WILLIAM RABAN

William Raban has been described, as one of the finest exponents of the genre known as 'Avant-Garde Landscape' film. From early art experiments in painting 'lifting traces' from nature to his most recent film and installation pieces, Raban engages with pushing the medium, holding on to the fundamental belief that "making films is about showing people things, not telling them how to interpret the world." I wanted to explore his work in terms of style, constructing meaning and pushing the barriers and boundaries of documentary film form. His messages are generally subtle and he does to force ideologies down the audiences throats but rather in infers meaning through the style and juxtaposition of the material. He avoids the explicit by allowing the audience to make the connections and this is an area I have found tricky in the past.

Raban also put substance over style ."It was a time for experimentation where ideas were the driving force rather than preoccupations with style or the desire to simply put dazzling images onto the movie screen" ('Lifting Traces', Filmwaves, Spring1998)

Rabans early work involved his lifelong pre-occupations of experimental techniques and nature. His "Wave print" painting made from oil paints in the sea transferred to paper and Wrapping canvas around a tree trunk and re-visiting it to apply washes and letting nature, time (duration he called it) and the elements influence and impact the image.

In the early 1970s, as a member of the London Filmmakers' Co-Operative, Raban combined the co-op ethos of hard line politic, intellectualism and experimentation to produce some of the most enduring work of the period. As part of the 'Filmaktion' group he experimented in the realm of 'expanded cinema',  In these pieces, the relationship between audience, theatre, projector and light beam were all engaged in deconstructing and reconstructing the conventional apparatus of cinema - a project that was in keeping with the radical politics of the time. These experiments in film form that later became aligned with what we now call 'installation' art.

In Take Measure (1973) he physically unwound the film through the audience from projector to screen; Diagonal (1973) used three projector beams extending beyond the screen into the theatre space and centred on the workings of the projector gate. In his own words "I was looking for a pure image, an image which was intrinsic to the medium of film. This film is not an abstract film; the subject is the projector gate, the plane where the film frame is arrested in the projected light beam, and the frame whose edges contain and divide the projected illusion from the blacked-out present of the movie theatre."

DIAGONAL (1973)

2'45" (1973) recorded and repeatedly re-filmed the event of projection and interaction with the audience, screen and filmmaker. These pieces are some of the most resonant (and characteristically witty) of the period whilst also providing clues for themes that he would continue to develop.

2'45" (1973)

These works link directly to my development of my Cinematique idea where the work is in effect the cinema audience and a subverted audience move around the cinema choosing which subjects to listen to about their love of cinema going via iPads or other screens. Through this the audience build their own documentary. The blurring of audience, space, film and the texts and sub-texts through the exhibition of it interest me as it did Raban. Whilst my work will not be as avant grade as Raban's the interaction and participation of the audience in the piece as in Take Measure and the re-interpretation and exploration of technology and dissemination of exhibition do interest me greatly too.

In his works of the mid to late 70's Raban continued these experiments but in a more formalist style. he used often double camera techniques to investigate the relationship between time, the actual time of filming and its representation back onto the screen as a starting point for what Le Grice describes as a 'rhythmic space-time game played by two cameras'. He creates a jump cut juxtaposed version of the world in "Time Stepping" 1973 with cubism sympathies in its structure. In "Colours of time" 1972 he plays with colour and time to construct a time lapse and colour influenced interpretation of the passage of time in a park over a day. These themes carry through to"Autumn Scenes" 1978 where the use of 2 cameras, often moving and jump cut shots creating an interpretation of the world disharmonious and yet strangely real and beguiling make you look at it though different eyes. These works to me where interesting in terms of style and construction as well as interpretation of the world around us. Technique and style was used to create interpretations and not to be style over substance.

In the late 80's Raban experimented more with but this time with commentary. In Thames Film (1986) he uses a mixture of old footage, photographs, maps, drawings and sketches are juxtaposed with film of the river shot from a mostly low point of view to capture the ebbs and flows with the river tides. The soundtrack includes spoken testimony, a record of the same journey made in 1787 and snatches of readings from Eliot. This in conjunction with the rich visual material, gives the impression of a diary, a record that contains and contrasts past and present whilst generating new meanings from the tension between them.

Raban continued aspects of this approach in From 60 Degrees North (1991), commissioned by Channel Four. In both 60 Degrees North and Thames Film they reference the earlier experiments with the documentary form of earlier 'landscape' pieces like Thames Barrier. from the clips that i have found these are interesting work but miss much of the poetic quality of the work with no voice over or commentary. Whilst not being explicit they do create a more constructed overview of the pieces rather then leaving them to the imagination of the audience. they simply feel more like a formal documentary in terms of style and structure.

ABOUT FILMMAKING from Ayman Saey on Vimeo.

Raban also experimented in documentary film form in some of his later works. He combined these also with avant grade techniques and playing with time of shooting, actual time and representations of this back onto the screen. He played and experimented with the 'poetic' qualities mode of documentary and areas I have been interested in the creative treatment of actuality whiles also using conventional observational and expository techniques. Poetic stylistics are heavily relied upon though and rhythm, rhyme, meter, punctuation, resonance are all represented visually and, particularly in these 'documentary' pieces, give an impressionistic visual feel. A.L. Rees describes this as 'blending the structural film with the documentary' and this is perhaps at its purest in the 'Under the Tower' trilogy. In this trilogy Raban centres on one geographical space The Canary Wharf tower and then explored the nature, structure, ebb and flow, people and elements of this space.

