Film
Production Grant application,
Barbara
Sternberg
Like
a Dream that Vanishes
PROJECT
DESCRIPTION (in relation to previous work):
Like a Dream that Vanishes continues and advances my
work in film both thematically and formally. All my films are concerned in some
way with Perception - how we perceive realities and how we see ourselves in the
world. The material properties of film
and the process of its production seem to me to be analogous to human
consciousness, to the nature of our being in the world. The ephemerality of
life is echoed in the temporal nature of film, the 'stuff' of life in the
emulsion, and the energy, life-force in the rhythmic light pulses. Questions
related to time and perception are integral to the film medium, a medium, in
its essence, of light and time. It is interesting that problems in
understanding the nature and behavior of light have led modern science to the
principle of complementarity and a quantum view of the world wherein perception
is being.
In
this film, imageless emulsion will be intercut with brief shots, perhaps only a
few frames, of human endeavor, body and the natural world. My camera glimpses
the world through short shots and/or a camera moving past, expressive of the
fleeting nature of experience, events, sensations. These strategies also
express a position regarding the taking of images; namely, an observational
stance. Subjects are not ours to possess; the world is not ours to hold on
to.
Human
life, to quote a Jewish scriptural text, is " as the grass that withers,
as the flower that fades, as a fleeting shadow, as a passing cloud, as the wind
that blows, as the floating dust, yea, and as a dream that vanishes." The heroism of living in the face of death,
of living with contradiction, has been at the heart of my filmwork.
As
daily bread comes in contact with the mouth, cinema would have to bring the
spectator into closer contact with his deep, everyday existence. Jean-Luc Godard
The
heroic aspect of daily living, that we get up each day and carry on, that we
make an effort, has been present in my treatment of people in, perhaps, all of
my films. Images of the everyday have been raised to emblematic significance by
removal from narrative context, through repetition, or by slow-motion and
reflect the rises and falls of our emotional energies. In previous films, I
have used men engaged in a tug-of-war contest; a woman walking on red
spike-heeled shoes, changing directions; a boy repeatedly running up a hill and
rolling down it. This film will use
performed gestures which have complementary attributes of joy and pain, play
and struggle. The game that is life is a play between coexisting opposites. Old
home-movie footage will be re-filmed of two little boys playing (or are they
fighting), circling after each other, falling down and getting up again.
Innocence and aggression, love and fear and anger intertwine, pass on one into
the other—the energy transmutes.
The
film will have seven sections indicated by numbers from countdown leader -
referencing film time as well as suggesting counting, measuring, aging (the
seven stages of man). The first section will be comprised of film emulsion
itself, that is, various film leaders barely touched by light, with faint
evidence of colour and degrees of density in mottled, blotched, swirled
patterns—the stuff of film (life)—intercut with snatches of imagery, blurred
bits of images: a man running along a road; a house at night, windows
orangely-lit; footage of the tide edging the beach, shot in a fast swirling
motion; veins followed in rock faces; cloud formations; a swimmer catching her
breath... The distinction between raw film footage and the reality imaged on it
dissolves and clarifies. Boundaries are
blurred. Images are less read than
experienced. I work with images
suggestively and bodily. With images as they can be registered between
abstraction and representation, between blurred and defined, between the
formless and formed, in motion, in between. Abstraction from reality, emptying
out of meaning brings us closer to Being.
The
idea of motion, like the imagination itself, has some of the characteristics of
both me and the world...Through movement, my will is, as it were, dispersed
through time. Simone Weil
Subsequent
sections will employ different film stocks; hi-con, b&w
and colour, treated variously from normal lab
processing to hand-processed, to re-printed over several generations, to
negative, to toned or tinted. I have been wanting and
intending to work with the dark of the image, images barely visible. In this
film I will finally work in this way in some sections, with images emerging
from and receding into darkness.
Segments
will vary in length and subject: water
images, always important in my work, will function as a parallel to the active
emulsion in the hand- processed footage. Water as Source, the primordial soup of life,
vast stillness and agitated flux. Sync-sound footage (shot on video and then
transferred to film) of an old man, face gentled with wrinkles and hands twisted
by arthritis who is speaking about philosophy (the discipline) and life
(living). Three or four passages will occur over the course of the film,
dropping and then picking up the train of thought. Footage of a two-year old
girl, bright-eyed enthusiasm, suspicious pout, earnest efforts, shot in b&w will be printed and re-printed and hand-processed
in such a way as to raise the emulsion and in this malleable state cause the
distinction between background and image to be softened. I want to somehow
affect the emulsion so that the image is seen as emerging from the emulsion, as
part of the 'stuff ' of
film, as the girl is part of the material/energy of life. The
movement between form and formlessness, appearing and withdrawing, creation and
dissolution (death) are felt. The film
image, as the reality behind it, is not quite graspable. Film, like life, is evanescent,
impermanent... like a dream that vanishes.
I
have moved away, in the last two films, from using an abundance of voice-over;
midst is silent and for C'est la vie I
worked with a music composer. Like a
Dream will have a composed music/sound/voice track. Voice will be used as music; that is, for
sound and rhythm even more than for meaning. I have recorded men and women speaking nine different
languages and these will form the basis for computer manipulated sound. I am
also working with retired philosophy professor, John Davis, and developing
monologues or edited interviews (videoed) on the relation between philosophy, a
discipline bounded by or existing in language and the experience of living
life. These will be heard as voice-over in some sections, in addition to the
pictured sync passages, and some of the time the thought will be able to be
followed by the audience. Other times this voice will comprise one of the many
voices, many languages heard in snippets, in phrases or even syllables, forming
rhythmic sound segments. Other sound components will arise in collaboration
with the composer; sometimes dense sound like a river flowing, so that the images'
rhythms can be experienced within this flow or ocean of sound; sometimes thin,
sporadic, abrupt; sometimes silent. I am considering working again with Rainer Wiens, Montreal (who composed the sound track for C'est la vie (submitted)) or possibly Earle
Peach (Vancouver) who has created the sound tracks for Mike Hoolboom's
films. I always complete the visuals
first before determining the exact nature and extent of the sound. The picture will be given to the composer on
video for sound composition and editing.
The
catalogue essay written for an exhibition I curated,
"Boundaries of Being", speaks of our (human) attempts to express the
inexpressible and of the kind of work I was looking for: "...media works
that concern themselves with how we are as humans in the world, or that allow
us to see the world afresh, as if we were seeing it again for the first time -
the mystery that is in the everyday. Difficult to explain...or maybe that's
really it: the ineffable...I am thinking about what is beyond words, is not
susceptible to those limits, the unsayable." I think my films or at least my aspirations
for film fit into this category of work.
Cinema
must represent, because it is stronger than ever, something that one does not
encroach upon. Jean-Luc Godard
Thank
you for giving this application your consideration.