tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-157489752024-02-20T01:32:07.204+03:00b l o g . WAYS OF SEEINGYoel Meranda's blogYoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.comBlogger132125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-49042334290089620482020-06-16T19:33:00.005+03:002021-01-24T20:29:27.000+03:00Tsai Ming-Liang's "Rizi" (2020)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwZi18-ocTU1ORiw3EKMu81QT8WbgvuFtd3rtsVPTxcY99NCMpXUW2OfVYM0aEMKVMSDNvoQhWM4oLwIGUovTKvFZIcajd8rkdSVsvnbVFQ9J5KOPlAiKF4A5dkxWRhaAIAMp3OQ/s3721/RiziReview.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2676" data-original-width="3721" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwZi18-ocTU1ORiw3EKMu81QT8WbgvuFtd3rtsVPTxcY99NCMpXUW2OfVYM0aEMKVMSDNvoQhWM4oLwIGUovTKvFZIcajd8rkdSVsvnbVFQ9J5KOPlAiKF4A5dkxWRhaAIAMp3OQ/s320/RiziReview.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><p style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">My article on Tsai Ming Liang's new film </span><i style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Rizi</span></i><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"> (</span><i style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Days</span></i><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">) is published in the 14th edition of Film Parlato. It includes some comments and information on the shooting by the film's cinematographer Chang Jhong-Yuan. You can read it </span><a class="_e75a791d-denali-editor-page-rtfLink" href="http://www.filmparlato.com/index.php/numeri/14/item/300-the-last-things-before-the-last-2-rizi-days-tsai-ming-liang" style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #4a6ee0; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;" target=""><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #4a6ee0; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">here</span></a><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">.</span></p><p style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><i style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">Rizi</span></i><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">'s still one of the last films I've seen in a movie theatre (because of Covid19), and I truly cherish the experience, as I hope the article makes clear. </span></p><p style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><br /></p><p style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span data-preserver-spaces="true" style="background: transparent none repeat scroll 0% 0%; color: #0e101a; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">The above image is a painting I made at a point I was stuck about my article. I'm clearly not claiming that it's of any value but sharing anyway.</span></p>Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-39418244623975438092015-04-23T09:09:00.001+03:002016-01-06T02:19:24.452+02:00Michael Mann's "Blackhat": Vanishing into the AirYou can click <a href="http://www.filmparlato.com/index.php/numeri/2015-04-11-00-47-00/item/33-michael-mann-s-blackhat-vanishing-into-the-air#readmore" target="_blank">here</a> to read what I wrote about <i>Blackhat</i> for Lorenzo Esposito's new online journal <i>Film Parlato</i>.<br />
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<br />Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-31287030439305478172014-12-24T02:48:00.000+02:002014-12-24T11:46:22.469+02:00Wang Bing's "'Til Madness Do Us Part" (2013)Tag Gallagher <a href="http://tlweb.latrobe.edu.au/humanities/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr0300/tgfr09a.htm" target="_blank">mentions</a> that Rossellini once said, "from a very humble position you can revise the whole conception of the universe." I think one could even go further, and claim that one can change the conception of the universe only through a humble position. <br />
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In <a href="http://www.lafuriaumana.it/index.php/48-archive/lfu-20/186-michael-guarneri-i-am-just-a-simple-individual-who-films-what-he-loves-to-film-interview-with-wang-bing" target="_blank">his interview</a> with Michael Guarneri for <a href="http://www.lafuriaumana.it/" target="_blank">La Furia Umana</a> (one of the best film journals around), Wang Bing says: 'In my view, the most important thing to keep in mind is that a film is not a still image. Beauty in cinema is not something that you can stop and "immortalize"; it is not something forever frozen into one single exposure. Beauty in cinema is the perception of an ongoing process. As a filmmaker, I am interested in movement, in moving images, in the "evolution" of the real that is so difficult to capture and make visible.'<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhshlSnp1VbVqjqXeiMwO8n3lZOhjsu8aGiF28MrGetXEvXiiYNL128vAxjqY_7UOrKO6gOMMMs7blGCVgB2-cKuAoby5DghWNK5LitlxCMUIKN8Ikw7Y453wpeVTJv2C8VTGJK7Q/s1600/madness1.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhshlSnp1VbVqjqXeiMwO8n3lZOhjsu8aGiF28MrGetXEvXiiYNL128vAxjqY_7UOrKO6gOMMMs7blGCVgB2-cKuAoby5DghWNK5LitlxCMUIKN8Ikw7Y453wpeVTJv2C8VTGJK7Q/s1600/madness1.jpg" height="181" width="320" /></a> </div>
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No doubt, his <i>'Til Madness Do Us Part </i>is a case in point. It's hard to find beauty in a Wang Bing film, unless you start to accept, and work (as an active participant) with their limitations. One floor in a mental hospital, the walls, the bars, a camera with a slightly wide lens, slightly rounding everything. The camera shakes, sometimes it's dirty, sometimes contre-jour, emphasizing the dirt. But it doesn't matter, almost, since the cameraperson (or the editor) doesn't seem to care, there are higher stakes. And then, the form, seemingly unimportant, helped by the editing which does not rest on a specific narrative, or an identifiable thread, allows an openness where everything becomes of equal value, all elevated. Camera is a tool which records a shape of the reality. Through editing one can go beyond the real, let it evolve like Bing says, make the invisible visible. Even the mediocre music coming from the television can become ominous.<br />
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And then, when the camera leaves the place, it's both liberating, for
the eye and the mind (especially that shot with the mountain far
behind), but one also sees that there's no difference. In<i> 'Til Madness Do Us Part</i>, before we left the hospital, we have already
learned, to quote William Blake, "To see a World in a Grain of Sand /
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, / Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand /
And Eternity in an hour." Well, maybe in 3 hours and 47 minutes, and in this case it's tangerines instead of flowers... When we're out, we're still in a "prison", doesn't matter whether there are walls to keep us in. There are walls we can't get rid of, no matter how long we walk...<br />
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Then near the end, one begins to see surreal images, such as symmetrical bodies with two heads, or the light blue of the sky begins to have metaphysical aspects, almost out of the blue, so to speak. The hospital, which is at points a metaphor for the society, becomes a cosmos. How do we get there, I do not know. The film is so unpretentious and noncategorical that there are some narrative closures even, the two lovers embrace, despite the bars in between. <i>Pickpocket</i>? <br />
<br />Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-81418408600417009842011-08-21T06:28:00.000+03:002011-08-22T12:42:44.919+03:00George Griffin on Robert Breer<div style="text-align: center;">
