Opening
Program  Installation
Program
1 Program
2-3 Program
4-5 Program
6 Program
7 Program
8 Program
9 Program
10 Program
11 Program
12 Program
13 Program
14 Closing
Ceremony
Program
11: American Avant-Garde
Cinema of the 1960s and Dance Film: Ed Emshwiller –
Cine-dances
of a man who wanted to become a camera
The American
Avante-Garde Cinema program is dedicated to Ed
Emshwiller, a legendary filmmaker and intermedia
artist, virtually unknown to the Russian audiences.
"By
means of the camera and the editing table, he [filmmaker] creates
image movements and relationships different from those of the
dance choreographer. So, in some cases, two choreographies are
united in one film –dance choreography and film choreography.
In other cases, dance choreography in the usual sense is practically
non-existent. Then the camera and editing techniques provide
the movement, contrasts, and transitions in the dance’s
image. Cine-dance, then is another way of using dancers –
not exactly dance, but a legitimate art form in its own way.
To me it is fascinating and challenging." –
Ed Emshwiller, Dance Perspectives #30, 1967
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“A madman
who wants to become a camera”, an optimist with incredibly
warm roaring laughter, a science fiction illustrator, a painter,
a filmmaker, a cine-choreographer, an intermedia artist, a teacher,
an advocate of avant-garde cinema, Edmund Alexander Emshwiller
was born in Lansing, Michigan, USA in 1925 and died in California,
in 1990. He earned a Bachelor of Design Degree from the University
of Michigan and studied graphics at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts,
Paris, and the Arts Student League in New York. In 1979 he became
Dean of the School of Film and Video at the California Institute
of the Arts; he taught at Yale University, the University of California
at Berkeley, and the State University of New York in Buffalo,
among other institutions.
Emshwiller’s creative talent and devotion reflected in everything
he did in life. Most all of his personal films (except for “Relativity”)
Emshwiller financed himself, working as a director of photography
on many commercial productions. He was such a desired cameraman
that Stanley Kubrik invited him to work on “2001: A Space
Odyssey.” Emshwiller declined the offer as he had commitments
to his personal work at the time. He loved, however, to collaborate
with different artists. “Emsh” worked with Alwin Nikolais
(films “Totem” (1963, 16’) and “Chrysalis”
(1973, 22’)) and Pilobolus dance company (film “Pilobolus
and Joan” (1973, 58’) and also took part in multimedia
Happenings of the 1960s. He was one of the first artists (along
with Trisha Brown) who brought on stage and mobilized the film
projector. Dancers physically manipulated the projectors and treated
them as partners during the stage performances. Multiple projections
and physical layering of images in real time (as opposed to post-production)
became signature in his work. One of Emshwiller’s most successful
multimedia performances is considered “Body Works”
(1965-66, 30’) where he used 5 projectors, 3 of which were
directed at dancers in white.
Later in the 70s, Emshwiller expanded to video and computer animation
techniques. His seminal works in this area are “Scape-Mates”
(1972, 28’) and “Sunstone” (1979, 3’).
Similar to Einstein’s theories or Plato’s philosophy,
Emshwiller’s vision spread far beyond his times. As renowned
film historian Cecile Starr points out, the early Emshwiller films
remain as “hauntingly fresh and beautiful… as they
were when the first one so revitalized [her] senses and [her]
soul.” Emshwiller’s continuous search for new techniques
that the film medium had to offer, allowed the artist to assemble
a rich palette of tricks that often supercedes an effect toolkit
of some of the slickest contemporary technologies. Emshwiller’s
formalist approaches to dance as well as his intention to fixate
the movement resonate with and preclude contemporary motion capture
technologies. “The truly great craftsmen are creatures with
demons at their service. And thus [in their work] the borders
of art and craft disappear in the mystery of created and found
reality.” Emshwiller was one of those great craftsmen.
Above and beyond technical perfections, it is the clarity and
originality of structure in every film as well as their precise
and refined realization that assure Emshwiller films an infinite
lifespan and put him among the most innovative and visionary filmmakers
of the 20th century." - AK
Dance
Chromatic
(7min, 1959, USA) on 16mm
Director: Ed Emshwiller
A fusion
of dance, abstract painting, and a percussive score achieving
a hypnotic and strongly rhythmic synthesis. – EE
Lifelines
(7min, 1960,
USA) on 16mm
Director: Ed Emshwiller; Music by Teiji Ito.
A
combination of animated line drawings with live photography
of a nude model. A play on the title (living lines, life model,
procreation and hand life line).
Thanatopsis
(5min, 1962, USA) on 16mm
Director: Ed Emshwiller; with Becky Arnold and Mac Emshwiller.
An expression
of internal anguish. The confrontation of a man and his torment.
Juxtaposed against his external composure are images of a
woman and lights in distortion, with tension heightened by
the sounds of power saws and a heartbeat.
Totem
(16min, 1963, USA) on 16mm
Director: Ed Emshwiller
Made in
collaboration with Alvin Nikolais, featuring Murray Louis
and Gladys Ballin with the Nikolais Dance Company. Electronic
score by Nikolais. A filmic interpretation of a modern dance
ballet by Alvin Nikolais. Earth, fire, water and primordial
mysteries in a cine-dance.
Film
With Three Dancers (20min,
1970, USA) on 16mm
Director: Ed Emshwiller
A cine-dance
film featuring the dancers Carolyn Carlson, Emery Hermans
and Bob Beswick. The trio, first in leotards, then in blue
jeans, then naked, pass through rituals of movement. They
are shown in stylized, "naturalistic" and abstract
images accompanied by stylized, naturalistic and abstract
sounds. A series of ways of seeing the dancers.
"Best (underground) picture of the year." -- Camille
J. Cook, Chicago Sunday Sun-Times
Exhibition: Sorrento Film Festival; Whitney Museum of American
Art.
Relativity
(38min, 1966, USA) on 16mm
Director: Ed Emshwiller
A man
wonders, measures, views relationships, people, places, things,
time, himself. A sensual journey through a series of subjective
reflections.
"[A] beautifully photographed color montage of shots;
insect, animal, man and galaxy; a sobering antidote to the
orgy of subjectivism going on elsewhere." -- Vincent
Canby, The New York Times
"The
artist's search for the meaning of his own existence is never-ending
and takes many forms. Ed Emshwiller's remarkable epic, RELATIVITY,
continues this exploration with extraordinary frankness and
rare technical skill. The sequence which symbolically portrays
a woman at the moment of sexual climax is one of the most
beautiful in the literature of film." -- Willard Van
Dyke
"RELATIVITY is a marvelously sensual film ... it is,
I have no doubt, a masterpiece." -- Richard Whitehall,
LA Free Press
Awards: Special Events program selection, NY Film Festival;
London Film Festival; Special Jury Award, Oberhausen Film
Festival.
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