Final Project- letters

I graduate in just a few days. This is my senior project:




letters

letters is an experimental documentary/travel log about my experiences during a semester abroad. It highlights language, gender and culture collisions I experienced over the five months I was there, as well as exploring ideas related to the exotic dream of a foreign land, vs. the reality of life in the land we fictionalize from home.

It was shot on a Sony HC1000, and edited originally in-country on a g4 laptop running Final Cut Pro 3.0. The sound was recorded using a mini-disc player and a stereo lavalier microphone. The picture to the right was my mobile studio.

Rebel Without A Cause

The Arc is in Camera

Using the camera to do more than just document the story is the power of cinema. In Christian Keathly’s Cinephilia and History, or The Wind in the Trees he notes that the first few drafts of Rebel without a Cause were “filled with lengthy Surrealist scenes that were intended to dramatize the various anxieties of the characters.” (Keathly, 168). These scenes were the viewer stylistic visual expression of those ideas. Ray dropped these dream-like, slow motion, camera effects-driven scenes originally conceived which would have departed from the film’s temporal space. Instead his choice was to remain inside the diegetic space. Inside that space, however, the camera placement, lens use and lighting choices come together to bend and color our perceptions of each moment. These stylistic elements then carry through the film a subtler message of the narrative, and express the emotional states of the characters with an hallucinogenic power appropriate to the Surrealist inspiration that Ray was working from.

The missing Surrealist scenes were supposed to dissolve out of the films real space and be filled with symbolic representations of each of the children’s emotional states. The scene described in detail by Keathly (Keathly, 169) recalls immediately Hitchcock’s use of the Surrealist dream sequence in Spellbound (1945) that was designed by Salvadore Dali. The missing scenes are not truly gone though, but subdued by and incorporated into the narrative of the film. The original intent of those scenes was to provide insight into the anxieties and emotions of the three main characters. This intention carries on without ever departing from the narrative space. It is a subtle sublimation of the surreal into what looks and reads as realism.

Using these stylistic elements, Rebel becomes an episodic series of color drenched dreams. The message that Ray creates with his dream sequence is one of seeking someone to look up to. Chris Wood’s psychoanalytic reading of the film (Finding the father in Rebel Without a Cause, 2000) suggests that these children are all looking for a father figure. Ray’s message though seems to be more about finding someone in the world to look up to. A father figure perhaps, but even those figures are made ridiculous by Ray’s camera at times. Judy's father is oblivious to his daughter's needs. Jim's father is a comedy. Plato has no one except the nanny. The women in all three cases are two dimensional at best. Ray’s vision becomes one of children caught up in the juvenile turmoil of the 1950’s searching for someone to look up to and not finding it.

Beginning in the police station, the children, James (James Dean), Judy (Natalie Wood), and Plato (Sal Mineo) are surreal portraits in adult clothes. In the first interview, with Judy, what we notice immediately is the color. Judy’s red lips and red coat command most of the attention. The saturation of the color does charge the scene. In a subtler way the stylized cinematography transparently accentuates the tensions of the scenes.

Judy’s first act is to look up at Officer Ray. She is lead into his office. In this place, the dropped scene dissolves the wall behind Judy and places her in a dungeon-like prison setting. Here though, the effect remains, without the trouble of special effects and editing. Judy is isolated, but by lighting. The rest of the police station around her is dark in comparison. She avoids contact with other people in the station, and when she looks up at Officer Ray, she does so with contempt.

The missing element or rather the subdued surrealistic element is replaced by a very simple, consistent system with a very simple message. It is a system of actions and camera angle that remains consistent throughout the film. This action is the simple act of looking up. In the police station, Judy and Plato both encounter Jim and look up to and then avoid his contact. They are still seeking authority that they can respect. In the police station, this act of looking up becomes focused on Officer Ray.

The camera follows Judy into the office where she is interviewed and introduces the stylistic element that will stay with the viewer for the rest of the film. It is subtle, and yet enhances the message of separation from authority that the children have. This style is the use of a wide angle lens that distorts the image, and lighting that focuses the viewers attention. It also conveys an emotional state at the same time. In the first moments of Judy’s interview, the frame itself is pulling the two well lit people in the room apart. There is an actual visible tension between them, as if they both occupy a drop of water about to burst. Inspecting this frame gives away its very unrealistic, surrealistic light. The end of the desk is lit from the floor, Judy and Officer Ray both have lights on them and in most cases appear to illuminate one another. The desk lamp light really only illuminates itself. This is the lighting and visual state of a dream office.