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The film-strip above is from Breer's <i>T.Z.</i>, thanks to the Anthology Film Archives <a href="http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/collections/reference-library/stills/stills-by-filmmaker">collection</a>. Here's what George Griffin said about Breer on Frameworks:<br />
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'Breer's genius lay in, among other things, his casual approach to craft. He didn't work at; he played animation. As soon as I saw his paintings from the Paris years — so hard-edged, ordered, Olympian — I could see how film, as a vehicle of synthetic performance, pushed him off the cliff. He learned to fly by the seat of his pants, re-inventing our art with every new, effortless stroke. Lucky for us. Through him we got Arp's random discontinuities, Klee's indexical card miniature scale, Cage's not so silent silence, and all that modernist wit, irony, nonchalance. His work was always flavored by jolts of sly fun. It spilled beyond media into concrete, tangible objects: parodies of machines, propelled by the viewer's hand, or set in motion as snail-paced automata.<br />
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Breer was the prolific, generous form-giver: movement was his medium.<br />
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I will miss him.'<br />
<br />Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-87585663203163710222011-08-14T13:25:00.003+03:002011-08-15T11:46:21.181+03:00thoughts and memories after Robert Breer's death...<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial; font-size: x-small;"></span><br />
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When I first saw on Fred Camper's Senses of Cinema top tens <a href="http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/top_tens/archive00.html#camper">list</a> a movie called <i>Swiss Army Knife with Rats and Pigeons</i> by a guy I had never heard of, I thought Fred must be kidding... He was just trying to be eccentric or something...<br />
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A few years later, Fred projected five or six films of Breer's to me in Chicago. My first reaction was 'IMPOSSIBLE!'. These films were not humanly probable... I remember being unarmed by <i>69</i>, and then lost watching <i>77</i>.<br />
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I don't remember where I saw <i>What Goes Up?</i>, it had to be in Chicago, maybe Onion City or maybe it was Fred who screened it for me? I know I saw it again somewhere...<br />
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After 2004, in New York, I was working at the Film-makers' Cooperative (co-founded by Breer in the 70's), where part of my job was inspecting films, frame by frame. I was happy, happy, whenever I had to inspect a film by Breer, sometimes taking my time to do it very slowly, inhaling genius.<br />
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One day, I was working at the Coop, alone in the office. The phone rang. The voice said:</div>
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- Hello, this is Bob Breer.</div>
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- Robert Breer! You are my favorite film-maker!</div>
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- You must be exaggerating, young man...</div>
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- Oh, I don't know how to say how much I love your films, how can I help you?</div>
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etc.</div>
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This was my first, and only contact with him. He is still one of my two favorite film-makers, along with Rossellini.</div>
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That same day, I started writing a letter to him, but it didn't feel strong enough, so I never sent it. Now, I feel extremely disappointed with myself for not having the courage to share it with him at the time. I'm pasting it below, without any corrections:<br />
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Dear Robert Breer,<br />
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After talking to you on the phone today, I felt very bad since there was so much more that I could have and should have told you. It was such a great pleasure to talk to someone who is a real hero, someone who means much more to me than most other things in the world.<br />
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When I first saw “69”, the first film of yours I ever saw, my first reaction was: “IMPOSSIBLE, how can a human being have such sensitivity?”. After seeing many other films of yours, and having had the chance to look at many of them frame by frame at the Coop, I still believe that is completely true. Your films are beyond human consciousness.<br />
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In my website, I make comments about every filmmaker I like or love, but about you I only wrote the following: “Robert Breer might be my favorite filmmaker, I seriously lack the words to describe his work” THAT is very true, because your work, more than anybody else’s, are so cinematic, so much tied to the nature of cinema itself, that it is senseless to try to make sense of them in words, or any other different kind of expression. They are complete in what they are, they mean things that could only be meant in cinema, no other medium could translate it, and that is exactly why they mean so much. I cannot not admire the person behind those films...<br />
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I wish there was a way to express how much you have added to my life, how much you improved my sense of life and art, but there isn’t. I know it, I feel it, it’s THERE for those who would be able to see it and that’s all.<br />
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Unfortunately, I didn’t see any of your works other than film, but just reading about them was overwhelming enough. Can’t imagine what it would be like to experience them in reality.<br />
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Anyway, IF you ever need anyone to help you with making art, I would be more than happy to, I can’t imagine anything else more worthwhile to do with my time, and with my life. And if not, I hope you go on making, creating art, trust me they are expanding the consciousness of those who really can see what there is in them. <br />
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You might be one of the greatest people ever lived, and that is a fact you should keep in mind at any given second,</div>
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With Love, <br />
Yoel Meranda<br />
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A few years later, I attended the Robert Breer Essential Cinema screening at Anthology in 2006. I wrote some things again but never posted anywhere. Again, it didn't feel strong enough. Here it is, edited and updated for this post:</div>
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'If I had to pick one filmmaker to send his/her films to outer space, it would be Robert Breer.</div>
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Anthology does an amazing job showing these films every year; That such a small number of people attend is a tragedy. I wish there was also a program of his later films, which are only better.<br />
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Breer's films reflect the thought-process as well as any other work of art, and simply by forcing us to concentrate on the tiniest, in terms of time and space, they push the boundaries of our imagination. But then, what happens in any tiny detail is overwhelmingly intense, the thought-flight is unlike anything there was before Breer, the scattered rhythms are so revolutionary that they change what we define as beautiful.<br />
