Category Archives: Sound

Reaching for the Screen in Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Lights in the Sky’ – Katheryn Wright

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Abstract: During the Nine Inch Nails’ Lights in the Sky tour in 2008, Trent Reznor made use of two semi-transparent stealth screens layered in front of a third screen through which the band performed the second and third acts of the show. A stealth screen is made from reflective elements linked together like a chain, and can appear either transparent or opaque depending upon the lighting. When these screens appear onstage during the concert, attention shifts from Reznor’s body in performance to his physical interactions with the surrounding screens. The screens are not only spaces for the projection of images, but physical objects Reznor interacts with during the course of the show. Reznor plays a game of hide-and-seek with his audience using screens to reveal and conceal his body. The downstage screen also transforms into a touch interface, where Reznor experiments with its responsiveness. Both hide-and-seek and the play of responsivity in NIN’s performance echoes the everyday interactions people have with their screen technologies. As such, the NIN’s Lights in the Sky tour maps emerging bodily habituations forming through the materiality of the screen.

Nine Inch Nails performing ’31 Ghosts IV’ during their 2008 Lights In The Sky Over North America Tour.

“We may debate whether our society is a society of spectacle or of simulation, but, undoubtedly, it is a society of the screen” (Manovich 94). In this quote from The Language of New Media, Lev Manovich recognizes the central role screen technologies play in the digital era. This “society of the screen” has taken on new life over the past decade. A few examples: Mirjam Struppek organized the first international conference about the aesthetic and political potential of urban screens in 2005. Released in 2007, the Apple iPhone brought multi-touch technology to a mass audience; a multi-touch surface can respond to two or more inputs, increasing the functionality of touch screen (or trackpad) devices like the iPhone. That same year, American Express sponsored a program for cardholders during the U.S. Open where attendees were issued handheld televisions to carry around with them during the event to enhance the live experience of tennis. In 2008, life on a spaceship involved living through your own personal screen in the post-apocalyptic film, Wall-E. And, the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008 featured Olympic gold-metal gymnast Li Ning traversing the inner rim of the stadium with a media surface unfolded to display images from the torch’s journey across China behind him.

These brief descriptions capture artists, scholars, entrepreneurs, and athletes challenging what the screen can do. Scott McQuire traces the migration of the television set from the domestic spaces of the home to urban spaces of the city, a shift that has developed alongside the rise of global networks and the mobilization of media (2). McQuire and Sean Cubitt argue that contemporary forms of sociality occur through the materiality of screen technology as an architectural façade, a virtual interface, or a personal companion (McQuire 48, Cubitt 105). Uta Casparay, Erkki Huhtamo, and Cubitt trace the material histories of the historical precursors to urban screens and outdoor advertising. Experimental artworks incorporating large-scale video like Krzysztof Wodiczko’s projections on historical monuments or smaller scale interactive pieces like Chris Jordan’s Chrono Beam (2011) has received recent critical attention in the way they interrogate the intersection between the embodied spectator and the ephemeral politics of public displays (Susik 113-114, 118). In addition to advertising displays and experimental art projections, experiments with emerging screen practices are also going on in popular forms of entertainment, especially rock concerts. Trent Reznor, lead singer and driving force behind Nine Inch Nails (NIN), has written and performed industrial rock music for more than two decades, and since the height of his popularity in the nineties has extended his creative pursuits to include digital imaging, remixing, online distribution, and most recently composing for movies including Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011). Added to this list are his experiments with screen technologies.

For NIN’s Lights in the Sky tour, Reznor introduced a new twist to the second act of each concert by adding two semi-transparent stealth screens positioned in front of a third screen (Gardiner par. 10). Because a stealth screen is made from reflective elements linked together like a chain, the combination of projection and light cues can make it appear both transparent and opaque at the same time. These screens function not only as spaces for the projection of animations or images, but material objects Reznor interacts with during the course of the show. The screens in Lights in the Sky are an extension of the design concept for his previous tour, Live: With Teeth, where Reznor used a big screen to display video footage throughout the concert. Lights in the Sky (designed by Reznor and Rob Sheridan, the artistic director, with lighting designer Roy Bennett and the company Moment Factory) combines laser technologies, particle-based animation that runs off several Linux-based devices, choreographed staged lighting, a high-resolution  n, and the two semitransparent stealth screens. In addition to these major elements, the production includes a closed circuit camera system streamed live through the Linux-based computer terminal and preprogrammed song cues controlled by the artistic director and lighting designer via the motherboard.

The collection of screens, lighting, animation, and sound create a media environment that Reznor moves within for the rest of the concert. Trent Reznor’s body is the critical touchstone around which every element in the performance revolves. For fans, rock concerts are about being in the moment and presence of the star. Reznor’s introduction of stealth screens during the concert creates an awkward situation where the people there to see NIN perform live do so through a technological interface. When I attended a live performance on September 29, 2008 in Jacksonville, FL, there were two primary types of interactions that occurred between Reznor, the transparent screens onstage, and audience. First, Reznor engages in a game of hide-and-seek where the screen is used to both reveal and conceal his body from the audience. Second, the play of responsivity between his physical actions and digital imagery creates a visual continuity between screen projections and his body in motion that reverberates through the venue. These interactions at the concert echo the habituations people develop as they use the variety of screen technologies at their disposal, making NIN’s Lights in the Sky a compelling case study to explore a privileged moment in time and space when the cultural significance of the screen is in flux.

Hide-and-Seek

The lights go out as the screens lower across the stage. Spectators murmur and wait for Reznor to reappear and begin the second set, but he does not immediately come back onto the stage. Instead, a blue field of light begins accompanied by some drums and a xylophone. The silhouettes of Reznor flanked on either side by the other members of the band appear behind the transparent screen. Only after the instrumental section has been going on for a few minutes, additional light floods the stage and spectators realize which body belongs to Reznor.

