Reading Responses

Intro to "Avant-Garde Film"
I thought this article was pretty interesting, mainly because I really don't know much about the history of experimental filmmaking aside from what I learned in 6x1. I thought it was a really good point that even when people make films that are as far from conventional as humanly possible, dominant cinema is still implied because commercial film is what is drilled into our heads since birth. I never thought of it that way, that how I react to "avant-garde" is entirely related to my relationship with dominant cinema, but I guess it is true. I thought that was interesting because I always try to keep an open mind, but I suppose this isn't entirely my fault. I also thought it was interesting that MacDonald connected "pioneer" avant garde filmmakers of the 1960s to the pioneers of original movie making. It makes me wonder that if those first movie makers went the route of "avant-garde" from the very beginning, if what we now consider "conventional" would be the road less taken.

The Film as an Original Art Form
mm I'm not sure I buy into this one. It seemed to be way more judgmental than I would agree with. He seemed to be saying that just because narrative film borrows from other mediums that it is therefore inferior to documentary and experimental filmmaking, which is in his opinion more "pure". That seems strange to me because before film, artists still borrowed ideas from other mediums, and I don't see how it was okay for other types of art but not for film. Painters paint stories that they read from ancient literature or the bible, and sometimes writers write stories based on paintings or sculptures that they see. Some painters make extremely realistic images, and others are more "experimental" work. I feel like film has many parallels to other art forms, and it doesn't make sense that all of those similarities that film has with the "original" art forms are the same qualities that Richter is using to accuse film of being unoriginal.