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The surreality of <i>Pat's Birthday</i>, the solemn look on those faces while the most absurd things are happening, the animals at the end... It feels as if there is no rhythm in it, as if the person cutting them is beyond human consciousness, while also being perfectly personal.<br />
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What about the bar in <i>69</i> that enters in and out of the frame, revolving, a joke on the imagined three-dimensionality of the screen, acknowledging it, using it to make rhythms, while showing something so absurd I cannot help laughing silently?<br />
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It is said that for Breer the basic unit of cinema is frame. But that would be underappreciating his real achievement, because what happens between the frames is very crucial too, so in some way he denies any possibility of any concept of 'unit' in cinema, his films prove that the cinematic time is continuous if the filmmaker makes use of the moments between the frames.<br />
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One of his films is called <i>Breathing.</i> It does not show anyone really breathing, but that film and all of his other films are very close to the complicated rhythms of breathing, which can be taken as a metaphor for any other happening in the universe, which happens with no sense of symmetry or order.<br />
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Robert Breer also uses the sound better than anyone else, his seemingly moody sounds vary all the time and a small change in pitch or tone seriously changes the way the image or the rhythm is conceived. Scientists will have to work for centuries to understand how the images and sounds are interrelated in our minds, but they will never be able to create experiences that make us aware of our weird nervous system that we think and feel with. Being intensely aware is one of the points of Breer's art.'</div>
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Since 2006, I've been in Istanbul, where I never had a chance to see a Breer film ON FILM, but I have a number of his films on good quality video.<br />
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Recently, on a trip to U.K., I stopped by in Newcastle to see the Breer exhibit at the Baltic, my first experience of his floats, and his paintings... It was a joy, an inspiration so great I didn't even know what to do with it... There were two films being projected on film at the exhibit: <i>Fuji</i> and <i>REcreation</i>. Saw both more than 5-6 times during the same day, never tired of discovering...<br />
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I wrote very little about Breer, because I have very little to say... His art speaks too forcefully, moves me from a place that's too deep within. For a long time, only thing I could say was what I wrote for my own Senses of Cinema top tens <a href="http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/top_tens/#meranda">list</a>: 'If frame is the unit of cinema, what happens between frames deserves higher attention.' I elaborated on this <a href="http://blog.waysofseeing.org/2010/03/about-robert-breers-films-and-his.html">here</a>.</div>
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Although I try to imitate Breer's rhythms in all of my videos, I made one that I believe somehow resembles Breer's films, <a href="http://vimeo.com/14561160">it</a>'s titled <i>moonalphabet</i>, but honestly I don't think it's good enough to even deserve to be dedicated to Breer... Oh also, there's <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0gAXl7PyRE">an unfinished animation</a> I attempted, completely inspired by Breer.</div>
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The image above is from Breer's <i>69</i>.</div>
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Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-44292039530835776982011-08-13T20:39:00.007+03:002011-08-13T20:46:04.715+03:00Robert Breer 1926-2011Here's the note Pip Chodorov wrote on Frameworks. The image is from Breer's <i>Blazes</i>.<br />
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Dear FrameWorkers,<br />
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Very sad to relate that Bob Breer passed away yesterday.<br />
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He was a good friend, a very funny man, and a great artist.<br />
He chose film, at a time when his painting career was taking off.<br />
He lived in Paris for ten years and showed at Denise René's gallery - big abstract paintings.<br />
Then he made a flipbook and got interested in abstract animation.<br />
He felt that his abstract compositions were maybe just steps in a continual flow of motion from one to another.<br />
In the 1950s, gallery artists didn't show films. (I guess that changed in 1966 when Warhol made Chelsea Girls).<br />
His fellow painters became big: Oldenberg, Lichtenstein, Rauschenberg...<br />
But Breer loved movement.<br />
He made sculptures that move v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.<br />
He made films that move very fast.<br />
He was ahead of his time.<br />
His films were not popular...<br />
He was an inventor.<br />
His father made cars (his father made the first streamlined car for Chrysler after having demonstrated, in the Wright brothers' wind tunnel, that their cars were designed to go faster backwards than forwards!)<br />
And his father also made home movies - in 3D - with a Bolex.<br />
Breer moved back to America and made experimental films that pushed film art into new directions.<br />
He was one of the founding filmmakers of the New York Filmmakers' Cooperative.<br />
He also made big sculptures that would creep around the art space, for example at Expo '70 in Osaka.<br />
He taught at Cooper Union for many years and sensitized a new generation of artists to experimental film.<br />
Over the last 15 years, many museum shows combined his paintings, moving sculptures ("floats"), and films. He felt that finally he could have a career as an artist and as a filmmaker.<br />
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We will miss Bob Breer.<br />
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-Pip Chodorov<br />
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Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-36550116016188182532011-07-11T01:24:00.006+03:002011-07-11T12:14:53.837+03:00Sidney Peterson's book: The Dark of the Screen<br />
Sidney Peterson, one of my ten favorite film-makers, published a book in 1980 titled <i>The Dark of the Screen</i>. It starts with the following haiku by Shikisha Fumei (or so it says in the book, Peterson constantly makes up facts throughout, following his surrealistic urges):<br />
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At a single match<br />
The darkness<br />
Flinches</blockquote>
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I really love the hilarious and imaginative title of the first chapter: "A Movie House is an enlarged camera Obscura for the sale of popcorn, a Darkroom for star-gazing right side up"<br />
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In the chapter titled "The Anxious Subject", Peterson also talks about how his idea of art was formed. Here are two paragraphs from there, written in his very idiosyncratic style. The <b>emphases</b> are mine.<br />