When the film moves to Jim seated on the shoeshine stand, at first the lighting and angle are fairly plain. It is a plain and realistic moment when the officer addresses him for mimicking a siren outside. Jim continues to act out, echoing Judy’s contempt for authority. Jim crosses the room to try and give Plato his coat, but as with Judy, Plato reacts by hiding his face from Jim. However, when Jim's Parents arrive the style shifts and now the viewer is returned to the warped frame and lighting. This scene gives us a caricature of parental involvement, as Jim’s father is forced to look up to him. The camera angle is low and the edges of the frame bow outwards accentuating the tension between characters even more. Jim enhances this effect with his actions as he places his father on the shoeshine stand and drunkenly mocks him. “Who are we to respect in this scene?” becomes the question. The framed scene is bent and ridiculous; the shot is unreal in its feel and look. On examination, as with Judy and Officer Ray, the characters appear to illuminate each other. Once again, the characters occupy this space that is about to burst apart. The shots appear very much like reality, but it is the reality of a dream where light and vision do not necessarily obey the rules, but rather they obey the feelings of the dreamer.

Later, when Jim finds someone to respect in Officer Ray, this is powerfully enacted cinematically. The changes in lighting are drastic in Officer Ray’s office when we examine the shots outside of the time line. The lighting is subtle from shot to reverse shot. If we look at the changes without the narrative, independent of the editing which hides the changes in light, the power of the cinematography becomes clear. The light is changing in the background all the time,. guiding us through a dream state of emotional values. Jim finds someone to look up to. The lights come on. It is classic and melodramatic theater, hidden in the editing of cinema. Jim finds someone to look up to. The viewer shares his emotional and visual experience.

The scenes in the police station are setting the stage for the rest of the film, as these three children seek some kind of respectable authority in each scene. The police station is an opening road map to the story’s outcome. The thickness of the surreal elements in these first few scenes give the viewer a framework of visual cues with which to construct what David Bordwell identifies as the fabula (Bordwell, 29-31) of the story. This powerful combination of action and style forms an identifiable visual cue to the movements of the story. Each time the story seeks to express the emotional state of the children, the action involves looking up, either successfully, or unsuccessfully. It is Ray’s statement, and as a structure it is readable both separately and as part of the narrative. It is narratively and aesthetically meaningful at the same time.

The 1950’s, saw the news fill with stories of a rise in delinquency-

Unless our cultural pattern changes, we can expect a steady increase in juvenile delinquency during the next six years. William MacKay, director of probation of the Third District Juvenile Court of Connecticut, declared Tuesday night.- The Hartford Courant, Mar 17, 1954

U. N. CRIME PARLEY ENDS; Strengthening of Family Urged to Fight Delinquency- The New York Times, September 4, 1955

The decade also saw a rise in educational films and feature films, like Blackboard Jungle (1955 also) that dealt with the issue. Each film sought its own way through the problem, either with the scare tactics of Sid Davis’s1950’s educational films (Alcohol is Dynamite, 1958 ), or with an alternate role model like Blackboard Jungle’s "streetwise teacher." Ray also made an earlier picture dealing with juvenile delinquency starring Humphrey Bogart (Knock on Any Door, 1949). Knock on Any Door however focuses on not being able to get out of the ghetto, and is very straight forward, black and white and very much a production of Bogart's.

Ray’s interest in the surrealist movement actually starts just after Knock on Any Door, “I wish Luis Buñuel had made Los Olvidados (1950) before I made Knock on Any Door (1949), because I would have made a hell of a lot better film." While Los Olvidados is not necessarily a surrealist film, Buñuel was a surrealist filmmaker, and the surreal often crept into his films even without overt Dali-esque episodes. Consider scenes from Las Hurdes, Buñuel ’s 1933 surrealistic documentary, where there is always a question as to what is real in the film. In one scene, the narrator is describing the treacherous mountains where not even mountain goats are capable of safe travel. A mountain goat falls off the side of the mountain. Yet, there is a puff of smoke in the corner of the frame. Creating a question in the mind of the viewer using Surrealist techniques is clearly what inspired Nicholas Ray after watching Buñuel's work, even though their political and social agenda's are obviously different.

