Experimental Film reviews

Name of film: Koyaanisquatsi
Name of creator: Godefry Reggio
Duration: 1:23:00

'Life out of balance'
The film is an artistic look into humans striving to achieve greater things. The film begins with a very slow zooming reveal of a very early cave painting, showing that even at the beginning of time, we as a race had the urge to explore and push our boundries of what we believed was physically possible. The film then cuts to the slow motion take off of a rocket, fire and smoke everywhere as we now have the capability to go beyond our own world and take that final step of evolution onto another planet, leaving the old behind.

The film then goes on to demonstrate all we have gone through in the world to get to this particular point of finally moving on. Fast motion clips of industry, workers in factories providing the energy needed to keep the world running so others can continue working on pushing that barrier further. All intercut with images of poverty showing that whilst people are trying to get into space, others are still trying to find a life for themselves on earth first. With the use of aerial view shots and other filming techiques rarely seen in 1980's cinema, Godefry shows off the technical marvel of the world, and how we managed to build all these fine cities with huge structually sound buildings and machines which seem to dominate the world of the 20th century. The clips of war symbolise how such amazing and world changing concepts and ideas can come as a positive outcome from such terrible events.

The music suits each scene according to the pace of the visuals; slowly building up or calming down, adding emotion to a very enjoyable piece.

Koyaanisquatsi

Name of Film: 1001 Nights
Name of Creator: Jananne Al-Ani
Duration: 6.00

1001 Nights is a very simple film with a whole lot of meaning behind it. Visually, the short film consists of a black screen with five boxes in the centre filled with coloured images of western women with their eyes closed. As the film begins, the black screen draws your attention to the boxes, and one after the other each woman opens their eyes and begins recounting a harrowing tale experienced in a time of war. Each experience is recollected in the point of view of a victim of war, caught up in other peoples conflicts and anger.

The stories told are not necessarily those of the woman in the film. Being all western, it is unlikely that these people have ever experienced what is being said, but used purely as a way of telling the audience that war can affect anyone, no matter how far away they are from the fighting itself.

There is no music in the piece, only the diagetic voices of the five woman, helping to create an instant reality to the film, something that hollywood style music would never have achieved, only taking away that dream like feeling you get by the end.