Responses to the Four Readings

Kino Eye - Dziga Vertov >I find that in The Kino Eye, Dziga persuades the audience of the power of film as a better way to capture life, and to turn that into collage that is inhumanly perfect; to "create a man more perfect than Adam." He claims this is achieved by capturing various images disregarding space and time. "From one person I take the hands, the strongest and most dexterous; from another, I take the legs, the swiftest and most shapely; from a third, the most beautiful and expressive head - and through montage, create a new, perfect man." To an extent, this is true. It is possible to create a man however you may desire to, yet is he really man, or a figment of imagination? Metaphors on Vision - Stan Brakhage >In this excerpt, Brakhage seems to be profoundly - or possibly profanely - attempting to assuage mankind of his fears, claiming that the "elimination of all fear is within sight," and that it must be aimed for, as it leads to an increase of ability to behold. I, however, strictly disagree, finding that fear opens our senses much more acutely in both auditory and visual cases. He ends his rant with the early history of fear in art, explaining how cave paintings depicted fearful scenes, more than likely out of desire to help the early humans to be less affected by the fear in the situations they might encounter (eg. having adrenaline boost when encountering a ravaging boar, but not being petrified with fear). The Ontology of the Photographic Image - Andre Bazin >In this excerpt of What is Cinema?, Bazin goes into detail of the history of the "plastic arts", as he so puts it - a broad category covering a range of things such as photography. He concludes that if analyzed, it may be found that the act of embalming was the forefather to these arts. He explains this as such: in Ancient Egypt, embalming was meant to preserve the body after death, as that was how they believed one could live on eternally. The art of painting is similar, as man first began as a means to preserve moments so as the memory of them could live on forever, but evolved to surround people of high birth, whom used it as a way to feel eternal in life. However, he states, when a rendering in art gave way to photography - a duplication of the outside world - painting followed the path, splitting between religious, glorified realism and true realism. As such, art is no longer about recording life, but about creating a world. Methods of Montage - Sergei Eisenstein >In his writing, Sergei states the basic ways that montages can be arranged, each differing based on which order of images may take, ranging from Rhythmic to Tonal. He also notes how Metric Montage is characterized by a "rude, motive force," similar to that of a metronome. It tends to exert a motion upon the viewing audience, capable of taking force in both meta-physical and physical realities. The second, a Rhythmic Montage, is based around the alternation of beats in a standard fashion. The third category is tonal, described as the emotional rhythm in montage. Fourthly, and lastly, is what he described as "a fresh flood of pure physiologism, as it were - echoes, in the highest degree of intensity, the first category, again acquiring a degree of intensification by direct motive force."