Not long after posting this, I did a lecture-screening on Nature and Cinema at the San Francisco Cinematheque, and later at Chicago Filmmakers. But this is still something I'm looking into, and also with respect to art (installation, sculpture, painting, and so on). — Fred Camper

I have a query. I'm looking for films organized around ecological themes.

I'm NOT talking about films with ecological subject-matter -- save-the-planet documentaries or poetic hand-held out-of-focus films of trees -- but rather about films which take some aspect of their form from nature. I've long been struck by the paucity of such work, at least among the small percentage of new films that I am able to see, and especially compared to developments in the art world over the last few decades.

An increasing number of artists are trying to make work that draws inspiration from natural processes and forms. In some cases this may mean making large constructions out of metal that try to organize themselves around "ecological" principles, rather than formal or emotional organizational models that devolve from modernism. In other cases, artists actually include pieces of nature in their work. In all cases these artists surrender some of their ego-centered "artistic freedom" and control to allow a piece of nature to determine some aspect of their work, as in for example gallery installations that include actual growing things.

I come at this from a personal belief that the seizure of the entire planet for human use is a monstrous crime, a holocaust beyond imagining. No one knows the exact number, but a median estimate is that every year 25,000 entire species become extinct.

One filmmaker who I take as an example of what I'm looking for is Chris Welsby, whose work not only depicts nature, but often seems to draw its compositional and editing structures from close observations of nature. Are there others?

Fred Camper

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Subject: Re: Nature
Date: Sun, 29 Sep 1996 14:36:42 -0400
From: Barbara Bader <MicroBader@AOL.COM>
Reply-To: Experimental Film Discussion List <FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
To: FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM

Fred: That's an intriguing post about "films organized around ecological themes." Please tell me about Chris Welsby and his/her films, or where I could see some or read up about this notion. When I read your description of Welby's work, " seems to draw its compositional and editing structures from close observations of nature," my little inner voice whispered..."gottaseegottasee gottasee...."

Thanks.

Barbara

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Subject: Re: Nature
Date: Sun, 29 Sep 1996 13:46:18 -0800
From: Jeffrey Skoller <jasko@NWU.EDU>
Reply-To: Experimental Film Discussion List <FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
To: FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
References: 1
 

> I have a query. I'm looking for films organized around ecological
> themes.
>
> I'm NOT talking about films with ecological subject-matter --
> save-the-planet documentaries or poetic hand-held out-of-focus films of
> trees -- but rather about films which take some aspect of their form
> from nature. I've long been struck by the paucity of such work, at least
> among the small percentage of new films that I am able to see, and
> especially compared to developments in the art world over the last few
> decades.

Fred:

Some titles off the top of my head:

Joris Ivins' last film about the wind. Can't remember the name tho.

Nick Dorsky's "Alaya"

Andre Zravic's Ocean beat

Silt, Young-beautiful-new-age-all-boy, film collective makes s/8mm with concerns with nature, process, hand made materials, hand processing, homemade equipment etc. from SF, of course.

Tony Conrad's films that he buried, baked, molded etc.

Early works by Louis Hock about time.

Some of the new African filmmakers like Idrissa Ouedraogo, Mambety, Seck and others who are making amazing works, about nature and encroaching modernity.

But "Nature" is such a problematic construction as it is. As you know there are many works that deal not so much nature as thing in itself, as with something like landscape as place and history. So some of the more politically and philosophically engaged works made are perhaps more to the point. Three makers come to mind:

In Claude Landzmann's masterpiece "Shoah", Place, and the cycle of nature is central to his ideas about the way memory and forgetting function in relation to trauma.

Or Straub/Huillet's film's "From the Cloud to the Resistance" and "Too Early Too Late". The relation between the land and economy and history are central to a construction of a notion of nature in these films.

Todd Haynes' "Safe" a sci-fi, horror, satire, looks at environmental illness, and at once critiques bourgouis American life, mainstream medicine, and new age alternative lifestyles.

I can't think of any films by women in this vain--how interesting hmmm...