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'<b>It happened so slowly, the dawning of the idea that film could be an art. One had the experience but not the idea.</b> I vaguely recall an <i>Oliver Twist</i> in twelve reels (It had to be the Pathé 1909 version, if not the 1910 Vitagraph treatment, or, conceivably, the 1912 independent production with Nat C. Goodwin as Fagin) that was so grim it had to be something more than entertainment. When <i>Birth of a Nation</i> was being roadshown around the country, an uncle took me to see it in a theatre in Oakland, California, and it cost a dollar. I was impressed. The racism was water off the duck's back. I think it was the first time I had ever seen sheets used for anything but sleeping between or Halloween. A year later, at the Panama Pacific International Exposition, I saw Chaplin making something and <b>the seeds of future improvisation</b> were firmly planted. Rather later, I had a friend whose father, a Unitarian minister, was a friend of Vachel Lindsey, from whom <b>we had caught a, to me incomprehensible, passion for movies as something more than they seemed to be</b>. And then, in the early 'twenties, I remember being vaguely affected by Elie Faure's <i>Art of Cineplastics</i> in <i>The Freeman</i> (re-encountered more than a quarter century later in the San Francisco Museum of Art's <i>Art in Cinema Symposium</i>) with its vision of things to come;"<b>what the art of the cinemimic may presume to become if, instead of permitting itself to be dragged by theatrical processes through a desolating sentimental fiction, it is able to concentrate itself on plastic processes, around a sensuous and passionate action in which we can all recognize our own personal virtues.</b>" I'm no longer sure that I know what he was talking about but at the time Faure was an enormously impressive figure. If he chose to pontificate about movies, who was I not to listen? It was a curious period. A lot of Americans were feeling the need for a little rhetorical hyping to compensate for the lack of excitement in their own aesthetic preperceptions. It was part of an <b>alleged</b> national coming of age and if Frenchman wanted to extend our illusions by <b>envisaging an art of film that was not only "lively" but <i>plastique</i></b>, we were ready for it, whatever it might mean and however it might be understood by an art industry preoccupied with the need to straddle the gap between art and the imperatives of mass amusement, the need "to be dragged by theatrical processes through a desolating sentimental fiction."'<br />
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And a few paragraphs later:<br />
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'<b>"In his mind unfolds the whole story."</b> To which should be added the cry of Beaumont and Fletcher: <b>"Plot me no plots!"</b> Imagine a psychology based on the need for a narrative continuity as absolute as that of most film, in which a dénouement has the obligatory significance of a categorical imperative, becomes, in effect, the ground of knowledge, in which "how's your second act?" becomes a more important consideration than your family romance or lack of ego development. The idea is not unthinkable. It is implied in the ancient metaphor of the God-directed <i>theatrum mundi </i>and was explored by Burke in his <i>Philosophy of Literary Form</i>. I am not suggesting that babies be disposed of with their baths, merely that <b>there are continuities and continuities and that the dash to unscramble the egg and put Humpty Dumpty together again should be <i>contained</i></b>. The Elizabethan sensibility did just that with its fusing of the arts of painting and poetry. <i>Ut pictura poesis</i>. In Shakespeare what emerged was the stage-clearance scene as his structural unit, with scenes symmetrically grouped around a central scene, as in a triptych. The influence of emblem books, "talking pictures," enabled him to present characters as in a series of snapshots rather than, as in film, in constant motion. <b>Scenes were formally related by "mirroring" and other such emblematic devices. Whereby it became possible to emphasize the thematic material at the expense of a narrative continuity. </b>The whole process is eloquently set forth by Mark Rose in his <i>Shakespearean Design </i>and I wish I could have seen it thirty years before he published it.<b> I might have stumbled a little less in groping for a rational structure, conceiving of sequences as clumps of material with reflection repetitions </b>and such, serving, at least formally, the purpose of the stage-clearance.'<br />
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For more info, <a href="http://canyoncinema.com/catalog/filmmaker/?i=240">here</a> is Canyon Cinema's page for Sidney Peterson. The image is from Peterson's <i>Clinic of Stumble</i>, which I have not seen.<br />
<br />Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-90962463589284476142011-05-25T10:18:00.000+03:002011-05-25T10:18:26.770+03:00Fred Camper on Chris Welsby<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div>Chris Welsby is one of the underrated artists of cinema. His approach is revolutionary: he lets the rhythm of the film be truly shaped by the rhythms in nature. The following is Welsby's own description of his great film <i>Tree</i>; all of his films approach cinema in a similar way:<br />
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'The camera was placed on the flexible branch of a tree in a strong wind. The composition included both stationary and moving trees (a wooded landscape). The relationship of this landscape to the vertical and horizontal plane was maintained as much as possible. The camera ran continuously until all the film was exposed. The world is seen from the point of view of a tree as its branches sway to the rhythm of the wind.'<br />
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The following are excerpts from Fred Camper's <a href="http://www.fredcamper.com/Film/Welsby.html">article</a> on Chris Welsby: Blowin' in the Wind.<br />
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'Chris Welsby's approach is less physical: he makes landscape films whose framing, camera angles, or edits are triggered by the sun, wind, or tides. The resulting images and rhythms are often quite beautiful but never smooth or predictable, lacking the predigested quality found not only in Hollywood movies but in many poetic films. These are not about getting sucked into a story or being captivated by artist-made abstractions. Instead his films not only contemplate nature — watching the clouds or the tides — but reflect on cinematic mechanisms as a metaphor for industrial civilization. Can our machine-made world enhance our experience of nature? Or are we irretrievably alienated from it by our own creations?'<br />
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'Later he saw "the task of sailing from A to B, which you can only do by working with the winds and tides, as a metaphor for a film."'<br />
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'For <i>Tree</i> (1974), Welsby tied his camera to a tree branch during a strong wind; he'd planned an 11-minute film, but the camera malfunctioned and the usable portion was 4 minutes. The wobbles of the frame as the branch moves dominate the movements of grass and branches within the frame: the viewer becomes profoundly aware of how much the act of framing conveys dominance and control — though here the agent is the wind.<br />
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In the 20-minute <i>Seven Days</i> (1974) Welsby finds his mature voice, offering a tour de force unlike anything cinema had yet seen. He took one frame of a Welsh landscape every ten seconds for a week, with the camera anchored to the same spot — though it did swivel. Placed on an equatorial mount (used in astronomy for photos of stars), it followed the sun across the sky. Moreover the camera flipped back and forth between two positions governed by the sun's visibility: when it was out, the camera turned 180 degrees from the sun (and the frame includes the camera's shadow moving across the land), and when the sun was behind clouds, it pointed straight at the sun.<br />
