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Absence has played a crucial role in the history of avant-garde
aesthetics, from the blank canvases of Robert Rauschenberg to Yves
Klein's invisible paintings, from the "silent" music of John Cage
to Samuel Beckett's minimalist theater. Yet little attention has
been given to the important role of absence in cinema. In the first
book to focus on cinematic absence, Justin Remes demonstrates how
omissions of expected elements can spur viewers to interpret and
understand the nature of film in new ways. While most film
criticism focuses on what is present, such as images on the screen
and music and dialogue on the soundtrack, Remes contends that what
is missing is an essential part of the cinematic experience. He
examines films without images-such as Walter Ruttmann's Weekend
(1930), a montage of sounds recorded in Berlin-and films without
sound-such as Stan Brakhage's Window Water Baby Moving (1959),
which documents the birth of the filmmaker's first child. He also
examines found footage films that erase elements from preexisting
films such as Naomi Uman's removed (1999), which uses nail polish
and bleach to blot out all the women from a pornographic film, and
Martin Arnold's Deanimated (2002), which digitally eliminates
images and sounds from a Bela Lugosi B movie. Remes maps out the
effects and significations of filmic voids while grappling with
their implications for film theory. Through a careful analysis of a
broad array of avant-garde works, Absence in Cinema reveals that
films must be understood not only in terms of what they show but
also what they withhold.
Conducting the first comprehensive study of films that do not move,
Justin Remes challenges the primacy of motion in cinema and tests
the theoretical limits of film aesthetics and representation.
Reading experimental films such as Andy Warhol's Empire (1964), the
Fluxus work Disappearing Music for Face (1965), Michael Snow's So
Is This (1982), and Derek Jarman's Blue (1993), he shows how
motionless films defiantly showcase the static while collapsing the
boundaries between cinema, photography, painting, and literature.
Analyzing four categories of static film--furniture films, designed
to be viewed partially or distractedly; protracted films, which use
extremely slow motion to impress stasis; textual films, which
foreground the static display of letters and written words; and
monochrome films, which display a field of monochrome color as
their image--Remes maps the interrelations between movement,
stillness, and duration and their complication of cinema's
conventional function and effects. Arguing all films unfold in
time, he suggests duration is more fundamental to cinema than
motion, initiating fresh inquiries into film's manipulation of
temporality, from rigidly structured works to those with more
ambiguous and open-ended frameworks. Remes's discussion integrates
the writings of Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Tom Gunning, Rudolf
Arnheim, Raymond Bellour, and Noel Carroll and will appeal to
students of film theory, experimental cinema, intermedia studies,
and aesthetics.
Conducting the first comprehensive study of films that do not move,
Justin Remes challenges the primacy of motion in cinema and tests
the theoretical limits of film aesthetics and representation.
Reading experimental films such as Andy Warhol's Empire (1964), the
Fluxus work Disappearing Music for Face (1965), Michael Snow's So
Is This (1982), and Derek Jarman's Blue (1993), he shows how
motionless films defiantly showcase the static while collapsing the
boundaries between cinema, photography, painting, and literature.
Analyzing four categories of static film--furniture films, designed
to be viewed partially or distractedly; protracted films, which use
extremely slow motion to impress stasis; textual films, which
foreground the static display of letters and written words; and
monochrome films, which display a field of monochrome color as
their image--Remes maps the interrelations between movement,
stillness, and duration and their complication of cinema's
conventional function and effects. Arguing all films unfold in
time, he suggests duration is more fundamental to cinema than
motion, initiating fresh inquiries into film's manipulation of
temporality, from rigidly structured works to those with more
ambiguous and open-ended frameworks. Remes's discussion integrates
the writings of Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Tom Gunning, Rudolf
Arnheim, Raymond Bellour, and Noel Carroll and will appeal to
students of film theory, experimental cinema, intermedia studies,
and aesthetics.
Absence has played a crucial role in the history of avant-garde
aesthetics, from the blank canvases of Robert Rauschenberg to Yves
Klein's invisible paintings, from the "silent" music of John Cage
to Samuel Beckett's minimalist theater. Yet little attention has
been given to the important role of absence in cinema. In the first
book to focus on cinematic absence, Justin Remes demonstrates how
omissions of expected elements can spur viewers to interpret and
understand the nature of film in new ways. While most film
criticism focuses on what is present, such as images on the screen
and music and dialogue on the soundtrack, Remes contends that what
is missing is an essential part of the cinematic experience. He
examines films without images-such as Walter Ruttmann's Weekend
(1930), a montage of sounds recorded in Berlin-and films without
sound-such as Stan Brakhage's Window Water Baby Moving (1959),
which documents the birth of the filmmaker's first child. He also
examines found footage films that erase elements from preexisting
films such as Naomi Uman's removed (1999), which uses nail polish
and bleach to blot out all the women from a pornographic film, and
Martin Arnold's Deanimated (2002), which digitally eliminates
images and sounds from a Bela Lugosi B movie. Remes maps out the
effects and significations of filmic voids while grappling with
their implications for film theory. Through a careful analysis of a
broad array of avant-garde works, Absence in Cinema reveals that
films must be understood not only in terms of what they show but
also what they withhold.
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