In this opening sequence to the second act of the show, the stealth screen initially masks and then dramatically reveals Reznor’s position on the stage. During the “Greater Good” track from the album Year Zero, the downstage stealth screen displays what looks like a time-lapsed recording of bacteria growing, pulsating, in a Petri dish – a mound of digital particles. For the first thirty seconds of the performance, these animations appear onscreen while Reznor is nowhere to be found. Then, extremely subtly, Reznor’s silhouette backs into the stage in front of the left corner of the screen. Dwarfed by the vastness of the stealth screen, he faces the offstage wing crouched over in a profile position. He is barely visible and remains completely out of view to many. After several beats, the movement of the digital particles takes the shape of Reznor’s face; the extreme close-up is a video recorded by an offstage camera. During this segment, Reznor’s body overlaps the live feed of his physical image being projected onto the stealth screen. He appears onscreen and onstage at the same time. Reznor hides. The audience seeks. This game adds an intriguing twist for the audience who came to hear and see NIN in person. Rather than getting to see the band perform for the entire set, the lead singer disappears from the stage for fairly large chunks of time. They perform songs like “Greater Good” behind the stealth screen and out of sight from the audience. As such, Reznor controls how much the audience sees him, on and offscreen, during the show.

During the performance of “Survivalism” in the third act of the concert, a closed-circuit camera system installed around the premises records live footage of the audience and projects it onto the big screen. In what looks like a collection of monitors located in a security station, spectators watch themselves watching NIN. This sequence is about the ubiquity of surveillance technologies contemporary American culture, but the audience cannot hide among the screens like Reznor can. Even so, those watching can use their mobile devices to capture the live event as it unfolds in real time. Smartphones enable audience members to communicate ideas and information via text, voice, image, and video. They can send what they record at the concert to NIN’s website. Ironically, audience members also use these same devices to capture a better view than they have while standing, zooming in to get a closer look at the action. The power Reznor has over his visibility onstage dissipates as the territory of the media environment expands into the World Wide Web. Although Reznor plays with the audience in terms of his physical visibility, the overall performance hinges on its technological infrastructure. The production team cannot always manage software, and screens at the venue. Computer glitches continued to crop into the flow of the performances during the tour, including when I saw it. In Jacksonville, animations on the stealth screen kept flickering on and off and, during the final “Head Like a Hole” encore, the red “NIN” symbol flashing on the downstage stealth screen had a part of an “N” chopped off. These glitches form a digital reality outside of any single person’s control. Spectators have no influence over their bodies on display.

When Reznor plays hide-and-seek with his audience using the screens surrounding him, this communicative act challenges the implied materiality of screen space. Critical discussions about the spatial relations of the screen media emerge in apparatus theory of the 1970s. Jean-Louis Baudry argues that the screen is simultaneously a mirror and frame that produces ideological distance between the conscious spectator and the dreamworld of the cinema (352 – 353). Manovich echoes the logic of apparatus theory in his cultural history of screen technologies where he distinguishes between the classical screen (Renaissance perspectival painting), dynamic screen (film and television), and the screen in real time (computer) (96). In all of these cases, “The act of cutting reality into a sign and nothingness simultaneously doubles the viewing subject who now exists in two spaces: the familiar space of his/her real body and the virtual space of an image within the screen” (106). For Baudry and Manovich, the screen marks a border between two qualitatively different spaces that may speak to each other in dynamic in provocative ways as decades of compelling scholarship in media and cultural studies has proven, yet they remain separate. The screen is important in as much as it frames the point-of-view of someone looking through it at whatever movie or show they happen to be watching.

Reznor’s game challenges the implied separation between real and virtual space that Baudry and Manovich trace in their respective theories. Establishing a connection between the spectacle and spectators through the screen transforms the display space into something more than a window frame to a virtual world. Reznor uses to the screen to shield himself from view, and to reveal his presence to the crowd. The juxtaposition between the stealth screen’s transparency and opacity highlights the basic attributes of its materiality. Its surface conceals and reveals as much as the edges frame what is on it. The stealth screen is like the cape a magician uses to hide the bag of tricks from the audience. The turn, however, is when the onscreen spectacle bleeds into the physical space the screen occupies. Through hide-and-seek, Reznor occupies a modular media space. So, too, do audience members who use their screened devices to get a better view of the show. Media scholar Adriana de Souza e Silva explains how “from the merging of mixed reality and augmented spaces, mobility, and sociability arises a hybrid reality…a hybrid space is not constructed by technology. It is built by the connection of mobility and communication and materialized by social networks developed simultaneously in physical and digital spaces” (265 − 266). She describes what others have called augmented space, simulacra, computer-mediated reality, or multimedia environments: concepts with varied connotations that attempt to describe the blending of physical and digital spaces. Reznor experiments with what communication feels like within these spaces that De Souza e Silva among others attempt to explicate. Ironically, the space between virtual and actual space symbolized by the screen for Baudry and Manovich seems to migrate to the body of the user, who in the case of the Lights in the Sky performance is Reznor and not the audience watching him.

Responsivity

A white field of particles fills the screen at the beginning of “Only” from the album With Teeth. A small opening grows out from the center to reveal Reznor’s body. The closer he moves toward the screen, the larger the opening. He walks across the stage, and the opening follows him. He moves upstage and the opening closes.  The field gives way to a violent streaming of digital noise that momentarily reveals the rest of the band playing behind Reznor. The white field returns to view. Again, Reznor paces across the stage as the opening follows him wherever he goes. The drummer comes out onstage and lights up a series of boxes by touching each individual square.

This transitional sequence leads into the performance “Echoplex” when the initial beat he establishes by touching the boxes merges into the song’s introduction. The drummer returns at its conclusion to deactivate the light boxes.

In these two instances, the onstage stealth screens transform into touch screens when lasers running along the back of the screens indicate their position. The animations generated in real-time record their physical movement in relation to the screen to produce the illusion of a haptic interface. Even if the performers do not actually touch anything, the sequences establish a sense of continuity between onscreen and offscreen through the responsivity of the screen. Responsivity refers to the quality of the digital connection between onscreen and offscreen. The screen interfaces of popular technologies like the iPhone react to the touch of a finger or pen. Touch screens work by layering two surfaces with an electric current or laser beam sandwiched between them. When somebody touches the surface of the outer screen, the flow of the current or beam is interrupted and signals the device to react in that particular spot. Slightly different from the touch screen, the remote responsiveness of game consoles like Nintendo’s Wiimote and Xbox’s Kinnect depend on a remote sensor or motion control. Reznor experiments with both types of responsiveness during the performance.

