Reading/Screening Blog#3

Keiran McCann
Spring 2010
Videography 002

Reading/Screening Blog#3
For this reading/screening blog I read the 2007 article The Svankmajer Touch by Cathryn Vasseleu and watched the 1998 film Flat is Beautiful by Sadie Benning. The article was about Swedish artist Jan Svankmajer and his various art pieces/works. The film was similar to the teachings and ways of Svankmajer while exploring experimental techniques and themes of acceptance and homosexuality. What Svankmajer was trying to explain and what Benning was trying to do was to create a film, or “tactile experiment”, which does not only utilize film. A “tactile experiment” is anything that creates a sensation or feeling for the person watching or engaging it. Art can be anything. A film is art and art genres can be mixed however the artist sees fit.

Flat is Beautiful is an experimental film, which utilizes live-action footage and cartoons. The filmmaking techniques of masks, animation, subtitles, drawings, and dramatic scenes are used to create an inventive world of black and white intrigue. The purpose of the film was to investigate the intuitive life of an androgynous eleven-year-old girl named Taylor. Taylor grows up with her single mother and gay roommate in a working class Milwaukee neighborhood. Taylor is obviously lonely and confused about the difference between masculine and feminine in a culture obsessed with defining gender difference. She is concerned with confronting these issues. The director Sadie Benning does a good job with story and technique to convey the world of this character. What is unique about this film is that it shifts between black and white film and grainy video. Flat is Beautiful explores the internal and external worlds of sadness, confusion, and growing up.

In Flat is Beautiful, the concept of identity or lack of identity is conceived experimentally by way of the characters wearing masks. The film can probably be considered exploitative in terms of it’s sexual content mixed with child like innocence of the live action actors. The grainy, floating images convey a sense of psychological uneasiness and the black and white aspect creates a bleak depressing atmosphere.

What Jan Svankmajer was trying to do was create interactive art which allows the viewers to participate physically and/ or emotionally. Benning uses the same principles as Svankmajer when creating her films. This is specifically seen in her film Flat is Beautiful. All art is a concept.