607 A Hollis Frampton Odyssey

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swo17
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Re: 607 A Hollis Frampton Odyssey

#101 Post by swo17 » Wed Mar 25, 2015 10:25 pm

theflirtydozen wrote:I'm still playing with the idea of a way the set of letters can have an extension to make an infinite set as well as applying more algebraic mapping stuff with the association of letters/film frames
I feel like the whole idea at work here is to reduce the infinite or finitely large into more manageable portions, so I'm not sure I can conceptualize the extension to an infinite film. Unless the point is that, in contrast, Magellan goes off in so many different directions that no ordering/limiting is possible. Unfortunately, I can't really comment much on that either, as Criterion's Frampton offerings to date are still distressingly finite.

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theflirtydozen
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Re: 607 A Hollis Frampton Odyssey

#102 Post by theflirtydozen » Wed Mar 25, 2015 10:33 pm

It's my understanding that Magellan was Frampton's attempt to model the universe and all it's information with film. I guess that's pretty close to infinite. Enns points out that this is much like how physicists use mathematics.
For Zorns Lemma, if it's possible to extend that set of letters/words to an infinite one, then the Axiom actually has some power is what I was trying to say in the quoted text.

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whaleallright
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Re: 607 A Hollis Frampton Odyssey

#103 Post by whaleallright » Sat Sep 28, 2019 2:41 am

Did this sell very poorly? IIRC Criterion hasn't ventured into avant-garde film much (or at all?) past this.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 607 A Hollis Frampton Odyssey

#104 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat May 09, 2020 3:16 pm

I revisited the early films in this set up through Zorns Lemma earlier today as a meditative palette cleanser after a rough day yesterday, and found the process incredibly therapeutic as a tool to unlock a kind of supported mindfulness. I'm a novice of experimental cinema comparatively to many here, but what works so well about these films, especially Zorns Lemma (though Process Red is a close second) is the simultaneous evaluative and surrendering parts in me operating concurrently, pulling me into my emotional and intellectual connotations and separating myself to take in the whole experience, turning my brain on and off from overstimulation to relaxation as I let the images stir. Zorns Lemma may be the most validating of all I've seen in how subjective meaning is derived and personal in its essence, perspectives divorced from ideology but connected to physical aspects of life to elicit significance. The use of words and fonts are like a visual exercise that the doc Helvetica is taking a piece from in its own analysis.

There is something about how the "x" letter becomes a flaming fire that moves me greatly, at first with amusement in its wit for using crossed logs to formulate a letter, which has its own ideas of meaning behind it, but then it gets visually louder and more erratic with a shaky cam and sharp cuts before other letters adopt its methodology, and that impressed intellectual arousal breaks down to emotional and physiological sensations. From here the film opens up out of the already-loose construct of its deceptively grounded parameters, signifying to me how internal logic is flexible but can still hold a rhythm even when venturing into enigmatic spaces - repetition coinciding with adjustments to variables of time, space, and imagery.

I always liked Frampton, and held this film higher than any experimental film I've seen, which is still the case - but this watch was particularly emotional for me. I'm sure this has a lot to do with when I watched it, why I watched it, and how it supported me in mysterious ways just as much as it embodies my philosophy for the subjective interpretation of meaning, but this may now be one of my favorite films ever. I won't pretend to be a devotee of this kind of cinema but when it hits, it destroys me in the kindest possible way, and the experience becomes my own. I believe all cinema does this, but here the connotation forces itself into 'being,' simply through engagement, by its nature of unblending from expectations that can make this initial jump harder in narrative cinema.

I'd love to get recs from those who do subscribe to this genre that might be similar - as much as one can recommend an experimental film based on another, which to me is as much a blank spot as if someone asked me to compare jazz musicians against others.

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swo17
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Re: 607 A Hollis Frampton Odyssey

#105 Post by swo17 » Sat May 09, 2020 3:54 pm

I've been telling people this is a time where it's important to create meaning out of new and safe symbolic gestures (for instance, you can still share a meaningful hug with someone from a distance if you both understand that that's what it means to hold your own arms together a certain way). So I can definitely see how you would relate to Zorns Lemma in this way, thanks for sharing that. It's an all-time favorite for me as well.

