The Garden in the Machine: A Field Guide to Independent Films about Place 9780520926455, 0520926455

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
List of Illustrations (page xiii)
Introduction (page xix)
1 The Garden in the Machine (page 1)
2 Voyages of Life (page 23)
3 Avant-Gardens (page 45)
4 Re-envisioning the American West (page 89)
5 From the Sublime to the Vernacular (page 125)
6 The City as Motion Picture (page 147)
7 The Country in the City (page 223)
8 Rural (and Urban) Hours (page 247)
9 Expulsion from the Garden (page 289)
10 Satan's National Park (page 319)
11 Benedictions / New frontiers (page 351)
Appendix (page 377)
Notes (page 387)
Index (page 447)

Citation preview

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The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous contribution to this book provided by the General Endowment Fund of the Associates of the University of California Press.

Scott MacDonald

A Field Guide to Independent Films about Place

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS BERKELEY

LOS ANGELES LONDON

University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England

© 2001 by the Regents of the University of California Earlier versions of several chapters, or portions of chapters, have been published previously; the later versions are reprinted here by permission: “The Garden in the Machine,” in Prospects 22 (1997): 239 — 62; “Voyages

, of Life,” in Wide Angle 18, no. 2 (April 1996): 101-26; “Re-envisioning the American West,” in American Studies 39, no. I (spring 1998): 115-46; “From the Sublime to the Vernacular,” in Film Quarterly 53, no. 1 (fall 1999): 12-25; portions of the “The City as Motion Picture,” in Film Quarterly 51, no. 2 (winter 1997-98): 2—20, and in Wide Angle 19, no. 4 (October 1997): 109-30; and “The Country in the City,” in Journal of American Studies 31, no. 3 (winter

1997): 337-60. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

MacDonald, Scott, 1942The Garden in the machine : a field guide to independent films about place / Scott MacDonald.

D. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN O—520-22737-9 (cloth : alk. paper). — ISBN O—520-22738-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Experimental films — History and criticism. 2. Motion pictures— Setting and scenery. _ I. Title.

PNI995.9.EQ6 M344 2001

791.43, —dc2i 2001027877 CIP

Manufactured in Canada

Io O09 08 o7 06 05 Of 03 O02 OF

io 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 °1

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANsI/NISO Z39.48—1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

For Patricia Reichgott O’Connor—

lover, partner, family, advisor, witness— this book begins and ends with you.

BLANK PAGE

We have advanced by leaps to the Pacific, and left many a lesser Oregon and California unexplored behind us. HENRY DAVID THOREAU, THE MAINE WOODS

BLANK PAGE

3 Avant-Gardens 45 Kenneth Anger’s Eaux d’artifice, Marie Menken’s Glimpse of the

Garden, Carolee Schneemann’s

List of Illustrations = xiii Fuses, Stan Brakhage’s The Garden of Earthly Delights, Marjorie Keller's The Answering Furrow, Anne Charlotte Robertson’s Melon Patches, Or Reasons

Introduction xix to Go on Living, Rose Lowder’s ecological cinema

1 The Garden inthe Machine 1 a Re-envisioning the Larry Gottheim’s Fog Line, Thomas .

Cole's The Oxbow, ia Murphy’s Sky American West &9 Blue Water Light Sign panoramas Babette Mangolte’s The Sky on

, Location, James Benning’s North on Evers, Oliver Stone’s Natural

2 Voyages of Life 23 Born Killers, Ellen Spiro’s Roam Sweet Home Thomas Cole’s The Voyage of Life, Larry Gottheim’s Horizons

5 From the Sublime to the Vernacular = 125 Jan DeBont’s Twister and George Kuchar’s Weather Diaries

6 The City as Motion Picture 147 7 The Country in the City 223 The New York City Symphony: Central Park, Jonas Mekas’s Walden, Rudy Burckhardt’s New York films, William Greaves’s Symbiopsychotaxi-

Weegee’s Weegee’s New York, plasm: Take One Francis Thompson’s N.Y., N.Y., Marie

Menken’s Go! Go! Go!, Hilary Harris’s Thing Hollis Frampton’s Zorns Lemma,

Organism, Spike Lee’s Do the Right s Rural (and Urban) Hours 247 Panorama, the San Francisco City Robert Huot’s One Year (1970) and Film: Frank Stauffacher’s Sausalito Rolls: 1971, Nathaniel Dorsky’s Hours and Notes on the Port of St. Francis, for Jerome, Peter Hutton’s Landscape Bruce Baillie’s Castro Street, Michael (for Manon) and New York Portrait,