Reznor draws the second type of responsivity for the performance of “Terrible Lie” in the third act. At this point in the show, the three screens have changed position. The stealth screens have been raised to allow for Reznor and the band to move more freely on the stage. However, they remain staggered so as to continue to project images, although intensities would probably be the better term at this point given that approximately 90% of what is onscreen are bursts of color and light. Amorphous red, orange and yellow particles flash on the three screens in the same rhythmic patterns of the song. These animations translate auditory and haptic cues (rock music performed live can be felt just as much as it is heard) into visualizations. These sensory translations, like synesthesia, extend the aesthetic possibilities of live performance. Reznor becomes connected to the (digital, screened, animated) world through the responsivity of his onstage environment. The responsiveness between body and screen draws disparate elements of the performance together into a single rhythm during the course of the show.

During the concert, Reznor appears to cross through the frame of the screen. Even though he never actually steps through it, the animations create the illusion of breaking through the screen’s surface. The stealth screen offers a way to cross the frame that separates the spatial reality of the viewer from the virtual space of representation. The formal separation between real and virtual space plays a pivotal role in Western aesthetics. Writing about this divide, Anne Friedberg traces the cultural history of what she calls the “virtual window” to Renaissance perspectival painting, where the viewer is situated in front of a framed surface. Reznor challenges this tradition by linking the physical and digital through his body. Although screens continue to situate the perspective of the viewer towards onscreen content, Reznor temporarily acts as a node through which the onscreen and offscreen converge. Reznor frames the visual content for the audience by moving towards and away from the stealth screen. He determines the path of the real-time particle animations during the show. Still, he never actually crosses through the frame of the screen. This crossing is an illusion; Reznor remains trapped behind the screen in order for that illusion to work. To cross the frame of the screen is transgressive within the field of modern aesthetics, much like breaking through the imaginary “fourth wall” of the stage, but the interplay between screen and body during the concert translates into an optical effect for everyone watching where Reznor is, himself, on display. Like a painting or film, this performance can only be accessed through a proscenium, a frame, which separates the spectacle from those watching it.

Similar to the responsivity of the touch screen, the integration of sensory components during the show cultivates a sense of continuity between actual and virtual through Reznor’s body. He acts like a remote control for the live action onstage, altering the sense of presence throughout the venue. Every aspect of the concert feels connected, and nobody can get out of it because the surveillance cameras make everyone visible. This feeling of connection continues when video recorded with mobile devices extend into online archives after the concert. The attempt to capture the “live” experience through media by fans reinforces the responsivity that Reznor draws on throughout the second and third acts. After each concert concludes, NIN’s website archives fan videos and chats in an effort to collect the individualized performances together into the broader context of the tour. Like the multiple elements of the live show combining through the responsiveness of the screen, information comes together through the human-computer interface. Mobile devices enable spectators to participate in the concert by recording and archiving the live event. The website clearly organizes its galleries according to concert and tour dates so visitors can easily navigate through the streaming videos. The feeling of connection cultivated through the play of responsivity during the show was reignited when audiences come together to construct their own narrative about the tour through the documentary Another Version of the Truth: The Gift that was produced by fans and distributed through NIN.com.

From my perspective in the crowd, interacting with his audience through the stealth screens seems almost like a spiritual experience for Reznor, who is the obvious centerpiece around which the hybrid reality is constructed. He stands behind the screen and soaks up the spectacle while the audience looks on. For me, however, the experience was ultimately frustrating because the spontaneity and singular intimacy of a rock concert, that feel and smell of bodies cramming next to you in a collective push towards the stage, is lost. We were left watching NIN interact with cutting-edge screen technologies onstage without access to it. Even though the animations and lighting cues were generated live, the concert began to feel closer to performance art (like one of Wodiczko’s projections) than a rock concert. It is the same feeling I have when I watch someone text at the table at lunch, for instance. The person is there, but not in the same way as they would have been otherwise.
Screens for Sale

The Lights in the Sky tour combines industrial-alternative rock, live performance, new media technologies, real-time animation, ticketholders, critics, and fans like myself into a symbolic act of a body reaching out to touch the screen. The game of hide-and-seek and play of responsivity represent different ways people interact with the screens around them. A commercial for the Blackberry Storm smartphone released in November 2008 (and running throughout the following year) illustrates how the appeal of interacting with a screen interface, much like the games Reznor plays, stems from the symbolic act of crossing through its frame. This commercial sells the idea that by simply touching a screen you can connect more efficiently, immediately, and directly with what’s important in your life. The multi-touch interface allows users to make contact with their social networks through a phone, yet the commercial itself acknowledges the reality of the interface, the semi-transparent field at the center of the composition, as the primary point of access. Reznor stands behind his stealth screen; the woman stands behind a rectangular plane and faces forward as she navigates through the textural space of the graphic user interface. Different from Reznor’s live performance, however, is what happens afterward. Animations like the boy with a kite, rock concert, and photographs explode from the frame rather than being projected onto a screen. Touching the interface releases the three-dimensionality of life as it unfolds in real time. The advertisement suggests all we need is a Blackberry Storm to make our experience of the world more real, an ideology that continues to shape narratives about technology in the 21st century. Still, the promise represented by the screen remains tempered by the frame of the television set or YouTube video player. The life falling out from the flat plane, activated through touch, can only be perceived by sitting in front or standing behind another screen, another interface.

