During this process I have realised that short form film has limitations, I would prefer to work with long extended shots, to use boredom as a tool. It would excite me to work in a more spiritual style, with the focus being to make the audience contemplate. I would rather be working in beautiful rural locations than in the city. I don’t feel at peace in the city which makes me feel restricted with the art I can make, I would like to explore a more peaceful, meditative avenue with my work but to explore these themes I must feel at peace within myself first.
What Paul Schrader dubbed the transcendental style in film came out of post war europe. After the war there was a shift in the arts with the rise of abstract expressionism, art was no longer simply a form of entertainment but meant to provoke, it became much more political than before. The transcendental style in cinema didn’t focus on action. On transcendental style filmmakers, paul schrader said “Their agenda is not solely to divert, entertain and amuse. They would like to, in some way, bring the viewer closer to the Mystery, the unknown.”
To work in a style that blurs the lines between what is film and what is real and to make people reflect on the mundane in their own lives, make people question what is exciting for the soul, is something i’d like to do, to film the mundane take place is common for the transcendental style,“The films’ style was a documentary-like objectivity; actors either were or looked like ordinary people involved in commonplace situations.”. It is a line that would need to be tread carefully, “At what point is boredom not simply an aesthetic tool you can use like a scalpel but simply boredom” , to be boring in an exciting way is a difficult task, I will spend much time experimenting with a camera before I approach this.
Paul Schrader on Revisiting The Transcendental Style In Film | TIFF 2017
Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2016, March 23). Neorealism. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/art/Neorealism-Italian-art