Un Chien Andalou
Un Chien Andalou is a 17 minute long surrealist film and was created in France in 1929 and is a black and white silent film. It is basically a film where a man uses a blade to cut into a woman’s eyeball. Within the first few moments of the short film the audience see the moon, the blade and the eye being cut. You don’t actually see the eyeball being cut into but instead you see a thin cloud passing by the moon, which obviously represents the eye. I like old films like this as they seemed to be more creative and left more to the imagination and allowed spectators/audiences figure things out for themselves and make them think that they had seen something when in fact it was just the trick of the camera shots/angles. I love that old cinema would do this all the time purely because there wasn’t the budget to spent on elaborate special makeup and effects whereas nowadays technology has moved on and audiences almost want to see everything, like they need to see every detail of a scene just to believe it more. I find this short film so random and strange, which kind of made me laugh because it was so out of the ordinary. I like the transitions and how a character could be in one place and suddenly be transported into another. I find this concept interesting and adds more to the short film, making it so much more inviting for the audience to keep them guessing and to move them away from the ordinary and passive way of thinking. For me this short film was made to provoke thinking and to really make audiences think for themselves and start to interpret things for themselves too instead of constantly being told exactly what is going on and what is happening in a film. After watching this short film I was left wondering what I had just watched. It was so random but strangely enough I found it amusing. It is one of those things that are just so strange and out there that you can’t help but laugh at it but also question how strange it is. I thought the cutting of the eye ball at the beginning was a signifier that they were living in a surrealist world and it was also gross to see and split open eye. The ants made me think that the man was dead and they were for some reason feasting on his dead hand, like bugs do when people die. The leading male protagonist literally seemed insane to me and was the most random in the short film but he really did intrigue me with his facial expressions and the eyeliner around his eyes.
Notes | Thoughts
-holding ants in his hand and is in a frozen position staring at it
– woman with hair slicked back pocking at a severed hand that she had in a box in the middle of the street while police try to push spectators away
– characters always freeze in a moment
– woman run over in the street, man looks so excited about it
– the man gropes the womans boobs [so odd]. she doesn’t want him to but he makes her and he images her with no top on and seems to be dribbling
– very theatrical performance and they use there facial expressions as obviously they never used to speak in these silent films
– doesn’t make any sense, he appears in different rooms etc
– the man is strange and somewhat creepy
– the man seems to be a bit delusional or just really weird as he seems to get excited for the gory and unsettling painful parts of the film
– books turn into guns
– transported to another place, in a woods somewhere. touches womans bare back before he falls to the floor possibly dead
– she looses her arm hair which ends up on his face. she leaves through a door in the house and ends up on a beach with some other man
KOYAANISQATSI (Life Out Of Balance)
Koyaanisqatsi is a 1h23minute film that brings to the light the beauty of our natural world alongside contemporary urban society. This is something that I want to focus on in my own photographic work and so this film is a perfect example to gain some inspiration from. This film shows the true horrors of our urbanised world and how it is constantly being destroyed, re-built and is taking away natures natural beauty. I love this film as it is really relaxing to look at with the music per the top and being able to see these beautiful landscapes with the sun and clouds moving showing the time-lapse. I have always been a lover of the natural world and often find myself going down to the ocean when I need to de-stress or relax. Something about the natural world is so therapeutic and more beautiful than any building ever could be. The main thought that I left with after watching this film was how often destruction does on in our urbanised society and how often we abuse our natural world, throwing rubbish around and not caring about the consequence that future generations are going to be focused to face because of the people of todays selfishness and carelessness. This film has really helped me with my thoughts on my project and inspired me to make a really great series of images that will really give a clear message on what I want my spectators to see and the movement that I want to follow.
Notes | Thoughts
-aboriginal drawings
-earrie , with soft calming music
– the voice makes it sound like some sort of ritual
– the music makes the destruction look almost poetic, as it falls you feel more empathy towards it and just watch as it slowly falls to the ground
– beautiful landscapes with music playing over it
– showing off the natural world with slow pan shots as well as the music making it more fascinating to look at
– shot of bats in a cave, sound of their voices and flying
– one huge time lapse
– cloud time lapse replicates fire and smoke, going fast pace
– water fall blue sea and clouds of smoke
– calm ocean
– different shots transitioning across smoothly
– clouds moving fast to transition into the ocean making a smooth transition that blends well
– clouds look like the ocean going over all of the mountains, looks amazing
– really relaxing to watch
– film made using a drone, flowing across water and miles of land with crops and flowers
– visually beautiful shots
– large truck, black smoke, electronic systems build over the natural world to make roads and garbage disposals
– giant connect pillions that carry electricity and holds the wires that the internet and electricity goes through
– power station throwing out gas into the natural world
– unnatural gases coming out of these stations
– roads and pathways being built over the natural world, confining it
– construction building, moving around dirt and remoulding it to suit people
– mass construction
– explosions
– amazing shots make it look almost sad that the natural world is slowly being taken away to make room for the urbanised society that we live in
– people on a beach next to a large construction site
-tourists coming to see these buildings
– skyscrapers are so tall, reflection of the clouds in them
– plane out of focus, blurred moving as if staring from a reflection in the ocean or showing the fuel that is used for planes that infects the air [pollution]
– you could make a photo book out of the shots made in this short film, it’s almost poetic
– the film is more effective as it makes you focus on one thing for an extended length of time, making you focus on the little details and think more about what we are doing to the natural world
– highways, hundreds of thousands of cars using fuel and polluting the earth. people don’t use their legs anymore because it isn’t convenient
– war, explosions, people dying and nature suffering, cluster bombs
– intense explosions constantly in nature while tall building and cities are doing just fine
– buildings are all geometric shapes, perfectly constructed and lined while nature is suffering and being abused and ignored
– rubbish and destruction everywhere
– people living in dirt and human waste
– mistreated
– dirty and disgusting
– repetition of buildings, cars etc
– everything in nature is different and unique in its own beautiful way whereas urban society looks all the same
– tall, ugly buildings
– smashed windows, destruction
– emphasis on how the urbanised world is mistreated and a waste of space
– constant destruction and being blown up, remoulded and changed to suit people
– formation of the clouds is dull and gloomy
– seeing the destruction of the buildings made me feel more on edge, it was horrible to watch. made me more tense
– so unnatural and everything looks the same
– floods of people, in masses walking around
– people looking into the camera stood in front of machines that people made, fast pace trains, large plane with pilot staring into carema
– huge lights and cameras behind a group of women staring into the camera
– sun setting through the reflection of windows of a huge building
