anthony mcall

"In these works, the artist sought to deconstruct cinema by reducing film to its principle components of time and light and removing the screen entirely as the prescribed surface for projection. The works also shift the relationship of the audience to film, as viewers become participants, their bodies intersecting and modifying the transitory forms." Serpentine Gallery

the five obstructions

"An unclassifiable film-school exercise—one part documentary, one part psychodrama, and one part mock manifesto—The Five Obstructions mainly serves to illuminate the game-like nature of Lars von Trier's aesthetic project.... The Five Obstructions is an essay on art as a matter of solving problems posed by a capricious deity—that is, an exposé of von Trier's own method, both of making a movie and directing actors. Von Trier compares this to therapy, although Leth hardly seems convinced. Eventually, he will be punished for his cleverness when von Trier withdraws his rules. Von Trier confesses that his desire is to "banalize" Leth and reduce him to the situation of "a tortoise on his back." But he fails once more when Leth proves resourceful enough to make something in a mode that both men profess to despise."

Tracking Shots

The Five Obstructions

by J. Hoberman

habitable cinema

"Several of the world's most respected filmmakers have spoken against the notion that a film leads to a climax, and tells a single story. When Kubrick spoke of wanting to 'explode the narrative structure of film' in 'Full Metal Jacket,' I think he anticipated the new creative problems implied in the idea of Habitable Cinema. Tarkovsky makes a similar point. Compared to theater, cinema allows artificial and discontinuous environments to be woven into a single, linear experience. Image, sound, and several other cues for understanding are intertwined into one object in time. This multimodal weaving is good, but the singularity in time is something we have exceeded. Habitable cinema dislocates cinema in the same way that navigable music dislocates music. It states that the cinema of the future will be a landscape or matrix or n-dimensional manifold of opportunity. The filmmaker of the future will be a worldmaker. His or her role will be to invent matrices of opportunity which will combine liquid architecture and navigable music and other dislocated and extended media into situations we can inhabit."

by Marcos Novak

werner herzog

"With a singular vision continually blurring the fine line between reality and fiction, Werner Herzog has become one of cinema's most controversial and enigmatic filmmakers. A strong authorial presence pervades each of his films, whether fictional features or documentaries. For Herzog, there is no distinction between the two styles – they are all just “films” – because real life and fiction feed off each other for mutual poetic inspiration...."

by David Church
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/06/herzog.html