Nov 6, 2009

Patrick Bokanowski

Poput deteta koje je dobilo novu igračku, obradovao sam se nedavnom "otkriću" - eksperimentalnim filmovima Patricka Bokanowskog. Za razliku od svih avangardista na koje sam do sada nailazio i čije delo je na ovaj ili (uglavnom) onaj način bilo moguće donekle "protumačiti", kod Bokanowskog se postavlja sledeće pitanje: Da li uopšte tragati za značenjem ili se jednostavno prepustiti enigmatičnom sklopu snenih/košmarnih slika i "odgovarajućih" zvukova (tj. "muzike" Michèle Bokanowski, supruge i stalne saradnice), koji kao da pokušava da prodre u podsvest podsvesnog, i tako ad infinitum? Dok se za ranije radove još i može reći da su opipljivi i dokučivi, skloni čak i (opreznom!) svrstavanju pod neki žanr, a istovremeno ograničeni u svetu bez granica, većina kasnijih sinematskih eksperimenata ostaje van svakog domašaja, iako se u deformisanim prikazima naslućuje stvarnost (ili umetnikovo poimanje iste). U svakom sledećem moguće je prepoznati nešto iz prethodnih, s tim što to neodređeno (ili pak određeno?) "nešto" uvek deluje drugačije, u beskrajnom ciklusu halucinogenih vizija.

Verujem da bilo kakav pokušaj detaljn(ij)e analize ovih neobičnih (nad-nadrealnih) ostvarenja izaziva grčeve i glavobolju filmskih kritičara, filozofa, psihologa i ostalih koji se usuđuju da ih razlažu, jer filmovi Patricka Bokanowskog prkose gotovo svakoj definiciji sedme umetnosti i rečima koje bi ih bar približno opisale. Međutim, uprkos svojoj neuhvatljivosti, nemirnom plutanju između redova i na marginama snova i pod-snova, oni pružaju neosporan užitak, koji podrazumeva "open-minded" (čitaj: "razjapljenoumnog") gledaoca, željnog inspirativnog i nezaboravnog iskustva. Verovatno će zvučati kontradiktorno ovo što ću reći (protivurečnost je ovde neizbežna), ali da je ekran bio voda, dok su se po njemu razlivale poetično-haotične autorove misli i ideje, udavio bih se, znajući unapred da je u takvoj vodi nemoguće udaviti se.

Uz nekoliko snapshot-ova, škrtih komentara (u opširnijim bih se sigurno izgubio) i citata, potrudiću se da predstavim osam kratkometražnih i jedan dugometražni film koji (uz za sada nedostupni La part du hasard iz 1984) sačivanjaju filmografiju Bokanowskog.

"Patrick Bokanowski, French filmmaker and artist born in 1943, has developed a manner of treating filmic material that crosses over traditional boundaries of film genre: short film, experimental cinema and animation. His work lies on the edge between optical and plastic art, in a 'gap' of constant reinvention. Patrick Bokanowski challenges the idea that cinema must, essentially, reproduce reality, our everyday thoughts and feelings. His films contradict the photographic 'objectivity' that is firmly tied to the essence of film production the world over. Bokanowski's experiments attempt to open the art of film up to other possibilities of expression, for example by 'warping' his camera lens (he prefers the term 'subjective' to 'objective' - the French word for 'lens'), thus testifying to a purely mental vision, unconcerned with film's conventional representations, affecting and metamorphosing reality, and thereby offering to the viewer of his films new adventures in perception."

Pierre Coulibeuf

La femme qui se podre (The Woman Who Powders Herself, 1972)


Ko bi rekao da se iza jednog ovako bezazlenog naslova krije neslućena art-horror fantazija? Ispunjena onostranim senkama i avetima (pri čemu je nemoguće odrediti pravac "onostranosti"), koje svojim bizarnim "postupcima" izazivaju jezu, ona nemilosrdno golica maštu i budi bezimenu fobiju. Ne bi me iznenadilo da su, u određenom trenutku, reditelji poput Davida Lyncha, blizanaca Timothya i Stephena Quaya ili Guya Maddina imali na umu Ženu koja stavlja puder...

