Byron Hurt

Last semester I saw a film in the union theatre, called "Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes." I found this film very interesting and thought-provoking. It was about the issues of rap and hip hop and how they deal with so much violence in their songs. Hurt was a quarterback at the Northeastern University. He made this film because he wanted to discuss the gender roles and violence in hip hop culture. In this film he interviewed numerous people including celebrities like Busta Rhymes and Fat Joe. He also interviews people at some kind of hip hop festival. Hurt interviews Busta Rhymes about homosexuality and hip hop, in which Busta responds by saying he doesn't want to offend anybody but "what I represent culturally, doesnt condone homosexuality whatsoever." When Hurt went on to ask Busta if a homosexual rapper would ever be accepted in the culture, Busta exited the interview. It was very interesting to think about it, because I have never considered what it would be like for a gay rapper to try and enter the community. Hurt had mentioned that there are gay rappers, although they are too afraid to come out. I would think that a lot of their fans would be lost. It seems that most of the people that listen to rap act all tough and hard and if they found out their favorite rapper was gay, they probably not listen to them anymore, in fact i think they would probably be very angered as well about it. Although, I think a gay rapper would attract a lot of other fans just for the fact that they had the courage to come out and do that. At the part of the film where they were at a hip hop festival, there were so many girls being grabbed and touched as they walked down the street. Most of them just dealt with it, but there were a few who tried to fight back at the men. The guys just laughed, of course. This part of the film really angered me because of the disrespect. Part of the hip hop culture, as explained in the film, is all about trying to be the most violent, have the most money, and have lots of women and sexual attention. i think the men were acting this way at the festival because they feel it's justified at this kind of place. The girls were dressed very sexual and the men even said that they were "allowed" to do that because they were dressed so slutty. I think this film was extremely powerful and I would love to see it again. It is powerful for anyone, let alone an african american man to make a film that brings these kinds of issues to attention.

Ryan Trecartin

Last semester, I went to a screening of Ryan Trecartin's film at the UWM union theatre. It was definitely a different experience. It was far from what I expected. There was a lot of color, odd characters, and strange dialogue. There didn't seem to be much of a plotline, it was just random scenes strung together. To be honest, I kind of felt like you had to be under the influence of some kind of psychadelic drugs to watch this film. At the beginning it was sort of funny, but then it just got long and hard to watch. I don't understand what the film was about. I didn't understand if it was suppossed to be one long story or just a bunch of little things going on. Even the individual scenes themselves, I didn't get what was going on. The characters seemed to be talking really strange and not making any sense. They all seemed to talk like valley girls too. I didn't understand the significance of the body paint used either. There was just too much going on in this movie. After the film, Ryan Trecartin answered some questions about his film. He had mentioned that the film wasn't completely random, yet it is hard to get what he was saying in the film. He couldn't even answer someone's question when they asked him to explain how it wasn't random. All in all, I thought the film was interesting for being so unique, however I didn't understand it in the least and I still don't.

May 5th Lecture

The film we watched called "Hold Me While I'm Naked" was a very interesting piece. Carl told us before watching it, that it was made by George Kuchar and his friends. He mentioned that Kuchar had asked his friends to appear naked in the film. This film had a Woody Allen kind of feel for me. It seemed like it was suppossed to be this sexual film, yet had humor in it and jokes. I was curious during the movie, to know if the people in the film were couples or if Kuchar just had asked them to work together as one. I was also curious to know how apprehensive they all were to take their clothes off for his film. What were Kuchar's intentions for this film? Was this film meant to be nothing more than a comedic piece or was there a more complex meaning behind the film. I was interested in what kinds of views and feelings does Kuchar have on sex that were attributed to this film? The whole film was about being naked and sex,etc. so what inspired him to make this? This film reminded me of Woody Allen's "Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex", although Allen's movie is a little more forward. I embedded a clip from the movie, however this is the only one I could find on Youtube.com

April 28th Lecture

"Duck Soup" seemed to be more about cheap jokes in each scene. Once the joke was over, the scene was over. There was definitely a narrative to it but not all the shots seemed to forward the story. There were scenes that didn't really push the story forward. For example, the scene where the two spys were playing pranks on the peanut stand guy. The scene was humorous but it didn't push the storyline forward. "The Way Things Go" was a narrative in its own way. It didn't have an obvious story to it, however if a narrative just means that there is a "logical sequence of incidents that take us from point A to point B", then the movie definitely had a narrative to it. You were not capable of getting from point A to point B without going through all the steps of the sequence. It was its own story because everything was connected. I would say these two films are similar because without all the fluff in the middle, you couldn't get the end product. In the "duck soup" film, all the gags seemed to come up later in the film after it had been introduced already. Everything had its way of tieing together to create more laughs. Using Frampton's formula, I would say that the film "Duck Soup" is mostly about the leader who made all the jokes (I cant remember his name, Rufus maybe?), and "The Way Things Go" would probably be about fire and the bottle rocket things they used, or just chemistry in general.

