is the auratic character of experimental films lost on youtube_ from cinema 16 to future shorts

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    Is the Auratic Character of Experimental Films lost on YouTube ?From Cinema 16 to Future Shorts

    Experimental how?

    Venturing on the grounds of art film is, both as a theoretical approach and as a practical

    endeavour met by the need to discuss, classify and determine what is an art film and how do we

    recognise one in the midst of many others. Therefore, in the multitude of labels available in this

    area, one must, from the beginning of the journey, set the coordinates the ship will follow

    throughout. Any research into art film studies will face the explorer with what could at first be seen

    as a mere terminology debate between independent, avant-garde, underground, experimental, and

    even expanded cinema. In keeping with the journey by sea metaphor, the log of these terms must be

    examined thoroughly and a path should be chosen in order for the research not to go astray. I will

    begin my essay with a short review of the terms and the debates around them in order to later

    choose my path of research.

    Firstly, the term avant-garde , was originally used to describe French painting in the early

    decades of the nineteenth century 1 and is, in its etymology a military term denoting an advanced

    group forging an assault on the enemy ahead of the main army. 2 But if that is the case, who then is

    the group starting the assault and who is the enemy? Could it be primarily an attack of art on art

    itself as it was known prior to the point of the avant-garde or is it an attack of art directed to

    political and social forces shaping our environment, as the 1960s French avant-garde movement

    built around Jean-Luc Goddard and Francois Truffaut suggests? Without claiming a definitive

    answer to the above questions, one can only make the pertinent observation that avant-garde has

    always been used in close connection to a crucial element: time. Going ahead the main army in

    launching the attack in a battle implies that a small part of the army would confront the enemy

    earlier than the masses. However, the enemy has not always been the same, changing shape along

    the social, political, technological and artistic transformation of each period in time. It thereforeseems quite contradictory that we now refer to avant-garde movements as events in the history of

    film, when arguably, any avant-garde movement is related to an advanced moment from the present

    time. Nevertheless, this statement would open up a philosophical discussion on continuity and re-

    occurrence of movements in film history that the length of this paper does not allow be to expand

    on. Yet there is an aspect upon which I would like to develop and it refers to the fact that avant-

    garde in the 1920s was a cross-fertilisation of art forms ranging from performance to painting and

    1 Michel O'Pray, Avant-garde Film. Forms, Themes and Passions (London:Wallflower, 2003), 3.2 ibid ., 3.

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    music 3 and this was reflected in the films produces in that period. Today, this cross-fertilisation has

    been appropriated and completed by the cross-fertilisation of modes of production (celluloid film

    meets video, photography, digital and CCTV) and reception (cinema, exhibitions, television

    screens, DVDs, YouTube ).

    These aspects lead to another term, that of underground film, attributed initially to Americanfilms of the 1950s and associated with a social, sexual and cultural sub-culture operating beneath

    the traditional mainstream. 4 Aside from its concern with form, the term addresses the idea of

    evasion from the traditional modes of distribution in cinema chains in favour of one-off screenings

    in locations, which could be themselves called underground. In any case, one of the most

    widespread terms used in film studies is independent film, which came into use around 1977 and

    strictly speaking served as a designation for movies made outside the confines of traditional

    financing, distributed by companies that were not aligned to the big Hollywood studios.5

    Closelyrelated to the financing and distribution aspects of filmmaking, the term independent film, also

    known as indie film has almost evolved into a distinct genre, opening the question whether

    filmmakers can ever be truly independent within the context of commercial cinema? 6

    Jonas Mekas, a dedicated independent filmmaker, editor and programmer, offers a

    fascinating allegory of creation in filmmaking:

    There is a tale according to which, after God created the world, he looked at it and he

    thought it was great. So he created cinema to record and to celebrate that world. But the Devil

    did not like that. So he put a moneybag in front of the camera and said: 'Why celebrate reality if

    you can make money with this instrument?' And believe it or not, all filmmakers ran after

    money. So God, to correct his mistake, created the independent filmmaker and said 'You will

    make movies and you will record and celebrate life, but you will never make any money. 7

    Setting the issue of independent filmmaking in the area of a deterministic drive more than a

    choice of the filmmaker, Mekas passionately inscribes this type of film in the artistic paradigm of

    art for art's sake as opposed to art for financial gain. However, amongst the terms used in this field

    to describe the different, the outsiders, the term experimental combines, in my opinion, the cross-

    fertilisation of fields the avant-garde experiences in form and production, with new modes of

    distribution and reception.

