Werner, Minnesota Declaration, available: https://www.wernerherzog.com/complete-works-text.html#2, (1999). Hill, John, Sex Class and Realism. (London: BFI Publishing, 1986). Horton, A, ‘Reel landscapes: cinematic environments documented and created’, Studying Cultural Landscapes, Robertson, I. and Richards, P. (eds) (London: Arnold, pp. 71-92, 2003). Kovich, Maureen,ௗ‘Sport as an Art Form’,ௗJournal of Health, Physical Education, Recreation,ௗV42 N8 (1971). Langseth, T. and Salvesen, Ø, ‘Rock Climbing, Risk, and Recognition’, Frontiers in Psychology, 9, (2018). Lyng, Stephen, ‘Edgework, Risk, and Uncertainty’ in Jens O. Zinn ed. Social Theories of Risk and Uncertainty: An Introduction, (London: Wiley Blackwell, 2008). M. Smith-Autard, Jacqueline, Dance Composition: A practical guide to creative success in dance making, (London: Methuen Drama, 2017). Manchel, F, Film Study: An Analytical Biography. (Fairleigh: Dickinson University Press, 1991).

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McDonald, Ian, ‘Situating the Sport Documentary’, Journal of Sport & Social Issues, v31, n3, (August, 2007, pp.208-225). Newland, Paul, ‘Introduction: approaching British rural landscapes on film’, British Rural Landscapes on Film. (Manchester University Press, 2016, pp. 1-23). Nichols, Bill, Introduction to Documentary, Bloomington (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2017). Panton, S. North Wales Rock: Selected Climbs in North Wales, 2nd Edition, (Hinckley: Cordee & Ground Up Productions, 2009). Perrin, J, The Climbing Essays, (Glasgow: The In Pinn, 2009). Platchias, Dimitris, ‘Sport is Art’, European Journal of Sport Science, V3, N4, (Nov 2010). Poulton, Emma and Roderick, Martin, ‘Introducing Sport in Films’, Sport in Society, Vol. 11, No. 2/3, (March/May, 2008, pp 107-116). Robinson,ௗKen,ௗThe Element, (Viking, New York, 2009). Slotnik, Daniel E, ‘Edwin Drummond, 73, Who Turned Climbing Into Activism, Dies’, The New York Times, available: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/obituaries/edwin-drummonddead.html, (2019). Smith, P, The Historian and Film, (London: Cambridge University Press, 1976). Tuan, Yi-Fu, Romantic Geography, (Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013). Wildenhahn, Klaus, “Approaches to the Legend”, Journey to a Legend and Back: The British Realistic Film, (Berlin: Volker Speiss, 1977, pp. 11– 23).

Filmography A Dream of White Horses, Directed by Paul Diffley, (UK, Hot Aches Productions, 2020). Apollo 11. Directed by Miller, T.D. (United States, Universal Pictures and Dogwoof, 2019). Chasing Ice. Directed by Orlowski j. (United States, Dogwoof, 2012) Dawn Wall. Directed by Lowell, J. and Mortimer, P. (United States, Sender Films, Big Up Productions and Red Bull Media House, 2017). Free Solo. Directed by Chin, J. and Vasarhelyi, E.C. (United States, Dogwoof, 2018). Maiden. Directed by Holmes, A. (United States, Sony Pictures Classics, 2018). Rock Athlete. Directed by Sid Perou, (UK, BBC, 1980).

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Touching the Void. Directed by Kevin Macdonald. (UK, Film Four Productions, 2003). The Sharp End. Directed by Nick Rosen, Peter Mortimer, (USA, Sender Films, 2007).

CHAPTER THIRTEEN MEANWHALE: THE BOX, THE WHALE, THE FILM AND A FATHER— ANDREW KÖTTING’S THE WHALEBONE BOX DAVID SPITTLE

A strong song tows us, long earsick. Blind, we follow rain slant, spray flick to fields we do not know —Basil Bunting1

Andrew Kötting’s The Whalebone Box (2019) is a film of (and as): dredged invocation, shrieking occult, family proximity, distance, collaboration, care and ruin; it is the between and the meanwhile, hidden but central to the decentred and intimate absence of resolution. No one plot, topic or subject, no one beginning or end. Kötting’s films evade the categorisation of documentary, essay-film, diary-film, expanded cinema, fiction, non-fiction, arthouse, installation, but encounter all, muddied and distracted at once. His films embody and escalate the (im)possibility of ‘documentary’ with any fidelity to form and content, or the illusory presentation of such, gleefully undone and avoided at every turn. The Whalebone Box will be the purported subject of this essay but I will at every turn, in correspondence with Kötting’s practice, digress and meander. As Kötting refers to his EARTH

1

Basil Bunting, ‘Coda’, Briggflats, 1966, Collected Poems (Bloodaxe Books, 1968) available online: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47708/coda-56d2285ab 4d58 (accessed February, 2021)

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trilogy of films as a traversal of hereon, hereover, hereunder and the questioning hereafter, this essay will hereby – tangentially – follow. ƒ Jaw, nostrils, lips, the restless tongue, cheeks illuminated, opening like fields between shadows and I LOVE YOU INSIDE OUT when the eyes become milk as they look backwards into the head, remembering John Clare I LOVE YOUR BONES as they hang above milling crowds, the scaffolding for water held in air AND YOUR BLOOD AND YOUR BILE as feet on ground, the carcass, the happening of your being in and with and of the landscape as itself a landscape AND I LOVE THE SHAPE OF YOUR ORGANS in the pocket and pool of rot and how body clot of jewels to earth is listening and seeing each in the other to be as biomass of place, her process is mine and yours and held, a skin box what of this as any form AND THE DARK we approach and come from to stage our flawed vocabulary and dive BROWN mulch of bowels the COLOUR OF YOUR LIVER moves on – oars old-haunts from any wreck, in ribs, timber and timbre AND I LOVE the foam and spray of change, of all-the-while THE SLUICE AND SPILL and the impossible container OF YOUR LIQUIDS as it moves to wherever it says: FORBIDDEN ƒ The Whalebone Box arrives as a continuation of Kötting’s journey films – Gallivant (1996) Swandown (2012) By Our Selves (2015), Edith Walks (2017) – but, just as Lek and the Dogs (2017) seem to draw the ‘EARTH trilogy’ (preceded by the ‘hereon’ of This Filthy Earth ,2001, and the ‘hereover’ of Ivul, 2009) into a collaged journeying aesthetic ‘hereunder’, so too does The Whalebone Box draw its journey into further hybridity: not quite documentary but its disruption as dream diary and confession, through to essay-film and travelogue. Neither EARTH nor SEA but the breaching between – into, and as, a troubled space: freeing, but with uncertainty, the conditions of new understanding. That between is the suggestion of AIR as the whale leaves water, but the film simultaneously feels as mysteriously sealed as the ‘air-tight’ box. To leap and be anchored, to navigate place (and film as place) as its own displaced or misplaced logic: the box, the whale, the daughter. It’s a confluence of dream logic and feet on the ground. The

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frenetic attentions to tactility and (types of) happening that reveal the surrealism(s) of a more closely observed and physically felt realism. In this lensed attention Kötting has also cumulatively recorded the journeying of his own fatherhood on film. Much of his filmography and, more widely conceived, his art (books, collage, sound recordings, performances, animation) finds itself through a shared creativity (in collaboration, as care, through struggle) with his daughter, Eden. ƒ The unopened box; neither simply closed or open but instead held in a Schrödinger’s simultaneity, always on the threshold of one-in-the-other. ƒ The shore between high and low tide in a restlessness between the possibility of concealment and exposure. And what is left, what is after – b(r)eached – a need to return. ƒ Reflecting on his first feature, Kötting has remarked: ‘[t]here is a creative treatment of reality in GALLIVANT that might well have its roots in the work of people like Grierson or Humphrey Jennings, but these were people that I became aware of in the wake of the film.’2 It would be possible to thread a trajectory in British documentary that could be relevant to Kötting: beginning in the avant-garde, modernist and surrealist influences of Len Lye (working with the British General Post Office in the 1930s); the formalist innovations between sound and image of Norman Maclaren; John Grierson’s influence as a producer for Night Mail (dir. Basil Wright and Harry Watt, 1936) and Coal Face (dir. Alberto Calvacanti, 1935) involving the poet W.H. Auden; and Humphrey Jennings

2

Andrew Kötting, EARTH HOUSE MANIFESTO (2001) http://www.andrewkotting.com/ak%20web/earthhouse.html (accessed February, 2021)

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with his roots in Surrealism and the formation of the ‘Mass Observation’ project (with the poet, Charles Madge, and anthropologist, Tom Harrison). Following this initial grouping of the most obviously significant contributions to British documentary leading up to, and during, the war period, there was a phase in the 1950s (sporadically supported by the BFI’s Experimental Film Fund, which began in 1952) when amateur filmmakers took up these recently established traditions in documentary. Some of these more amateur filmmakers would go on to professionalise their practice, seen for example in Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo’s It Happened Here (1963). A film that began in 1956 without funding when Kevin was 18 and Andrew 16, and went on to garner the interest and support of Stanley Kubrick (who donated film reel to the project when working on Dr. Strangelove) and Tony Richardson; whilst it also helped launch the career of the cinematographer Peter Suschitzky (who went on to work on The Rocky Horror Picture Show, The Empire Strikes Back, and enjoy a long running collaborative relationship with David Cronenberg from 1988’s Dead Ringers onwards). That drive of amateur enthusiasm was, and is, always an integral part of experimental filmmaking and its evolution. In 1971 Stan Brakhage wrote the essay, ‘in defence of amateur’.3 An avantgarde filmmaker whose kaleidoscopic and kinetic energy, burning at the edges of diary film into more cosmic montage, painted film, moth wings, morgues and mountains, can be seen as part of the Kötting palette (and a huge inspiration for the writer, and occasional filmmaker, Iain Sinclair, who becomes Kötting’s most regular collaborator). For Brakhage, ‘amateur’ was a word directed at him in pejorative critique of his celebratory exploration of ‘home movies’, he reclaimed the term as its own virtue – reconnecting it to its Latin etymology, meaning ‘lover’. He compares the inclusion of learning and discovery, in all its clumsy and awkward joy, as an act of love; a process that exists as independent from any need for external comparison, affirmation or utility…a personal journeying that incorporates its own wrong turns and confusions, to be productively lost, and to intuitively discover new routes into new and unknown territories. Any filmmaker of potential relevance to an understanding Kötting’s digressive relationship to British documentary would have to be tangential from any grouping or historicised trajectory. Therefore, in spirit if not in style or content, the following contextual coordinates might be traced: the rhythmic audio cutting and propulsion of Geoffrey Jones’ British Transport 3

Stan Brakhage ‘in defence of the amateur’, Essential Brakhage: Selected Writings on Filmmaking (McPherson &Company, 2001) pp.142-51.