Although Ray follows along the lines of Sid Davis’s model in the end (the child who fails to find someone to look up to dies), Ray’s statement is complex in form and narrative, moving organically through the story line, letting the story itself grow up with Jim. In part, Plato’s death is more like Buñuel’s puff of smoke. Nicholas Ray is not Sid Davis, and also doesn’t want to remake Knock on Any Door. He also isn't Luis Buñuel, and he doesn't want to remake the sadness and corruption of Los Olvidados. The message becomes a mixture of family, authority and self. First at the station as he shows us the contempt for authority each child has. Then to the planetarium as the children look up with equal contempt and some wonder at the stars with no answers. It is impossible to look up to something that ultimately finds you insignificant seems to be the message of the planetarium. Then amongst themselves at the bluffs. Here, they look to themselves and the only way to look is down into the black ocean. Then the three children together at the mansion. They find some comfort here, looking up to each other in the fantasies of home and of teenage love. They are always looking up for answers, always coming away with disappointments. The struggles of the children and the ineffectual actions of the parents are highlighted and shaped by the cinematic form and style. The children look up and we look upwards with them, synesthetically sharing their dream as vision becomes feeling.

In the ending scenes of the planetarium, the surreal and upwards looking camera focuses on Jim. He is no caricature now. Instead, the final impressionistic camera and lighting movements focus on him as strong and place the authority in the lower positions. Finally ending with Jim's father saying “I’ll stand up with you son. I’ll be as strong as you need me to be.” In this final moment, the angle of camera and lens treats father and son as equals and hold the surreal of one last movement. As the viewer looks up to them, shadows of the two men on the observatory merge. The answer is in the camera style as they must look up not only to family and authority but to themselves. Ray’s comment becomes a complex statement, carried through the film with a simple formal device of angle and lens and subtle surrealistic style. Delinquency is the product of changing times and relationships as youth searches for someone to look up to for strength. Unlike Blackboard Jungle, where there is a street wise teacher, unlike the scare-tactics of educational films, the headlines and the classroom, Ray offers a complex and artful expression through a simple restructuring of the surreal and impressionistic. The power of this stylistic expression also lies in the fact that we never leave the temporal or physical space of the film in order to express different state of mind or emotion. It is realism and surrealism blended in a coherent narrative context through subtle use of formal devices. It is a filmic language lesson given to the viewer in the beginning of the film that plays out in the end without the anvil of the blatant dream.

Someone to look up to

In looking at the structures of Rebel Without a Cause, I am struck by a simple and yet persuasive formal and stylistic element employed by Ray to carry his message about “Today’s Most Vital

Controversy,” as is said in the trailer from the film. Visually Ray’s message is clear. Using a

consistent form and style for certain scenes, Ray sends a message that is even more clear than Chris Wood’s psychoanalytic reading of the film (Finding the Father in Rebel without a Cause,

Wood, 2000). It’s not just about finding the father in Rebel. It’s about finding someone in the world to look up to. A father figure perhaps, but even those can be caricature at times, also through this structured element. Ray’s use of wide angle lenses and stylized lighting sets each one of these scenes apart from the film. Ray’s comment thoughout the film becomes a very simple reworking of a discarded idea of blatant surrealism turned into a simple, subtle use of

light and lens and angle. Rebel Without a Cause becomes a statement of children of the 1950’s caught up in the turmoil of the times, searching for someone to look up to and not finding it in any single source.

As noted by Christian Keathly (Five Cinephiliac Anecdotes, 2006) this moment begins with Judy and her extreme red lips and coat. We first

address her with Officer Ray and her first act is to

look up to him. As they lead into his office though, the camera maintains this warping frame, and dark lighting. The dropped device was supposed to be an extensive surrealistic dream like sequence meant to represent the emotional state of the children in relationship to the authority in their life. Instead, Ray’s choice was to stylize and refrain from leaving the reality of the narrative completely behind.

A strange effect, the wide angle accentuates a tension in the medium shot by bowing the edges of the frame. Looking first at Judy’s interview, both characters are lit by practical spots and

maintain this spatial relationship as Judy goes on to tell her story. She is in the positio

n that we start with for all of the children in the station, seeking someone to look up to, to have notice them, to listen to what they have to say. They are surrealistic portraits in adult clothes and they are searching throughout each of these distorted scenes for someone. We do not have to leave

the narrative’s space to see into the emotional state of each child. The lighting and warping and camera angle communicate this without that departure.