    3 Michel O'Pray, Avant-garde Film. Forms, Themes and Passions (London:Wallflower, 2003), 7.4 ibid ., 6.5 D.K. Holm, Independent Cinema (Harpenden: Kamera Books, 2008), 12.6 ibid ., 12.7 Jonas Mekas, Transcript of a talk given at Whitney Museum, New York, 1992. Source:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2N_ejauRgs

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    In the end, the very proliferation of terms is evidence of the size and diversity of this

    particular area of film history, as well as of the ongoing debate about how to understand it. 8

    However, the common struggle of all these terms is to encapsulate a restlessness of the artistic

    experience, a vivid passion for exploring moving images and their entangled relations to the world,

    other art forms and the audiences. I will use the term experimental film in this essay as the closestconceptualization of the above-mentioned restlessness, keeping in mind Henry Miller's writings

    from the 1947 Art in Cinema Catalogue :

    The experimental film, called such only because it dares to lie to the mirror, is not the

    ultimate film art. It is only a tentative, faltering step in the direction of the unexplored. Thus far

    the medium of the film has scarcely been penetrated. It is still an uncharted ocean bounded by

    we know not what strange shores.9

    Having outlined the coordinates of my journey and selected my routes on the map of film

    history, I will continue with a clear aim: to show that experimental film making its way to

    audiences is in as much an artistic, as it is an educational experience. My subsequent path will be to

    show how the 'auratic' character of film art is an intrinsic feature of the piece and how, in the

    contemporary context of multiple means of filmic experience, the experimental aspect is in fact, the

    element creating the aura.

    The Escape of Film and its Aura

    In her book The Evolution of Film, film theorist Janet Harbord dedicates a chapter to what

    she calls the strange relations we have with film now that it has escaped the cinema, now that it is

    dispersed across multiple sites and media platforms. 10 Our encounters with film in the broad sense

    of the term are now 'scattered' throughout our daily experiences, from television to the computer

    screen to mobile phone screens, public spaces and entertainment centres, cinemas and art galleries.

    Using Harbord's term, we could say that film has been set loose. 11 But if it has been set loose,

    what for and how was it constrained before? Following a phenomenological paradigm, we could

    say that film has been set loose from the question 'what is a film?' and given the opportunity to

    answer the provocation of 'what can a film do?' In this case, the answer is: it can create experiences.

    8 Scott MacDonald, Avant-garde Film. Motion Studies (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 15.9 Henry Miller, Art in Cinema Catalogue , published late 5/47 in Scott MacDonald, Art in Cinema: Documents

    Toward a History of Film Society (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), 80.10 Janet Harbord, The Evolution of Film. Rethinking Film Studies (Cambridge: Polity, 2006), 120.11 ibid . 121

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    Victor Burgin mentions how, in the early stages of cinema history, Andr Breton and Jaques Vach

    created their own avant-garde cinematic experience using the film theatres of Nantes by dropping

    in at random on whatever film happened to be playing, staying until they had had enough of it, then

    leaving for the next aleatory extract. 12 Their then experimental film viewing has somehow been

    experienced in one form or another by any member of today's society, be it by the practice of 'zapping' through films on television, or by following random paths that the hyperlinks between

    films on YouTube take us. The experiment became a common practice, embedded in our behaviour

    due to the evolution of new media. However, not only the media themselves allowed for this

    behaviour to change. It was film itself and its versatility, reminding us, as Harbord highlights, of

