''( )'' is a 2003
silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when ...
directed by
Morgan Fisher
Stephen Morgan Fisher (born 1 January 1950) is an English keyboard player and composer, and is most known as a member of Mott the Hoople in the early 1970s. However, his career has covered a wide range of musical activities, and he is still ac ...
.
Summary
The film consists entirely of insert shots extracted from feature films, considering the "status of the
insert shot Insert may refer to:
*Insert (advertising)
*Insert (composites)
*Insert (effects processing)
*Insert (filmmaking)
*Insert key on a computer keyboard, used to switch between insert mode and overtype mode
*Insert (molecular biology)
*Insert (SQL)
*Fi ...
in an ingenious way", according to film expert Susan Oxtoby.
Fisher said of his film, "Inserts are above all instrumental. They have a job to do, and they do it; and they do little, if anything, else. Sometimes inserts are remarkably beautiful, but this beauty is usually hard to see because the only thing that registers is the news, the expository information, that the insert conveys... By chance, I learned that the root of 'parenthesis' is a Greek word that means the act of inserting. And so I was given the title of the film."
Synopsis
P. Adams Sitney, Professor of Visual Art at Princeton University, wrote a short essay for Artforum International "Medium Shots: the films of Morgan Fisher" in which he describes the film "''( )''." "Fisher's most recent film, ''( )'', succeeds astonishingly where
Frampton's parallel effort, ''
Hapax Legomena
In corpus linguistics, a ''hapax legomenon'' ( also or ; ''hapax legomena''; sometimes abbreviated to ''hapax'', plural ''hapaxes'') is a word or an expression that occurs only once within a context: either in the written record of an entire ...
: Remote Control'' (1972) failed; it uses aleatory methods to release the narrative unconscious of a set of randomly selected films. ''( )'' is made up entirely of "inserts" from feature films organized according to Oulipian principles. Inserts were usually shot by assistants when star actors, large crews, or expensive sets were not needed. These include details of weapons, wounds, letters, signs, tombstones, machinery, games of chance, timepieces, money, and even intimate caresses. Fisher culled the inserts from a number of films he collected for that purpose and edited them together under constraints he does not fully reveal; he places the inserts from a given film in the order in which they appeared in that film, but two inserts from the same film never follow each other directly in his assemblage. Alternating among them we catch glimpses of violence, intrigue, high-stakes gambling, and sexual adventure."
MEDIUM SHOTS: THE FILMS OF MORGAN FISHER - Artfourm International
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Screening
''( )'' was screened on October 18, 2003, during the New York Film Festival
The New York Film Festival (NYFF) is a film festival held every fall in New York City, presented by Film at Lincoln Center (FLC). Founded in 1963 by Richard Roud and Amos Vogel with the support of Lincoln Center president William Schuman, it is ...
,2004 Toronto International Film Festival
The 29th Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 9 through September 18. The festival screened 328 films of which 253 were features and 75 were shorts (148 of the films screened were in a language other than English).
Awards
No fi ...
as part of the Wavelengths programming.
References
External links
*{{IMDb title
2000s avant-garde and experimental films
2003 short films
2003 films
American avant-garde and experimental films
American independent films
American silent short films
American black-and-white films
Surviving American silent films
2003 independent films
Collage film
2000s American films