Sometimes we forget film is an art. With mindless flicks flooding the cinemas every weekend, herding us there in eager droves, it can certainly be difficult to remember this fact. We're often content with explosions and recycled jokes, and there's nothing wrong with that, per se. But once in a while it wouldn't hurt to widen our scope of cinematic interest and absorb film as many filmmakers have intended for it to be absorbed: as an art.
Luckily, a slew of upcoming and ongoing projects in the Boston area presents film in an array of innovative, artistic lights. Fascinatingly, many of these undertakings link film with another artistic medium.
Such creative fusions demonstrate that movies are capable of and keen on exploring certain emotions and themes that many people associate with other art forms. These projects also attempt to show that art in general is a collaborative craft. While film can elicit true empathy on its own, it can produce an even more stimulating effect when combined with music, static art or the stage, for example.
For artist and Harvard lecturer Matt Saunders, bringing film together with photography and painting felt natural. In fact, the definitive titles for different art forms mean little to Saunders. He sees art as an opportunity to create images that, when taken together, produce a cohesive effect. For him, whether this takes the form of animation, photography or a melding of the two doesn't matter in the least.
"All those distinctions are kind of meaningless," he said. "The basic core process of my work is very much with making images out of materials and thinking about where these images are located, and what's specific about how they are made."
Painting, drawing, photography, animation - each of these artistic mediums share a similar dialogue, and the artist's latest show, "Matt Saunders: The movies that were secret remain secret somehow and a nation forgets its pleasures," attempts to portray that. Inked, hand?drawn short animations screen throughout the space while characters from the films hang along the walls in the form of "photo prints" - pictures taken of his canvas paintings - similarly colored in gray, nuanced tones. Each of his pieces, be it film or static art, compliments and evolves from the others, creating what Saunders hopes viewers will see as an "image stream."
"They present different information," he explained. "But that carries over [from one art form] to the way you see the other ones, so it creates a more complicated dialogue of transition and materiality."
On display in The Carpenter Center basement and within the Harvard Film Archive, Saunders' project, which he hesitates to call an exhibit due to its constantly evolving nature, is largely dedicated to the site that houses it. One of his main aims was to strengthen the relationship between film and other visual arts by drawing in people from both worlds, which the Carpenter Center has strived to do for 50 years.
"The idea was to try to find a way to show artwork not in the exhibition space that exists in the building, but to try to activate that zone where the two programs touch," Saunders said.
The show will run through Nov. 4 and attendance is free. Gallery hours are from 10 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 p.m. to 11 p.m on Sunday, with screenings taking place in the Carpenter Center Lecture Hall every weekday at noon.
When it comes to thinking about cinema in relation to theater, the world is no stranger to film adaptations of popular plays. Just think: How many renditions of "Hamlet" have made it the big screen? While such a production does bring together the stage and the screen in some loose form, Coolidge Corner Theatre and Huntington Theatre Company's recent collaboration unites these two arts in a far more intriguing and intimate fashion.
"This year, [Huntington's] season included a couple of titles that were directly film related, such as Fritz Lang's 'M' (1931)," Coolidge Corner Theatre Program Manager Jesse Hassinger said. "So we explored the idea of doing a limited series where we would join up with a couple of their productions to show a related film."
This ongoing series, titled "Stage & Screen," is a bold venture that brings current Huntington artists to the Coolidge Corner Theatre for the screening of a film that impacted their work in one way or another. Following the screening, the artists will take part in a conversation with the audience, talking about themes or subjects relevant to the film and to their upcoming productions. This unique pairing of theater and cinema demonstrates that these arts always have and always will reciprocally influence one another.
"I think the nicest thing about working so closely with the Huntington on this series is that they can offer playwrights and/or directors [the chance] to discuss how either the themes of the film have influenced them, or the films directly have influenced their work."
"It's nice to be able to offer the audience not only a different viewpoint on some of the themes, but also [to demonstrate] how those themes can tie into the plays that are about to be performed as well," he added.
"Stage & Screen" already kicked off earlier this month with a screening of Gore Vidal's "The Best Man" (1964), followed by an appearance from stage director Michael Wilson and Christopher Shinn, creator of the play "Now and Later," which runs through Nov. 10 at the Huntington's Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts. Both productions explore similar themes of deceit within the political world, and thus provide a compelling base for comparison and discussion. Hassinger hopes that this discussion will help bridge the gap between theater and film and demonstrate their intertwined, symbiotic relationship.
"Hopefully there is going to be this dialogue between the films that we have presented and the plays that [audiences] are hopefully going to go see," he said. "And it will raise the level of interest and appreciation to a higher plane, so that [audiences] can see that there is a little bit of dialogue between different art forms - that the stage is not completely separate from movies and vice versa."
The series will continue into the 2013 season with more events at the Coolidge Corner Theatre and related Huntington stage productions going up as well. The next pairing, which will take place on Monday, Jan. 7, will link Spike Lee's "Do The Right Thing" (1989) to the upcoming show "The Invisible Man," directed by Christopher McElroen, with a discussion on themes of race and identity to follow.
Though movies aren't usually perceived as a "live" art, as they're filmed in advance, years ago they did include an aspect of performance along with their presentation. Back in the days of silent cinema, orchestras accompanied showings to add an almost indescribable quality to movie screenings a sort of energy that comes along only with viewing a live show.
This Sunday, Oct. 21, New Hampshire composer Jeff Rapsis and the Somerville Theatre are teaming up to bring that energy back to life with a screening of Lon Chaney's classic, "The Phantom of the Opera" (1925), accompanied by a live score from Rapsis. The film will screen in 35 mm with an original print, allowing the audience to view "The Phantom of the Opera" as it was initially intended: on the big screen, with pristine visual quality and a live score backing it.
Having taken an interest in vintage cinema and music as a teenager, Rapsis finally put his passions together in 2007 and has been making scores for silent films ever since. Over 300 shows later, Rapsis is still amazed by the emotional effect that's created by joining live music with film on the big screen, a pairing he views as altogether organic.
"To me it was like peanut butter and chocolate: two great things that were even better together," he said. "I find it interesting to see how [silent films] come to life when they are projected in front of an audience with live music. It is often quite surprising how much energy they still have in them."
Rather than try and replicate what an original score might have sounded like, Rapsis creates his own material for the screenings, delivering a performance that is largely improvised based on the feel of the film and the audience's response. Perceiving it as an art continually in progress, his musical performances aren't about exact preparation, but rather about expressing a relationship between the film being screened and the musical feel of the moment.
"All your critical faculties and all the things you would worry about or second?guess or wonder just sort of subside, and you can just naturally make music in a way that I find surprising sometimes," Rapsis said.
Describing silent films as more like the opera than anything else - big in both emotional and physical senses - Rapsis believes the only way to properly complement their powerful visual presence is with a live score. The result is a recreation of silent films as they were meant to be seen and an illustration of the cohesive bond music, live performance and cinema all share.
"The live music creates this element of real performance that's not present in a contemporary movie," Rapsis shared. "The live music, in the way I do it, could be different every time. It creates a certain energy that's present in any live performance."
Catch these programs now to see film as the collaborative art it was meant to be.
