ABSTRACT
As I initially remembered the film extract, it started with a close-up of a smiling young woman doing a gymnastic exercise swinging clubs, and then the camera pulled back so that the spectator could see more and more women all doing the same exercise. When I looked at it again, however, I found that there was always more than one woman visible on screen and it didn't start with the smiling woman at all. However, even if its construction is more complex, the dynamic of the sequence is that it goes from the individual to the mass with the smiling woman as the key performer. What the extract actually starts with is a mobile close-up shot taken from above and slightly behind another young woman who is bending slightly forwards kneeling on the grass. She is performing a cyclical exercise where she swings around to one side and reaches up and out so that at the furthest stretch she is upright at the top of her circling movement. This then carries on round and down the other side, getting smaller and less extended until she is back down and curled forwards again. As she moves, the camera also moves around from behind to one side, and when you see her face, her eyes seem to be almost closed, her head back almost as if in prayer or meditation. The music accompanying this is quiet - high, piping woodwinds in a lilting, folksy melody. This shot quickly fades into another and then another showing that this woman is part of a line of young women - all of whom are perfectly synchronised - and that there are other rows in front and behind. The camera angles for these are steep, so that in one shot the lines of women cut in sharp diagonals across the rectangle of the screen; in others the camera is low so that the young women are shown as strong shapes against the clouds which have been photographed (the film is black and white) with a filter so that they stand out sharply against the darker cloudless parts of the sky. Again the women's faces are neutral, and if their eyes are not entirely closed then their focus is inwards. These women are concentrating on the physical experiences of the flow of momentum and breath that make up the movement sequence. This scene fades into a shot of another gymnastic exercise done by women standing with bent knees and consisting of lateral stretches. Then there is a more definite cut to the exercise with the clubs
featuring the woman with the lovely smile. The progression in the extract is therefore from an exercise kneeling, through one with bent knees to one standing upright.