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What might sound like a gentle observational film seems to me quite violent. The wind roars on the sound track; clouds streak by almost apocalyptically; the camera flips back and forth for no obvious reason. On close observation, though, one can usually anticipate these changes by noticing a hint of sun behind the clouds or the land darkening: it's possible to see the natural "cause" of each cut in the preceding shot. This is a film that rejects the long tradition of landscape painting (and much subsequent landscape filmmaking) in which images serve as metaphors for the artist's emotions. Instead viewers are invited to bring their own responses to this enjambment of nature and the machine.<br />
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The camera's movement in Seven Days reveals a tiny stream, a group of flowers, some distant ridges. This is not a landscaped garden but a random assemblage of natural objects with an unordered beauty, a beauty the viewer must discover. (Welsby counts John Cage as another influence.) The film's rough edges and jittery, speeded-up rhythms seem calculated to express both the protean side of nature (the changing weather is apparent not only in clouds but in raindrops on the Plexiglas Welsby placed in front of the lens to protect it) and the violent, mechanical motion of the mechanized tripod. Just as sailing involves learning to work with the tides and the wind, the mechanisms of filmmaking can be brought into sync with nature's forces. Ethics and aesthetics come together here, as Welsby suggests that filmmakers let the clouds do a little editing.'<br />
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The image is from Welsby's film <i>Colour Separation</i>, which I haven't seen...Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-20055903196360237792011-05-01T16:03:00.006+03:002014-12-24T03:06:43.380+02:00Adrian Martin on Roberto RosselliniHere are the last two paragraphs of Adrian Martin's <a href="http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/shorts/reviews/rev0300/ambr9a.htm">review</a> of Tag Gallagher's illuminating book <i>Adventures Of Roberto Rossellini - </i><i>His Life And Films</i>. The <b>emphases</b> are mine. <br />
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The image is from Rossellini's <i>Il Messia</i>, possibly the greatest film ever. The guy on the right, struggling with the fishing net, is the son of God; and the slightly pensive guy on the left is Judas, but we don't know his name yet in the movie. I find this image to be a good example of the 'present tense' Adrian Martin is talking about.<br />
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"Rossellini's films, at their best, occur in this saturated, <b>voluptuous present tense</b> in which everything is <b>always</b> on the point of <b>transforming</b> itself. And as such, they grab us here and now, in <b>our present tense of viewing</b>, no matter our socio-political or historical context. The "miracles" that Rossellini shows are scarcely mystical (he refused to include the depiction of miracles in <i>Acts of the Apostles</i>), and the "grace" they bestow is not exactly in the hands of a God who alights when and where he wills it (which is the kind of line critics like to lazily indulge in relation to other religious cinéastes, like Bresson, von Trier or Dreyer). <b>We can hardly know - and the characters seem to hardly know - when the miracle has actually occurred in <i>Voyage in Italy</i> or <i>Stromboli</i>, let alone be able to instantly comprehend or absorb its dimensions, implications and consequences.</b><br />
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Maybe this is the authentically Rossellinian aspect of some great, contemporary films: <b>when they build to that strange, mysterious instant which leaves both the characters and us stunned, reeling - transformed but not yet able to articulate the structure and sense of that transformation. It is enough to live this miracle, however confusedly, enough to feel the power of the wave, to know at last that you, and the world around you, has begun to change</b>. Rossellini's cinema is about <b>the moment of revitalisation</b>, on every conceivable level, personal as well as social. That <b>moment of potential rebirth</b> - and the need for it - will never be over for any of us living creatures."</div>
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Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-31159648798623349682011-03-12T18:46:00.000+02:002011-03-12T18:46:03.183+02:00John Ford's "3 Godfathers" (1948)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Three close friends are on a desert. One of them is on the ground, dying of thirst. Another one is kneeling next to him, trying to help. The third one seems slightly out-of-touch but his simple gesture is as grand as it gets: He shadows his friend's face with his hat. There's acceptance, distance, but also profound care, and a sense of community.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">For those who have doubts that this simple gesture has such great implications, Ford makes his near-cosmic intentions very clear. When his friend is already dead, and Robert is going to lower his hand, ending the gesture, we are left face-to-face with the sun for a very brief moment. Watching this, I remembered the last line of Rossellini's <i>Louis XIV</i>, 'neither the sun, nor death, can be looked at directly'.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">When at the end of the film the same gesture is repeated, without the sun, or the death, but a profound joy and a possibility of love (and again, a sense of community), the film comes full circle, from Death to Life. Tag Gallagher talks about 'magic moments', 'especially the finale, when sparkling cutting and framing rhyme swingy girls singing'.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoEnfv5e1_uFHFLMc7Z2d1B9WeWUyXSuhRaHlKwtlu8OXasnfgJu9C9X-r4gAYuRIVqvMBoKnWo0XiQevR1XAzx7f1MnUwFfvqeoQBjwiAyTqgF6Ei_h2B3rJST-hpkeAPQyaSbg/s1600/3+godfathers+5.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoEnfv5e1_uFHFLMc7Z2d1B9WeWUyXSuhRaHlKwtlu8OXasnfgJu9C9X-r4gAYuRIVqvMBoKnWo0XiQevR1XAzx7f1MnUwFfvqeoQBjwiAyTqgF6Ei_h2B3rJST-hpkeAPQyaSbg/s320/3+godfathers+5.png" width="320" /></a></div>Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-8248899651027488722011-03-12T17:47:00.001+02:002011-03-12T17:47:49.615+02:00Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub's "Une visite au Louvre" (2004)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraXFxuSjomYHdf9UbOVj-iuE6UFQUYlVmoxjbMlaRHgg23o9AHrfGh4Chcta4Lgo4hC5QotGCsxdZa4q-hmqSdPSftCa0Q-2tnAd-ntuI-sz3ePiYMJLHIjx0MBk4Tw6483yvHg/s1600/visite+au+louvre.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiraXFxuSjomYHdf9UbOVj-iuE6UFQUYlVmoxjbMlaRHgg23o9AHrfGh4Chcta4Lgo4hC5QotGCsxdZa4q-hmqSdPSftCa0Q-2tnAd-ntuI-sz3ePiYMJLHIjx0MBk4Tw6483yvHg/s320/visite+au+louvre.