FILM: Guerillere TalksYEAR: 1978
DIRECTOR: Vivienne Dick
PINBALL MODEL(S):
Space Odyssey (1976, Williams)
Eight Ball (1977, Bally)
Big Hit (1977, Gottlieb)
Evel Knievel (1977, Bally)
GAME LOCATION(S): Arcade
NOTES: The 'No Wave' creative movement of the late 1970s in New York was earmarked by a breakdown and outright rejection of aesthetic boundaries. Films such as this segment from Vivienne Dick's debut filmmaking effort, demanded not only a new way of engaging with art, but new ways of talking about it as well.
On one hand, 3.5 minutes of anti-narrative footage featuring a pinball player and a mostly-unintelligible soundtrack would seem to align this segment with the 'actuality' shorts of early cinema. However, this kind of realism was not incidental, but rather took on a new kind of meaning in its outright resistance and rejection of cultural and commercial aesthetic normalcy.
Pinball, with its historical reputation as being an entertainment outlet of marginalized youth, takes on a somewhat ironic quality here, as the camera visually resists the anarchic essence of an aggressive and frantic counterculture. Instead, the soundtrack alone imbues this essence, while the lens surveils the relative calm surrounding the space of the pin-table and its player.
