NOVA KINO FILMS
mark boswell
This lecture was first delivered at the VII MAGIS - Gorizia International Film Studies Conference:
"Cinema and Contemporary Visual Arts" in Gradisca, Italy, 2008.
Subsequent lectures were given at The University of Arizona, The Hammer Museum Los Angeles,
Oxford University, England, The San Francisco Art Institute, The University of West Florida, and The
European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück, Germany.
Published by CINEMA & Cie. International Film Studies Journal in collaboration with the
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3.
NOVA-KINO: The History of Cinematic Agit-Prop
Nova-Kino is a 21st century cinematic theory represented in the works of various international filmmakers, media artists, and cultural jammers who utilize found footage as source material to be re-edited or re-animated, giving radical re-birth or second life in their reconstructed state. A crucial component of this process is the usage of critical, political, and other highly charged points of view embedded within the structure of the work that challenge hegemonic power structures at large or in more specific realms. The end result is a didactic, oppositional warhead historically recognized as Agit-Prop, the eternal bi-product of the Russian Revolution.
Numerous academic papers, magazine articles, anthologies, museum shows, and media art festivals have presented, discussed, and documented the general phenomena of found footage films in all of their variegated forms. The intent of this paper is to focus on how a development of a certain sub-sector of found footage filmmaking occurred and how it exists in certain forms today. A practice that is specifically political and/or radically theoretical in its’ opposition to numerous power structures; capitalism, corporate media, American malevolence, etc. I will attempt to show how Nova-Kino exists in two distinct forms: theory and practice. The theory is on the page while the practice is in the films.
Nova-Kino departure point lies in various early 20th century artistic movements including Futurism, Dada, Surrealism, and the theories of early Russian cinema, Vertov, Eisenstein, et al. (all roads lead to Moscow.) Hurtling forward from this point like a theoretical snowball, with Walter Benjamin’s “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” prophesizing the future impact of cinema on contemporary culture as well as certain aspects of Bertoldt Brecht’s “distancing” effects; Nova-Kino traverses through Film Noir, the French New Wave, international avant-garde film movements, Situationism, and then wholeheartedly springs to life through Bruce Conner's maverick found footage masterpieces.
“We will sing of great great crowds excited by work, by pleasure, and by riot: we will sing of the multi-colored polyphonic tides of revolution in the modern capitals; we will sing of the vibrant nightly fervor of arsenals and shipyards blazing with violent electric moons; greedy railway stations that devour smoke-plumed serpents; factories hung from clouds by the crooked lines of their smoke; bridges that stride the rivers like giant gymnast, flashing in the sun with the glitter of knives; adventurous steamers that sniff the horizon; deep-chested locomotives whose wheels paw the tracks like enormous steel horses bridled by tubing; and the sleek flight of planes whose propellers chatter in the wind like banners and seem to cheer like an enthusiastic crowd.”
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti “Futurist Manifesto” 1909.
The Italian Futurists were the first twentieth century art movement to recognize the machine as the impetus for radical change in anachronistic societies. Led by the bombastic Filippo Marinnetti, where the shock-waves of his ideas quickly spread to other European capitals as he personally proselytized the public and other willing artist through brilliant self-promotional trips and schemes. These manic whistle stop tours were highlighted by fiery speeches, agitating the bourgeoisie and common man alike. In St. Petersburg around 1916, Marinetti bombastically expounded on the dynamic possibilities of speed, advanced machinery, and rapid industrialization.
At the same time that Vertov began filming "Kino-Pravda" newsreels for the Russian revolution, the international Dada movement began its’ own sensational assault on art and society. While Marinetti gravitated towards Mussolini, Fascism, and the glorification of war; the Dadaist in Zurich, Berlin, Paris, and elsewhere where linked closer to anarchism and nihilism with clear opposition to the ominous signs of more nationalistic wars on the European continent. In Berlin, the German Dadaist John Heartfield started critiquing mass media through the simple slicing of photographs with a pair of sharp scissors, then taping them together, producing an entirely different meaning and context. Heartfield’s didactic photographic montage punctured through the real meaning of Hitler’s propaganda with a few simple cut and paste’s and a sardonic title. Montage theory and practice is born extraneous of Eisenstein’s own research. Duchamp's appropriation tactics are applied to the unlimited field of mass media. The fundamental element to nova-kino/agit-prop is hatched through Heartfield’s simple cutting device. “A chance to cut is a chance to cure”- (album title of experimental electronic duo Matmos that they cleverly appropriated from a California Plastic Surgeon advertisement.) Still today, the Dada movement is consistently cited by contemporary artists and numerous found-footage filmmakers as an extremely potent source of inspiration and influence.