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films – Snow (1963), Rail (1967), and Locomotion (1975); the pioneering, uncompromising and political docudramas of Peter Watkins – Culloden (1964), The War Game (1965) and many more, eventually leading to the long-running (375 minute) epic La Commune (2000); Hugh Macdiarmid, A Portrait (1964) by the unique poet and filmmaker Margaret Tait; and then the brief modernist interjection of B.S. Johnson’s You’re Human Like the Rest of Them (1967) and his stream of consciousness meandering on Fat Man on A Beach (dir. Michael Bakewell, 1974). Veering away from documentary was the heavily theoretical and structuralist work of the London Filmmakers Co-Op (founded in 1966). A group which holds no particular interest or relevance in relation to Kötting’s filmography – except for two particular details: with its origins in the bookshop, Better Books, the Co-Op was in constant dialogue with writers and poets, most notably the founding presence of experimental poet, Bob Cobbing; and secondly, the gloriously eccentric DIY of Jeff Keen’s incredible films (one of which, Marvo Movie, 1967, featured the sound poetry of Cobbing). These were strobing and kinetic visions, often animated into stammering cut-ups of comics, burning plastic and heaped detritus, or theatrically traipsing around Brighton’s Municipal Waste Tip under the pulp guise of Dr. GAZ. Not unlike Kötting, Keen was always filming his family or surrounded by a troop of willing friends. A kindred filmmaker of extraordinary originality, operating far from any theorised or categorical structure – a true amateur, in the Brakhage sense. Although further connections could be made, with, for example, the humour of John Smith’s witty avant-gardism and Chris Petit’s downbeat road-tripunder-the-shadow-of- Thatcher, Radio On (1979); or the wry journeying of Patrick Keiller’s London (1994) and the voiceovers in Robinson in Space (1997) and Robinson in Ruins (2010); and later, resonating with the rich sense of place and community that informs Giddeon Koppel’s Sleep Furiously (2009), Clio Barnard’s inventive audio enactments in The Arbor (2010), and the films of Mark Jenkin. Or, extending beyond a British context, Kötting has often invoked the inspiration of Werner Herzog and, through a kind of reactionary glee, the Dogme ’95 manifesto (which he often parodies and explores). And yet, whilst it would be possible to map a reading of the ‘poetic documentary’ through any of these coordinates, there

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is one filmmaker and one film that takes influential precedence for Kötting: Philip Trevelyan’s The Moon and the Sledgehammer (1971).4 ƒ Points of departure, voices possessed, crossings between the archival and personal, here in the where now? of all excavations and burials: ‘in this brief transit where dreams cross’ as T.S. Eliot put it, and as Kötting quarries Eliot in his own bricolage of sound.5 The box as the memory of bone and the might-be memory of its contents. Containment as content but trembling with something else, something unsettled – “Can you see the sea?” A document of its own documentation, as all documentaries (whether they integrate this awareness or not) always are…but here, turning in on that contemplation, to be like Eden – in the dream whilst looking for the dream, eyes trained on the forest canopy looking for the flying whale. Even in this reflexive equation, Kötting’s film goes further: showing us Kötting filming Eden, looking at her looking, as she is dreaming (as in the opening sequence), standing on the shore (a threshold dreamt or actual?), or sat in the forest – looking for the dreamt of whale. To be pieced together without division when the human engine waits carrying a box made from what it contains – whalebone and whale – the surrealist dream of one-in-the-other as also the waking phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty’s chiasmic flesh – a being in and of the world.6 The film situates itself in this crossing of analogous boundaries: subject & object / sleeping & waking / presence & absence / air & water / land & sea / family & art / time & space / documentary & poetry / the box & its contents.

4

This background research is indebted to the invaluable essays of GJ Buckell, A History of British avant-garde film (Filmwaves, London, 2005-2007). 5 T.S. Eliot, ‘Ash Wednesday’, 1930, Collected Poems 1906-1926 (Faber and Faber, 2002), p.94. 6 Maurice Merleau Ponty, ‘The Intertwining – The Chiasm’, The Visible and the Invisible (Northwestern University Press, Illinois, 1968), pp. 130-55.

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ƒ Kötting is returning a box North, travelling from his home in the South of England, to the Hebrides islands off the West coast of Scotland (specifically to the Isle of Harris). The box is made from panelled slats, nay, SLABS, of whale bone, bound together and sealed in a ghost white chest. The bones were taken from the carcass of a beached whale and then cleaned and sculpted by the artist Steve Dilworth. Dilworth’s unique spirit is everywhere in this film, communicating seamlessly (or in shifting séance) with Kötting’s own tireless eye-to-soil assemblage of landscape and the happenstance of what is found. Dilworth’s art has been described as shamanic and scavenging, occupying a visionary isolation of ‘making’ from his remote house on the Isle of Harris. Through resurrecting natural matter and animals from death, decay and neglect, into uncanny geometries of sculpture, he has created his own cosmology of objects. Two birds, beaks crossed, found dead in the nest. Each sun-dried carcass is now mummified, skin shrunken around an armature of bones. Or a cat and a rat, reanimated in cadaverous conversation. The armadillo’s armour, sparrow hawk’s talon, earth, braided grass and rope, carapace, coffin, and the vast geology of indifference; collected and re-built, reimagined as totemic coordinates. Skull and stones. The hidden vial of calm water, storm water, foam and spray. Notched vertebrae and the polished curves of rock. Each in cryptic dialogue with the other, mythologised into shapes of mute speech. Returned to the land. Encased by and with. What is seen and the hidden bird, feathers kept in a hollow of stone. Flight in the immovable. Perhaps Dilworth’s most fascinating and unnerving creation, ‘The Hanging Figure’, is seen in the film: hanging from the ceiling of his workshop like the cocoon of an ancient body. Braided rope, woven horsehair, bindings of seagrass and the re-assembled bones of a human skeleton; all painstakingly (re)constructed by Dilworth to (re)create an ageless and genderless being, ordained with the hand stitched aura of ritual. Outside of time, Dillworth’s shamanic sleeping-bag holds a lifeless sleeper beyond death – neither male or female, a relic from the future. A bundled taxonomy, suspended and calling out from Eliot’s ‘The Fire Sermon’ (The Waste Land, 1924): I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives, Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see At the violet hour, the evening that strives

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Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea7 This found and re-built collection of bones and papered skin, aleatory angel hanging, could be the guardian of the box or the spirit of the box, or, just as it watched over Dilworth’s studio, it presides over the film. Recalling Walter Benjamin’s obsession with Paul Klee’s painting, ‘Angelus Novus’. The painting, as rapturously described by Benjamin: His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back his turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. The storm is what we call progress.8 ‘What can you see?’ ‘You can’t see the past?’ ƒ The camera moves through the bright rush of cars, from a busy road through to a roadside hedgerow and moving into the shade of a branched canopy – it’s darker here, a hidden dwelling: the opening sequence to Philip Trevelyan’s unique documentary, The Moon and the Sledgehammer (1971). What follows is a wandering portrait of a real family, Mr. Page and his two sons and daughters – Peter and Jim, and Nancy and Kathy. Situated 20 miles South of London, their ramshackle house is located in six acres of woodland and, in a clearing scattered with the mad orbit of collected steam engines, chickens, a disintegrating piano, half-abandoned metal-work projects and a trove of stripped and decaying automobiles (from a gutted bus to a sunken truck), their family trundles uneasily around the father figure (Mr. Page, known locally as ‘Oily Pete’). The film feels at once in the past and of the future: gathering relics of DIY engineering in a dislocated arcadia they seem to improvise a bygone dream in the overlooked; or, through nonsense verse 7

Eliot, ‘The Waste Land, 1922 (Collected Poems 1906-1926, Faber and Faber, 2002), p. 61. 8 Walter Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, 1940, in Illuminations (Fontana, 1977), pp.259-60.

