INTERPRETATIONS

Associative presentation

Or on the prophets of documentary and experimental film

Film theorists (like Ante Peterlic) say that in associative film presentation the motives are lined up according to associative principles of similarity or difference, metaphor or metonymy or, for example, links based on extrafilmic knowledge. The clearest examples of this type of presentation are most frequent in experimental films, although some documentary films (like Krsto Papic’s A Small Country Spectacle, 1971) are also associatively presented. Certainly, once documentary film starts to lose its referentiality due to the rhetorical associative organization — like, for example, in films Mirila (1997) by Vlado Zrnic and Before the rain (2004) by Mario Papic — we can say that we are dealing with a distinctively modernist documentary film, closer to the border between documentary and experimental film. Associative type of presentation features shocking joints of contrasting shots, for example in Dead Man Walking (2002) by Tomislav Gotovac. Another frequent occurrence is that of similar or identical scenes or shots, or continual presentation of unchanged or almost unchanged images, for example in Sleep (1963) by Andy Warhol or Gotovac’s Glenn Miller I/High school yard (1977). The importance of extrafilmic knowledge is again evident in films by Tom Gotovac such as Dead Man Walking (which can only be understood in the context of Gotovac’s opus) and Prophets (2004; which demands good knowledge of history and visual culture). Certainly, associative presentation is often linked with narrative presentation (for example in Godard’s works), while Eisenstein, despite narrative organization of many of his films, in his theoretical works focuses mostly on the associative potentials of film.

Nikica Gilić