◡◶▿ ROTT12 | Ellipsis
☯️ There's something missing from your movie. Plus: Alice Diop on holes; where to access Xmm film tools; obscure movies. The final class. | Rotting the Image Week 12
Missed a week? Joined late? Don’t worry about reading these lessons out of order. Each functions independently. They are sent in a sensible sequence but hardly reliant on it.
Okay. We’ve reached the final class of our autumn semester. The final micro-essays from our Rotting the Image module. (We’ll make a little summary next week). And it’s a “bumper issue”!
But first, let’s think back to last week. We learned:
How the splashes and strokes of high-definition images seem to strain for independence from a film,
while in a low-definition movie, those same splashes and strokes will gloop together.
The steps a filmmaker can take to protect her preferred definition levels from future meddlers.
The things aside from “image” that can be more or less defined in a movie.
We also heard a great definition of “experimental film” from Paul Taberham and Katerina Athanasopoulou. Great! Worth a look.
And today? Let’s look at how:
🧞 Filmmaking is just filling in the gaps in the dark.
👩🏫 “Show, don’t tell” isn’t just about words; it means “don’t use tell-y images.”
😷 There are a number of techniques and approaches to putting less image in your image.
🖼️ The film frame, and frames within the film frame, are excellent covers for unwanted visual matter.
Unfound Peoples Videotechnic is not for every eternal film student. But perhaps you know someone with whom it will resonate?
Please forward this lesson to them and encourage them to subscribe. (It’s the only way the school can strengthen and grow.) Let them know there are 11 other image lessons to flip back through. And ask them how they’re doing in these cold and dark months!
Show, don’t show
You can hear me deliver this lesson by scrolling up to the header and clicking Listen and/or the play ▸ button.
Filmmaking is just filling in the gaps in the dark. The filmmaker begins by filling in the audiovisual frame. The audience continues by filling in the gaps left by the filmmaker. Clearly, what the filmmaker doesn’t show and how she doesn’t show it is as important as what she shows. Who knows what lives in those gaps?
Image ellipsis
Cinema is an elliptical art. “Show, don’t tell,” they say. Usually, they mean “cut the chat.” “Cut the voiceover.” But chat and voiceover are not the only overused modes of telling.
How about: don’t tell with words, but also don’t tell with images. Or non-verbal sounds. Let the audience decide what’s going on from a selective composition of pictures and noise and selected omissions. You’re asking the audience to do more work, but you’re also providing them the tools to do it.
There are multiple techniques to “not tell with images.” The filmmaker might:
Shoot around the element that is not to be told.
Film it in the dark. Or the very bright.
Layer visual and audio elements on set or in the edit suite.
Destroy the image (at any point in production, post-production, or exhibition).
Do indirection↓.
Fail to produce moving audio-visuals at all.
A bold word or phrase indicates that an instruction of the same name and concept appears elsewhere in this module.
And how to choose what not to tell, or what to untell? The filmmaker might:
Carefully choose what to omit or extract.
Build from the ground but leave gaps, never thinking what ought to fill them.
Decompose, erode, or lacerate the sound/image:
Using a mathematic or algorithmic system.
Using an organic or rhizomatic system.
Using a system of randomness, free association, instinct, or mania.
(N.b. It is possible to decompose, erode, or lacerate the image at any stage of production. The filmmaker needn’t wait for an exposed image to go at; she might equally destroy the image while writing, lighting, animal wrangling, etc.)
Filling the entire rectangle with detail is unnecessary. It might come across as “trying too hard.” Better to make the audience lean in. Draw them closer to the movie and entice them to feel around.
Frame boundary
Hollis Frampton said that the film frame is “an icon of the boundary between the known and the unknown, the seen and the unseen, what is present and possible to consciousness and what is absolutely elsewhere and . . . unimaginable.” (That’s Frampton’s ellipsis).
The boundary between:
The known and the unknown;
The seen and the unseen; and
What is present and possible to consciousness and what is absolutely elsewhere and . . . unimaginable.
He said lots of things, that Hollis Frampton, but this is one thing he said about the film frame.
