Response To Reading 1

1. These films are centered around dream, ritual, dance, and sexual metaphor. Sitney takes a section of these films based around Dreams and calls them Trance films.

2. Sitney describes imagist structure films as being similar to the Imagism movement in poetry. He basically explains that these films concentrate on one action or movement, and everything else introduced in the film goes around the essential action. In Choreography it seems like everything is building up to the jump at the end. The dancer seems to just be winding up and winding up until finally he takes a long leap. The film is slowed down at parts and it seems like it’s just taking a moment in time and draws it out to be a film centered around that one action.

3. I think I got for the most part the same understanding as him, but I think he may have gone a little deeper than I did. Granted he has probably watched the film a lot more than I have, so he probably has a lot more to get out of it by watching it more than once around. My impression was that she felt trapped and bored because of all the repetitive shots that were also slowed down in the party scene. Also the fact that in the end the person drowns gave me the impression that she felt suffocated by her life.

4. Sitney is saying that Angry and Deren both understood the relationship the camera had with its subject. They both had an open mind for what the camera could capture and create.

5. Sitney believes the central tension of the film rests on the Magus’ resolution and becoming a man made god. Personally I didn’t see this at all. I had a hard time understanding what each character was, and the length of the film made me even more confused as to what was going on. I don’t think I really saw the same result as Sitney has. Again, he’s probably watched the film many more times than I have and he understands it a lot more than I do.

6. A lyrical film makes the film maker the protagonist of the film. The images of the film are through his eyes. It gives us a sense of how he is reacting to his vision. Lyrical films are full of movement either camera or editing.

7. Hard and Soft montage is explained my Sitney is the collisions of shots as well as the blending of others. Camera movements or a drift of colors will signal a significant transistion. In Aniticipation of the Night the collision of night and day shots create Hard and soft montage.

8. When Brakhage became a film maker he decided to throw away his eye glasses. He claimed to see through his eyes, with his eyes, and even the electrical patterns on the surface of his eyes. (This guy sounds awesome I can’t wait to write about him!)

9. Brakhage made his films very abstract by distorting the image with fast moving cameras, edits, and covering the film with paint and scratches.

10. Dog Star Man is part of the Romanticism movement and describes the birth of consciousness, cycle of seasons, man’s struggle with nature, and sexual balance. Emerson, Whitman, and Dickinson are three of the writers associated with the Romanticism movement.