The first part 'Sundial' (1992) is a minute long, offering 71 rapid scenes, each showing the Canary Wharf tower at its centre. The camera records the tower from all angles at different times of the day with different foreground material each time and uses rapid cutting and certainty of framing create a number of responses. The tower is represented as a three dimensional object that seems to lift from the screen, relating back to Raban's aforementioned explorations into 'cubist' representations of objects and space. Semiotic codes attached to the tower as 'symbol' (it has been described as 'Thatcher's Dick'!) are simply connoted.

The second part, A13 (1994) uses a huge variety of images - through windscreens, mirrors and CCTV cameras and rhythmic, percussive editing and soundtrack. The area around Canary Wharf and the Limehouse road link are presented over a day (a 'nod' to the influence of Man with a Movie Camera and Raban's admiration for Vertov). Like Sundial, there is no overt explanation, Raban's rationale being "to see how far it was possible to construct meaning by sound and image alone".

In Island Race (1996) the main focus is the people, inhabitants and lives of those living around the tower. Margaret Dickinson has noted, "The world explored is one of public space and public events". Raban focusses on politics and the racial tensions in the Isle of Dogs that were rising to the surface during the course of the filming. Footage of local election, scenes from a recent anti fascist march, the London Marathon, shots of Ronnie Kray's funeral, are juxtaposed with images of racist graffiti and celebrations of 'Empire' in the form of VE day street party celebrations. Using t no commentary and just a soundtrack to act as the glue to hold it all together the film is a montage of images without explanation or other usual documentary conventions imposed on them. Raban follows events as they happen rather than forcing a structure through editing. This leaves the audience to ask questions and construct their own meanings and interpretations relating to identity, nationalism and community from the ambiguity.



Houseless Shadow (2011) brings us more up to date with Rabans work. From the clip below you can see that he draws upon many of the techniques he has been exploring all of his career. Moving camera, time lapse and careful use of soundtrack to add tone and mood but not to either conflict or work in tandem with the images. The voice over from a Charles Dickens essay again reflects earlier work. The voice over is used to create meaning and draw parallels and differences between London then and now and leans towards the former rather then the latter.



WHAT I WILL TAKE FROM RABANS WORK.

• The subtle use of images/scenes and sequences to suggest meaning. Implicit rather than explicit avoiding didacticism.
• Technique and style are good but the message and ideas should always be the driving force.
• The manipulation of time of filming and interpretation of this through to screening.
• Shooting of more of my own footage. Raban shot a lot of the footage for his films alongside archive material.
• The use of music for mood and tone but not to be too parallel or contrapuntal.
• The absence of voice overs OR the creative use of texts as a voice over to not be expositional and say what is happening but to offer an interpretation of what is happening. Historical texts etc to make a comment on similarities or nature of change if any.

PATRICK KEILLER: LONDON 1994

I was first exposed to London (1994) by Patrick Keiller over 20 years ago at a Cambridge Film festival screening and it really left a resonance and stayed with me for some time as I tried to process and unpick it. The film is neither documentary nor fiction, and is a fascinating film essay by Keiller creating a unique kind of travelogue. The film charts a year in the life of England's capital through the eyes of the enigmatic Robinson, whose literary reflections and historical speculations are voiced by an unnamed, unseen narrator.

On its release the London Financial Times dubbed it"...the most innovative and absorbing British film in recent memory".

The film is a curious blend of fiction and factual blurring the two to highlight the third person narrative of the fictional Robinson the character at the centre of the film . This narrative is at the same time nonsensical and has it's own sense of subverted reality but also it bizarrely grounded in and allows comment on actual reality itself from a third person viewpoint.

Keiller himself states "What seems to be true is that as a physical structure, it is seriously deficient," he says. "But perhaps more than with any other capital, you can make your own London." Keiller trained as an architect but, partly due to a lack of work, turned to film, particularly intrigued by the surrealists' notion of changing a city by changing the way we look at it which all sound a bit like Robinson our hero in the film. This idea proved attractive for somebody who wasn't going to change it through architecture.

In London, Keiller transforms the city is by "reimagining" places. Which means giving us the pictures while the narrator tells pleasant often throw-away lies. Leicester Square, we are told as the images unfold, could be a place of homage to that proto-screen writer, Laurence Sterne, author of Tristram Shandy. Throughout, Keiller's photography make the city a star in it's own right and avoids the often obvious and shows off both the beauty and the ugly of the city. "I worried about the pictures being very flattering. I did want to show some neglect. And the narration includes the impact of political issues on the city's fabric, as Robinson's journeys into the past are interrupted by present-day events by, for instance, the aftermath of an IRA bomb attack. But," continues Keiller, "I also wanted to show how London could be, that is, how some of it already is."

The narrators detached reporting of Robinson's high-flown ideas and fibs works well. The thoughts of the wanna-be but far from it intellectual are cooly delivered to us, teasing us to take them seriously. "Robinson is handy," says Keiller. "Glib and ill-informed be may be, but he allows me to float ideas."




WHAT I WILL TAKE FROM LONDON

• The blending of fact and actuality footage and fiction to give it a different meaning and often using the fictional to shine a light on the factual.
• The detached third person VO of the (unreliable) narrator and the fictitious treatment of the real London. It allows comment as if an alien had landed amongst us and commentary on the real through the eyes of the unreal.
• The use of footage shot to capture this world and make some sense of it. The VO juxtaposed against the reality of the image yet working alongside to to offer comments on it.

