[Reader-list] Work in Progress-Sarai Fellowship

[Ayisha Abraham]

Work In Progress: Some Notes on the project "Disintegrating Memories"


I am busy editing what I call short sketches.  Instead of inhabiting a
sketch book they sit in a hard disk. They are executed as quickly drawn
ideas or visual notes.
After having collected a modest amount of footage (home movies,found
footage etc), doing selective interviews with filmmakers and writing a
little on the subject of amateur films, I am now editing small amounts of
media.  What I term a series of "sketches" literally.  In many respects
nothing more than film poems. Roughly, put together with very fine
disappearing threads of thought, sometimes none at all.  My attempt is to
really work through the footage, observe it carefully and decide where to
make interventions, if at all.  That is  proving to be the biggest dilemma.
I seem to be going through a phase where intervening minimally seems more
attractive.  And yet there is the pleasure of editing and creating form.
(And often over working , as I discover the potential of the editing soft
ware-Final Cut Pro).
What  conceptually interests me, is the possibility of reframing or
reshowing this personal collection of amateur film. Dug up like broken
fragments of a bygone past, these films can evoke in the viewer an all too
familiar past. Slowing down the speed of the film, creating fictive
characters by juxtaposing them together, are some of the tools I am using
for re-looking.  But as I said, minimal intervention is what interests me
and yet, I must define my role in the project.
At present, I am working with a mere 10 minutes of media.  16mm footage
shot on Mini Dv and now sitting in the hard disk of the computer.  10
minutes of an Upper class world in Mysore and abroad in the early 1940's.
Family and Royal functions and sport, of travel abroad .  The footage is
delicate -it cannot be played without the blemishes of projecting, coming
to the foreground.  And yet, at a formal level there are textures to
observe.  Textures which are an integral part of disintegrating celluloid .
The formal patterns take on  different meaning.  I use these textures,
dwell on them.  The circles of light and the  crackling surfaces.

1. In one short segment, the hostess and the filmmaker for the most, is
making sure her guests are comfortable.  She has instructed someone to
shoot the scene for her.  From above. The feast is laid out, the guests in
their fineries, elegantly socialize across tables, formally laid out.  I
notice a particularly articulate guest, charming and dapper.  I cut him
out. Slow down the footage to prolong the scene, repeat it over and over
again as though the shot just continues, and the hostess and our gentleman
seem to come together as a unit.  The camera pans out of the boundaries of
the walls to the vintage cars parked in a row. That it is the past is now
clear, that it is a scene of privilege is evident.
2. In the next sketch, the children run out playing.  They look directly at
the camera, smiling self consciously and yet confidently, like they are
used to the gaze of the lens.  Their dance out into the open is slowed
down.  They move down hte frame of the shot. The camera then registers the
upright adults who follow.   The family is established.
3. In another sketch, a woman grabs her still box camera and shoots-she
shoots directly at the  16mm movie camera being pointed at her.  A woman
recording a woman recording a woman.  It is bright sunshine,and she has her
dark glasses on.  I slow this sequence down.  She clicks once and again and
again.  In slow motion -it is 25% of the original speed- she seems to be
obsessively clicking her camera.

The important aspect in this series of short sketches is that they are all
being derived from footage which did not survive the ravages of time.  Most
of this woman filmakers' footage disintegrated and yet, I tried hard to
shoot small snippets, which were carefully fed into the projector.  The
fact that it is spoiled film is now an integral part of the digitally
recorded version.  Very little survived and so like an archaeologist I must
rearrange the fragments and imagine a past.

I must have more than ten short sketches by now and I will try to do as
many as I can.
I am also translating some of these sequences into artists books-stilling
the moving image and printing/writing the text. The stills in a book, which
can be held and viewed at leisure, is just another form for presenting the
material.

I am going to start compiling the short films together in some kind of
personalized way. While I continue to do the more interventionist sketches.
And then I'll gauge what seems most effective for the material in hand.  I
have still to begin interviewing a filmmaker here in Bangalore, who has a
huge body of work.
These interviews tend to focus on the technical and the filmmakers'
relationship to technology. The domestication of the technology and
technologizing of the domestic.
The fragments of this project continue to build itself. I am still
wondering about the final form.  Any thoughts?

Please note change of address and ID.
Ayisha Abraham
302 Silverdale, #5 Hutchins Road, Cooke Town
Bangalore 560 005, India
Tel: ++91 (0)80 546-4058  e-mail: ayish at vsnl.net