As
we have already made the connections with the beginnings of
experimental film and surrealism,dada and even cubism, we can further
discuss how those associations
were made possible through manipulations of form itself. Surrealist,
dadaist and cubist artists conceived film as an art whose specific
nature is visual, which led them to have various positions when it
comes to the narrative component of it.
If
we look into the work of surrealists, we can see the reasons why
their work became seriously associated with experimental films. Luis
Buñuel said, "The film seems to be the involuntary imitation of
the dream", and that goes to show how surrealists were the first
to take seriously the similarity between film's images and those of
dreams and the unconscious. Surrealists were able to provide
convincing illusions through experimental films, and to portray
ridiculous as rational.Through liberating power of nonlinear,
non-narrative aesthetic experiences that experimental films provided,
surrealists were able to adapt this kind of film making to their
goals and requirements, which strive to revolutionize the human
experience.
But
there is one problem that emerges with this. These experimental
films are considered to be too eclectic, and they cannot be defined by
style or form, but rather as results of the practice of surrealism.
To quote Michael Richardson :
"Within popular conceptions, surrealism is misunderstood in many
different ways, some of which contradict others, but all of these
misunderstandings are founded in the fact that they seek to reduce
surrealism to a style or a thing in itself rather than being prepared
to see it as an activity with broadening horizons." There is a
problem when it comes to recognizing the distinctive qualities that
make up the surrealist point of view. Trying to find a common theme,
particular type of imagery, certain concepts that can identify as
'surrealist' in order to provide a distinctive criteria of
judgement by which a film can be appraised is practically impossible.
If
we look into the dada roots of experimental film making, the
association between these two is made through artistic creativity
which relies on randomness and imagination.Researching into the
unconscious , using psychoanalysis with the automatic process of
dada art, made the dadaist approach cinema as ready made objects. If
we look into the work of Marcel Duschamp, especially his first
experimental film Anemic Cinema, which consists of images of
spiraling circles which are cut with nine verbal puns in french,
we can see that it only problematizes the abstract character of the film image. The is a co-relation between this and dadaist rejection
of formal language of abstraction by creation of readymades and
optical and kinetic experiments. To quote Duschamp : ' For me there
is something else in addition to yes,no and indifferent- that is for
instance , the absence of investigations of that type .' There is a
critique of the visual experience and an indifference to aesthetics in experimental films, just
like readymades are not merely an art object on display, but ones
which display the constitution of the object as value and meaning.
If
we take a look into cubism ,especially the works of Picasso and
Braque, we can see the association with experimental films when it
comes to the usage of position of objects which are fading into each
other or the neutral ground of the image. İn conventional films,
this approach is used to represent the discontinuity of space, but in
experimental films and cubist paintings it is an attempt to obtain an integration of discordant orders.İn both cubism and experimental
films there is an invention of a new form of space and the way it
is presented, where the reality is viewed from multiple angles at
once.
To
conclude, we can quote a passage from Metaphors on Vision, by one of
the most prolific experimental film makers, Stan Brakhage's
: "Imagine an eye unruled by man-made laws of perspective, an
eye unprejudiced by compositional logic, an eye which does not
respond to the name of everything but which must know each object
encountered in life through an adventure of perception." This
passage not only explains the aesthetic dogma which Brakhage created ,
but it also perfectly summarizes how the previous associations with
all the art movements are made. The recurring theme which we can see
that though the very manipulation of form, these artists are
presenting a distorted version of reality, experimenting with the
fundamental rules of perception and exploring and re-evaluating the
field of human experience of reality and rationality.