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in thick dialect, conjuring an eccentric eco-prophecy that feels prescient to our unsustainable present. Or, as Kötting puts it: ‘[a]re the Page family our dinosaurs or are they our visionaries? Has the world passed them by or have we come full circle and is it us that are now struggling to catch up?’9 [2016] The themes and cinematography could be interpreted as the objet trouvé of Kötting’s filmography, the crumpled blueprint from which so much has grown. The ramshackle sincerity of their house like Kötting’s rustic farmhouse in the Pyrenees – the documented centre of his film This, Our Still Life (2011). The lined faces and mud beneath the nails, the sense of time’s forgotten pocket – pastoral and vaguely apocalyptic, an atmosphere central to Kötting’s EARTHWORKS trilogy. The wistfully ambiguous sense of incest and the creeping rot of isolated community, both cornerstones to This Filthy Earth (2001), though made more visceral and galling; one of the sons, Jim, shimmying up a tree foreshadowing the arboreal exile in Ivul (2009); and that same son, with a gas mask on, pretending to be an elephant on all fours as if prophesising Kötting’s Lek, adopting a canine pose in the desert in Lek and the Dogs (2017). Mr Page wears a rumpled suit, gathering scrap metal with a perpetual cigarette limply hanging from his grin, scampering around like a cross between a Tom Waits lyric and the alien presence of William Burroughs lost in the South of England. Andrew Kötting wears a rumpled suit in each of his JOURNEY films, a character and purpose channelling the hidden world of Mr. Page. There are more connections (the use of sound, an end-of-the pier decay; the stream of consciousness like a home-brewed modernism; the camera’s movement, its kinetic curiosity; the substitute of recognisable structure for a more poetic intuition…and it could go on) but perhaps it’s best to quote again from Kötting: Seminal aphorisms and insightful anecdotes, a glue for this their apparent nonsensical way of living. A portrait of a fantastical family at odds with the world and then themselves. Scrap metal, steam driven lumberjacking selfsufficientists. The film was my compass for Gallivant and my accomplice for This Filthy Earth it has nurtured me and fed me. Jon Bang Carlsen must have drunk from the same trough, his companion films ‘It’s now or Never’ (1996) and ‘How to Invent Reality’ (1996) contain smidgeons of the same spell binding.

9

Kotting, ‘The Moon and the Sledgehammer’, (2016), http://www.andrewkotting.com/ak%20web/themoonandthesledgehammer.html (accessed February 2021)

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This is documentary as the poetic record of family and landscape, how both change, and are changed by, time. ƒ Andrew and Eden, father and daughter, two collaborators visiting London’s Natural History Museum. Adverts for an exhibition are placed in the museum’s opening hall, below the suspended skeleton of a blue whale, the adverts are beside an owl in a Perspex box and read: Visit Life in the Dark and Visit Today. Andrew and Eden, child and adult, adult and adult, cared for and caring, seen by and seeing, two explorers visiting the British Museum. They are looking at ‘Franks Casket’, an Anglo-Saxon whale bone chest from the early 8th Century. It is adorned with runes, inscriptions, alphabets and, most significantly, narrative scenes. Myth and stories proliferate from different cultures and times: Christian images, Roman history and mythology, Germanic legend, Homeric epic, and the lost and founding tales that – as the audio description informs us – come alive with the multivalence of interpretation. But it is narrative. It is knife-cut narrative: a she-wolf nourished them / a wretched den / rushes / wood / bitter / The terror king became sad where he swam / on the shingle / whale bone…scenes engraved ‘with all the weight and complexity of narrative’. Meanwhile, the Whalebone Box of Kötting’s film, of Eden’s dream, and of Dilworth’s making, ‘devours narrative, like a black hole’. Kötting’s films return always to the turning away from narrative: the all ways, a turning away as narrative. Arguably the EARTH trilogy approaches and intermittently adopts narrative, adapting novels and plays, drawing closer (closest in Ivul) to narrative and rooting themselves hereon / hereover / hereunder. The ground of drama, the narrative as what emerges in the relationship between soil and skin. Between person and land, individual and community, and always, the disturbance of family. In the journey-films, the natural narrative of a journey (the setting out, the feet on the ground, and the return) becomes a convenient shoreline, from which to swim out – with happenstance, opportunity, and tangent. Always beneath these distracting models for narrative is the natural pulse towards a turning further in the 10 Kötting, ‘The Moon and the Sledgehammer’, (2007), http://www.andrewkotting.com/ak%20web/themoon.html (accessed February 2021)

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mire. The mud beyond the footpath, bounding beyond the chain-link warning (it reads FORBIDDEN) at Montségur. Before Gallivant (sequences from which, POV looking out from the travelling van’s dashboard, are revisited in this film, the box resting on the dashboard like a holding of memory – a mute reminder), and back into Kötting’s very first early shorts there is a (student) film that seems to unroll itself from the weathered skip of a lost avant-garde, redolent of the elliptical humour of Beckett if archeologically re-configured along the ley lines of The Goon Show and Tom Waits…the film is called Klipperty Klöpp (1984). Primal prattery digs into unsettling and convulsive ruminations, in which a man throws himself round and round, into and across a field: It takes me right back to when things are a lot clearer now. Foggy wasn’t the word it, It was well muggy. Exceedingly unpleasant. See I remember he said; He said, this my son is a sun A prehistoric sun.11

The field becomes a trodden Mobius strip, its figure-of-eight infinity beaten into the ground like manic crop circles circled in the hurried confusion to be elsewhere. Films spill over their announced endings, chapters repeat and disregard their supposed function as reliable markers, and most often we return to where we began – never neatly or with calculation, but with the gesture that assures (with its lack of assurance) that any narrative is only ever accidental or illusory. We can try to remember, to return, but are instead continuously re-introduced to the forms of our own forgetting. There can be no simple moving forwards or backwards but, like Dilworth’s ‘Hanging Figure’, a suspension looking both ways: the whale breaching and beached through change. ƒ In Lek and the Dogs (2017), Kötting’s film preceding The Whalebone Box, a subterranean narrative of repression and self-excavation crawls and walks between feral dogs and a lost man. This is the hereunder: time is geological. Towards the film’s end, Alan Moore’s voice describes the notion of SOLID 11

Klipperty Klöp (1984, dir. Andrew Kötting), transcript of the voiceover: http://www.andrewkotting.com/ak%20web/klippertyklopp2.html (accessed February 2021)

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TIME, a concept that intuitively slots into the film’s logic. A concept that also exists in Moore’s magnum opus, the novel Jerusalem (2016) and comes rambling into view throughout Kötting’s Edith Walks (2017). If time is solid, what better way to express and interrogate this theory than through traversals of land in the metaphor of Earth as Time. According to Moore’s voiceover, in following this Joycean conception: cause and effect break down, morality losses its anchor, and time can be thought of as narrative without narrator; timelines shuffle and coexist without lineation but still are. Here (in a constant where of when) vice and virtue cease to navigate experiences and instead all of time, as traversed by our ‘moment to moment sensations’, becomes both ‘the best of times and the worst of times’. There are relationships and dialogues between these experiences but no framework of ordering, as Lek mutters: This is forever / it will always be like this / for as long as I can remember

The experience of a kind of eternal past in the memory that will always be, Lek’s past in the dessert, in the under, becomes the present of his navigation. After its credits, the film ends with a quote from Eugene O’Neil: ‘THERE IS NO PRESENT OR FUTURE, ONLY THE PAST, HAPPENING OVER AND OVER AGAIN, NOW’ The questioning re-examination of time – as experience and concept – is integral to Kötting’s docu-poetics. In Gallivant, interviewing communities of British coastal towns like an eccentric anthropologist collecting postcards (each on the verge of fading), time is in its eroded trace and observed between generations (‘Big Granny and Little Eden’, as Iain Sinclair puts it)12. In the virile dereliction of This Filthy Earth: xenophobia, intolerance, incest, misogyny and rage. A crumbling and ugly portrait of little-England in the throes of stagnation that keeps getting more distressingly prescient with time. Community as a preservation of time (in Gallivant) and community as the soiled anachronism of time’s stagnation (in This Filthy Earth). Then there was Kötting’s internationally ranging remembrance of his recently passed father, In the Wake of Deadad (2006): standing beside the inflatable of his father in different locations. A physical expansion of the photograph; memory as a totem marooned from context, Kötting standing in the same suit his father is shown to be wearing. In This Our Still 12 Iain Sinclair, ‘Big Granny and Little Eden’, first appeared in the September 1997 issue of Sight & Sound and is now available in the BFI booklet to Gallivant (dir. Andrew Kötting, 1996). This essay was Sinclair’s first introduction to Kötting’s work.

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Life, time is the interaction between a rhythm of seasonal change and a darting observation of the momentary. Not unlike like a more mischievous Stan Brakhage, time is the simultaneity of cosmic cycle and domestic incidental; flickering attention, transience and the durational are inseparable iterations of perception in/of/as time. And yet, in all this mutable simultaneity, time is also SOLID. Time is the narrative of journey and the journey of narrative and, in the journey films – embroiled in the poetics of Sinclair’s psychogeographic vision. Sinclair first appears in Swandown and contributes his contagious conversational energy and smuggled poetic references into further films, becoming a mainstay in Kötting’s band of collaborators. In his feverish navigation of prose and poetry and prose-poetry, without the need (or time) for any such confining distinction, Sinclair’s two long ‘poems’ from the 70s, Lud Heat and Suicide Bridge, conjured a gnostic cartography of London that draws deep incantations of place as portal: tread of speculative history and the spread of textual territories.13 Tread / Time. The seeing and stepping of it, the step as seeing. The central poetic influences moving between Blakean Gnosticism (whose prophetic eye rolls forward into the gyre of Yeats) and the Black Mountain Poets, specifically Ed Dorn’s Gunslinger (1968-75) and Charles Olson’s roving epic of place, The Maximus Poems (1950-70), which – amidst a myriad of other sources and references – plied its New England archaeology via Pound’s The Cantos and Melville’s seafaring…and, connecting to England in its later stages, was drawn into correspondence with (and took scholarly support from) the English poet, J. H. Prynne. For Olson, ‘polis is / eyes’: ancient territory of seeing as poetic traversal of space and time, not ‘localism’ but the occult expansion of time through mapped locale.14 Sinclair’s poetry was also alive with the rushing speed and urgency of Tom Raworth’s poems, the hieratic breeze of Surrealism from Lee Harwood’s The Long Black Veil, and the ambitious mapping of Allen Fisher’s PLACE. Time is snagged and rushing, tunnelled into and mapped, labyrinthine and vast but, from Olson’s ‘Projective Verse’ essay, ‘one perception must must must MOVE, INSTANTER ON ANOTHER’ – alive with the frenzy of onwards (a very

13 Iain Sinclair, Lud Heat and Suicide Bridge (Granta Books, 1998). Both of these long poems were originally published by Sinclair’s own Albion Village Press; Lud Heat in 1975 (with a second edition with the Lewis-Graham Press, 1986, and a third edition with Goldmark, 1987) and Suicide Bridge in 1979. 14 Charles Olson, ‘Letter 6’, The Maximus Poems, ed. By George F. Butterick (University of California Press, 1983), p.30.

