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was physically impossible to continue I would print the result. This was very laborious and time consuming, needless to say, and very difficult to print, but they were interesting, especially the relation of the sound to the picture. At the time I sort of scorned them, I think because of the 'found' nature of the material; my feeling was that because I didn't shoot the images myself, the process was invalid. I think they'd be very interesting today.
Anyway, all of the early films were shown, usually once or twice, at the Cinematheque when it was in the basement of the Wurlitzer Building on Forty-first street. If my memory serves, this would be around 196566.
I also did a series of ten-minute, one-take films of people bathing, stationary cameraa meditative stare at the act itself. The fascinations were, of course, the beauty of the human body and the peculiar, dreamy, self-absorption that comes over humans when they're submerged in warm amnioticlike liquid. Defenses drop and more private and vulnerable aspects of personality emerge. An interesting section from this series was of George and Mike Kuchar, twins, bathing together. George insisted on wearing a three-piece business suit in the tub because he was shy. Somehow a puppy got in there with them. I doubt if anyone got clean, but it turned into a strange and tender document. I always liked George because of his kindness to animals.
So far as I know,
is the earliest of your films still in distribution. It's an unusual single-shot film, thirty minutes long, and dramatic. Could you talk about the genesis of that project? [For some years one other relatively early Noren film was available from Film-makers' Cooperative:
(1972), a double projection of buildings exploding in slow motion, in forward and reverse, that 'was intended as mantra, to run perpetually, viewer to enter/leave at any point. Originally B&W on color stock. On occasion I provided live piano accompaniment, extempore, a la 'perils of . . .' ' (letter to author, April 4, 1989).]
was made in half an hour one afternoon in 1965. I was able to borrow an Old Auricon synch-sound news camera for the weekend. Great cameras, by the way; you used to see them around all the time. This one had a twelve-hundred-foot magazine, so that determined the length of the film. I thought of the film one Saturday morning over coffee and shot it the next week. It was shot on 16mm Tri-X reversal, a continuous twelve-hundred-foot take, optical sound on film.
Many fascinations were at work there. I was interested in the idea of the 'screen test' as a form in itself and wanted to work with that. Also, I had a mischievous interest in subverting the cinema-verite ideas that had such currency then. [Jean-Luc] Godard's definition of film as 'truth twenty-four times a second' was much quoted. One of the first things I
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ask the actress in the film is, 'Does the camera lie?' And then, 'Do you lie?' The answer is, ''Yes.' I was playing with that and was also fascinated with the idea of identity or personality being a series of masksa young man's fascinationand I was curious to see if it were possible to set up a mask-removal procedure, and finally discover the 'real' person behind all the smoke and mirrors that constitute an 'official' personality. Another interest was in interrogation as a form, 'confession' extracted under duress, the Truth.
How well did you know that woman? And how fully did you plan the interaction between the two of you?
I chose a young actress named Miriam, whom I had met once before in connection with another film. Of course, I was also interested in the fact that she was an actresswhen are we ever not acting?and wanted to see if perhaps I could register that borderline transfiguration of 'real' person into actor/actress and back again. I think that aspect of the film is successful and interesting still. So, Miriam came for her screen test, and we talked and performed and acted while the half-hour of film ran through the camera. It left us both bewildered and exhausted, questions hanging in the air.
Several photographs hang on the wall behind the woman; two of thesea photo of an aborigine looking at a movie camera, a news photo of a woman in Vietnamsuggest that you were dramatizing problematic elements of the conventional uses of cameras, and the conventional functioning of the media. Is that a correct assumption? Do you see the parallel between the exploitation of aborigines and the exploitation of women? Both have often functioned as exotics for the voyeuristic movie viewer.
The photo of the aborigine and the Arriflex on the wall had nothing to do with 'exploitation'; it was a humorous comment on my own absolute lack of expertise in using that camera, nothing else. On the wall behind her also is a photograph of [Piero Paolo] Pasolini. I was interested in him at the time because of his efforts at making 'fictional' documentaries, which
certainly is. There is also an absolutely up-to-the-minute news photograph, which was taken from the front page of that day's
which sort of localizes the film in time.
These days, especially, the film raises issues with regard to the camera as an instrument of the 'male gaze.' In fact, it seems a particularly vivid instance of the use of the camera to exert power over a female subject.
The camera is an instrument of the 'gaze' of the person controlling it, male or female. Your question suggests that the male gaze is inherently exploitative and manipulative, while the female gaze is
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