    Siegfried's Kracauer's reference that film's affinities are transient, always at a point of emergence

    and reinvention. 13 Nevertheless, this situation should not pose problems to art films, but enhance

    the possibilities for experiment because experimental films have always somehow escaped cinema, just like Rene Claire's Entr'Acte was released at the Theatre des Champs Elyses between acts of

    the ballet Relche or Andy Warhol's films were screened at social events and Velvet Underground

    concerts. However, the film's escape is now, not only in real spaces, but also in the vast virtual,

    juxtaposed and linked spaces of the Internet.

    Michel Foucault's notion of heterotopia as a kind of effectively enacted utopia in which the

    real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously

    represented, contested, and inverted. 14 is brought into focus by Victor Burgin under the notion of

    cinematic heterotopias. 15 The spaces where film has now escaped collide between real and virtual,

    creating a multi-faceted zoetrope, linking us to the roots of early cinematic experiences. Interaction

    with film is re-directed to the body, to the senses in real and virtual worlds, reminding us of Tom

    Gunning's notion of cinema of attraction. 16 Therefore, everyday situations are or can become real

    or virtual encounters with cinematic experiences. This new paradigm under which film is

    experienced has been the starting point for work of many artists in experimental video installations

    both in real gallery spaces and online. Theorist Jackie Hatfield envisaged a philosophy of

    experimental cinema, which emanates from the cinema of attractions and expanded film, and

    includes the electronic, the computer, the active spectator, sculpture, collage, dramaturgy,

    narrativity, and representation. 17 With the vast array of techniques available for artists to

    12 Victor Burgin, The Remembered Film (London: Reaktion Books, 2006), 7.13 Janet Harbord, The Evolution of Film. Rethinking Film Studies, (Cambridge: Polity, 2006), 144.14 Michel Foucault, Des Espace Autres (1967 , trans .Jay Miskowiec) published in Architecture/Mouvement/

    Continuit, October, 1984 http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html 15 Victor Burgin, The Remembered Film (London: Reaktion Books, 2006), 10.16 Tom Gunning, The Cinema of Attraction(s): Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde in The Cinema of

    Attractions Reloaded (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006).17 Jackie Hatfield, Expanded Cinema-Proto, Post-Photo in Jackie Hatfield (ed.) Experimental Film and Video,

    (Eastleigh: John Libbey Publishing, 2006), 238.

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    experiment with, the multitude of inter-linked modes of production and wide range of distribution

    channels, concerns on value, authenticity and loss of the auratic character of the artwork are

    nevertheless being raised, especially in the online space.

    In 1935, Walter Benjamin argued: that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction

    is the aura of the work of art18

    while almost twenty years before, Louis Lumiere, one of the fathersof cinema, proclaimed the cinematograph an invention with no future.

    The experimental work of artists like Fernard Leger, Hans Richter, Dziga Vertov, Luis

    Bunuel or Maya Deren to name just a few, has proved not only the future of the cinematograph, but

    its artistic value with an auratic character that stemmed from experimenting with the mechanical

    device.

    In 1968, experimental film artist and photographer Hollis Frampton started a lecture in New

    York: Please turn out the lights. As long as we're going to talk about films, we might as well do itin the dark (...) the only place left in our culture intended entirely for concentrated exercise of one,

    or at most two, of our senses. 19 The existence of strong links between film's intrinsic auratic

    character and the cinema theatre as a space for reception that sustains and enhances that aura have

    been widely argued for in film studies. In addition, the expanding age of digital reproduction has

    not only led theorists to bring into discussion the death of celluloid film 20, but brought into focus

    the decay of film's aura in its distribution via websites like YouTube . Moreover, YouTube being a

    platform where both Hans Richter's Rhythmus 21 and the latest pop culture music video can be

    found, the issue of the audience's ability to organize and control themselves in their reception 21