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />Here is the voice-over we listen to over the image above (Paolo Veronese's <i>Marriage at Cana</i>) in Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub's <i>Une visite au Louvre</i>. The text, titled <i>Le Louvre</i>, is from Joachim Gasquet's monograph <i>Cézanne</i>. It is based on a visit Gasquet made to the Louvre Museum with his friend Cézanne. So, more or less, this is Gasquet's reminiscences of what Cézanne had to say about the painting. First the English translation (thanks to Sally Shafto), then my French transcription (hopefully as read in the film). The French sounds much more musical, and prophetic:<br /><br />"But here we have painting. There’s painting for you. Detail, ensemble, volumes, values, composition, excitement, it’s all there . . . Believe me, it’s amazing! . . . What’s happening? . . . Shut your eyes, wait, don’t you think of anything. Now open them . . . What about that? . . . One sees only a great coloured undulation, isn’t that right? A rainbow effect, colours, a wealth of colours. That’s the first thing a picture should give us, a harmonious warmth, an abyss into which the eye plunges, something dimly forming. A state of grace induced by colour. You can feel all these shades of colour running in your blood, don’t you agree? You feel reinvigorated. You are born into the true world. You become yourself, you become part of painting . . . To love a painting you need first to have drunk it in like this, in long draughts. You must lose consciousness. Go down with the painter to the dark, tangled roots of things and rise up again from them with the colours, open up with them in the light. Learn how to see. To feel [ . . . ] My word, there was a happy man. And he brings happiness to everyone who understands him. [ . . . ] People and things pass into his consciousness through the sun, with nothing in him separating them from the light, without a sketch, without abstractions, everything in colour. In time they emerge, still the same but somehow clothed in a gentle glory. Happy as if they had inhaled a mysterious music."<br /><br /><br />"Mais voila de la peinture, voila de la peinture! Le morceau, l'ensemble, les volumes, les valeurs, la composition, le frisson, tout y est. Ecoutez un peu, c'est épatant. Qu'est-ce que nous sommes? Fermez les yeux, attendez, ne pensez plus à rien. Ouvrez-les. N'est-ce pas, on n’aperçoit qu’une grande ondulation colorée, une irisation... Des couleurs, une richesse de couleurs. C'est ça que doit nous donner d'abord le tableau, une chaleur harmonieuse. Un abime où l'œil s'enfonce, une sourde germination, un état de grâce coloré. Tous ces tons vous coulent dans le sang, n'est-ce pas? On se sent ravigoté. On est au monde vrai, on devient soi-même, on devient de la peinture. Pour aimer un tableau il faut d'abord l'avoir bu, ainsi, à longs traits, perdre conscience. Descendre avec le peintre aux racines sombres enchevêtrées des choses. En remonter avec les couleurs, s'épanouir à la lumière, avec elle. Savoir voir, sentir. Celui-là il était heureux, et tous ceux qui le comprennent il les rend heureux. Les choses, les êtres lui entraient dans l'âme avec le soleil sans rien qui les lui sépare de la lumière. Sans desseins, sans abstractions, tout en couleur. Ils en sortaient un jour les mêmes mais on ne sait pourquoi habillé d'une gloire douce tout heureux. Comme s'ils avaient respiré une mystérieuse musique."<br /><br /><br />Sally Shafto 's full English transcription of the film can be found <a href="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2009/feature-articles/transcript-to-straub-huillets-a-visit-to-the-louvre/">here</a>. And her article about the film is <a href="http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2009/feature-articles/on-straub-huillets-une-visite-au-louvre-1/">here</a>. <a href="http://www.backtoclassics.com/images/pics/paoloveronese/paoloveronese_themarriageatcana.jpg">Here</a> is the painting in better resolution.Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-71677855970841021512011-03-10T00:40:00.009+02:002011-03-11T16:16:23.069+02:00Robert Duncan on Ezra Pound and poetry...<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeHfGMKRxNyp5kKdesoFZ7bR01wOp6q_Y8NFYdzlYD6-hlYRJ-bKZ_RSgIMMsWZ6QQ_7ndkD3LEWmzLd7ShHRGNXCF6LFTMCFoDV2zFsmdd4XxNzIghmPOoIVGRRPI_0IyefOHKg/s1600/duncanpound.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeHfGMKRxNyp5kKdesoFZ7bR01wOp6q_Y8NFYdzlYD6-hlYRJ-bKZ_RSgIMMsWZ6QQ_7ndkD3LEWmzLd7ShHRGNXCF6LFTMCFoDV2zFsmdd4XxNzIghmPOoIVGRRPI_0IyefOHKg/s320/duncanpound.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">At the University of Pennsylvania's <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/">PennSound</a> website, you can find audio recordings of some incredible poets such as <a href="http://www.writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Creeley.php">Robert Creeley</a>, <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/HD.php">Hilda Doolittle</a>, <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Duncan.php">Robert Duncan</a>, <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Olson.php">Charles Olson</a>, <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Pound.php">Ezra Pound</a>, <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Stein.html">Gertrude Stein</a>, <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Williams-WC.php">William Carlos Williams</a> and <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Zukofsky.php">Louis Zukofsky</a>, among many others.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>I've been reading a lot of Robert Duncan (one of my five favorite poets/writers along with Shakespeare, Dante, Balzac and Joyce) and Ezra Pound recently, so it was with huge excitement that I found there an ecstatic Robert Duncan lecture on Ezra Pound. There's also a mind-opening essay by Duncan titled <i>The Lasting Contribution of Ezra Pound</i> in <i>A Selected Prose</i>, a book which includes some of Robert Duncan's essays, edited by the wonderful Robert J. Bertholf. For a long time I have considered Duncan's essays the best art criticism I've ever read anywhere. You can find my failed attempts at a similar approach to art if you travel around this blog.</div><div><br /></div><div>The link to the audio files of Duncan's Pound lectures is <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Duncan.php">here</a>. (Unfortunately, the recording is cut just before the end of the lecture, so we don't have the full thing, but it's close...)</div><div><br /></div><div>Here is a part of the lecture where Duncan criticizes Pound's ideas about poetry (after he strongly criticizes Pound's horrible antisemitism):</div><div><br /></div>"Like I still feel very forcefully... I did not believe... Not only did I not believe in totalitarianism but I just did not believe in, at all, in order, in systematic order... I believed entirely in volition and believed in volition from a vast mass of people, factors. I wanna compose my poems... My words are inhabitants of a poem that comes up like a democracy and it throws me as I work with it because I gotta work with what the word means not what I'm gonna put into it... If I... Somebody... Some people in other schools of poetry they have an idea of an error you could make or something you could correct and my remarks about not correcting a poem have often just been totally misunderstood because they have a different basis for working. My... I substituted for any possibility of correcting, being totally responsible for what would happen in the poem. So if there... If something happened that would be an error... That is if I'm going along and I see the pattern and something happens that's not the pattern, this, working with this toward a larger pattern, this means my imagination has to make another leap to incorporate what another person would have made an error and would have changed so it would fit it in. And this is so acute that when I read poems that, you know, that are preplanned and they have squeezed in so that they carry out a theme that's up here, I turn off. I think 'My God!' I mean, 'that, of course, you could have thought that before! Who needed a poem to know that that came after that?' Because the lead for me is working with the materials there. But this has something to do with my idea of how the universe works. I mean after all I'm moving into the world of physics where we now got particle events that don't rhyme. The real thing, the root form of... Poets of Pound's generation were breaking the iambic contaminer but they were breaking a form that was intelligible when man thought the universe was formed that way and none of us believed that, I think. I mean... Or we may believe that, I believe that too, but on top of that we also believe in an entirely different universe and principle of form. And when we are intense in poetry we tend to imitate what we most deeply believe is the creative form of the universe."