ARTISTS WORKING IN ENVIRONMENTAL AND CLIMATE CHANGE ART

This post is nothing more than some good research to follow up on in regards to clime change. I have been looking around the issue itself and examining the causes, effects, arguments, politics, history and looking at campaigns to bring it to the publics attention.

However I have not looked at too many other artists working in this field to see what work is being created and how I can add to this and find my own angle within it that suits me and my practice.

“The quality of place, the reaction to immediate contact with earth and growing things that have a fugal relationship with mountains and sky, is essential to the integrity of our existence on this planet,” the famous American photographer Ansel Adams wrote in his autobiography. From the romantic painters of the late 18th century to Adams to contemporary figures like Pedro Reyes and Agnes Denes, artists have long had a fascination — and deep respect — for the planet on which we exist. With the words “global warming” and “climate change” never far from the headlines, artists like Adams and co. are more relevant than ever. Tying together the scientific and creative worlds in acts of beauty and activism, sculptors, painters, photographers and more have the power to make environmentalism a priority and bring green initiatives to the forefront of cultural conversations. Behold, 18 green artists who are making climate change and conservation a priority.

1. Olafur Eliasson’s Icebergs

Your waste of time. 2013. Installation

 For “Your waste of time,” Olafur Eliasson displayed pieces of ice that broke off from Iceland’s largest glacier, Vatnajökull. Exhibited in a refrigerated gallery space powered by solar panels, the ice “sculptures” represented 800 years of Earthly existence, putting human’s physical experience in perspective. “The obvious lesson of Mr. Eliasson’s installation, ‘Your waste of time,’ is that global warming is wreaking havoc on nature,” Ken Johnson wrote in The New York Times last year.


2. David Maisel’s Photographs of Open Pit Mines

David Maisel, The Mining Project

At first glance, David Maisel’s gorgeous photographs seem to celebrate the natural beauty of another planet, but his deep blue swirls and red craters actually depict the aerial appearance of environmentally impacted sites in the United States transformed by water reclamation, logging, military tests and mining. “With the mining sites, I found a subject matter that carried forth my fascination with the undoing of the landscape, in terms of both its formal beauty and its environmental politics,” Maisel writes on his website.


3. Luzinterruptus’ Waste Labyrinth

https://vimeo.com/100256751


The art collective Luzinterruptus has a history of tackling political and social issues in Europe. The “Labyrinth of Plastic Waste” is but one example. “We were looking to demonstrate, in a poetic manner, the amount of plastic waste that is consumed daily,” Luzinterruptus explained in a statement. “In addition to focusing attention on the big business of bottling water, which leads to very serious problems in developing countries, whose citizens have watched as their aquifers have been privatized with impunity for the exclusive enrichment of large business owners and ruling classes without scruples.”


4. Amanda Schachter and Alexander Levi’s Harvest Dome

Architects Amanda Schachter and Alexander Levi‘s massive “Harvest Dome 2.0,” assembled from 450 umbrellas and 128 bottles, once floated around the inlet of Inwood Hill Park in New York City. Deemed a piece of “performance architecture,” the 24 by 18-foot structure further proves the world’s garbage can we reused in many unexpected ways.


5. John Sabraw’s Toxic Sludge Paintings

Using toxic runoff found in the Ohio River region, artist and professor John Sabraw produces his own DIY pigments — bold yellows and reds that are sourced from the oxidized sludge of abandoned coal mines. Rather than using imported iron oxide from China to make his paint colors, he taps into the water’s heavy metals left over from abandoned coal mines, bringing to light the region’s pollution problem in the process. “The artist, like the scientist, has a crucial role to perform in our society,” Sabraw explained to HuffPost. “See things differently, act on this vision, report the failures and successes.”

6. Naziha Mestaoui’s Virtual Forests trees 

Naziha Mestaoui‘s “One Beat One Tree” projects virtual forests onto city spaces, blurring the boundaries between the natural world and advancing technology. The digital trees actually grow in rhythm with a person’s heartbeat, as viewers can connect to the series via a smart phone sensor. And with each virtual plant, a physical one is grown in regions throughout the world, from Europe and Latin America to Africa and Asia. Since its inception two years ago, the project has already sparked the growth of 13,000 trees.

7. Rachel Sussman’s Oldest Things 

Photographer Rachel Sussman has been traveling the globe for the past 10 years, searching for the world’s oldest living things with camera in tow. From the Mojave Desert to the Australian Outback to Greenland’s icy expanses, she captures portraits of organisms capable of lasting for 80,000 years, shining a light on our planet’s resilience in the face of human intervention. “Extreme longevity can lull us into a false sense of permanence,” Sussman wrote for Brain Pickings. “But being old is not the same as being immortal.”

8. Barry Underwood’s Electric Landscapes 

Headlands (Outcrop) 

Combining elements of painting, photography, performance, cinema and land art, Barry Underwood renders environmental issues like light pollution and deforestation in electric splendor.”My attempt is to portray environmental issues that are not delivered in a heavy-handed way,” Underwood explained to HuffPost. “Rather in a way that draws attention in a pleasing way, then if contemplated could unfold a message of dissidence or a natural discord.”

9. Paulo Grangeon’s 1,600 Pandas. 

 French sculptor Paulo Grangeon used an unlikely medium to illuminate the reality of animal endangerment across the world. For his traveling exhibit, “Pandas on Tour,” he created 1,600 papier-mâché bears meant to represent the actual number of pandas left on the planet (recent estimates actually place the number slightly below that, at 1,596). Launched in 2008 in collaboration with the World Wildlife Fund, Grangeon’s project has traveled to landmarks in more than 20 countries, including the Eiffel Tower.

