The Maverick Lipsett
	The first piece of cinema immediately, and perhaps unwittingly, signals the fate of the moving image as an industry: workers leaving a factory, as captured by the Lumières. Not long after that fateful day in 1895, movie-making became a business employing dozens or hundreds on any single production, and as this pursuit spread internationally, the cinema became a formidable industrial machine. Departments were organised to manage individual duties on a production -- camera, lighting, grip, transportation -- and unions were created to protect the workers; filmmaking grew into a massive and complex operation requiring a fortune to fund. But like the Lumières, some filmmakers prefer to work in the simplest formation: a camera and a camera operator. In the current state of cinema, a film made by such a modest-sized crew would be considered independent, resisting the industrial production methods that have become the norm. Also, a film made on a budget considered paltry against the millions of dollars spent on mainstream feature films is usually classified as independent. 21-87 (1964) was created by Arthur Lipsett (credited with "sound and picture") with George Croll as re-recordist, and Tom Daly and Colin Low as producers -- certainly not the sort of team standard on a mainstream feature film. For many of Lipsett's films a camera was hardly required. Or even film stock. But as budgets being low or high is relative, and as many independent films mimic the big-budget/mainstream/Hollywood production structure, how does one define "independent cinema"? One could consider semantics: "Independence" is freedom from another, usually larger, body. "Independence" is the fringe. "Independence" is the marginalised. And if the larger body is mainstream thought, practice, and communication, then 21-87 is an utter aberration. Lipsett's film not only resists the movie industry in its making, but also challenges the spectator's view on its content, understanding of the filmmaking process, and perception of the film medium. The title is unconventional and ambiguous, requiring the spectator to interpret its meaning. "21-87" does not summarise a story or suggest a theme the way many mainstream titles do for marketing and packaging. The title is explained by a snatch of dialogue during the film: "Somebody walks up and you say, 'Your number's 2187, isn't it?' Boy, does that person really smile," but even this explicit pronouncement of the title is confounding. After viewing, one agrees that such an austere, impersonal title is most suggestive of the mechanisation of humans in 21-87. 21-87 is typical of Lipsett's cut-and-paste method. Working as an editor at the National Film Board of Canada, he assembled scraps off the cutting room floor, re-contextualising other people's footage into incisive criticism of our relationship to technology, modern alienation, and society's fragile structure. Films like 21-87, Very Nice, Very Nice (1961), and Fluxes(1968) are seemingly random collections of unrelated images, but careful viewing uncovers intention in the editing. In 21-87 the numerous shots of people walking about in an urban centre create a sense of anonymity. Several shots feature men playing with guns, with the last shot of the sequence being of a man feigning death. With the tact of Eisenstein, Lipsett synthesises the separate shots to comment on our acceptance of violence as game. A truly random assemblage would suggest absence of thematic intention by the filmmaker, but as 21-87's editing proves, Lipsett certainly has something to say. His experimental editing is combined with non-synchronous sound, which often counterpoints the images to alienating effect. The opening shots of a woman on a trapeze, men sawing a corpse, and a man moving jerkily like an automaton are juxtaposed with the whirring, clicking, humming sounds of a factory; human actions are rendered mechanical by the audio. In contrast to the idea of industrialised humanity, wherein people are presented as soulless, 21-87 plumbs our desire for spirituality. Gospel singing, religious chanting and prayer, and talk of the bible accompany images of random shoppers, a man on a horse diving into a pool, and models parading fur coats on a catwalk. The images suggest consumerism, absurdism, and objectification, while the audio imparts salvation. In one sequence, the shoppers are given this narration: "I believe in the return of Christ... I don't believe in mortality, [I believe in] immortality." The one moment that most concisely conveys the theme of 21-87 is the shot of a man in a spacesuit accompanied by religious song and prayer. For a film made in 1964, this image carries immediacy and excitement -- a celebration of science. But when coupled with the sound, this moment heralds the triumph of technology as much as it beckons the loss of faith. Is Lipsett suggesting that science is the new religion? Have humans become so mechanised that spirituality is rendered useless? Can technology and theology co-exist the way they do in 21-87? Or, further, will science and religion criticise each other, the same way 21-87 is critical of both? The production of 21-87 is a rebellion against traditional filmmaking; by collecting found footage, Lipsett does not require a camera. By using non-diegetic audio, Lipsett rejects the mainstream norm of synchronous sound. Like his contemporary Norman McLaren, Lipsett expands the vocabulary of filmmaking technique. But whereas McLaren's scratches often do not represent any recognisable forms, Lipsett's films consist of records of the observable world. Considering that Lipsett gathered his film strips from the NFB, one can assume that much of his material originated as pieces of documentaries. One can regard 21-87 as a collection of moments of reality -- that is, an anthology of documentary. But 