MAKING LIGHT OF IT

In David Bordwell's final post in his superb series detailing a few of the major American critical voices of the 40's, he mentions reviews by Agee and Farber of some of Maya Deren's films, and Deren's subsequent responses.  The following are Deren's responses mentioned in the post...

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 (via Anthology Archives)

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From Film Culture No. 39 (Winter 1965)

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From The Legend of Maya Deren...Pt Two, "Chambers" (1942-1947)

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From The Legend of Maya Deren...Pt Two, "Chambers" (1942-1947)

If, while no doubt on your way to more worthwhile destinations, you happen to have somehow stumbled on to this site within the past good while, you were likely left with the impression that it had been abandoned.  That impression, though understandable, is not entirely accurate...

During that time the majority of my focus was spent preparing and applying for archival graduate programs, whilst staving off the nervous breakdown always seemingly just around the corner.  Alas, what little energy usually left was all but obliterated by the train wreck of a platform that is Blogger.  Thankfully, that part of the process is coming to an end, and enthusiasm for this endeavor has been renewed.  I was very fortunate to be able to consider several great programs, but in the end decided the Preservation and Presentation of the Moving Image program at the University of Amsterdam was the best fit for me...

Once I've gotten settled in (having lived my entire life in Salt Lake City I'm sure the cultural transition will be seamless), I'm hoping that I will be able to use some of the same methodologies and areas of focus and apply them to something a little more ambitious and expansive.  If that sounds overly nebulous at the moment it's because I'm not quite sure what form it will take (except that it won't be on Blogger, dammit).  Up to this point I've been fairly limited in what I could get my hands on, and as a result the focus has largely been on established, well documented (American) filmmakers.  I hope the relocation will bring greater flexibility, which I would like to use to start exploring lesser documented artists from a much wider range of nationalities...  

This site has been a great opportunity to come in to contact with many very passionate individuals that I likely would not have met otherwise, and for that I'm very grateful.  I don't feel as though I've done a whole lot to contribute to this community in the way I would like, especially when it comes to newer artists working in younger formats, but by pursuing this path I hoping I can work towards something more substantial...

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"Not only has Ken Jacobs been a productive filmmaker for forty years, but he has fought doggedly for independent cinema. In 1963, he and his wife, Florence, and Jonas Mekas were arrested for showing Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures [1963] in a case that helped to topple New York State's censorship regulations.  In 1966 he established the Millennium Film Workshop in New York City, at St. Marks Church in Washington Square, where, as Howard Guttenplan remembers, Jacobs hosted open screenings on Friday nights: "Ken was a brilliant teacher and a very perceptive and provocative person when talking about films and related matters" (Millennium Film Journal, nos. 16-18, 1986- 87, p. 9: this special Twentieth Anniversary issue includes a wealth of information about the history of the Millennium Film Workshop). In 1969, Larry Gottheim brought Jacobs to the State University of New York at Binghamton to teach, and for a time they made Binghamton a center for avant-garde filmmaking that inspired a generation of students, several of whom have had substantial impact on the field, including Steve Anker, Alan Berliner, Dan Eisenberg, Amy Halpern, Richard Herskowitz, Jim Hoberman, Ken Ross, Rene Shafransky, and Phi1 Solomon.

As a filmmaker, Jacobs has made substantial contributions to at least three major critical film trends. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, often in collaboration with Jack Smith, he developed what would later be called "trash film": with no money but plenty of chutzpah, Jacobs would film Smith, dressed up in makeshift costumes as he performed anarchic, gender-bending melodramas on lower Manhattan streets, sometimes with neighborhood children. The resulting films- Saturday Afternoon Blood Sacrifice (filmed in 1957; sound added, prints made 1964), Star Spangled to Death (shown in various "incomplete" versions from 1958 to 1960), Blonde Cobra (shown in various versions 1958-1963)-confronted both the commercial cinema and those approaches to critical filmmaking current in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Looking back, they seem prescient of some of Andy Warhol's films and of John Waters's trash melodramas of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