Rudnick’s Panorama, Ernie Gehr’s Part | Eureka and Side/Walk/Shuttle Coda—Deconstruction/Reconstruction:

Pat ONeil's Water and Power and , 2 Expulsion from the Garden = 259 Eugene Martin’s Invisible Cities Thomas Cole's The Garden of Eden and Expulsion from the Garden, Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust, Carl Franklin’s One False Move, J. J. Murphy’s Print Generation and Horicon

10 Satan’s National Park 319 Appendix 377 Bruce Conner’s Crossroads, Werner Distribution Sources for Films Herzog’s Lessons of Darkness, Claude and Videos Lanzmann’s Shoah, James Benning’s

Deseret and Four Corners Notes 337 Index 447 11 Benedictions/New Frontiers = 351 | Chick Strand’s Kristallnacht, Stan Brakhage’s Commingled Containers, Andrew Noren’s Imaginary Light, Leighton Pierce’s 50 Feet of String, David Gatten’s What the Water Said, nos. 1-3

BLANK PAGE

Plates , |

(following pages 7/0 and 326)

1 Thomas Cole’s View from Mount 14 The Lake in Central Park in Jonas Holyoke, Northampton, Massachusetts, after Mekas’s Walden (1969)

a Thunderstorm — The Oxbow (1836) 15 Thomas Cole’s Expulsion from the

2-3 The fog slowly clears in Larry Garden of Eden (1828)

Gottheim’s Fog Line (1970) 146-18 Three phases of a rural Vermont 4 Four filmstrips from Larry Gottheim’s scene, from J. J. Murphy’s Print

Horizons (1973) Generation (1974)

5 The water spirit unfolds her fan, in 19 Mountainous terrain in Utah, from Kenneth Anger’s Eaux d’artifice (1953) James Benning’s Deseret (1995)

6-7 Filmstrips from Stan Brakhage’s 20 Concluding image from James The Garden of Earthly Delights (1983) Benning’s Deseret (1995)

8 Filmstrip from Rose Lowder’s 21 Filmstrip from Stan Brakhage’s

Bouquet 9 (1995) Commingled Containers (1997), |

9 Filmstrip from Rose Lowder’s

handpainted imagery evoking water

Bouquet 10 (1995) 22 Filmstrip from Stan Brakhage’s Commingled Containers (1997), reflections

10 Mono Lake, from Babette Mangolte’s in the flow of Boulder Creek, Boulder,

The Sky on Location (1984) Colorado

11 Mountain scene, from Babette 23 A man mows a lawn, from Leighton Mangolte’s The Sky on Location (1984) Pierce’s 50 Feet of String (1995)

12-13 Two composite shots from Pat 24 Toy tractor, from Leighton Pierce’s 50

O’Neill’s Water and Power (1989) Feet of String (t995)

Xili

Figures

1 Frederic Edwin Church’s Sunset (1856) 17 Stagecoach and cavalry in Monument

/ xxi Valley, from John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939)

2 The campsite in J. J. Murphy’s Sky [| 9° Blue Water Light Sign (1972) | 17 18 Fog lingering in the Tetons, from 3 Thomas Cole’s The Voyage of Life: Pabetts Mangolte’s The Sky on Location

Childhood (1839-40) | 24 (1903) / 93

4 Thomas Cole’s The Voyage of Life: Youth 19 J ames Benning’s motorcycle, with

g scrolling text, from North on Evers (1991) (1040) / 25 / 99 5 Th Cole’s The Vi Life: omas Cole's The Voyage of Life 20 Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty, April Manhood (1840) / 26 1970, Great Salt Lake, Utah / 103

Age (1840) / 27

6 Thomas Cole’s The Life:ofOld Cole's TheVi Voyage Life 21 Mickey and Mallory, in Oliver Stone’s 7a-d_ Set of four ind ds L

Natural Born Killers (1994) / 108

Be OEE SSused EESS NY 22 Ellenthe Spiro and Sam on the road durGottheim in arranging rhymes ; ing the shooting of Roam Sweet Home

in Horizons (1973) / 34

(1996) / 116 8Gottheim’s Wash on the line, from Larry , , . Horizons (1973) / 42 23 Margie McCauley, at sixty-six years

