CHRISTIN BOLEWSKI
constructed passage
"Constructed Passage - Being elsewhere"
Experimental documentary by Christin Bolewski
Digi Beta, 55,33min
Based on text by Marc Augé "Places and Nonplaces", Ryszard Kapuscinski
"The shadow of the sun", Claude Lévy-Strauss "Tropiques Tristesses"
Being elsewhere, in a foreign country...
Observing, reporting, story telling....
That´s the subject of the film.
The journey starts. From North America to West Africa and from
Africa to America. The journey is imaginery. We are traversing
the space, but we never arrive. Images are fleeting, even the
camera is in a permanent movement. The place is not experienced:
Places and Nonplaces.
Observing, reporting, reflecting reality?
"I do not maintain that this is reality."
The film "Constructed Passage" interweaves elements of different
genres: documentary and ethnological film as well as narrative,
experimental and music clip in order to maintain that it is not
possible to show reality or being objective. Image and sound alternate
from documentary to ?artificial images" created through digital
and analog processing and sampling.
"The journey continues until it´s end. We traversed the space,
but did not found the place."
What is left in the end are a series of "shapshots" piled hurriedly
into memory.
____________________
More Infos:
A journalist travelling through Africa tells about his experiences.
Like an ethnological investigator he discovers and describes Africa.
In opposition to that is the text of a modern philosopher, who
writes reasonable about the activities of the ethnographer, his
dilemma between objectivity and subjectivity, about modern travelling.
Places and nonplaces: ?Adding up all the air, rail and motorway
routes, the mobile cabins called ?means of transport? and finally
the complex ?skein? of cable and wireless networks. The accelerated
circulation of passengers and goods. High speed roads, interchanges,
airports...?
All of that is in opposition to the slowness and the movement
in Africa. There an inhabitant of a small village tells about
the history of his nation. About settling, why a complete village
was moving from place to place and how the slavery brought the
Africans to America. Fetish priests and ghosts are of great importance
in this stories, which sound very exotic and foreign to us. The
other, typical curiosities, snapshots these are the topics of
the travel journal - a lot of clichees. The mediation takes place
through words and text:
"The link between individuals and their surroundings in the space
of nonplace is established through the mediation of words: signs
and symbols. Their ?instrucitons for use?, which may be prescriptive,
prohibitive or informative."
In Africa messages were mediated by "talking drums". Signals which
informed the inhabitans of a village, when there was a danger
and they should come back to the village and help. Later drumming
was used for the evening entertainment. It was combined with stories
which the old ones told to the young people: story telling, oral
tradition, myths.
Observing, reporting, reflecting reality?
"I do not maintain that this is reality."
The film "Constructed Passage" interweaves elements of different
genres: documentary and ethnological film as well as narrative,
experimental and music clip in order to maintain that it is not
possible to show reality. That´s even a fact in the debate about
documentary film and ethnology.
That´s why the film is imaginery. The text of the film is put
together from different stories and characters: the character
of the modern and very distant philosopher, who is reflecting
about places and nonplaces, ethnology and the networking of the
world, the character of the journalist and investigator, who talks
about his experiences, the teacher of the African village, talking
about the history and the culture of his country and one tourist
guide of the Cape Coast Castle, who repeats automatically day
by day his text about the slavery to foreign tourists.
The text of the philosopher is written by Marc Augé und Claude
Lévy-Strauss. It is presented in the film by title inserts and
a male narrator. It comments the stereotype stories of the journalist
(text by Ryszard Kapuscinski). The title inserts break the image
flow and give a strong rhythm to the film like the included black
edits.
Images and sounds were recorded in North America and Ghana with
a small DV-Camera. The camera is in a permanent movement and documents
the journey through different landscapes and places. There is
no mise en scéne. The camera just shows what has happened. The
images try to capture reality and to be objective and to convince
the audience that it is possible to show reality. Suddenly this
impression is broken, the images are deformed, digitally processed,
edited like a music clip and very artificial.
Movement, speed, rhythm: elements of the journey and the film
editing. The movement of the camera is increased by the editing
- and very important - by image and soundsampling. Sometimes the
meaning of the images is submitted to the structure of the sampled
sound. Images are repeated, because the related original sounds
produce a rhythm. Repititions and musical structures form the
film. The soundtrack is completely created out of the original
athmospheric sounds - except of two other rhythmical pattern.
Original sounds of dance and drumming, athmospherical sounds of
streets, airplanes, supermarkets,... are manipulated, edited,
slowed down, played backwards etc.
The Image and soudsampling was created by digital editing with
Avid Media Composer. The image was processed realtime with a DVE
and with Avid Media Composer. The soundtrack was produced parallel
to the image editing with Avid. Only the mixdown was done in the
soundstudio.
"Constructed Passage - Being elsewhere"
Experimental documentary by Christin Bolewski
Digi Beta, 55,33min
Based on text by Marc Augé "Places and Nonplaces", Ryszard Kapuscinski
"The shadow of the sun", Claude Lévy-Strauss "Tropiques Tristesses"
Video: Digi Beta (s/w and color), length: 55,33min, PAL
Sound: Stereo 1+2
Constructed Passage - being elsewhere
Director: Christin Bolewski
Date of Production: September 2001
Language of any dialogue: English/German
Narrator: David Larcher
Script, conception: Christin Bolewski
Editing: Christin Bolewski
Camera: Christin Bolewski
Music, sound: Christin Bolewski
Production: Christin Bolewski www.christinbolewski.de
and ooio.de www.ooio.de
Postproduction: Christin Bolewski
at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne
© Christin Bolewski 2001
Technical details of video-production
Recorded on Mini-DV mastered on Digi Beta
Digital editing offline with Avid Media Composer
Online Editing with Avid Media Composer and digital Post-Editing
at Sony-Betacam BVE 9100
Digital image processing with Sony DME 5000, Avid Media Composer
Technical details of audio-production
Multichannel digital sound sampling with Avid Media Composer
Postproduction and mixdown with
Digidesign, Sound Designer, Pro Tools, Yamaha O2R
Digitalmaster as SDII-file and DAT-cassette.
