Michael recommends Angelopouos as 'incomprarable'. Absolutely, except
of course for other Angelopoulos films. To Vlemma tou Odyssea
(Ulysses' gaze) (1995) really does the business in temporalities of
film. Keitel as 'A" searches fro evidence of the first film made in
the Balkans, passing through the post-1989 landscape (in one
exraordinary take a barge containing a colossal statue of Lenin
floats down the Danube). The opening shot is a marvel in itself, not
least because it links the phenomenology of perception and memory to
historical process, and all of them to a narative which directly
addresses the professions of film historian and film archivist
I'd also echo warren's warning: Applying a theory can be done, but it
tends to produce expectable results. _Critical_ work is always
experiemntal, not least in the sense that it is likely to falsify a
thesis in the laboratory of analysis. This doesn't of course mean
abandoning theory, but it means treating films with the respect
normally kept for theories, and treating the theories as tools for
understanding films (rather tyhan films as tools for understanding
theories)
Nice to be back on the list
sean
>
>I also suggest you look at John Sayles' 'Lonestar', which, a little like
>Angelopoulos in his incomparable film 'The Travelling Players', contrives to
>shift time within a single shot (several times). Both films are extremely
>penetrating about film-time-history, and in the Sayles, cross-border
>cultures.
>
--
Sean Cubitt
Professor of Screen and Media Studies,
University of Waikato,
Private Bag 3105,
Hamilton,
New Zealand
T/F +64 (0)7 838 4543
http://www.waikato.ac.nz/film
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/slade/digita
http://www.dundee.ac.uk/people/sean/welcome.html
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