Pre-session text:
[07/04, 15:30] Emilio’s document on drive:
Following the thread that led us to investigate time and perception, we are going to consider the relationship between author and viewer.
It is always a matter of time and perception, but also of sharing. Screening can determine a non geographical space of identification determined by two elements: the author and the viewer. Both are involved in determining the coordinates that delimit that space.
The honesty of the author emerges from the willingness to create a dialogue with the viewer, possibly without other compromises. This is very difficult, and of course we must take into account a tension towards honesty that will be hampered by bureaucratic, economic and logistical issues.
In order to create a space of dialogue through filming, it is necessary for the viewer to have the same tension toward honesty.
It is an ethical=aesthetic space.
We need to be able to control our induced desires that drive us to an easier and more mundane approach, always trying to keep our critical eye alive.
By taking the author’s effort on our shoulders, we help constitute a political space and maintain its ethical and aesthetic character.
Just look at how long you like Comizi d’Amore by Pier Paolo Pasolini
[10/04, 17:05] Emilio’s email:
Dear Camilo and Marlene,have you seen (even in part) Comizi d’amore?
There is a reflection here on the semantics of visual forms.
Luz has shared with us an extract of the video she is working on together with David and Sierra, parts that were saved from the fire that happened at their place. I enjoyed the film and I agree with her intentions and arguments and hope that it can open new perspectives to those who do not have a critical eye toward the purpose and methodology of institutional and conventional schooling.
Since we are investigating the forms of visuality, we can compare this film with Pasolini’s “Committees of Love” (this is my translation of the italian “Comizi d’Amore”, the english title of the film is actually Love meetings) by Pasolini.
Let us try to analyse the different forms of communication by comparing the film by Luz, David and Sierra with Comizi d’amore.
In Comizi d’amore the choice of shooting among people avoids the character of statement, given by interviewing a single person. The multiple answers given by different people to the same question in the same scene in Pasolini’s film leave an open space for interpretation.
[13/04, 12:26] Marlene’s email:
Dear Emilio and dear Camilio,
I think there is something very important here that I am trying to grasp. The film by Pasolini was made in the 60s, in a country that was different from now and as it seems, extremely different from north to south. Differences are still there, this said, thankfully killing for “honour” is now a crime everywhere. It is shocking sometimes to hear what they say, to hear women say that women should be considered “inferior” to men and of course a lot has been accomplished culturally from that point, but we all know the path towards a better society is still long, and shall always be pursued. These times we are living now are very delicate, and we see the coming back of different types of fascisms, some of them recuperating or reinvigorating some of the ideas and concepts spread in the darkest phrases of the Pasolini movie.
How do we create films that help us liberate from the boundaries of sick societies/environments/systems/rules? Why do bodies accept to be dominated? The brilliant Boy in Luz’s film really impressed me. But everyone in our friends’ film talks about ways of escaping certain kind of chains, like having to achieve constant results, not being able to carry out what we love as we are full of fear, caring for becoming machines of a system more than to be “inspired” and thus “inspire” other people too, as both directions are contagious, the direction towards liberation but also, unfortunately, the one towards conformism, flattening the real, exploiting maybe always the fear of not being accepted, of not being able to fit in.
In the Pasolini film they talk about conformism too, especially in a passage in which the author talks with Moravia – a very important writer – , leaving the philosophical comment to the work he has been carrying out to the world of the intellectuals:
Moravia “A person who is shocked is someone who sees something which is different from them and, at the same time, threatening. Not only is it different, but it also threatens the person, both physically, and in terms of the image this person has of him or herself. Outrage is fear of losing one’s personality, it is a primitive fear”. Pasolini “As a conclusion who is shocked is psychologically insecure, in other words a conformist.”
I am sure a lot of people would feel threatened too by the words of the people in Luz’s film.
How do we make films that help us inspire each other, how do we make films to create a dialogue with the viewer, and how can a response from the viewer come back to us in a deeper exchange?
I think a difference from Comizi d’Amore and Luz’s film is that the the author is present in a dfferent way. Of course Luz mediates the content because she makes a choice and some very specific people are being interviewed. Her relationship with these people is totally honest and the viewer can understand that the author exactly wants to present this point of view that is common between all the people interviewed. In the Pasolini film there is a different way of choosing. He goes to different “environments” that are very well connotated by class differences, we have the feeling that he has already an idea of which kinds of opinions he is going to find in the different places. He pushes questions, sometimes in an ironic way that is not always perceived by the person interviewed. There is some judgement coming out from the way he talks and I had the impression that sometimes his subjects are treated as “specimen”. Can we say he is honest with these people? Of course out of the film come very important and interesting questions. And maybe showing to some boy at the beach somewhere in the south, who doesn’t even talk to girls, what the students in Bologna say about sex, or a factory worker in Milan, what has been said by people coming from an agricultural world with their daughter already at a different plane of life, can maybe help mixing up cards and, hopefully, speeding up a process of changing what is it that makes people approve of ideas that make them deny rights.