Kind of drawing a blank on similar experimental films, but maybe you'd appreciate Rose Lowder's bouquet films, Guy Sherwin's short film series, the blissful sensory overload of Gunvor Nelson's True to Life or the films of Paul Clipson, the pure visual distraction of the films of Jim Davis, or the long, calming effect of Jonas Mekas' As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty

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knives
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Re: 607 A Hollis Frampton Odyssey

#106 Post by knives » Sat May 09, 2020 10:20 pm

For effect I do think Mekas is probably the closest to some of Frampton, the Hepax series primarily, but Snow seems like the obvious connection to the two mentioned by blus. Plus you get Mekas' lovely voice.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 607 A Hollis Frampton Odyssey

#107 Post by therewillbeblus » Sat May 09, 2020 11:58 pm

Thank you both, much appreciated.

And on a note unrelated to film, swo thank you for sharing that example of how we can continue to make meaning with gestures that connect us to others, I needed to read that. In a strange way it's very related to the therapeutic experience of film, specifically experimental cinema, and more specifically, for me, Zorns Lemma.

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therewillbeblus
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Re: 607 A Hollis Frampton Odyssey

#108 Post by therewillbeblus » Mon Jan 04, 2021 10:45 pm

I finally got to the three Hapax Legomena films included in the set, and watched the first two twice in quick succession in order to really immerse myself in the experience, and of course they improved drastically on immediate revisits.

zedz and swo already described (nostalgia)’s power better than I ever could, but beyond the cognitive-emotional relationship of processing, I thought this was a profound meditative exploration of permanent memory as an invaluable asset that, when accepted as such, grants us permission to be at ease in treating all signifiers and their connotations as impermanent, of letting go and then, ironically, paving the way to flex our memories' parameters with new meaning. The act of destroying signifiers on the burners and stalling for full minutes or longer pierced me with a simultaneous discomfort in permanently destroying a trigger for memory, and also a liberation in all the possibilities that can come from starting fresh unclouded.

Poetic Justice has a lot of fun evoking imagination of personal connotations while grounding us to simplified mundane rules. The directions contain their own meta-gags, among them telling you how you’re feeling but contrasting the whimsy and smiles with directions of opposite emotional states i.e. frowning, clashing the meditative state the film places you in with directions of movement, giving the direction to move away from a camera to embrace a person whilst looking at words re-romanticized action shot with a camera, and then of course all the layers in instruction shifting into signifiers that elicit the feelings of being both insignificant and important, the juxtaposition of torn photographs and holding a photograph where the person responding to the destroyed art actually feels more intimate and creative than the one holding the art in tact. A photograph of a scene isn’t enough I guess, it’s the actions of interpreting and reacting that inspire art in life. Frampton also deconstructs narrative cinema itself in a very funny way, like a nonstop deadpan shtick without faces but paper, which in essence stand in perfectly. I laughed at out a few times, like the “striped twill” prose followed by the emersion of a physical audience for the nth time, only literally so; expanding the scope from lovemaking to banal bridges to “I’M FILMING YOU”; the one title card that was written in different handwriting; some eagle-menacing; and a hundred other genius moments, ineffable by nature of finding the dilution of meaning in repetition, which then gives way to new meaning...

Critical Mass was my least favorite, but it was still very effective, especially at such length, which put me in a trance and forced me to remember and stew in all the stupid arguments I've had with significant others- where nobody really looks as 'right' as they might think they are from a solipsistic vantage point in the moment (or in tainted memory!) I also couldn't stop thinking that this film should be mandatory homework for most people who show up to couples therapy, and in all seriousness I’m tempted to use it with my clients.

I understand that there are, what, four more films in this series- are they all worth seeking out?

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swo17
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Re: 607 A Hollis Frampton Odyssey

#109 Post by swo17 » Mon Jan 04, 2021 11:00 pm

I've only seen Ordinary Matter, which I remember being visually impressive but not necessarily deep in the ways these other parts can be

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