Wavelengths 1:
These are just some thoughts I have as far as the Wavelengths shorts are concerned:
Ten Mornings Ten Evenings and One Horizon
I will refrain from speaking too much about Tomonari Nishikawa as I am not that acquainted with his work prior to having seen this. It came to my attention that he had passed away very recently, and that he had left a significant mark on experimental cinema and that the inclusion of this film was in part a dedication to him.
I will say though that the process through which he made this full was very interesting – using visual masking to create an effect whereby cars and trucks passing through the bridge in each shot phase in and out of different sections of the visual. Not much more to it than that, but it makes for an interesting effect. Maybe I will have to check out more of Nishikawa’s work now that I have started with this one.
Rojo Žalia Blau
Again, another filmmaker whose films I was not acquainted with previously (Viktoria Schmid), but this film in particular left a very strong impression on me. I love the experimentation with color in this one. It’s very psychedelic and at times trippy. There’s a shot here of the tree bark that looked wavy and “alive” like it was breathing. Interesting red and blue effects that imitate a very classic 3D look, without the need for 3D glasses.
Disappeared
I was almost ready to write this off entirely. I suppose there is something to the approach of filming these blurry objects and images – shapes that resemble that of an orange tent, and some other shapes moving around that look like a person and a dog and so forth. It almost seems like the shot is very out-of-focus, and there isn’t much going on otherwise… until the final reveal. The lens zooms out – and that’s one crazy lens to be able to zoom in on those subjects from that far away. That part alone makes up for the very slow buildup here.
09/05/1982
It took me a while to understand this one and what was being done here. Basically this is what appears to be fabrication of an event that presumably occurred on the very date that is the name of this film. Looking it up doesn’t bring any results, but as Jorge Caballaro said during the Q&A to this, the point is more about raising the question of how we can determine the different between truth and fiction. Especially in a digital online world of echo chambers and fake news. I suppose the effect worked to some degree as it did make me question things – the footage definitely looked like it was shot in 1982, until the very clearly AI-generated part involving the construction crane flying away came in right at the end.
It was mainly just very loud though, and quite frankly I was less bothered by the usage of AI and more bothered by the approach this movie took – the abrasiveness of it all wasn’t to my taste personally. But I’m not quite as dismissive of it like some others just simply because of the AI component.
Map of Traces
There is some very subtle, yet not subtle commentary on the political situation in Hong Kong. We see the aftermath of the Umbrella Revolution and subsequent protests, we see the police officers around regular civilians. We witness its impact on artistic expression as exemplified by the old man being interviewed, who uses water to paint his graffiti in order to avoid further trouble. In between these images and videos are inter-titles of letters of correspondence between characters, words censored and blacked out completely as indicated within the correspondence itself. Using Google Street view to recall memories of the Hong Kong city streets of old, a time when things were less complicated and a time that can no longer be returned to. A map of traces and memories, so to speak.
In Transit
This was not quite as rhythmic and structured for this type of film than I would otherwise like. Some of the variations – when they do happen – are a nice change of pace though, like the moment where the ‘sky’ and the landscapes reflected through the window merge together. What look like clouds turning into trees in that moment. Or when it looks like the train stops for a brief moment before continuing. But even then this felt quite long even at 17 minutes in length, and ultimately I’m not sure what the point of it really was.