Chapter V
Dad, will you tell me a story?
In this chapter I will go into some of my inspiration sources and visual work.
Dad tells a lot of stories.
So much so that many of those stories I have heard a minimum of four times.
They usually have the same theme or rhythm. Childhood stories, things about his upbringing, grandma and grandpa, work and often joyful stories that end up in jokes.
When he opens his mouth, just a few words spill out and I can already tell which story he is going to refer to this time.
Yet, occasionally, I am surprised. It's especially when he talks to his siblings or my grandmother that he tells "new" stories.
At those moments I listen intently...
He is an amazing storyteller, where did he get that from?
He never had theatre classes, so that can't be it. Perhaps it's the years of teaching he has done? But...the way he tells stories is a bit similar to my grandmother, however he usually speaks in a more enthusiastic way.
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Year of production: 2022 - Running Time: 2:23 min
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In the previous chapters we already went over storytelling and how the advances in technology made film play a big role in the creative and entertainment industry. Film is still a young medium, but a medium that has a broad exploration in all facets of the film industry. I myself am most interested in documentary films and the making of those. They have gone from an entertaining pass time to something truly inspiring, this is something that I often hear after a friend or family member has watched a documentary. But why are these documentaries so inspiring or interesting? Is it just the end product of a semi-non-fiction production, the subject or is it the creator of the work the source that pulls the viewer towards them? Some of the creatives that mainly work with documentary have inspired me to pursue film as a medium and their work and work ethic I wanted to include in my research.
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Starting with Agnès Varda. This part is dedicated to her and her point of view while creating a film and the use of stories in them. Varda has an immense body of work; throughout many years she has created and crafted. She has worked with several themes in her films and you strongly see photographic elements, because Varda initially started out as a photographer. Besides that, she herself has a strong presence in the work. In the book ‘The Cinema of Agnès Varda: Resistance and Eclecticism', there is one chapter that focuses on auteurism. Auteurism meaning; a critical film theory according to which the primary creator of a film is the director, all of whose works are said to reflect to a certain degree the characteristics of a personal style. She has so many amazing works, but I'll only be touching on one film. This one film stood out to me, specifically because of the way she worked on her film “ UNCLE YANCO“.
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In the presentation she did at TEDxVeniceBeach she talks about the process in this film where she met her uncle. Not planned ahead and only a few days to film. She used Baroque editing in combination with white sound and then she filmed the meeting in such a way that the sentiment was well translated. During the filming days she could already imagine the kind of editing she wanted to do. "Express the excitement and joy, not just tell the meeting" -Agnès Varda (2017).
The second filmmaker that was an inspiration for my thesis was Sarah Polley, Specifically her film "Stories we tell". In short: in this film she wants to uncover the truth about who her biological father is and she questions her family members about this topic, which is very private in nature. In the interview above she explains the initial thought that went into the film and her fascinations with the varying perceptions of the story. This coincidentally is the reason that I found this such a beautiful and inspiring work. Family, story and memory brought together into a beautiful documentary.
During the making of this thesis, I have found out more about the history of narrativity and the approaches to it by the individual. Furthermore, there are so many interesting theories on the topics of stories and memory. Much more than I ever could have imagined, they will surely find a way into my works. Thanks to this research, I can continue with film and moving-image and strive to improve through everything I've learned and the inspiration sources I have found will definitely remain a part in my artistic practice.
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