The Alternative Way of Expression in Experimental Cinema

The Alternative Way of Expression in Experimental Cinema

-- Viewer Experience of Eric Baudelaire’s Sugar Water

        Like sugar dissolving in water, most of things in our daily lives are happening in an invisible and gradual process. The 72-minute video directed by Eric Baudelaire has just used this reference as a jumping off point (Planet Mag). The film starts with a scene of an enormous advertisement billboard painted in blue at a metro station in Paris, and ends in a completely same scene. At the beginning, a billposter man enters into the metro with a bucket, a package of posters and a ladder. He stops at the billboard and starts to stick four posters, which are four images of a car parking on the street. He keeps wetting and pasting throughout the entire film. The first image is about some cars parking along the street, which looks very peacefully. In second one, one of the cars turns into flames and then it is covered and surrounded by heavy smoke in the third image. By the last one, the fire is extinguished but the car has become burnt-out remains.

        During the whole movie, the camera is set up in front of the billboard without any movement, and continues to shot in only one take for more than one hour. There is no extra sound except the sound of the working poster and the noise of the train entering and exiting. Some passengers enter the scene, wait for trains for several minutes, and then, seem to leave in trains. They barely pay attention to the posters, and it is seemed that no one has realized the existence of the camera during that time. However, actually, it is easy to notice that these people are not real passengers but actors. During the process of pasting the five images, including four photographies of the burning car and

one blue paper which is used to cover the wall in the end. Defining every time the man starts with a new poster as a beginning point, and when he finishes pasting the poster as an ending point. The same people enter the metro with doing the same things in the same order for five times, which is a little queer and strange. However, it do make the movie looks like a circulation, although the sequence of the event presents in the images is chronological. The only scene which implies the passing of time is a man who is asked about what time it is and he replies in different clocks each time. This is one of the clues which shows the passing of time in this nearly static movie.

        A lot of artworks reflecting on the violence emerged after 9/11, especially made by American artists. It is obviously that Baudelaire’s purpose to hang on the posters and to make this video is for anti-violence and anti-terrorism. He typically addresses on the function of mass media in reporting news of violent events. It also shows the detached and indifferent attitude of common people towards these kinds of events in daily lives. We are too inured to make intense reactions to these accidents represented by media nearly every day. Like the passengers in the video, they just look the images as common wallpapers or meaningless advertisements. The film starts with the billboard painted and in the end, it is turned into blue again, which can be understood that things the photographic images represent can happen everyday around the world, just like a circulation. It is no doubt that Baudelaire is a good photographer to display an episod of violence by using four photographs.  However, it is tedious to make such a long film with monotonous scene and no moving of camera. It seems easy for audience’s attention to be dispersed and

become harder for them to concentrate on the photographs, which is the theme and major of the film. For instance, other famous experimental film like Empire of Andy Warhol. All the audience exit the cinema after 30 minutes on the first day of releasing. If there is no one to finish watching the film, how can the director to convey and express his or her ideas. Furthermore, it is too dramatic and ideal to manage all the movements and conversations of the commuters. Such as no one in the metro station with nothing to do pays attention to the pasting work, which is unreal and unfamiliar with our normal lives. It is obvious that the director instills his own will into the film.