Vaguely based on the historical concept of structural film, we want to explore films that are based on self-imposed rules in this workshop. These rules can be of a purely formal or narrative nature, can result from considerations inherent to the medium or follow a more playful impulse. It's only essential that a conceptual rule stands at the beginning of the project and that the film develops along this idea. A bit like a children's game, in which the floor is made of glowing lava. Or playing tangram. Or inventing a nonsense rhyme.
DATES
Friday, March 25th from 10:00 to 14:00 @ Expostmusikraum
Friday, April 8th from 10:30 to 12:00 @ Zoom
Thursday, April 28th from 10:30 to 12:00 @ Zoom
Thursday, May 12th from 10:00 to 14:00 @ TBM Wohnzimmer
Monday, May 30th from 15:00 to 16:30 @ Österreichisches Filmmuseum Wien
Wednesday, June 15rd from 10:15 to 14:00 @ seminar room ZV (DO0425)
Wednesday, June 29th - End of semester presentation, exact date and place to be announced
The permanent Zoom link for all the sessions is:
220 156 9842
https://dieangewandte-at.zoom.us/j/2201569842
EXAMPLES / INSPIRATIONS
☆ Wavelength (Michael Snow, 1967)
Shortfilm, 45min, Engl. OV
Wavelength is a 45-minute film by Canadian experimental filmmaker and artist Michael Snow. Considered a landmark of avant-garde cinema, it was filmed over one week in December 1966 and edited in 1967, and is an example of what film theorist P. Adams Sitney describes as "structural film", calling Snow "the dean of structural filmmakers." In a 1969 review of the film published in Artforum, Manny Farber describes Wavelength as "a pure, tough 45 minutes that may become The Birth of a Nation in Underground films, is a straightforward document of a room in which a dozen businesses have lived and gone bankrupt. For all of the film's sophistication (and it is overpowering for its time-space-sound inventions) it is a singularly unpadded, uncomplicated, deadly realistic way to film three walls, a ceiling and a floor... it is probably the most rigorously composed movie in existence."
☆ (nostalgia) (Hollis Frampton, US 1971)
Shortfilm, 38min, Engl. OV
The film is composed of black-and-white still photographs taken by Frampton during his early artistic explorations which are slowly burned on the element of a hot plate, while the soundtrack offers personal comments on the content of the images, read by fellow artist Michael Snow. Each comment/story is heard in succession before the related photograph appears onscreen, thus causing the viewer to actively engage with the 'past' and 'present' moments as presented within the film.
☆ Transformation by holding time (Paul de Nooijer, 1976)
Shortfilm, 3min, no dialogue
First of three versions of Transformation by Holding Time, films with the duration of one film reel in which the screen is gradually filled with Polaroids, made in one shot from one angle, without editing. In this version, the film camera registers the filmmaker who is on a moor taking Polaroid pictures of the film camera.
☆ Spacy (Takashi Ito, 1981)
Shortfilm, 9min, no dialogue
A film whose subject is the place (A gymnasium), the time, (the 10 minutes the film runs), and the unconformity of the reality (the gymnasium), and the illusion (the representation of the gymnasium). All the components are strictly combined in an endless cycle, a Möbius stripe, an Escher's film in a japanese tempo, from Slow to Fast, from Pianissimo to Fortissimo.
☆ untitled (Johnann Lurf, 2003)
Shortfilm, 3min, no dialogue
Emerging from the screen’s blackness, a small image appears at its lower edge. A young boy sits in a train clattering out of the station. Shortly after that another film image is visible at the upper edge: A man catches his wife cheating on him. More and more scenes appear until the screen fills with 12 sections. A different film is being shown in each one.
☆ Mirror Mechanics (Siegfried A. Fruhauf, 2005)
The film as a mirror and, as a further consequence, the phenomenon of identification primarily inherent in feature films, condense to a type of essence of film´s potential. This film reports on cinema and the processes within it. In doing so, it doesn´t reveal any secrets, but instead, attempts to transfer – in the sense of seeing what we see – what we do in the cinema and what also can be relevant outside of film into a visually stimulating and captivating event.
☆ Arena (Paraic Mcloughlin, 2018)
Life is a game that must be played is the premise of artist Páraic McGloughlin’s experimental short Arena. Created using Google Earth imagery, the piece is a fast-paced look at the earth from above, reflecting the shapes we make, the game of life and the planet as our playing ground. I had the pleasure of picking Páraic’s brains to find out how he created this unique piece of filmmaking and what he feels is the message behind his fascinating artwork.
TEXT, LITERATURE and LINKS
Definition of Structural film: Direction of experimental film especially during the 1960s and 1970s in the USA (Wavelength, USA 1966, Michael Snow; Nostalgia, USA 1973, Hollis Framton; Tide, BRD 1974, Heinz Emigholz). The films follow a concept derived from the parameters of the medium or the filming situation itself, similar to a scientific experiment. The external conditions of the experiment are fixed, comprehensible to the audience and of a process-like, "dramatic" structure. For example, a single frame is taken every second while the camera moves away from the filmed object but zooms in on it at the same time, so that the various image changes can be observed through spatial distancing and planar approach, and the end of the film results from the maximum distance or proximity to the object. In contrast to the scientific experiment, the result of the structural film is an aesthetic one, in that besides sophisticated processes, image composition, rhythm etc. also play a role and the concept itself is playfully carried out or even broken through in violation of the rules. Often, but by no means always, structural films are also material films. (Philipp Brunner)
⇒ Gidal, Peter (Ed). Structural Film Anthology. BFI, 1978
⇒ P. Adams Sitney. Structural film. In: Film Culture 47, 1969
⇒ George Maciunas. Some comments on structural film. Dec. 5, 1969
⇒ Max Tohline. A Supercut of Supercuts, 2021
⇒ For all available e-books click here