With Soft Rain (1968) and in particular, with Tom, Tom, the Pipers Son (presented in various versions, 1969-71), Jacobs reestablished himself, as one of the most influential "structural filmmakers." (Since the publication of Visionary Film in 1974, P. Adams Sitney's problematic but widely used term has been much debated; its relevance for Tom, Tom, the Piper's Son has always been limited.) In the films of this period, Jacobs turned his full attention to an exploration of the mechanical/chemical, and spatio-temporal bases of the film experience, and of the viewers ' ways of seeing and understanding film imagery.  In Tom, Tom, the Pipers Son Jacobs provides a rigorous and extensive exploration of the original Biograph one-reeler, Tom, Tom, the Pipers Son (1905), revealing a wide range of visual territories within the early short's narrative action.  

Finally, in Tom, Tom, the Pipers Son and in other, more recent films and film performances, Jacobs has been a major contributor to "recycled cinema," the tradition of using earlier films as the raw material for new works of film art, a tradition that begins with Esther Shub and Joseph Cornell (for whom Jacob's worked, briefly, in the 1950s)- and, in recent years, has become a, if not the, dominant critical procedure in independent film and videomaking. Except for Tom, Tom, the Pipers Son Jacobs's most noteworthy contributions to "recycled cinema" have come in the long series of cine-performance works that have dominated Jacobs's creative activities since the early I970s. Jacobs has devised several ways of creating new spaces and times from filmstrips he has accumulated over the years, but the most important of these is what he calls "the Nervous System," a set-up of two analytic I 6mm projectors (the analytic projectors Jacobs has worked with can be run, forward or backward at 1, 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 16, and 24 frames per second) mediated by a propeller that spins in front of' the two lenses, and allows Jacobs to create a wide variety of visual effects, including 3-D, which are usually accompanied by one or another form of recycled sound..."

(Scott MacDonald in A Critical Cinema 3)

"From the first days of our friendship, I was aware that Flo functioned as the 'reality principle' in relation to Ken, who often envisions and desires the impossible. She is also the most trusted other pair of eyes for his work, bringing to this task an aesthetic that is highly compatible with his own, but-and this is important-which was formed before she met him. It was not, however, until I transcribed this interview that I realized that Flo Jacobs is nothing less than the producer of Ken Jacobs' cinema.

In the world of avant-garde cinema, the 'producer' credit is almost nonexistent. Avant-garde filmmakers associate producers with a Hollywood tradition of division of labor in which the art of the director/auteur is compromised and corrupted by commerce. In fact, there are good producers and bad producers. A good producer nurtures and supports the director's vision and does the practical work of raising money, organizing the production and postproduction, and making the deals that get the film into the world. Flo does all these things, albeit in the particular way that they are done in a nonprofit, experimental film context. In addition, she has taken on the formidable task of cataloguing and archiving 50 years of Ken Jacobs' cinema. This demand on her time comes at the expense of the art she makes independently of Ken, but it cannot be otherwise because, in ways that are both quantifiable and not, Ken's oeuvre is also her own."

(Amy Taubin in Optic Antics: The Cinema of Ken Jacobs)

FILMS:

 

*Note: After 2009, the list of videos and Nervous Magic Lantern performances are incomplete.  Jacobs remains very productive within both realms, producing singular works that are as essential as any he has previously made.  Such vision, however, likely leaves little time for the maintenance of a current filmography.  Will Rose, a UK film curator and researcher (who compiled the catalogues for Optic Antics that are included below), is presently working on a book compiling Ken's writings, programme notes, articles, interviews, etc., which will also include an up-to-date filmography.  When a more thorough catalogue of the latter titles becomes available to me, it will be added. 