<br /><br />Needless to say, I believe that what Duncan says about poetry is important and true for all art.<br /><div><br /></div><div>In the same recording, you can listen to Duncan harmoniously reading some gorgeous Cantos by Ezra Pound. I can't suggest those strongly enough... Also <a href="http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Williams-WC.php">at</a> PennSound, there is an mp3 of William Carlos Williams speaking about Pound, in his own particular way. And Jacob Waltman recently <a href="http://making-light-of-it.blogspot.com/2011/03/old-ez.html">posted</a> a quote on Pound by Stan Brakhage.</div><div><br /></div><div>The image above is from the cover of Robert Duncan's <i>Ground Work: Before the War.</i> It always reminds me of Larry Jordan's films.</div><div><i><br /></i></div>Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-64754188113678560682011-02-14T01:36:00.004+02:002011-02-16T16:09:18.249+02:00Kenji Mizoguchi's "Sansho dayu" (1954)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
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A perfect balance of cosmic distance & empathy that Mizoguchi achieves with such grace in his films... The camera is there, sometimes moving with the characters, sometimes reacting to the immense suffering told, but it always seems to 'speak' in a voice slightly more divine, widening our vision, changing what our 'truth' is.<br />
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(SPOILERS in the following paragraph:)<br />
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Take the last moments of <i>Sansho Dayu</i>. The mother and son embrace, as a culmination of all suffering we have gone through with them... This is an open-ending: Life is torture, no doubt, but no place for nihilism, one should always worship the Goddess of Mercy. They sit on the ground, the camera is level with them, they fill almost the whole frame. The empathy is near total. Then when Zushio needs to break the terrible news to her mother, the camera pulls back and up, allowing some perspective, and maybe much needed breathing space. The purpose is not to pull our strings, but to make us feel anew. Then, Mizoguchi cuts to a wider shot, from above, with the mother & son at the lower-right. In the distance we see the sea, shimmering... The camera starts its movement to the left, leaving the two characters there as if they were no different than the rocks around. We're back to (perhaps with even greater force) Mizoguchi's cosmic perspective. In this sense, having a sense of cosmos does not mean looking down on human suffering, but seeing the interrelation between cosmos & suffering & love. In any case, we are moved away from individual human struggles. But as the movement to the left continues, we see a guy working, tirelessly. We don't know him, but we identify, feel empathy. He embodies life-as-struggle (or torture, if you will). But the camera keeps moving, does not stop to watch him, does not try to frame him specifically. He's placed with the rocks and the sea behind, we're reminded of cosmic scales again, or rather, cosmic is tied back to the personal again, and the film ends.<br />
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This sense of cosmic personal is what makes <i>Sansho Dayu</i> such a huge masterpiece.<br />
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But then there's another thing that always amazes me in Mizoguchi: the architectures of oppression. In <i>Sansho Dayu</i> 'life is torture' but most of the suffering happens at the hands of other humans, within the structures built by other people. These structures, seen through Mizoguchi's camera-work, does express the power structures within the society, but they go farther than that: The structures are one of the ways the society imposes the power relations (the hierarchies) on the individuals. The buildings, or the inherent prejudices that built them, are NOT innocent. While telling his harmonious stories incredibly effectually, Mizoguchi also asks us to question the spaces imposed on us in our public life.<br />
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I had written about the film before in this blog, you can read that post <a href="http://blog.waysofseeing.org/2009/03/kenji-mizoguchis-sansho-dayu-1954.html">here</a>.Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-10034600834882055422010-11-14T16:38:00.001+02:002010-11-14T16:44:04.420+02:00Lee Marvin on John FordI heard that Pedro Costa screened the following at the Anthology Film Archives last week. <a href="http://anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screenings/series/36485">Here</a> is more information about the event.<br /><br />It's Lee Marvin talking about two transcendent John Ford films he acted in: <i>The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance</i> and <i>Donovan's Reef</i>.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><object height="325" width="400"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/cI1qBAVrjIs?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/cI1qBAVrjIs?fs=1&hl=en_US&rel=0" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="400" height="325"></embed></object></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-10027272649037846492010-10-19T19:45:00.017+03:002010-10-23T19:35:32.254+03:00Apichatpong Weerasethakul's "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" (2010)<div style="background-color: transparent; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span><div style="background-color: transparent; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span id="internal-source-marker_0.696707617957145" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Apichatpong Weerasethakul's new film is like a surprisingly natural, free-wheeling train of thought. Watching it the second time at the </span></span><a href="http://www.iksv.org/filmekimi_2010/english/"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">filmekimi </span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">in Istanbul</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span id="internal-source-marker_0.696707617957145" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, I felt the line between me and the film disappear, it became a light-dance that mimics </span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span id="internal-source-marker_0.696707617957145" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘the inner workings of the mind’</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #333333; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> (as the director himself </span></span><a href="http://cinema-scope.com/wordpress/web-archive-2/issue-43/spotlight-ghost-in-the-machine-apichatpong-weerasethakul%E2%80%99s-letter-to-cinema/"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">puts</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> it)</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, while challenging us constantly, a ree</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">l at a time.