An immovable camera planted at one end of a basketball court devoid of posts and baskets. At the other end and serving as background a stage with a red curtain. That is the static scene for the entire film. Have twenty-four girls, members of the Goshogaoka basketball team, train in front of the camera, moving in and out of frame, running, stretching and performing a variety of gymnastics. The sounds are those of the court: feet pounding rhythmically on the wood floor, synchronized vocalizations by the players, etc. Sixty minutes of that may sound boring, but the choreographic form of the exercises is hypnotic. Only towards the end, when the players massage each other in silence, does the film lose its energy.
4 Reviews
thrillingly small scale epic that i couldn't take my eyes off of
tboymcf4 February 1999
-- a hybrid of matthew barney stripped bare, busby berkley in a
gymnasium, and the zen of the warmup -- a teacher suggested i
see this work without telling me a word about it -- simply on my
request for abstract non-narrative musical type films --
although structuralist in form (which can be a bit daunting), it
was impossible to look away -- even with a completely static
camera position -- repetition of movement created a lyrical poem
-- thrilling but in the most non-invasive purely evocative way --
i can't wait to see more of Lockhart's.
gymnasium, and the zen of the warmup -- a teacher suggested i
see this work without telling me a word about it -- simply on my
request for abstract non-narrative musical type films --
although structuralist in form (which can be a bit daunting), it
was impossible to look away -- even with a completely static
camera position -- repetition of movement created a lyrical poem
-- thrilling but in the most non-invasive purely evocative way --
i can't wait to see more of Lockhart's.
A wickedly poor example of structuralist film
flannelgraph31 March 2005
Normally in structuralist film (i.e. Riddles of the Sphinx, Wavelength) the comment is: "Easy to describe, but utterly difficult to explain its depth." With Lockhart's Goshogaoka, however, it is only what it portends to be: an "ethnographic film" devoid of truth, an avant-garde work in opposition to nothing, a 63-minute piece of choreographed basketball drills. Wait, even _that_ description makes this film sound like it's got more going for it than it actually does. Lockhart fails to look any deeper than the surface-level with these movements, and therefore extracts any meaning from the motion.
This is just another example of Americans fetishizing a foreign culture to an extent that any actual life is muted. By directing the basketball team's actions toward farce, Lockhart doesn't present us with how Japanese culture interprets and integrates our own, she presents us with how she wants Japanese girls to look, act, and behave--as imperialist as any film in the last 100 years exhibiting a complete disregard for its subjects.
Mostly, what saddened me as I left the showing was how film and video have become the last refuge of the bad artist.
This is just another example of Americans fetishizing a foreign culture to an extent that any actual life is muted. By directing the basketball team's actions toward farce, Lockhart doesn't present us with how Japanese culture interprets and integrates our own, she presents us with how she wants Japanese girls to look, act, and behave--as imperialist as any film in the last 100 years exhibiting a complete disregard for its subjects.
Mostly, what saddened me as I left the showing was how film and video have become the last refuge of the bad artist.
A review of "NO" and "Goshogaoka"
tieman6421 November 2010
Warning: Spoilers
Avant-garde and experimental film-maker Sharon Lockhart directs "NO", a film "about" two Japanese farmers who meticulously amass heaps of hay and later spread them out along an expansive field.
Like most of Lockhart's films, this is a "study" of time, space, XYZ axes and the relationship or boundaries separating photography and cinema, which of course is just a pretentious way of saying that the film looks at a bunch of farmers playing in the mud.
Next to the work of experimental directors like James Benning and Michael Snow, Lockhart's "study" – about a couple decades too late – doesn't seem particularly revolutionary, though there is genius in her compositions, in her intricate use of space, in the interplay between foreground and background action, and the way the stacks of assembled hay gradually seem to "line up" and form beautiful patterns.
Indeed, at its best, watching "NO" is like watching a painting gradually taking shape, Lockhart drawing links between a farmer's rakes and tools and that of a painter's brush. The on screen figures are literally painting or composing the scene as we speak, humble artists trapped in a film whose title itself alludes to the Japanese art of flower arrangement (No-no Ikebana).
"Goshogaoka", Lockhart's debut project, is perhaps more interesting. The film opens with an image of theatre curtains and then treats us to six ten minutes segments, each comprised of several high school girls running in and out of the frame. The girls appear to be training for a future basketball game, but what's interesting is the way their training seems to dissolve as the film progresses, giving way to non-naturalised, less formal behaviour. Not only that, the group of girls seems to change from a faceless mass to a group of recognisable individuals, some breaking away at times to perform exercise routines directly for the camera (which opens up a bevy of thematic avenues relating to individuality, art, conformity, the limitations of documentary etc)
It's only once the film ends, that one realises that it has subtly shifted from a kind of documentary voyeurism to a performance staged directly for the camera, that the film slowly destroys the barrier between sports, dance, documentary and fiction, and that the seemingly free-form behaviour of the girls is itself a highly choreographed piece of staged performance.
8.5/10 - With "avant-garde" and "experimental" film-making increasingly localising around music videos and commercial advertising, it's nice to see someone who's still doing things the old fashioned way.
Like most of Lockhart's films, this is a "study" of time, space, XYZ axes and the relationship or boundaries separating photography and cinema, which of course is just a pretentious way of saying that the film looks at a bunch of farmers playing in the mud.
Next to the work of experimental directors like James Benning and Michael Snow, Lockhart's "study" – about a couple decades too late – doesn't seem particularly revolutionary, though there is genius in her compositions, in her intricate use of space, in the interplay between foreground and background action, and the way the stacks of assembled hay gradually seem to "line up" and form beautiful patterns.
Indeed, at its best, watching "NO" is like watching a painting gradually taking shape, Lockhart drawing links between a farmer's rakes and tools and that of a painter's brush. The on screen figures are literally painting or composing the scene as we speak, humble artists trapped in a film whose title itself alludes to the Japanese art of flower arrangement (No-no Ikebana).
"Goshogaoka", Lockhart's debut project, is perhaps more interesting. The film opens with an image of theatre curtains and then treats us to six ten minutes segments, each comprised of several high school girls running in and out of the frame. The girls appear to be training for a future basketball game, but what's interesting is the way their training seems to dissolve as the film progresses, giving way to non-naturalised, less formal behaviour. Not only that, the group of girls seems to change from a faceless mass to a group of recognisable individuals, some breaking away at times to perform exercise routines directly for the camera (which opens up a bevy of thematic avenues relating to individuality, art, conformity, the limitations of documentary etc)
It's only once the film ends, that one realises that it has subtly shifted from a kind of documentary voyeurism to a performance staged directly for the camera, that the film slowly destroys the barrier between sports, dance, documentary and fiction, and that the seemingly free-form behaviour of the girls is itself a highly choreographed piece of staged performance.
8.5/10 - With "avant-garde" and "experimental" film-making increasingly localising around music videos and commercial advertising, it's nice to see someone who's still doing things the old fashioned way.
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