Films can touch an audience's deepest emotions and memories. They create a shared experience that may evoke laughter, tears, anger, even fright, communicating ideas unlike any other traditional fine-art medium. Milwaukee's Mary L. Nohl Fund recently awarded five of seven 2008 individual artist fellowships to filmmakers, and another to a pair of installation artists who use their works to enhance film sets.
Is film redefining the traditional concept of fine art?
Each Nohl Fellowship winner finds an answer and inspiration from the ability to, as emerging artist Frankie Latina puts it, "escape into the imagination through the art of film."
Besides Latina, honored filmmakers include Tate Bunker, Xav Leplae, Iverson White and the Special Entertainment team of Bobby Ciraldo and Andrew Swant, who all envision film from diverse artistic viewpoints.
Several factors impact and define film perhaps more than other fine arts. Modern technology affects film by adding a sense of immediacy. Due to the affordability and accessibility of cameras and the now commonly held MP3s and cell phones that produce videos in an instant, film has evolved into an acceptable and increasingly familiar way to express oneself, affording a greater number of people the chance to explore fine art through film.
Every Nohl winner acknowledges that this phenomenon introduces additional filmmakers into the art world, a plausible explanation for the high percentage of honors given to filmmakers in 2008. All emphatically agree that film has been defined as a fine-art form since the mid-20th-century, but retains an entertainment element uncommon to classical art. Theaters distribute film as entertainment, while museums present art as an educational experience.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
As White explains, his films serve dual functions. "I am making a work of art, collaborative, and if it's not entertaining there's no reason to look at it."
Bunker adds, "The public is starving for movies of substance… We're not creating art but discovering art."
Each Nohl Fellowship filmmaker discovers his or her art with a unique, personal perspective using traditional or classical production techniques and concepts. For Bunker this means revealing the story primarily through the moving picture, a visual medium where the unfolding narrative relies less on dialogue and more on images.
Leplae intends for his series of full-length films to feature performers in exotic cultures, which he hopes will provide fresh awareness to the audience beyond what they presently assume.
White produces award-winning films, shorts that usually span 15 minutes or less, through the more classic style of a narrative story revolving around love and relationships.
Latina expresses himself through feature-length films that revel in the exquisite light and shadow portrayed in every scene, captured by the camera to become a museum-quality print.
Ciraldo and Swant explore the advances in technology through YouTube video distribution, a green screen that computer-generates the background to become a virtual set design, and animation-a structure employed and validated with the first Oscar nomination for an animated documentary, 2008'sWaltz with Bashir.
Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg, 2008 established artist winners of the Nohl Fellowship, construct detailed and realistic miniature installations that draw viewers into a set, asking them to suspend their disbelief and enter a mysterious world similar to a filmmaker's. Their installations translate into small sets, props that have been appropriated for films. This again transforms the definition of fine art, now seamlessly incorporated into film.
All of the Nohl Fellowship winners provide their own conclusions by presenting examples of their award-winning styles in fall 2009 at UW-Milwaukee's Inova Gallery instead of at a theater. Viewers may decide if and how the current definition of film as a fine-art medium evolves in the 21st century. Whether film creates cultural art, an escape from society's realities or pure entertainment, there are few other art forms that can provide this experience.
As White explains, "This experience of seeing with an entire audience… that's not the same as going out in the community to view art. … There's just something about hearing 100 or 200 people gasping or laughing at the same moment."
