PEOPLE WHO ARE GOOD Part 1

A list of some video and film art filmmakers.


Bill Viola

I first came across his art in a book, which isn't very impressive when you're looking at stills of video art. I quickly learnt that he had a great sense of time and movement, and distilled things in a way that worked like music.
Not too fond of his later work which was a whole series of classicist portraits as moving image, but earlier work (especially with water) was really nice. Ignore the tacky band!

Bill Viola about his work for Nine Inch Nails Part 2 - YouTube


Tracey Moffatt


Moffatt's work is sometimes a commentary on cinema itself and even though I haven't seen everything she's made, the images I have seen hit me like a punch in the face. She seems to always be able to create an atmosphere that wakes you up and pushes you into a new space of thinking and experiencing film. Her films are strong and direct, dark and serious...but also filled with satire and sharp wit.


Matthew Barney


Matthew Barney is infuriating and amazing at the same time. His film work moves so slowly that you want to scream but its so ritualistic that you cant stop watching. He is a strange creative force and to me must read an occult sign in everything he sees, even a colour on a wall! Also funny because he got a metal drummer to play blast beats over a hive of bees...painfully good.

Best known for Cremaster Cycle: http://www.cremaster.net/


Anri Sala

Just good. That is all. No, seriously, he is probably known as one of Europe's best video artists at the moment. Sala approaches filmmaking with a realist attitude, but creates an end result that feels more than ordinary. Plus, the poor horse looks so awkward its almost cruel, and then you realise it is ok and suddenly its funny, and then more disturbing. His sense of humour and seriousness combined with a more than apt understanding of the language of images makes his films great.

http://www.lumeneclipse.com/gallery/04/sala/index.html


Grace Weir


Weir looks at relativity, time and quantum mechanics via film. Usually her theories go over my head (or at least now they do!) but she makes very beautiful and calm images.

http://www.graceweir.com/projects


Michael Snow


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYr_SvIKKuI

I think Michael Snow is really interested in what the eye sees, and how that transfers to thoughts, memory and experience. This is a rad example of that. I can't intellectualise any more.


Andrei Tarkovski

Polaroids are how I first came across Tarkovski. He has a great sense of light and takes polaroids not like a snapshot, but like a square of tasty colour and depth.
Then I saw a couple of his films and forgot the story a little way in because they looked so good!
I admit I dont know all of his work or how much butter he had on his toast in the morning, but I can say that his ability to capture light and colour inspired me. Crazy good shit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENrzp_hZNxM&feature=related


Maya Deren


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9Gve37nWBo


Stan Brakhage

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2002/great-directors/brakhage/

A QUICK RANT ABOUT FILM AND ART AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN

Why does film and video art exist?

The language of film gives us a visual encyclopedia with which to tell stories. Sure this is enough to satisfy and entertain, but formulas of representation, like language, have limitations although they are key to our understanding of film in its general structure.

There is always an unspoken element to how we experience the world, but it's no less important to communicate it.

Usually film or video art can be described as obscure or cerebral or, worse, ephemeral. 

If anything, film and video art explores the spaces in between objective reality, and brings form to otherwise fleeting or uncanny observations.

Good film and video art makes use of the way light works and captures atmospheres and subtleties that are usually only observed by the eye (and often not consciously).

Jonathan Crary comments in "Techniques of the Observer" that the break with traditional modes of representation and composition at the beginning of the nineteenth century was more than a change in the appearance of art, it was a rupture of the old way of composing and interpreting the experience of the visual. 

At the same time, the critic Jean-Pierre Geuens has said that because we can experience film so readily, and manipulate an edit via technology, we take away "the vitality of the experience which we would otherwise access in ways more relative to our visual experience... [and] as film becomes absorbed into the humdrum of daily life, it inevitably loses its ability to open up a space that is radically different from where we are."

So there are 3 things working against each other and a fresh experience of film. 

One is over-saturation of filmic experiences via technology and the other is an undefined mixture of clear modes of traditional representation and obscure deconstructural pieces masquerading as story.

The remedy is direct intention and the communication of that intention without dictation.

And that's where film art lies, between story and not.

And Werner Herzog said it really well when describing his role as a film maker in an interview with Kristine McKenna:

...articulating the things that are inarticulate in many of us is my duty and my profession. 

M

STOPMOTION

Video Art now is not just patched-up bad quality vid images mulled together in some kind of semi-lyrical obscurity. It's stop motion, time lapse, bullet photography and multimedia.

And above is a freaking good example of one of MAPS successful forays into stop motion.
A great beard-reveal, colourful but strangely doomy, cut-out fun...watch it!