The Art of Personal Filmmaking

BC: My name is Bastian Clevé. I was born in Munich on January 1st, 1950. I received my artistic and filmic schooling both in Hamburg and at the San Francisco Art Institute. Since 1979, I have been living and working in Los Angeles. [until 1993]

Q: You have made over 30 experimental films. Is there a fundamental difference in approach to this manner of filmmaking?

BC: Yes. Basically, there are two distinct avenues by which I approach my own work. I may begin with an idea for a film without having a clear vision of what the resultant piece will look like. Thus, I explore the medium and test its limits as a means of articulating my own thoughts and the experience of making the film. In the film Echo, for example, I move and operate the camera very quickly, while journeying through a room to a landscape in order to obscure the identity of passing objects. In such filming situations, I do not know in advance what the character of the images will be.

In other instances, I am quite scientific in my approach. I begin with a theory or concept and accordingly apply those techniques appropriate to the creation of those previsualized images which fill my mind. If there is no known technique to produce the desired results, then I experiment and often build my own equipment in order to achieve my objective. This approach is often elaborate, laborious and slow. Pieces which involve single-frame printing are especially time consuming. The film Kaskaden is a product of this particular method: I began with a normal tilt up a tree; and later I manipulated the location footage through the use of an optical printer, employing a variety of possible techniques -slow motion, multiple exposures, colored filter changes, mirroring, manual movement of the filmstrip, etc. - to accomplish those images which were dwelling in my mind’s eye.

Q: You exhibit basic elements of the filmstrip itself, such as sprocket holes. Do you want to foreground the basic elements of filmmaking?

BC: Yes, and I use these elements of filmmaking in an alternative manner - not to reproduce reality, but to create a new, purely filmic reality. In the film Zenith, basic material aspects of the filmstrip function as ‘actors’. I try to create visual music and establish a sense of purity, that is why I left the film silent. There are, of course, other films in which I emphasize the materiality of film. In Empor, I was interested in the physical effect which is engendered at the very end of the film.

Q: Audiences expect to be shocked and challenged by experimental films. What is your position on this?

BC: I am not very interested in shocking the audience. I regard my films as a form of entertainment. Entertainment defined as an intellectual and sensitive form of stimulation. Despite the fact that Götterdämmerung created quite a controversy with its premiere at the Oberhausen Film Festival in 1974, I had intended only to create a film about the beauty of rhythm, dance and music. The film plays with the letters of the filmic alphabet, such as the interplay between a point of focus and a point of imperceptibility or the interplay between different focal lengths, the passage from a fade-in to a fade-out or the layering effect of a multiple-exposure.

In the film Fatehpur Sikri ,I try to express my impressions of a journey through India and Nepal. The technique of the travelling matte allows me to combine images of a classical Indian dance and contemporary every- day life in India. The superimposed window of Fatehpur Sikri is placed between these two building block images. In a sense this brings me to another thought on the need of the filmmaker to discover those filmic techniques which will appropriately articulate a particular theme. In the case of Fatehpur Sikri, the technique used enhances and underlines the content of the images, the essence of their interchange and the governing idea which I wished to express.

Q: Most of your films are concerned with formal principles. Do you use any of these techniques to also tell a story, to narrate?

BC: Yes, I am currently moving in that direction. I am convinced that traditional stories can be told in a much more stimulating and dynamic way through the use and application of new visual methods and expressions. These [alternative devices] would allow the audience to be more imaginative itself. In fact, I attempt to create such a narrative in the feature-length film San Francisco Zephyr, which tells the story of a three-month journey through the United States and Canada. I use images from a rodeo, from Niagara Falls, from the Rocky Mountains and from a Fourth of July parade in San Francisco. The jazz musician, Eberhard Weber, created the soundtrack while watching the film. For him, the same principle of exploration and adventure governed his composition as it did for me -we both reacted to things which we had not seen before and created spontaneously.

Q: Why do you use simple and everyday images?

BC: Basically I am interested in creating images and films which I have not encountered previously. By using everyday images and subsequently transforming them into something beautiful and poetic, I can explore new aspects of reality - a reality which was previously perceived as a known factor by both myself and the spectator.

In addition, in Winterlandschaft I want to create a 3-D like effect in my work I accomplish this by using the color-negative filmstrip itself … that is as itself. Also, I place materials between the camera, projector and screen in order to achieve a spatial impression.

Q: Are there similarities between your work and the artistic methods and approaches apparent in other fields?

BC: Yes. I can understand that some of my work may be perceived as painting with light. I react to light as one reacts to music and thus compose with light. The process of filmmaking, for me, is similar to musical composition. I do everything by myself -beginning with the idea of the film, designing the lighting plan and executing the shoot, as well as the final edit. My works are, therefore, very personal.

The last film, Lichtblick, is like an optical poem; one of the objects - the Museum of Fine Arts in Hamburg - implies that artistic self-understanding resides within the context of the other arts. The musician, Klaus Schulze, composed the soundtrack for this film.

