Notes from International Postmodernism by Hans Berttens and Douwe Fokkema

Fokkema Douwe, Bertens Hans, (1997), International Postmodernism, USA, John Benjamin's Publishing Company

2. Postmodernism in the other Arts

• return of the many headed monster strenching into many Art forms
• crosses many boarders and develops within artistic fields

2.3 Postmodernism and Film - James Peterson

• approach relationship between cinema and post modernism is to list basic qualities of psotmodernism art and how films exhibit those qualities
• cinema itself is a complication as there is no such thing as 'the cinema' but a number of cinemas - broad term
• most emphatic expression of the high modernist aesthetic in cinema was avant-garde
• 'minimal film making'
• 'neo poetic cinema' - approach of modern film form modelled roughly on modern poetry, a retrospective strain
• the compilation of film - new works made by re - editing footage taken from old documentries, television commercials, etc
• "The affinity between the compilation film and assemblage and appropiation in other medias makes this the most characteristically postmodern strain of contemporary avant - garde film making." (Peterson, 1997: 143)
• "The post structuralist, and by extension the post modernist, is skeptical about the ability of representations to capture aspects of the real world." (Peterson, 1997: 143)
• second form of post modernist documentary is that content of representation is not reality but another representation fragments of found footage and sound - the avant - garde
• popular narrative cinema is metaphorically post modern exhibits significant fragmentation superfically or impurity
• schizophrenia - response to the pressures of contemporary life
• "The contemporary horror genre provides an extraordinary number of examples of metaphorically post modern cinema because it so often concerns the literal fragmentation of the body." (Peterson, 1997: 143)