6. A still from the final shot of “Man with a Movie Camera”, dir. Dziga Vertov, 1929.
7. A still from “Man with a Movie Camera” portraying an audience watching “Man with a Movie Camera”
FILMS ABOUT FILMS:
By Lara Parsons
The emergence of autoreferential cinema Self-referential cinema is commonly perceived as “Films about film”. In essence, this implies that the director is delving into themes that explore and reference the filmmaking process, either as a featured element of the plot or a meta-narrative device, producing meticulous pieces in which the art of film becomes both the process and the product. In many contemporary mainstream films, we observe the perfectionism that arises when seeking to satiate capitalistic ideologies, wherein a clear narrative is formed to offer escapism to the audience. Conversely, in self-referential films, there is more concern with the medium itself rather than the narrative, to the point where the medium becomes the narrative. Instead of being merely used for audience consumption, self-referentiality therefore turns the film into the catharsis of an artist. The basis of a self-referential film is that it creates an enigma and resultantly, subjectivity. In many cases, the narrative is built on fragments thrown together in a seemingly random way, thus elevating the post-modern nature of the experimental film. This is especially due to the fact that postmodernism was quickly being picked up in the 1960s following the rejection and deconstruction of modernist techniques and messages–although self-referential films date back to the early 1900s. There is no singular way such films can be interpreted as there is no grand narrative, let alone the sense of a clear narrative altogether, where the films do not force the audience to think a certain way and spur the shift from passive to active consumption. This can be explained by the fact that the belief of objective truth was diminishing with the rise of postmodernism. Self-referentiality can be formed through various techniques, often using stylistic choices that were previously associated with the imperfection of old films, such as the lines that cut down across the frame due to the nature of old film cameras or the grainy texture and a narrower aspect ratio that is no longer seen in commercial films—-and even the inclusion of “bad” footage. Themes involve self-discovery from a motif of diaries, or simply the passage of time and ongoing life in which a stationary camera is set up to record the surroundings. This has been highlighted by the MoMA curator of film, writer and art critic Donald Richie: Unlike the traditional narrative film, which seeks to maintain the illusion that what we are seeing is reality, the self-referential film wants to show that it itself is an illusion… In showing that it is an illusion, however, the self-referential film also suggests another reality—that, for example, of the makers of the self-referential film we are seeing. This reality is presented as a more real reality than that which the ordinary illusion-film offers. All self-referential cinema becomes, then, a search for reality, or for truth.
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