3-D: Realist Illusion or Perception Confusion? : The Technological Image as a Space for Play

This paper seeks to explore the ambiguities of the devices of stereoscopic imagery both moving and still. Since the invention of the stereoscope there has been the claim that stereoscopic images gave a more complete representation of their objects by adding an appearance of three-dimensionality. However, it has also been acknowledged that stereoscopy creates merely an optical illusion of three-dimensionality, one which presents its own perceptual ambiguities. Moving from the issues raised by Jonathan Crary in his discussion of stereoscopy in The Techniques of the Observer to the history 3-D films, this paper explores how the tension between an illusionist approach of fooling the senses into believing an image and an outright challenge to representation which fosters the contradictions of stereoscopic images has made 3-D a dynamic aesthetic form. I will discuss both commercial films, such as the late Transformers series, as well as avant-garde works by Ken Jacob and The OpenEnded Group (Marc Downie and Paul Kaiser).&nbsp

Finding the way: films found on a scrap heap

Some filmmakers restrict their manipulations of found footage to the minimal act of presenting a film they have discovered with almost no changes. But others have subjected found footage to extensive editing, chemical manipulation, rephotography, or new soundtracks (or all of these processes combined). In this brief essay I cannot hope to cover all the permutations of this rich genre of experimental film, nor to mention all of its numerous practitioners (and I will deal with the visual image more than sound). However, I do want to give a sense of the range of approaches that exist using found footage to mention a few of its master

A slippery topic : colour as metaphor, intention or attraction?

Diffusé avec l'accord de EYE Filmmuseum, détenteur des droits d'auteur sur ce texte.Texte issu du : Amsterdam Workshop (2e :1995 : Amsterdam, Pays-Bas

Wearing Time: Returns, Recalls, Renewals

The four-day festival program, co-curated by Tom Gunning and Marketa Uhlirova, explored how film and fashion together evoke and reflect on the past, and its connections with the present, and future. The diverse historical and contemporary films included commercial cinema features, documentaries, artists films, newsreel items, and fashion films. The festival asked what concrete manifestations of time fashion and clothing enable: What kind of chronologies and histories? Origins and memories? Echoes and shadows? Projections, visions, or premonitions? Few things indicate the past as immediately as styles of dress. Period films are often referred to as “costume dramas” for this reason. As well as designating the past, clothing also marks the periods and stages of individual lives. Narratives of aging and rejuvenation depend on convincing changes in fashions, hair, and make-up. The opening of an old closet arouses nostalgia and feelings of loss for the body that inhabited the now-empty clothes. There is something uncanny about rediscovering an old familiar dress and indeed, it can awaken ghosts and revenants that return to haunt the living. Clothes can also signal different times of day and rituals that accompany these. As a major source of visual spectacle, Hollywood films in the studio era often announced the number of costume changes a leading lady would go through. Not only can dress become a vehicle with which to travel through time, is can also measure time; it allows us to wear time, even as time wears us out. From the earliest trick films to the dance numbers of contemporary Bollywood films, cinema can magically make clothing transform, appear, and disappear – but also, importantly, re-appear. Fashion in film has always been an important sign-posting device, deployed in multiple ways: to guide the viewer through time; to confuse, deceive, and disorient; or even to dress the wounds of time

Regard oblique, bifurcation et ricochet, ou de l’inquiétante étrangeté du carrello

Le carrello, qui ponctue à maintes reprises le fameux film Cabiria de Giovanni Pastrone (1914), est l'une des figures les plus intrigantes du cinéma italien des années dix. Les historiens traditionnels du cinéma le voient généralement comme l'ancêtre du travelling. Tel ne serait pas le cas, selon les auteurs du présent article. Même s'il fait indubitablement partie de la famille des mouvements de caméra, même s'il implique un mouvement de la caméra sur un chariot, au même titre que le travelling institutionnel, le carrello cabirien serait doté de plusieurs traits spécifiques qui en font un cas unique dans l'histoire du cinéma.The carrello, that punctuates time and again Giovanni Pastrone's famous Cabiria (1914), is one of the most intriguing figures in Italian cinema of the 1910s. Traditional historians of cinema generally consider it as an ancestor of the traveling shot. Now, such would not be the case, according to the authors of this article. Even if it is indubitably part of the family of camera movements, and even if it implies the movement of a camera on a dolly, as in a traditional tracking shot, the "cabirian" carrello is endowed with several specific characteristics that make it a unique case in the history of cinema

Composition en profondeur, mobilité et montage dans Cabiria (Pastrone, 1914)

Une étude comparative du film Cabiria et de ses chutes (prises de vues exclues de son montage définitif) permet de montrer comment la mise en scène de ce film italien, sorti en 1914, est fondée sur une forme de composition spatiale en profondeur. D'où la tendance notable d'y éviter la fragmentation de l'espace via le montage, comme pour en respecter l'intégrité et mettre en valeur son aspect tridimensionnel. À l'image de la majorité des films européens de la première moitié des années dix, Cabiria réalise ainsi un idéal de représentation spatiale tridimensionnelle « à circularité limitée » qui, tout en permettant au spectateur de se rapprocher de la scène, ne situe jamais l'instance spectatorielle au centre de l'action, un idéal de représentation spatiale au sein de laquelle la mobilité de l'espace scénique est obtenue autrement que par le changement de plan.Through the comparative study of Cabiria and the footage excluded from the final cut, this essay demonstrates that this Italian film, released in 1914, follows a project of "in-depth spatial composition" in an attempt both to avoid the fragmentation of the represented space caused by editing and to respect its integrity through an emphasis on its tridimensional aspect. Like the majority of European films of the first half of the 1910s, Cabiria thus realizes an ideal of tridimensional spatial representation "with limited circularity" (which, while it enables the spectator to get closer to the scene, never situates it at the centre of the action). The dominant feature of this type of spatial representation is the mobility of the scenic space, which is different from the one created by the succession of shots