10. Daan Roosegaarde’s Vacuum



Ask a Dutch artist to solve the problem of blanket pollution in Beijing and what do you get? If you’ve tracked down Daan Roosegaarde, you’ll get “Smog,” a system of underground copper coils meant to suck up airborne particles using an electrostatic field. It’s like a vacuum cleaner that operates on a similar principle to statically charged balloons.

11. Aida Sulova’s Trash Cans

A Kyrgyz street artist named Aida Sulova confronted the rampant garbage problem in Bishkek by using trash bins as a canvas. According to Wooster Collective, the street artist pastes photographic images of open mouths on garbage cans throughout the city to “remind people that what they throw into the world, eventually ends up inside us.”

12. Chris Jordan’s Portraits of Consumption cell phones 

Cell phones #2

Atlanta 2005 Photographer Chris Jordan puts consumption into perspective with his series “Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption.” His works show the debris we as a society leave behind, from massive dumps of cell phones, to crushed cars and circuit boards, all squeezed together in hypnotic quantities. “I am appalled by these scenes, and yet also drawn into them with awe and fascination,” Jordan explained in an email to The Huffington Post. “The immense scale of our consumption can appear desolate, macabre, oddly comical and ironic, and even darkly beautiful; for me its consistent feature is a staggering complexity.”

13. Gabriel Orozco’s Found Objects

For the 2012 installation “Sandstars,” Gabriel Orozco arranged over 1,200 objects from the Isla Arena, Mexico trash repository on the Guggenheim Museum’s floor, accompanied by a dozen large, gridded photographs depicting the individual objects in a studio setting. The found treasures bring hints of the ignored wastelands into a gallery setting, forcing viewers to confront the effects of industrial and commercial refuse.

14. rAndom International’s Rain Room 


The 2013 phenomenon that was the “Rain Room“ invited MoMA viewers to experience a deluge of falling water without getting wet. According to the museum’s description for the exhibition EXPO 1: New York, “the work invites visitors to explore the roles that science, technology, and human ingenuity can play in stabilizing our environment.”

15. Agnes Denes’s Wheatfields 

Agnes Denes, Wheatfield, 1982

Agnes Denes is a giant among land artists. Her most well-known project is probably the 1982 piece “Wheatfield — A Confrontation,” in which she planted a field of golden wheat on two acres of a landfill near Wall Street and the World Trade Center in Manhattan. She weeded, irrigated and cultivated the mini oasis, bringing the essence of rural America into the throngs of America’s urban epicenter. The confrontation was between nature and artifice. 16.

16. Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Surrounded Islands surrounded islands 

Christo and the late Jeanne-Claude are well known for their massive land artworks that serve to remind viewers of the natural wonders scattered around the planet. For “Surrounded Islands,” the two artists encircled 11 islands in Biscayne Bay, Miami with 6.5 million square feet of floating pink woven polypropylene fabric. In the process, they cleaned up 40 tons of garbage from the floating land masses.

17. Mathilde Roussel’s Living Sulptures

French artist Mathilde Roussel created a series of living grass installations that take the shape of human beings. Made of recycled material and fabric filled with soil and wheat grass seeds, the pieces are meant to symbolize the centrality of food. “Observing nature and being aware of what and how we eat makes us more sensitive to food cycles in the world — of abundance, of famine — and allows us to be physically, intellectually and spiritually connected to a global reality,” the artist explains.

18. Pedro Reyes’ Grasshopper Burgers 

For “The People’s United Nations (pUN)” exhibition at Queens Museum in New York, Mexican artist Pedro Reyes made climate change and geo-engineering points of focus for his diplomatic performance piece. He even served grasshopper burgers during a lunch break to participants in the 193-person assembly to highlight the carbon footprint of meat. “Protein from insects is the way of the future,” the artist has proclaimed.

ANDREA LUKA ZIMMERMAN: ESTATE A REVERIE & TASKAFA

I hear an interview with Andrea Luka Zimmerman on the radio when she was talking about her films career and ideology with reference to Taskafa, Stories of the Street. I really liked her attitude and social conscience as well as the political issues she said dealt with in her work although never overtly. For my global warming idea I too am dealing with some of these issues and like her I primarily see myself as a documentarian so I decided to research her and look at some of here films.

Zimmerman is an artist, cultural activist and filmmaker. She grew up on a large council estate in Munich and left school at 16. After moving to London in 1991, she studied at Central St. Martins. She is a co-founder of the artists' collectives Fugitive Images and Vision Machine. Her collaborative feature drama Cycle (forthcoming) with Adrian Jackson (Cardboard Citizens) was the winner of the Artangel Open Award 2014.

Andrea Zimmerman's work deals with issues and whilst not dealing directly with global warming her work does explore the impact of globalisation, power structures, militarism and denied histories. She celebrates strategies of social and cultural resistance and proposes new ways of living together in the face of a threatened idea of the ‘common good'.

A good example of her work is Zimmerman’s her film Estate, a Reverie (2015). The film follows the long drawn out closure of the Haggerston Estate in East London and the utopian promise of social housing it once offered. Zimmerman has been a resident on the estate herself for 17 years and filmed over a huge seven year time scale. Zimmerman was aware the demolition was in the cards and never sought to make a film about the estate but then started questioning that it was not just the buildings that would be lost. In an interview with London Calling website by Marina Nenadic she sums this "I thought: what is it that we’re going to let go of now? There were all these kinds of community engagements and people who have been there forever and the beautiful friendships that form. I wanted to show the life that was there, before it went for good."