    becomes of radical importance. As film artist and theorist Malcolm LeGrice observes, the major

    changes brought by technology into the social, cultural and artistic fields have had a response from

    post-modernism by embracing cultural simultaneity in an ultimate eclecticism of image across time

    and space. 22 Despite the fact that early arguments about the new digital technology focused mostly

    on the changes in modes of production that art film was witnessing, issues of changing modes of

    reception in the digital age started to be raised. As LeGrice continues his argument, by abandoning

    the attempt to maintain a continuity between physicality, the medium of representation and the

    condition of the represented, it has left the spectator with no resistance to the image. 23 With the rise

    18 Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction in Illuminations , (London: Pimlico,1999), 215.

    19 Hollis Frampton, On the Camera Arts and Consecutive Matters. The Writings of Hollis Frampton, Ed. BruceJenkins (London: MIT Press, 2009).

    20 Laura Mulvey, Death 24x a Second: Stilness and the Moving Image (London:Reaktion, 2005).21 Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction in Illuminations , (London: Pimlico,

    1999), 228.22 Malcolm LeGrice, Digital Cinema and Experimental Film- Continuities and Discontinuities (1999) in

    Experimental Cinema in the Digital Age , (London:BFI, 2001), 312.23 Malcolm LeGrice, Digital Cinema and Experimental Film- Continuities and Discontinuities (1999) in

    Experimental Cinema in the Digital Age , (London: BFI, 2001), 312.

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    of digital technologies and new media, artists have not only started to experiment with techniques,

    but have also found the Internet a place to showcase work and a source of material for new film

    experiments. Furthermore, the different cinematic experience created by YouTube , as opposed to

    galleries and theatre screenings, raises questions of authenticity and autonomy of the artworks. Is

    this the original work or was it edited? Is this the piece in its entirety? Is this the originalsoundtrack, approved by the filmmaker? Legitimacy of the work is questioned alongside its value.

    Taking into consideration another aspect characterising the cinematic experience on YouTube , that

    is reception in a state of distraction, 24 is it actually possible to consider this platform a means of

    distribution for experimental films? How can the audience decide and appreciate the value of a

    piece of art film in this swirling experience of moving images, hyperlinks and collaged work? And

    due to this agglomeration of art and non-art, value and non-value, not easily distinguishable, should

    we consider YouTube an appropriate platform for showcasing experimental film at all?My argument and implicitly, my response to the above concerns is that, just as throughout

    the history of experimental film, there were individuals and groups who created spaces for

    acknowledging, promoting, selecting and screening experimental film to the public, the virtual

    space of YouTube offers a platform for showcasing the intrinsic auratic character of contemporary

    experimental work within an organised framework. The educational endeavour of some

    organisations such as Future Shorts in promoting, screening and showcasing work on the

    contemporary available platforms will be, in the next part of my essay, compared to the work of

    emblematic characters such as Amos Vogel and his well known film-club , Cinema 16.

    Showcasing the Unknown: from Cinema 16 to Future Shorts

    In 1946, Maya Deren was screening some of her films ( Meshes of the Afternoon, A Study of

    Choreography for the Camera, At Land ) at Provincetown Playhouse. Amongst the audience were

    Amos and Marcia Vogel, who will later use the same screening space to show a wide array of films,

    organised in programs which included abstract, scientific, avant-garde and documentaries. 25 Born

    out of Amos Vogel's personal desire to see the fascinating films he was reading about, Cinema 16

    started out small, in 1938, only to become one of the the biggest film club in America, with over

    6000 members. 26 This project, driven at first by his personal interest in challenging and

    subversive films, later achieved multiple statuses as a film society, small avant-garde distribution

    organisation and a film community. One of the most important aspects of this non-profit film

    24 Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction in Illuminations (London: Pimlico,1999), 233.

    25 Scott MacDonald, Cinema 16. Documents Toward the History of the Film Society (Philadelphia: Temple UniversityPress, 2002), 4.