Yours is an interesting query, albeit philosophically quite problematic, since at this point in history, it is widely acknowledged that there is no such thing as nature other than some specifically cultural constructions. Like, how would we recognize nature as nature with-out some learned idea of what it is and why it is important? You are also asking about connections between the "natural" world that you posit as the alpha/omega of the "real" and an artform that is highly illusionistic and unnatural in the way it renders movement, time, space and geometry. Finally filmakers are artists who spend most of their lives in-doors, in dark rooms either staring at large plastic screens or sitting at editing benches staring into little flickering boxes. They use man made technologies, electrics, petroleum based products and chemicals that are highly toxic and polluting. They also use products made by some of the most vile greedy, multi-national corporations that exist. These corporations are the worst polluters in the world, and spend millions on destroying what ever environmental protection policies governments and people try adopt. So somehow, I kinda doubt that nature and ecology is at the top of most filmpoet's list of concerns. not that trees and oceans aren't meaningful, but I'm not quite sure how filmmaking and "Deep-ecology notions" are compatible. But I too would like to know.

Perhaps that beloved chestnut "Mothlight" is as close as you'll get...

Jeffrey Skoller
jasko@nwu.edu

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Subject: Re: Nature
Date: Sun, 29 Sep 1996 14:06:44 -0800
From: Jeffrey Skoller <jasko@NWU.EDU>
Reply-To: Experimental Film Discussion List <FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
To: FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
References: 1

Oh yeah I forgot anything by that "force of nature" George Kuchar!!

But esp. his Weather Diaries and any of the videos he's made about UFOs and Extra-terrestrials or OKLAMHOMA...

Jeffrey

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Subject: Re: Nature
Date: Sun, 29 Sep 1996 16:07:41 -0700
From: FC <fc@enteract.com>
To: Experimental Film Discussion List <FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
References: 1

Barbara Bader wrote:

> Please tell me about Chris Welsby and his/her films

Barbara,

Thanks for your interest in my "theme." Chris Welsby is a male, British, now teaching (I believe) at Simon Fraser University in Canada (British Columbia). He's been making films at least since the 70s. I haven't seen enough of them. I particularly loved ESTUARY, a 50-minute or so film in which multiple views of an estuary from different angles and at different times seemed not only to reflect natural changes (a common idea in the time-lapse sub-genre of observational filmmaking) but -- it's been years since I've seen it -- seemed to be trying to constitute the natural environment as something larger than, and outside of, an individual observer, which is a stance that a-g films don't usually take. Some short descriptions of his films can be found at http://www.movingimages.bc.ca/catalogue/Experimental/Experimental_w.html (If you don't have Web access, email me directly.) They're available from Canyon and several distributors in Canada. What city are you living in?

Fred Camper

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jeffrey,

Thanks much for your quick reply to my query. I've seen perhaps three quarters of the films you list, and very much appreciate your suggesting the rest. The Ivens film by the way is "The Other Side of the Wind," but it, and many of the other films you list, is not exactly what I'm looking for. I guess my interest is in films that view nature as something outside of, prior to, and other than, human civilization. Ivens's film, which I thought really great and incredibly moving, conflates his own breathing problems with the wind itself. There's an earlier Ivens, "Le Mistral," from the late 50s, that's actually more purely about the wind -- about a particular wind in the South of France, the "mistral" -- and that is closer to my interest here. Similarly "Shoah," a film I love and have written on, sees nature only through the filter of its theme, which is to the great shame of our species very much about human civilization. I saw Tony Conrad's baked films years ago -- those that he could project, and those that were too encrusted to project. The projected ones I suppose in their random patterns reflected some of nature's randomness, but I thought not especially profoundly, though I liked them for other reasons. I'd say the same about the hand-made work of silt, and about most of the other works on your list that I've seen.

The philosophically "problematic" issues that you raise interest me greatly, but I'd like to think about them for a few days or longer before deciding whether or not to respond. I have thought much about the fact that cinema is itself polluting, at least as it is now made, but that doesn't seem to me a reason why it should be the case that "nature and ecology is at [not] the top of most filmpoet's list of concerns" -- quite the contrary! Knowing one's own film polluted as it was being made ought to make filmmakers who care about such matters more concerned.

For the moment let me close with an incomplete piece of "conceptual art" that I offer to this list (I'm using the word "art" advisedly!) It's a fanciful proposal I've long had in my head, which would only be complete with drawings, wiring diagrams, architectural plans. It wouldn't solve the polluting aspects of filmmaking but it might do something about viewing.

