Field Report 1

Robert Schaller: A living Experience


Robert Schaller’s work is very similar to the work we saw in class. We saw several various handmade works, ranging from water-thrashed images to bear gardens to leaves and moths on the filmstrip. Robert’s style was very similar in how the work looked compared to the screening we have seen. His “My Life as a Bee” was very similar in style to Stan Brackhage’s “Mothlight”; both looked awesome. But my main point in this field report and an extreme similarity between many of the, I think, best films we have seen in the last couple of weeks is how they dealt with life.

Take Brackhage’s film “Mothlight.” This film was based on the life of a moth; it dealt with how a moth flies into light blindly and what aspects make up its life. Breeding in leaves, nesting in trees, and anything that surrounds moths in their short life is depicted in this film. Robert took the same aspect of showing the life of a creature, in this case a bee, and depicted what surrounds that life. Jittery camera, beautiful flowers, and flying around invaded the screen and took us as the viewers along for the journey of this living thing.

I really enjoyed Robert’s triple threat, with three projectors running at the same time on their side. It’s portrayal of movement and life, in this case a woman’s life, in an obscure fashion sent shiver’s down my spine. Her movements captivated the audience and the degrading image expressed the fragility of her existence. For me, the use of three women proved to a hard image to decode and understand. On one hand I perceived the women to a like family, toward the end only one woman was left on the screen and the others faded with time as they do in real life. Yet, I can also be thought of the collective life of the dancers in a troupe. In time, each one will fade away and only the memories of the life they lived will remain.

Finally, I would like to correlate Robert’s triple threat with Adriana’s “Bear Garden.” Both had soundtracks and these sounds definitely changed the way we viewed and interpreted the films. Both had dark moments in the sound as lighter moments, this created a different interpretation than it would have been in an absent sound environment. We, as the audience, thought of the characters life differently. In Bear Garden, when the sound went dark you could imagine the pain of the bear or WWII captives. You could almost feel a dense lump in your chest watching Robert’s film also. And when the sound cut out, it left you waiting and holding your breath for the next moment. Who knew basic images of our life could enact such sensations on the audience.

I think, out of the films we have seen, when a living thing is portrayed or examined it was more interesting than not. It gave meaning to the audience, something they could imagine, relate to or follow. Though films like, “What the Water Said” were interesting in their own right, I would much rather watch any of the other films mentioned in this report. I will leave off with something that I believe in, a quote if you will, “Live until life stops you.” (anonymous)