"Yet it's very much like a new masterpiece that blazes its own trail without resembling anything else that has been seen before (although you could claim a vague family resemblance with Goya or German expressionism). But whatever one wants to analyze or not analyze in this film, it is a work which disturbs one deeply. The music (by Michèle Bokanowski) is pitched high, as if synthesized from the whistling wind; it's the sound a flying saucer might make along with Tibetan trumpets and overheard bits and pieces of people talking in a language you don't understand. You wonder how everything you are looking at was fabricated. There are a few double exposures, or else 'real people' wearing grotesque Frankenstein-like masks or stockings over their faces. They are either filmed through a dirty glass or else they metamorphose into drawings (a character can be drawn or else volumes come into focus and assemble themselves into a weird and yet coherent form): as a result, the space the film is describing is being constantly scrambled; it's a film without any floor in it and, as a spectator, when you are watching it, even if you are comfortably seated, your own seat leaves the ground. One notices these briefly passing creatures (one of which is, yes, a woman powdering herself) slowly and deliberately undertaking acts you don't quite understand, but which are clearly of a ghastly nature (perhaps a murder?); one watches two 'real' characters suddenly change into ink spots while a bombardment of drawn or painted meteorites explodes on what might be the 'earth'; one looks at somebody pouring coffee into a full cup which then overflows into an endlessly dark and ink-like trail; at which point you say to yourself that what is going on here, in this black and upsetting film, has the logic of a nightmare."

Dominique Noguez, The Logic of Nightmare

Dèjeuner du matin (Lunch in the Morning, 1974)


Nalik istraživanju koje sprovodi u svom prvencu, ublažavajući "košmarnost" za koju nijansu, Bokanowski još jednom nastoji (a u pitanju je puka pretpostavka) da izazove strah taman kada pomislite da razloga za strah nema. Apstraktne, lebdeće pejzaže povezuje jedna nit - dugokosi dečak, čije je bežanje od, recimo, svakodnevnog života, u par navrata prekinuto vriskom od koga se i sleđena krv ledi. Zajedno sa La femme qui se poudre, Dèjeuner du matin bi se mogao posmatrati kao predgovor za film Eraserhead, gorepomenutog reditelja.

"This very short film takes us outside of time as we know it and drops us into a different kind of timespan and into a different world. To a certain extent it can be called 'surreal,' but only in reference to the filmmaker's own vision. It can be called a dreamscape, but don't go looking for any hidden meanings in these disturbing images. Such as that long nocturnal hallway we've walked down in our dreams, down which psychoanalysts have followed their customers, or on their own behalf. It leads us into the deepest depth of ourselves. Plastically speaking, the work is superb. It touches us physically before affecting us metaphysically. In the dark depths of a field, a strange and displaced peasantry is scything an invisible yield."

Claude Mauriac, V.S.D. magazin, Jun 1979.

L'ange (The Angel, 1976-1982)


Počev od mačevaoca koji probada porcelansku lutku okačenu o plafon, preko starice koja čoveku bez šaka donosi krčag s mlekom, mladića koji prebire po biserima, kupanja starijeg muškarca i njegovog psa u limenoj kadi i identičnih bibliotekara koji užurbano sređuju arhivu (?), a zatim dolaze do nage žene zarobljene u kocki, pa sve do "uspona" u završnici, praćenog mističnim probijanjem svetlosti, Anđeo ne prestaje da fascinira svojom vrtoglavom lepotom, kakva god da je njena svrha. Možda je cilj ove misteriozne "fantazije" da ovaploti haos iz glave nebeskog bića koje se sa visina nagledalo svega i svačega, a onda kroz kakav filter propustilo ono što je zapamtilo i u To sakrilo odgovor za postizanje savršenstva...

