Frank Film

Frank Film, Frank Mouris

Frank Film link

This 1973 experimental animation uses stop motion cut out magazine images. The sound track is layers of Frank's voice over one another. It starts with one voice counting down from 1972, while the other introduces the man, Frank, and the film as a series of images which the film-maker had collected for five years or so. Beginning with different shifting television screens, the diverse images flash on the screen.

There is a relation between the narrative of the man's childhood and the lists of seemingly unrelated words, and the images. The word list is almost a stream of consciousness word memory of items which come to mind when remembering, with intuitive links to other words, and a tendence towards illiteration and words starting with f where possible.

The counting voice moves through a series of holy men and holy days, matching the images, as the narrative voice mentions his calvinistic protestant work ethic of his childhood. It continues with other things that start with f, such as fried eggs, fish, fluffy, first-day-of-school (which coincides with the other voice talking about school).

A list of all the women he remembers runs behind his memories of girls as he talk of his school days.

He also creates a list starting with free, such as free association, free loving, free from pain, free from sin, free wheeling, free school, free state, free market, free-while-this-offer-lasts.

He describes his process of getting to the point where he wanted to be a film-maker.

The numbers return but going up this time, as he says this is the end and the film finishes.

An interesting element of this soundtrack is that there is no emotional tone set by a musical introduction, you are left listening to the voices to decide your own emotional response. I found myself in an analytical mode of listening, shifting between listening to the more linear narrative and the word lists, so I never heard the whole story of the narrative. The sound quality was not so good, so I struggled to understand the words, and wondered which I should be listening to at any one moment. Yet the images, the story and the word lists built up a picture of Frank's life which works on many layers, the visual playful images, the intuitive free word association, and the traditional story-telling, as you might hear a friend tell their story. It is intimate without being over emotional, it feels very personal and universal all at once. It feels like listening to your brain work and being able to choose between the left brain or right brain mental approaches and the visual also.