Flo Rounds A Corner ( 1999)
New York Street Trolleys 1900 (1999)
A Tom Tom Chaser (2002)
CIRCLING ZERO: Part One) We See Absence (2002)
Keeping An Eye On Stan (2003)
Celestial Subway Lines/Salvaging Noise (2004)
Mountaineer Spinning (2004)
Krypton Is Doomed (2005)
Insistent Clamor (2005)
Leeds Bridge 1888 (2005)
Spiral Nebula (2005)
Incendiary Cinema (2005)
Let There Be Whistleblowers (2005)
Ontic Antics Starring Laurel And Hardy; Bye Molly (2005)
New York Ghetto Fishmarket 1903 (2006)
Pushcarts Of Eternity Street (2006)
Two Wrenching Departures (2006)
Capitalism: Child Labor (2006)
Capitalism: Slavery (2006)
The Surging Sea Of Humanity (2006)
RAZZLE DAZZLE: The Lost World (2006-7)
Hanky Panky January 1902 (2007)
Nymph (2007)
GIFT OF FIRE: Nineteen (Obscure) Frames That Changed The World (2007)
Return To The Scene Of The Crime (2008)
Anaglyph Tom (Tom With Puffy Cheeks) (2008)
The Scenic Route (2008)
The Guests (2008)
Amorous Interludes [consists of: His Favorite Wife Improved (or The Virtue Of Bad Reception); Alone At Last; The Discovery; Love Story; We Are Charming (2008)]
Hot Dogs At The Met (2008)
What Happened On 23rd Street In 1901 (2009)
"Slow Is Beauty"-Rodin (2009)
Brook (2009)
Bob Fleischner Dying (2009)
The Day Was A Scorcher (2009)
Jonas Mekas In Kodachrome Days (2009)
Walkway (2009)
excerpt from THE SKY SOCIALIST stratified (2009)
BRAIN OPERATIOJVS (2009)
Ron Gonzalez, Sculptor (2009)
Gravity Is Tops (2009)
Berkeley To San Francisco (2009)
Fair And White, Parts I, II, III And Extra (2010)
SENSORIUMS AT SEA: Dr. Toothy 's New Entranceway (2010)
SENSORIUMS AT SEA: Toothy Two (2010)
The Near~ Collision (2010)

A Loft (2010)
A Train Arriving At A Station (51h Street) (2010)
The Pushcarts Depart The Scene (2010)

Seeking the Monkey King (2011)

The Green Wave (2011)

Street Vendor (2011)
CYCLOPEAN 3D: Life With a Beautiful Woman (2012)

Blankets for Indians (2012)

The Joys of Waiting for the Broadway Bus (2013)

A Primer in Sky Socialism (2013)

The Guests (2013)

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NERVOUS MAGIC LANTERN PERFORMANCES:

(Paul Arthur)

"What I watched was beautiful, hypnotic, mysterious and as close to a representation of three-dimensional imagery as I’ve ever seen without wearing funny glasses. It was pure cinema. As it happens, it was so pure that no celluloid had threaded its way through a projector. I hadn’t been watching a film, after all, or digital images, only light and shadow."

"He turned out to be a great model for my teaching.  His classes were very present tense; he didn’t do prepackaged lectures.  He thought and reacted on his feet.  He legitimized these difficult films for me through his enthusiasm and passion and his peculiar and uncanny nonacademic intelligence and wit." 

(Ken Jacobs) 

"I'm almost afraid to say it, but I do. I'm indispensable because I've been working to help him, but I'm not raking credit for his work. I really value his work. And I've felt for a long time that if people don't, then it's their problem. We can't accept their rejection. It's up to us to make the work get out there. Right from the beginning, when Kenneth applied for grants, if he got rejected he'd say I'm never going to apply again. So I'd say, if you don't apply again, that means you've accepted being rejected. You have to absorb the depression that comes with being rejected and we just have co make things happen in terms of what we can do. I think the work is amazing, and it just has to be."

(Flo Jacobs)

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Keith Sanborn's 1988 manifesto Modern, all too Modern

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Let's set the record straight.

We challenge the official History promoted by the International Experimental Film Congress to be held in Toronto this Spring. The time is long overdue to unwrite the Institutional Canon of Master Works of the Avant-Garde. It is time to shift focus from the History of Film to the position of film within the construction of history. The narratives which take up this new task must respect the complexity of relations among the many competing and overlapping histories which make up the activity within the field.

