A Critical Cinema 2: Interviews with Independent Filmmakers

to visual concentration. I've always been aware of how sound can take away from the image. That's what I hated about Fischinger for a long time: there was never a moment in his films when your eyes could just look. But the problem, of course, is that silence is an illusion. John Cage went into that anechoic room at Bell Telephone, where all sounds are absorbed. He said he could hear his nervous system and his blood flowing, or something like that. Anyhow, I knew I had to deal with sound in some way.

MacDonald:

Are you a music lover? The motif structure you often use in the films seems musical.

Breer:

Well, if I said I'm a music lover, I'd have to make good on that claim with great erudition. When I painted in Paris, I used to listen to Mozart every morning on the radio. But after a while I found it intolerable. I couldn't listen to organized sound, because it would confuse my signals. I couldn't make useful decisions on color. If I was listening to blues music, I'd have to go blue. When it comes time to make sound for the films, then I concentrate on it.

MacDonald:

So you finish the visuals and then look for sounds?

Breer:

Always. I feel the visual thing is very fragile and subtle and has to be nurtured and put exactly in place. When it's strong, then you can inflict it with sound. I've always put sound on later, though recently when I cut a film I allow spaces for sound to substitute for events or relate to events. I have the word "bang" in the film I'm working on right now [

Bang!

(1986)]. And obviously that'll call for an asynchronous event of the same kind. When the telephone rings in

TZ,

you hear the voice saying, "Hello," first, and

then

the phone ringing. It always gets a giggle. It's deliberate that the sound-picture relationship is obverse, perverse, and sometimes absolutely synch.

Have you seen

70

recently? I decided to leave it silent, and I had the option of a black sound track or a clear one. For some reason I decided on a clear track, which, it turns out, picks up dirt and glitches, so that if you leave the audio on, there's sound. I show

70

now with instructions to leave the projector sound on. There's a breathing quality to the soundtrack, and it dispels the uncomfortableness of a nonsound film.

MacDonald:

Certain films seem pivotal for you.

Jamestown Baloos,

for example, and

Recreation

.

Breer:

Well, the only reason

Recreation

isn't pivotal is that I did a film before it which got lost. It was a little loop that looked like

Recreation

. Discovering the possibilities of the collision of single frames was a breakthrough for me. The loop got worn out, and I had to throw it away. I made

Recreation

trying to do the same thing, but longer, so it could be on a reel and be practical to show.

Jamestown Baloos

was more a matter of trying to control what I had discovered.

Page 25

MacDonald: Recreation

was made in France?

Breer:

Right. I could tell from feedback at cine clubs that it was pretty outrageous.

MacDonald:

Another aspect of

Recreation

and

Jamestown Baloos

that seems new to you is a kind of self-reflexivity about filmmaking.

Breer:

I wrote a manifesto during

Jamestown

. I thought I was developing a whole new language (I didn't realize at the time how influenced I'd been by Fernand Leger's

Ballet Méchanique,

[1924]). Anyhow, the manifesto was about painting being fossilized action, whereas film was real action, real kinesis. Rather than a diagram or a plan for change, film was change. And that was the exciting new thing about it. At the time, I was thinking of Rauschenberg in particular, who was doing what I thought were essentially post-Schwitters [Kurt Schwitters] combine paintings, not something new. Rauschenberg was being touted, but I felt I was doing

real

collages that had all the Rauschenberg combinations but were also dynamic and rhythmic, a real step forward from Schwitters, who I admired very much.

MacDonald:

It's also another step in the development of metamorphosis. When you begin using imagery recognizable from pop culture in a new context, you're changing its meaning and impact. And also, in terms of timing, the viewer's mind is always behind in understanding what's just been presented: in both

Jamestown Baloos

and

Recreation

we're often seeing something new, and at the same time trying to think of the implications (original and new) of what we just saw.

Breer: