An Algorithm (Bette Gordon, 1977) (Patreon)

Filmmaker Bette Gordon is probably best known for her 1983 feature film Variety, an experimental narrative from New York's Downtown scene that actually attained some commercial and critical traction. Focused on a young woman (Sandy McLeod) who is a ticket-taker at a porno theater, Variety was one of the first films to address women's relationship to porn as a potentially healthy curiosity. Gordon was clearly interested in exploring questions of the female gaze, Laura Mulvey's theories of the gendered nature of the apparatus, and the then-burgeoning discourse around sex-positive feminism. Variety did not avoid dealing with the shady and even dangerous aspects of the male-centric world of porn, but neither did it relegate women who were in that orbit to the position of 'victim.'

Gordon's achievements in experimental film have regrettably been marginalized by her eventual move into feature filmmaking. Her divorce from James Benning, who was a collaborator on some of her earliest works, may have also complicated matters. (In case you were wondering, Gordon is Sadie's mom.) But An Algorithm is one of Gordon's solo efforts that fits squarely into the trend of self-reflexive structuralism that was dominant in the 1970s North American avant-garde. Its mathematical structure would seem to owe something to Benning, but he virtually never worked in such a compact, elegant manner. This film has much more in common with the more transparent, self-deprecating formalism of filmmakers such as Peter Rose, David Rimmer, and even early Peter Greenaway.

A set of shots is taken from the exact same vantage point. A young woman dives into an urban swimming pool. The various shots (there appear to be five, but I am not sure yet) are intercut with each other according to a mathematical schema. The formula is announced as it unfolds, in the soundtrack, which consists of a male and a female voice chanting numbers. First it is straight counting, and then we notice gaps, which indicate that the film is being constructed according to groups and series. 

Soon, color-negative images of the same strips of film are introduced into the sequence. So the resulting film (as you can see above) becomes more and more staccato as it progresses, and flips between positive and negative with increased frequency. The simple action is fragmented like a Muybridge motion study, but the dive is often thrown to and fro, interrupted and dismantled. An Algorithm suggests that an analytic cinema, guided by mathematical principles, would offer us a clinical, scientific look at this quotidian gesture. But in fact, as the algorithm works itself out, the motion of the film breaks down, becoming more chaotic, dissolving into a series of semi-still images. 

So in a way, the math allows us to see "the film" as it really is, but does so at the expense of semiotic comprehension. An Algorithm is a Heisenbergian film. We can observe film's material being, or its realist promise, but we can't have both at the same time.