    26 Amos Vogel, Film as a Subversive Art. Amos Vogel and Cinema 16 (Paul Cronin, United Kingdon, 2003, 55 mins).

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    society was the programming strategy that Vogel used for his two sessions of screenings, one

    starting from 7.15 p.m. and the following, from 9.00 p.m. As Amos states in the 2003 documentary

    on Cinema 16:

    On one program there would always be perhaps abstract film, a scientific film, avant-garde film and a political documentary because my intention at all times was to subvert audience

    expectations by showing such diverse and different films. 27

    Amos Vogel's programming technique not only aimed at educating the public with a wide

    spectrum of alternative and experimental positions in film, but also consisted a solid ground of

    influence to emerging filmmakers. One of the filmmakers, organizers and editors that Cinema 16

    inspired was Jonas Mekas, who not only continued the movement by developing the New York Film-Makers' Cooperative, but also openly credited Cinema 16 for one of his films: That film

    ( Lost, Lost, Lost ) was very much influenced by my viewing experimental films at Cinema 16. ()

    At that point I thought it was totally invented and outside of me. 28

    Although he was highly influenced by the films showed at Cinema 16, Mekas had a

    different approach to creating a film society, in sharp contrast to what he named Amos Vogel's

    potpourri approach to programming standard at Cinema 16. 29 In opposition, Mekas decided to

    approach programming for the New York Filmmakers' Cooperative by concentrating on the work of

    a single artist at each program, while the selective distribution policy of Vogel was replaced with

    the artists' decisions on which of their films to distribute and receive all rentals minus the basic

    expenses of keeping the cooperative afloat. 30

    Mekas' critical approach on Vogel's programming strategy is arguably misinterpreted as long

    as we keep in mind that Cinema 16 was not created with the sole purpose of showcasing artist's

    work, as a gallery or museum would, but rather as a means of building audience to experience the

    works in experimental cinema at large. With the goal of creating a film community that would

    sustain his organisation with their membership contributions, Vogel's ambition was to offer a

    platform where audiences would be 'touched' in one way or another by the filmic experiences.

    Vogel has kept this orientation and goal throughout his book, Film as Subversive Art in which, each

    chapter begins with a brief theoretical consideration of a particular dimension of film's capacity for

    subverting personal and societal complacency. 31 The chapters of the book touch upon different

    27 Amos Vogel, Film as a Subversive Art. Amos Vogel and Cinema 16 (Paul Cronin, United Kingdon, 2003, 55 mins).28 Scott MacDonald, A Critical Cinema 2. Interviews with Independent Filmmakers , (Berkley and Los Angeles:

    University of California Press, 1992), 88.29 ibid. , 77.30 ibid ., 77.31 Scott MacDonald, Introduction in Film as Subversive Art (London: C.T. Editions, 1974/2005), 3.

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    techniques that Vogel identifies in experimental cinema and with the same structural attention as he

    would use in programming Cinema 16 screenings, he offers a rich set of examples to titles like The

    Destruction of Time and Space , Assault on Montage or The Triumph and Death of the Moving

    Camera .32 However, without acting as a showcase of Vogel's knowledge on experimental film, his

    book manages to provide a subversive form to other published works of its time. It highlights, justas Scott MacDonald rigorously observes, written film theory's function to deliver the reader back

    to the cinema, to the complexities of accomplished individual films, and to the social experience of

    film-going. 33 It can be argued that Vogel's book is a prefiguration of the challenges of remediation

    in the contemporary digital age. At this point, his book functions like a hypertext, as the reader,

    with the screen of the laptop in front and an Internet connection, can at any given point pause,

    search and view the films which the book references. It is now highly common for books to have

    hyperlinks to websites and videos that can be found online, for the audience to experience alongsidethe process of reading.

