PARIP 2003

NATIONAL CONFERENCE: 11-14 September

CONTRIBUTORS

TREVELYAN: HUMPHRY
international film school wales
university of wales college newport
film in the gallery: the space within

For many film makers who work outside the tradition of film art, there is no critical/theoretical framework that can adequately interrogate and define the complex mix of subjective (somatic) and rational decision making that leads to the moment of photography, and the relatively inarticulate process of constructing image and sound in the filmic moment. While the critical study of film is largely based on ideas of text, mise-en-scene and consumption, the experience of film making itself and what is brought to the act of film making is largely unexplored. Put another way, the dominant modes of film interpretation, within film and cultural studies on one hand, and theories of art on the other, do not sufficiently address the question of how films are made. Ideas of authorship obscure our understanding of the significance of collaborative work, the impact of performance, ‘technique’ and aesthetic. It is not enough for practitioners to complain that their work is misrepresented: they must develop themselves a critical language that is capable of expressing that unwritten, unrecorded process.

This presentation will explore what happens when film is taken away from the screen, and its component materials exposed in non-linear time and space. It is based on the experience of deconstructing, or remaking, a feature-length documentary on five screens within an open gallery space. It will explore why putting film in the gallery is an increasingly common part of some film makers’ practice, and how this process both overlaps and mirrors the work of contemporary film/video artists. Does the presence of film in the gallery open it up to a different range of critical enquiry? Does it allow the film maker to examine aspects of their work that linear film narrative obscures or even rejects? Does this kind of exposure allow both film maker and audience to re-examine their assumptions about the nature of linear film narrative? The principle themes that emerged from the exhibition include the impact of the relationship between the documentary film maker and their subject on filmic strategies: the subject as performer: and the process of self-reflection for film maker and audience. The presentation will be accompanied by a recreation of part of the exhibition in the Theatre Collection reading room.

Back to main conference page