Boundless Ontologies: Michael Snow, Wittgenstein, and the Textual Film

While most fi lms use moving images as their primary currency, there are several experimental fi lms—such as Michael Snow’s So Is This (1982)—that instead traffi c in the written word. This article argues that such experiments problematize rigid conceptions of fi lm’s ontology and instead foreground the usefulness of a Wittgensteinian approach to cinema. Unlike a book in your hand, a fi lm keeps on going whether you like it or not. For it has an existence of its own. A microcosm larger than life, its boundaries are boundless. —James Broughton1 The fi lm of tomorrow will be lettrist and composed of subtitles. If at its conception cinema was by virtue of its images an attack on reading, the day will come when the cinema will be a mere form of reading. —Isidore Iso

The Sacrificial Economy of Luis Bunuel

In a 1959 interview with Jean de Baroncelli, the great Surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel famously declared, “I’m an atheist still, thank God” (qtd. in Kyrou 120). In fact, as anyone who has seen Buñuel’s films can attest, he is more than simply an atheist; he is also an antitheist. That is, not only does he lack faith in God, he actively opposes such faith, frequently using scathing satire and blasphemy to challenge religious hegemony. Still, in spite of Buñuel’s anticlericalism and atheism, it would be difficult to find a director more obsessed with God. Religious topoi are ubiquitous in Buñuel’s filmography, and this includes a particularly prevalent (albeit undertheorized) topos of sacrifice. I want to argue that Buñuel’s sacrificial economy reveals a great deal about his complex relationship to religion. I also want to suggest that Buñuel’s appropriation of this religious theme is philosophically rich, anticipating Jacques Derrida’s theorizations of sacrifice in The Gift of Death (Donner la mort)

Animated Holes: An Interview with Naomi Uman

“Oh, Walter! Tell me what you see.” – A sexually-charged woman, Naomi Uman’s removed (1999) I’m watching a German porno from the 1970s. Well, not quite. I’m watching a German porno that’s been dubbed into English, which explains why the characters’ mouths are not synchronized with their salacious dialogue (“My God, she’s got a fantastic ass!”). The film is a German porno, once removed

Movies That Don’t Move

My Cinema Journal article, “Boundless Ontologies: Michael Snow, Wittgenstein, and the Textual Film,” is part of a larger research project on stillness in cinema that has recently culminated in the publication of a book entitled Motion(less) Pictures: The Cinema of Stasis (Columbia University Press, 2015). I began this research in 2010 and since then, I have had the opportunity to present and discuss my conclusions at a number of conferences and symposia. For the past five years, I have given my scholarly attention to films with little or no movement, films in which stasis, rather than motion, is the default setting. Examples of such static films include Andy Warhol’s Empire (1964), the Fluxus film Disappearing Music for Face (1966), Michael Snow’s So Is This (1982), and Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993). I have had considerable difficulty explaining this research to others, even my colleagues in film studies. For a while when I was asked about the focus of my research, I answered by saying “static films.” However, I realized that this response was causing considerable confusion when an academic asked me if this meant that I studied films that consist solely of television static.[ii] In a bid for lucidity, I began answering the question in a more direct and conversational way: “I study movies that don’t move.

The Sacrificial Economy of Luis Bunuel

In a 1959 interview with Jean de Baroncelli, the great Surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel famously declared, “I’m an atheist still, thank God” (qtd. in Kyrou 120). In fact, as anyone who has seen Buñuel’s films can attest, he is more than simply an atheist; he is also an antitheist. That is, not only does he lack faith in God, he actively opposes such faith, frequently using scathing satire and blasphemy to challenge religious hegemony. Still, in spite of Buñuel’s anticlericalism and atheism, it would be difficult to find a director more obsessed with God. Religious topoi are ubiquitous in Buñuel’s filmography, and this includes a particularly prevalent (albeit undertheorized) topos of sacrifice. I want to argue that Buñuel’s sacrificial economy reveals a great deal about his complex relationship to religion. I also want to suggest that Buñuel’s appropriation of this religious theme is philosophically rich, anticipating Jacques Derrida’s theorizations of sacrifice in The Gift of Death (Donner la mort).This book chapter is published as Remes, J., The Sacrificial Economy of Luis Bunuel in Faith and spirituality in masters of world cinema Volume II / edited by Kenneth R. Morefield. 2011. Chapter One; 1-10. Posted with the permission of Cambridge Scholars Publishing.</p