    By and large, as a showcase for experimental films, Cinema 16 was unchallenged. 34

    However, the programming strategies, as well as the media for showcasing work have been

    evolving rapidly and the requirements of a competitive market led to the interruption of the non-

    profit film society. Nowadays, niche markets of short films have created the chance for

    organisations like Future Shorts to promote, showcase and distribute this type of film, in the

    programming of which, structures similar to Vogel's arise. Future Shorts organises its screenings

    under general themes where paying audiences come and view new directors and their experimental

    work. Nevertheless, the films showcased are organised, as the registration form on their website and

    their YouTube channel show, under the following categories: animation, documentary,

    experimental, fiction and music video. Although Future Shorts' objective is not solely to promote

    experimental film, the organisation works as a worldwide short film festival providing an

    alternative system to the traditional film festival model. Filmmakers have the chance to get their

    work seen all over the world from just one submission. 35 The screenings themselves comprise only

    one platform where Future Shorts, adapting to the range of available technologies, has developed

    upon, amongst them being their YouTube channel. Surprisingly enough, the organisation decided to

    showcase the short films that they are screening on this online platform, arguably challenging the

    idea that the auratic character of the films is lost online. On the other hand, their decision can be

    understood as a statement of confidence in their audience's choice to continue paying for the films

    because of the auratic character of the experience.

    32 Amos Vogel, Film as Subversive Art (London: C.T. Editions, 1974/2005).33 Scott MacDonald, Introduction in Film as Subversive Art (London: C.T. Editions, 1974/2005), 4.34 Davis Curtis, Experimental Cinema. A fifty year evolution, (London: Studio Vista, 1971), 51.35 Future Shorts website: http://www.futureshorts.com/htmlViewer.php?id=12

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    Now Showing on YouTube : Synaesthesia and Lift

    Future Shorts' choice to have some of the films showcasing at their festival also posted on

    their YouTube channel addresses the issue of the complex relationship film now has with different

    media. It is not solely the cinema theatre, with its darkness and projector the place where the

    audience can have a filmic experience, it is the laptop screen and any given condition imagined.

    However, in this new context of distracted reception, can the audience recognise and emerge into

    the ecstatic response that made the audience of Cinema 16 applaud with their feet, with their hands,

    they would make noises, whistles? 36 Viewing Synaesthesia (2010) is a journey into surrealism on

    the realms of the virtual, an argument that the dream-like fantasy world of image and sound set into

    a hyper-reality where fruit and vegetable become sound amplifiers, newspaper cuttings make up an

    evening's dinner and the experience of television viewing is entirely kinaesthetic. Not only that the

    juxtaposition of familiar situations and unfamiliar activities reminds of Louis Bunuel's surreal film,

    but the issue of a technologically enabled synaesthetic experience references back to Eisenstein and

    Pudovkin's statement that the first experimental work with sound must be directed along the line of

    its distinct non synchronization with the visual images. 37 The auratic character of the short

    experimental film is part of the artwork, entangled in its content and form.

    The apparently common setting of the film, a retro-looking image saturated in colour

    emphasizes the dream-like atmosphere of the technological surrealism. On the other hand, the filmaddresses contemporary issues of technological devices acting as extensions or prosthesis for the

    senses.

    Fig. 1. Stills from the experimental music video Synaesthesia

    Furthermore, with the contemporary home showcasing a wide range of technologies, all

    driven towards capturing our senses in one way or another, the synaesthetic experience portrayed by

    the film also appears to be a confusing state where the senses are set under the uncontrollable

    36 Film as a Subversive Art. Amos Vogel and Cinema 16 (Paul Cronin, United Kingdon, 2003, 55 mins).37 S.M. Eisenstein, V.I. Pudovkin, and G.V. Alexandrov, A Statement in Film Sound. Theory and Practice (New

    York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 84.

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    powers of technology. The increasing intensity of the music collides with the increasing rhythm of

    the images leading up to a non-synchronised situation similar to a military siege over the senses.

    The experimental qualities of this film are noticeable within filming technique and montage.