We are concerned by the tone which pervades the announcements for the Congress. The recognition belatedly accorded to "the founding women of the avant-garde," the ceremonious embalming of lively, refractory work, the minimal attention given new work, the organization of screenings along nationalistic lines, and the "open" -- read "unpaid" -- screenings for those willing to pay $100 for the privilege, all betray a tokenism blind to any activities outside the officially sanctioned margins. And if our analytic concerns seem to prejudge the event, they are borne out with desolate clarity by the record of the Congress organizers in attempting to suppress dissent within their own community. Their efforts in Toronto against the Funnel Experimental Film Centre and against feminist film theory speak for themselves.

And while the putatively timeless Internationalism of the Congress should make it all things to all people, the overwhelming majority of the announced participants consists of representatives of the 60's Avant-Garde and its decaying power base. Only one or two younger filmmakers have been made part of the official program, though some of us will at least be discussed in our absence. Workshops are dominated by technological values and are lead exclusively by older men. In this context, the organization of screenings along nationalistic lines promises a replay of the results with which we have become all too familiar over the past decade: a government- subsidized inventory of products suitable for export. Work is chosen to minimize linguistic, sexual, and cultural difference, typically to conform to the model of the "universal language of form" so dear to institutional esperantists. Difference is recognized only where it can be recuperated and diluted to a tepid pluralism.

The "open screenings" at best provide an image of damage control. These screenings, as the de facto venue for new and unrecognized work, have been scheduled mostly for late in the evening at the end of full days of featured panels, workshops and screenings. Even without average festival delays, this scheduling usually bodes poorly for attendance. The priorities of the Congress organizers are clear: those without established institutional credentials are to be marginalized within the consolidation of the official margins, to be presented as Film Historical leftovers.

There is a spirit of mind which continues to challenge the hegemony of industry, of government, of bureaucracy. The revolutionary frame of mind pervading activity in film in the Teens and Twenties and again in the Fifties and Sixties -- which seemed to die in the Seventies -- continues to thrive, but only where it has shifted and migrated according to changing historical conditions. The issues which galvanized the Cinema Avant-Gardes of earlier decades arose from different conditions than those which confront us today. An event which promotes itself as of major importance to Experimental Film and fails to reflect the vitality and breadth, the vulnerability and urgency of current oppositional practice in the media renders nothing but obeisance to a moribund officialdom. It risks nothing but its own historical relevance.

The Avant-Garde is dead; long live the avant-garde.

-1989

Signed by 76 film-makers (U.S. and Canada):

Caroline Avery
Peggy Ahwesh
Timothy S. Allen
Craig Baldwin
Susan Banas
Jay Blankenship
Emily Breer
Don Brennan
Barbara Broughel
Edmund Cardoni
Abigail Child
Romy Charlesworth
Tom Chomon
Catherine Clarke
Bill Daniel
Moyra Davie
R. Dickie
Paul Dickinson
Jesse Drew
Barry Ellsworth
Steve Fagin
Bruce Fiene
Mary Filippo
Nina Fonoroff
Su Friedrich
John J. Gallagher
David Gerstein
Joe Gibbons
Annie Goldson
Barbara Hammer
Peter M. Hargrove
Todd Haynes
Eve Heller
Peter Herwitz
Robert Hilferty
Chris Hill
Kent Howie
Jim Hubbard
Barbara Lattanzi
I. Lempert
Lewis Klahr
Mark LaPore
Marck McElhatten
Ross McLaren
Deborah Meehan
Andy Moses
Allen Mukamal
Linda Peckham
John Porter
Yvonne Rainer
Berenice Reynaud
Tom Rhoads
Fabio Roberti
D. Rogers
Ron Rogers
Lynne Sachs
Keith Sanborn
Lincoln Schlensky
Sarah Schulman
M. M. Serra
Esther Shatavsky
Joe Shepard
Jeffrey Skoller
Karl Soehnlein
Philip S. Solomon
Carty Talkington
Christine Tamblyn
Leslile Thornton
Christine Vachon
Luis E. Vera
Susanna Virtamen
Jack Walsh
Dan Walsworth
Andreas Wildfang
Sarah E. Wright
Tom Zummer

(via Al Razutis)

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my thanks to David Phelps for his assistance

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