Springboard

28.4.2020

Jennet Thomas

Film makers who chose to work with constraints

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Guy Ben-Nur: Berkeley's Island (1999)

• Low budget

• DIY

• Early works include himself and family surrounding the idea of isolation as an at home parent

• Based on Robinson Crueso

• Island in the middle of the family kitchen

• Family man wish to be alone

• Uses light from fridge door to read

• Daughter interferes by moving camera and making sandcastles

• Theme of isolation

• Internal voice of character

• Self reflection

• Diary entries

• Domestic

• Amateur

• Sees what he has been deprived of in objects - the female body

• Chocolate coins

• Entertaining self with penis

• Parrot is pet cat

• Dead pan humour

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Sadie Benning: Jollies (1990)

• Childhood bedroom

• Toys as props, ideas and characters

• Close-up filming

• Sexuality development

• Isolated surroundings

• 'I wanted to substitute artists, things that were around me, to illustrate the events. I used objects in the closest proximity. The television, toys, my dog, whatever.'

• Romance

• Black and white

• Unstable camera

• Music

• Barbies

• Close up of face telling story: intimate

• Aware that the creator and narrator is behind camera

• Different camera angles and perspective such as sideways or upside down

• Written words and lettered beads to spell out words

• Teenage stories

• Relationship with boys when younger

• Close ups of mouth and lips

• Shadows

• Shaving face - why? Masculine? Wearing a tie

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Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid: Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)

• Just 2 people

• Continuity tricks

• Strange camera angles

• Difficult to hold onto reality

• Black and white

• Focus on shadows and silhouettes

• Knife in bread

• Percussion in soundtrack gives an uneasy feeling

• Light and shadow contrasts

• Cloaked figure with mirror for face

• Stairs and paths seem longer than they really are

• Falling : altered gravity

• Watching herself?

• Parts where the house seems to be moving reminds me of a fun house at a fair

• Repetition

• What is reality

• 3 of the same person sat around table, are these people one person or all different?

• Man does the same things as the clocked figure, are they the same?

• Throws knife at man's face but instead it smashed a mirror showing his face

• Flower is shown throughout

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Jacolby Satterwhite: Refining Desire 5

• Sketched his mother's inventions, she sent them in to shopping channels in hope they would be made, he later found out she had schizophrenia

• These drawings became her meditation/therapy

• He started making artwork about her world, including his mother's singing recordings, sees he is collaborating with her

• Gay scene

• Animation

• Social media

• Technology

• The way our bodies exist virtually

• Sees his body as a form of punctuation

• Obsession

• Lost movement in his arm as a child due to cancer, body wasn't moving as it should

• Sci-fi

• Surrealist

• Chaotic

• Inspired by family footage

• Wanted to dance with the girls but was pushed out

• 'Queering the purpose of an object'

• Turning his mother's drawings into different objects

• 'Pussy power' drawing, pouring liquid from this onto women whose 'bushes' are on fire

• Women dancing as they no longer have bushes

• Tying people up with hair and plaits

• 'Lipstick for between the legs'

• Lipstick turns into giant penis which spits out mini dancing Jacolbys

• Dancing in triangles in space