(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
We are used to the masterful film, the one who is the master of himself and who lulls us into his conservative dream. We are used to the film that masters its representation of the world and which exerts its mastery over us. Just think about the logo sequences of the big studios: There, the film studios demonstrate their mastery of technique, their skill and control, before serving you an understandable world. The dominant 3D movie follows the same logic. It is master of its world and its technique. It asks you to live in a world where the depth dimension also exists, and will – like the classic fiction film – seduce you into its special universe, presenting an often clear and clear story.
This year's 3D focus during the Oberhausen short film festival was rather based on the 3D technique as a destabilizing and trying mode of thinking; as a means that does not master itself, but which trying to get ahead. This is the starting point for an experimental practice that potentially shifts the foundation of thinking. A mature, reflective consciousness is not one that rests in itself, but one that explores, plays, experiments, and is uncertain about things and their own horizon of thought. A genuinely critical thought activity is one that "uses" its own uncertainty to hunt for new acknowledgments and experiences that can increase the scope for what is possible and what can be imagined. Can you do something similar with film?
Can you see 3D outside the conventional world of fiction and examine it abstractions premises?
"Radicalizing the thought." Festival director Lars Henrik Gass writes in the catalog's introductory text that the 3D focus is the last part of an investigation of a «post-cinematographic future». As I understand it, he is referring to a reality where digital technologies and networks replace traditional film formats and viewing contexts. Gas wonders "whether and how film can have a place in a society that no longer needs it, but may need it more than ever". The continuation reveals even more about the focus and the festival's perspective in general: «Questions in art are not present to be answered. They radicalize the idea. "
The starting point for productive film thinking sees film as a mode of thought in the world, and not as the storyteller's last nod. Film is – as Jean Epstein theorized on the subject almost 100 years ago, and which Gilles Deleuze, among others, was to further develop – a "machine intelligence" that expands the very basis for reflecting on the world, and which intensifies and multiplies the gaze into its mystery. It is with this starting point that we must see the film as significant both in an existential, social and moral sense: in how it can throw us into new understandings of the world; out of our usual train of thought, our satisfied ego – and let us face a strangeness in ourselves and in the face of reality.
Can one think of 3D technology in the light of such a film philosophical radicalism? Can one see 3D outside the prism of the conventional fictional world and examine it on the premises of thinking and free play? This stands for me as a central issue after this year's Oberhausen.
Breaking conventions. Film theorist David Bordwell has pointed out two 3D rules established by Hollywood: that the technique should serve our understanding of the action (when it should not only impress us with its effects), and that it should strive for realism. Jean-Luc Godard is – believing himself – one of those who has most thoroughly broken with this Hollywood standardization of 3D and stereoscopy.
Film critic Bryant Frazer has pointed out ways Godard breaks the rules in Adieu au langage (2014). This includes the use of cheap low-quality cameras that create dirty images, an emphasis on everyday "background noise" on the soundtrack, and a splitting of the stereo image (two images on top of each other), so that we are violently pulled out of the depth illusion. The film does things with 3D that, according to Frazer, "would have fired a Hollywood stereographer a dozen times." That's probably an understatement.
Under the title The Third Image: 3D Cinema as Experiment this form of exploratory, playful and deconstructive use of stereoscopy was themed during this year's Oberhausen Festival. In his introductory text to the program, Björn Speidel writes that he considers the possibilities of 3D technology to be as powerful as the sound and colors in his time represented.
Speidel describes stereoscopy as "spatial vision". The technique is based on two images that are placed "on top" of each other, and shown through 3D glasses, giving us an illusion of depth. Stereoscopy is seeing three-dimensionality: "stereoscopy is what makes an image seem spatial". Recently, digitization has made this technique more infallible and cheaper to produce than before, and in the future, 3D will permeate all media fields and no longer seem sensational, writes Speidel.
Spread over six theme bars, he presented various experimental forms of stereoscopic film. "As I put together the program," he writes, "I wanted to present a panorama of ideas. I am particularly fascinated by what may still come: the history of 3D film can be found in the museum ».
I only saw two of the programs, and the quality of the movies was uneven. Two stood out: the Croatian ARCHEO29 (Vladislav Kneževic´, 2010) was a powerful collage of war motifs, which used depth and distances in a disturbing and symphonic way – and Virgil Widrichs Back Track (2015) is a collection of clips from film noir, where movies are put into dialogue with each other (for example Sunset Boulevard, Last year in Marienbad og The Man Who Wasn't There). The film images are also reconfigured internally, in that small objects are highlighted and confuse the clarity of what the images refer to. Other highlights were 3D images of dancing, a vulva, and animated giraffes throwing themselves off a diving board.
Experimental display form. As interesting as the films were the form of the show itself. We sat in the hall with three different pairs of 3D glasses and constantly had to switch back and forth from film to film. Several times it was unclear which glasses were to be used for which films. In addition, Speidel pointed out that some of the films were not intended to be shown in 3D, or at least not adapted to the glasses we wore. We simply participated in an experiment, and trial and error was part of the experience. The audience laughed, got annoyed, commented in a language I did not understand, and otherwise sat still and tried to stare into the strange depths of the picture.
The possibilities of 3D technology are considered as powerful as the sound and colors of their time represented.
Here, as mentioned, lies some of the quality of a festival like Oberhausen and a focus like this: a tentatively approach to film. In contrast to the overcontrolled dominance of Hollywood culture, the Oberhausen Short Film Festival represents a forum for curiosity, experimentation and discussion that seeks to keep alive expressions and ideas that are excluded from the dominant discourse, and that are about art. potential.
In an interview from 2014, Gass describes the festival as "a laboratory for artistic innovation." This year's 3D focus tried to ask questions about what this technique can be, what it can offer, whether it can be thought of in new ways.
Several of the films – both in this focus and in the international competition program – were fragile and ridiculous. I thought a few times: Are we just young children playing cultured? But some of the films were fantastic, and what went on again – and which fills me with admiration – is that one dared not be nice, one dared not satisfy the audience; because one aligned oneself with the possibilities, what film can be – not just what it should be, which the clichés so constantly bombard us with.
We must protect and front the film that is not self-satisfied, but that directs its means and forces towards "radicalizing thought", and thus a film that risks itself.
Endre Eidsaa Larsen is a film critic in Ny Tid.
endreeid@gmail.com
