MY MOVIE WITH NO KISSING By

Christopher Bannister

My Movie With No Kissing is a ten-minute experimental film that attempts to

problematize the linkage between resemblance and affirmation of the representative bond

in film (specifically in the cinematic kiss) while at the same time still evoking various

emotions that could surround a kiss. The film refuses traditional concepts of narrative,

character, and climatic gestures to convey meaning. Instead, the film will use non-

narrative, improvisational acting to develop a series of fragmentary scenes based on short

prompts. Each of the scenarios will lead towards a kiss but the main actors will never

kiss; instead, the climax will be the intrusion of re-presented screen-kisses. Each screen-

kiss will leave a trace in the form of a faint, repeating, superimposition of itself over the

subsequent acted scenarios. As the film progress, the simultaneous traces of screen-kisses

will slowly overwhelm and cover the main actors.

The central concern that inspires this film is Michel Foucault’s concept of

resemblance and affirmation of the representative bond put forth in This is Not a Pipe.

Discussing the paintings of René Margritte, Foucault posits a central principle in the

western painting as being the “equivalence between the fact of resemblance and the

affirmation of a representative bond”1 For Foucault, resemblance is a relationship of

representation that categorizes a representation by its closeness to the original object, and

affirmation is the hidden discourse in resemblance that affirms that the representation is

the object it resembles. (i.e. We point to a figure that resembles a pipe and state

affirmatively, “This is a pipe.”) Resemblance is in opposition to similitude, which refers

to a process of equation. With similitude, there is no hierarchy of original and copy;

Fig. 1 – Screenshot of Rice/Irwin Kiss

(1896)

instead, there is simply a series of autonomous items that are not ranked but linked by

similarities and repetition.

My Movie With No Kissing takes up Foucault’s terms to inspire an investigation

into issues in filmic representation and resemblance. The kiss is chosen as what I see as a

fertile site for investigation into some of these issues. The act of kissing is on one hand

loaded with meaning (love, passion, a synecdoche for the sexual act), but, on the other

hand the screen-kiss can be seen as vacuous and problematic because it consigns the kiss

to generic tropes while at the same time hinting at the affirmation that the screen-kiss “is

a kiss.” The goal of my project is to make visible the paradoxes and alienation inherent in

the screen-kiss and explore alternative filmmaking techniques that I could hopefully

apply towards future films that seek to represent subjects.

Creative Plan

Treatment

My Movie With No Kissing begins with the silent replaying of a portion of the

Rice/Irwin Kiss (1896), the first filmed kiss (Fig. 1). A small

portion of the black and white footage plays as Rice and

Irwin approach towards a kiss, but before their lips meet, the

film cuts back to black. The visuals return with the first of

the acted scenarios that occur in a dimly lit industrial space

that has a bed, a table, and a bathtub. The male actor and

female actor perform the first of a series of improvised

scenarios. The scene draws the actors towards a kiss, but before their lips meet, a found-

footage clip of a kiss is cut over the actors. On the soundtrack, the audience can barely

make out what seems to be the main actors consummating their kiss. The film returns to

the actors in another scenario. The actors, location, and costumes are the same, but the

actors are not playing the same characters. Although the scene is similar to the previous

scene, the two scenes refuses to fit narratively. The scene is complicated by a faint

superimposition of the previous found-footage kiss that refuses to go away and loops

over the main actors. In this second scene, again, before the main actors kiss, a different

found-footage kiss cuts in. It adds itself as a trace on top of the first found-footage kiss

and both are superimposed over the main actors when the film returns to the next

improvised scenario. The cycle continues between with each scenario leading to a

presumptive kiss, but interrupted by found screen-kisses that layer over the subsequent

film. The film climaxes in a painterly abstraction when the main actors are no longer

visible and the film ends.

Acting/Directing Style

I have chosen to call the main acting in the film improvised scenarios, but more

specifically, the scenes will be developed based closely on an improvisational method

called Composition. Composition is a method that theater directors Anne Bogart and Tina

Landau developed and describe in their book The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to

Viewpoints and Composition. The two directors forefront an improvisational acting

practice that puts emphasis on the specific structural components of tempo, duration,

kinesthetic response, repetition, shape, gesture, architecture, spatial relationship, and

topography.2 I am particularly interested in this practice because it is an acting/directing

process that does not push actors to resemblances of character and story. I do not want

my actors to be falling into the affirmative trap of acting a certain way because “My

character is like this.”