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Kötting-esque mantra).15 This is time as perceived out of time, in the epic, and collaged from and in time, as the diary; both constellating at once. Lud Heat and Suicide Bridge burnt into the gathering counter-culture of the British Poetry Revival, later selectively gathered in Sinclair’s anthology, Conductors of Chaos (1996): this was a community of poets that actually engaged with the legacy of Modernism and international avant-gardes, as opposed to falling into the nostalgic plod of ‘The Movement’; a more subversive spring far from any Larkin, exploring the reverberations of Situationism and Fluxus, while basking in the psychedelic light of Ginsberg and the paranoid shadows of Burroughs. Sinclair was enthralled by the paranoid contagion of any word-virus cooked from Burrough’s cut-up conspiracies and he channelled that energy, via his own vatic dig into London crypto-histories, through two long poems that are unlike anything else in British poetry. Often referred to as ‘psychogeographic’ (a term which has long since betrayed the esoteric momentum of its many sources, spewing bland proliferations of the word ‘liminal’ and the inevitable academic uptake – dulled by compulsive labelling and confined to smug conferences) these two volcanic texts became central to a growing ring of underground writers and artists, including (but not confined to): Alan Moore, Rachel Lichtenstein, Stewart Home, Gareth Evans, and Brian Catling. This convergence of hidden histories and a diversely experimental / modernist-inflected poetics, became the lens for a new geography (a ‘deep topography’) inseparable from evolving models of time. In Lud Heat, Sinclair quotes from Blake: Los took his globe of fire and searched the interior of Albion’s Bosom, in all the terrors of friendship entering the caves Of despair and death . . . Walk’d difficult.16

The imagination forging into ground, intestinal England – the gutter, catacomb, ditch and grave – to see underground, the challenging walk. Suicide Bridge begins:

15 Charles Olson, ‘Projective Verse’, in Postmodern American Poetry, ed. By Paul Hoover (Norton, 1994), pp. 613 – 21. 16 William Blake, from Jerusalem, quoted by Sinclair in ‘Lud Heat’, Lud Heat and Suicide Bridge, p.100.

Andrew Kötting’s The Whalebone Box HANDS OUT OF the entrails of time. Myths are lies. Out of the bucket. Retain those primary, first light, dramas of aboriginal creation: getting, how here, dew freezing on the corpse […].17

And three paragraphs / blocks later: The land the animal. They have a location which is charged with an intense and continually reinforced personal magnetism, literally driven down into the granules of soil – so that each single grain is a charged particle of energy, forming a live carpet on which they stand and move, a cathode mosaic of infinitely detailed histories and archetypes. Past & present are coeval, equally radiant.18

ƒ step turf totemic & the breath a camera wheels the ossuary, focus dog-step in the margins all swim trod the moment, i density of DE/COMPOSITION BY FIELD A lens fault. A leak of eternity [Iain Sinclair] what was meant by where is a matter of when this drift the move not mapped [Lee Harwood] in burial, the property of bargain-bin magus yarps car park mole the soil invoke pigeon king oblique listener heaped beside the canal the cut stone angel, sheer decapitation and opening the box, Jonah in the meanwhile Mekas noting briefly lost

17 18

Sinclair, ‘Suicide Bridge’, Lud Heat and Suicide Bridge, p. 147 Ibid, pp. 147-48

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DOGTOWN / HACKNEY glovebox might-of-us O M25 Ginnster’s crumb caffeinated in pilgrimage Une voi féconde second in the mire sits the muck rake EARTHWORKS bog heart a stone circle sod-it-sods-madrigal-in-feet-talk It takes me right back to when things are ƒ to re-consider the concealed centre: what is the box? In this brief transit where the dreams cross It is a bomb. A black box, the record of what went wrong. Pandora’s box, the hurt to be released. It is a coffin. A house, the place we build in place. It is the placing of a space. Held and holding. It is the purring of Schrödinger’s dead cat. The Whalebone Box is, without a doubt, a doubting, heavy, multitude. Does it contain Dilworth’s clam water or storm water – he can’t remember. Does it hold the slipping memory and metaphor of the whale? Both and neither, probably. It contains ‘probably’. I dance around its definition (Klipperty Klöpp!) because it is the film’s obscure engine, at once intensely personal and endlessly open – without ever opening. I think

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it is helpful to remember that a box can contain a world just as it can protect against the world. In a constant and confusing relationship with the box and the whale is Kötting’s daughter, Eden. Eden paints and sings and dresses-up and shakes and smiles and grimaces in most of his films, as also – the distinction porously examined – in his life: the movement between art and/as family being of recurrent interest. Eden was born with Joubert syndrome, a rare genetic disorder which affects the cerebellum (specifically the absence or underdevelopment of the cerebellar vermis), damaging control around balance and coordination. It stunts areas of cognitive and speech development and can impair internal organs. The most common features are often grouped around hyperpnea (rapid breathing), hypotonia (decreased muscle tone), and ataxia (deteriorating or making near-impossible certain voluntary muscle movements: swallowing / speaking / walking / vision). It can be a very debilitating condition. I mention (reductively and in simplified terms) the medical context of this disorder because Kötting’s filmography, as an exploration of how enmeshed life and art can and should be, is frequently (if not always) coming from a very specific relationship with his daughter, and by extension the embodied realities and perception of Joubert syndrome.19 In Gallivant, a journey around the English coast was energised through the interactions of Eden with Kötting’s grandmother – a relationship between someone new to the world and someone playfully bickering into the twilight of their experience with, and in, that world. On the threshold In This Our Still Life (2011), we see the time passing of Eden’s childhood, her interest in painting, the shared joy of collaboration and the restless camera that, like Eden’s unstill ‘still life’ painting, begins to see in ways physically moved into new attention(s). A kinetic lens propelled in rhyme and reaction to Eden’s roll / range of looking. of the last mystery, The Sun Came Dripping A Bucket Full of Gold (2011) was a short ‘Seaside Super-8’, later incorporated in By Our Selves (2015). Eden walks along the beach, supported by her walking-frame and joined by the ‘straw bear’ – a creature that appears in By Our Selves and that is a version of Kötting, or that is a version of the corruption or market of creativity, or that is an 19

Kotting’s writings/films on Joubert’s syndrome

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armoured self, a lost self, or that – like a walking creation of Dilworth – seems summoned from a pagan ritual as an idol of blundering multitudes, a shadow that welcomes as it frightens. at the brute absolute hour, Then, following a 16mm short film of the same name (with camera work by Ben Rivers, 2014), The Illuminated World Is Full Of Stupid Men: Eden Kötting Sketchbooks 2015-2017 was published as a beautiful collaborative book.20 The scrawled words of Andrew accompanied by Eden’s painting and collage. This frenetic, humorous and brooding tapestry itches between diary, philosophy, despair and giggling shreds of cosmic portent: STARGEEZER / IT’S RAINING STUPID MEN / THIS APPARITION you have looked into the eyes Cartoon eyes, splashed toothpick arms, stars, butterfly stickers, arrows, and the grinning animal beings EYES DRIPPING BLUE / THE ENDLESSNESS OF ART STUFF of your creature self, which are glazed with madness, and you say he is not broken but endures, limber and firm in the state of his shining, [from ‘King of the River’, Stanley Kunitz]21 Her drawings were then animated by Glen Whiting in a short, Forgotten The Queen, that accompanied the feature film, Edith Walks (2016). A rambling archeology of perambulation leads a troop of Kötting’s collaborators from Waltham Abbey via Battle Abbey to St.Leonards-on-sea in East Sussex. The journey is in tribute to ‘Edith Swan Neck’, the lover / wife of King Harold, their remains separated for 950 years to be now (then), in fluffed 20 Andrew and Eden Kötting, The Illuminated World is Full of Stupid Men: Eden Kötting Sketch Books 2015 – 2017 (Badbloodandsybil, 2017). I quote in capitals in spliced quotations from the book at this point in the essay. 21 Stanley Kunitz, ‘King of the River’, The Testing-Tree (1971), the poem is available online: https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/unbound/poetry/antholog/kunitz/river.htm (accessed February 2021)