Estate, a Reverie to me reveals the plucky everyday humanity and resilience of residents who are generally constantly overlooked by media representations and wider social responses. The film is excellent in portraying the complex relationships between people and the conditions in which they find themselves. It constantly asks the viewer how we might resist and challenge the stereotypes of class, gender, ability, disability and geography.

Zimmerman again sums this up perfectly in the London calling interview and the social conscience behind her work, "it’s not just about housing but also about access to social services when you’re disabled or severely ill and elderly. You will see in the film that people really struggle to get any help at all. So it’s not just rent in itself but also the social structures around it. The cuts happen because people are invisible. Elderly people are invisible, disabled people are invisible. You’re aware that there are people living by very small means, and they create a real life from that, but all of that is impossible by this situation we face now in which all affordable housing is unaffordable. To have a dignified, decent life in which they don’t have to fit into a certain age or ability bracket is almost impossible in Hackney in the future as I see it."

I really enjoyed the film humanism in the film and the quiet way it went about making its points, you never felt like they were being force fed to you and were all wrapped up in the community, characters and stories from of the contributors. In her own words "Community is made up of real diversity and difference and co-existence and generosity, and that’s hopefully what this film shows. I want them to see a celebration and refusal to just be a person with not many means, because everyone has so much richness so I want them to see these communities that are often so unseen or unrecognised."

The film is punctuated by the poetic words at the start and end and the historical through lines about the area, its inhabitants and the history written about it. The only misstep is the historical re-enactment which to me does not fit. In my opinion. The spray painting of estate and the music also all enhance the piece and lift it beyond it's humble stories and surroundings.

The use of huge photos of the past tenant inhabitants over the boarded up windows of the abandoned flats was particularly poignant. Further research and an excellent piece my Nela Milic in Art and the city sheds some light on this. Milic reveals that this was a separate piece of work that Zimmerman created with the residents called "I am here" 2009. Hackney council made them take it down but the statement in real life and on film was very clear and simple.  The portraits flew in the face of the abandoned, derelict worthless, labels that Hackney council had put on the estate and demonstrated that real people lived there and that they were proud of that.

It is shot with no frills yet has a real inner beauty swaying between keeping you as the viewer as an outsider forced to look in but than also at times fully enveloped in the lives and struggle of the characters and their struggle. The joy of the film is the time we get to see the people on the estate and live with them. They may sometimes play for the camera but generally we see them simply exist and this must be due to Zimmerman's relationship to them and the trust she has built up. She gets us close up access to this "Walled city" and the many characters in it. When "strangers" of various guises come for some poverty tourism we agree with the community that we do not want them there as we feel in the inner circle. Zimmerman's sympathetic and honest approach  never makes us feel that we indulging in poverty tourism ourselves. There is an honesty about the camerawork it is no frills and just recorded interfering very little with the action and generally still.

The film also has a poetry about it and an honesty, and even though it is very obviously subjective it is forgiven for shining a light on characters who all too often have a voice. The film allows the viewer to empathise with their situation by providing a window into their world and the struggles that we have all and injustices that we all feel from time to time. Through this it manages to show the extraordinary in the ordinary of their lives and issues. It is a heartfelt piece and you do get a sense that as Zimmerman herself puts it "Estate has not been made about this community, but has been made from it. ".

To me the film demonstrates that there are stories in very neighbourhood, behind every front door and engaging characters too. I can be too obsessed with style but the simple honesty of the camerawork here gives the story and the characters and integrity. They never feel contrived, over the top or lampooned and are always given the time and space to be and scratch beneath the skin of their characters and story.

Below is an excellent discussion about the film from the BFI.
http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/560eb7cb09d68

Estate, a Reverie, 83mins, 2015 (Trailer) from Andrea Luka Zimmerman on Vimeo.

The themes of Estate, a Reverie resonate through a great deal of Zimmermans other films. Taskafa, Stories of the Street (2013), is a film about survival and co-existence told through the lives of the street dogs of Istanbul and the citizens who care for them. Despite several major attempts by Istanbul´s rulers, politicians and planners over the last 400 years to exterminate them, the city´s street dogs have persisted thanks to an enduring alliance with widespread civilian communities, which recognise and defend their right to co-exist. The film opens a window on the contested relationships between power and the public, community and categorisation (in location and identity), and the ongoing struggle / resistance against a single way of seeing and being. It is structured around and voiced by the late writer and storyteller John Berger from his own novel King: A Street Story (1988).

The film is about street dogs but this story provides a window in to see other issues, people, characters, politics and social issues in Istanbul at the same time just like Estate did. A Savage online magazine article captures this well "Andrea Zimmerman’s essay film looks at the economic and political state of Turkey through the stories of Istanbul’s street dogs and the community that fosters them. Zimmerman’s editing effortlessly blends the real and surreal to demonstrate people’s harmonious co-existence with dogs, cats and birds. Her collage of testimonials illustrates the inexplicable bond between people and animals: they are as much part of the city as the streets’ cobblestones, or the bricks that make up buildings.

The style is really interesting as we are often given a dogs eye view of the street which research shows was hard to do. Early attempts to fit cameras on the dogs failed so it was left to the he cinematographer to film on a low slung body mount. The filming was still possible though as the dogs were very used to human interaction and soon got used to the rig. In her book New Political Animals Sophie Mayer describes the effect of this view point. "Zimmerman develops a low-angle, blurred "dogs eye view" to make Taskafa a participant in, as well as object of discussion, and there are often at least as many dogs as humans on screen. Human behaviour is viewed in the ethical context of its companionship or otherwise to the squares dogs". We are made to feel empathy with the dogs and the dogs a representative of the communities as a whole in Turkey.

