markg011: November 2010 Archives

The Jan Svankmajer film was both horrifying and humorous. It was horrifying because the baby was munching on people, murdering them. The father knew it was a monster baby but the mother was delusional and protective of her "child" so she wouldn't let the father chop the baby up. Finally the parents lock the root baby in the basement and it looks like they are going to get everything under control, but then the little girl takes pity on the baby and feeds it. Everything goes downhill and the horrors get worse. However, Svankmajer includes humor in the movie as well. The little girl's character has some funny lines and the situation is a little funny because it's so ridiculous. I didn't enjoy the "Food" video at first because it wasn't pretty to look at. Once I got past this, I saw the cleverness of it. I thought the video was well done.

I don't think I fully understand "The Street of Crocodiles." I didn't like that dolls were the subjects of this video. They are creepy when the move by themselves and it made the movie seem eerie. I appreciate how the sound and images work together and after the interview, use of light throughout the video was brought to my attention as well.

The techniques Kentridge uses are very effective. I like how he combines and uses different media in a single work. For example, he used his body and a projected silhouette image made from paper. These shapes are combined to create a walking horse. He uses his own body with charcoal in another work. These techniques make his works unique. Another one of his techniques he uses is creating a charcoal drawing and changing it slightly in each frame. Then he combines the frames to make an animation. I admire his patience in manipulating a drawing this way because it must be very tedious and frustrating. There is a lot of diversity in his works; he plays with sound and music, projections, drawings, objects in stop motion, etc... By watching this video, it is obvious that that he loves what he does because he is very passionate when he talks about his different projects.

Taris, roi de l'eau
I liked that parts were filmed underwater and the different camera angles. The only sound in the video was narration and water sounds. I noticed there was no sound during the slow motion parts and the water noises were silenced during the narration. The water sounds enhanced the piece and I think they should have been continued throughout the whole video. The video's story is about what goes into being a successful swimmer. I related to it because I just attended my first swim meet and I was in awe at how fast these people could swim. I liked that towards the end of the video, it made swimming seem like a form of art.
Eaux D'Artifice
This piece seemed very tranquil. Right away I noticed the blue color and the tranquil music. It triggered my memory of the movie Sleeping Beauty when everyone at the palace is under the spell and everything is at rest. The story in the video is that a woman is walking through a garden at night and she disappears in a fountain. If I had to change something, I would add some very subtle water sounds because I wanted to hear the relaxing sound of the water when I was watching the video.
T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G
When I was watching this I got really annoyed because he was only saying "destroy" over and over. "Destroy" didn't sound like a word anymore after about 30 seconds of constant repeating. Then, it started to sound like other words were mixed in and I couldn't tell what he was saying anymore. It was uncomfortable to listen to "destroy" for that amount of time. The sound was very important in this piece because without it, it would just be colored pictures flashing and I wouldn't have felt as strongly about the piece. There wasn't really a story but it reminded me a little of Andy Warhol's work because it was basically the same image in many different, bright colors. I wouldn't change anything about the piece because even though I didn't like the constant repeating during the video, after it was done and I didn't have to listen to it anymore, I thought it was really interesting.