Instead, in Composition, you develop the work based on series improvisational

assignments. The process has four main stages. Rehearsals begin with a discussion of

foundational issues. The director and actors collect source fragments and materials. The

materials are used to inspire improvisational scenarios, and finally, the scenarios are

refined and organized into the piece.

I will discuss with my actors my overarching questions of representation,

resemblance and how the kiss will be the anchor for our explorations. Then, we will work

through collected materials that will be prompts for improvised scenarios. I have attached

a series of poetic fragments that I have already written that can be one element of

improvised scenarios (Appendix A.) I also have developed a series of writing prompts

(Appendix B: THIS IS NOT DONE YET) that the actors will respond to so as to add

their materials that relate to the kiss. I will also bring in news articles, photos, music, etc

that relates to the kiss and will encourage the actors to do the same. (A selection of the

print elements I have begun to collect can be found in Appendix C: NOT INCLUDED IN

ELECTRONIC VERSION)

This collection of materials, prompts, etc. is not designed to be “originals” for the

actors’ performances to resemble. Instead, the collection of materials is a collection of

prompts for similitude. In the improvisational practice, each actor will be assigned to

work with a certain source items to prompt their performance in a rather abstract way.

Two actors will be coming at the improvisation from a different prompt; so, the scene is

not about resembling an original idea of script, story, or character, but combining

simultaneous performances that exist next to each other in interesting ways. The hope is

that in working this way, the film will embrace some level of refusal of the resemblance

of character/narrative-based acting will at the same time creating performances that are

arresting and emotionally evocative.

Furthermore, the choice of improvisational acting is a strategic choice. Normally,

the style encourages an affirmation that the actors are closer to a “real.” Thus, my film’s

use this style seems paradoxical. My goal is to use that paradox, to use the expectations

of affirmation and resemblance in the acting style and then refuse affirmation and

resemblance in the film as a whole. The paradox between the acting style and the film’s

ends will hopefully create a certain level of rupture in the discourse of affirmation just as

René Margritte’s paintings employ traditional techniques of painterly resemblance and

then turn them on their head.

Cinematography and Visual Editing

The improvised scenarios will be shot on 16mm black and white film and then

transferred to digital video. I have chosen black and white because based on tests I have

done with the concept, the desaturation allows for more possibilities in matching footage

to screen-kisses of various eras. Shooting in black and white also allows me then to use

color from video of contemporary found kisses as an asthetic device. I will highlight the

conflict between the found kisses and the acted scenarios by keyframing and surging the

colors using digital animation techniques as if the layers of kisses are each fighting to

come to the top.

The shooting style of the improvised scenarios will be a hand-held, vérité style

shot mostly in close-up. The lighting set-up will be minimal with larger areas of darkness,

using practicals wherever possible as if the film is a documentary shot in a dimly lit

room. Just as the improvisational acting style evokes a certain level of resemblance and

affirmation that I can then disrupt. The camera style will do much the same. Hand-held

close up camera style will resemble especially the camera work in the intial scenes of

Faces by John Cassavettes.

The found sequences will be superimposed using digital editing techniques.

Specifically, I plan to edit in final I will manipulate and key-frame the levels of opacity,

color, and video effects to achieve progressively more

painterly and abstract composition. The inspiration for the

visuals towards the end of the film will be somewhat

similar to the painterly, abstract effects that Stan Brakhage

achieves by layering footage in some of his films. (An

example of this layering effect from tests I have done can

be seen in Fig. 2)

Sound Design

As with all the elements of the film the goal of the sound design is to create

similitude. The sound design will begin somewhat naturalistic to the scenes of the main

actors. As the initial screen-kisses interrupt, the sound of what seems to be the main

actors consummating the kiss should persist. However, as the film progresses the sound

design will begin to slip from naturalism and resemblance. Scenes will start with synch

sound and then drift into seemingly unrelated voice-over. Static, noise, and appropriated

sounds from mass-media will progressively intrude.

Location

Figure 2 – Sample shot for tests for

My Movie With No Kissing

As a location, I have elected to use an industrial, warehouse space that has a bed,

a table, and a bathtub. The abstract space is one that refuses a certain level of

resemblance. Like the acting, and camera style the location choice is about misreading.