These are just a few thoughts. I will think about a film response.
Hugs,
Marlene
[13/04, 17:03] Emilio’s email:
friends
I am happy because we are addressing some interesting issues. I really appreciate your comments Marlene. Especially your analysis of Pasolini’s manner when you doubt his sincerity. We all know Pasolini’s greatness, just as we know his political ideas. Sometimes he is the one who forces the answer. It’s true. Sometimes he tries to get people on his side. But the structure of the interview is politically alive. The multiple interview, being done between people, allows us to hear their different opinions. Empowering people to know different opinions, sometimes completely opposite to our expectations, is a way to assert a space of freedom. Constructing a situation in which comments are completely thought of as an affirmation or celebration of a single point of view could repurpose the unified information system used by the institutional education system.
[15/04] Camilo’s email:
Hello dear Emilio and Marlene,
Thank you for continuing to question our audiovisual practices (those of the Ecoverse), going deeper into dialogue/discern through the Laboratory; I am certain that it will contribute to the development of new pieces in the future among those of us who participate, with the example of Luz´s, by the way I appreciate your openness (to David and Sierra too, who co-produce) to take their video (still in progress) as a reference to articulate the theme of this third session: a multidirectional relationship between Author and Viewer, understanding that both can be the same individual (or many) as well, therefore avoid observing them as opposites or on opposite sides of an audiovisual, but rather as multidirectional subjects of the creation of a film.
It is this multidirectionality of the job of a creator or the role of a receiver that I now address as “the alternatives” of audiovisual production, referring also to the “different voices” from Pasolini´s and the questions-reflections that emerged in you Emilio and Marlene:
– “the monologue, given by each interviewee, places the listener in a passive position” … “Pasolini’s film (multiple answers scene) leave an open space for interpretation”
– “How do we make films that help us inspire each other, how do we make films to create a dialogue with the viewer, and how can a response from the viewer come back to us in a deeper exchange?”
– “the structure of the interview is politically alive. The multiple interview, being done between people, allows us to hear their different opinions. Empowering people to know different opinions, sometimes completely opposite to our expectations, is a way to assert a space of freedom.”
This feeling of creation “for”/”with more” Freedom and multipurpose, on the other hand, I agree is somehow distorted in productions even with the intention of presenting “alternative” thematics (in our case the “other learnings”), as I agree they may reproduce a “domination” of the discourse with its audiovisual proposal, perhaps limiting that Freedom and communication between the two roles under discussion.
So, if the will is to create complex “alternatives” with multiple interpretations and open to multiple perspectives (and even more so if “what is imposed” is questioned), how can we avoid a dominant system with audiovisual common manners and techniques?
Below I share a Colombian film from 1978, “Agarrando Pueblo” (could be translated as “Grabbing the people”), a critique in mockumentary format of a “porn-misery” production and how the author usually (or can) deviates from his “honesty” to achieve results. To be effective with the message the “imposed form” is justified, therefore it is valid to falsify the truth, buy the “interviewee” and finally lie to the viewer! I especially recommend the final interview-sequence (from minute 25:17), seems as a post production conversation where the creators sit down to chat with the “antagonist” of the closing sequence and I feel a very “honest” horizontality is achieved in the dialogue, a meta-encounter between what was filmed and reality.
I complement with 2 more references::
– The Five Obstructions (Lars Von Trier): an atypical documentary about the filmmaker Jørgen Leth and his film The Perfect Human, where the same film is recreated several times in a creative conversation with its creator, stimulating him as an experiment, sometimes “against” his will as a person and/or as a director, and redefining the “author” to honour him at the same time. I especially recommend the conversation between Von Trier and Leth before and after the development of the 2nd obstruction (from minute 15:50).
– Tejiendo Re-existencias (Red Mushuk Away): a documentary for an “alternative” education network-community I participate in and part of the Ecoverse that might have a diverse approach of voices, just to see if you have comments.
Thanks for this space AULab friends 😉
3. AUTHOR / VIEWER
ZOOM SESSION NOTES, RECORDS AND LINKS
(Next we share the exchange-conversation happened on Wednesday April 24th 2024 between the group that attended this 3rd session)
-If you prefer just to listen the Audio Recording as a “podcast”
-The chat Transcription
