Dienstag 31.07.2012
20.30 Uhr
vorgestellt von Sebastian Markt
THE EXILES | USA 1961 | 72 Min, 35mm, bw | Buch, Produktion, Regie: Kent Mackenzie | Kamera: Erik Daarstad, Robert Kaufman, John Morrill | Schnitt: Kent Mackenzie, Warren Brown, Thomas Conrad, Erik Daarstad, Thomas Miller, Beth Pattrick | Ton: Sam Farnsworth | Protagonist/inn/en: Yvonne Williams, Homer Nish, Tommy Reynolds, Rico Rodriguez, Clifford Ray Sam, Clydean Parker, Mary Donahue
Gedreht zwischen 1959 und 1961 von Filmhochschulabgängern, dargestellt von Laien, mit denen zusammen die Filmemacher Drehbuch und Erzählung erarbeiteten, mühsam finanziert mit Gelegenheitsarbeiten in der Filmindustrie, uraufgeführt bei den Filmfestspielen von Venedig 1961, in Nischen gefeiert, fast fünfzig Jahre lange unverliehen geblieben, 2003 als Schatz gehoben in Thom Andersens Essayfilm LOS ANGELES PLAYS ITSELF über die Kinobilder von L.A, restauriert und 2008 nach 47 Jahren ein eingeschränkter Kinostart;
THE EXILES ist ein Solitär im amerikanischen Independent Kino der 60er Jahre, ein engagiertes Kino über das Leben einer Gruppe Native Americans, einen Tag und eine Nacht lang, Momentaufnahmen der Diaspora in einem heute längst "entwickelten" Viertel von Los Angeles, sucht eine Form von dem zum berichten was draußen passiert und im Kino nicht zu finden ist, und überschreitet dabei die Demarkationslinie zwischen Dokumentarischem und Fiktionalen, nicht als Verstoß gegen Konventionen sondern als Hinwendung zu einer filmischen Freiheit, die die Maximen ihrer Ästhetik aus der Treue zu den Figuren und ihrer Welt zu gewinnen sucht.
In einer Reflexion der Arbeit an dem Film schrieb Kent Mackenzie über den Prozess:
"Most of the crew members of THE EXILES were young filmmakers who had been out of the University for two or three years. We had outlived the romance of our first jobs and had discovered that the industry was not waiting with open arms to welcome "young geniuses," particularly those interested in reality. When we looked at the films on which we were employed and the films in the theaters and television, we were puzzled. in very few of them did we see any reflection of the life we saw around us or any attempt examine real questions and problems. We reacted strongly against what we perceived in these films, and this energy became one of the forces which led to the production of THE EXILES.
Although there had never been any formal common philosophy, many of us had started to question the old methods of production and the conventional formats for structuring films while still studying in the Department of Cinema. We became contemptuous of the escapist Hollywood theatrical movies with their simple resolutions of simple conflicts and their pat answers of material success and romantic love. We had little patience with the documentarians who abstracted from life to spell out their particular social or business messages. We rejected the apparently precious and sterile concepts of "art" which seemed prevalent among avant-garde film makers.
Like many others before us, we were overwhelmed with the potential power of the motion picture-power to reach beyond the mind and deep into an audience's total feeling. But we felt that in the sixty years of its infancy this young medium had seldom approached or suggested this potential.
[…]
We were fascinated by this complex and rapidly changing life we saw around us and felt it was our duty to examine it. Western man appeared to be in a stage of transition — a period in which the old values of his society were in a state of decay and new values yet undefined. We saw the great beauty of life and the deepest human values obscured by pretension, corruption, and commercialism. We were upset that the world should be so, and we felt that if only we could point these things out, to people in a few good films, the world could be changed now, in our lifetimes. It seemed to us, that it was the potential of film to explore and reveal this world - to expand the consciousness of the viewer, helping him to look freshly at himself and his surroundings. We felt that film was to be a leader in the search for new values in this confusing industrial age.
[…]
Although many of [the] films to which we were drawn were often classified by critics of historians as "realistic", "neo-realisitc," or "naturalistic", we felt that the concern with physical reality was not for its own sake but to create living and vital images and symbols from recognizable elements of everyday life. Many of the directors of these films appeared to be seeking to express the essential inner qualities of a situation through the use of physical details. They seemed deeply concerned with humanity in general and made compassionate films dealing with the content of life as they saw it rather than emphasizing formal qualities such as light, movement or angles. The forms of their films were usually closely related to their contents. In the best films and sequences the form grew from the content. They were indivisible.
But still none of these films seemed to us to be really the films of our time. Even the best of them made use of theatrical conventions and methods, and this puzzled us. We were bursting with so much to say about both life and film, but we didn't know where to start. We finally took what suggestions we could from the films we respected most and decided to take our cameras directly to life itself. We became strongly content-oriented. We felt that we had to reject al the old methods and structures and study our subjects so intensely that we could develop new methods and structures of our own.
[…]
As we left the University and went to work in the industry, we found that no one was ready to permit us to explore life through film or experiment with the relationship of life to film form. Horrified that we might learn to make films the way everyone else seemed to be making them, almost in desperation we started on THE EXILES.
We were filled with energy, desire, and a hazy vision of how things might be done better. We had no idea of the complexities or problems of film production. We were very contemptuous and negative about other people's styles and accomplishments. I am sure that we fumbled and bumbled and hurt ourselves by rejecting all the old principles wholesale - throwing out the baby with the bathwater - but most of what we could see in the films around us was bathwater, and we had to throw that out. The only way for us to find a way of expressing life through film seemed to be experimenting in complete freedom with an actual production."
A Description and Examination of the Production of The Exiles:
A Film of the Actual Lives of a Group of Young American Indians
by Kent Robert Mackenzie
[enthalten als Teil des Bonusmaterials in der DVD Edition des Films bei Milestone Films.]
