The Grind Don't Stop (Patreon)

If you ever check my viewing logs on The Academic Hack, you'll know that I have been mainlining recent experimental films, mostly because I have my November program to begin thinking about, and also because I have been communicating with different programmers via back-channels about what an uneven year it's turning out to be. There's plenty still to see, and I don't really feel right "reviewing" films that have not yet premiered that their makers sent me for festival consideration. But I will say a few general things.

1. Analog is back, baby!

There is a general sameness to a lot of the films I'm seeing, and whereas in the past few years it was a commitment to "discourse" in the form of essay films, now it seems to be a backlash to digital, streaming, and all the bleak-future things that Covid accelerated. I have seen so many films that foreground the filmstrip, with blotches, paint and scratches, flakes of developer, end flares, and the like. And in a lot of cases, there's very little else going on. It's as though the mere assertion of having worked with physical materials represents some kind of media-ecology intervention. After the Frampton moment, it's back to Brakhage, but not anywhere as good...?

2. You could always have an ocean ending.

Or beginning, or middle. Quite a few films are suddenly besotted with the movement of bodies of water and the light glinting off them. Others consist of series of landscape shots that are assembled one after the other, with little concern for rhythm or movement. A lot of them might as well be photo essays, and some would probably be more successful in that medium. The impulse here seems to be "find a meaningful location and describe it, piece by piece. Something will emerge." Not always.

3. Stop! You've already found your film.

Quite a few works I've seen are comprised of moments that land between "accomplished" and "close to perfect," but the makers are trying to create relationships where they do not organically exist. So great material is undermined by its continued proximity to stuff that is interesting at best, lifeless at worst, but just doesn't belong in the film that's trying to emerge. Now, this is a response I try to temper when I have it, because it could just be my own biases. There is something to be said for the clash of unlike strands of meaning, and it's possible that my frustration has less to do with the films themselves than my preexisting notions of what a coherent film looks like. So I will most likely watch these films again in a week or so.

4. Are you even trying anymore?

This one is reserved for the established filmmakers who are serving up less compelling examples of their signature style. This is always a tough one, since (like the "incoherent" films described in #3) artists develop in strange ways and it's possible that what I see as lazy might, in retrospect, seem "refined" or "streamlined." But what can I say? I'm seeing quite a few filmmakers who are covering the same old ground, only with less than inspired results.

5. But I keep searching, because gems do exist.

I have found a few really solid films in the pile. These include new(ish) works by Miranda Pennell, Dan Barnett, Sara Sowell (whose Color Negative is pictured above), Anna Kipervaser, and James Edmonds. None of them are as strong as Blake Williams' latest, but a few come close. So, fingers crossed!