Fred Camper

------------------------------------------------------------------------

PROPOSAL FOR A NON-POLLUTING CINEMA

The screening room, with a projection booth behind, would be bare except for stationery bicycles facing the screen on a tiered floor, which would serve as seats. Each bicycle would be connected to an electrical generator, and each generator via concealed wires in the floor to an electrical control panel of some sort in the projection booth. Here some of the electricity generated would be channeled to a governor-controlled motor, which would run the projector; to the sound amplification system; and to the projector bulb. Some sort of voltage regulator would be needed to ensure that bulb intensity and sound did not vary with the energy of the pedaling, and would have to be set "low" enough in advance so that a slacking off of effort from the audience wouldn't stop the show -- though I suppose a large number of walkouts, in this case, inevitably would stop the show! At least it would insure that film viewing was always a communal experience, though I don't like the idea that an audience could vote with their feet to stop a film, since very few stay till the end of some of my favorite films.

Of course the Americans With Disabilities Act reminds us that we need a few seats down front for those unable to pedal.

Given the wattage needs of a typical projector bulb, the inefficiency of bicycle generators, and the physical condition (here I think of myself!) of many filmgoers, this proposal might be practical only with relatively large audiences. Perhaps smaller audiences could be accommodated for daytime-only screenings with some supplementary optical system that replaced the projector bulb with light channeled in from outside, though then a quick-response intensity regulator (perhaps a rotating mirror system) would be needed for those partly cloudy days in which the amount of daylight changes rapidly.

Some might say that solar panels on the roof of the "theater" or a windmill nearby would make all this irrelevant, and they would certainly be preferable in my book to the local nuclear plant, but I like the audience-participation aspects of power-generating in this proposal.

FC

__________________________________________________________________

Subject: Re: Nature
Date: Sun, 29 Sep 1996 16:14:02 -0700
From: "Francis A. Schmidt" <scrubjay@NETCOM.COM>
Reply-To: Experimental Film Discussion List <FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
To: FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM

It strikes me that Ariana Gerstein has a number of films that use different seeds and plant parts directly applied to film, and she was working on something with very small sea shells (Though I also remember being quite skeptical about it going through a projector gate (MY projector gate, at any rate)).

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Subject: Re: Nature
Date: Sun, 29 Sep 1996 17:56:30 -0700
From: Richard Herskowitz <rjh2s@VIRGINIA.EDU>
Reply-To: Experimental Film Discussion List <FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
Organization: Virginia Film Festival
To: FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
References: 1 , 2

Correction to Fred's correction: "The Other Side of the Wind" is an incomplete Orson Welles project, while Ivens' last film is called "Story of the Wind."

A filmmaker who has struck me as incorporating ecological principles into his editing strategies (which he calls "distance montage") is the great Armenian artist, Artavazd Peleshyan. Pacific Film Archive, I believe, has a print of "Seasons," and possibly others by Peleshyan. It's been too long since I've seen Peleshyan's work to elaborate further here, but maybe others can...

--Richard Herskowitz

__________________________________________________________________

Subject: Re: Nature
Date: Sun, 29 Sep 1996 18:47:22 -0700
From: FC <fc@enteract.com>
To: Experimental Film Discussion List <FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
References: 1 , 2 , 3

Richard Herskowitz wrote:
>
> Correction to Fred's correction....Ivens' last film is called "Story
> of the Wind."
>
> A filmmaker who has struck me as incorporating ecological principles
> into his editing strategies (which he calls "distance montage") is the
> great Armenian artist, Artavazd Peleshyan.

Richard,

Thanks so much for the suggestion, especially appreciated since I'll be at the PFA in a month. Will definitely look into this! As for the Ivens title, well, I did know that of course, but sometimes the brain disconnects from the keyboard; thanks for the correction.

Fred Camper

__________________________________________________________________

Subject: Re: Nature
Date: Sun, 29 Sep 1996 22:56:00 -0400
From: Barbara Bader <MicroBader@AOL.COM>
Reply-To: Experimental Film Discussion List <FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
To: FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM

Fred: thanks for the info on Welsby. I will visit the web site you suggested--as soon as my new software for web access arrives. I'm so fed up with aol.....I don't even bother to try to get anywhere on the web.