As the film moves through the police station, we come next to Jim seated on the shoeshine stand. At

first we see him, mimicking the siren, the light and angle are fairly plain. It is a plain moment, as the officer addresses him and he continues to act out, contemptuous of the authority

represented. Then Jim crosses the room and we see Plato as

he avoids looking up to or accepting help from Jim. However, when Jim’s parents arrive, the style changes and now we have the warped angle and lighting in full effect, giving us a caricature of parental involvement as his father is forced to look up to him. Jim enhances the effect as the camera angle stays low and he places his father in on the shoeshine

stand and drunkenly mocks

him. “Who are we to respect in this scene?” becomes the question, it is all so warped and ridiculous. This is the most pronounced use of distortion and angle in the film as both sides of the frame bend upwards and inwards.

The scenes in the police station are setting the stage for the rest of the film as these children seek some kind of respectable authority in each scene. Just as Plato and Judy in their respective interviews, every expression of self and dream throughout the movie involves this looking up. It is a Bordwellian indoctrination to the specific language of this narrative, as this element is used extensively in the opening moments and gives usclues to the desires of the characters involved, as well as leaving us a trail to the resolution of the arc which we can recall later. The statement of form and style is readable both separately and as part of the narrative. These scenes are set up to provide resonance later in the film.

The early scenes are set against less stylized scenes where the children are unable to look up.

Plato avoids Jim’s compassion; Judy avoids Jim’s presence and is initially contemptuous of Officer Ray. It seems that director Ray’s statement is clear that these children have no one to look up

to. Each of these scenes carry the same style, the change in light, the change in angle as the police station sets the stage for this idea of searching for that person that they can look up to and believe in. It is part of a dialectic of style when we can see that these are children, and then we can see from inside their emotional state.

A search for a father figure is an over simplification of this film. Of particular note is the ending of

the meeting between Officer Ray and Dean’s character. The camera set-up that has followed us throughout the police station, the low angle, shifting light is pronounced at the meeting, but made subtle by the shot reverse shot editing of the scene. Ray’s argument seems more about

delinquency as a quest for answers, which he sets up beginning with police station quickly followed by the incredibly philosophical planetarium

scene. Here all of the children are looking up for answers, and later Jim discusses them with Plato. It is the emotional state that gets conveyed through lighting and angle. It is the overarching surrealism of emotional states that is represented by Ray’s direction that supports the action. It is not the surreality of Hitchcock’s

Spellbound sequence, or other Dali-esque works. It is a choice of subtlety and impressionism that works its way through the film to make Ray’s statement.

The 1950’s, saw the news fill with stories of a rise in delinquency-

Unless our cultural pattern changes, we can expect a steady increase in juvenile delinquency during the next six years. William MacKay, director of probation of the Third District Juvenile Court of Connecticut, declared Tuesday night.- The Hartford Courant, Mar 17, 1954

U. N. CRIME PARLEY ENDS; Strengthening of Family Urged to Fight Delinquency- The New York Times, September 4, 1955

The decade also saw a rise in ephemeral films and other films, like Blackboard Jungle (1955 also) that dealt with the issue. Each film sought its own way through the problem, either with the scare tactics of 1950’s ephemera, or with an alternate role model like Blackboard Jungle’s streetwise teacher.

In the case of Rebel though, Ray’s stylistic statement appears to be a mixture of family, authority and self: First at the station as he shows us the contempt for authority that the children have. Then to the planetarium as the children look up with equal contempt and some wonder at the stars with no answers, amongst themselves at the bluffs, amongst themselves in the dreamlike scenes at the mansion. Always looking up for answers, always coming away with disappointments, the struggle of the children and the ineffectual actions of the parents are highlighted by this form and style.

