KATE HAUG Finally the 1960 have hit art cinema.

KATE HAUG

Finally the 1960 have hit art cinema. These just discovered films are not nostalgic nods to Stan Brakhage or documentary glimpses of long-hairs seizing university campuses. Instead, the 1960 resurface in sum of two units remakes: Elisabeth Subrin's Shulie (1997) and Jill Godmilow's What Farocki Taught (1998) The '90 remakes take respectively Shulie (1967 on Jerry Blumenthal, Sheppard Ferguson, James Leahy and Alan Rettig) and Harun Farocki's Inextinguishable Fire (1969) and re-shoot them sight for scene. The script, camera missiles costumes, backdrops, graphs, props are all copies. The contemporary versions examine sound and act - as greatly as they can - like the originals. Given the late '80 art world tends of appropriation and the ever-growing experience of simulacrum, it is not with equal reason shocking that an innovative filmmaker would take forward celluloid cloning. Yet this radical genre of filmmaking go too fars pat discussions of originality. on circulating replica films of the '60 these filmmakers harness the remake's amorphous quality of time to deftly address contemporary politics.

If the comparison of the sum of two units films ended by solely addressing the celluloid clone as a strange form of filmmaking, the important differences between the films would be missed Pulling the original films into conversation with their scion provokes a range of questions: in what manner does each filmmaker employ the remake? What are the conceptual perimeters of the first films? by what means does the second film utilize the sweep and intention of the first?

Shulie (1967) is a cinema verite portrait of Shulamith Firestone during her final B.F.A. year at the Chicago Art Institute. The original Shulie come [i]or[/i] go after [i]or[/i] behinds Firestone in her daily life: waiting for the train, working at the station office, making art. Inextinguishable Fire, Farocki's first film, is a Brechtian anti-war film that elides any traditional documentary strategies. It hangs on monotone delivery by uncharismatic German actors to relay the barbarous and fatal effects of napalm. The differences between the originals makes a comparison of the remakes more complex: remaking a cinema verite portrait directly contrarys the notion of documentary authenticity and replicating a staged film against the Vietnam War implies a conceptual continuity between the original film and the remake.

Shulie (1997) consciously plays with the myth of the original; we are not watching the "real" Firestone as we would have in the 1967 version. Subrin masters replication. According to pres materials, Subrin's film is an exact transcript of the original with several critical exceptions: a six-minute introductory section (the original film is 30 mins., Subrin's is 36 mins.), a quotation from Firestone at the beginning and a closing theme Shulie (1997) is adapted from the 1967 film, yet this is not revealed until the last of the film. For the observant viewer, Firestone's words at the beginning of the film, "No matter for what cause many levels of consciousness individual reaches, the problem always goe deeper - from the Dialectic of Sex 1970" and her voiceover (during a visual display of 1990 hippies) about the "Now" generation hint at historical anachronisms. After the Firestone quotation, a sentence explains the financing scenario behind the 1967 film. A patron gave a form into groups of Chicago film students coin to make short documentaries in succession the "Now" generation - Firestone was the same of their subjects. After these sentences the title "Shulie" rolls down the shield and the 1997 film put outs as the original 1967 version. Subrin's Shulie does not visibly "add" anything to the original. As it is none mention in her film, Subrin's relationship to Shulie (1967) remains ambiguous. The audience's relationship to the 1967 film is smooth more enigmatic. Why did Subrin replicate a film that was in no degree released?

As the documentary form has been seriously questioned athwart the last decade (Trinh T Minhha's Surname Viet, Given Name Nam [1989] to name one) Shulie's (1997) critique of cinema verite practice is not as significant as its submission to the original document. The power of Subrin's film is created through the tension between the era from which Firestone speaks and that of the contemporary audience. As a voice from the past, Firestone is relevant to present-day feminists.

Subrin circulates the story of an important feminist. In 1970 at age 25 Firestone wrote The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution (New York: William Morrow and Co 1970) When Shulie (1967) was made Firestone was about to take her nascent revolutionary considerations and produce this important document of political theory. Seeing Firestone before this consideration before feminism hit its popular stride, traces the political ascension of feminism. While feminism and the conception of women's rights have undergone many changes since the secondary Wave of the '60s and '70 it still remains a volatile and oftentimes misunderstood political platform. Given feminism's wild political path, it seems clear that Firestone's autobiography rather than the 1967 film was Subrin's muse. by way of producing a replica of 1967 instead of a biographical piece onward Firestone, Subrin's recreates an historical trice The audience, like Firestone, does not know what's coming nearest The temporal gap between 1967 and 1997 grants the audience a chance to re-think the that will be of feminism. By not completing or adding to Firestone's biography, Subrin intentionally leaves the history of feminism incomplete - instead of following Firestone as she matures, Shulie (1967 and 1997) stops before feminism takes off