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fluxus of drummed enthusiasm, reunited … and the whale casket [THE BOX] makes its debut, carried önwards to lend cetacean marrow to a king’s séance. In Eden’s film, Whiting’s animation captures the nervous energy of The Illuminated World Is Full of Stupid Men and the fidgeting enchantment of This Our Still Life, drawing each pulse and twitch into new discomforts of belief, power, history and religion. Beneath each twang of arrows, the scurrying hearts. Each violent asterisk, the crockery of fallen stars dropped from no god and her lines spoke red around the eye, a sun. And circling flights in burial, here the chattering every wing and look of her to sketch a blur of being still, the birds a language drawn from trees, the forest underwater. ƒ I want to try to get at the difficult, but inescapable, ways in which the whale and the box (one- in- the-other) seem to relate to Eden. In watching the The Whalebone Box, I found myself in a notably different churning of mood. In Kötting’s films there is always the underbelly or, in Lek and the Dogs (2017), the underground…where memory, viscera, and melancholy become inseparable from the elsewhere buoyant foraging or energy of a journey. Yet, in The Whalebone Box I found myself, more than usual, in a shifting and troubled sense of sadness. Lek and the Dogs is probably the most unnerving or explicitly dark of Kötting’s films, however it explores that realm in a mode that feels innately dramatic: adapting a 2010 play by Hattie Naylor, the film has an embedded drama, and, however digressively envisioned, a character-based narrative that foregrounds communication and became powerfully cinematic. The Whalebone Box feels far closer to an unsettling and personal meditation, something washed up and crawling from the intimacies of a partially encoded diary. Despite being a continuation of Kötting’s journey film, despite sequences on the road and passing trees, and despite the usual peripatetic approach…the film is heavy, returning always to a mute ambiguity in, and of, the box. The whale and the box become slipping metaphors for unknowable sites, where the imagination projects, romanticizes and fears in its own speculation. Whales have a long and ancient history of igniting and confounding human imagination: from Andromeda and Perseus through to Sinbad and Jonah;

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global mythologies and religions tracked the whale long before the journey of Ishamel in Melville’s Moby Dick; and far later, into the ‘whale renaissance’ (gathering momentum after the bio-acoustician, Roger Payne, and his album ‘Songs of the Humpback Whale’ in 1970), the New Age embrace of whale song that spoke as much to ecological concern as it did to desires of meditative transcendence, or a non-specific and candle-lit spirituality. After histories and myths of the whale as monster, the whale becomes an image of gentle grandeur, a symbol of peace. The whale is hunted just as peace is always threatened. It becomes a troubled image of reflection, to find ourselves in the whale and then, in tragedies of power and money, to kill or deny that recognition in hunting the whale. One of the most expansive modern histories of the whale is Philip Hoare’s Leviathan (2008), a docu-prose-dive of cetacean and civilization.22 Hoare appears in The Whalebone Box and later ghosts through the film, his voice caught in the broiling soundscape of Kötting’s audio net. A documentary of the same name, Leviathan (dir. Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel, 2012) used new HD GoPro technology to capture a fishing trip off the coast of New Bedford (the inspiration for Melville’s Moby Dick, which the directors shouted aloud from, on the sea-lashed deck of the trawler, during and after filming). The film splits its many perspectives through a queasy and appropriately fish-eyed lensing or bird’s eye view that both, attached to various parts of the trawler, douse and disorientate; swinging between inversions of sky and sea, between fish viscera and cragged landscapes of working hands, into documentary art as sensory hallucination. Off-shore, by islands hidden in the blood [‘I Maximus of Gloucester, to You’, Olson]23 Then, when success is achieved and the sweating author has managed to get shut his casket of paragraphs, hammering on it in a perfect fury to keep the body from bursting out, what then? [‘The Scrollwork on the Casket’, Jack Spicer]24 22

Philip Hoare, Leviathan or, The Whale (HarperCollins, 2009). Olson, I Maximus of Gloucester, to You’, The Maximus Poems, p. 5. 24 Jack Spicer, ‘The Scrollwork on the Casket’, my vocabulary did this to me: The Collected Poems of Jack Spicer, ed. By Peter Gizzi and Kevin Killian (Wesleyan University Press, Connecticut, 2008), pp. 24-5. 23

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Meanwhile, the box is made from whale. Sinclair carries the box in Edith Walks, its ‘animal battery’ already charged with history – the relic of its own prophecy in a journey before the journey that leads it back to burial. ƒ The box is a container we turn to for hiding personal items, for reverently preserving bodies or the bodies of delicate possessions – a flat-pack world to hold our worlds. Equally, the box is where we hide and repress ourselves, where secrets or shame are packed away; each closing of the box an anxiety that seeks to reverse Pandora’s opening of the box, but knowing, as we feel we know the whale, what is there. An uncanny presence that we find difficult to admit or deny. It is in this duality as an integral human experience – both uncomfortable and vital – that Kötting’s relationship with his daughter seems to emerge. In the bookwork, This Illuminated World Is Full of Stupid Men, there is one particular scrawled note from Kötting that seems relevant: The incomprehensible resilience that some possess and that the self-righteous misinterpret every time they get dressed Whereas I have her with me every day to remind me of “things are never as they should be”25 The resilience of Eden, her endurance of a debilitating genetic disorder that, through her living and art in Kötting’s films, and in her own exhibitions, enables a different seeing and making. The resilience of Andrew and family, creating and caring in the demanding realities of Eden’s life, is the unrelenting honesty of bodily functions and the physicality of truly supporting someone. The following words introduce the film, whispered as the camera lingers on the almost-asleep face of Eden: I love you inside out, I love your bones and your blood and bile, and I love the shape of your

25 Andrew and Eden Kötting, The Illuminated World is Full of Stupid Men: Eden Kötting Sketch Books 2015 – 2017, p.160.

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organs and the dark brown colour of your liver, and I love the sluice and spill of your liquids. Throughout the film, the camera watches over the sleeping Eden and we are told that the whale is living in her dream. The bizarre and beautiful unravelling of a parallel context for the box (beyond Dilworth’s creation) is described as the result of Eden dreaming the whale, and the whale gliding through a forest where Eden shoots it – using its bones to make the box. We see her, staged in re-enactment of the dream: sat in an armchair in the forest, wearing a wreath of plastic flowers, holding a real gun and a pair of binoculars. The unknowable centre of the film, its unopened box, is created by a dreaming daughter. Or, to introduce the shifting reality of the film’s unrest: it is only her dream as dreamt up by a father in an attempt to express his own shifting relationship with his daughter. When Kötting’s camera rests watchful over the sleeping Eden there is again a shifting of mood: between an unnerving sense of her vulnerability and dependence, and the more warming sense of a caring vigilance. The camera that roves over her face, as unknown contours draped in shadow or as tongue or eyes in a spill of light, creates a troubled attention or perhaps an attention necessarily difficult in its commitment. It is the look that Eden gives the whale at the film’s end, the huge model in the Natural History Museum, as she stands beside its immensity and the uncanny calm of its eye; her attention to the whale’s eye, like her father’s filmed attention as it focuses on her dreaming face, a landscape at once unknowable and familiar. It is a moment that reminds me of a character in Bela Tarr’s 2003 film Werkmeister Harmonies: a man named Valuska, seen as a village idiot but that in fact seems to live in a sensitive dream of this world, stares into the eye of dead whale that is brought into the town as a circus attraction. It is a moment of connection and recognition, but one charged with an unsettled and uncanny mystery. One of the honest discomforts of Kötting’s film is the candid strength of love for Eden that nevertheless feels, at times, to come up against the unknowable reality of her very different experience. At one point, we see her lying on the bed with her feet up in the air together, she looks beached, her feet are blistered, her body hurt in protest to the linear tread of feet. The next shot we see is of a whale breaching out of the water. Understanding that “things are never as they should be” is not a defeatist acceptance of difficulty but an honest appreciation: that the expectations of life and its experience, are built on representations and narratives that we are told to follow; always blind in their reduction of variety and cruel in their judgements. The Whalebonebox devours narrative. There is no

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shouldavists/couldavists that occupy a structured journey, but the tangled experience of truly encountering our experience and not its hollowed advert. Consequently, when Sinclair describes the box, he suggests ‘the treasure is nothing actual, it’s that strange state of consciousness that you can only achieve out of your own confusions’. There is no answer to what the box holds except our own questioning of what it holds, an existence predicated on the questioning of its possibility. The realization of this is embodied in movement (of perception/experience/language/place/physicality) that distrusts any answer, in binary or certitude, but continues – and, in the words of Sinclair, this continuing is to ‘dissolve into something grander, rather than being put into a box and nailed down in a particular spot. It’s much better to be on the move, to be flowing and floating.’ As we hear this in film, we see Eden: she is swimming and smiling, beyond any one step of narrative or any solid truth, she answers the phone with her binoculars – Where we are, who knows guesses

where we go?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN UNEARTHING ARTEFACT 93: CAPTURING THE CREATIVE PROCESS KYLE BARRETT

“[…] the word “documentary” should be handled with care. It seems to have a precise definition, but this comes from the lack of a more appropriate concept for a whole range of cinema, and our unfortunate need to categorise.” Werner Herzog (Quoted in Cronin, 2014)1

Introduction Screen Production Research (SPR) is an emerging field within the academy, which encourages academics to generate creative works, such as scripts, films, and media installation projects that can be “assessed and valued by research productivity metrics.”2 It is located within the realms of practicebased and practice-led methodologies, studying “the creation of audiovisual work that is disseminated on/with screens and can include theorydriven practices that use the screen to ‘do’ research.”3 This essay will discuss my short documentary, Artefact 93 (2019) as a SPR project. The film examines creativity, which in itself is a “slippery and nebulous concept” 4, or in a more scientific manner “a mental journey between ideas