In the ending scenes of the planetarium, the surreal angle and upwards looking camera focuses on Jim. He is no caricature now. Instead, the final impressionistic camera and lighting movements focus on him as strong, and place the authority in the lower positions..Finally ending with “I’ll stand up with you son. I’ll be as strong as you need me to be.” In this final moment, the angle treats father and son as equals and hold the surreal for one last second as the shadows of the two men on the observatory merge. The answer is in the camera style as they must look up not only to family and authority but to themselves. Ray’s comment becomes a complex statement, carried throughout the film with a simple formal device of angle and lens and subtle surrealistic style. Deliquency is the product of changing times, and changing relationships as youth searches for someone to look up to for strength. Unlike Blackboard Jungle, where there is the streetwise teacher, unlike the scare-tactics of ephemera of the headlines and the classroom,

Ray offers a complex answer through a simple restructuring of the surreal and the impressionistic. The power of the stylistic expression also lies in the fact that we never leave the temporal or physical space of the film in order to express different states of mind or emotion. It is realism and surrealism blended in a coherent narrative context through subtle use of formal devices. It is a filmic language lesson given to the viewer in the beginning of the film that plays out in the end without the anvil of the blatant dream.

Self-Narrative Sympathy in Taxi Driver

I find Taxi Driver a stunningly simple portrait of the psychological process one must go through to live in New York City without growing up there. I imagine it’s not terribly different to grow up there, but at least you have some time to get things down if you start there. New York City has a way of forcing the definition of self in the simplest of terms. At least this was what I was thinking when I stayed to work in New York City this past summer. I remember waking up one morning where I was staying in the Bowery, and walking the seven blocks uptown to St. Marks. I had gone to a movie the night before with a friend from Milwaukee who was also living and working in New York for the summer. There was a moment when we both noticed that we were each dressed quite a bit different than when we were in Wisconsin, and we were both wearing watches. On my way to St. Marks, I remember thinking to myself that Taxi Driver was not really about the violence, or crime or Travis Bickle being crazy, but more about the city itself and its powerful drive to make one define oneself.. Like a silent force, it is all around you. My sympathy for Travis Bickle was deepened by my time spent in my tiny room in a hostel in the Bowery. My work, as a local truck driver delivering art, was not unlike the taxi office, and it was my workplace and my $35 a night closet-sized space in the Bowery that demanded a new self-definition to get along in the city. At this point in my stay, I had some routines, a few friends, and I had begun to feel like I lived there. In Taxi Driver, it is through where he lives and where he works that Travis defines himself. It is the real world of work and home that defines Travis Bickle’s process of self-narrative through the movie. Travis does not get the girl, a new apartment, money, or any other benefit from his search to define himself. All he achieves is the end of his search for identity in the work-a-day world. In the opening dialog and form, Travis Bickle's endpoint is set, and is reflected throughout this story of the search for identity, the development of a stable self-narrative.

What do you want to Hack for?


Travis’s lack of identity in the city is clear from the opening scene where he applies for work. Immediately he has to answer the question of self. “What do you want to hack for?” Travis’s answer is awkward though. “Eh, can’t sleep nights…”

In a film where mirrors play a large part in Travis’s soul searching, here we have what at first glance appears as a mirror over the personnel officer’s head. Travis here is reflected in color and style of dress by the smiling woman in the background. This is the world, framed off in the behind the personnel officer’s head. It is the world that Travis is still separate from. He doesn’t speak the language: “What’s moonlighting?”. He doesn’t understand.

At the moment he defines himself in a recognizable way- “Marines,” he answers, The camera cranes up, the personnel officer relaxes, and everyone in the world he is separate from responds to him. This opening secures the tone of Travis’s need to be identifiable in New York, to be recognizable. At the same time, the scene set’s the tone with its suspicion of him and his unclear identity. The opening false mirror of the space inside the garage foreshadows his destination as one of them, but here, as in the rest of the movie there is a separation of glass and authority.

. . . And when she sang, the sea, Whatever self it had, became the self That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we, As we beheld her striding there alone, Knew that there never was a world for her Except the one she sang and, singing, made. -The Idea of Order at Key West , by Wallace Stevens

Travis Bickle is desperately seeking to define himself, and it is through his twisted misunderstanding desperation that he finds violence along the way. Truly though, throughout the film we are reminded of this opening moment as Travis stands only slightly apart from his goal, which is to just be a taxi driver, like the ones who reflect him at the desk. From this scene forward it is Travis’s voice that sings his self into being, and as the poem here goes to say, at the end we know that there is no world for him but for the one he sang and, singing, made.

Here’s Travis, He’s a ladies’ man.



This progression of Travis’s self-identity is marked by him closing in on the world he has joined. While they still misidentify him- this time “ladies’ man,” he is less separated from his fellow taxi drivers than before. We may not yet understand Travis Bickle, but we understand intuitively his own process of self-narrative, of becoming. While he has stepped into the space behind the glass, he is still separated from his co-workers by space and misidentification. Stylistically he is still separated in the scene. It is no surprise, really, because Travis Bickle has failed to identify himself as well.

