Fig 1. The Practice Exchange 5 - Film practice, teaching and research
Four films by UAL research staff and students were played to a full house, at this special session of The Practice Exchange at the BFI. After a brief introduction about TPE by Marsha Bradfield, William Raban introduced his latest film, and the work of three of his students.
Fig. 2 William Raban introducing the films
THE ELEPHANT WITHOUT A TAIL, 2010, 7 minutes, dir. Gary McQuiggin.
CAPITAL (work in progress), 2010, 10 minute section, Dir. Louis Henderson
ABOUT NOW MMX, 2010, 27 minutes, Dir. William Raban.
ABOUT FILM MAKING, 2010, 6 minutes, Dir. Ayman Saey
Fig 3. From left to right: Louis Henderson, William Raban, Gary McQuiggin, Ayman Saey, Marsha Bradfield
The screening was followed by an hour-long discussion between the audience and the film-makers, chaired by Marsha Bradfield. Below there are some of the issues and questions that came out of it (sound recording of the discussion is available on request).
Film as auto-ethnography: William Raban said “I find myself written in the film,” alluding to the traces of his body in the film. Often created accidentally – for example, jolts of the camera operated manually, or voice-overs done in a hurry- such traces nevertheless became integral to the film, testifying to the presence of not just the subjectivity of the film-maker in constructing the film’s narrative, but to his / her embodiment in the actual texture of the film.
A throw of the dice: The role of chance in film-making. Filming as a process of gathering visual and audio material, and being responsive to what happens in the present, allowing accidents to influence the editing of the film.
Film as critique: How important is it - in the context of films that deal with political subject matter or that have a political intention – to interrogate also the film tropes being deployed? Should film-makers take to task the genres and techniques borrowed from other filmic traditions, and consider them in their full historical significance?
Image and sound: Trusting in the power of image and sound alone to convey meaning without added commentary. Whist digital manipulation of image might be rejected in film-making to preserve the authenticity of what is being represented, sound is altered with much more ease, and often used to underline meaning in a non-didactic way. The importance of sound in watching a film is how it makes a more bodily experience, as sound is actually felt in the body, especially when it is screened in purpose-build spaces.
Film as a mind map: Tracking the process of making the film as part of the film itself, though the use of time-based genre such as the chronicle or the diary. Attempting to visually map the city as a living organism, or to “track a thought” through film. The difficulty of bringing forward the complexity of thought and perception involved in our experience of the city, and how its visualisation in film resists these attempts by flattening out and bounding it to the film frame. This flatness can play into a sense of alienation, in line with a perceived revival of detachment strategies in practice, as a step towards critical distance. The importance of geometrical composition within the film frame, and camera movement in constructing additional meaning around the subject matter depicted.
“It takes two to make a film”: Film can be thought as collaborative practice in several respects. The collaboration between film-maker, camera operators, sound artists, but also the meaning created between director and audience – the film as “open-text”. Filming in the city, the chances of the film audience to literally be in the film are plausible. Does that increase the sense of “becoming a community” in the shared experience of watching the film, or does it makes us wary of being under surveillance?
Film and ethics: Film practice always works with limits, the limits of the film frame, the limits of viewpoints. The erosion of public space, new anti-terrorist laws, and child protection legislation set increasingly restrictive limits on what film-makers may record in the city. Is this a form of “censorship” and if so who or what is being removed or obscured from public view? What kind of images of the present are we creating when we accept those limitations? Film-making as research sets tight frameworks for artists to work within the demarcation of academic research ethics. Should artists challenge the boundaries of how ethics are conceptualised and applied to artistic research in academia? Should they be challenged on principle, or by artists actually raising above ethic regulators’ expectations?
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