1

Paul Cronin, Werner Herzog: A Guide to the Perplexed – Conversations with Paul Cronin (London: Faber and Faber Ltd, 2014), 286 2 Susan Kerrigan, Gillian Leahy and Hart Cohen, “Still a burning issue: measuring screen production research,” Studies in Australasian Cinema, Vol.1, No.3 (March 2016): 79-96, 79 3 Batty, Craig and Kerrigan, Susan, “Introduction”. In Screen Production Research: Creative Practice as Mode of Enquiry, ed. Craig Batty and Susan Kerrigan (Gewerbestrasse: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018): 1-10, 1 4 Oli Mould, Against Creativity (London: Verso, 2018): 4

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or concepts that involves either a novel route or a novel destination.”5 The primary focus of the documentary is Emit Snake-Beings, who at the time was an Aotearoa (New Zealand)-based artist. The film developed from discussions centred on the artist’s practice and “creativity of the moment”, a notion where an idea “may be so overwhelming that you adopt it without hesitation.”6 Snake-Beings’ “artefacts” (the tangible artworks he produces) are constructed from old cabinets, faulty radios and other electronic devices, demonstrating a blend of both science and art. While there is a calculated process in the construction of these artefacts, Snake-Beings’ relies heavily upon his intuition and what inspires him in “that moment.” The documentary, itself a creative artefact, attempts to imaginatively capture this process. To test “creativity of the moment” from a production standpoint, restrictions were applied to filming: No crew, no pre-production, 2-day shooting schedule, 1 location, and interview questions must be spontaneous. Working within creative restrictions allows filmmakers “interested in thinking ‘outside the box’ to recognize that they can benefit from being placed ‘inside the box.’”7 Indeed, these self-imposed limitations demonstrate that specific effects, or “poetics”, can emerge from the use of restrictions that enhance creative documentary practice. This process challenged both Snake-Beings and myself as well as tested the limits of nobudget, short documentary filmmaking. It is contended that the unforeseen, or rather “accidental”, elements that arose during the creation of the film produce poetics in their own right. Additionally, it will be argued that Snake-Beings’ persona and practice further dimensions to these documentary poetics. This essay should be read as part-interrogation of SPR, and part-exegesis of Artefact 93. As noted above, SPR is an emerging field that has been cultivated in the Antipodes, especially Australia (see Batty and Kerrigan, 2018). The hope for this essay is to share the experience of working within confined means, highlight avenues of contextualisation in academic research frameworks, and reflect upon the challenges and benefits of working within self-imposed constrictions that produce specific effects. To 5

Timothy D Griffiths, “Capturing Creativity,” Brain, Vol.131, No.1 (January 2008): 6–7, 6 6 David E. H. Jones, The Aha! Moment: A Scientist’s Take on Creativity (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2012): 35 7 Heidi Philipsen, “Constraints in Film Making Processes Offer an Exercise to the Imagination,” Seminar.net – International Journal of Media, Technology and Lifelong Learning, Vol.5, No.1 (November 2009): 1-17, 1

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quote Leo Berkeley, this should be viewed as “having an objective of uncovering knowledge that will develop and broaden future practice for the benefit of a diverse community of practitioners.”8 The intent here is to present a study of loose, improvisatory filmmaking practices. However, this does not represent a “be-all, end-all” for short documentary practice, but rather raise questions for practitioners working within the academy, either those who began in industry and transitioned, or scholars who have consistently made creative works alongside their research. First, there will be a discussion of creative restrictions, their influences. This is followed by perspectives on poetics and how they will be employed throughout this essay. I will then provide a brief background of my filmmaking practice, reflecting upon a previous project to illustrate the development of production skills. Finally, I will detail what I consider to be the documentary poetics of Artefact 93.

Knowing your Limits: Creative Restrictions The use of creative restrictions has been a constant throughout my film projects, either self-imposed or imposed by others. While all films, both fiction and non-fiction, have restrictions, in the form of schedules, budgets, performers, locations, running times and so on, specifically applied limitations enhance both the filmmaking experience and final project. Perhaps the most (in)famous incarnation of creative restrictions in filmmaking is the Dogme 95 movement that originated in Denmark, “who borrowed the look of documentary, and some of its precepts, to make fiction films that stood close to the dividing fence between fiction and factual film.”9 Filmmakers Thomas Vinterberg, Lars von Trier, Kristian Sevring and Søren Kragh-Jaconsen devised a “manifesto” that strived to challenge dominant, conventional filmmaking practices (specifically from Hollywood) that were undermining “truth” within cinema. Essentially, the above filmmakers established an opposition against so-called “mainstream” film’s glorification of “genre clichés and special effects”10 with the primary goal to establish a 8

Berkeley, Leo, “Lights, Camera, Research: The Specificity of Research in Screen Production”. In Screen Production Research: Creative Practice as Mode of Enquiry, ed. Craig Batty and Susan Kerrigan (Gewerbestrasse: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018): 29-46, 32 9 Cousins, Mark, “Paradocumentary in Iran.” In Imagining Reality, ed. Mark Cousins and Kevin Macdonald (London: Faber and Faber Ltd, 2006): 412-415, 412 10 Schepelern, Peter. “Film according to Dogme: Ground Rules, Obstacles, and Liberations.” In Transnational Cinema in a Global North: Nordic Cinema in Transition,

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“cinema of authenticity.”11 The manifesto had strict criteria within the parameters devised by the collaborators in which the filmmaker takes a “Vow of Chastity” and must adhere to “a set of minimalistic technical and narrative rules to which the profilmic has to subjugate itself thereby formulating a broader film aesthetics founded in a notion of realism and the real.”12 The “rules”13 of Dogme 95 were a pastiche of the Ten Commandments and were established to inspire filmmakers to overcome the restrictions in creative ways. This criterion indicates, as Cousins states previously, a somewhat documentary approach to fictional narratives. Indeed, these restrictions produced specific effects in terms of the films’ aesthetics and their purposeful desaturated, raw images achieved the antithesis of Hollywood glamour. The early films associated with the movement, Festen (Vinterberg, 1998) and Idioterne (Trier, 1998) replicate a documentary aesthetic, with shaky handheld cameras, abandonment of 180-degree axis ed. Andrew Nestingen and Trevor G. Elkington (Detroit: Wayne University Press, 2005): 73-110, 74 11 Caroline Bainbridge, The Cinema of Lars von Trier: Authenticity and Artifice (London: Wallflower Press, 2007): 91 12 Jerslev, Anne. “Dogme 95, Lars von Trier’s The Idiots and the ‘Idiot Project’”. In Realism and ‘Reality’ in Film and Media, ed. Anne Jerslev (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2002): 41-66, 48 13 Dogme 95 “Rules” 1 Shooting must be done on location. Props and sets must not be brought in (if a particular prop is necessary for the story, a location must be chosen where the prop is found). 2 The sound must never be produced apart from the images, or vice versa. (Music must not be used unless it occurs where the scene is being shot.) 3 The camera must be hand-held. Any movement or immobility attainable in the hand is permitted. (The film must not take place where the camera is standing; shooting must take place where the film takes place.) 4 The film must be in color. Special lighting is not acceptable. (If there is too little light for exposure the scene must be cut, or else the light must be provided by a single lamp attached to the camera) 5 Optical work and filters are forbidden. 6 The film must not contain superficial action (murder, weapon, etc. must not occur.) 7 Temporal and geographical alienation are forbidden. (That is to say the film takes place here and now.) 8 Genre movies are not acceptable. 9 The film format must be Academy 35mm 10 The director must not be credited. Orr, John. “New Directions in European Cinema.” In European Cinema, ed. Elizabeth Ezra (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004): 299-317, 314-315

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lines, and natural lighting.14 The results of Dogme 95 were mixed, with early critical praise for Festen and divided opinions on Idioterne due to its premise of people pretending to have mental and physical disabilities to provoke society. However, the movement’s intent on fostering creativity resonated internationally, with projects adhering to its “rules”, such as Julien DonkeyBoy (Harmony Korine, 1999), an American independent film, and the Argentinian Fuckland (José Luis Marquès, 2000). Von Trier would continue the use of restrictions within his practice, as depicted in the documentary The Five Obstructions (Trier and Jørgen Leth, 2003). Von Trier challenged fellow filmmaker Jørgen Leth to remake and recreate the latter’s experimental film The Perfect Human (1967) in five ways with a specific caveat applied to each version. The process was a “test of [Leth’s] creative power. They challenge his modest remove from his filmic subjects, and they are overcome with a stunning aesthetic practice that transforms the rule itself into a site for studied observation.”15 The obstructions varied from shots lasting no longer than 12 frames, to remaking the film as a cartoon. Throughout the documentary, it becomes clear that it is the discourse generated between the 2 filmmakers in reaction to the obstructions that is the crucial to the creative process, “not the closed ‘interpretations’ of the remakes themselves.”16 Similar conversations are a central component in the development of the examples I will examine below.