These startling ideas lit the artistic and intellectual fire of a certain David Abel Kaufmann, a.k.a. Dziga Vertov ( “spinning top” in Russian). At that particular time Vertov was a student at the Neuro-Science Institute in St. Petersburg. He also frequented bohemian cafés filled with artist who would eventually form into Russian futurists and constructivists splinter groups inspired by Marinetti. Vertov would soon shift from student of Neuro-science to practitioner of documentary film, eventually adopting futuristic concepts into his own fiery manifestos that would launch an entirely different cinematic movement still affected to this day by his cinematic notion of the real. Radically separate from his own Russian contemporaries as well as international trends in Berlin, Paris, and Hollywood in the twenties.
Marinetti’s speeches purposely sought to arouse controversy and to attract publicity by repudiating the conventionality of the times. This agitational style would also become the trademark of Vertov’s persistent rant against commercial cinema, specifically narrative fictional or theatrical devices. Famously denouncing his own revolutionary colleague, Sergei Eisenstein, practice of staging historical events through cinematic application. Vertov insist that it is reality that must be documented versus Eisenstein’s theatrical interpretation of it. In 1919, Vertov writes: “Watching the films that came from the West and from America, taking into account the information we have on the work and searching abroad and here: I come to the following conclusion: Verdict of Death to all motion pictures without exception…”) Vertov’s first stint in filmmaking involved making short documentaries advancing the successes of the recent revolution for the Russian Government. At this time in the U.S.S.R., Agit-prop (agitation-propaganda) trains were specifically employed as self-contained mobile propaganda centers to disseminate information and entertainment in faraway places. Vertov and other revolutionary filmmakers, painters, photographers, and poets would traverse the monstrous Soviet empire to educate the public about Lenin’s achievement. He and other filmmakers simultaneously shot and edited films while on the train or at a stop, immediately projecting them to curious citizens and workers to elucidate communist concepts or evaluate technical procedures inside factories (filmed the day prior). This would lead into his Kino-Pravda (film-truth) series, where he would capture everyday life on the streets, sometimes with hidden cameras, in order to reveal deeper truths about the communist struggle. On Kino-Pravda he writes: “if truth is shown by means of the cinematic eye, then a shot of the banker will only be true if we can tear the mask from him, if behind his mask we see the thief.” Vertov is already interested in deconstructing perceived notions of the cinematic device and this holds true to Nova-Kino films of today. For example, Bryan Boyce’s 2002 short film: “State of the Union,” where he superimposes George W. Bush’s face onto that of a Teletubby floating passively in the sky while zapping sheep in the pasture below to their instant death. Boyce takes the seemingly soothing quality of Teletubbies effect on infants, and exposes it for what it actually might be; the indoctrination of an extremely malevolent force.
The term propaganda in the Russian language did not bear any negative connotation during Vertov’s time. It simply meant "dissemination of ideas". In the case of agit-prop, the ideas to be disseminated were those of communism, including explanations of the policy of the Communist Party and the Soviet state. In other contexts, propaganda could mean dissemination of any kind of beneficial knowledge, e.g., of new methods in agriculture. "Agitation" meant urging people to do what Soviet leaders expected them to do; again, at various levels. Propaganda was supposed to act on the mind, while agitation acted on emotions.
Vertov's filmic propagandizing was seemingly harmless compared to the extent that Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays employed it. Bernays, a scheming advertising agent from Zurich wrote the definitive book on the subject in 1928, appropriately titled: "Propaganda." This book is a prime example of what happens when the wrong man gets a hold of a weapon of mass delusion. Here is the opening paragraph from the lead chapter entitled: "Organizing Chaos: The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country." Once he teams up with Henry Ford and the American government to support WW2, you can guess where this is going.
The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction is Walter Benjamin’s seminal 1936 essay that prophesizes the future impact of cinema on the fields of mass media and political theory. He unknowingly thrusts certain Duchampian concepts of appropriation towards the future subversiveness of found footage filmmaking. He states that "mechanical reproduction emancipates the work of art from its parasitical dependence on ritual.” The ritual of lights, camera, action is annihilated through the future pirate hand that will guide the mouse. Instead of the filmic process being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice - politics. The politics of distribution. Hence our pirate dvd vendors on the subway tracks of Manhattan are the true-to-life reincarnation of Benjamin’s mechanical reproducers as radical agit-propsters. In reproduction, Benjamin sees democracy.
