Eternal Night of the Blogless Mind

Well yes, I have finally managed to blog again! Let's hope I can still 'Recall' my opinions and replicate them here for you. Following on from my blog entry about 'experimental film', and the fact that despite its appearance, it still heavily relies on a set pattern of elements and common form, I now extend this discussion by analysing Alternatives to the 'Classical Hollywood Narrative'.

In the 'Story' module of the Screen Culture course that I am undertaking at AFTRS, Michel Gondry's "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" was a prime source of defining Alternatives to the Classical Hollywood Narrative. Gondry's take on Charlie Kaufman's script is exactly that, a piece of multiform narrative that seems completely detached from the Classical Hollywood and yet upon closer inspection matches the Classical almost to a tee.

Meshing 4907

In 1943 the husband and wife team of Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid decided to put their creative minds together to produce a film. The result of this is the influential short "Meshes of the Afternoon", which has a structure that in today's Screen Culture we would label as 'Experimental'. Well this blog post is an experimental piece in its own right, as I will mesh together a film made by a couple in 1943 with a film made by a couple in 2010. That is, the film "4907" made by Raelene Loong and myself.

Now I had never seen "Meshes of the Afternoon" until last week when it was screened as part of the Story module of my Screen Culture course. And yet, a film made 57 years ago, has a sharp resemblance to this short film that I wrote and co-directed this year. Now maybe i'm just unoriginal, which is quite possibly the case, or maybe it is an indication that 'experimental' is really not that experimental after all.