Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Assignment 1

I do not typically find experimental films entertaining or engrossing, but I did like the film we watched in class. The movement in the film seemed to have a hypnotic quality, and was engaging in that I was looking for patterns to emerge throughout the showing. Though I never was able to find any predictable patterns, the film did seem to move through stages with repeated motifs. The found footage of the man and the children, for instance, or the large numbers. None of the images seemed to relate to the soundtrack at all, excepting one sequence in which the beat of the music was accompanied by flashes of white dots. This sequence stood out in my mind, maybe because it finally showed a relationship between sound and image, and a pattern. I did begin to think that maybe numbers were related to time, and the footage of the people showed aging, but that is, of course, purely speculation.
My feelings towards the film seemed to change periodically, just as the film seemed to move through different segments. I felt anywhere from completely lost in the film, just watching without thinking, to being bored to the point of distraction. I did enjoy the majority of the film, but there were stretches that became quite arduous to watch.