I live just outside Washington DC. We wanna leave! Back to NYC? Chicago? Go West, Young FIlmmakers?

This "Nature" thread is really juicy.

Barbara

__________________________________________________________________

Subject: Re: Nature
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 00:36:09 -0400
From: Jim & Shellie <shedden@INTERLOG.COM>
Reply-To: Experimental Film Discussion List <FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
To: FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
 

> One filmmaker who I take as an example of what I'm looking for is Chris
> Welsby, whose work not only depicts nature, but often seems to draw its
> compositional and editing structures from close observations of nature.
> Are there others?

I love Welsby's work and have presented it in Toronto when possible. Much of it is available from the CFMDC (cfmdc@interlog.com). Yes, he's at Simon Fraser.

How about Jack Chambers? His films seem to fit the bill, though somewhat obliquely. Actually, adopting priniples of "nature" or, at least, incorporating questions of nature into the heart of filmmaking, is very common among Canadian filmmakers: check out Atmosphere (Chris Gallagher), works by Chambers, David Rimmer, Wieland, Elder (eg, Fool's Gold), Snow (La Region Centrale seems to be the classic text of what you describe), and others...

Mothlight isn't the only obvious Brakhage example -- I'm surprised no one mentioned Garden of Earthy Delights.

More later.

__________________________________________________________________

Subject: Re: Nature
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 00:40:19 -0400
From: Jim & Shellie <shedden@INTERLOG.COM>
Reply-To: Experimental Film Discussion List <FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
To: FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM

I would reiterate Herskovitz's recommendation of Peleshian.

We are showing major pieces by Peleshian this fall at the AGO as part of Cinematheque Ontario's extended Peter Mettler "carte blanche". I showed BAD video dupes of Peleshian's work in Toronto (at CineCycle) in late 1993 and even they were fantastic. FRED: check them out if you can.

__________________________________________________________________

Subject: Natural light
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 21:05:50 +0800 (SGT)
From: melva@pacific.net.sg (Melanie Curry & Alfonso Alvarez)
To: fc@ENTERACT.COM

In regard to your nature query, I'm a bit curious - what kind of nature? Human, supernatural, earthly, insect. Destruction of, rediscovery of, people in the frame or strictly lovely mountain shots? A play on the term? Here are a few favorites that you may concider:

Luis Buñuel's 'Las Hurdes'
Marie Menken's 'Glimpse of the Garden'
Kert Kren's '31/75 Asyl'
Bruce Baillie's 'Valentin de Las Sierras'
Fred Padula's 'El Capitan'
Rock Ross' 'Autumnal Diptych'
Robert Fulton's 'Path of Cessation'
or his 'Wilderness: A Country in the Mind'
Kevin Deal's Unfinished 'Symphonia de Sierra"
or his 'Dream Cantata'
Joris Ivins' 'Rain'
Peter Kubelka's 'Unsere Afrikareise'
Timoleon Wilkins' 'Tree'
Karen Davis' 'Over the Hedge'
Greta Snider's 'No Zone'
Alexis Karaslovsky's 'Epicenter U.'
Jay Rosenblatt's 'The Smell of Burning Ants'
Chris Marker's 'San Soleil'
Willard Maas' 'Geography of the Body'
Chick Strand's 'Waterfall'

A film whom I've no idea who the producer(s) is/are:

Baraka

You raise a good point about films that are directly inspired by some 'nature', there just don't seem to be that many - on the otherhand, it depends on the meaning of the word. Jeffery Skoller may be right about 'Mothlight', and for me historically it still remains important. When I first started film school I was entranced but in this post-punk era, it's a film whose power has been diminished by too many screenings, too much attention & too much bad analysis. I don't hear Bach anymore though, I hear the Dead Kennedys when I see that film & I suspect that Jello Biafra & Stan Brakhage have something in common with respect to shifting the paradigm of sensory perception.

I think you can find most of this work through Canyon Cinema. As for Kevin Deal's 'SymphoniaŠ', try contacting Steve Dye at sdye@sirius.com. Kevin died while recording some wind sounds for this film up at Sequoia Nat'l Pk last July & thus the film up until now is shown as a double system piece, using a sound track he recorded live at Mills College in Oakland CA a few months before his death. Baraka has a major studio distributing the prints, but if you can get to screen it in the original 70mm you will NOT be disapointed.

