on (nostalgia)

Like Kerem, I found this week’s films incredibly interesting because of the tension and sensations of desire and frustration I found within myself while experiencing the film. Michael Snow’s Wavelenght is indeed deserving of the monumental reputation it has. What I found most impressive about it is that as a viewer, there is no need to understand the context, its historical significance, or its author and movement to obtain a grasp of its significance, grandeur, and success. However, I wish to dedicate this post to Hollis Frampton’s film, because within it I found a fascinating dialogue between film, photography, temporality, and the viewer. Looking at it according to Hanhardt’s notion of avant-garde film, based on the modernist conception of the “scrutinizing of the ‘properties and materials’ of its medium”, Frampton’s (nostalgia) is a combined exploration into both photography and film. Film is used to explore photography’s flatness, it’s ephemeral and transient qualities, and it’s inherent fragility. This creates a necessary contrast between photography and film, which provides insight into film’s documentary, analytical, and dynamic nature. Mostly however, the clever play with the disjunction of the soundtrack showcases the alienation and detachment created by photography. The fact that the sound and image don’t exactly correspond to each other makes a statement about the very existence of photography. Within a photograph, there is an ever-present tension between remembering and wanting; between desire and nostalgia. Frampton recreates this tension using film, sound and the disjunction between them. To me, Frampton played a game with the viewer’s perception and then used this to convey a message about photography. The entire film is based on the repetition of a cycle, which time and time again plays with the viewer. By the time the narrator stops speaking, the viewer is already concentrated on the burning, which is followed by a black screen, a resting point for the mind. By the time the next image appears, the viewer has forgotten what he heard during the previous. Concentrating on the image, and the narration which accompanies it, he falls into displacement, because of the disjunction. The fire then distracts the viewer from this displacement, only to lead him back into it, with the crawling of the ashes, the black screen, and the cycling of the entire process. I found this mocking of the viewer to be essential to the message Frampton conveys about the superficiality and undeniable tension inside photographs. The usage of film and sound to convey it was not only an extremely clever decision, but an extremely effective one as well.