Amos brought me to a horrible place to love ⋅
The whole retrospective Amos in Wonderland is worth watching as a complete take on Amos Vogel’s work and life, and what preceded this second section was a playful and enthusiastic introduction to New York. I felt that Alexander Horwath and Regina Schlagnitweit emphasized Vogel’s stance towards films, and most importantly towards the world that surrounded him. A stance consisting of freedom, genuinity and freedom to experiment in a serious and intense way. Before the program, the curators briefly spoke about the selection in a video and their virtual presence created a really nice and welcoming atmosphere. Other than that, before each block they chose a certain excerpt from the interview with Amos Vogel made by Paul Cronin, which was not just a thematic introduction but also a reminder of his figure. These excerpts highlighted certain issues in his life, allowing us to deepen in certain subjects and provoked thoughts about facts that are usually accepted without questioning.
After the introduction and the first block, the second section kept following the life of Amos Vogel and his wife, Marcia Vogel, reflecting upon their marriage which had taken place on August 6, 1945, exactly on the same day, when the atomic bomb was thrown on Hiroshima. After another excerpt of the interview, the next block began with the title In Love and War. This section was emotionally intense, formally diverse and offered a complex net of thoughts to present a controversial state of mind, contrasting the personal wonders and the unthinkable horror of the historical and political events. This logic of alternately balancing and clashing creates a genuinely human atmosphere, where the shocking reality of the war hits you as if you have never heard of these happenings before.
Not long after the first session which was an infantile (in the best possible sense) and playful take on New York, A Diary for Timothy felt like a shocking and extremely highlighted change of viewpoints from childhood naivety to the anxieties of adulthood. This film is a letter to a recently born child, an emotional and overarching summary of all the horror and fear of the twentieth century. After this warm addressing, in Hiroshima Nagasaki August, 1945 the audience got a shockingly precise description of what the atomic bomb does to nature, especially to the human, as it explained the rapid functioning of this incomprehensible weapon. In a close dialogue with this film, Take the 5:10 to Dreamland seemed to be the cruellest artwork I’ve ever seen. It became clearer in this context, that literally each simple, beautiful and innocent image of found footage film can be associated with some phase of the atomic bomb’s destruction. After this heavy experience, the love and kindness of The Voyagers was a real relief. I summarized these last three films as an image of two enormous vehicles targeting the sky, one with the aim of total destruction and the other with the aim of preserving a particular part of life. Reflecting upon the previous topic but being a synthesis of thoughts about creativity, intuition and the intention of discovery that drives humankind, this film was a sensitive summary of a diverse day. Besides, it really was a nice frame of this block, in tone resonating with the letter-like narration of the first film.
A real cinema hall experience
The Wonder Ring in the context of the Amos Vogel program’s A New Home block (In the Street, Weegee’s New York, Wonder Ring, Sunday, ISM ISM, Operation Jane Walk). It had a child-like perspective on New York, regarding interests and the intensity of engagement, corresponding also with the first part of the previous film, Weegee’s New York. I’ve watched Wonder Ring several times before, but the cinema experience as always, changed it a lot. Brakhage observes and documents the Third Avenue elevated train before its destruction with honest love, finding genuine joy in details, lights and movement. Not only did the film create a beautiful atmosphere, but with the colourful windows, overlapping reflections and the movement of the vehicle, it opened up my childhood memories. I have some similar visual moments and I have travelled a lot as a child; however, this is not the only reason the film had this impression on me. I believe the bound and still position as a traveller, from the inside looking outside and the perception of motion together achieved this meditative state of deep observation, which is often discussed as a childhood privilege. Besides, lately I’ve been thinking a lot about reflections on the window, as when we see the reflections of our environment, even if we look outside, we look inside as well. This unconscious idea might invoke more this kind of contemplative sense.
How my doubts had driven me to indifference…
The majority of the films I saw in the official selection were rather indifferent to me. While I recognize the effort to put together similar films, I still think characteristic differences in either style, rhythm or theme are important otherwise it feels like watching the same film over and over again. These shorts, like for instance PSEUDOSPHYNX, didn’t really leave an impression on me, I couldn’t observe the animal nor had I associations that based on the title the film should have offered. In the retrospective dedicated to Amos Vogel, I had loved almost all films both individually and in dialogue with each other, and even the ones that I felt distant spoke to me in new ways. A particular example of that would be Operation Jane Walk. During the years I’ve been studying the history of cinema I had some debates and discussions about video games, how they would replace films and how they can build a similar narrative to films. I often found these debates pointless and the visual style of most video games I just found ugly, so when this film started as the last piece of a beautiful section, I was quite confused. Hacking the logic of the video game from the inside seemed rather interesting, the voice of the tour-guide slightly tended to be somewhat ironically personal. Ignoring the fights and dangers that might take place during our journey, we focused on the buildings of the city. Although, I cannot really appreciate when the essence of a film is merely a smart-alecky idea, this one stayed with me and I was struggling for some days with my conflicted relation to this film. As I mentioned, this kind of video game aesthetics usually repulses me, but watching it in this context, having Film as a Subversive Art in mind, made me question my reservations. I’m still not sure if I liked the film.
A film that could have been a favourite
However, I chose a film which I dislike very much for I was so close to love it. It was Signal 8, directed by Simon Liu and it immediately raised my attention as I usually enjoy very much films based on singular and everyday observations, so I was quite sure I would like the film. Despite that from the beginning I felt that the originality and the personal aspect of the observations are overshadowed by this humming sound, and that the cuts were too fast to describe a certain experience in time and space. Even if I recognized my own way of relating to certain objects in the street, I felt that this is just not the same, it doesn’t really engage with the details. With the sound effects and modified images, it rather aspires to create a ghost-like atmosphere of the city, mustering all the clichés of alienation, lack of nature, the general anxiety of the citizens. Other than that, I honestly don’t understand where this need for dragging the camera and flashing images comes from, but my eyes are not trained enough to bear these visual hardships. The film seems especially bad in light of the other films I saw in the festival about cities, mainly in the Amos Vogel program.
Babos Anna 