Good Luck,
Alfonso Alvarez

Melanie Curry
--and/or--
Alfonso Alvarez

and now, in living color,
Marta Chloe Celia, too

__________________________________________________________________

Subject: Re: Nature
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 10:19:14 -0700
From: Valerie Soe <vsoe@SFSU.EDU>
Reply-To: Experimental Film Discussion List <FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
To: FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM

Try the SILT collective here in San Francisco--they've been doing a lot of interesting hand-processed work on Super8 that includes all kinds of organically based means of getting an image on film (including using dirt, I think).

You can call any of these guys & they'll all get the message--Christian Farrell (415) 273-5595; Keigh Evans (510) 601-5401; Jeff Swan (510) 527-1493.

vsoe

__________________________________________________________________

Subject: Re: Nature
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 14:36:23 -0400
From: Pip Chodorov <PipNY@AOL.COM>
Reply-To: Experimental Film Discussion List <FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
To: FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
 

> I can't think of any films by women in this vain--how interesting hmmm...

I can:
Marie Menken (Glimpse of the Garden, Notebook, etc.)
Marcelle Thirache (Lande, Clair de Pluie, Palme d'Or)
Germaine Dulac (Arabesques)
Barabra Hammer (Pond and Waterfall)
Nancy Holt (Swamp)
Martine Rousset (Ete, Dehors, Un Leger Vent Dans le Feuillage)
Rose Lowder (Les Tournesols, Impromptu, Bouquets)
& Lisl Ponger, Gunvor Nelson, Chick Strand, & more....

-Pip Chodorov

__________________________________________________________________

Subject: Re: Nature
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 14:05:27 -0600
From: Phil Solomon <solomon@STRIPE.COLORADO.EDU>
Reply-To: Experimental Film Discussion List <FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
To: FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM

Re: nature and landscape:

more thoughts:

Brakhage: CREATION,VISIONS IN MEDITATION,THE MACHINE OF EDEN,THE WOLD SHADOW, CHILDS GARDEN AND THE SERIOUS SEA Rimmer: NARROWS INLET
Gottheim: FOGLINE,HORIZONS
Hutton: STUDY OF A RIVER (new), LANDSCAPE (FOR MANON) HERZOG'S DOC ON FIRES OF KUWAIT (AGAINST NATURE, ETC.)
Kurt Kren: TREE AGAIN, ASYL

phil solomon

__________________________________________________________________

Subject: Re: Nature
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 1996 16:19:00 -0400
From: Janene Higgins <myrakoob@ECHONYC.COM>
Reply-To: Experimental Film Discussion List <FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
To: FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM
 

> >I can't think of any films by women in this vain--how interesting hmmm...
>
> I can:
> Marie Menken (Glimpse of the Garden, Notebook, etc.)
> Marcelle Thirache (Lande, Clair de Pluie, Palme d'Or)
> Germaine Dulac (Arabesques)
> Barabra Hammer (Pond and Waterfall)
> Nancy Holt (Swamp)
> Martine Rousset (Ete, Dehors, Un Leger Vent Dans le Feuillage)
> Rose Lowder (Les Tournesols, Impromptu, Bouquets)
> & Lisl Ponger, Gunvor Nelson, Chick Strand, & more....
>
> -Pip Chodorov

Jennifer Reeves: "Configuration 20" (available through Filmmakers' Cooperative, NYC)

-jmh

__________________________________________________________________

Subject: nature: films by women
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 00:47:42 EDT
From: Jean <JWALTON@URIACC.URI.EDU>
Reply-To: Experimental Film Discussion List <FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
To: FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM

Another film by a woman that takes its cues from "nature": "The Answering Furrow" by the late Marjorie Keller. Others of her films may also fit into this category, but this one especially came to mind. --Jean Walton

__________________________________________________________________

Subject: Re: nature
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 1996 12:37:25 +0200
From: Fred Truniger <true@FIWI.UNIZH.CH>
Reply-To: Experimental Film Discussion List <FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
To: FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM

hi altogether,

this nature query haunts me...
I havn't the slightest Idea, why films like Chris Welsbys DRIFT, although they are using a technique that has been developped long ago, still have some attraction for me. These quiet and teasing images...

