The Grand Bizarre 2018 Directed by Jodie Mack
A kinetic journey through the graphic motifs of textiles paired with figures and landscapes to explore the technological development of fabric production and consumption alongside systems of visual and spoken language. The piece investigates recurring graphic symbols and how their cross-cultural appropriation functions within a global economy.
[9]
From my TIFF Wavelengths coverage for MUBI:
A feature-length culmination of the forms and ideas that experimental animator Mack has been exploring for the past decade, The Grand Bizarre is also a song in praise of cosmopolitanism. Using travel as its essential framework, The Grand Bizarre examines the world through textiles—a frequent motif in Mack’s work. We see rugs, fabric swatches, scarves, and tapestries come to life through stop-motion and single-frame movement, often flickering by in mirrors and at certain locations in the image. They are colorful banners representing the patterns and timeless order that underpins the apparent chaos of daily life.
But then, Mack is also working with a dual meaning of the word “material.” She shows us…
"We, like lace, make up the very fabric of society, the tapestry of togetherness that consists of holes, but also of threads that tie us together until the end of time. The more we embrace our fragility and shared sufferings, the more boundaries we overcome, until the light can’t help but pour on in."
- Kayla Severson
74/100
Second viewing, up from 71. "Greatly elevated by its final movement," I tweeted from TIFF '18, "which makes visceral the amount of painstaking work involved in crafting both each barely-glimpsed swatch of fabric (implicitly) and the film itself (explicitly). I even got a little weepy." As it turns out, having experienced that denouement makes the rest of the movie even more impressive, not just retroactively but when revisited: Rather than merely enjoying the riot of colors and patterns, as before, I also kept an involuntary mental tally of how many soft rustles and double clicks each rapid-fire montage would entail—an exercise that quickly became overwhelming and stayed that way for the duration. (Granted, the same is true of all…
i thought that that one scene in the long day closes would be the longest i'd ever spend looking at carpets in a film and i'm very happy to be proven wrong
In her pre-film introduction, director Jodie Mack described this film as being about the relationship between the fundamental units of textiles, language and music - the thread, the phoneme and the beat. While watching The Grand Bizarre (which, by all accounts, is an extraordinarily pleasurable experience*), I kept this in mind, and I struggled with it a little. I kept thinking back to Wasteland No. 1, which I had seen earlier in the night- the sense of disconnect I felt between the thematic/visual strains there was only heightened here. I could see, plainly, Mack incorporating her ideas, but only rarely could I see them interact with each other in any sort of dialogue. It seems to get sidetracked in ways…
Made me feel all kinds of things (and I have never seen my turtle vibing so hard before).
None of us are cut from the same cloth.
It's a pretty cool thesis that loses some momentum by the end as it starts to run out of things to say. The music is either hit or miss but the ambient additions are a nice choice.
一方面是利用这个形式唤起现代人类发展历史的进程与演变，从单一织物到后现代语境表达，从原始节奏到电子迷幻乐使用，能想到的阶层与角度都覆盖其中，包括社会形态上演变以及意识形态发展与变化，甚至能看到多个时代混沌，错乱，反思内容。另一方面再次使用图片，运动方式组合成时间的递延，有效再次编制所谓影像运动与影像时间结合，再次验证大脑认知和构建影像-时间-运动-传递-能量，这一递进方式，通过组合素材选择变化以及素材内容递进，完成织物素材的堆积与进化，乃至表现出未能准确表达之语境。必须用抽象方式打开，并模拟这层知觉。但我们总是后知后觉的，包括导演也是，实验式探索依然显得影像表达略为枯燥，单一。
First impression: how does one person gain access to so much fabric, and music in 11/8 time shouldn't slap this hard.
Afterward: this was an absolute joy. Playful, colorful, even funny at times. It encouraged in me a deep appreciation for something (textiles, prints, etc.) I don't have a habit of noticing in my everyday life, which in turn encouraged me, on a broader scale, to question why I don't appreciate certain beautiful things ("the little things," one might say). It's a little long for a movie of its type, but the sound design helps immensely in ushering it along. Seriously, the music is fantastic, an electronic orchestra of found sound reminiscent of Herbert or Matmos. The Brakhage-style ending (thinking mainly of Mothlight) had me in a submissive daze, but epileptics beware.
I feel lucky to be alive to see it, even tho its full historical Geist is pinned to seeing it now anyway, hell yeah baby that’s Art
My response to this movies was quite ambivalent. First, I found the fusion of stop-motion textiles and inventive soundscapes quite exhilarating. This is clearly a super-talented artist at the top of her game. Unfortunately, the magic faded away gradually. Granted, my interest in abstract art and the avant-garde and semiotics and such is quite slim, so this would have worked better for me if it were a 10-minute short rather than an hour-long feature.
But beyond that, something about this movie’s celebration as a profound rumination on globalization kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Globalization, really? Where are the workers who made all these textiles? Where did Jodie hide them? The thing smacked a little of frivolous sightseeing. Not…
If you like avant-garde films that consist mostly of flashing images of textiles and stop motions of said textiles moving around, which while narrative-less is actually a discourse on the homogenization of patterns and ethics of the textile industry. Then, boy oh boy do a have a film for you.
Appropriately for a film about the textile industry, this is a film to wrap yourself around. There is a rhythm where Jodie Mack keeps the collages busy and fast-paced before she detours into a much smaller, quieter moment to characterize her theme of textiles being essentials to our way of life and also extensions of it.
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