Erewhon: Filming nowhere

Photographer Gavin Hipkins’ first feature film draws upon Samuel Butler’s anonymously published utopian satire Erewhon: Or, Over the Range (1872). It pairs a stream of evocative images with a voiceover narration from Butler’s text. In particular, it is in his exploration of Butler’s critique of the...

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Autor principal:	Laurence Simmons
Formato:	article
Lenguaje:	EN
Publicado:	Asia Pacific Network 2015
Materias:	Communication. Mass media P87-96 Journalism. The periodical press, etc. PN4699-5650
Acceso en línea:	https://doaj.org/article/6af18cb0be74484bb86d32990c1cb4cd
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id	oai:doaj.org-article:6af18cb0be74484bb86d32990c1cb4cd
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spelling	oai:doaj.org-article:6af18cb0be74484bb86d32990c1cb4cd2021-12-02T13:03:22ZErewhon: Filming nowhere10.24135/pjr.v21i2.1141023-94992324-2035https://doaj.org/article/6af18cb0be74484bb86d32990c1cb4cd2015-10-01T00:00:00Zhttps://ojs.aut.ac.nz/pacific-journalism-review/article/view/114https://doaj.org/toc/1023-9499https://doaj.org/toc/2324-2035Photographer Gavin Hipkins’ first feature film draws upon Samuel Butler’s anonymously published utopian satire Erewhon: Or, Over the Range (1872). It pairs a stream of evocative images with a voiceover narration from Butler’s text. In particular, it is in his exploration of Butler’s critique of the coming dominance of the machine in a post-industrial society that Hipkins’ film speaks to postcolonial New Zealand. Paradoxically, however, Hipkins employs the words of Butler’s text to free himself from the tyranny of narration and produce a film of continual interruptions, juxtapositions and breaks in perspective and mood. One moment we are asked to respond to the sublime grandeur of the New Zealand bush or mountainscape, the next to the banality of a rusted dripping pipe or a collection of car carcasses. Hipkins’ images acquire their power not because of their inherent qualities, but because they prove themselves to be transformable, that is, because they can enter into relations of composition with other images. Through its montage, Hipkins’ ‘cinema of thinking’ successfully combines the documentary nature of film—its recording—with its symbolic, evocative, ruminative capabilities, thus exemplifying Jean-Luc Godard’s dictum that all good fictions are documentaries and all good documentaries are fictions.Laurence SimmonsAsia Pacific NetworkarticleCommunication. Mass mediaP87-96Journalism. The periodical press, etc.PN4699-5650ENPacific Journalism Review, Vol 21, Iss 2 (2015)
institution	DOAJ
collection	DOAJ
language	EN
topic	Communication. Mass media P87-96 Journalism. The periodical press, etc. PN4699-5650
spellingShingle	Communication. Mass media P87-96 Journalism. The periodical press, etc. PN4699-5650 Laurence Simmons Erewhon: Filming nowhere
description	Photographer Gavin Hipkins’ first feature film draws upon Samuel Butler’s anonymously published utopian satire Erewhon: Or, Over the Range (1872). It pairs a stream of evocative images with a voiceover narration from Butler’s text. In particular, it is in his exploration of Butler’s critique of the coming dominance of the machine in a post-industrial society that Hipkins’ film speaks to postcolonial New Zealand. Paradoxically, however, Hipkins employs the words of Butler’s text to free himself from the tyranny of narration and produce a film of continual interruptions, juxtapositions and breaks in perspective and mood. One moment we are asked to respond to the sublime grandeur of the New Zealand bush or mountainscape, the next to the banality of a rusted dripping pipe or a collection of car carcasses. Hipkins’ images acquire their power not because of their inherent qualities, but because they prove themselves to be transformable, that is, because they can enter into relations of composition with other images. Through its montage, Hipkins’ ‘cinema of thinking’ successfully combines the documentary nature of film—its recording—with its symbolic, evocative, ruminative capabilities, thus exemplifying Jean-Luc Godard’s dictum that all good fictions are documentaries and all good documentaries are fictions.
format	article
author	Laurence Simmons
author_facet	Laurence Simmons
author_sort	Laurence Simmons
title	Erewhon: Filming nowhere
title_short	Erewhon: Filming nowhere
title_full	Erewhon: Filming nowhere
title_fullStr	Erewhon: Filming nowhere
title_full_unstemmed	Erewhon: Filming nowhere
title_sort	erewhon: filming nowhere
publisher	Asia Pacific Network
publishDate	2015
url	https://doaj.org/article/6af18cb0be74484bb86d32990c1cb4cd
work_keys_str_mv	AT laurencesimmons erewhonfilmingnowhere
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Erewhon: Filming nowhere

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