I can suggest some of these:
Atsushi Ogatas work in video (mostly produced in Cologne, Gemany) like TIMELESS SCENT (1992) or STATE OF ALERT (1995)
Even more so: Robert Cahen, a french Videast working at the CICV in Montbeliard (F). His works are entitled L'ILE MYSTERIEUSE (F 1991) about the Easter Island (Quote: "The sea surges purple under a lilac/gold sky, the shadows of racing clouds on vivid yellow grassy plains are caugh by a camera flying like a bird." - very much like Welsby) or this wonderful work about the antarctica of a title I forget now. Most recently: SEPT VISIONS FUGITIVES (some short versions and the 33 Min. release that has won (i think) the Oberhausen Competition this year, F 1994/1995). You might find information on these at the CICV server (although I havn't visited it for quite some time) at www.cicv.fr.

BLIND GRACE (USA 1993) by Adam Cohen is a portrait of New York City shot on 8 mm at 1/4 secs, so the images blurred. Cohen has processed his material in video so the master is video. Music composed by Stephen Vitiello if I remember right.
Vitiello also did the soundtrack to Eder Santo's JANAUBA (Bras 1993) a mediation about a landscape in the center of Brasil, where he has grown up. Both tapes are at the eai in NY.

Now I suppose it's time to ask, if by "films" you also mean "video"??

About Artavazd Pelechian: Yes I think this is a wonderful clue by Richard. He has always had his basis in Armenia (still has, although living in Paris, as far as I know) and made two filmbout live there: MENK (we) about the traditional and modern in Armenian society. I remember the first and last picture in the film to be a shot of Mount Ararat, the holy Montaion of the Armenian Catholics. Between those two shots (a technique he calls Montage of Distance - sorry, don't know the term in English) you discover a panorama of everyday armenian life, Traffic, Marriages, etc.
Another "Armnian" Film is TARVA YEGHANAKNER (The Seasons) with the soundtrack of Vivaldis four seasons (part of it) showing farmers at their work, cutting grass on incredibly steep slopes, bringing their sheep down from the mountain at the end of summer.
Other Films are SKISB (The Beginning) the graduation film at VGIK, a film montage about the revolution and probably more important OBIATELLI (The Inhabitants) in which he points out the agression of human being against nature. Man appears as a shapeless figure in the beginning from which all animals flee in panic. More and more the shape becomes human... Often also read as a image for the genocide of 1915 on the armenian people. I know that the french Cinematheque has most of those prints - but it is almost impossible to get hold of them...

Still don't remember the title of this wonderful Anatarctica-film of Robert Cahen.
By the way: Peter Delpeut has made two found-footage-films while working at the Nederlandse Film Archiev in Amsterdam: THE FORBIDDEN QUEST and LYRISCH NITRAT. Both being a homage to the Natirate-Material of the early days of cinema and to the treasures of the archive in Amsterdam they might nevertheless be of interest to you in this query. LYrisch Nitrat (NL 1992?) is a compilation of material grouped under some titles like LOVE, DEATH, ... Maybe not directly targeted to your subject. The DEATH section shows Nitrate-material that is so destroyed, that it couldn't be restored - supposdly much like this Tony Conrad films Jefrey mentioned, or like the films of the german group among Juergen Reble called Schmelzdahin. But in THE FORBIDDEN QUEST (NL 1994?) Delpeut tells a story of an old man he met. This old man told him about his youth when he travelled the seas and went on a long journey to the North Pole (was is south?) The three ships meet an Ice Bear (Those Ice Bars only living on one of the two poles, and definitely not on the one the ships are heading for) and the wreckless Captain shoots the animal against the fears of all the men on board. This appars to be the turning point of the journey. From this mon^ment on, when the "God-Sent-Bear" is shot the journey fails. The ships get stuck in the Ice, the men die of hunger and the captain never reaches the pole. There is a very misterious space at the end of the journey, a nirvana or maybe rather a "Zone" like in Tarkovskijs STALKER.
One of the jokes of the film (by the way) is, that nobody tell you that this is completely fictous. The footage from the Arctic is taken from the arcives and the sequences with the old man are shot by Delpeut. You come to believe the story after the first minutes and only doubt it after maybe an hour. The material is beautiful and very "nature" in both films of his. He also edited a somewhat unsorted reel of found material of "his" archive called BITS AND PIECES.