21-87 does not represent the conventional definition of documentary cinema because it does not attempt to record real events or real places or real things; rather, 21-87 strives to communicate an idea. And in articulating the idea, Lipsett requires his audio. It is the relationship between image and sound that sends 21-87 to the realm of experimental film; the tension between image and sound is perplexing and unorthodox, and, ultimately, abstract. And that is where 21-87 achieves its greatest coup against the mainstream: the film defies genre, straddling the categories of documentary and experimental cinema -- already two styles of filmmaking independent from the juggernaut known as fictional narrative film. Independence from genre and mixing of styles suggest that 21-87 can be categorised as uncategorisable -- that is, post-modern. The entire film is pastiche. The entire film is re-contextualisation. In form, content, and production, 21-87 is a potent example of a post-modern film. The structure is non-linear and one senses that the film could end after two minutes, after five minutes, or continue for an hour. There is no beginning, middle, or end and the forward-moving action of linear narrative is absent; the religious sound-bites are used throughout the film and, rather than being only a motif, serve a cyclical effect, allowing entry into the film's theme at any point. The abstract ideas of 21-87 are most accurately communicated when one sums up the parts. The images and sounds come from innumerable sources and have limited meaning when separate. Like Eisenstein's montage, meaning can only be had when the spectator fuses together the various visual and aural components. Therefore, intellectual discourse between spectator and 21-87 is required in order for the film's content to be understood. To further the post-modern approach to 21-87, one must remember that Lipsett did not shoot the images for his film, but instead collected existing pieces of footage. The conceit of a film-gatherer (collecting) rather than film-hunter (shooting) suits Lipsett in his making of 21-87; one can imagine Lipsett rifling through the bins of the NFB editing suite, perhaps searching for nothing in particular and not realising the value of a shot until sitting down to splice. In one stroke, his technique synthesises the roles of director and editor so that neither title alone is applicable -- Lipsett's role in 21-87 is purely that of filmmaker. Or, for a post-modern slant, he is a curator of images and sounds. If Lipsett's approach to filmmaking is avant-garde, then surely the spectator must view his films with a new awareness. As there is no narrative in 21-87, the spectator's engagement relies on every instance of image and sound -- every moment is processed in and of itself, rather than fitting in relation to other moments in a narrative structure. If Lipsett were to create various versions of 21-87, each cut differently than the other but using the same images and sounds, his themes would remain intact. To jumble a narrative film in that same manner could lead to nonsense. 21-87 encourages the spectator to re-assess the process of communication, especially as it relates to linear structure. 21-87's independence from linear structure challenges the premise of cinema being a time-based medium. Theatre, dance, and music -- all performing arts -- require time for communication to occur. Cinema usually follows that context to an extent. These forms provide a succession of events that, in their relationship to one another, impart a story or idea or sensation. It is when the individual events are composed, organised, that meaning is compounded and clarified. As Eisenstein professed, one shot of bayonets has limited meaning, as does one shot of a woman screaming. But the combination of the two shots communicates horror and oppression. The two shots cannot be shown simultaneously -- they must be shown in succession, which requires time. And this is where cinema differs from the performing arts. An actor's single action on stage has limited meaning, as does a dancer's gesture or a pianist's keystroke. Each single event and action requires successive events and actions in order to communicate fully. Cinema, on the other hand, is a collection of individually engaging images, as if thousands of photographs were strung together. As photography is a fully functioning medium unto itself, and as it is not a time-based medium (in presentation), cinema confuses the distinction between time-based and non-time-based art. Each frame within a film can express meaning by itself (although, again, as montage theory suggests, richer and more accurate meaning is expressed when shots are combined). Each frame of any film could be blown up and exhibited, and the spectator would find some degree of engagement. Indeed, 21-87's meaning is most dynamic when viewed from start to finish as Lipsett intends, but each of its individual moments is evocative by itself. 21-87 is a mosaic of images and sounds with each piece being interesting, and the whole being profound. 21-87 certainly does not experiment with time to the extent of Chris Marker's La Jetée (1962), a veritable collection of still photographs rendered cinematic. But as stated earlier, 21-87 could be re-edited in numerous variations and still communicate effectively because it is non-linear. La Jetée, on the other hand, must retain its structure because it is narrative. With 21-87, one can enter the film at any point; with La Jetée, one can not. Lipsett's film is independent from the confines of narrative and time. 21-87 rejects the conventions of film production and industry, marking a new form of cinematic communication. The film is a maverick: avant-garde and independent. -- Norman Lup-Man Yeung October, 2005
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