The Signature of Documentary – thoughts from Open City London Documentary Festival 2011

 
 - Linda C.H. LAI
 

Photo by Linda Lai: Open City London Documentary Festival's opening event, June 16, 2011

To me, documentary is a total event that cannot be fully considered without taking into account the intention of the maker, relation between the maker and the documented, the use of the work in its life-span of distribution and circulation, the conversations it invokes, and finally other on-going discourses in which it works out its politics.

Textbook discussion on documentary film has often been caught up in issues of evidence of truth rooted in the camera’s being there and the photographic image’s indexical transparency. The shift to clarification of documentary as a genre, thus its visual and narrative practice as conventions, often results in reinforcing the acceptance of documentary works’  narrative constructed-ness …

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《慾望號快車》 — 餘韻的意義 “Crash” – The Meaning of the Aftertaste

  葉啟俊YIP Kai-chun


平日在家看影碟,每隔廿分鐘就忍不住按停,喝水查電郵去廁所,其實都是耐性貧乏的徵狀。年多前看《慾望號快車》時便是如此,每隔三分鐘就停一停。看完過後 ,有「終於看完了」的快慰解脫。是看完爛/悶片的感覺。

不過,看完好一陣子後,腦內竟然不斷浮起戲內畫面。好像不該去想,但又禁不住想;既是不安地想,又是回味地想。看時每三分鐘停一停,以為自己是被緩慢沉悶所逼;此時方知是本能驅使,把戲中的不安切碎,好等較易消化。先前看完的解脫快感,則其實是對不安完結的期待。

要說劇情,其實沒什麼可說:主角無意中發現撞車的「樂趣」,遂不斷追求。沒有驚險的場面,也沒令觀眾大起大落。雖然電影的主題是撞車,撞車倒也撞得平實,強悍的剪接和精妙的鏡頭欠奉,車自然的撞在一起,近乎理所當然般發生。
撞車是主角,做愛也是主角;戲內除撞車外,就是做愛。熱愛做愛的主角有個女朋友,也大概有至少一打性伴侶。主角跟一起撞過車的女人做愛,跟其他撞車迷組織的人做愛,跟撞車迷組織的主腦做愛。主角的女朋友,跟主角一起撞過車的女人,撞車迷會的人,撞車迷會的主腦,以及戲內所有人,都跟其他人相互做愛。影片到了後段,只要任何兩個人稍為接近,就像磁石般自然相吸,然後自然的愛撫,自然的做愛,無分場合男女。

聽落跟鹹片沒兩樣,其實剛好相反。如之前所說,電影既無驚險的場面,也沒有令觀眾大起大落之處 — 包括性興奮。全部角色清一色木口木面,撞車時亦無甚表情,又豈會在做愛時露出半點喜怒哀樂? 當然不甜蜜,也不親密;不覺得滿足,亦不覺得愉悅。 他們做愛,好像只是為了 . . . . . . 做愛。看似為本能,但更像是個癮:一個追求刺激的極至,但再刺激如撞車也不能滿足的癮。

就這樣看完後,腦內都是戲中場面,特別是角色碰一碰就做愛的片段。看時被判為爛/悶片,之後卻如好片般令人不停憶起 — 這是第一套給我這種餘韻的電影。

以前上,〈性‧別〉課 (Sexualities),大概認定了性是人最基本的歡愉,不該遭世俗汙名抹黑,以及所有種類的性都該平等云云。近乎救贖的想法,令班內充斥著股詭異的熱情 — 性是美好的!跟〈性‧別〉課崇尚的性愛無限好唱反調,《慾望號快車》中的性愛,只是人類對刺激追求的宣洩;什麼愛呀、浪漫呀通通懶講。在這性愛反烏托邦(Distopia)中,性是空洞的動作,似乎有些什麼,又或是得到些什麼,其實什麼也沒有。這不禁令人質疑性愛是否如大家所說般美麗 — 每人身邊總有做愛只為跟人(任何人)有點關連的人,只為想睡好一點的人(「散精」,同事說),只因無別事可做的人,只因為做愛而做愛的人 — 那跟戲內見人就搞的角色有何分別?

既然如斯黑暗,那觀後的一點回味又是什麼?這回味也不像是看完好戲後的回味。我一直想呀想,然後手足無措,只能不情願的把這歸納為「本能」 — 對性渴望的本能 — 即使是戲內那麼陰暗,那麼空洞的性。可是,如果屬實,那豈非再次印證,戲內令人不安的性交模式,早已是在現世確實的一部份?

既想不通,但又不想篤信黑暗的推論。一堆沒有答案的問題。

就像《慾望號快車》帶來的餘韻般,性是漫無止境的課題。(YIP Kai-chun)

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片名:Crash (英語) /《慾望號快車》(香港) / 《超速性追輯》(臺灣) /《撞車》(中國)
製片地:加拿大 / 美國 // 片長:100分鐘
觀看場次:觀看影碟 — 2009年2月
《慾望號快車》IMDB (The Internet Movie Database)網頁:
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Talking head questions: inductive and interdisciplinary

- Elliot W.Y. LEUNG

FPC Forum: ‘What’s in a Talking Head: narrated selves and event structure”
2010.06.26 / FPC / 2:30-4:30 pm / Linda C.H. LAI

Some belated thoughts…

Absolutely fascinating talk and materials; materials which – as was acknowledged during the presentation – lend itself to so many possible frames of analysis, approaches, and appealable to various knowledge/capital fields (Bourdieu), that an inter-disciplinary analysis becomes an unimaginably arduous endeavour, the success of which, nonetheless, would no doubt do justice to the richness of the theoretical mosaic invoked.

The challenge – or problem, depending on how one sees it – seems to be that ‘talking heads’ as an object of analysis as well as aesthetic gaze crosses so many conceptual boundaries that 10+ very different essays can be conceived, each published in a different journal in a different knowledge/citation field:

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The Revolving Cultural Imagery of a New China – a response to the Art HK 2010 新中國新意象?-對2010 香港國際藝術展的一些想法

YIP, Olivia Wai-ka

a work of photography seen at the Art HK 2010

The Art HK has often been a chance for a friends’ reunion of mine every year in late May. It was never a bad idea to gather old friends for an art fair like this and dine at a local hotpot-restaurant with beers afterwards. I did not mean to be critical at first, but the ‘selling’ activities were too overwhelming. With special privilege provided by a friend working in a local gallery, we were able to attend the VIP session of the Art HK 2010. On a more general level of observation, it was the guests in attendance that first caught my attention. Most visitors were extraordinarily well-dressed – they looked as if coming from a world beyond mine. …

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Walking fields & the critique of flâneuse - preview notes #6 for FPC's 1st exhibition

- Kimburley Choi

Video stills from Linda Lai's…

 

Trespassing and a tale of cities…

Trespassing world cities 《搖擺過路人》(2005) is a composite of Linda Lai’s tourist-video-style travelogues. The opening is a low angle shot showing a woman walking, and the camera seems to be in a bag; then it cuts to the tile of New Delhi in 2004, the pan shot of the bridge in New York City in 2001, the tracking shots of Frankfurt city space in 2001, Taipei in 2003, and New Delhi in 2004. The intercuts between tracking shots of these three cities and the following elevators shots of different cities indicate the similarities of these “modern” cities and we (the videomaker and the audiences) cannot easily recognize their differences.

Although ethnographers nowadays acknowledge the constructedness of ethnographic fields, Schneider (2008) argues that …

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