AV02 / Region Code 0 / SlimCase / € 25.00 incl. postage & handling 
(Germany only - for other countries add € 3.00)

“What lies beyond  reality? Are there ways to take different approaches? Can I visualize things which do not exist in the material world? Can I create visual music and compose with light, imagery, color and shapes which are not animated but are to be found in reality? Can I create imagery the way musical composers create symphonies? Those were the questions I asked myself once I had seen enough “Hollywood”-type movies.

I felt the desire to create something new and personal, something beyond stories and plotlines known to mankind ever since the start-of-times in both theatre and drama. My own stories in a personal style bearing no similarity to other artists or filmmakers. - As an artist I am interested in creating images previously never seen, as a professional I aim at perfection in the craft of filmmaking” (Bastian Clevé)

The focus of Clevé‘s artistic filmmaking lies in the manipulation of real-live imagery using sophisticated in-camera-editing and optical printing.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bastian_Clev%C3%A9)

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1. Schau ins Land (1976)
   
   16mm, colour, 10:06 mins. Music by Klaus Schulze
2. Nachtwache (1976)
   
   16mm, colour, 9:39 mins. Music by Klaus Schulze
3. Lichtblick (1976)
   
   16mm, colour, 13:04 mins. Music by Klaus Schulze
   BMI-Award 1976
4. Die Reise (1977)
   
   16mm, colour, silent, 9:55 mins
5. Empor (1977)
   
   16mm, colour, silent, 9:47 mins.
   German Film Award 1978
6. Nach Bluff (1977)
   
   16mm, colour, silent, 10:07 mins.
   German Film Award 1979
7. Fatehpur Sikri (1980)
   
   16mm, colour, sound, 9:09 mins.
   Bronze Award - Houston Film Festival USA
   Special Merit Award - Athens Film Festival USA
8. The Art of Personal Filmmaking (1983)
   
   Bonus Documentary, 29 mins.
   Read the interview with Bastian Clevé online. 

Produced in 1983 and running for 29:25 mins, Clevé talks about his early films and their making in an interview situation. The interview is conducted in German but dubbed over in English spoken by Clevé himself. We will upload the precise English wording of the interview for your convenience to this web site at a later stage.

Unfortunately, the source is a VHS tape [sorry – Blue Ray quality nowhere on the horizon in those days…] but as far as known this is the only existing tape of its kind. A substantial part of the tape shows excerpts of his films. The ones featured are (in order of appearance): Echo (1983) / Kaskaden (1983) / Zenith (1981) / Empor (1977) / Götterdämmerung (1974) / Fatehpur Sikri (1981) / San Francisco Zephyr [medley] (1978) / Winterlandschaft (1983) / Lichtblick (1976)

See also Bastian Clevé: Journeys

For private home use only! For other uses, please, get in contact.

AV01 / Region Code 0 / SlimCase / 25.00 € incl. postage & handling
(Germany only – for other countries add € 3.00)

“Filmmaking has always been a journey into the unknown for me. Each new film demands its own trajectory. I might start with a particuliar idea and than after the first 100 feet of exposed film comes back, the imagines tell me which way to go or not to go.

There is always a kind of pull between me and the material photographed, something opens up. If everything works out fine and the imagines connect to me and i can almost hear the sound they want, it is one hell of elation running through jour body and mind, unbelievable. To sum up:my approach to filmmaking is primarily an organic one. The films are a synthesis of the intellect and emotion all filtered through the plastic material of film. I try to let imagines flow freely to the surface”

(Paul Winkler).

These images are clearly marked by the use of devices to create them. Winkler may briefly show the unaltered image in the beginning of a film. But inevitably processing will occur, and Winkler’s “low-tech invention pushes the possibilities of comparatively simple mechanics and long-known camera devices to their outer limits and beyond” (Ingo Petzke). Mostly, these are still and moving mattes and the optical printer but also some inventions of his own. They always result in refreshingly new images full of sensual impressions.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Winkler)

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1. Sydney Harbour Bidge (1977)
   
   16mm, colour, sound, 13mins
   Gold Award – Best Experimental, Australian Film Awards 1979
2. Bondi (1979)
   
   16mm, colour, sound, 15mins
   Silver Award - Experimental, Australian Film Awards 1979
3. Ayers Rock (1981)
   
   16mm, colour, sound, 21mins
   (produced by CINE PRO, Germany)
   Price money, Ann Arbor Film Festival, USA 1983
4. Time out for Sport (1996)
   
   16mm, colour, sound, 17mins
   Best Editing, Ann Arbor Film Festival, USA 1996
   Finalist - Dendy Awards Sydney Film Festival 1996
5. Rotation (1998)
   
   16mm, colour, sound, 17mins
   Directors Choice Award, Black Maria Film & Video Festival, Jersey City, USA 2000
   Best Experimental Film, Melbourne Film Festival 1999
   Finalist, Dendy Award, Sydney Film Festival 1998
   Honorable Mention, Ann Arbor Film Festival, USA 1999
6. Bonus: © Paul Winkler (2005)
   
   MiniDV, colour, sound, 11 mins
   Portraitfilm by Mark Daley, Nicole Reid and Dominik Muench
   Produced in “Avant-garde Film” at Bond University, Australia

Total running time 94 mins

We are producing and distributing experimental films on DVD – worldwide and at reasonable prices.

