Vivian Giourousis - WINDOW WATER BABY MOVING!

HOARD MAGAZINE September 2005

Universal interconnectedness illustrated through the Feminine body in Cinema

A film analysis by Vivian Giourousis

WINDOW WATER BABY MOVING! Mother Aphrodite was born from the froth of the sea, and Stan Brakhage is calling! Hello!? Tell Carl Jung we've made reservations for this year's MadCat Women's International Film Festival where they'll be serving some good old-fashioned lucid dreaming covered in lush physic landscapes. Tell uncle CJ his favorite master chef is heating up something good in the primordial pot. Go on now, let Mama archetype feed you some of her visual bliss. And no network television before eating this eye-candy, it will ruin your avant-garde appetite!

The following film analysis explores a three taste sample platter of this year's MadCat menu. The three films are, "Threading the Needle" by Andaleeb Firdosy, "Where's My Boyfriend?" by Gretchen Hogue and "Ice/Sea" by Vivian Ostrovsky. Stitched together like a patchwork quilt, each of these films uses crafty montage to construct narratives that employ themes of our timeless and universal bond.

If a single picture alone is worth a thousand words, then multiple frames pieced together are infinitely priceless. Montage is the art of telling a story through a sequence of images. One image, and then another, and another; dispersed film fragments pieced together and brought into relation so to create a coherent visual narrative. Pure cinema doesn't need words to tell a story because the pictures speak for themselves. It is in the choice of images, and the orchestrated sequence in which the image patterns unfold, that measure a valued aspect of a film's aesthetic worth. Montage brings it all together.

Andaleeb Firdosy weaves a personal and historical tapestry with "Threading the Needle". The film tells the story of a flood that hit Shirpur, India. Title credits in the very beginning of the film tell us the exact year of the flood is unclear. Some say the big flood hit in the 1940's, while others remember it happening in the 1950's. As the film continues, a group of women recount their personal memories about what happened the day of the flood. And like the personal belongings and valuables that were lost adrift, so are the washed and faded memories of what happened. The recollection and memories of the women are told in fragmented pieces throughout the film. And we find that personal perspectives differ and conflict. But through her use of montage, Firdosy creates a narrative that ties the separate experiences together. Wide shots of dry present-day landscapes intermingle with black and white vintage footage of the flooded town; past and present visually merge, and thus metaphorically, create an undifferentiated place in time that holds a somewhat divine worldview perspective. Close-up shots of the women are also interplayed with the landscapes, and this threads a connection between the body of the land and the personal body of its people. We, and the earth, are one. As the women speak of their personal memories of the flood, we are visually reminded of our shared history with the earth, and that perhaps the earth, in its deeper wisdom, which spans a millennia of its own memory, must know and remember a deeper truth.

The strongest metaphoric image repeated in "Threading the Needle", is that of the sowing machine. As the women in the film share stories of the flood, we see them sowing and piecing together patchworks of cloth. Close-up shots of a woman threading a sowing machine are patterned in between close-up shots of a movie camera being threaded with film. Here, Firdosy's montage is presenting us with a clear relationship between images; the link between the traditionally feminine craft of sowing and the filmmaker's very own cinematic handy work. Montage is a form of cinematic quilt making, where a feminine hand binds cohesion and wholeness where there once were separate pieces. A thread pulls together a conversation about lost memories, and a well-stitched sequence of frames bind the structure of this film's visual narrative.

still frame from "THREADING THE NEEDLE"

In "Where's My Boyfriend?" by Gretchen Hogue, the story is told through a very fast paced montage of found footage and animated paper collage. Montage, in and of its self, can be considered a form of cinematic collage, so this film is a super sized serving of compiled images stacked a mile high. The film tells a very blunt story about sex and the frenzied race of reproduction against biology's ticking clock. And the sound of the ticking clock that is heard throughout, signifies that this film is an expression of a feminine bodied concern. We also hear a frantic high-pitched voice narrating, over and over again, with the question, "Where's my boyfriend?" And although this repeating voice and these few narrative words shape the overall effect of the film, we rely on reading the film's montage to move us through its visual story.

still frame from "WHERE'S MY BOYFRIEND"