Agit-prop becomes the “cris de coeur “ for generations of leftist filmmakers. Specifically the French heir apparents of Vertov and Dada: Guy Debord, Chris Marker, Jean-Luc Godard and the Italian Gillo Pontecorvo, as they launched theoretical attacks on conventional cinema from a political perspective with films like: Society of the Spectacle, Grin Without a Cat, Vladimir and Rosa, The Battle of Algiers, and numerous other works during the fertile period of political filmmaking from the early Sixties to mid-Seventies. Debord and the Situationists concept of Detournement, where iconic works of art or films are given re-birth with new meaning through technical alteration, furthering Dada’s pillage of popular culture in a more sophisticated manner. Without question, Guy Debord’s film “Society of the Spectacle,” is the most ambitious appropriation of found footage ever in which he is able to present the broad spectrum of his seminal theory (of the same title) imbedded inside a feature film. Similar to Vertov, Debord also proposes a revolution of everyday life and a critical theory of contemporary society. Jean-Luc Godard, along with Jean Pierre Gorin form the post-68 film collective “The Dziga Vertov Group.” The Situationists and and especially Debord had a derisive opinion of Godard, considering him just a “another Swiss bourgoise” who borrowed heavily from their ideas without ever mentioning the debt. Conversely to Eisenstein and Vertov, these French filmmakers were clearly against the state (particularly the Franco/Americano hegemon) versus proponents of the State (Soviet.)
Separately and simultaneously the American avant-garde filmmaker Bruce Conner began constructing short, experimental films made exclusive of previously shot material i.e. found footage, that he surreptitiously assembled from a San Francisco television station trim bin and myriad other sources. Conner’s output represents the final snowflake of the first tier of a massive, hypothetical snowman firmly packed in the brilliant winter light of post-modern perspective, closing a circle between Duchamp’s Ready-Mades, Vertov’s Agit-Prop and Eisenstein’s montage theory. His works still able to inspire a parallel cinematic universe as they embody the quintessential Nova-Kino method: the re-contextualization of previously shot material through the editing process that results in a newly formed critical, political, or theoretical position. A prime example is the renowned sequence in A-Movie- Conner’s first film, where an attractive woman in a bikini is spotted on a telescope by an American submarine operator. Reacting excitedly to what he has just seen, he launches a missile that we see traveling under water for a short time. This is followed by a devastating overhead shot of an atomic bomb mushroom cloud exploding. By simply inter-cutting between a Hollywood war film and documentary footage from various military weapons tests an unparalleled examination of the American psyche is created. “A Movie,” would have a profound and lasting effect on many generations of experimental filmmakers to come. In a filmic sense, nothing before seen was like Conner’s work -a seamless mashing together of disparate bits of newsreels, advertising clips, industrial films, and odd strands of leader into an extremely cohesive and bombastic thesis critiquing the American way of life. Two of his later films, Mongoloid and America is Waiting co-collaborations with the American New Wave band Devo and the British experimental composer Brian Eno, paved the way for the coming “no holds barred” format of Music Television.
At the onset of the 1980’s, parallel to the advent of MTV, the San Francisco filmmaker Craig Baldwin, begins his own experimentation with the “found footage” format. Inspired by the Dada and Situationist’s movements, as well as his studies at San Francisco State with among others, Bruce Conner, Baldwin’s work represents the next stage in the evolution of Agit-Prop cinema as he combines the found-footage montage laden aesthetics of Conner’s films, while inserting his own highly charged “speculative fiction” version of historical events through voice over. Adding reflection, analysis, bombastic humor, and a wild array of conspiratorial conjecture to the medium. His early works including the mind-bending Tribulation 99, set the stage for Nineties found-footage artists and the digital revolution.
Will film theory meltdown our snowman at its completion date and reappear in other art practices? Nova-Kino envisions the route of the alchemists, converting the silver nitrate of various relational aesthetics into a boiling cinematic concoction projected on subversive, non-traditional screens interrupting the methodical flow of capital’s post-spectacularized urban space. Witness the continual shrinkage of the public cinematic screen and the widening of the private one, a tendency described in Baudrillard’s simulation theories.