April 7th Lecture

In the film "Natural Features", I noticed mostly the eerie noises. I noticed a lot of faces, the color black, and the act of painting. Based on Frampton's formula for films, I would say this film was about eerie noises because that is what I noticed the most in the film, it seemed to be what occurred most in the film. Visual wise, I would say the film is about faces because thats what seemed to appear most in the film. I don't think it was helpful to my understanding of the film to think of it this way. It was only when I put everything together when I really got a feel for the film and what it might possibly be about. I seemed to get this creepy feeling watching this film in class. I actually thought the exact same thing as someone in class discussed about this film- I got this feeling that there was some kind of psychotic murderer making noises and singing to himself and basically entertaining himself. I felt like this person was into torture, and I got this feeling because they kept showing faces and they would be painted over or deformed in certain ways. You could also hear screams every once in a while in the film, which made it feel like there were people tied up or something in a room nearby. I felt kind of like this person I had imagined in my head had some kind of mental disability because they kept singing and making car noises, etc. The part I found most disturbing was with the family portrait with the eyes all blacked out and I think this was when the singing started up.

Table Top Video- After thoughts

I thought my taping went alright. I think I went a little too fast. I was afraid that I wouldn't get it all done so I was rushing through it, and then when I got to the end I had like 30 seconds to waste. I took a long time to mix the silly putty, which was probably boring to watch, and then with the extra time I just played with the silly putty. When I practiced this at my house I kept going over the time, so when I actually did it in class I was rushing through it. I think it worked well for me that I had some silly putty along that I had let dry overnight, because otherwise I would not have been able to take it out of the cup since it was so sticky. I think I learned that 2 minutes and 30 seconds is a lot longer than I had thought.

Table Top- Artist Statement

For my table top video, I will be proving that "Chemistry Can Be Fun." I will be explaining what a polymer is and then making a polymer by making some silly putty. I did this "experiment" last year at UW-Sheboygan with my class when we put on a chemistry show for the children in our community. My intentions for the video is to show that chemistry isn't always difficult and boring work, that it can also be fun and entertaining sometimes. So the two main things I am demonstrating is that chemistry is fun and also how to make silly putty.

Week Six

When we watched Alex Bag's video in class, it immediately reminded me of Ryan Trecartin and his works. I saw this Ryan Trecartin video last semester when he visited UWM. This isn't exactly the video I wanted but I couldn't find a better one. In general, his works echo Alex Bag's video because they are both so random. The part in United Fall 95 that reminded me most of Ryan Trecartin was probably the part where there was two girls wearing bright wigs and lipstick and talking about being bored. The characters were similar to characters in Trecartin's films because they are always wearing bright colors and they are usually wearing paint on their skin as well. In both artists' works they also seemed to talk in a "valley girl" kind of way with all the "like", "ya know", etc. Their videos are both so random with so many ideas put into one piece, even though they don't seem to go together. This particular video is similar to Bag's because of the bright wigs and clothes like I mentioned she used in her film in the "I'm so bored" sketch. They say "fricken" a lot and they are both in a store. In both pieces, the characters are talking about such random and odd things that it makes you wonder if they are on some kind of drugs. Trecartin uses more detail in his pieces, there is more too look at and more complex sets and effects.

Week Five

This week I found the video with the two dogs and the tennis ball the most interesting. When I first saw it, I wondered if I had seen that on Sesame Street before. Someone mentioned that in discussion, which is where it was confirmed that the artist had done pieces for Sesame Street. The author of this piece, I see as an animal lover. I see this person being fascinated by animals and being very observant of animals. I can picture this guy making up little games and tricks with his dogs. I can picture this guy being very patient as well. It obviously takes a lot of patience to work with animals, its not like you can just make an animal do something right away. The thing I found most interesting about this piece was the dog on the left side(when looking at the screen) because he kept looking all around. The other dog was just very stiff following the tennis ball without hesitation. The other dog kept trying to outsmart the man by anticipating his moves and guessing where it would go next. It was funny to watch this dog freak out. His head kept jerking around to the other side, just waiting for more movement. I think the dogs have control in this piece. The man is trying to manipulate the dogs by waving the tennis ball in front of them and trying to keep their attention, however the dogs just look where they want to. The dog on the right was watching the ball dead on, yet the dog on the left was looking all over the place. My eyes seemed to stay on that dog to see what he would do next. I kept thinking he was going to run around trying to achieve the ball.