Being connected and simultaneously in sync with each other through actual and virtual space creates a sense of presence rooted in the modularity of media space. This spatial arrangement appears to situate the body as a locus of control, benefiting artists like Reznor who embraces the emancipatory promise of new media technology and multinational telecommunications companies like Research in Motion Limited (RIM), the makers of Blackberry, who hope to sell the need to connect with others by touching a really cool screen on your smartphone. Still, like anybody who uses a smartphone will eventually find out, Trent Reznor’s ability to control the terms of his physical interactions with the screens around him is a fantasy. His financial investment, celebrity status, and social positioning coupled with the obvious fact that he and his band are the only people allowed onstage during the concert make him a privileged participant. Reznor chooses what to release on the website. Reznor manages the NIN’s brand. The title of the documentary is called “the gift” because he released high-quality digital recordings to his fans so they could make the documentary. Still, this fantasy – the fantasy of control and connection – is something that commercials for new media technologies ranging from smartphones and video games to Project Glass from Google X continue to promote. Reznor’s onstage encounter with his screens during the Lights in the Sky tour represents a time and place when this fantasy was just beginning to enter into the mainstream, when the potentiality of hybrid reality is being tested within the volatile boundaries of popular culture, and before the games Reznor plays were written into the teleological narrative of technological change.

 

References

“Another Version of the Truth: The Gift.” Nin.thisonisonus.org. Web. 14 Oct. 2011.

Baudry, Jean-Louis. “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus.” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, 5th Edition. Ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. Oxford University Press, USA, 1998. 345 – 355. Print.

Caspary, Uta. “Digital Media as Ornament in Contemporary Architectural Facades.” Urban Screens Reader. Eds. Scott McQuire, Meredith Martin, and Sabine Niederer. Institute of Network Cultures: Amsterdam, 2009. 65 – 74.

Cubbit, Sean. “LED Technology and the Shaping of Culture.” Urban Screens Reader. Eds. Scott McQuire, Meredith Martin, and Sabine Niederer. Institute of Network Cultures: Amsterdam, 2009. 97 – 108.

De Souza e Silva, Adriana. “From Cyber to Hybrid.” Space and Culture 9.3 (2006): 261 –278. Web. 19 Aug. 2010.

Easybakechicken. “Nine Inch Nails – Lights in the Sky Tour – Echoplex – Trent Speaks.” YouTube. Web. 14 October 2011.

Friedberg, Anne. The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft. The MIT Press, 2009. Print.

Gardiner, Bryan. “NIN Dazzles With Lasers, LEDs and Stealth Screens.” 13 Sept. 2008. Web. 14 Oct. 2011.

Huhtamo, Erkki. “Messages on the Wall: An Archeology of Public Media Displays.” Urban Screens Reader. Eds. Scott McQuire, Meredith Martin, and Sabine Niederer. Institute of Network Cultures: Amsterdam, 2009. 15 – 28.

Manovich, Lev. The Language of New Media. The MIT Press, 2002. Print.

Mattssnet. “Blackberry Storm – Feel Your Passion – Hot Girl.” YouTube. Web. 14 October 2011.

McQuire, Scott. “Mobility, Cosmopolitanism, and Public Space in the Media City.” Urban Screens Reader. Eds. Scott McQuire, Meredith Martin, and Sabine Niederer. Institute of Network Cultures: Amsterdam, 2009. 45 – 64.

–. “The Politics of Public Space in the Media City.” First Monday. Web. 14 October 2011.

“Nin.com [the Official Nine Inch Nails Website].” 13 Sept. 2008. Web. 14 October 2011.

Shelterslullabies. “Nine Inch Nails – Only (Lights In The Sky Tour).” YouTube. Web. 14 October 2011.

Shelterslullabies. “Nine Inch Nails – Survivalism (Lights In The Sky 2008).” YouTube. Web. 14 October 2011.

Susik, Abigail. “The Screen Politics of Architectural Light Projection.” Public 23: 45 (June 2012): 106 – 119.

Vacantenigma. “Nine Inch Nails – The Greater Good – Philly, PA – 8-29-08.” YouTube. Web. 14 October 2011.

 

A Moving Image Experience: Il Cinema Ritrovato: Bologna, June-July, 2010 – Wendy Haslem

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A film festival is always a time machine, and Il Cinema Ritrovato doubly so. Every bit of film contributes to the kaleidoscope of a century, especially when screened now, at the beginning of a new century and during circumstances where almost no moment of film, and few entire films, count in the same way.

Peter von Bagh, Artistic Director, Il Cinema Ritrovato, (2010 9).

In 2010 the 24th edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato screened 313 films over eight days in four locations throughout the city of Bologna, Italy. The coordinator of Il Cinema Ritrovato, Guy Borlée and the artistic director Peter von Bagh were responsible for curating a festival of cinema dedicated to the conservation and exhibition of newly discovered films. Conservation technologies are the invisible and highly visible forces behind this festival. These technologies are revealed in newly cleaned, pristine images, brilliant with the erasure of traces of time and use. Films reveal narratives that are restored with the insertion of intertitles and even in black sequences highlighting those scenes that were beyond restoration. This is a festival that makes a dynamic contribution to the evolution of the history of world cinema. Il Cinema Ritrovato exhibits the results of conservation projects by the Cineteca Bologna, The World Film Foundation and other restoration institutions world wide. As von Bagh implies, this network connects organisations, spaces, people and histories beyond a simple chronology. Von Bagh perceives this festival to be as much about the future as the past. He writes:

Considering that the cinema year 2009-10 has been filled with especially infantile discussions about 3-D and related matters, I’m glad to state the overwhelming – and essential – presence in our program of technologies and the dialogue about them. This doesn’t mean only our dear themes of colour and widescreen, but also a more surprising face: that stepping into the midst of silent films is often also a trip to the future (Peter von Bagh, 2010 9).

This film festival not only connects the past to the present, it creates a culture that understands both as necessary for the future of the moving image. Il Cinema Ritrovato is a festival that cannot be reduced to the binary oppositions of ‘business’ and ‘audience’ festivals outlined by Mark Peranson (2009 23-37). In its diachronic connection of short films, feature films, documentaries and cinema from across film history, exhibited in spaces including theatres, museums and a Piazza, this is a “moving image experience” greater than film according to the definition outlined by Paolo Cherchi Usai. The moving image experience connects the act of seeing with creation, preservation and access (2008 9). In its history, in the establishment of its hierarchies and in the creation of its rituals, Il Cinema Ritrovato could be aligned closely with André Bazin’s effusive description of festivals, “in which people join in holy worship of a common transcendent reality, then the Festival is a religious Order” (1955, 2009 13-19).