Hope that helpes...
greetings from Europe

Fred Truniger

_________________________________________________________________________
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_____________________________________________________________________
Please contact: Fred Truniger, programme commission, multimedia Tel/Fax: +41-1-4923840 email: true@fiwi.unizh.ch

__________________________________________________________________

Subject: Re: Nature
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 11:41:00 MDT
From: "FStv Programming Dept." <Programming@FSTV.ORG>
Reply-To: Experimental Film Discussion List <FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
To: FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM

I'd also recommend Paul Sharits' S:S:STREAM:S:ECTION:S:S:ECTIONED:S:S:ECTION:S:S:S (forgive the extra or missing Ss or :) for its paralleling of natural form with filmic form and content.

Jon Stout

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FREE SPEECH TV: a progressive voice in the media revolution Programming Department: Laura Brenton, Michele Leonard, Jon Stout

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phone: 303-442-8445, fax: 303-442-6472
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__________________________________________________________________

Subject: Re: Nature
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 13:30:27 EST
From: Albert Kilchesty <akilch@LIBRIS.LIBS.UGA.EDU>
Reply-To: Experimental Film Discussion List <FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
Organization: University of Georgia Libraries
To: FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM

Applying a very liberal definition to the idea of "landscape" and its representations in cinema, with specific attention focused on formal/ecological approaches, I offer the following additions to the nature thread, most of which I haven't seen in many years:

Parallels -- Vicki Peterson
Porter Springs II -- Henry Hills
Foregrounds, Saugus Series, etc., etc, -- Pat O'Neill
Many of the Super-8 films in Richard Lerman's "Transducer Series" (you can hear the landscape too) Globe -- Ken Jacobs
Seated Figures -- Michael Snow
Sky Blue Water Light Sign -- J.J. Murphy
Cayuga Run, Hudson River Diaries, and several S-8 "cine-sonnets" by Storm DeHirsch
Trapline -- Ellie Epp
Modernist (not) -- video by Paula Levine
Pond -- Jerry Orr
Forevermore: Biography of a Leach Lord -- Eric Saks
Straight Talk About Deserts -- E.S.
Song 13, Song 22 (or is it 23?)& Sex. Med.: Open Field -- SB
Fifth World, Pasturale, Prowl and The Code of the West -- all by me, but you have to visit me to see them since I don't make prints
Canadian Pacific--David Rimmer
Cezannescapes I&II, and a number of films in the series "Italian Places" -- Gary Adlestein
Wild West Suite -- Holly Fisher
videotapes by Mary Lucier, Bill Viola, Gary Hill
Running Fence -- Maysles Bros.
All My Life - Baillie
Pasteur3 - Will Hindle
the Sky on Location -- Babette Mangolte
California Stops and Passes, Pts I and II -- Robert Nelson
Last acts of Contrition, and a film shot in LA whose title I can't remember - Richard Kerr

If I had more time, I'd be able to list more. But I don't want nature to become boring.

Verdantly yrs,

Albert Kilchesty

__________________________________________________________________

Subject: Re: Nature
Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 14:10:44 -0700
From: Richard Herskowitz <rjh2s@VIRGINIA.EDU>
Reply-To: Experimental Film Discussion List <FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
Organization: Virginia Film Festival
To: FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM

Since we're on this nature kick, here's my schedule of road and desert videos from this year's Virginia Film Festival. There are TV shows and documentaries and films transferred to video mixed in with the experimental work, because I like to juxtapose these forms.

The Virginia Film Festival schedule, or most of it, is up on our web site (see URL below), and the whole event addresses landscape in film and video. Among the programs that may be of interest are James Benning with "Deseret" and "North on Evers," Jarman's "The Garden" with two early Greenaway landscape shorts, O'Neill's "Water and Power," Ellen Spiro's "Roam Sweet Home" (also in progress), Rick Prelinger's "Freedom Highway" compilation of industrials, Suzan Pitt with "Joy Street," "Revenge of the Kinematograph Cameraman" and other "cartoon critters," Mark Street's "Why Live Here?," and much more.