The film is a reminder that we cannot be separated from nature, despite the efforts of politicians and city planners to create increasingly empty and formulaic environments. In the film the people and communities contribute “They came here before us”, utters an interviewee. “I know the history. People came after. Humans, we kill people; animals, we destroy. Is there anything more savage than that?”.

Although the film mainly focuses on street dogs, it consistently raises issues of cultural intolerance and social segregation. People’s generosity towards them when they often have little themselves community contrasts with eradication attempts of Istanbul’s rulers and politicians. The move of the politicians towards urbanism in the 1950s saw gates erected to keep the ‘good’ in and the ‘bad’ out. “It’s so obvious the sour relations between rich people and the street animals”, says an old man defiantly in the film, “it’s like a caste system”.

I found the film about memory and the most necessary sense of us all, belonging, through a search for the role played in the city by Istanbul´s street dogs and their relationship to its human populations. Both the street dogs and the people who l care for them as with as Estate it provide a window to examine the extremes of human life and the extraordinary power of people and community.

Taşkafa, stories of the street, 66min, 2013 / trailer from Andrea Luka Zimmerman on Vimeo.

What I will take forward from Anrea Zimmerman into my own work.

• The honesty of her camera and no frills approach. It looks like it is all shot in natural light and this with the camerawork and sound gives it an honest and real feel. The baggy framing allows the contributors to inhabit their spaces and for us to drink in the details of the minutiae of their lives.
• Building the amazing rapport she has with her participants. Be they humans or dogs!
• The way she addresses the politics not as a full frontal assault but through her subjects. they make the points and she simply gives them a platform to do that.
• Her humanist spirit. The films are about people (or dogs) the issues are their circumstances.
• The spending time with the subject matter. Estate was shot over 7 years. Time can allow a story to play and unfold.
• The realisation that stories are everywhere. they do not have to be sensational they are happening in your street, neighbourhood and although smaller can be just as if not more interesting.
• Her work is real mood pieces. There is an understated flow and mood that creeps into every frame. The general views of the surroundings and life just going on in both films greatly contribute to this.
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GLOBAL WARMNING RESEARCH: INITIAL IDEAS

The following are all ideas and avenues to investigate more and to research around the idea for the Global Warmning piece. Presently it is little more than a piece to comment on global warming and climate change. I aim to explore this area and to organically develop a piece from this broad subject matter. I have a close friend who is very high up within Greenpeace and i am aiming for the piece to be content that would highlight their concerns and causes on the issue. Other than that it is going to be a fluid voyage of discovery.

What follows is a "brain dump" of some of the stylistic, thematic, aesthetic, structural and ideological ideas that I am toying with at this early stage. I aim to research all of these further to help shape and influence these as I move the piece forward.

THEMES  & IDEOLOGY

• The history of climate change and the man made aspects of it.
• The causes of climate change and how it occurred.
• The effects of climate change.
• The international political debate and "spin" surrounding climate change. Famous U-turns, quotes, naysayers, arguments, academics, specialists and the scientific world.
• A call to arms. What can we do to stop/prevent? Globally, nationally, locally or as individuals.
• Climate change

RESEARCH & EXHIBITION LEARNING AGREEMENT

MA Research & Exhibition Proposal


What I Aim To Achieve
Since the start of the course I have been trying to extend my practice away from the mainstream side of TV finding the often formulaic nature of this somewhat confining. My aim has continually been to stretch my practice, influences and approaches to factual filmmaking. This has led to investigations into a more creative, inventive and artistic approach to documentary style codes and conventions. This had led to my practice evolving into experiments with installation work, animation, motion graphics and micro documentaries. Whilst this has indeed developed my practice it has also made me realize that content really must dictate form. Too often I have tried to impose style for styles sake and must realize that progressing my practice does not have to mean being innovative when traditional styles may be the best methods for the piece. I love great cinematography, sound design and classic style and too often in order to move forward have been guilty of throwing baby out with the bathwater. I want to look more into how the two can coexist in my work moving forward. Moving forward my aim continues to be exploring how far I can push the boundaries of factual, character-based narrative films. Whilst retaining the narrative and character based subject matter I love. However in some of my pieces I have found myself straying from the narrative and character based subject matter with a strong message and ideology that I love. This has clarified and solidified that it’s importance to me and that to me it does indeed override form and style in the hierarchy of my working practice. I work best when at the service of the “factual” subject matter first and foremost and the ideology, messages and values I am trying to communicate. From my previous work on the MA work and my research and development I feel that these themes are what I will pursue further as my continuing areas of interest. Moving forward my aims and objectives are outlined below.


1: Investigate Factual Film-making Form, Fictional and Avant Garde Film hybrids.
When does a factual film become a work of fiction? When does it become avant-garde? What happens to fact when it is mixed with fiction and an approach with an art aesthetic? From my work to date I believe I am operating in the spaces between documentary, fiction, avant-garde installation pieces. This is an area I wish to explore further as I see my work as having a foot in all of these camps. I want to develop further my practice into the deconstruction of documentary modes and stylistics and the definition of what a documentary is, should be and could be. I want to continue to experiment and subvert documentary form modes and boundary crossing into other areas.