This festival has the continuing support of screen luminaries like Martin Scorsese (who provides access to his archive) and prestigious organisations like The World Cinema Foundation which sponsors the restoration of many films. Some of these films are surprisingly new. Recent historical forces affecting the history of film are evident in the exhibition of Mest/Revenge (Ermek Shinarbaev, 1989), a film described by Kent Jones as “one of the greatest films to emerge from the Kazakh New Wave and one of the toughest” (2010 47). Mest, a film that investigates the Korean diaspora displaced into the Russian Far East was prohibited distribution by Soviet authorities and shelved as soon as it was completed. Mest was restored by The World Cinema Foundation and Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Film Laboratory, Bologna with the collaboration of its director Ermek Shinarbaev in 2010.

Programs of auteur films shown at Il Cinema Ritrovato include a retrospective of the films of Jean-Luc Godard, musicals created by Stanley Donen, silent and early sound films of John Ford, the films of Albert Capellani and a project reflecting the collaboration between Charlie Chaplin and Robert Florey. The ‘auteur’ is reconceptualised throughout these programs as embodying multiple identities, evident in nascent careers and in collaborations between filmmakers and studios. The festival consciously references the interrelationship between cinema and history in films that reflect ‘anni difficili’ in collections entitled: Hard Times: Italian Cinema Before the Codes (1945-1949), as well as Hard Times in Europe: European Cinema (1945-1952). A recurring feature of Il Cinema Ritrovato is ‘A Hundred Years Ago: European Films of 1910’, a program commemorating the cinematic technologies available one hundred years prior. Another program of films addressing issues of national identity, early communications and the development of global flows was ‘The Naples/Italy Project and Cinema of Emigration’ curated by Elena Correra and Luigi Virgolin. Many of the short films that comprise this collection were made at the turn of the century when the port city of Naples was a gateway to the rest of the world. Colour was also a focus in a program entitled ‘Searching For Colour in Films’ with many films (like Visconti’s Senso, 1954, Il Gattopardo, 1963 and Nicholas Ray’s Johnny Guitar, 1954) restored to their original vibrancy. Curator Gian Luca Farinelli notes the importance of color when he writes that the “chromatic mood” of a film might be the most secret and intimate aspect of our relationship with films we have loved (2010 99). A program entitled ‘Fearless and Peerless: Adventurous Women of the Silent Screen’ showed films featuring active, mobile feminine protagonists, detective figures who travelled by ship, plane, horse and cart, even car, women armed with guns and chloroform and were not afraid to use them.

The Piazza Maggiore is the largest open air auditorium showing films for free, connecting the local community with film buffs, scholars and archivists. Each evening of the festival viewers gathered in the twilight reserving their seats before the dusk descended providing the ambience for the nightly screening. This public screen sits on an auspicious grounds in terms of history and architecture. On the right is The Basilica Maggiore shrouded by scaffolding supporting its reconstruction. The screen faces Bologna’s Archaeological Museum, a further indication of deference to the rich history of the Comune di Bologna. The screen is surrounded by cafes and restaurants with some of Bologna’s distinctive leaning towers visible in the streets beyond. A small bio box sits at the rear of the piazza, projecting light above the audience and through the celluloid – the medium of choice for Il Cinema Ritrovato. This large public screen provides the focal point for the festival. In 2010 Il Cinema Ritrovato screened restorations of  films like Boudu Saved From Drowning (Jean Renoir, 1932), African Queen (John Huston, 1951) and the classic musical Singin’ In The Rain (Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly, 1952) which was introduced by the ebullient Stanley Donen.

 

Figure 1: Il Cinema Ritrovato, Piazza San Maggiore in the daylight, Bologna. Photograph: Simon McLean

Figure 2: Stanley Donen introducing Singin In The Rain. Photograph: Simon McLean

Two public screenings in The Piazza Maggiore illustrated both the innovation and the significance of this festival. The first was the breathtaking public presentation of Lumière! (2010). This portmanteau of short films curated by the Lumière  Institut, representing innovations in anaglyphic, stereoscopic film and autochromatic coloured film stock in early cinema. In 2010 the screening of Lumière! took place on a hot night when the Piazza teemed with more than six thousand people waiting to become only the second public audience in the world to watch the Lumière brothers’ experiments with stereoscopic illusions, precursors to 3D cinema. The audience demographic was broad, and included young Italian cinephiles, some luminaries from the world of cinema and film historians, many of whom would have experienced significant change in film and screen technologies throughout their lifetimes. On this particular night I noticed a young man with an awkward gait sitting uncomfortably close to a woman who set him back in his seat with a steely glare. In our row sat young mothers cradling babies on their laps. Someone had bought their dog and he slept, curled up by his owner’s feet for the entire screening. Overwhelmingly, the impression is of an incredibly diverse audience who met in the Piazza every night, a tangible sign of the vibrant life of film culture in Italy and of the devotion to the Bologna Cinematheque specifically, the organisation that presents Il Cinema Ritrovato annually.

It is not such a stretch  to imagine that the inventors Auguste and Louis Lumière were creating technologies to film and project cinema in three dimensions as early as the 1930s. However, this new package of short films displays the surprising extent of their experimentation beginning with the earliest impressions of pre-cinema in the single reel, static camera recordings of everyday events or ‘actualities’. Included within the collection of the Lumière  films presented at Il Cinema Ritrovato are the recognisable early scenes: workers leaving the Lumière  factory (La Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon, 1895), feeding the baby (Sortie d’usine, Repas de Bébé, 1895), but also early narrative films like The Waterer Watered (L’Arroseur Arose, 1895), sequences comprising more than a single shot, indications of experiments with cause and effect. One of the films in the collection shows a pedestrian being hit by a car, and then magically springing to his feet as the film is reversed, a homage to George Méliès and the potential for editing to provide illusions beyond reality. The magic of early cinema is evident in innovations in film narration, in experiments with space and perception, but also in the exhibition of images shot by travelling cameramen.

