experimenta 2005

i couldn't help it.. thought i would definitely not post another film review.. but this i cant let go of..

yesterday tejal shah of gay activist-artist fame with lots of foreign funding had an 'encounter' in college. she showed her surprisingly not too awful but not terribly exciting work to a bunch of 17-20 year old children. thankfully, there was no extremely militant posturing and the work was still allowed to express its rather mundane observations regarding loneliness (a film that consisted of a shot of lake michigan with the sounds of tejals mom making phone calls to her making a 'liminal' space to spend time in) or gender (a film where on a split screen tejal and some other artist wearing blue shirts- first shave and then wear make up and then take the make up off. )

then in the evening after a meeting at the aga khan offices at marine lines i stepped into 'experimenta 2005'.. the third season of an 'experimental film festival' at the british council at nariman point. maybe i need to just be able to explain the films to you..

the first film was a 'cameraless' film.. 'skin flick'. a woman (she had to be white) had stuck tape all over her body and then methodically peeled it off and pasted it on 16mm film. this was then projected for us to see. 11 minutes of her skin. Next- a guy carrying a camera in an auditorium walks to the screen and then walks back to the projector in loop for a long time. then a candle that shot through scratched film.. then some apartment buildings in bombay that were shown in different levels of saturation - thrice..

and many more such.. and we saw them religiously expecting to be moved (?) intellectually stimulated(?)- i don't know what.

i guess it must be about form and technique that the experiments were.. complicated processes of shooting or developing that as much part of the 'experience' as watching because quite frankly while watching the films i did not see anything that could not be acheived with some basic animation package. that makes me think- does it not? what is it then the nature of experimental film. mukul tells me it is a hangover from the 60's when people were playing with the 'medium' itself.. to achieve new forms of cinema..

i guess for me the search for new form needs to be informed by a search for more relevant ways to deal with the questions plaguing the medium. as a layman i dont know the questions that concern the medium. i only watch. to me the films did not work as experiences cus i really don't care about the experiment as the consciousness of the particular experiment is an essential part of the viewing.

or then again there might be the phenomenological- or the poetic moving image- abstract and sublime that i was supposed to imbibe. for me to imbibe i needed to contextualise the image.. place it in a relationship with me to be able to relate to it. pure image like abstract art rarely is able to draw me in, except perhaps a mark rothko or a jackson pollock..

'experimenta' interested me as a space though. these strange people trying things out.. very cutting edge/avant-garde.. everyone was young, good looking, liberal..belonged to the fancy designer shirted, clubbing, smooth lot that fancies itself intellectual.. those in the film world most studied at some film school in new york or london.. i guess 'experimentation' takes on this meaning there..

anyways, we drank free red wine and some really nice crackers and hummus..

confusion: what in the world is mukul's documentary doing in these surroundings? friday screening by the way.. see it if you haven't yet..