2: Explore Documentary Style and Create More Visually and Aurally Creative Films.
I wish to continue to explore the possibilities of the reflexive documentary style borrowing from other areas of the arts and moving image with more emphasis on the aesthetic to tell the story in a more emotive way. I want to investigate ways image can be used to tell a factual story and move away from simple expository documentary formula of talking heads and GV’s to a more and imaginative, inventive visual and aural style. This may include the fusion of shot footage, animation, roto-scoping, archive footage, abstract images, use of music, motion graphics, sound design and sophisticated camerawork styles. They will also be playful with documentary modes and formats and what Werner Hertzog termed “The Ecstatic Truth”. This is a poetic, imaginative, fabrication and creative, stylistic interpretation of the truth created by the author uninhabited by the constraints of reality. However as mentioned above there is a thin line to cross and style must serve substance and content. I must be bold enough to make sure technique is enhancing the films message, narrative and characters and to hold back a little when this dictates.


3: Push Possibilities of Character Based Factual Storytelling and Representation
I will continue exploring the notion of representation in factual cinema and the fact that nothing can be a 100% true representation so it this important? Godfather of documentary John Grierson used the term “creative treatment of actuality” and Guys Madin “docu-fantasias” to explore how creativity, subjectivity and objectivity can be treated individually or as interesting bedfellows. Is bias necessarily a bad thing? How far can the factual film-maker go when creating subjective representations of characters, places and events before the piece is no longer based on truth? They will also be playful with documentary modes and formats and what Hertzog termed “The Ecstatic Truth” a truth created by the author uninhabited by the constraints of reality.


4: Utilize New Documentary Formats, Exhibition and Distribution
I have made inroads into this but want to investigate it even further. I have started to challenge the documentary form and distribution to try and find new audiences and audience consumption through my move to installation pieces. I have enjoyed multi screen installations and exploring idea of not being confined to one screen and the interaction and interplay between multiple screens but how much does the venue or exhibition method change the content? I want to further explore formats and dissemination more through of micro-docs, live worldwide docos (periscope), VR documentaries, more installations, site specific work, interactive documentaries and online formats that challenge and develop the conventional documentary. However I must not neglect tradition formats, exhibition and distribution if content is best served there and realize that these can work in tandem.


5: Remember Less Is More
All too often in my work I have thrown the kitchen sink at my pieces trying to work with too many layers of style, ideology, themes and elements. Time and time again the ideas that have served me best have been stripped down, 2-3 key stylistics elements and one central message within them. I will attempt to refrain from overcomplicating my work and try and distill and refine the stylistics and ideology down to their key elements. This will mean continuing to experiment with new techniques, structure, codes and conventions as mentioned before but just not too many at the same time!


6: Develop a Body Of Work Exploring the Aims Outlined Above
I aim to develop to varying degrees the ideas below. Initially I will concentrate on A and B but I also want to work towards demo versions, visuals and research in some of the other areas too. Research and action research will ultimately decide the pieces of work that I will see through to completion.


A: Global Warmning
A multi screen installation piece charting the history of global warming (now climate change) and the debates surrounding it’s validity. It will pitch the facts and figures, sound-bites from both sides of the debate, u-turns, alongside visual evidence of the phenomenon. The piece has interest and possible support from Greenpeace. It will be a collage of news sound bites, audio, images, video, physical representations, photos, motion graphics, animations and kinetic typography. I envisage the screens displaying the physical evidence of natural disasters, melting ice caps, shots from space and ozone imaging.


B: Anonymous.
A documentary created back to front as trying to shoehorn creative style and formats onto documentaries has been to the detriment of the idea. So this will be a back to front approach on deciding the styles and formats I would like to use and then finding an appropriate subject. I like the subversive idea of the documentary subject being anonymous and not appearing except possibly a voice and working backwards finding a subject(s) to whom this would be appropriate. To this end I developed the anonymous idea of potentially working with subjects who wish to remain anonymous such as graffiti artists, personal stories from participants who do not wish to be featured, political and environmental activists and criminals.


C: Cinematique
This piece will be site(s) specific and explore the love of cinema and viewing film as a collective audience and how that effects consumption. It will deal with the ways of seeing art from different perspectives and blurring the lines between audience and participation. The piece will be a site specific installation based in a cinema either real of created. However the audience will be the film and I want to explore multiple screens representing the cinema audience each one possible a talking head of an audience member explaining their love of the act of “cinema going” and cinema. Screens will be placed around the site sharing their experiences and reflections and the audience will be able to go around and choose whose recollections they want to hear. On the cinema screen will be the image of the cinema auditorium so shining a mirror back on itself and the audience interacting with the screens.


D: The Nature of Love?
An experimental documentary exploring the nature of love in all it’s facets through the eyes of my 92 year old grandmother. She has had two very successful marriages one lasting until middle age and then she remained single only re-marrying in her late 70’s. However she still carries a torch for her first and true love a pilot who she only went out with a few times but never made it back from one of his missions. Within the context of these three relationships I want to try and frame the three stages of love lust, attraction and attainment.


E: Planet Splendid
A factual style TV program disguised as a children’s animated TV series. This will be the development of a the script, visuals animatic and possibly a scene heading towards a pilot. The pilot will be centered around a character from outer space in this case a planet with all angular edges and shapes. Coming to earth (Plant Splendid) he will learn about curves, wheels etc and take these back to his planet. Other themes colour, manners, music etc…


F: Natures Test Card
This will be an attempt at deconstructing the typical nature documentary down to it’s core elements then re-imagining them. Very similar to the trend in restaurants to “deconstruct dishes”. It will use image and picture to create a loose narrative but within the confines of a test card that will be created for experiencing in a virtual reality world inside a VR headset.