We aim to provide DVD editions of exceptional films not to be found anywhere else – films literally as rare as red avocados. We release DVDs by a wide range of internationally acknowledged filmmakers and spanning decades of inspired work.

First releases will be:

AV01 Paul Winkler (Australia): Australian Icons (1977-1998)
AV02 Bastian Clevé (Germany/USA): Journeys (1976-1980)
AV03 Ingo Petzke (Germany): Northern Lights (1975-1984)
AV04 Christoph Janetzko (Germany/USA): Early Masters (1979-1986)

All prices quoted are for private home use only! For other uses , please, get in contact.

DVD (NTSC) / Region Code 0 / Color, Sound /22.00 € incl. postage & handling (Euro zone only - for other countries add 3€) 
The commendable compilation as issued by the Centre for Visual Music, Los Angeles

Jordan Belson is the last of the great masters of the California Visual Music artists, which included Oskar Fischinger, Harry Smith and James Whitney….

‘Filmmaker and artist Jordan Belson creates abstract films richly woven with cosmological imagery, exploring consciousness, transcendence, and the nature of light itself. Born in Chicago in 1926, Belson studied painting at the California School of Fine Art (now San Francisco Art Institute), receiving his B.A., Fine Arts (1946) from The University of California, Berkeley. He saw films by Oskar Fischinger, Norman McLaren and Hans Richter at the historic Art in Cinema screening series in San Francisco in the late 1940s, and later, films by John and James Whitney. Belson was inspired to make films with scroll paintings and traditional animation techniques, calling his first films “cinematic paintings.” Curator Hilla Rebay at The Museum of Non-Objective Painting exhibited his paintings, and upon Fischinger’s recommendation awarded Belson several grants.  From 1957-1959, Belson was Visual Director for The Vortex Concerts at San Francisco’s Morrison Planetarium, a series of electronic music concerts accompanied by visual projections.  Composer Henry Jacobs curated the music while Belson created visual illusions with multiple projection devices, combining planetarium effects with patterns and abstract film footage.  His Vortex work inspired his abandoning traditional animation methods to work with manipulated projected light. He completed Allures (1961), Re-entry (1964), Phenomena (1965), Samadhi (1967), and continued with a series of abstract films.  His varied influences include yoga, Eastern philosophies and mysticism, astronomy, Romantic classical music, alchemy, Jung, non-objective art, mandalas and many more. Belson has produced an extraordinary body of over 30 abstract films, sometimes called “cosmic cinema,” also considered to be Visual Music.  He produced ethereal special effects for the film The Right Stuff (1983), and continues making fine art and films today, completing Epilogue in 2005.

— Cindy Keefer, “Jordan Belson” in Alexandra Munroe, The Third Mind; American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989 ( New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2009). © Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2008-09

1. Allures (1961), 8 mins
   
   An early masterpiece of Non-Objective Cinema “I think of Allures as a combination of molecular structures and astronomical events mixed with subconscious and subjective phenomena - all happening simultaneously. the beginning is almost purely sensual, the end perhaps totally nonmaterial. It seems to move from matter to spirit in some way.”  “…it took a year and a half to make, pieced together in thousands of different ways….Allures actually developed out of images I was working with in the Vortex Concerts.” (Jordan Belson, quoted in Expanded Cinema by Gene Youngblood, p. 160-162). The soundtrack is a collaboration with Henry Jacobs. Allures was preserved with the support of the National Film Preservation Foundation.
2. Samadhi (1967), 6 mins
   
   Samadhi evokes the ecstatic state achieved by the meditator where individual consciousness merges with the Universal. “I hoped that somehow the film could actually provide a taste of what the real experience of samadhi might be like.” (from Scott MacDonald’s interview with Belson in A Critical Cinema 3). Belson adds “It is primarily an abstract cinematic work of art inspired by Yoga and Buddhism. Not a description or explanation of Samadhi.”
3. Light (1973), 8 mins is based on the continuity of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is a ride through space and light. This is the last film for which Belson composed his own soundtrack. This film was preserved with the support of the National Film Preservation Foundation.
4. Fountain of Dreams (1984), 8 mins - never before released. A bold synchronization to the Transcendental music of Franz Liszt.
5. Epilogue (2005), 12 mins
   
   By way of a pure Visual Music experience, the Hirshhorn Museum (Smithsonian Institution) commissioned a major new work from abstract film artist Jordan Belson, who distilled 60 years of visionary sound and images into a twelve minute videofilm, synchronized to a symphonic tone poem “Isle of the Dead” by the great lyric composer Sergei Rachmaninoff. Produced by Center for Visual Music, with support from the NASA Art Program. Epilogue was installed in the Visual Music exhibition at the Hirshhorn, Washington, D.C., June - September, 2005.

Total running time 45 minutes

Photographs  (C) Jordan Belson, all rights reserved