''Remedial Reading Comprehension'' is an

experimental An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs whe ...

short film A short film is a film with a low running time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of not more than 40 minutes including all credits". Other film o ...

Owen Land George Landow (1944 – June 8, 2011), also known as Owen Land, was a painter, writer, photographer and experimental filmmaker. He also worked under the pen names Orphan Morphan and Apollo Jize. His work is also known to parody the experimental ...

, produced in 1970.

Description

''Remedial Reading Comprehension'' takes the form of an

ephemeral Ephemerality (from the Greek word , meaning 'lasting only one day') is the concept of things being transitory, existing only briefly. Academically, the term ephemeral constitutionally describes a diverse assortment of things and experiences, fr ...

educational film An educational film is a film or movie whose primary purpose is to educate. Educational films have been used in classrooms as an alternative to other teaching methods. History Determining which films should count as the first educational fil ...

.Dixon, Wheeler W. (1997) ''The exploding eye: a re-visionary history of 1960s American experimental cinema,'' SUNY Press, p96 Land combines found colour footage, a mock

television commercial A television advertisement (also called a commercial, spot, break, advert, or ad) is a span of television programming produced and paid for by an organization. It conveys a message promoting, and aiming to market, a product, service or idea. ...

about

rice Rice is a cereal grain and in its Domestication, domesticated form is the staple food of over half of the world's population, particularly in Asia and Africa. Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice)—or, much l ...

, text from a speed-reading manual, and footage of the director running, with the superimposed words, "This Is A Film About You... Not Its Maker."Robin Blaetz (2002) "Avant-garde Cinema of the Seventies," ''History of the American cinema,'' Volume 9, University of California Press, p473 The speed-reading text is taken from "Pupils into Students," an essay written by

Jacques Barzun Jacques Martin Barzun (; November 30, 1907 – October 25, 2012) was a French-born American historian known for his studies of the history of ideas and cultural history. He wrote about a wide range of subjects, including baseball, mystery novels, ...

and published in ''Teacher in America (1945).''Conner, J.D. (2009) "What Becomes of Things on Film on Film: Adaptation in Owen Land (George Landow)," ''Adaptation,'' 2(2), 161–76 ''Remedial Reading Comprehension'' forms part of the

structural film Structural film was an avant-garde experimental film movement prominent in the United States in the 1960s. A related movement developed in the United Kingdom in the 1970s. Overview The term was coined by P. Adams Sitney who noted that film artist ...

movement of the 1960s and 70s, in that it considers "film itself as subject matter, its basic structures rather than its actual physical presence."Cook, Pam (1981) "The point of self-expression in avant-garde film," ''Theories of authorship: a reader,'' Routledge, p271-281 The film opens with a woman dreaming about an auditorium of people, who are sitting down as though about to watch a movie. In this scene, Land's camera assumes the point of view of the

movie screen A projection screen is an installation consisting of a surface and a support structure used for displaying a projected image for the view of an audience. Projection screens may be permanently installed on a wall, as in a movie theater, mounte ...

itself.Dixon, Wheeler W. (1995) ''It looks at you: the returned gaze of cinema,'' SUNY Press, p1-2, 56-7

Reception

''Remedial Reading Comprehension'' is considered a prominent and important work in the

movement. Scholar Fred Camper wrote that the film “does not try to build up an illusion of reality, to combine the images together with the kind of spatial or rhythmic continuity that would suggest that one is watching “real” people or objects. It works rather toward the opposite end, to make one aware of the unreality, the created and mechanical nature, of film.”

Wheeler Winston Dixon Wheeler Winston Dixon (born March 12, 1950) is an American filmmaker and scholar. He is an expert on film history, Film theory, theory and Film criticism, criticism.Bill Goodykoontz, December 23, 2012, USA TodayDefining Tarantino Accessed Aug. 25, ...

wrote that "the film acts upon us, addressing us, viewing us as we view it, until the film itself ''becomes'' a gaze, rather than an object to be gazed upon.” J.D. Connor considered ''Remedial Reading Comprehension'' to be an "odd intervention" in the structural film movement, in that it retains "the Romantic interest in dreams and personae" away from which avant-garde cinema had been moving.

References

External links

* {{IMDb title, 0478015, Remedial Reading Comprehension 1970 films American avant-garde and experimental films 1970 short films 1970s avant-garde and experimental films 1970s English-language films 1970s American films English-language short films

Description

Reception

See also

References

External links