The tautological concept of a cinema folding in upon itself, then unfolding in the form of epic pirate re-makes, or re-takes and distributed for free hits the ground running on the subway tracks of Manhattan. Currently in Union Square, one of New York’s largest subway stations, Walter Benjamin’s prophesy of mechanical reproduction has actualized itself in two full-time, separate pirate dvd distribution operations. Operation A is an international phenomena that consists of the black market dvd sale of current Hollywood movies recently released in commercial cinemas. Scrounged right off the big screen by surreptitious camera operators, who employ elusive, constantly evolving techniques, as they slip into the seats of a current Blockbusters and shoot the entire film with a tiny, hand held mini dv cam. The tape is immediately converted to dvd, slapped into a case with a cover version printed right off the official website from the film and straight into your hands for a meager 5 bucks. Laughter, sneezes, the backs of heads, all right there on your live version of a real movie. Operation B is run by a lone, philanthropic anarchist, wearing a sandwich board dvd menu around his neck listing films that he offers to hand out for free (donations accepted, not required.) He sits there stoically, day after day, hovering over large stacks of freshly ripped dvds including Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit, Al Gore’s Global warming doc, numerous 911 conspiracy films, and a handful of other explosive features. These situations become all the more ironic after viewing the detourned Meisterwerk “Art In The Age Of Mechanical Reproduction as told to Keith Sanborn.” A 3-minute film depicting various international FBI, Interpol, and other governmental snoop agency warning signs that explicitly state not to do exactly what these subway track bootleggers are doing. The various warning signs unfold, one after the other, in unison with a snappy, easy listening version of “Mack the Knife” bubbling on the soundtrack for the entirety of the piece. A Brechtian device with a Situationist flair!
Cinema was purportedly in a state of decline in the early the 1990’s as the potential mass digitalization of celluloid’s hegemonic domain emerged. The portable video camera had created a fork in the road of experimental film history two decades prior to this time and now the digital camera threatened the urgency of Godard’s cinematic postcards, that he sent out at a rate of 25 times per second on moving celluloid. Avid non-linear edit systems were on the way in as the revered Steenbeck went out to pasture, lounging around classrooms like an old piano. A new democratic access to mass media production had finally arrived. Sony became the brand of cinematic choice, as Nizo and Beaulieu went into the sentimental display cases of film school offices, camera stores, or inordinately shackled into the netherworld of dank storage units. Tokyorama versus the Franco-Germanic technological cult. Even old school avant-gardists put there Bolex on the shelf. A hundred years of cinema slowly coming to an end. Jean-Luc Godard famously refusing to lament its burial.
However, a funny thing happened on the way to the graveyard. Global communication fueled by the internet, low cost access to high quality digital video production, and the ability to copy, steal, borrow or appropriate film and video footage at virtual no cost, enabled guerrilla filmmakers a new and dynamic entry point into the expanding world of international experimental cinema. The lines between film and video blurred. Film festivals, cinemas, and classrooms were suddenly equipped with video projectors. Access to a computer and a mini dv camera meant that anyone could unleash a political assault on the dominant paradigm and call it a movie. Coupled with the largesse of a film archive or the increasingly simple savoir-faire to rip a dvd, copy a vhs tape, or download a digital file, in short; a lit fuse on the bomb was placed in the hand guiding the ubiquitous mouse. It is now apparent to see how we arrived at this technological juncture, where film and digital media (once adversaries,) became joined at the hip.
Mash it UP!!!
As computerized non-linear digital edit systems and mini-dv camcorders become extremely affordable as well as widely accessible through not-for-profit media centers and educational institutions during the mid-Nineties up to the present, the found-footage filmmakers now have an overwhelming amount of access to previously shot material of disparate origin. Where they once scoured the terrain of thrift stores, flea markets, yard sales, library dumps, and garbage cans for material, they now have the possibility of downloading digital files of footage from various online archival sources or the expansive reach of e-bay and Craigslist; speeding up, customizing, and improving their ability to find the right material. A strong case can be made that such filmmakers as Craig Baldwin, Martin Arnold, Bryan Boyce, Keith Sanborn, Matthias Muller, Harun Farocki, Martha Colburn, Mika Taanila, Johan Grimonprez, Christian Marclay and Animal Charm are the front line of Nova-Kino’s audacious gauntlet. Gilles Deleuze said in a conversation with Michel Foulcault that: “at one time, practice was considered an application of theory, a consequence; at other times, it had an opposite sense and it was thought to inspire theory, to be indispensable for the creation of future theoretical forms.” I conclude that Nova-Kino is simultaneously a theory and practice with the direct intent to do what Foucault said in the same conversation: “this is a struggle against power, a struggle aimed at revealing and undermining power where it is most invisible and insidious.”