The bed, the bathtub, and the table all initially evoke certainty of location. (This is a

bedroom, a bathroom, a dining room) And, I hope that because of the close-up camera

style intially will hide the entirety of the space so that it does resemble a bedroom,

bathroom, dining room, etc. Yet, little by the little the oddness of the space will only

become clear throughout the film. The assumption of resemblance will slowly be

destroyed as the audience begins to glean traces of the former locations from previous

scenarios. The audience will realize that the space is not really anything, but a

construction. I also chose the particular props because they all evoke to me locations of

screen intimacy. The warehouse space that houses them should evoke a disjunct between

the intimacy of the areas the props create and the industrial coldness of the overall space.

Structure

Symptoms was originally inspired by the experimental films of Maya Deren and

Stan Brakhage. Specifically, the film takes up the tradition of what P. Adams Sitney

terms the imagist film3 where a simple gesture is isolated and then progressively has

more and more lateral or foreign material introduced around the central action. (As

examples, Sitney cites Meditation on Violence by Deren or Dog Star Man by Brakhage.)

In my film however, the central action is not an actual gesture that the actors perform.

Instead, it is the footage from screen kisses. In this use of found footage and juxtaposition

by layering, the film also draws structural inspiration from experimental filmmakers who

work similarly with appropriated footage Nam June Paik.

Theoretical Background

The theoretical basis for My Movie with No Kissing comes from two strains. Of

course, I have already referenced that the film is intimately interested in the Foucault’s

notions of affirmation and resemblance. Yet, the other aspect of what I am interested in

and perhaps why I think it is important to look at a problematize the passive acceptance

of resemblance and affirmation draws on the concepts of Guy Debord.

Affirmation of the representative bond is a silent discourse that Foucault

perceives in representation by resemblance. Foucault describes it as such:

“Let a figure resemble an object (or some other figure), and that alone is enough for there to slip into the pure play of the painting a statement - obvious, banal, repeated a thousand times yet almost always silent. (It is like an infinite murmur - haunting, enclosing the silence of figures, investing it, mastering it, extricating the silence from itself and finally reversing it within the domain of the things that can be named.) “What you see is that.”

Affirmation of the representative bond is the discourse that encourages the viewer to

point to Magritte’s painting Ceci n’est pas une pipe (Fig. 3) and point to the central figure

and say “This is a pipe.” (Despite any claim of the text to the contrary.) What Foucault

points out is that this creeping affirmation is a lie.

This is not a pipe. Once we look past the initial

impulse to point to the drawing and label it a

pipe, we can of course easily correct ourselves

because “it is quite apparent that the drawing of

the pipe is not the pipe itself.”4 But, erasing the

spell of resemblance and the affirmation of the

representative bond is, in fact, not easy to move beyond or rupture. As pointed out by

Figure 3: Ceci n’est pas une pipe by René

Magritte (1926)

Foucault’s description of the affirmative discourse inherent in resemblance, the discourse

naturally hides itself, reverses, and restates itself.

However, Foucault upholds René Magritte’s paintings as works that take on the

difficult bond between affirmation and resemblance in a unique way. Foucault celebrates

Magritte for

“Dissociating the two [resemblance and affirmation]: disrupting their bonds, establishing their inequality, bringing one into play without the other, maintaining that which stems from painting, and excluding that which is closest to discourse-pursuing as closely as possible the indefinite continuation of the similar, but excising from it any affirmation that would attempt to say what is resembled.”5

For Foucault, what is remarkable about Magritte’s painting is that they excise the

affirmation of resemblance, but they do not do it by moving immediately towards pure

abstraction. Magritte’s paintings, at first, seem to invite the spectator to look for

resemblance. The figures in his paintings seem to exactly resemble certain items. The

figure in Ceci n’est pas une pipe seems to have been created specifically to invite the

discourse of affirmation, “This is a pipe.” But, on further investigation the paintings

reverse themselves. They disrupt those bonds of resemblance and affirmation. The

paintings remind us that resemblance should not lead to affirmation because the

affirmation is always a lie. A painting never “is a pipe.” Instead, Magritte’s paintings

invite us into a world where the audience must give up the search for the original.

The paradoxical discourse that Magritte’s paintings invite can be seen in

Foucault’s analysis of Les Deux mystères (Fig. 4). Magritte’s

painting contains a easel that holds a painting (or perhaps a

blackboard) with a similar figure to that of Ceci n’est pas une

Figure 4 - Les Deux mystères by René Margritte (1966)

pipe. But, in the upper left hand corner hovers a second figure that resembles that same

familiar pipe. Foucault describes the myriad of questions the painting raises:

“There are two pipes. Or rather must we not say, two drawings of the same pipe? Or yet a pipe and the drawing of that pipe, or yet again two drawings each representing a different pipe? Or two drawings, one representing a pipe and the other not, or two more drawings yet, of which neither the one nor the other are or represent pipes? Or yet again, a drawing representing not a pipe at all but another drawing, itself representing a pipe so well that I must ask myself: To what does the sentence written in the painting relate?6

Magritte’s painting turns the simple communicative value of the visual image on its head.