Movies That Don’t Move

My Cinema Journal article, “Boundless Ontologies: Michael Snow, Wittgenstein, and the Textual Film,” is part of a larger research project on stillness in cinema that has recently culminated in the publication of a book entitled Motion(less) Pictures: The Cinema of Stasis (Columbia University Press, 2015). I began this research in 2010 and since then, I have had the opportunity to present and discuss my conclusions at a number of conferences and symposia. For the past five years, I have given my scholarly attention to films with little or no movement, films in which stasis, rather than motion, is the default setting. Examples of such static films include Andy Warhol’s Empire (1964), the Fluxus film Disappearing Music for Face (1966), Michael Snow’s So Is This (1982), and Derek Jarman’s Blue (1993). I have had considerable difficulty explaining this research to others, even my colleagues in film studies. For a while when I was asked about the focus of my research, I answered by saying “static films.” However, I realized that this response was causing considerable confusion when an academic asked me if this meant that I studied films that consist solely of television static.[ii] In a bid for lucidity, I began answering the question in a more direct and conversational way: “I study movies that don’t move.”This is an article from Cinema Journal’s Afterthoughts and Postscripts 54 (2015). Posted with permission.</p

Animated Holes: An Interview with Naomi Uman

“Oh, Walter! Tell me what you see.” – A sexually-charged woman, Naomi Uman’s removed (1999) I’m watching a German porno from the 1970s. Well, not quite. I’m watching a German porno that’s been dubbed into English, which explains why the characters’ mouths are not synchronized with their salacious dialogue (“My God, she’s got a fantastic ass!”). The film is a German porno, once removed.This article is published as Remes, J., Animated Holes: An Interview with Naomi Uman. Millennium Film Journal, 2017, 66; 68-72. Posted with permission. </p

The Sleeping Spectator: Nonhuman Aesthetics in Abbas Kiarostami’s Five

In 2006, the actress Tilda Swinton delivered a ‘State of Cinema’ address at the Kabuki Theatre during the San Francisco International Film Festival. Early in the address, Swinton remembered a conversation with her father: ‘Dadda was telling me that his falling asleep in the cinema is a particular honour to the film in question. He was telling me this as a compliment, his having snored through three of the four films released last year in which I appeared’ (2006: 111).This work is part of the collection Slow Cinema, ed. Tiago de Luca and Nuno Barradas Jorge, Edinburgh University Press: Edinburgh 2015, https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/</p

Brakhage and the Birth of Silence

Discussions of “silent cinema” have generally focused on films made during the silent era (1894–1929). Even after the spread of synchronized sound, however, several experimental filmmakers created films without soundtracks, purely visual experiences that challenged cinema’s status as a multisensory medium. This article gives close attention to Stan Brakhage’s 1959 film Window Water Baby Moving as a way of outlining some of the effects of cinematic silence, such as aesthetic ambiguity and a heightened awareness of cinema’s visual rhythms.This article is published as Remes, Justin. "Brakhage and the Birth of Silence." JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 58, no. 2 (2019): 71-90. DOI: 10.1353/cj.2019.0003. Posted with permission.</p

Boundless Ontologies: Michael Snow, Wittgenstein, and the Textual Film

While most fi lms use moving images as their primary currency, there are several experimental fi lms—such as Michael Snow’s So Is This (1982)—that instead traffi c in the written word. This article argues that such experiments problematize rigid conceptions of fi lm’s ontology and instead foreground the usefulness of a Wittgensteinian approach to cinema. Unlike a book in your hand, a fi lm keeps on going whether you like it or not. For it has an existence of its own. A microcosm larger than life, its boundaries are boundless. —James Broughton1 The fi lm of tomorrow will be lettrist and composed of subtitles. If at its conception cinema was by virtue of its images an attack on reading, the day will come when the cinema will be a mere form of reading. —Isidore IsouThis article is published as Remes,J., (2015) “Boundless Ontologies: Michael Snow, Wittgenstein, and the Textual Film,” Cinema Journal 54.3, 69–87. Posted with permission. </p