From Berger, P. L., & Luckman, T. (1963). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge- "identity is formed by social processes. Once crystallized, it is maintained, modified, or even reshaped by social relations... "

We may not yet understand Travis Bickle. That ambiguity in identity in his occupation binds our sympathy to him in a way that neither his voice over nor his personal habits can. The viewer may not understand his journaling, or his frequenting of porn theaters, but all viewers understand the narrative of being the new employee. It is the personal narrative psychological connection which we must make with Travis as he moves through his workplace. Our own personal narrative, while constructed differently than his, still shares experience with his (assuming of course that you’ve taken a working class job with a group of people who you don’t know).

I want to Volunteer over here.


Echoing the opening, we see Travis attempt to repeat his first success, using what he has gained from his new environment. After successfully entering the previous world behind the glass of the opening scene, he reaches towards a similar reflection, this time emulating the boldness described in the coffee shop scene by his co-worker. Travis though is out of place. There is no reflection of him this time, only a media picture claiming “We are the people.” Travis is on a quest to be a “person like other people”; he has already spelled it out for us in the first voice over, the first act of his self-narrative. There is no truth here though; there are no people like the “other people” Travis is already connected with. These are not working people, they are volunteers, and they don’t follow other working people, they follow a media image and a saying.

Here is a man…

Travis’s ensuing rejection sends him into a period of self-reflection (literally at some moments) and a program of self-definition. Again, even as we fear and pity him, there are elements in our own self-narrative that resonate with such rejection. Rejection and loss always result in a renewal of self-definition, and naturally Travis embarks on that search like any other person would. “Here is a man…” his notebook trails off. His dark passage though disturbing is a true catharsis in the philosophical sense. It is an event that is achetypical and identifiable in our own personal narratives. It is the tragic catharsis, the “dark night,” the “trial by fire.”


In this final scene with his co-workers, Travis has crossed the framing in every sense. He is regarded by his co-workers, in what amounts to the job site with acceptance. Although his passage was misguided and his motives really madness, in the end Travis’s personal narrative resolves and he is a man. He no longer needs a constructed self-narrative. His is crystallized by his catharsis, and his place is reinforced by the social structure around him. The final scenes all have a visual and temporal clarity that transcends the clutter of the New York cityscape. He is a taxi driver finally, and everyone else is a fare. It is this simple narrative identity, without any overt reward, that carries through Taxi Driver to underpin the story itself. Travis’s personal, successful search for identity maintains the viewer’s allegiance to him despite our extreme narrative access to his thoughts and motives.

The closing scenes with the credits, as we watch the thousands of lights on New York streets always remind me of the TV series line “The are 6 million stories in the Naked city and this is one of them.” Travis’s place as a working man is it’s own reward, and Taxi Driver is a simple story about one man’s fantastic search for identity in the city of New York.

New Media Experiment- Can a penniless candidate run?

Presidential Announcement

Add to My Profile | More Videos

So, now that class is over, I have started my own new media experiment. I am running for president coupling a national tour (because of the nature of my work) with a YouTube/MySpace video project.

Should be interesting. Here's the youtube link.

Lockhart vs. The Rest of Structuralist Film Making

Sharon Lockhart has been compared to James Benning, creator of 13 Lakes, and 10 Skies. I have to admit, just as I only made it through 6 of 10 Skies, I also only made it through the first half of Pine Flat. I mention this because both pieces, 10 Skies, and Pine Flat are settings from the first three quarters of my life- the California Sky, and growing up in the Sierra Nevada foothills.

I'd like to start with Goshogaoka, because it is outside of my experience, and yet I feel like it is a better film. Goshogaoka is a choreographed fiction based on Lockhart's study. At no time during it's exploration of movement, frame, and space did I feel pulled out of the film. The cinematography is consistent, as is the choreography and the ideas in motion. Similarly, at no time during 10 Skies, did I feel like the factuality of the document was in question. Structurally it was sound, neither piece ever felt forced. Here too, I think of D'est. Regardless of pace, and structure, I never felt as though Akerman was forcing the piece to behave a certain way.