Documentary Poetics Documentaries, in their most conservative definition, capture “real people in real situations.”17 Bill Nichols categorises documentary into several “modes” depending on the filmmaker’s visual style and approach. There are 6 modes: expository, poetic, observational, participatory, reflexive, and performative, all of which can overlap in various ways,18 however, the methods the creator employs will produce specific effects upon the viewer. 14 Brian Michael Goss, Global Auteurs: Politics in the Films of Almodóvar, Von Trier, and Winterbottom (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc): 218 15 Lynes, Krista Geneviève, “Perversions of Modesty: Lars von Trier’s The Five Obstructions and ‘The Most Miserable Place on Earth’,” Third Text, Vol.24, No.5 (August 2010): 597-610, 608 16 Perkins, Claire, “In Treatment: The Five Obstructions,” Studies in Documentary Film, Vol.4, No.2 (2010): 149-158, 155 17 Paul Ward, Documentary: The Margins of Reality (London: Wallflower Press, 2006): 34 18 Bill Nichols, Introduction to Documentary (Third Edition, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017): 108-109

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It is here where we can locate the “poetics” of documentary. This should not be misconstrued as the “poetic mode”, which is driven by “association, ideas, feelings, fantasies, experiences and reflections”19 but, as David Bordwell suggests, “how, in determinate circumstances, films are put together, serve specific functions, and achieve specific effects.”20 Mirroring Bordwell’s interpretation of poetics, Michael Renov wrote that in documentary there are 4 tendencies in the “active voice appropriate to their role in a ‘poesis,’ an ‘active making’: 1. to record, reveal, or preserve; 2. to persuade or promote; 3. to analyse or interrogate; 4. to express.”21 Documentaries are differentiated from their fictional counterparts due to preconceived notions of capturing “reality”, depicting “real people” and distilling “true” events. However, both fiction and non-fiction filmmaking reflect Renov’s tendencies and, obviously, share the same practice elements (preparation, filming, editing etc.). Dara Waldron agrees, stating that a “structural relationship between fiction and non-fiction found in practically all forms of film (irrespective of whether they’re called documentary or something else).”22 Reality shapes fiction and fiction can shape our approaches to capturing reality; it is the methods the filmmaker employs that ultimately produces specific effects (consciously or not) upon the viewer, such as the aforementioned Dogme 95 movement. These effects may be generated by visual elements, such as the framing, lighting, colour of a shot that can be interpreted in many ways beyond the original intention of the filmmaker. While fiction films may have larger budgets, vast crews, star actors and so on, documentaries are often produced under more austere circumstances. This may account for the less glamourous images that have been captured on smaller, consumergrade cameras, or even mobile phones. Viewers can forgive these images as they process them as “reality” and what they are witnessing is perhaps captured in a spontaneous, chaotic nature (for instance, images of protests and police intervention). In turn, these grainy often blurry images have their own aesthetic/poetic values to either reinforce notions of reality or the chaos they capture. Of course, how and why these images are chosen/produced by 19

Jong, Wilma de, “Life does not tell stories: structuring devices in documentary filmmaking.” In Creative Documentary: Theory and Practice, ed. Wilma de Jong, Erik Knudsen, and Jerry Rothwell (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2012): 97117, 104 20 David Bordwell, Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989): 266-267 21 Renov, Michael, “Towards a Poetics of Documentary,” In Theorizing Documentary, ed. Michael Renov (New York: Routledge, 1993): 12-36, 21 22 Waldron, Dara. The New Nonfiction Film: Art, Poetics, and Documentary Theory (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018): 7).

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the creator is always a site of exploration within film and SPR studies, and delving into the context of a text’s creation can illuminate and further our understanding/development of creative practice. Bordwell concurs, noting that just as a poet uses iambic pentameter or a sonnet, a filmmaker’s choice of editing, cinematography, music, sound and so on can be investigated to better understand the intention of the author.23 The examples below will demonstrate that in the determinate circumstances I have utilised produce documentary poetics, employing practices that rely upon spontaneity, intuition, problem solving, experiences and reflections.

Portrait of an Artist: Alice Francis and Creative Practice Prior to Artefact 93, I co-directed short documentary Portrait of an Artist: Alice Francis (Barrett and Kim Ayers, 2014), a profile of Dumfries and Galloway-based artist Alice Francis. This project cultivated facets of my practice that I continue to foster to this day. The conditions in which the short documentary was made produced specific effects that in retrospect warrants investigation to contextualise Artefact 93 further. I will briefly discuss 2 aspects of the filmmaking process which I believe to be pertinent to my aesthetic development, specifically the collaboration with Kim Ayres (a Dumfries and Galloway-based photographer), and the visual techniques we employed. Funded by Honeycomb: Creative Works, a £3.58 million programme financed by the European Union. Part of the programme was to invest in short non-fiction filmmaking residences to produce portraits of artists and practitioners working in Scotland’s Western seaboard, where 6 filmmaking partnerships were established during the residency. Restrictions were applied: Each team had to produce a short documentary within 5 days, with only 1 day of principal photography and 2 intensive days of post-production before screening the final cuts. This project was Ayres first foray into moving image but elements of his photography practice fed into the documentary’s aesthetics. He specialises in “character” portrait photography, where the models dress in costumes (of their choosing) and select a style, genre, or motif, that Ayres visually reinforces. For instance, models choosing a film noir setting would be photographed in black and white with heavy use of shadows, Venetian blinds, and props as well as wearing the familiar costumes associated with

23

Bordwell, Making Meaning, 269

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the genre. In essence, Portrait of an Artist was an attempt to capture the “character” that is Francis (who utilises multiple artistic practices including land installation, media, and performance). Ayres and I made the decision to limit camera movement, opting for wide angles and static frames wherein Francis would be the focus, action, and movement within the shot. This juxtaposition of static camera and movement within the frame “create evocative metaphors that can stir feelings that rational meanings cannot.”24 These wide shots gave insight into Francis’ environment. The primary location during principal photography was at the artist’s home/studio, converted farmland that contained a large barn (primary studio) and 2 caravans (main living spaces). In much of Francis’ work is the utilisation and manipulation of the natural environment. The artist constructs props from found objects (predominately rubbish and discarded materials on the street, beach, forest etc.) and creates largescale land installations which give the impression of shrinking the size of anyone interacting with the artwork. In an effort to mirror this, the wide shots shrink Francis as she moves between her caravan and barn. The murky grey sky, mud, and soil created an organic desaturated visual dimension that was later contrasted by the bright colours of Francis’ clothes, artworks, and brief rays of sunshine in the main studio. These unplanned and natural elements produced the most striking visual components of the film that complimented Francis’ artwork that while beautiful to observe had hidden, darker environmental meanings centred on pollution and climate change. Within the studio space is where the primary interview took place, with the most inventive enquiry being “What are you chasing?” Francis took time before eliciting an answer, yet was unable to fully solidify her thoughts in response. Instead, this (unanswerable) question perfectly summarised both the artist’s practice and notions of creativity: The goal itself is producing artworks, with any consequential interpretation beyond the creator’s control. In terms of editing, excising numerous sequences are, personally, the biggest challenge in film production. With roughly 7 hours of footage, the final edit was 4 mins 14 secs. It was crucial not to remove or interrupt the aforementioned unplanned natural/organic elements as this dictated the meditative pace and rhythm. Though only just under 5 mins, the film (constructed primarily through wide shots) utilised its very brief time to distil much of Francis’ practice, art and personality. All films produced 24 Knudsen, Erik, “Camera and Cinematography,” In Creative Documentary: Theory

and Practice, ed. Wilma de Jong, Erik Knudsen, and Jerry Rothwell (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2012): 215-238, 227

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during the residency were screened at the Robert Burns Centre in Dumfries. The final results from each documentary demonstrate a particular space, time, and practice within Scotland’s Western seaboard that reflects the paradoxical nature of creativity, or what artists “chase”. If we consider the above analysis within practice-related research frameworks, arguably it reflects a practice-led methodology, as it “focuses on the nature of creative practice, leading to new knowledge of operational significance for that practice, in order to advance knowledge about or within practice.”25 The diversity of the documentaries demonstrated that the confined working conditions, or “determinate circumstances”, produced high quality films. Not only does it expand your creativity, but liberates you as a filmmaker to make definitive choices on the day(s) of principle production. The challenges, at least for this project, were in the edit. What to retain and discard is the point of contention for any filmmaker, but when working in the short form it is integral to maintain a core narrative that depicts the key concepts and themes you wish to explore.

Developing Nonfiction Poetics: Artefact 93 To briefly summarise, Artefact 93 documents artist Emit Snake-Beings as he constructs one of his “artefacts” for an upcoming exhibition. During this process, he delves into his philosophy of art and practice, revealed as a striking blend of science, art and mysticism (the latter notion something he believes we have lost in the scientific era). Many of the artefacts produced prior to filming are large objects that resemble mechanical totems and represent Snake-Beings’ persona as an art “Shaman”, navigating and interpreting this paradoxical environment of science, art and mysticism for the public. A further element that the artist raised is the idea that his artefacts are a representation of “fact/fiction”. Though they are handmade artworks that feature everyday hardware and components (wires, batteries, bulbs etc.). However, they also contain programmed radio transmissions and/or number displays, or what can be considered “fictional” elements that he has purposely selected to create this fusion. Additionally, this perception of “fact/fiction” perfectly encapsulates his artistic persona. Of course, “Emit Snake-Beings” (the first name pronounced as ee-mit) is not his real identity but a moniker specifically used for creating these artefacts. His true name 25 Skains, R. Lyle, (2018) “Creative Practice as Research: Discourse on Methodology,” In Media Practice and Education, Vol.19, No.1 (May 2018): 82-97, 85