MIRAGES: A Video Exhibition at the Bayly Art Museum

Friday, 11/1
Women on the Road:
1:00 Fat of the Land (Sara Lewison and Niki Cousino)

George Kuchar's Weather Diary 6:
2:00 Scenes from a Vacation

Art of the Desert:
2:35 Private Life of Plants : It's a Jungle Out There (excerpt) (David Attenborough)
2:50 The Desert is No Lady (Shelley Williams)
3:45 Stones and Flies (Philip Haas)
3:55 Janauba (Eder Santos)

Saturday, 11/2
Women on the Road:
1:00 Double Blind (Sophie Calle)

George Kuchar's Weather Diary 9:
2:20 Sunbelt Serenade

Spirit of the Desert:
2:45 Straight Talk About Deserts (Eric Saks)
3:05 Simon of the Desert (Luis Bunuel)
3:55 Summer Salt (Steina Vasulka)
4:20 Arches (Dan Reeves)
4:30 Deserts (Bill Viola)

Sunday, 11/3:
Women on the Road:
1:00 Greetings from Out Here (Ellen Spiro)

George Kuchar's Weather Diary 12:
2:05 Season of Sorrow

Politics of the Desert:
2:20 Private Life of Plants: Plant Politics (excerpt)(David Attenborough)
2:30 Patagonia(Luis Valdovino)
3:00 Landscape: A Video Production (Susan Lutz)
3:50 Death Valley Days: No Gun Behind His Badge (with Ronald Reagan)
4:25 Lessons of Darkness (Werner Herzog)

-- Richard Herskowitz
Director, Virginia Film Festival
Department of Drama
Culbreth Road
Charlottesville, VA 22903
http://www.virginia.edu/~vafilm

__________________________________________________________________

Subject: Re: nature
Date: Sun, 06 Oct 1996 15:46:27 -0700
From: FC <fc@enteract.com>
To: Experimental Film Discussion List <FRAMEWORKS@LISTSERV.AOL.COM>
References: 1

Dear Frameworks Members,

It's been a week since I posted my "Nature" query and, after some twenty responses, I want to sincerely thank everyone who took the time to reply. This list has displayed its immense value to me by the range and nature of the replies. I will now gradually endeavor to view the films and videos suggested which I haven't already seen.

Part of the "rules" of replying to such a query are, it seems to me, that one can question the terms of the query, and several, notably Jeffrey Skoller, also did that; and this questioning has also been very helpful. As I tried to explain in my reply to him on September 29, my own interest here "is in films that view nature as something outside of, prior to, and other than, human civilization." This is a problematic view of course, since such films will be viewing nature through the filter not only of the human filmmaker but of the human-designed industrial mechanisms that make motion pictures possible. Still, I think it possible, as a few films have shown, to endeavor, however imperfectly, to use all that as a window, however skewed, onto something else. Thus in reply to Alfonso Alvarez, "lovely mountain shots" would not be part of what I'm seeking, unless they were in a context that gave them a new meaning: we have plenty of those, and they tend to contain and pictorialize nature by incorporating it into the tradition of landscape paintings and picture-window views rather than trying to see it anew, in other terms.

Of the films suggested that I've seen, many seem to me to use nature by incorporating it into well-established aesthetic formats; using it in almost a "colonizing" way as fodder for the artist's own ends. Thus for example one of the films on Alfonso's list, Marker's "Sans Soleil," a film I love, sees nature as part of a personal journey, nature as a metaphor for time; nature and the film "Vertigo" (another film I love) are compared, almost equated. Which is not to say that the way such films treat nature is not worth considering, as evidence of prevailing attitudes; and not to say that a glimpse of nature as something larger is not also visible in "Sans Soleil" and other such films.

Some of the other films suggested I am now going to have to rethink. I would not have thought of "Mothlight" or the baked films of Tony Conrad or the organic-patterned films of Shmelzdahin or silt, all of which I have seen, as relating to my query, but on reflection, they obviously do.

In a few years I may write on this topic, but not before then; if I publish anything, I'll let everyone know. In the meantime I'll do a few filmshowing-lectures. Thanks again to everyone.

Fred Camper