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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Dec. 4, 2003)
New York artists bring film collages to Eugene him strips are the canvases for the pair’s show, which invites viewers to find their own meanings By Natasha Chilingerian Pulse Reporter New York-based filmmakers Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder will present about an hour of their work in "rhe Matter of Film" at the Downtown Ini tiative for Visual Arts on Sunday. Sponsor Marc Moscato, who creat ed the collective art series "Not My Mouse Mobile Arts," described Gib son and Recoder's films as "very dense and layered moving paintings with audio collages." Gibson and Recoder use filmstrips as their canvases and apply materials such as paint and photos modified by glue and tape, and then pair the visual aspect with abstract soundtracks. They experiment with forms of film manip ulation, for example, incorporating scratches and hairs on old film into the collages and layering two films into one projector. Gibson's short film "Soundings" shows an array of colored shapes, photos of humans and sounds such as church bells and hospital heart monitors. Gibson and Recoder said viewers should look at their films the same way as abstract art pieces in museums. They said their work is not meant to convey particular messages but is meant to simply be enjoyed and inter preted by the viewer. "It's about experiencing the film it self," Gibson said. "It's not about con verting people, it's not political, and it's not sending a message." Recoder said that although some viewers struggle to find a narrative, he and Gibson don't intend to tell stories in their films. "(Our films) can be simple and delighting once you get past the threshold of expecting a narrative," he said. "When a viewer sees a nar rative in one of our films, it is usual ly about where the color red ends up. It's not about characters." Recoder said it is exciting to use the same kind of film strips used for mainstream movies, but to deal with the medium in a different way. Moscato added that Gibson and Re coder's artistic use of film results in a completely new way to watch movies. "(Their films are) a completely Turn to FILM, page 12 Courtesy Filmmakers Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder bring their distinctive films to the Downtown Initiative for Visual Arts. Their work experiments with forms of film manipulation. Trash' cinema's raw qualities deserve defense The late, great film critic Pauline Kael once observed that "The movies are so rarely great ait, that if we can't appreciate great trash, there is little reason for us to go." I think of this quote whenever someone tells me that my extreme input of B-movies, exploitation films and cheap horror Aids will "rot my brain." I watch these films with total aware ness that they are cheap, poorly acted and, more often than not, ineptly made. But aside from this there is a beauty to them, though it is a degraded beauty, like that of a train WTeck or a condemned, rotting building overrun with weeds. Often they can be more aesthetically pleasing in their cheapness than most big A-list films are in their slick stylishness. With the trash films, if a mistake is made, it is easy to forgive because the limitations that the film makers work with are obvious. On the other hand, makers of big-budget Hol lywood flicks, with giant budgets and nearly unlimited resources, have no ex cuses for the dreck that they put out. This might explain why cheap bad movies are more enjoyable than expen sive bad movies, but it doesn't really get to the heart of why they're enjoyable in the first place For that you have to dig a little deeper. One possibility could sim ply be the level of creativity. When strapped for cash, filmmakers have to do as much as they can with as little as possible. Without special effects to flash across the screen every few seconds, the B-movies of the past had to find other ways to keep the audience interested. Absurd plots and over-the-top acting did part of the job, but the greatest of these films were also innovative in sub tle, more technical ways. Take "Night of the Living Dead," for example. The 1968 original is now mostly remembered as being the first real zombie film, yet there is much more to it than that. Below the horror movie plot is a distinct film grammar that has rarely been used so effectively. The camera angles are never centered, always too high or too low and some times even twisting off to absurd de grees. This enhances the feeling of dis tortion and displacement more than Ryan Nyberg Budget rack any cheesy effect or music possibly could. Yet it amazes me that so few peo ple would consider "Night" a great film, or even an important one, but it has done for horror cinema what "Citizen Kane" did for everything else. Trash cinema also has its auteurs. Few people would consider Roger Corman a great filmmaker, and on many counts they would be right. Films like "Gun slinger" and "The Undead" are indis putably awful, notable only for their lack of value. But then there are classic films like "A Bucket of Blood," "Ihe Wasp Woman" and the original "The Litde Shop of Horrors," which all work in one of the most difficult areas: Satiri cal horror. Also, Corman's cycle of Edgar Allen Poe adaptations, such as "House of Usher," were incredible constructions of Gothic mood. So, from all this, the eternal question is raised: Is trash cinema art, or just cheap exploitative profiteering? I an swer with another question: "Why not both?" Most art is exploitative anyway, and it is no secret that many of the great B-movie filmmakers took extreme measures to get people's asses into the ater seats. This is hardly different from the market-study obsessed, high con cept hell that major studio filmmaking has become — save, perhaps, the level of calculation. Ihe great trash films, es pecially those of the 1950s and 1960s, despite (or maybe even because of) their cheap marketing ploys, contained a rawness that no big budget film can match, much like the rawness of early rock 'n' roll: distorted and dirty but full of life and energy. So maybe this distinction between "high" and "low" art ought to be done away with. Maybe "Reefer Mad ness" says more about America's view of drugs than "Traffic." Maybe the films of Edward D. Wood, Jr. are more rewarding than any amount of hip, Tarantino-inspired drivel. Maybe, as the big budget holiday season bears down on us, we ought to reconsider what is and isn't trash. Or maybe we just ought to look at art a little differ ently. Or something, anyway. Contact the senior Pulse reporter at ryannyburg@dailyemerald.com. 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