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was never revealed (nor did I enquire) providing further “mysticism” for both the artist and the film. “Fact/fiction” also raises further areas of investigation for documentary as it can be viewed as similar to Waldron’s notions of “nonfiction”, not to be construed as “non-fiction” but as a hybrid form of filmmaking understood “primarily as a form of art production that advances the poetics of moving image in relation to film that engages with real people in real situations.”26 I do not make claim here that the intention of Artefact 93 was to break conventions, create a hybrid documentary, nor to produce an artefact for academic study. On the contrary, Artefact 93 was an experiment in furthering creative restrictions to “engage in the act of creation, rather than relying solely on dissection of the art after the fact.”27 I do, however, acknowledge that upon completing the final edit of the film there were numerous elements captured throughout the making of the film (in response to self-imposed restrictions) that establishes specific nonfiction effects that warrant dissection. In fact, it was during principal photography that certain fictitious elements emerged to the surface, specifically through the “character” of Snake-Beings. Typically, ideas often originate from “an image, a meeting, a juxtaposition or an intuition.”28 Upon meeting Snake-Beings, his energy, artistry and eccentricity immediately sparked the idea of creating the film. Due to Snake-Beings’ schedule, we had 2-days principal photography, an element which required swift filmmaking decisions. Part of the experimentation was testing the capabilities of the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema camera and, in an effort to assess both the camera and my own proficiency, the most challenging restriction was applied: The filmmaker must be a 1-person crew. This would entail being director, cinematographer, and sound designer on the 2-day shoot. An added caveat to these restrictions is that the interview questions can only be asked spontaneously during principal photography due to our mutual belief that if the subject answers many questions about themselves prior to filming, “you may lose spontaneity on camera.”29

26

Waldron, Nonfiction, 8 Skains, “Creative Practice as Research,” 84 28 Rothwell, Jerry, “Development Strategies”. In Creative Documentary: Theory and Practice, ed. Wilma de Jong, Erik Knudsen, and Jerry Rothwell (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2012): 55-86, 58 29 Rothwell, Jerry, “Interview Strategies,” In Creative Documentary: Theory and Practice, ed. Wilma de Jong, Erik Knudsen, and Jerry Rothwell (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2012): 239-251, 246 27

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Similar to Portrait of an Artist, I opted to shoot predominately in static wide shots. This, again, revealed much of Snake-Beings environment, both the house he resided and a converted detached garage used as his studio. The film’s opening images feature a mid-shot of Snake-Beings with a large artefact in the background. This was recorded late into the final day of principal photography but during the edit it was selected to commence the film as it encapsulated Snake-Beings perfectly. As he tries to describe what the artefact can do, it began to malfunction, spewing programmed radio transmissions that he had to stop, otherwise “it would go on forever”. As the film continues, the opening sequence becomes a crucial component in understanding the paradox of Snake-Beings, who like the scientist, artist and mystic he views himself constructs objects that ultimately he has no control over once they are complete. Within his workspace, the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema camera’s natural desaturated image serendipitously supported the capturing of the murky greys, rust and blemished colours of the background artefacts. The loose wires and electronic components in the aluminium tool box – the selected container for the artefact being constructed in the film - allowed for a deliberate avoidance of “picturesque” images, i.e. beautiful panoramic compositions, magnificent colours, stunning depth of field or deep focus. On the contrary, a lot of the images are purposefully obscured, scruffy and desaturated, mirroring Snake-Beings “punk” aesthetic, or rather “Do-It-Yourself” (DIY) ethos, a piecemeal practice where you utilise whatever you have access to in order to create. Reflecting on Waldron’s notion of nonfiction, elements of this occurred when we expanded certain performance elements of Snake-Beings’ character. Aligning the walls were various masks (reminiscent of Venetian and Chinese opera disguises) that the artist put on as we continued the interview. I would “directed” Snake-Beings and block with him to conduct certain actions in the studio space. I revised and expanded several questions that were already filmed, such as “what are you chasing?” and “what have you dreamt in the last few days?”. With a mask covering his face, SnakeBeings became more open and revealed some details of his past, for instance the source of “93” a recurring number throughout numerous artefacts and its importance (later revealed to be the number of a house he once lived in). These small sequences utilised “fictional” practices that arguably defy the fiction/non-fiction divide. Captured with standard coverage (mid-shot and close-up) these sequences, though visually conventional, were subverted to a certain extent by Snake-Beings’ “performance”. Yet, this practice revealed more of his background in comparison to the traditional talking head interview conducted in the first day of production. Reviewing the footage, I was able to utilise at least 70% of these images, with the rest not suitable or

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unnecessary for the testimony that was forming the narrative. The process took 2 weeks to form a rough cut, lasting 11 mins in total. This surpassed my 5 min running time ambitions, requiring substantial editing. The greatest issue was the soundtrack. Audio quality required additional help from sound designer, Luke Jacobs, who finessed and cleaned the sound to be suitable for public screenings. The final edit was completed, with a running time of 5 mins 39 secs. Sharing the final film with Snake-Beings, colleagues, and friends generated positive feedback, with those who knew the artist personally felt that the film truly captures his personality, spirit, and creativity.

Conclusion: Artefact 93 as Screen Production Research This essay has presented examples of creative restrictions within the film production process that confirms “that creativity is a systemic and iterative process that can be internalised by an agent who is conditioned through creative practices.”30 The set of caveats imposed on the creation of the 2 short documentaries discussed above have provided a site of enquiry into effective filmmaking practices. Additionally, post-contextualisation within Screen Production Research frameworks demonstrates the practitioner/researcher’s “creative artefacts and critical outputs are disseminated separately, while knowledge acquired from the creative practice informs the critical explorations.”31 Experimenting with the order in which practice-related research can be implemented, it demonstrates that questions and avenues of analysis can occur from practice in an effort to enlighten and enhance future projects.32 The restrictions, self-imposed or imposed by others, reflects documentary poetics emerging from the circumstances of how the films were created. However, one final aspect I wish to discuss is the film’s impact and effects on an audience. When screened at Sightlines 2019 festival and conference, interpretations of the film were illuminating. The film unobtrusively captures Snake-Beings in his environment and, as an eccentric, expressive individual in his own right, his actions “have particular effects and implications.”33 One response was particularly fascinating in that they believed that the first section of the film to be a mockumentary, 30 Kerrigan, Susan, “Accommodating creative documentary practice within a revised

systems model of creativity,” In Journal of Media Practice, Vol.14, No.2 (2013): 111-127, 124 31 Skains, “Creative Practice as Research,” 85 32 Candy, Linda, and Edmonds, Ernest, “Practice-Based Research in the Creative Arts.” In Leonardo, Vol.51, No.1, (2018): 63-69, 63 33 Marquis, Elizabeth, “Conceptualizing documentary performance,” In Studies in Documentary Film, Vol.7, No.1 (2013): 45-60, 46

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supposing that Snake-Beings was in fact a fictional “character” rather than an genuine artist. Ironically, this response bestows credence to the artist as blend of “fact/fiction”, now retrospectively can be understood as nonfiction poetics. Assuring the audience that Snake-Beings was authentic (in terms of his artistry) - and delivering the shock that that is not his real name - it revised the film in their minds. As noted previously, the intent was never to produce a product to be evaluated as an academic study. However, reflecting on practice-related methodologies, it is interesting to evaluate the results in SPR frameworks. Susan Kerrigan and Philip McIntyre comment: By moving the focus away from the product that is created and focusing it on the structures of practice that are used to create a product, the research enquiry becomes more attuned to the individual’s level of skill and their ability to negotiate problems that arise in the project which need creative solutions.34

Though there was a certain liberation at not being beholden to countless storyboards, or detailed shot lists, devising an improvisatory nature toward principal photography was intended to “have artistic impact.”35 In place of using a shot list as a stepping stone, it was opted to film a majority of day one in wide angles, capturing much of Snake-Beings’ environment as he works. Resetting the camera positions to capture movement, close-ups, and insert shots become more time consuming due to the hectic nature of the artistry being documented, and limited time available. The results could be considered an “observational” mode, where there is an “onscreen awareness of the camera, but the lack of an actual physical presence, verbal interaction, or narration simultaneously denies that presence.”36 Indeed, most of the images captured on this day relied little on verbal interaction, nor the necessity for the filmmaker to be present on screen - the intention was to film the spontaneity of the artist’s working practices and develop a sense of the “nebulousness” of creativity. The testimony generated was captured toward the end of the first day, allowing time to keep the camera static as 34

Kerrigan, Susan, and McIntyre, Philip, “Practitioner centred methodological approaches to creative media practice research,” In Media Practice and Education, Vol.20, No.3 (2019), 211-231, 214 35 Lees, Dominic, “Improvisation as research methodology: exploring links between filmmakers’ practice and traditions of enquiry across the academy,” In Media Practice and Education, Vol.20, No.2 (April 2019), 134-146, 134 36 Larke-Walsh, George S. “Compassion in Kim Longinotto’s documentary practice,” In Feminist Media Studies, Vol.19, No.1 (2019): 147-160, 154

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questions were asked in an effort to capture “the subject itself, not a reconstruction of it.”37 Visually, the film can be categorised within Nichols’ observational mode, however the documentary does not simply convey any technical information, nor the “how and why” Snake-Beings creates these artefacts. In terms of restrictions, the most arduous was being a 1-person crew. The audio quality issue revealed the problems of being director, cinematographer, and sound designer simultaneously, with the later addition of editor in post-production. The collaborative nature of filmmaking cannot be undermined or ignored. Applying notions of practice-related methodologies has revealed limitations with this form of filmmaking. Improvisatory notions in the pre- and principal-production process has had artistic impact, in that what has been captured is truly spontaneous from the subject. I would argue that the restrictions supports this notion. If the film were made utilising the conventional means of documentary, adhering to traditional development stages, planning every step in advance, this may or may not have produced a stronger documentary. Perhaps this is where an experiment such as The Five Obstructions would prove to be the next step in placing one’s individual skills to negotiate a new set of creative problems. However, this would be antithetical to the intention of the film. To finish this essay, I want to quote Emit Snake-Beings, who I will always be extremely grateful to for his kindness, eccentricity, and willingness to share his fantastic work, that when told about the completion of the film, he responded, “Did I look mad?” Yes, but in the most mystical way.

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