The painting, despite its almost hyper-clarity (there should be nothing easier than

affirming those pipes), invites the viewer into the complexities of representation. It

forgoes simple resemblance because the viewer cannot easily establish which pipe is the

original and which is the copy. Instead, it invites the audience into similitude. There are

simply two similar, autonomous figures that do not draw meaning from some central

original.

My assertion is that film is a medium that trades on representation by

resemblance. For many, the power of film is in its resemblance, its “closeness to the

original.” Although Foucault’s arguments were developed with regard to painting, it

seems that the concepts apply to film also. We look at each movie scene where actors

perform the gestures that resemble kissing and state (perhaps more strongly than when

looking at a painting), “That is a kiss.”

My film seeks to create a similar rupture that Magritte’s paintings create. The

initial scenes with the actors will make use of resemblance. The use of an improvisational

acting style and a vérité camera style will hopefully begin to invoke the discourse of

affirmation. The actors will not sound “scripted,” and it will look almost like a

documentary. Both of these aspects are traditional hallmarks of film resemblance. But, as

the affirmative statement begins to enter to say, “These are two lovers who are going to

kiss.” The film will cut in the found footage kisses. The goal is to create a disruption

similar to the questions that Les Deux mystères evokes in Foucault’s reading. Are we

watching a couple that was about to kiss, but then was rudely interrupted by this old

footage of actors kissing? Or, are these actors somehow a representation of the thoughts

of the couple’s kissing in the footage?

The battle for primacy or centrality of meaning is the essential movement of the

film. But, I do not plan to resolve one track as the original. Instead, the film is designed to

be a progression of similitude. It is a series of repetitions of couples, of kisses, of almost

kisses, of obscured kisses, and ultimately, none of the pieces have a right to sole control

of the screen. Instead, they will just be layered on top of one another. The end result will

be a screen that is abstraction.

I have decided to lead towards this visual chaos and abstraction to engage my

second core theoretical inspiration. I am concerned with what happens to the spectators

when we receive these affirmative images so easily, and my concerns I see as essentially

in line with Guy Debord’s concept of alienation of gesture due to the reception of

commodified representations. In Society of the Spectacle, Debord states,

“The externality of the spectacle in relation to the active man appears in the fact that his own gestures are no longer his but those of another who represents them to him. This is why the spectator feels at home nowhere, because the spectacle is everywhere.”7

For Debord, the spectacle is the base unit of the current structure of society where people

are not only alienated from the fruits of their labor, but even there leisure, desires, and

gestures become arranged to give power and profit to others. The simplest example of

this is in media. (Although, Debord vehemently argues against the spectacle being limited

to just media.) People use media such as television or movies for leisure and relaxation;

yet, watching movies and television creates profit for someone else. So, whereas Marx

warned of a society where workers were becoming alienated from their labor because

they worked to create profit for someone else, Debord expands Marx’s analysis to point

out that in the contemporary society of the spectacle people are alienated from their very

selves because everything that we do creates profit and power for others.

If we, for example, take the gesture of the kiss. Debord argues that there is an

external spectacle that represents kissing to us. This spectacular kiss is not designed to

represent kisses that resemble our kisses nor represent things as they are. Instead, the

spectacle seeks to represent a kiss to us and manipulate kissing in whatever way it is that

can use our desire for and infatuation with the kiss to create profit and power for the

spectacle.

I realize that Debord is perhaps creating an overly dramatic meta-narrative in the

society of the spectacle. Yet, especially as a media-maker, I wonder what consuming the

generic screen-kisses (or generic resemblant representations in general) does to the

audience. Screen-kisses may be benign fantasies. But, there is always the discourse of

affirmation. The pictures moving at 24 frames a second of two actors gesturing as if they

were kissing says to us, “This is a kiss.” Ultimately, that discourse has to in some way

compete with any other notion of what a kiss is. So, perhaps, Debord is postulating that a

person’s kisses become “no longer his but those of another who represents him.”

