Dissolving & Reconstituting Narrative Cinema

Lectures

First presented in RMIT Media & Communications, 1985; expanded for Audio-Visual Concepts, RMIT Media Arts from 1998

Part 1 - Experimental Cinema

  • The Man Who Lies

    1968 – Alain Robbe Grillet (France)

    The New Novel & Truth

    Profile – Alain Robbe-Grillet
    moebius narrative structure
    foregrounding the act of narration
    photographic falsehood

  • Silence & Cry

    1968 - Miklos Jancso (Hungary)

    Melodic linearity & narrational flow

    Profile - Miklos Jancso
    camera musicality
    orchestration of space & bodies

  • Not Reconciled

    1968 – Jean Marie Straub (Germany)

    Historical deconstruction

    Profile - Jean-Marie Straub
    textual compression & cycles
    political demythologization
    anti-texts

  • Natalie Granger

    1970 – Margueritte Duras (France)

    Non-eventfullness

    Profile - Marguerite Duras
    happening & not-happening
    action & description
    narrative threads

  • The Pitsburgh Trilogy

    1971 – Stan Brakhage (USA)

    Abstraction

    Profile - Stan Brakhage
    pictorial depiction
    narrative abstraction
    considerations on viewing

  • Querelle

    1982 – Rainer Fassbinder (Germany)

    Theatre

    Profile - Rainer Fassbinder
    plasticity
    art direction / production design / set decoration
    mise-en-scene

  • An Independent Life

    1989 - Vitaly Kanevsky (Russia)

    Nomadic narrative & decentralization

    Profile - Vitaly Kanevsky
    oral history & folk music
    biography & memory

  • From the East

    1995 - Chantal Ackerman (Belgium)

    Statsis and temporality

    Profile - Chantal Ackerman
    documentary timing
    actor/camera intersection

Part 2 - Exploitation Cinema

  • Witchcraft Through the Ages

    1921 – Benjamin Christensen (Sweden)

    Documentary Narrative

    Documentary form
    fact & fiction

  • The Private Lives of Adam & Eve

    1958 - Albert Zugsmith (USA)

    Theatrical rupture

    Space between film & viewer
    rupture types
    rupture intentions
    intentional rupture

  • Glen or Glenda

    1958 - Ed Wood Jr. (USA)

    Personal & independent cinema

    Expression & statement
    auteurism
    cultural validity
    the self

  • Satan's Bed

    1968 - Roberta & Michael Finlay (USA)

    Experimentalism & radicalism

    Terms & definitions
    renegade cinema
    brute narratives
    illogicality
    exploitation

  • Heat

    1971 - Paul Morrissey (USA)

    Performance

    Paul Morrissey & the Warhol factory
    Morrissey's performers
    performance & narrative

  • Demon Seed

    1978 - Donald Cammel (UK)

    Rape/revenge subtexts

    Rape/revenge thematic presence
    historical developments
    ideology

  • Flashdance

    1983 – Adrian Lyne (USA)

    Video clip textuality

    Video clips versus the cinema
    death of the Hollywood musical
    developments in choreography
    developments in montage;
    narrative fracture

  • Pee Wee's Big Adventure

    1995 – Tim Burton (USA)

    Icons & cliches

    Symbolic codes
    semiotics/semiology in the cinema
    saturation