"During the seventy minutes of The Angel, viewers see a series of distinct sequences arranged upward along a staircase that seems more mythic than literal. Each of the sequences has its own mood and type of action. Early in the film, a fencer thrusts, over and over, at a doll hanging from the ceiling of a bare room. At first, he is seen in the room at the end of a narrow hallway off the staircase, and later from within the room. He fences, sits in a chair, fences - his movements filmed with a technique that lies somewhere between live action and still photographs. At times, Bokanowski's imagery is reminiscent of Etienne-Jules Marey's chronophotographs. Further up the stairs, we find ourselves in a room where a maid brings a jug of milk to a man without hands, over and over. Still later, we are in a room where there seems to be a movie projector pointing at us. Then, in a sequence reminiscent of Melies and early Chaplin, a man frolics in a bathtub, and in a subsequent sequence gets up, dresses in reverse motion, and leaves for work. The film's most elaborate sequence takes place in a library in which nine identical librarians work busily in choreographed, slightly fast motion. When the librarians leave work, they are seen in extreme long shot, running in what appears to be a two-dimensional space, ultimately toward a naked woman trapped in a box, which they enter with a battering ram. Then, back in the room with the projector, we are presented with an artist and model in a composition that, at first, declares itself two-dimensional until the artist and model move, revealing that this "obviously" flat space is fact three-dimensional. Finally, a visually stunning passage of projected light reflecting off a series of mirrors introduces The Angel's final sequence, of beings on a huge staircase filmed from below; the beings seem to be ascending toward some higher realm. Bokanowski's consistently distinctive visuals are accompanied by a soundtrack composed by Michèle Bokanowski, Patrick Bokanowski's wife and collaborator. Like Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), Bokanowski's The Angel creates a world that is visually quite distinct from what we consider "reality," while providing a wide range of implicit references to it and to the history of representing those levels of reality that lie beneath and beyond the conventional surfaces of things."

Scott MacDonald, "A Critical Cinema: Interviews With Independent Filmamkers"

Preporuka: L'ange na Screenville blogu, autor: Harry Tuttle.

La plage (The Beach, 1992)


Prvi filmić u kome Bokanowski u potpunosti menja svoj pristup - mesto jeze zauzima harmonija.

"There are now films like THE BEACH which belong to a sort of aristocracy of experimental film - which is just an arbitrary term meaning that a film's plastic aspect is just as important as its meaning or storyline - and Patrick Bokanowski's film has an almost classical quality in this sense, insofar as it is composed like a painting, or, perhaps because of Michèle Bokanowski's contribution, like a piece of music. In THE BEACH, one no longer associates his work with Kafka or Isidore Ducasse, but rather with the light-filled drawings of Victor Hugo or Seurat, Tanguy or even Mir-. It's as if a period of nightmares had come to an end, and a new sense of something like serenity had taken over."

Dominique Noguez

Au bord du lac (By the Lake, 1994)


Jezerska idila, pod kaleidoskopskim svetlom...

"It is true that the unidentified people being filmed are not there simply for the actions they are performing, but the time that the scene is taking to be completed is also beyond any normal definition. The colors vary, and we are plunged many years back in time, no doubt because the shot is suddenly reminding us of Van Gogh or Gauguin and the color-tones they used. We are not at the side of any identifiable lake, we are swept up in a different sort of space-time context by the light, the movement and the colors that the place evoked in Patrick Bokanowski's mind. The shore we are on is the quintessence of lakehood, and, as happens in his previous film, THE BEACH, it's as if the proximity of water metamorphosed everything around, fluidizing all of the matter into endless spirals before our delighted eyes."

Jacques Kermabon, BREF magazin, Mart, 1994.

Flammes (Flames, 1998)


U ovom filmiću Bokanowski koristi isečke iz svojih prethodnih dela, maskirajući ih primenom digitalnih efekata...

Éclats d'Orphée (Shreds of Orpheus, 2002)


Brzopotezna ekstremno-eksperimentalna pozorišna predstava... ili ?!#$%&/ - u svakom slučaju, zanimljivo iskakanje autora iz dotadašnjeg "šablona".

Le canard à l'orange (2002)


Razigrana domaćica priprema jelo iz naslova. Kada joj se pridruži nezvani gost, antropomorfni krokodil, počinje jurnjava po kuhinji, koja se završava odletanjem patke u slobodu. Ukratko, Le canard à l'orange je kao live-action Woody Woodpecker (aka Pera Detlić), snimljen pod dejstvom sumnjivih "sredstava"...

Battements solaires (Solar Beats, 2008)


Solar Beats bi bilo lepo videti na velikom platnu. Sukob animirane i igrane forme. Vatromet.

Za kraj, još jedna preporuka: Patrick Bokanowski @ filmref.com, autor: Acquarello.

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