GG: shadows on the wall, accompanied by music...

["Joseph Podlesnik" <veronese@jerseycape.com>]

Kristen (and group):

More scattered thoughts--

It's known that GG wanted (in a second life) to write, produce, and direct
his own films. It would have been a gas to see these works. 

Re: the "common language" between film and music: It seems only natural
that other artistic mediums would be cross-bred with the powerful emotional
properties of music. Think of those enlightened few who first recognized
this and paired the early film with the piano or organ. Taking a step
further back, we can see that music accompanied theater productions even
before the advent of film (they call it opera, don't they?) Perhaps it is
any event (funny or dramatic) acted out in time -- with its rhythmic stops
and starts, its fits and resolutions, its varying emotional tonus -- which
shares this common language with music, and not necessarily film. 

Taking a step back even further: We can see how images (icons or
sculptures) were paired with organ or choir music in the great Gothic
cathedrals. Further back still -- Greek murals must have been accompanied
by early Hellenic music. Think of what it must have been like to witness
Bernini's "Ecstasy of St. Theresa" replete with church music. Music has and
will always add dimension to, enhance and propel the emotional feel of
different art forms. It's amazing how these cross-bred conventions have
affected how we experience reality today. For instance, I'm always catching
myself (to an almost compulsive degree) experiencing daily events through
an imagined musical accompaniment, wondering how different music would
affect the emotional tenor of various situations throughout the day. Also,
I'm always seeing reality through the slow-motion conventions of film.
Funny, how would I have seen reality had I lived 200 hundred years ago?  

Re: the idea that film is not a medium of the intellect. Does this have to
do with the fact that for film's illusory motion (or "alpha" effect) to
take place, it must work on the sluggish way in which our nervous system
processes rapid series of images? Think about it, film is one of the few
mediums (only medium?) which involves this kind of effect in order to
perceive it. Apparently Marcel Duchamp, too, didn't think film was worthy
of the intellect. He didn't believe in cinema as a means of expression,
saying once that, "... like photography, it doesn't go much further than a
mechanical way of making something. It can't compete with art. If art
continues to exist..."

Nevertheless, I enjoy film and have been working for sometime (a real labor
of love!) on a video homage, a documentary on my father's life (he passed
away in '94). The project includes photo-stills, Super 8 footage and old
video tapes, current video interviews with friends and family, background
music, narration, and sound effects -- everything we've been talking about
-- all these different art forms rubbing elbows. Film (video) is an awfully
promiscuous medium.