{"id":772,"date":"2014-11-08T11:04:21","date_gmt":"2014-11-08T11:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/?page_id=772"},"modified":"2014-11-08T11:18:47","modified_gmt":"2014-11-08T11:18:47","slug":"covadonga-g-lahera-on-inflames-2009","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/reflections\/reflections-on-av-essays\/covadonga-g-lahera-on-inflames-2009\/","title":{"rendered":"Covadonga G. Lahera on INFLAMES (2009)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Covadonga G. Lahera, INFLAMES.<\/strong>\u00a0Originally published\u00a0as\u00a0&#8216;<em>Electroma<\/em> \/ <em>Carretera asfaltada en dos direcciones<\/em>&#8216;, <em>Transit. Cine y otros desv\u00edos<\/em>, July 2, 2009. Online at:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/cinentransit.com\/electroma-carretera-asfaltada-en-dos-direcciones\/\" target=\"_blank\">http:\/\/cinentransit.com\/electroma-carretera-asfaltada-en-dos-direcciones\/\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/67554241?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0&amp;color=6b1307\" width=\"640\" height=\"346\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When I saw <em>Electroma<\/em> (Thomas Bangalter, Guy-Manuel De Homem-Christo, 2006) for the first time, and specifically when I saw the end of that film, in which one of the protagonists traverses the\u00a0screen, completely on fire,\u00a0in a slow motion downwards\u00a0semicircle from left to right, I was immediately reminded of\u00a0the climax to\u00a0<em>Two-Lane Blacktop<\/em>, Monte Hellman&#8217;s 1971 iconic road movie, with its final, slowed vision of celluloid bursting into flames. The sudden combustion\u00a0of that film&#8217;s last\u00a0frames also suggested the burning up in\u00a0the image of\u00a0&#8216;the driver&#8217;, the young co-star who, up until that moment, had shared with his <em>partenaire<\/em>, &#8216;the mechanic&#8217;, a life seeking out people to race against in his\u00a0Chevy 150.<\/p>\n<p>The origin of this association was that simple: Hellman&#8217;s film came up and met\u00a0the one and only feature film by\u00a0Daft Punk, and that mental image is what I subsequently\u00a0tried to bring into the timeline of a\u00a0video editing program. In this way\u00a0the two sequences could have a real, material encounter, and could accompany one another in\u00a0their shared\u00a0dematerialisation, simultaneously harboring the possibility of a new story, perhaps in some enclave of Route 66, or somewhere in the state of California, their only matching location. This would be a quiet crossing, like the one that had taken place in my head,\u00a0hence the silencing of<em> I Want to Be Alone<\/em> (also known as<em> Dialogue<\/em>) that Jackson C. Frank plays over the closing scene of <em>Electroma<\/em>; the end of <em>Two-Lane<\/em>\u00a0&#8230; had already\u00a0dispensed with sound, its final frames halted by burning. My intention to make the scenes accompany one another, to make them rub up against each other, involved a second act of manipulation: to slow down\u00a0the 35 second long sequence from\u00a0Hellman&#8217;s film until it\u00a0matched the 3&#8217;05&#8221; duration of the fragment from <em>Electroma<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>As I reflected later,\u00a0linking the\u00a0two films in this way really wasn&#8217;t so random, indeed, it was\u00a0more than justified. Both belong to the quintessential journey film genre, the road movie, in its definition of a particular physical journey and his existentialist draft. Both opt for a minimalist mise-en-scene and feature a pair of\u00a0friends who do not say much to one another\u00a0(in the case of <em>Electroma<\/em>, remember that it&#8217;s a mute\u00a0film\u2013not a silent one\u2013starring Hero Robot No. 1 and Hero Robot No. 2, who commence the\u00a0film aboard a Ferrari 412 with the registration CALIFORNIA HUMAN). At the time of their release, the\u00a0two films\u00a0generated mixed reviews, however, over the years they have ascended\u00a0the cult film podium, each with its own\u00a0intense and surprising\u00a0musical footprint. It should be noted, though, that\u00a0even though both films came from filmed\u00a0concerts, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel De Homem-Christo set\u00a0aside their usual band name\u2013Daft Punk\u2013and along with it the temptation to include their own music\u00a0in the soundtrack. The nine songs that we hear are by other artists\u00a0(Brian Eno, Jackson C. Frank, classics like Chopin and Haydn &#8230;). Similarly, in\u00a0<em>Two-Lane Blacktop<\/em>, with its songs by The Doors, Chuck Berry, Arlo Guthrie and Kris Kristofferson, music by\u00a0its protagonists (the singer-songwriter James Taylor and the failed drummer of\u00a0The Beach Boys Dennis Wilson) didn&#8217;t make it\u00a0into the soundtrack<\/p>\n<p>In the end,\u00a0the meeting of the two sequences was\u00a0made possible by a simple split screen device. It was the first time I edited\u00a0a video-essay, my first <a href=\"http:\/\/cinentransit.com\/category\/6exposedcinema\/\" target=\"_blank\">Exposed Cinema<\/a> feature. In actual fact, it was the first I had a go at any sort of editing.\u00a0The spark that had caught fire\u00a0in my head met these two blazing fragments, and suddenly it was as if the golden robot of <em>Electroma,<\/em> after witnessing\u00a0his partner&#8217;s suicide and himself catching fire\u00a0&#8211; using the rays of the sun magnified by\u00a0a piece of glass from his cracked helmet &#8211; were to have succeeded in a final gesture of igniting the cellulose acetate\u00a0of T<em>wo-Lane Blacktop\u00a0<\/em>also&#8230; So one could also think the images in this way. This experiment and game, which had been to rub two independent blocks of film together, re-contextualized them in a relationship with one another <em>as road movies<\/em>\u00a0and as narratives of a particular odyssey whose drifter characters keep moving with their eyes on\u00a0the horizon (one on foot, the other at the steering wheel). The End, in both films, catches them both <em>en route<\/em>, in the\u00a0middle of the action, on the move, and overexposure\u00a0(whether to sunlight or to projection mapping)\u00a0will provide the reason for their extinction.