Martin Arnold – the idea of looping
November 23, 2009
Martin Arnold is an experimental filmmaker. He is most well known for his appropriation art. He obsessively reworks found footage, often black and white footage. He removes the found footage from its original context and brings it into a new environment. Arnold’s films are often heavily cut sequences in which he uses several seconds of the found footage and makes it into much longer works. He tries to repeat frames. His cuts seem almost as if they were frame by frame. Arnold captures the characters/actors’ tiniest movements and repeats them and makes those tiny movements have a much more important role within the film. He loops these movements constantly and at first creates humour within the audience then later frustration. Some even find these movements hypnotic. As a result, audience ultimately view the found footage in a new light and percieve the found footage differently.
It is interesting how Arnold uses old footage and brings it into a completely new context. Most of his footage are black and white films from the 50′s, old Hollywood films, but he is able to bring these old films and reinvent them, appropriate them to make them seem new and up-to-date again. My favourite part of Arnold’s work is the way he is able to bring the ‘unimportant’ portions of the films and to make them important. Those ever-so slightly motion is exaggerated to give much bigger importance. It is definitely refreshing to see the film re-edited in a new way.
Passage a l’acte (1993) This is a breakfast scene from To Kill a Mocking Bird. He changes this breakfast scene to create a ‘post-war’ like film. Originally, the characters from the scene was a father, a neighbour and two kids. However, in the film, it now appears to be a family, the mom, the dad and two kids. The slamming of the door represents the sounds of a machine gun. The loop within the whole film also gives a terrifying feel as the high pitched noises were constantly repeated. Arnold makes a fool out of the boy by making him twitch non stop and the girl is edited to sound like a robot. The overall effect of the film was not a pleasant one. It created a much uncomfortable environment in which one can feel the aggressiveness and the hostile atmosphere of that kitchen.
Alone.