This is not what I felt during Pine Flat. Although I felt strong identifications with the children, remembering clearly what it is like in rural California, where the opportunity for long hours of solitary play on vast wooded hillsides is greater than anywhere else I have ever been, it still seemed that these children were forced into the scene. I expected myself to be more forgiving, because I have engaged in the exact same activities, in the very same environments. I think part of it may be, again, the artist's buildup of these children that she missed, and her constant intrusion into the space because poor camera use. Every time the camera readjusted during a segment, it shook me out of the contemplation of the subject. This little tiny thing disrupted the piece and brought on memories of less than favorable reviews I had read earlier in the day.

I have to give Ms. Lockhart credit for her effort, as she has never constructed a film on her own. Unfortunately though, it shows, and in showing it diminishes the film for me. In the end, I couldn't help but be poisoned by the review that implied that there is not really any content to this film. That it is little more than a collection of moving stills. That it portrays nothing, but gets by on it's merit as "pure art." In the end though, I became like the hunter in his camo during the film. Forced to sit still and obviously somehow not really willing to; like him, as much as I want to do what I am sitting there for, I can only disrupt it. A hunter, cannot sit and make noise and expect to find game. A viewer cannot sit still if all he can do is be reminded of the artifice of a film that is not truly supposed to be about artifice.

Again, I have to say that there are many wonderful moments in that first half. Especially the boy waiting for the bus he can see across the valley, and the way the mist comes and goes in the forest. Those two moments alone ring so true for me. But the camera movement, and the unrealistic moments weighed me down. Perhaps I am just in a bad mood, or I expect more out of visitors sometimes and may be forgetting that directors are just people. As a late bloomer, myself, it may be that I should be infinitely forgiving to Sharon Lockhart for messing with my childhood in her first go around with a camera in her hand.

What what what?

It's hard not to compare Porterfield's "Hamilton" to Akerman's "D'est." In pacing, cinematography and intent, they share so many elements; the long uncomfortable take, a relentless pace, an absence of action, the desire to communicate a space through the visual nearly exclusively. Both are complex combinations of fiction and documentary, of an exploratory eye. Both films seek to make the viewer inhabit a cinematic space long enough, patiently enough, to grasp that space. Both films punctuate the long steady pace with moments of strange action. An afternoon in Grandma's flower garden (Hamilton), a night in a sparely populated Russian nightclub(D'est). This visual style in Hamilton gives rise to feelings of document.

"We developed this film in Baltimore because it is home..." - Porterfield

However, "Hamilton" is a story, a scripted fiction, where "D'est" was a cinematic study. Reading Porterfields statements and bio, you get a slight feeling that he has something to prove. Self-taught, dropout, particular in methods, and a bit pretentious in execution. This very conventionally shot homage to two ideas, that of Bresson and Thoreau, leaves me a little bit insulted at the end with it's untranslated poem. It diminishes what is a truly open container that invites the constant projection of the viewer to get through the story. There is so little dialog, you must see yourself as someone in the film. However, Porterfield's name dropping explanations are a distraction. If you don't know Thoreau, Bresson, Mekas, Rilke, or German, then there are things about "Hamilton" that fail because he has eschewed convention. There are other things that Porterfield could have done to enhance the story he told without exaggerating conflict, such as better attention to the mise-en-scene. In effect, he is married to his darling of "...Boston, because it is home." Yet, there are few times where home is truly effected by Hamilton. The opportunities for that abound, but are diminished by unconvincing acting (for example with the Grandmother in the garden, or the hugging scene at the end), and that is a convention that can only be effected by directorial choice. The long car ride is the most effective scene in this vien, if not the entire film, so the question has to be asked if it is just a lack of skill with dialog and body language on the part of the film maker.

Don't take me wrong. I liked the look and pace of Hamilton. I liked the concept and most of the execution. I liked the ambiguity of the ending. What I disliked was Porterfield's published insistence that somehow this film is rebellious, or pedantic in some way. He is better than just successful at compressing a window of a long hot weekend where two young people try to make sense of life and probably miss each other by inches in the end. He is clear in portraying his the banality of life. As long as no one has to speak, the acting is good. My problem with this film is more one of a director who seems like he has something to prove other than his ability to produce a film worth watching. Porterfield did indeed produce a film worth watching. I would rather he just left it at that, and left the philosophy and justification to Bresson, Thoreau, and Mekas who were, artists of a different order.