\u00a0Ashes to ashes, and fade to black.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/files\/2014\/09\/CL1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-760 size-full\" title=\"Frame grab from INFLAMES (1)\" src=\"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/files\/2014\/09\/CL1.png\" alt=\"Frame grab from INFLAMES (1)\" width=\"725\" height=\"392\" srcset=\"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/files\/2014\/09\/CL1.png 725w, https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/files\/2014\/09\/CL1-300x162.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 725px) 100vw, 725px\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/files\/2014\/09\/CL2.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-761 size-full\" title=\"Frame grab from INFLAMES (2)\" src=\"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/files\/2014\/09\/CL2.png\" alt=\"Frame grab from INFLAMES (2)\" width=\"735\" height=\"398\" srcset=\"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/files\/2014\/09\/CL2.png 735w, https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/files\/2014\/09\/CL2-300x162.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 735px) 100vw, 735px\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/files\/2014\/09\/CL3.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-762 size-full\" title=\"Frame grab from INFLAMES (3)\" src=\"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/files\/2014\/09\/CL3.png\" alt=\"Frame grab from INFLAMES (3)\" width=\"735\" height=\"398\" srcset=\"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/files\/2014\/09\/CL3.png 735w, https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/files\/2014\/09\/CL3-300x162.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 735px) 100vw, 735px\" \/><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/files\/2014\/09\/CL4.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-763 size-full\" title=\"Frame grab from INFLAMES (4)\" src=\"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/files\/2014\/09\/CL4.png\" alt=\"Frame grab from INFLAMES (4)\" width=\"735\" height=\"398\" srcset=\"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/files\/2014\/09\/CL4.png 735w, https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/files\/2014\/09\/CL4-300x162.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 735px) 100vw, 735px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u00a9 Covadonga G. Lahera, September, 2014<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em>Translated and edited by Catherine Grant<\/em><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h2>Biographical note<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Covadonga G. Lahera<\/strong> is a film critic and journalist. She is the co-founder and co-editor of the Spanish film website\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/cinentransit.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Transit: Cine y otros desv\u00edos<\/i><\/a>. She has contributed to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.blogsandocs.com\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Blogs and Docs<\/i><\/a>,\u00a0<i>Caim\u00e1n Cuadernos de Cine<\/i>,\u00a0<i>Diario de Levante<\/i>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/lolajournal.com\" target=\"_blank\"><i>LOLA<\/i><\/a>,<i>\u00a0Gobshite Quarterly<\/i>,<i>\u00a0La Furia Umana<\/i>,<i>\u00a0<\/i><a href=\"http:\/\/contrapicado.net\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Contrapicado<\/i><\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/elumiere.net\/lumiere_web.php\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Lumi\u00e8re<\/i><\/a>,<i>\u00a0<\/i><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.asiared.com\" target=\"_blank\">Asiared<\/a>.<\/i>\u00a0She has\u00a0trained as a video editor and has edited audiovisual essays as well as\u00a0a number of\u00a0music videos\u00a0and short films. She took part in the professional encounter \u201cNew media, new critic\u201d at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.s8cinema.com\" target=\"_blank\">(S8)<\/a>, 5\u00aa Mostra de Cinema Perif\u00e9rico de La Coru\u00f1a, and was part of the first FIPRESCI jury at the Seville European Film Festival (<a href=\"http:\/\/festivalcinesevilla.eu\/es\/\" target=\"_blank\">SEFF<\/a>). She is a committee member of\u00a0the Catalan Association of Critics and Cinema Writers (<a href=\"http:\/\/accec.cat\" target=\"_blank\">ACCEC<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Covadonga G. Lahera, INFLAMES.\u00a0Originally published\u00a0as\u00a0&#8216;Electroma \/ Carretera asfaltada en dos direcciones&#8216;, Transit. Cine y otros desv\u00edos, July 2, 2009. Online <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/reflections\/reflections-on-av-essays\/covadonga-g-lahera-on-inflames-2009\/\">Continue Reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Covadonga G. Lahera on INFLAMES (2009)<\/span><span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":132,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-772","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P4VcpT-cs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=772"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":801,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/772\/revisions\/801"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/audiovisualessay\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}