    Notwithstanding that a theatre screening would emphasize some of its qualities, my opinion is that

    its auratic characteristics are embedded and can be appreciated in the work regardless of thescreening conditions.

    The second example with a strong intrinsic auratic character is the 2001 documentary Lift,

    produced and directed by Marc Isaacs as his first work in this position. Without considering the

    numerous awards this film has won, its auratic character stems from Warholian experiments with

    the camera as a recorder of ubiquitous parts of reality. Moreover, by its long takes and home movie

    appearance, this film addresses two major issues in contemporary filmmaking: the amateur films

    and the increasing role of surveillance cameras that we are used to encounter in most of the public places. Nevertheless, the strongest experimental traits of the film are the setting (the enclosed space

    of the lift in a block of flats) and the interview-like approach of the person behind the camera.

    Without being just a recording instrument, it seems that the director aims at reinterpreting the space

    of the lift as a fluctuating confessional, thereby setting a new level of interpretation connected to the

    rise of reality show formats and the video recorded confession booth so often used in these shows.

    In other words, we could interpret Lift as an endeavour to capture some of the many paths films has

    escaped to, by setting the camera in an 'inescapable' situation. On the other hand, this experiment

    could be interpreted as a anthropological project directed towards contemporary urban societies,

    focusing on the lives and dynamics of the inhabitants of a flat. The film's auratic quality stems from

    all of these references to film in contemporary culture, as well as the montage techniques used,

    therefore its viewing on YouTube does not diminish its value as a piece of experimental film art.

    Fig. 2. Stills from the experimental documentary Lift

    In a time when reception in a state of distraction seems to be the rule rather than the

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    exception to the rule, YouTube as a platform for promoting the films and consequently, the festival,

    is organised by Future Shorts in a minimal way, leaving to the audience to find their path in the

    myriad temptations shaped as suggestions or connected information. On the traditional platform

    where short films are screened, the same rule is shaping the form of reception. However, it appears

    that Jackie Hatfield's38

    philosophy of experimental cinema stemming from the cinema of attractionsand encapsulating a wide range of artistic practices is as much a part of the programming, as is the

    choice of which films to screen. The auratic character of the films displayed is intrinsically

    connected to the artwork, therefore visible on the online platform, as it would be in a screening.

    However, the role of the Future Shorts channel is similar to that of programming, where the

    playlists act like sessions of screenings that can guide the viewer into a valuable filmic experience.

    38 Jackie Hatfield,Expanded Cinema-Proto, Post-Photo in Jackie Hatfield (ed.), Experimental Film and Video, (Eastleigh: John Libbey Publishing, 2006), 238.

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    References

    Benjamin, Walter, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935) in HannahArendt (ed.), Illuminations, London: Pimlico, 1999, first published 1955.

    Burgin, Victor, The Remembered Film, London: Reaktion Books, 2004/ 2006.

    Cubitt, Sean, Digital Aesthetics, London: Sage Publications, 1998.

    Curtis, David, Experimental Cinema. A fifty year evolution, London: Studio Vista, 1971.

    Eisenstein, S.M., Pudovkin, V.I., Alexandrov, G.V, A Statement in Film Sound. Theory and Practice, New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.

    Foucault, Michel, Des Espace Autres (1967 , trans . Jay Miskowiec) in Architecture/Mouvement/ Continuit, October, 1984.

    Frampton, Hollis, On the Camera Arts and Consecutive Matters. The Writings of Hollis Frampton,Bruce Jenkins (ed), London: MIT Press, 2009.

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  • 8/6/2019 Is the Auratic Character of Experimental Films Lost on YouTube_ From Cinema 16 to Future Shorts

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    1

    mins).

    Synaesthesia (Terri Timley, USA, 2010, 4.13 mins).

    Lift (Marc Isaacs, UK, 2001, 24.38 mins).

    http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html http://www.futureshorts.com/htmlViewer.php?id=12

    http://www.youtube.com/user/futureshorts?blend=2&ob=4#p/p

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2N_ejauRgs