The program of Lumière  films includes sequences of panoramas of distant locations shot by Lumière  camera operators travelling throughout the world. One particular stereoscopic film included a panning shot revealing iconic buildings like The Blue Mosque and Hagia Sophia in the newly named city of Istanbul at the time that these images were recorded. With the camera mounted on a boat or even a bike, the Lumière Brothers are able to present early impressions of exotic cities as their camera scans locations visible from the Golden Horn and throughout Turkish street markets. A stereoscopic version of The Arrival of the Train at Ciotat Station (L’Arrivée d’un Train En Gare de La Ciotat, 1895), pushes Tom Gunning’s description of ‘the aesthetics of astonishment’ into a new, more contemporary realm. Whilst Gunning questions the mythology associated with early accounts of audience shock and the terror of witnessing the train arrive, audiences resplendent in their cardboard 3D glasses displayed the opposite – attentive wonder and fascination. With the experience of the IMAX and 3D screen common amongst contemporary audiences, shock is replaced by wonder and appreciation of the effects of stereoscopic technologies producing images in spatial relief. Coloured sequences created with the use of the Lumière’s patented autochromatic process displayed ladies in patterned dresses, pastel landscapes and the slightly unnatural glow of cityscapes. This collection of films shows the influence of the Lumière  family photography business in Louis and Auguste’s experiments with the development of cinematic technologies to produce delicately toned, coloured film.

Lumière! was presented and narrated by the director of the Lumière  Institute, Thierry Frémaux. The narration was both respectful and revealing. Frémaux showcased the Lumière  films which included sequences that feature a family of circus performers, with surprising images of children being juggled from the feet of their parents, their small bodies spinning through the air. The patriarch of this family reappears in a later sequence displaying his capacity for origami, folding and then modelling a range of hats. Frémaux drew our attention to detail in some of the staged sequences including the delight of two men dancing together at a formal ball. Films in this collection are designed to display spectacle, performance and magic. When the program of Lumière  films reached the end, it played again – in fast rewind – from the end to the beginning, a reminder of the range and depth of the images that comprise the collection. This digital restoration project emerged as a collaboration between the Institut Lumière  and L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory of Cineteca Bologna. These experiments in early cinematic technologies, including autochrome and anaglyph films, provided a fascinating, and at times breathtaking, collection of early cinematic experiences.

Another highlight screened in the Piazza was the latest version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926), a screening that included an additional 15 minutes of footage. This recent version of Metropolis was discovered in the collection of Manuel Peña Rodriguez in 2008 and verified by the Buenos Aires Film Museum. The latest print is based on an original nitrate copy of the film that was purchased by the distributor, Adolfo Z. Wilson in 1927. The additional scenes stand out due to an alternative aspect ratio, and the surprising beauty of its faded and scratched original state. The combination of the deteriorated found material alongside the otherwise pristine film stock required viewers to look carefully and deeply into the new sequences, making visible the impact of time on celluloid. This version included detail about the rivalry between Fredersen and Rotwang for Maria and it provides the motivation for the invention of the robot. To augment the experience even further, Metropolis was accompanied by music played by the Bologna Symphony Orchestra. Audiences for this unique screening spilled into the streets beyond the Piazza, exceeding the audience numbers for Lumiere!. One of the features of Il Cinema Ritrovato is the combination of ‘live’ performance through introductions, musical soundtracks, or even narration alongside the screenings of the restored films in the Piazza Maggiore.

Whilst Lumière! and Metropolis were spectacular, some of the shorts that were screened prior to the features almost eclipsed the longer films. One of these was Il Ruscello Di Ripasottile (1941), a magical realist film shot by Roberto Rossellini and Rodolfo Lombardi. This is an eight minute experiment with the potential for cinematic illusion in documentary cinema. Rossellini creates a narrative of two conflicting threads – beginning with the story of a perch couple awaiting the imminent hatching of their eggs. A chain of talking animals is established as the fish communicate with frogs and birds in their underwater environment transmitting the good news with delight and some trepidation about the predatory trout in their vicinity. The drama escalates as the trouts overhear the conversation. Exteriors were filmed in the Ladispoli hinterland, whilst close ups of the fish were shot by creating cascading waters in the fish breeding tanks at the Ittiogenico Fish Biology Institute in Rome. Rossellini juxtaposed exterior locations with controlled interior environments and inserted the sounds and speech of animals to produce a magical realist underwater fantasy.

Il Ruscello Di Ripasottile was filmed in Italy just prior to the development of the Neorealist film movement, a time when filmic subjects usually focused on daily struggles, producing films that were sanctioned by the Fascist Regime. Whilst this short film might be interpreted as an analogy of larger power struggles, the aesthetics and lyricism distinguish this tale from the Neorealist formula. Il Ruscello Di Ripasottile was restored at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, Cineteca Bologna from fragments of the film and documents discovered in Cinema Cilea de Palmi (Calabria). Il Ruscello Di Ripasottile was conserved without the necessity for absolute completion of form, some images (particularly towards the conclusion of the film) are rendered with black frames, something that serves to end the film in time and support the soundtrack. This film also exhibits damaged sequences in reverence to its original form and it shows a dedication and attention to detail in the restoration of the images and sounds that remain. Il Ruscello Di Ripasottile is indicative of the ideology that emphasises the primacy of the original in conservation and the desire to preserve as much of the source as possible. Linking film through the blood line, Il Ruscello Di Ripasottile  may also be seen as a precursor to Isabella Rosselini’s fabulous Green Porno project, a book and dvd set, investigating the sex life of various insect species.

