From July To Keaton and All the Roads Between.

First off I would like to state I have yet to really be moved by any sort of "experimental" film of any kind, so just to get the frame of mind of where I am coming from on this.

Anyways back on topic. I would like to start with a quote that I feel had a great application to what we watched in lecture. "A joke is the arbitrary connecting or linking, usually by means of verbal association, of two ideas which in some way contrast with each other." Freud made reference to this quote in his work "Jokes and there relation to the unconscious." I think this is a great way to look at July's film The Amateurist. At first I didnt know what to think of this film and it really stumped me. First off I thought it was maybe supposed to be humorous with the numbers and the reflection of those shapes from the person shown on camera, but as I watched further I got a eerie feeling, and was confused. I kept trying to look deeper into the film to understand its meaning as a viewer. Which brings me back to the quote, was the reaction from the woman talking to a woman on a TV and thinking she could hear her the kind of association Freud was referring to? Freud also refers to looking at a joke from new angles and perceiving it as something more, which ironically was what I was trying to do the whole time, it really puts the point Freud was trying to make into perspective. I was talking with someone after the screening about his views on it and we discussed the discovery of what if we are what she refers to as amateurs , and when we try to find a deeper meaning in something that is foreign to us if that was the intention of the film. Since she discusses with an off camera person about how she is a professional... it really made me think more of her intentions and actually sparked some interest in me. Overall I am glad I got to see this piece of work and actually enjoyed analyzing it more then Keaton's film.