Girl With a Movie Camera - An audience member's opinion

DISCLAIMER:
I know nothing about dance and am a huge advocate of story. More than likely I am not qualified to give an opinion on the performance. That being said, here's my opinion. It could well be wrong.

Cool dancing

Cool images

But where's the story?

It could well be that the lack of a story is the whole idea. It could be that the independence of each section is intended to reflect each shot in a montage thus emphasising the role of director/camera in the construction of reality in any performance/film. As an added bonus this would fit within the original framework of Man with a Movie Camera (there was to be no story).

However if this is the case they seem to have missed a very important point - the advantage that being in control of these shots gives the director. They are able to arrange them in such a way as to convey any message they desire.

Additionally the if the argument is that the removal of story is necessary to comply with the original Man with a Movie camera the argument doesn't work. The original film also avoided theatre (here we have dance) and intertitles (here we have lines read aloud to the audience). Staying away from story to maintain purity is pointless if the performance is already tainted by other compromises (In fairness the inclusion of theatre is a necessary component of the new performance but intertitles are not. If you are prepared to make one unnecessary compromise how can you justify not making others?)

The absence of a clear ongoing story is a shame as a story is so there for the taking. All that would be required is a restructuring of the events.

The key messages seem to be:

Cameras operate in a contrived reality

The real world is messy

Montages allow for the odering of images in the most advantageous way

The camera is a mechanical eye

The girl with the camera needs to adapt to keep pace

While these messages are currently delivered vocally they don't reliably tie into the following or preceding section. One very clear example being the use of the idea that real life is messy and unstructured, difficult for a mechanical eye to capture. What follows is perhaps the most structured section of the entire piece. Mechanical movements done in time to Daft Punk's Technologic in costume reminiscent of office workers. Rather than convey the messiness of life this section seems to reinforce the structure of office work.

If the messages and performances were restructured to move through a logical order we could create a story where the girl with the camera triumphs

The camera is a  mechanical eye

(Demonstrate with the RGB scene and anything similar)

Cameras operated in a contrived reality

(Demonstrate with well controlled scenes (probably the ones in the dance hall), the camera on the bungy cord being one example)

Montages allow for the advantageous ordering of images - probably link with previous

The real world is messy

(Here the real world footage might be appropriate, preferably show the camera unable to keep pace somehow)

The girl with the camera must adapt

(show the camera working within its limitations to produce great results - one way to achieve this could be to include the current camera on a bungy cord scene here. This could echo back to a new camera on a bungy cord scene where the dancers are doing things on stage at anytime except when the camera is on them. This would show the camera missing the messiness of real life)

There are also some areas of confusion

- the repetiion of nologic at the end of the technologic song - is this deliberate or poor editing?

- the see through people entering the theatre at the beginning - is this deliberate or poor editing?

- the dancing being close-to-but-not-actually synchronised between the video and the stage - is this some kind of statement or some kind of error?

- The conflict of voice and music at the start - sometimes the voices of the dancers are barely audible over the music. This is an area in need of improvement.

Overall though the performances are strong and the images and movements are visually interesting. A strong experimental performance piece.