It is my engagement with Debord’s theory that leads me to have the film progress

into overwhelming abstraction. In the end, I want the actors that are initially seen to

suffer the same fate as Debord’s man “who is at home nowhere, because the spectacle is

everywhere.”8 Also, the audience of my film essentially goes through a similar

experience. The audience is denied “a home” of easy affirmation by the progressively

layered spectacles. I realize that my film is spectacular itself and there is no way to

escape the spectacle. But, I hope to at least make the experience of the spectacle

somewhat visual and create a temporary discourse around and problematization of what

is normally hidden.

Conclusion

I am making this film because I have for most of my filmmaking career been

interested in the effect that the images we as filmmakers create have on both subject and

audience. I feel that it is worthwhile to spend time in this project directly confronting and

exploring some of those issues. This film is a chance for me to experiment with different

techniques of directing, acting, etc and see what alternative possibilities there may be for

filmic representation. My hope is that the film is not purely an academic exercise. As I

mentioned at the outset, in denying affirmation and making visible the alienation of

resemblance, I still hope that there is an arresting and interesting element to the film.

Although viewers may not connect with a cohesive unity I do still want them to connect

to the performance, the visual elements, and emotive traces. I want to believe that formal

and experimental film can still in some way speak to experience even if it is saying

multiple things.

Appendix

Appendix A: Poetic Fragments to be used as potential prompts for scenarios

These fragments are not designed to be read as dialogue. They are prompts that

will be used as a starting point or one similitude of meaning in a scenario. They have

been left deliberately mis-numbered and partial to reiterate their fragmentary and partial

nature.

-----

I have been waiting For sleep to come or some night to take these thoughts But, dim sacrifice occurred at the celluloid kiss Scenario 1 We are dead in each others lives. The veil of time and life plans already in motion Seem insurmountable. She’s endured thorns in her heart that she still bleeds from Immortality in memory Scenario 2 It fell apart Scenario 5 No question is answerable unless you act

Scenario 6 I spent my money on a lottery tickets and a $40 prostitute Scenario 8 We are the only ones here

And, you’re trying to screw us over Scenario 9 I remember How desperately you Quietly lost your mind To the memory of the piano You used to play so well Scenario 10 You had me listen to Bob Seeger records I didn’t understand. You said you’d get a Polaroid of your own someday Scenario 12 Check the windows Say a prayer I’m going back to sleep Scenario 13 We are not who we think we are Scenario 14 Please be quiet. Just stop talking. I am not angry at this waste we’ve loved ourselves into.

Too far in to finish with any sense of dignity, not far enough for hope of reaching any shore. Scenario 15 The man walks around the house. I mean I spent a lot of time here a year and a half ago and it’s just gone to shit. The drugs are making beads of sweat roll down his face. Scenario 16

There she was We had nothing to say Scenario 17 There are bodies rising up out Of morbid waters on the Mississppi tonight Unburied they rot and swell And rise Scenario 18 Two people sharing a meal “Since you’re beautiful, don’t tell them what you know. Don’t tell them anything because they will desecrate some sacred place inside of you where that beauty must dwell” Scenario 19 Sometimes I forget how much I despise you.

I resent how the chaos of your life affected mine. The way that you dissolved into chaos and disaster and then kept intruding into mine. I kept telling you to leave, and you kept coming back each time. Wondering, yelling, it was just ridiculous. I hated you when you did that. I have an anger fully inaccessible and unnamable. And, I do not dwell in such places. -- I am never going to apologize and you should never expect one. You do not deserve one. You will never have power over me. I resent the fact that I had to ask you for help in the first place. Scenario 20 I went to a party last night. There was a wonderful singer singing about before she was born I wonder that she knew herself so well while I barely knew how to use my wet feathers. It was ridiculous to compare but I did

none the less Scenario 21 If I could have spoken for you Scenario 22 You muttered something about the birds-mating that left me crying myself to sleep last night. --- Perhaps a truly passionate love, a sublime love that’s reached a certain peak of intensity is simply incompatible with life itself - Luis Buñel

Works Cited 2. Michel Foucault, This is Not a Pipe trans. James Harkness (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1983), 34.

1. Anne Bogart and Tina Landau, The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition (New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2005), 8. 3. P. Adams Sitney, Visionary Cinema, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 26.

4. Ibid, 19. 5. Ibid, 43.

6. Ibid, 16. 7. Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle accessed at http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/en/display/16, Chapter 1:30. 8. Ibid.