I have been a cinema studies major in some capacity or another since 2002, when I entered into the University of Oklahoma and decided to myself "You don't want to be an English major. Your passion is not here. Always remember the trash compactor."
And so, I undertook the course of study that is sending me careening headlong toward a Graduation Without a Clue of What To Do Next™.
This week's viewing of Lola Rennt has brought me somewhat full-circle in that the third film that I watched in my first film class was this particular film. It is only fitting that it is the second-from-last film that I watch as I close out my college career is the same.
Spirals. Circles. A vortex.
All of these things connote a certain idea of repetition. It is this repetition that gives the a movie life. Without repetitions with slight variations, there would be no movies. This is only one of several ways in which this film nods to the history of the pictures.
The spiral motif harkens back to one of the cinema's earliest predecessors, the zoetrope. This particular link also underscores the cinema's direct relationship to its cousin, animation. Whereas you have a succession of pictures flickering past to create motion and thus a movie, you have a succession of cells flickering past to create a cartoon.
And films are just as real as a cartoon.
I know that Jean Luc Godard once said that cinema is truth at 24 times a second. But he also said that every edit is a lie. I'm not trying to discredit one of the cinema's chief provocateurs, I'm just saying that there is no truth in the cinema, especially when the act of putting together a film is akin, at least according to the later of Godard's statements, to the act of compulsive lying.
Just something to think about, I suppose.
How does this affect our present work on our short films? Kelly, Sean, and I have had a couple of discussions based on our screening and the assigned reading regarding Tykwer's film, and skipping over the spiral motif, Sean has decided to use the idea of Tykwer's vision of Berlin in his film somewhat. It's true, we aren't really able to discern which part of Berlin is which. I suppose the idea is to show Berlin as one not necessarily homogenous whole. Thus we have shot quite a bit of footage at various places around the city in order to piece together a patchwork film that evokes place. The things we have shot span the spectrum of this city, from the subtle nooks to the mundane sites that all the tourists see. We hope that our film will evoke place quite clearly. That, however will be decided by our classmates.
This past Sunday, I played around with the idea of using The Wall at Mauerpark as a cinematic canvas, referencing Jürgen Böttcher's Die Mauer. I walked along the wall with my camera trying to capture as much color as I could, as much graffiti as I could, as much art as I could. I panned across the field, people running across the hill playing with their dog, the flea market down below. And then something quite unexpected happened.
I found a story.
I will hopefully be able to work this story into our film. I'm sure that we can make it work.
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