G: Residue
Currently still in early development stages it will be an exploration into the notion of memory and it’s selectivity. I would like to work with alzheimers patients creating one off bespoke personal documentaries about the key events in their lives to act as memory triggers. Possibly extend to life lessons from older citizens for today’s youth.


Indicative Reference Material: Factual Film References
I have a profound interest and cultural awareness of a huge variety of filmmakers working in the field of documentary film today and also those from the past. Far too many to mention here but here are some pieces of work that I greatly admire and continue to draw inspiration from.


Zero Days: Alex Gibney (2016)
Uses an actress to play an amalgamation of interviewees about the Stuxnet virus malware cyberweapon “allegedly” created by the US NSA and Israel to destroy Iranian enrichment centrifuges that spread worldwide. It uses CGI imagery to disguise the actress on screen.


Tower: Kevin Maitland (2016)
An innovative telling of Americas first campus mass killing. Told by actors voicing the words of those involved 50 years ago and also shooting new footage and rotoscoping the action over archive footage, reenactments, photos and animations. It brings the story to life and makes it feel contemporary.


Notes on Blindness; Peter Middleton & James Spinney (2014)
A documentary on academic John Hull’s dealing with his impending blindness through an audio diary. Over three years John recorded over sixteen hours of material, a unique testimony of loss, rebirth and renewal, excavating the interior world of blindness and this documentary uses the recordings lip-synched by actors to illustrate this. It was accompanies by a fantastic VR recreation of visuals demonstrating how John built a sonic landscape through sound.


Exit Through The Gift Shop; Banksy (2010)
Banksy’s documentary on Thierry Guetta, a Los Angeles-based Frenchman who videotapes various underground art escapades, and later is transformed into an art phenomenon dubbed "Mr. Brainwash." The finished film overlaps and blurs the documentary between what is real and what might be fake blurs, as modern art and celebrity are put under the microscope.


The Possibilites Are Endless; James Hall & Edward Lovelace. (2014)
A fusion of high art and delicate storytelling about the rehabilitation of Scottish singer Edwin Collins after a life threatening stroke. Always inspirational, never taking the obvious tabloid route.


The Arbor; Clio Barnard. (2010)
A mesmerizing and beautiful documentary fusing narrative and documentary on the tragic playwright Andrea Dunbar.


The Kid Stays in the Picture; Nanette Burstein & Brett Morgan. (2002)
A stylistic and creative documentary on infamous Paramount studio head Robert Evans. A real raconteur he is only on screen through clever use of archive materials from layered and moving photos tand archive film clips and footage.


The Filth and The Fury; Julien Temple. (2000)
A wonderful documentay extracting often painful rememberances from the Sex Pistols against a mismatched collage of image and sound with a punk style aesthetic.


My Winnipeg; Guy Maddin. (2007)
A crazy free-wheeling and intriguing documentary of the filmmakers formative years growing up in Winnipeg. Re-enactments, archive footage and dreamlike camera-work create a compelling and beguiling docu-fantasia.


Night Mail; Harry Watt & Basil Wright. (1936)
A pioneering documentary and subtle propaganda of a postal train travelling from London to Scotland. It fuses poetry from W.H. Auden a score by Benjamin Britten to fascinating effect.


Other Filmmaker Inspirations:
John Smith, Andrea Luka Zimmerman, Luke Fowler, Patrick Keiller, William Raban and Ben Rivers. Other Indicative Reference Material and Inspirations Vinyl Requiem: Lol Sargent/Philip Jeck The Clock: Christian Marclay Now: Chantal Ackerman A Free and Anonymous Movement: Jane and Louise Wilson Martyrs: Bill Viola Can I Get an Amen?: Nate Harrison Door Into The Dark: Anagram 40 Part Motet: Janet Cardiff Raw Materials: Bruce Nauman Palisades: Rachel Rose


Art Movements:
Pop Art, Post Modernism, Appropriation


Artists:
Claude Manet, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Marcel Duchamp, Jeff Koons, Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince, Barbara Kruger, Roland Barthes & Elaine Sturtevant.


Installation Artists:
Nate Harrison, Cory Archangel, Jane and Louise Wilson, Christian Marclay, Bill Viola, Nam June Paik, Chantal Ackerman and Anagram, Lol Sargent/Philip Jeck and Janet Cardiff. John J H Phillips, Yayoi Kusama, Hannah Black, Ryan Trechartin, Andrew Thomas Huang, Gillian Wearing, Shana Moulten, Sue de Beer, Douglas Gordon, Yang Fudong and Tony Oursler


Resources To Aid My Work:
Alongside my own video shooting and sound recording kit I am likely to need the following to undertake my work and to extend my practice and skill base and to enable a more cinematic approach to my work.
• Use of 3D VR software and headsets for developing immersive content.
• Access to “full frame” DSLR cameras.
• Various lens’s to enable more cinematic qualities to my cinematography.
• Access to “grip” equipment. Track and dolly, jib arms, steadycam etc.
• Training and assistance with motion graphics software eg Adobe After effects.
• Possible refresher training on AVID although I may cut in Adobe Premiere Pro.
• Assistance with sound manipulation software such as Logic Pro.
• Guidance and technology for installations and using projectors for video mapping.


Support from Tutors:
Plenty of reference points from tutors on texts to look at and publications, reports on the areas I intend to investigate. More support in art theorists, theories, movements that link into my areas of interest.
• Audience & participation.
• Site specific artworks.
• Ideas of seeing.
• Representation.
• Sampling art, re-versioning, repurposing, recycling movements and art.
• Post-modernism.