Live Cinema As Live Cinema by Gerry Fialka & Will Nediger
(The first word “live” is a verb, the second "live" is an adjective.)
“Live cinema” – if we mean any filmic presentation which is in some sense created in real time as it is presented – has had different meanings over the years. Cinema was presented live in its very early years, with live scores making each screening of a film different from the previous. The typical silent score wasn’t really integral to the film, and rarely changed significantly performance to performance, but it was live nonetheless. Many films also had live narration, as in the benshi performers in Japan’s silent era or the narration that initially accompanied screenings of Luis Buñuel’s Land Without Bread.
There’s also a sense in which every film is constituted in real time by the spectators, of course, since films consist of a series of still images which we interpret as motion. In Visionary Film by P. Adams Sitney we read about a “hilariously aggressive” lecture at Yale in 1965 at which avant-garde animator Harry Smith traced the invention of “the cinema” to Giordano Bruno’s thesis that there are an infinite number of slightly different universes and we perceive motion by mentally running through a succession of universes as if looking through a zoetrope. And there’s an even more literal sense in which every film is constituted in real time, not by the spectators, but by the technology of film itself. To quote Hollis Frampton: “The rectangle is generated by our performer, the projector.”
But there’s also, perhaps more importantly, a phenomenological sense in which film as an artform is live. Consider the title of this essay, Live Cinema As Live Cinema. The first word is “live” as a verb. McLuhan suggested that technologies are extensions of our humanness, that in some sense they extend our ways of living. (Most say cinema extends the eye, or memory. McLuhan considered that cinema extends the foot.) Our second use of the word “live” is an adjective, “live” in the sense of “performed in real time,” but also in the sense of “not dead.” We’re reminded of the La Poste, who published the reaction to the premiere of Louis Lumière films on December 30, 1895: “When these gadgets are in the hands of the public, when anyone can photograph the ones who are dear to them, not just in their immobile form, but with movement, action, familiar gestures and the words out of their mouths, then death will no longer be absolute, final.” And so our through-line reads, “If you live cinema (that is, if you actually experience cinema as though it is a real direct experience), then that could be a metaphor for the genre of film called live cinema.”
Of course, when we talk about “live cinema” we usually mean something more specific than this, though the term still covers a vast array of artistic practices. Live cinema in this narrower sense is also known by many other names: expanded cinema, performative cinema, projector performance, live A/V, VJing (video DJ), transmedia, and others. Pioneers of "Live Cinema" include: Winsor McCay, Buster Keaton, Abel Gance, Marcel Duchamp, James Joyce, Jack Smith, Jordan Belson, Harry Smith, Andy Warhol, Carolee Schneeman, Ken Jacobs, Stan VanDerBeek, Gene Youngblood, Peter Greenaway, Bruce McClure, Chris Marker, Nam June Paik, Andy Warhol, Frank Zappa, Francis Ford Coppola, Liquid Light Shows (Joshua White, Single Wing Turquoise Bird), Other Cinema, Potter Belmar, Sam Green, RIA, and performance artists galore.
This narrower sense can be captured by pair of mid-70s films. In Anthony McCall’s Line Describing a Cone (1973), a projector emits a half-hour-long film of a line of light that gradually traces the circumference of a circle on a wall, while the beam of light traces out the form of a cone, made to seem solid by the mist produced by a fog machine. The dimensions of the cone can vary, and spectators are encouraged to view it by moving around and through the cone to fully get a sense of its shape. Another example is Lis Rhodes’ Light Music (1975), in which a series of black-and-white patterns are projected onto two screens on opposite walls of a room. As in Line Describing a Cone, a fog machine gives a solidity to the patterns of light in the room, with spectators encouraged to interact with it. In these films, the spectators actively help to construct the film in real time every time it is presented.
A comprehensive history of live cinema will fill out our book (and our documentary), but here we just want to highlight some mavericks, especially the work of one particular pioneering artist in the art of live cinema: Pat Oleszko.
Oleszko might be best known for her riotous, hilarious live non-cinema performances – she said: “Basically I am a sculptor, and sculptures live in society.” Her performances often involve elaborate handmade costumes. (In one such performance, Giordano Bruno Meets His Match, Oleszko dressed up as gender-swapped version of Giordano Bruno, being burned at the stake. Ironically, the performance was shut down by a free speech society holding a celebration of Bruno; they said it took away their audience.) But Oleszko has also done cinematic work: she made several films with Susan Zeig in the 1970s, including those shown at the Ann Arbor Film Festival in which she interacted with her filmic self during screenings: PatturnCoat (1974), Two “O” Duo (1975), and Nudes Reel Nudes Real (1977). In these performances, it was the artist, rather than the audience, who helped construct the film in real time. The audience experienced two Pats at once.
Having been inspired by Oleszko, Gerry Fialka has employed a similar immersive experience with Pixelator Denny Monayhan (aka King Kukulele, https://vimeo.com/287541742) and in test screenings of the feature film The Brother Side of the Wake. When the image of the protagonist is talking on screen, the audience also notices that a live human being (Denny or Gerry) approaches the screen and turns to face the filmgoers. When the onscreen character speaks, their live “double” turns and reacts, speaking a line. This dialogue occurs between two versions of the same person. It is the inner dialogue being outed, in a multi-media mash-up, merging reel time and real time. Bucky Fuller's axiom "I seem to be a verb" applies to this exploration.
Luis Buñuel's ... “Long Live the Living” . . . into . . . "Long Live Live Cinema"