973 old, filmed walking Route 66, in Ellen

9 Pavel Tchelitchew’s Hide-and-Seek Spiro’s Roam Sweet Home (1996)

(Cache-cache) (1940-42) | 49 / 119

10-11 Fountains in the gardens of the 24 Bill and Jo run from the tornado in Villa d’Este in Kenneth Anger’s Eaux Twister (1996) / 128 aarti

artifice (1953) | 5% 25 Martin Johnson Heade’s Thunder

12 Marie Menken with Gerard Malanga, Storm on Narragansett Bay (1868)

in Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls (1966) / 132

| 57 26 John Steuart Curry’s Tornado Over

13 Marie Menken—with Kenneth Kansas (1929) / 133

Anger? —shooting her Arabesque for 27a-c Developing storm, from George

Kenneth Anger (1961) / 59 Kuchar’s Weather Diary1(1986) / 139

14 Carolee Schneemann and James One of G Kuchar’s ¢

Tenney in the throes of sexual abandon 28 One ot George uchar's signature

; shots, Weather Diary 1 (1986) in Fusesfrom (1967) / 63 | 142 15 Carolee Schneemann and boa , , 29 Nanook warms his son Allee’s hands, constrictor, in Boa Constrictor (1970)

| 69 in Robert Flaherty’s (1921) Nanook of the North / I51 | 16 Four consecutive frames from Rose i, i, ; og 30 Berlin intersection in Walther Lowder’s Rue des teinturiers (1976) Pa —_ / 83 Ruttmann’s Berlin, Grosstadt die Sinfonie einer (Berlin: Symphony of a Big City, 1927) / 152 XIV ILLUSTRATIONS

31 Industrial landscape from Ralph 46 Clock on San Francisco’s Ferry Steiner and Willard Van Dyke’s The City Building and demolition, in Dominic

(1939) / 154 Angerame’s In the Course of Human Events 32 Times Square in Rudy Burckhardt’s (1997) | 19° The Climate of New York (1948) / 156 47 Castro Street sign, from Bruce 33 Brooklyn Bridge in Rudy Burckhardt’s Baillie’s Castro Street (1966) / 193 Under the Brooklyn Bridge (1953) / 157 48a-b U.S. Steel Building, San Francisco, d rainbow over San Francisco, from 34 Coney Island, 22” of July 1940, 4 o'clock on a) in the afternoon (1940), photograph by Micra Rudnick’s Panorama (1982) Weegee (Arthur Fellig) / 162 / 19

35a-b New York bridges and skyscrapers, #8 “P Moments mn Ernie Gehr S adaptain Francis Thompson’s N.Y., N.Y. (1957) tion/interpretation of A Trip down Market

| 165 ees Street before the Fire (1905), in Eureka

| | (1979) / 201

36 Woman one Paris street 1n Alberto 50a-c Images from three of Ernie Gehr’s Cavalcanti’s Rien que les heures (Nothing

but the Hours, 1926) / 172 trips up and down the elevator of the St.

Francis Hotel in Side/Walk /Shuttle (1991)

37 Vito and Mookie discuss race relations / 206

in Do the Right Thing (1989) 173 51 Fan and desert landscape in Pat 38 Moscow in Dziga Vertov’s The Man O’Neill’s Water and Power (1989) / 211

with a Movie Camera (1929) | 175 52 Time-lapsed musician, against back39 Spike Lee as Mookie during the shoot- _ ground of the Owens Valley, in O’Neill’s

ing of Do the Right Thing (1989) / 177 Water and Power (1989) / 212 40 Sink’s-eye view of Tina cooling off in 53a-b Wall with graffiti in Philadelphia

Do the Right Thing (1989) / 178 and arcade along a street in Torino, Italy, 41. Jo in Wayne Wane’s Chan Is Missing from Eugene Martin’s Invisible Cities

(1981) / 184 (1990) / 219

42 A whimsical bit of observation in 54 Map of the Greensward Plan submitFrank Stauffacher’s Sausalito (1948) ted by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calbert

/ 185 Vaux / 224

43 San Francisco harbor in Frank 55 Map of Central Park as it was actually Stauffacher’s Notes on the Port of St. Francis built by Olmsted and Vaux / 226-27

(1952) / 187 56 The first image of Central Park in 44 Street scene from Frank Stauffacher’s 04S Mekas’s Walden (1968) / 231 Notes on the Port of St. Francis (1952) 57 An early text from Jonas Mekas’s

/ 187 Walden (1968)9/33 2

45 The Golden Gate Bridge in Frank 58 The arguing couple in William Stauffacher’s Notes on the Port of St. Francis | Greaves’s Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take