Figure 3: Il Ruscello Di Ripasottile, (Roberto Rossellini, 1941)

Another inspiring and moving short film displayed in the Piazza Maggiore was Islands in the Lagoon (Isole Nella Laguna, Luciano Emmer, Enrico Gras, 1948), a poetic sequence that was described in 1948 as a chronicle of “the feelings and emotions of the islands” (Venturi, 2010 30). This black and white travelogue begins with a woman sitting on an island small enough to support herself and a goat that she has tethered to a pole. Whilst the goat chews grass, the woman is occupied by her sewing. As the camera escalates, the resulting panorama offers an indication of the mass of water surrounding this tiny landform, and the first sign of movement is noted in a small sailing ship that glides along the still waters of the lagoon, waters “without rest” according to the narrator. Water and land is linked inextricably by high contrast imagery, shots which blur the horizon line. The voice over narration mentions the “grand silence” of this landscape, one that supports ruins of a previous age. Bones and other traces of past lives remain invisible to two children who are busy pulling blackberries from canes. In a later scene, a gliding camera visits a quiet church, identifying its “abandoned saints”. The movement of the camera highlights the stillness of the church. Reflections of water produces an illusion that the Madonna’s eyes are glistening. Buildings are shot to emphasise the shimmering reflections in the water of the lagoon, adding the illusion of movement to the stillness of exteriors. The closing sequences of Islands in the Lagoon detail the work of the inhabitants of the islands. Sequences of women making lace, beading and sewing are juxtaposed with images of men blowing, spinning and cutting decorative glass for chandeliers, heated to extreme temperatures that render it soft and pliable. Focus falls on the serious faces of children concentrating hard on their crafts, an image that might imply their destinies. But Islands in the Lagoon concludes with the voice over narrator identifying the great treasure that Is hidden at the bottom of the sea, which, if we look closely, could be found one day.

Beyond the screenings at Il Cinema Ritrovato, the multi media exhibition Federico Fellini Dall’Italia Alla Luna (Federico Fellini From Italy to the Moon) offered a fascinating insight into the career, dreams and desires of one of the most important Italian auteurs. The Museum of Modern Art, Bologna (MAMbo) exhibited impressions of the life and work of Federico Fellini in public and in private moments. Visitors are greeted with large, vibrant posters advertising Fellini’s films. These include the powerful imagery of posters for Roma (1972), the cityscape with characters linked in an matrix of eyeline matches in La Dolce Vita (1960) and the collage of stars and filmmaker in the classic poster for 8 1/2 (1963). Beginning an exhibition with the public art provides a reflection on the first visual impressions of a Fellini film. This public imagery also includes newspaper articles and paparazzi snapshots designed to create scandal surrounding Fellini, his films and his stars. ‘Cinestories’, popular in illustrated magazines, provide insight into early storyboarding process in imagining films like The White Sheikh (1952). One of the moving image screens shows the mesmerising opening sequence from La Dolce Vita, featuring a helicopter trailing a statue.  A photostory of Fellini’s images of Mandrake the Magician appeared in Vogue and reimagined Marcello Mastroianni as Mandrake working in advertising in the early 1970s.

Figures 4 & 5: Posters for Federico Fellini’s films Roma and La Dolce Vita.

Federico Fellini Dall’Italia Alla Luna also reveals private images, behind the scenes photos from film productions and drawings that offer a (sometimes alarming) indication of Fellini’s thoughts. Fellini’s dreams are exposed in a reflective journal of watercolour illustrations and text. Drawings reveal his fear of being stuck in doorways, his anxieties of falling from buildings and Fellini’s nightmares about giant crocodiles. Watercolour illustrations magnify the proportion of breasts and penises in lascivious images of Fellini’s sexual fantasies. The exhibition includes Fellini’s thoughts on Roma where he writes: “Everything here belongs to the belly, everything is the belly… such a show is a feast for the eyes, but at the same time threatens all gazes: mouths, faces, outpouring bodies avidly swallowing”. Fellini  associates the procession of prostitutes in Roma  with both Fascist parades and processions of the Catholic Church, all of which he describes as ‘hypnotic representations’ of ritual. Photographs reveal the antics behind the scenes of Fellini’s film productions. This is illustrated by one particular image of a kitten placed gently on Anita Ekberg’s head during a lighter moment on the set of La Dolce Vita. These private images include satirical caricatures: photos written over with dialogue bubbles revealing the thoughts of the young filmmaker. The collection shows a collage of responses to a classified advertisement that Fellini published in an Italian newspaper announcing that he is ready to meet anyone who would like to see him. Displays include personal letters written to Fellini directly – one in orange texta, others containing snapshots of aspiring actors, some in profile, some in various states of undress. MAMbo’s exhibition Federico Fellini Dall’Italia Alla Luna is a revealing and rich collection of still and moving images, both public and private designed to follow the ‘red thread’ of Fellini’s obsessions.

Complementing the film and multi media programs the Cineteca Bologna and L’Immagine Ritrovata film restoration and conservation laboratory present the FIAF (Fédération International des Archives du Film) summer school in film restoration. The Summer School provides distance education on theory and film restoration as well as classes on the practice of restoration on site and an internship primarily for archivists and film industry workers. The DVD Awards ceremony acknowledges the best results in conservation and reproduction in the digital format from the previous year. Exhibitions of photographs, multi media and the commitment to training a new generation of film conservators is evidence of the breadth of Il Cinema Ritrovato and its interest in the future of restoration.

The crowds spilling beyond the limitations of the Piazza Maggiore, the full houses in Scala Scorsese or Lumière, the visitors to MAMBo, the interest in workshops in conservation provides measureable evidence of the breadth of Il Cinema Ritrovato. The devotion to film history and the reverence for film is expressed in the dedication of the organisation, which is mirrored in the vibrancy of the audiences in both large public spaces and in the more intimate theatres. The culture of Il Cinema Ritrovato sits resolutely against the swirling fears about the end of celluloid and the eclipse of film by digital media. But this is not a festival that exists in opposition to change, it is one that is progressively engaged with film and media histories. Peter von Bagh defines Il Cinema Ritrovato as a “web of correspondences in the finest sense of the word” (2010 9). He argues that the “program is always immeasurably more than a succession of films. Behind the scene of the program is not only the Bologna staff, but also so many individual participants, and the enormously knowledgeable audience we now have around us” (2010 9). Bazin notes that when the festival reviewer returns home,  “he feels as though he’s come back from far away, having spent a long spell in a world where order, rigour and necessity reign” with the experience an “amazing albeit hard-working retreat, with cinema as its unifying spiritual focus” (1955, 2009 19). On both sides of the screen, in its organisation and in its audiences, Il Cinema Ritrovato reaffirms the life and vibrancy of cinema of the near and distant past.

References:

André Bazin (2009, 1955) ‘The Festival Viewed As A Religious Order’, Dekalog3: On Film Festivals, Richard Porton (ed.), London: Wallflower, 13-19.

