Balagan–Jesse Lerner

Jesse Lerner (in person)
showing The American Egypt and Megavoz
@ Balagan (Coolidge Corner theater)
2006.11.30

This was the last show of the year (2006) for the Balagan series at the Coolidge Corner theater. This was my first experience seeing Lerner’s work. The introduction was friendly and efficient, promising not to reveal too much about the film.

Lerner makes historical films. That is his films are interested in historical subjects and they take on the appearance of historical films. Lerner acknowledged that he invites the ambiguity that arises from working in in 16mm reversal-stock film. Everything about the film appears to be historically accurate.

These are not easy films to watch. They move fast, they are bilingual and text-heavy. Viewers without fluency in both spanish and english are forced to read the subtitles, and there are a load of them.

Who is the target audience for these films? I ask this without hostility, but only as someone with a passing knowledge of history. The subject matter is arcane enough that

Watching Lerner’s films is something like going to a large and exhaustive show at a national history museum. A rich, steady stream of imagery, quotes, characters, and detailed history is packed into an experience that cannot be absorbed in queue. You have the impression that there is deep scholarship here, and you cannot help but to be impressed by the sheer mass of the collection and the tenacity and brilliance of the curator. Absorbing all this information is better done in a slower moving medium, maybe a graduate course about a history of American government, the concentration and abuse of power, labor relations, international economics, feminist politics, socialism, agriculture and the exploitation of the indigenous population (both people and plant life). That gives you a taste of all the subjects that are touched by these two films and the pace at which they move.

Lerner made a point about wishing to create tension between text and image, saying that he invites the tension that is created when the two streams of media do not serve to illustrate one another. I wholeheartedly support this technique: it assumes a sophisticated audience and younger viewers will be especially comfortable with this style of presentation thanks to video-games and MTV. It’s interesting enough divorce image from the text. Here one has the feeling that this tension is not being used profitably enough. For example, we expect divers channels should have their own rhythm, and here they certainly do not. The edits are made according to one channel or the other so it it impossible to escape the notion of the audio serving the image or the image serving the audio.

Much to their credit, these are not strictly even tempered or didactic films. They are unusual and energetic works with a clear point of view which is full and well-rendered. One has the impression that they would bear serious investigation. Again, this makes them hard going. cinema is not a good form for this kind of density. it leaves the viewer feeling wowed and subpar at the same time. In this Lerner is in excellent company. I have said the same thing about films by Chris Marker, Yvonne Ranier, and Peter Watkins.

Magnavoz (2006) is the more poetic of the two works. Lerner framed it as an experimental work, a kind of science fiction. The text is taken from an eponymous 1930 (?) manifesto in play form. The style of the text is Brechtian. The characters are generic (Indio, …) and attention is drawn to their fictional context. The hand-tinting is lovely and surely must have required super-hero effort.

There are a few beautiful images worth noting. The Magnavoz is a represented by an antique phonograph horn shot from below so that it appears to be shouting at the volcano.

Many of the vocal performances are extraordinary, especially in Magnavoz. Sometimes the delivery is rushed, especially in the transcripts from the Feminist Congress, and this has the effect of diminishing our impression of this text. It almost feels like a prejudice against the feminist congress itself, which runs so counter to the grain of the film that one can’t help but feel it is a mistake.

The music keeps pace with the rich stream of media and provides an energetic foundation for this ambitious undertaking.

The footage is unusual and 95% of it I had never seen before. Though it appears here mostly as evidence. Like a paper overwhelmed by quotations. There is no rhythm, no creation of tension nor release. It is all equally rich.