Amoeba Music

The form of a movie is something that most people don't pay much attention to, and yet it is the form that constructs your experience. Since the beginning of cinema, the arrangement of scenes, props, music and even the body language of the cast, sparks some kind of response in the viewer. I thought I had seen all there was to see in terms of form, even on the abstract and experimental level. For me, experimental films are like visual poetry, or projected dream sequences. They are usually short and nonlinear, and the "meat and potatoes" is in the style, not so much as the story. While watching The Bloody Child it became clear that a new form was being introduced to me—a feature length experimental film that is so pure in its development it resembles a morbid essay film.

The general stance on experimental film is that it no longer exists. I'd argue that the filmmaker who directs experimental film no longer exists, or is at least very hard to find. The whole idea behind it is to work on a low budget, typically with whatever materials are available, and come up with something that is free from being classified as any other genre. Low budget films are now considered indie or avant-garde and are not as artistically driven as they once were. Many of them are simple comedies or romances, which is not a bad thing. However, once you decide to get into the game of shooting something linear, you are assigning all the rules of form that go along with it. True experimental films have no rules, and that's what makes them so exciting, and also a threat. In terms of essay films, my claim that this resembles one might not make much sense at first. But if you've seen films like Baraka or Koyannisqatsi, you'll notice that they capture something miraculous about our world. They are visually breathtaking and usually have scores by conductors like Phillip Glass, both of which this film does not have, so don't compare it in that sense. What it does capture is the barbaric nature of violence and insanity. Menkes took a story straight out of a newspaper, let it simmer, and then interpreted what it meant to humanity in a film.