Field Report #1

Stan Brakhage’s Mothlight and Kevin Jerome Everson’s Golden Age of Fish are very different films. The first, a 4 minute handmade film, is unconventional in its making and sparse in its subject matter. The latter, however, is diverse in its subject matter, ranging from topics such as geology to product advertisement to kites and to murder suicide just to name a few. Its making is also more conventional, using a camera to fix an image, but the media it incorporates is just as diverse as its topics, using a mix of video and a variety of color and black and white film stocks. As different as these films may be, both are clearly experimental, and, strikingly, both are documentaries.
Mothlight works as a documentary on two levels. The first is as a physical documentation. By affixing wings and leaves and other objects directly to the film the viewer is presented with the subject in it’s raw form. The camera is an intermediary. Films made with them add a degree of separation, but in Mothlight that separation doesn’t exist, allowing the image to be an expression of the truth of the object. Besides presenting the viewer with artifacts, this film works as a documentary on another level by expressing the experience of a moth. The film is frantic, our eyes are drawn to the light of the screen that flickers and flutters before us. Our experience of the film mirrors the experience of a moth.
The Golden Age of Fish operates as a documentary on a similar level to the second I described for Mothlight. Before the screening began, Kevin Jerome Everson spoke to the audience. What struck me about what he said was that despite (and because of) the wide variety of topics it covers and imagery it presents, this film is about Cleveland. Specifically, about the perception of Cleveland from people who do not live there. Even more specifically it is Everson’s perception of the perception of Cleveland from people who do not live there. Thinking this line of thought over while watching the film I began to understand that the truth of Cleveland is how it is perceived, which can be extended to the truth of anything is how we perceive it. I then began to understand the use of the different film stocks and video effects as well at the motifs of layers and gathering of pieces. Just like Mothlight, the truth lies in the experience, so by presenting us with multiple experiences we can put together a greater sense of truth.