(1952) / 187

XV ILLUSTRATIONS

One (shot in 1968, finished in 1972) 74a-b Two Catskill Mountain landscapes,

/ 238 from Peter Hutton’s Landscape (for 59 William Greaves shooting what Manon) (1987) | 283

became Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One 75a-b Images of New York City, from

in1968 / 245 Peter Hutton’s New York Portrait, Part I 60-61 Turning the pages of Antonio (1976) | 284 Pigafetta’s diary of the voyage of Magellan 76a-b Two Hudson River scenes from

and frying an egg, both in Hollis Hutton’s Study of a River (1997): a tug Frampton’s Zorns Lemma (1970) / 252 pulls a tanker down the Hudson; a train 62 Robert Huot, Marcia Steinbrecher, and Brides along me river near Bear Mountain

Colonel, the dog, begin the walk across ridge [207

Huot’s farm in the final section of Zorns 77 Thomas Cole’s The Garden of Eden

Lemma (1970) | 254 (1827-28) / 292

63 Robert Huot in costume for War 78-80 Nineteenth-century magic lantern (1961), a performance by Huot and Robert — show; magic lantern projection in Georges

Morris / 257 Méliés’s The Magic Lantern (1903);

64 Hero, the word photograph Hollis fireman thinks aaieins his family at home, in Edwin S. Porter’s The Life of an Frampton gave to Robert HuotAmerican / 258 Fireman ; (1903) / 294

65 Asher B. D d’s Kindred Spirit

(8 7 5 urand’s Kindred Spirits 81-82 Thomas Moran’s Slave Hunt,

49 59 Dismal Swamp, Virginia (1862) and detail

66 Robert uot diary painting, Diary | 298-99

20 (1973) [| 20% 83 King Kong does battle for Anne

67 Twyla Tharp nursing Jesse Huot in Darrow ina prehistoric swamp, Robert Huot’s Rolls: 1971 (1972) / 263 production still for King Kong (1933)

68 Robert Huot and Hollis Frampton dur- | 300 ing the shooting of Huot’s Third One-Year 84 Family members arrive for a reunion

Movie—1972 (1973) / 264 on Sea Island off the coast of South 69 Story of Saint Jerome: Jerome Heals a Carolina in Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Lion, from The Book of Hours, The Belles Dust (1992) / 301

Heures de Jean de France (ca. 1412), as 85 Sheriff “Hurricane” Dixon and reproduced in The Belles Heures of Jean, Lila/Fantasia reunited in One False Move

Duke of Berry, Prince of France | 268 (1991) / 306 70 Fitz Hugh Lane’s Ipswich Bay (1862) 86 J.J. Murphy’s mother walking in her

| 274 backyard, midway through the contact 71, Martin Johnson Heade’s Newburyport print generations in Print Generation

Meadows (ca.1875) / 275 (1974) | 312

72a-b Two images of water from Ralph 87 Rachel and Barnum visit the Horicon

Steiner’s H,O (1929) / 278 Marsh in J. J. Murphy’s Horicon (1993) | 315

73 Fitz Hugh Lane’s Brace’s Rock, Brace’s

Cove (1864) / 280 XVi_ ILLUSTRATIONS

88 Nuclear detonation during Crossroads 93 Navajo cemetery in Farmington, New testing, from Bruce Conner’s Crossroads Mexico, sometimes called “Moccasin Hill,”

(1976) / 323 from James Benning’s Four Corners (1997)

89 Abandoned tank in Kuwaiti oil fields [| 348 after the Gulf War, from Werner Herzog’s 94 Two successive frames of Andrew | Lessons of Darkness (1992) / 325 Noren filming in his backyard, from 90 The Lumiére Brothers’ L’Arrivée dun Imaginary Light (1995) | 303 train en gare de la Ciotat (1895) / 334 95 Umbrella and raindrop in Leighton 91 The gate to Auschwitz-Birkenau, from Pierce's 50 Feet of String (1995) / 371 Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985) / 335 92 Desert in southern Utah in James Benning’s Deseret (1995) / 339

Xvil ILLUSTRATIONS

BLANK PAGE

But there do come certain moments in the history of a community when people can look around and Say, “Well, here we are. What’s next?” We have arrived

at such a pause for clarification and decision in Vermont. Our providential wilderness cannot be taken for granted today. Because for a century we stood outside America’s economic mainstream, our region’s nonhuman community enjoyed a rare opportunity to recover. But in this new era of telecommunications, when business is no longer so closely tied

to major manufacturing centers, there will be no more security for beautiful backwaters. Unless we find the will to protect the North Mountains of our state— as terrain in which selective logging, human recreation, and wildlife can coexist— we could lose

within just a few seasons the balance that has grown up here. JOHN ELDER, READ/NG THE MOUNTAINS OF HOME