Indirection
Indirection is the deliberate withholding of audio, visual, or narrative information. (Often a combination of the three.) This is usually achieved by obscuring elements of the movie’s universe:
With other matter (sound, set), or
Out of frame or hearing range, but
With its properties hinted at by that information which remains.
Example: the physical goings-on in a foggy sauna may be suggested by the screams of unseen participants, the facial expressions of a foregrounded attendant, or the peculiar movement of the steam.
Volodymyr Nanneman was an advocate for the use of indirection. (Perhaps he was an advocate because users of his incomplete filmmaking system were likely to find significant gaps in the content that his system fabricated.) Nanneman’s practical analysis of indirection can be summed up thus:
What you know that you can’t see makes what you can see hilarious; what you don’t know that you can’t see doesn’t bother you.
What you suspect is being hidden from you makes you resentful towards a movie; the showing of that which needn’t have been shown provokes disdain.
The revelation of hidden matter brings catharsis; the hiding of visible matter brings disorientation.
Summed up: while its excessive or insensitive use may compromise the intended effect on a movie’s audience, indirection can be a great boon to the filmmaker on a budget.
Indirection is not a very good name for the technique it describes. But the concept is very useful from the start. The filmmaker may begin by imagining images and then decide what to leave out. Or she may begin with nothing and add as little as she can get away with.
Indeed, when she introduces indirection and other modes of ellipsis into her practice, the filmmaker may well begin to question whether her movie needs any images at all.
Please share your thoughts, queries, and exercises from this week’s lesson in the comments.
“Even with its holes I was struck by the beauty of this film…”
"[E]ven with its holes I was struck by the beauty of this film I was coming across almost half a century after its release,” writes Alice Diop. She was watching an unrestored copy of Sarah Maldoror’s Monangambé (1968) alone in a Paris cinema.
The Belgian/international film mag Sabzian invited Diop to write about the state of cinema at the end of 2023. Diop reflected that her take would need to be personal. Which brought Diop to the topic of this personal viewing experience. And the parallel between ellipted or elided lives and voices and ellipted/elided (bits of) images.
“Experiencing the film in this unrestored version was frustrating but at the same time fascinating,” writes Diop, “because it almost seemed to accentuate its spectral beauty. The image was almost blurred at times, even on the verge of disappearing in certain sequences.”
Do read the full text on Sabzian to get to the moral of the story. It’s available in French, English, and Dutch!
X mm
Has our Rotting the Image module made you anxious to shoot on actual film rather than (or in addition to) video?
It’s expensive! And mysterious! And complex! Do it!
Here is an excellent way to remove or neutralise (some of) the expense, mystery, and complexity: join or participate in a ‘film lab.’ These collective organisations for sharing tools and knowledge exist (or drift in and out of existence) in all sorts of places.
Check the Film Labs network for your nearest one, as well as tips and that on the practice.
Don’t be intimidated. As you have learned over the past couple of semesters at Unfound Peoples Videotechnic, making an utter mess of it is not just ‘not a problem’ - it’s a fruitful technique and a dignified lifestyle!
An obscure film for Christmas
This time last year, I wittered on about film lists. Prompted by the discourse on film lists, prompted by the results of Sight and Sound’s Greatest Films of All Time poll.
In the interests of tradition, I’d like to flag that same organisation’s recent release of a new list: 101 Hidden Gems, or films that received no more and no less than one vote during that previous poll of tastemaking filmmakers, critics, and imposters.
Pick something to watch with or against your family during the winter break. Abel Ferrara chooses early Béla Tarr. Marc Cousins chooses late Kira Muratova. The Quay Brothers choose Stone Wedding, which they showed to us at film school pretty much exactly ten years ago. Maybe they’re earning a percentage. Anyway, it’s great. (I would add Joseph Kilian (Directors: Pavel Jurácek, Jan Schmidt, 1964), which the Quays also showed us.)
Anyway, if you lay awake worrying that you’ll be confronted by Letterboxd on the red carpet and not have four pretentious-enough favourite films to brag-share, the new list is a good place to rectify that.
Okay. That’s it. End of term. Summary next week. The new term begins 22nd January, 2024. Barring something terrible happening, or a change of heart.
Class dismissed!
~Graeme Cole.
(Principal)
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