Week Four

This week was interesting to see someone's work while she was there with us. It was nice to hear the artist's point of view for once. It was also interesting to hear what others had to say about Althea's work in discussion. One guy in class said that he saw her film in a gallery and thought she was being sarcastic in it, and then was uninterested to find out she was serious about it. I didn't see any of her work in galleries but I was kind of surprised about how serious she was about her work. I don't mean to cut her down, its just that her films were a little hard to take serious. I do give her credit though, for the fact that she majored in photography I believe? and now she is making films. It's taking me a while to learn how to do quality film pieces and I'm a film major myself. I thought her films kind of felt like she had come up with all these great ideas that she kept jotting down and then just decided to jam them all together in one piece. I found it amusing how Althea said she got so much feedback on her pieces that were unintentional in her work. For example, how she said she got comments of maybe the girl had an eating disorder in the first film we watched. I would have never thought of the ideas she had told us about, but once we heard it, it all made complete sense. I thought her piece "A Memory Lasts Forever" was really awkward and uncomfortable. It bothered me from the beginning how the girl was stumbling around all fake pretending she was drunk and one girl was even puking, and then once they found the dead dog- they were instantly sober; singing songs and panicking and all. I thought the song was a little korney too. It felt like a disney movie, like someone mentioned in class. I felt that "Songstress" was entertaining at first, but quickly got boring. I felt myself wanting to see the next clip only to see what she looked like and how she sounded. It seemed like the girls were trying a little too hard. The only one I really enjoyed was the girl with the braids and the orange skirt. I think she sounded a lot like Jewel and she looked like Alanis Moirsette. By the time we saw the last girl, I was just not interested in the whole thing. In the last film(I can't remember the name), I found this one the most interesting. I think it seemed like it had a lot more thought and planning behind it. I couldn't figure out quite what she wanted us to get out of it as a viewer, but it kept my interest. It kind of made me feel like there was some kind of message behind it but I just couldn't grasp what she was saying. It was cool to see the end stare at the end though from all the characters. It was also great how she used the camera on a track the whole time and just filmed without stopping the camera or without even pausing in one spot.

Week Three

I had a hard time this week with the class screenings and art work. I had trouble seeing most of it as art. We started off with the performance called "step piece". I didn't understand how this was considered an art form, it was just somebody stepping up and down. If we gathered a group together and watched as people walked down the street, would that be considered art or a performance piece? John Cage's 4'33" was kind of out there as well. I didn't find it amusing until I read the article about the piece. It said how Cage was imitating how there is no such thing as silence. It's interesting to think about it this way. When you would normally consider a moment as "silence", you can still hear ambient noises. You can hear humming and buzzing of buildings or heaters, etc. or you can hear animals like birds if you are outside. I never thought about it this way. It makes me wonder how Cage came up with his ideas. Was he just sitting around one day and he realized all the noises around him? Carl mentioned another piece in class, yet I can't remember who he said performed it. The piece consisted of someone saying they were having a poetry reading, so everyone gathered together, and then he came late and on his way he would call at every payphone to say where he was. It is an interesting concept in the way of how this person thought of it. Something you don't really pay much thought to, someone else saw it as a work of art, a performance piece of some sort. I wouldn't call it art myself, yet it was interesting. The thing that bugged me the most in class, was the picture we saw of Marcel Duchamp's Fountain. It bugged me because it was just a urinal; a urinal with his name on it, that was turned on its side. I got the impression that he didn't physically make this urinal, therefore I don't feel he had the right to call it art, let alone his own work.

Week Two

In Maya Deren's article "Creating Movies With a New Dimension: Time", Deren talks about creating dimensions of time in her films. She creates a feeling of time by doing trick cuts. For example, in Meshes of the Afternoon, Deren walks across her house and with each step, she walks on a different surface. (sand, grass, a rug, etc). This creates a feeling that she has walked longer than just a few steps. In the film we watched in class, At Land, she again creates this dimension of time when she is crawling up the branches on the beach. As she is crawling, the tree turns from brances, to a table, to a jungle-type area. Maya also talks about being creative in film. She discusses how there is "no particular value in duplicating something which already exists....except for purposes of personal or historical record..." I definitely agree with her on this statement. Why would somebody want to watch a film of, say a birthday party? It is more interesting when the filmmaker puts their own spin on the subject, when they put their own artistic view into the piece. Then we can see it as they see it.

Meshes of the Afternoon (Part one and two):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbJKyLXoqXc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GsNqHnbAWs&feature=related