XIX

The Garden in the Machine is the result of two explorations, one more obviously professional, the other more obviously personal; or to be more precise, the eleven essays that follow are the product of a decade-long intersection of these two explorations. Since the late 1970s, nearly all of my scholarly and critical energies, and a substantial portion of my pedagogical energy, have been devoted to what is variously termed “avant-garde film,” “independent film,” “experimental film” (in recent years, I have included “video art” as well): that immense world of alternative media that has developed generally outside the commercial histories of the movies and television and remains outside the awareness of both the mass audience and most teachers, critics, and scholars of media, the humanities, and cultural studies. I have found the many and var-

ied achievements of this alternative media history endlessly stimulating and rewarding —and, in pedagogical contexts, remarkably invigorating. Indeed, one of contemporary academe’s most stunning paradoxes is that, in an era when “media literacy” is so crucial and alternatives to conventional consumer culture so necessary, this unparalleled pedagogical resource is generally

ignored. |

The second exploration began as a personal response to my local circumstances, although in recent years it has become more fully a part of my serious research. Early in my forties, during the conventional midlife crisis, I came to realize not only that I had spent fifteen years in central New York—twelve more than I had expected or planned—but that I was likely to spend many more years here. Central New York was becoming “my place,” seemingly without my conscious participation. I decided, of course, to “make the best of it” and did so by finding my way into the Adirondacks and Catskills, and into the XX INTRODUCTION

cultural history of the region. The more I learned about upstate New York, the more interested I became not only in this place but in places in general, in all

their specificity and interconnectedness. Inevitably, given my professional commitments, my developing interest in history and geography came to include—came to focus on—the history and geography of the depiction of place, in literature, painting (see fig. 1), and photography and especially in film and video.

Because many of the most inventive, evocative, and stimulating—even the most beautiful—twentieth-century depictions of place, particularly American place, are found in alternative films and videos and because nearly all these works remain unknown to most of those likely to find them interesting and

useful, a book on some of the more remarkable and the issues they raise seemed called for. Further, because many of these works pose challenges to

Oe oe viewers, especially viewers coming upon them for the first time with expecta-

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Plates 8-9. Filmstrips from Rose Lowder’s Bouquets 1-10: ‘

(left) from Bouquet 9 (1995); (right) from Bouquet 10 (1995).

The imagery on the left was recorded along the Route de Signes; the imagery on the right, in the Alps (the bottom frame of this filmstrip depicts an artificial lake created by the SerrePoncgon Dam on the Durance River). Courtesy Rose Lowder.

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nn eS ee eS ri— recognition was particularly wide, probably because in 1983 Mangolte’s decision to reexplore the American West could hardly have seemed less attuned to the American independent filmmaking scene, which seemed focused on gender, ethnic, and sexual cine-liberation. As was true for many of the early settlers, Mangolte’s decision to go west involved an escape from the doctrinaire conventions of her moment. And it offered Mangolte a topic commensurate with her considerable gifts as a cinematographer. During 1980-81 Mangolte traveled (with one assistant), making imagery, for a little over eleven weeks (there were five separate automobile trips), during all four seasons: “Altogether I drove close to 20,000 miles. I was always trying to make sure I would take a road that would lead me to something interesting, even though I couldn’t be sure: I was always taking the road for the first time.”> In The Sky on Location Mangolte’s focus is on western landscapes

that show no obvious indication of human interference’—filmed with the kind of solemn respect evident in the paintings of Thomas Moran and Albert Bierstadt and in the photographs of William Henry Jackson, A. J. Russell, Carleton Watkins, and Ansel Adams (see fig. 18). All Mangolte’s carefully com-

posed images are made with a 16mm camera mounted on a tripod, although there are frequent pans, some of them evocative of the panoramic paintings and photographs of the nineteenth century (and of still and moving panora-

mas), others expressive of Mangolte’s own excitement at being in these remarkable landscapes (see plates 10, 11).

The first of Mangolte’s journeys begins in midsummer (July 27, 1980) in

the Togwotee Pass near Grand Teton National Park and moves through Yellowstone and up to Glacier National Park. A second begins in Silverton, Colorado, jumps to Wyoming’s South Pass and moves west across Nevada to Death Valley. Next, we’re in the Rio Grande Valley and circle up through Utah’s Kodachrome Basin to Bryce Canyon, Monument Valley, Zion Canyon, then into Arizona to the Grand Canyon, Canyon de Chelly, and the Hopi reservation. A brief moment in the Sonoran Desert is followed by a trip from Q2 RE-ENVISIONING THE AMERICAN WEST

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