"Where's My Boyfriend?" strings together a montage of magazine cutouts, which includes a vast array of pornographic clippings as well as mainstream advertisements. Other paper clippings appear to have come from biology textbooks and medical indexes. We see porn stars pasted together like paper dolls, an assorted collection of penises, uterine diagrams, wet fetuses, and glamorous Gerber-like baby models. And it's all laid out on the screen in an intricate visual mosaic. Found film footage shows scenes from vintage porn, as well as child birthing scenes from either personal home videos or sex education films. "Where's My Boyfriend?" meshes imagery from varying sources, all sexual in content, but separate in original intent and milieu. We are presented with familiar images that stir our sexual knowledge and evoke our sexual nature in one way or another, but what is unfamiliar, is viewing these sexually cued images simultaneously. The raunch of pornography may seem juxtaposed against clippings from baby food ads or clinical medical films, but the only discord that lies amongst these images is the context in which they have been previously presented to us. What Hogue does with this film, is pull together a complete narrative of what sex is really all about. And she does this by using images we have seen before but have kept separate and compartmentalized even though they are in fact part of the same story. Spliced in with the images already described, the film also includes an image of an astronaut floating in outer space. Distanced far above, from a vast and cosmic point of view, we hear an echo call out, "Where's my boyfriend?" And it is from this higher perspective, a perspective that sees beyond fragments and the illusionary divide between porn, science, commercialism and Sesame Street, that Hogue narrates the story of Mother Nature. To tell the story of conception, is to tell the story of each and every one of us.

"Ice/Sea" by Vivian Ostrovsky is a film that unites the world. It is a compositional montage constructed from film footage of seascapes, beach scenes, and other oceanic imagery from around the globe. The film is made with found footage as well as self-shot footage. The film footage also appears to be from various eras. Ostrovsky's montage brings these separated elements together and creates a fresh environment that appears congruent across space and time. Footage from Patagonia, Odessa, Rio, Viet Nam and elsewhere, are interplayed and related. The result is a visual narrative that tells us the film's story is taking place in a single afternoon at the same beach. And it might as well, since the waters of the earth are as old as time and span the globe as one big blue blanket anyway. Ostrovsky's film creates a world that defies boundaries, unites hemispheres and reconciles continents. It does not discern between past and present and understands that the pulse of 'right now' is a crossroads of both.

Ostrovsky's sequence of ocean and beach imagery begins with a powerful aesthetic choice. In the very beginning of the film, we see sun worshippers lounging on a stretch of sand. Suddenly, their attention moves toward the waves of the sea. Emerging out of the foaming waters, a roaring tiger runs toward dry land. Ostrovsky starts with this image of the tiger before the world of her film begins to expand. The powerful image of a tiger emerging from the sea is reminiscent of images of the birth of Aphrodite. And in a film that moves with the force of the ocean, a force often equated to the feminine, it is easy for the imagination to draw on a timeless mythic parallel such as that of a procreative Mother goddess. The sea is a body, a symbolic feminine form, the beginning of us all. The tiger, a magical force, emerges from the sea allowing Ostrovsky's film to come into being.

still frame from "ICE/SEA"

"Threading the Needle" by Andaleeb Firdosy, "Where's My Boyfriend?" by Gretchen Hogue, and "Ice/Sea" by Vivian Ostrovsky rely heavily on the craft of montage to create cinematic narratives. With the talented and skilled use of montage, each filmmaker brings wholeness and order to otherwise fragmented subject matter and content. "Threading the Needle" by Firdosy creates a story that unites the personal and the universal in memory, history and experience. She also draws a line between traditional female handy work such as sowing and her own craft as filmmaker, and this intern connects her to the women elders of her family. Hogue's "Where's My Boyfriend?" unites various forms of sex related media which has been traditionally segregated and compartmentalized and offers us a wider and more complete tale about the birds and the bees. And with well-orchestrated montage, Ostrovsky's "Ice/Sea" takes film fragments and transforms them into a singular environment that unites time and place through the unifying force of vast reaching bodies of water.

A body of water, a flood, the sea. Something lost and washed adrift, and threaded by distant memories. To thread the camera, to cut the cloth, to quilt together oceans and subconscious dreams. To create a work, a burst of birth, a gush of inspiration. Images of flickering light, a tapestry of divinity on the screen. A point of view, a knowing glance, the depths of wisdom. [ end ]

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MadCat Film Festival 2005
September 13–27 in San Francisco, Ca. & October 6 & 13 in Berkeley, Ca.

MadCat features a vast and diverse selection of film, video, animation and installations that vary greatly in theme and content. For a complete listing please refer to: www.madcatfilmfestival.org

click here to read Hoard's archived review of MadCat 2003