Peter von Bagh (2010) ‘Introduzione/Foreword’, Il Cinema Ritrovato, 24th Edizione, Bologna: Cineteca del Comune di Bologna, 9-12.

Paolo Cherchi Usai [et al] (2008) Film Curatorship: Archives, Museums, and the Digital Marketplace, Wien: Synema.

Guy Borlee, Roberto Chiesi [eds] (2010) Il Cinema Ritrovato, 24th Edizione, Bologna: Cineteca del Comune di Bologna.

Tom Gunning (1995) ‘An Aesthetic of Astonishment’, Viewing Positions: Ways of Seeing Film, Linda Williams (ed.), New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 114-33.

Kent Jones (2010) ‘Mest’, in Il Cinema Ritrovato, Guy Borlee, Roberto Chiesi [eds], 24th Edizione, Bologna: Cineteca del Comune di Bologna, 47.

Mark Peranson (2009) ‘First You Get the Power, Then You Get the Money: Two Models of Film Festivals’, Dekalog3, Richard Porton (ed.) London: Wallflower Press, 23-37.

Lauro Venturi (2010, 1948) ‘Isole Nella Laguna’, in Il Cinema Ritrovato, Guy Borlee, Roberto Chiesi [eds], 24th Edizione, Bologna: Cineteca del Comune di Bologna, 29-30.

 

Bio:

Wendy Haslem is a lecturer in Screen Studies in the School of Culture of Communication at the University of Melbourne where she is also Coordinator of the Moving Image MA, which is part of the Master of Arts and Cultural Management. Wendy teaches, researches and publishes on the intersections of film history and new media.  Her research includes: Gothic film, film noir, cinema of the 1950s, Atomic culture, trauma cinema, censorship, Japanese film, Australian film culture and industry. Wendy is interested in the impact of new forms of exhibition on the archive. She is the author of ‘A Charade of Innocence and Vice’: Hollywood Gothic Films of the 1940s (2009) and she is a co-editor for the anthology Super/Heroes: From Hercules to Superman (2007). She is currently researching the evolution of the Gothic from silent cinema to new media for her book Gothic Projections: From Méliès to New Media. Email: wlhaslem@unimelb.edu.au

 

 

 

 

 

From Night and Day to De-Lovely: Cinematic Representations of Cole Porter – Penny Spirou

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Cole Porter (1891 – 1964) is a composer and popular songwriter with two musical biopics that explore his life story: Night and Day (Michael Curtiz, 1946) and De-Lovely (Irwin Winkler, 2004). Due to their time of release and production the films offer different interpretations of Cole Porter’s life through musical integration, narrative content, star casting and genre characteristics. Star casting in De-Lovely and Night and Day transforms the way the film audience interprets the protagonist. Casting for a musical biopic is significant as it changes the perception of both the character and the actor. Several popular music artists appear in De-Lovely, not as specific characters but as performers/singers of Porter’s music. The following will explore the function of the popular music artists in the film as well as the casting of Kevin Kline as Cole Porter in comparison to Cary Grant in Night and Day. In terms of genre characteristics, De-Lovely is recognised as what Altman refers to as the ‘backstage musical’ (1987). The genre categorisation can be identified in the narrative premise of the film. The over-arching plot in De-Lovely is that Cole Porter (in the final days before his death) witnesses his life re-enacted through a musical onstage. This stage musical then becomes the diegetic film narrative. A discussion concerning the backstage musical and the function of the contemporary self-reflexive approach will conclude the analysis of De-Lovely and how style and form effects interpretation of content.
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Keaton and the Lion: A Critical Re-evaluation of The Cameraman, Free and Easy and Speak Easily – Anna Gardner

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Much of the academic writing on the films of Buster Keaton concentrates on the silent period from 1917, when Keaton began his career in films, to 1928 when his independent production company (Buster Keaton Productions) was wound up and Keaton signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. This article will explore some of the less highly regarded films of Keaton’s career, namely those made at MGM between 1928 and 1933, which have been neglected in the majority of the academic literature on Keaton as they fall outside what is generally considered to be his most fertile and creative period. Continue reading →

Sound and Space in the Split-Screen Movie – Ian Garwood

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Abstract: This article focuses on the operation of sound in the split-screen movie. It concentrates, in particular, on instances where the storytelling function of sound is accompanied by the aural exploration of the split screen as a specific spatial form. Different relationships between the soundtrack and multiple frames are demonstrated through examples from The Thomas Crown Affair, The Boston Strangler and Timecode. Continue reading →

Refractory Volume 8, 2005

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Edited by Angela Ndalianis and Wendy Haslem

Some of the essays in this special bumper issue were presented as papers at the Men in Tights! Superheroes Conference, which was held at Melbourne University, June 2005.

Contents

1. True Lies: Do We Really Want Our Icons to Come to Life – Louise Krasniewicz

2. The Comicbook Superhero: Myth For Our Times – Nigel Kaw

3. Toys and Grrls: Comparing Figures in the Merchandising of Television’s Action Heroine - Miranda J. Banks

4. What the *Hezmanah* Are You Talking about?: Alien Discourses in ‘Farscape’ – Jes Battis

5. Xena’s Double-Edged Sword: Sapphic Love & the Judaeo-Christian tradition – Ivar Kvistad

6. Romancing the vampire: the lives and loves of two vampire slayers: Anita and Buffy – Ingrid Hofman-Howley

7. Smallville’s Sexual Symbolism: From Queer Repression to Fans’ Queered Expressions – Anne Kustritz

8. Cyborg girls and shape-shifters: The discovery of difference by Anime and Manga Fans in Australia – Craig Norris

9. The Bold and the Forgetful: Amnesia, Character Mutability and Serial Narrative Form in The X-Men - Radha O’Meara

10. All’s Well, the Twentieth Century Dies: David Bowie as Postmodern Art Detective Professor – Kellie A. Wacker

11. Side FX – the Aura of Electronics in the Information Age – Rock Chugg

12. More than Meets the Eye: the Suburban Cinema Megaplex as Sensory Heterotopia – Leanne Downing