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I don’t know much about photography or film-making. Nor do I do much of either, so her work didn’t have as clear connections to my own art. However, I do enjoy watching short films although most that I watch are animated or produced by large companies. I’ve always been aware of experimental films because of the televisions in galleries set up to loop a couple of films, but I’d never had the opportunity to learn about the process behind them. It was interesting to follow Sasha Waters Freyer’s progression in her artistic career and see what experiences led her to her experimental films. She began work in documentary because she enjoyed portraying people’s stories. she wanted to make her films more personal, so she switched to experimental film. Her process really seemed like a series of discoveries in what she was interested in and what she enjoyed, so the connection to play pages was pretty clear. She mentioned that what she does in film isn’t really a career path, so she works outside of making films. But I think her process and freedom to explore is partially because of this lack of outside pressure demanding quantity over quality in order to generate a living. I’ve always thought of photography as a more distant and impersonal process since the subject is filtered through a lens regardless of the artist’s manipulation, but her experiences seemed to contradict that. Especially in her film Respiration, she mentioned her tedious and meticulous process in finding old film, manipulating it, and building her own props and sets. It’s difficult to understand film as an “artistic plastic medium” as she mentioned because the camera seems so fixed and unforgiving. I was surprised at how long it takes to make an hour-long film. Working on a project for three weeks in class seems long, so I can’t imagine three years. Some of the terms she used like 16mm I didn’t quite understand but that could inspire future explorations. I was interested in her incorporation of old film, so I found this video where they develop found WWII footage. |