</span></span></span></span></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; white-space: normal;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwXSLLOjqmVVe-0x7lrjHVE9jByypJFMQfzAOeziH9x-KuaflD102fWq0wZNNcB_e8fXGztG4_RsNCJVf1uZTo0_FKaHxOmioaqwPgnfmOSUk-TFRTfmJuXO3jsrmHGf4vgLpKLA/s1600/boonmee8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><img border="0" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwXSLLOjqmVVe-0x7lrjHVE9jByypJFMQfzAOeziH9x-KuaflD102fWq0wZNNcB_e8fXGztG4_RsNCJVf1uZTo0_FKaHxOmioaqwPgnfmOSUk-TFRTfmJuXO3jsrmHGf4vgLpKLA/s320/boonmee8.jpg" width="320" /></span></span></a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In this post I’m going to try to share with you some of the best things I found written about the film on the web. I have nothing to say that’s too original, so this post is mainly for the unconverted: I hope to share some clues with people who don’t know what they think of the film. If you already love the film, you’re most probably a beautiful soul anyway, don’t read the rest, go do something good for the universe!</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhpdY7cjgMGVwub-cavuxVD2rdLfjqmSY1nTqnUwqZ5wKgL-Qbh6sp3mbmRpkCKIzFVMKFs18ZOcLNY9Xs9Fprx8Z3GYmzSDWk1iqT4JKNeBoblbbZLSOXfD_8aOTQj_GwS2vMJw/s1600/boonmee4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><img border="0" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhpdY7cjgMGVwub-cavuxVD2rdLfjqmSY1nTqnUwqZ5wKgL-Qbh6sp3mbmRpkCKIzFVMKFs18ZOcLNY9Xs9Fprx8Z3GYmzSDWk1iqT4JKNeBoblbbZLSOXfD_8aOTQj_GwS2vMJw/s320/boonmee4.jpg" width="320" /></span></span></a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Here is what Apichatpong himself says about the film in Mark Peranson and Kong Rithdee’s Cinema Scope </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://cinema-scope.com/wordpress/web-archive-2/issue-43/spotlight-ghost-in-the-machine-apichatpong-weerasethakul%E2%80%99s-letter-to-cinema/"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">interview</span></span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">:</span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘More than my other films, Uncle Boonmee is very much about cinema, that’s also why it’s personal. If you care to look, each reel of the film has a different style—acting style, lighting style, or cinematic references—but most of them reflect movies. I think that when you make a film about recollection and death, you have to consider that cinema is also dying—at least this kind of old cinema that nobody makes anymore.</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(...)</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I think Uncle Boonmee will be one of the last films that will be shot on film, as everything is moving to the Red or Sony or whatever, so it’s a tribute, and a lamentation, in a way, for celluloid. The first reel is really like my way of filming: you see the animal in the forest, a long take with the kidney dialysis, and the driving scene. And the second reel is very much like old cinema with stiff acting, no camera movement, and a very classical stage, like Thai TV drama, with monsters and ghosts. The third reel becomes like a documentary, shot in the exteriors on the tamarind farm—and also French, in a way, this kind of relaxing film. The fourth reel, with the princess and the catfish, is a costume drama, a Thai cinema of the past. So even though there is a continuity, the time reference always shifts… The fifth reel is the jungle, but it’s not the same jungle as Tropical Malady because it’s a cinema jungle—a day-for-night drama that we shot with a blue filter, like very old films. You put this old actor into a cinema jungle, and the cave refers to those old adventure novels or comic books. (In the scene with the ghost we also used a mirror, another allusion to the cinema of the past.) And the sixth reel, in the hotel, the time is slowed down, the time has become seemingly documentary. Again it’s like my films, with the long takes, but at the same time in the end when it splits, when you see the doubles of the two characters, Jen and Tong, I wanted to suggest the idea of time disruption, that the movie isn’t dealing with one reality, there are multiple planes…’<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk8VJE1LduNkY7WwZrxShfSUjiYveCzvnTjqeAh__ofvQqR06Vy4FUdu4AAc3mRylEPxywFeVVNhw3Ibsj_maa4PEOTE1SDwBJlXgI1nheQSmjRNm4xQOilktHtkJYK_VZhnS4Ww/s1600/boonmee1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><img border="0" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk8VJE1LduNkY7WwZrxShfSUjiYveCzvnTjqeAh__ofvQqR06Vy4FUdu4AAc3mRylEPxywFeVVNhw3Ibsj_maa4PEOTE1SDwBJlXgI1nheQSmjRNm4xQOilktHtkJYK_VZhnS4Ww/s320/boonmee1.jpg" width="320" /></span></span></a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In other interviews, he claims </span></span><a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/asia/news/e3i6478fc41cf5464a55943f3ff6da955da"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">that</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> the </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘film is about love and relationships’,</span></span></span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><a href="http://www.nationmultimedia.com/home/2010/04/20/life/The-late-great-Apichatpong-30127420.html"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">that</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> it’s </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘a personal diary’, and </span></span><a href="http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/a-conversation-with-the-top-prize-winner-of-cannes/"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">that</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> the whole Primitive Project is ‘about going back to the roots of things, what we have in our bodies, the primitive energy’</span></span></span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">. He also says </span></span><a href="http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/a-conversation-with-the-top-prize-winner-of-cannes/"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">the following</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> about </span></span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives</span></span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">:</span></span></span></div><div style="background-color: transparent; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘I wanted this to be like a children’s film or a children’s book, to retain that feeling of innocence. For me the interesting challenge was how to make a film that talks about death — this universal issue that’s been done a lot — and at the same time make it abstract enough to give the audience the freedom to use their imagination.’</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">From an Apichatpong interview by Kong Rithdee </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://www.bangkokpost.com/entertainment/movie/37872/of-monkey-ghosts-and-men?awesm=fbshare.me_ANHGV"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">at</span></span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Bangkok Post:</span></span></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">'Uncle Boonmee is a film about transformation, about objects and people that transform or hybridise. You can explain with scientific belief that nothing exists, nothing is really solid and everything is just a moving particle.’<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfb7VGIPsYmgXtLUigJvkikJsn49HAwMQ0L_Ur2Fq85qfQfKbJa26IJIol-cgQqj2uE32SS2Wo0-e6C9HOftW7AqcVB_YsML8A07yf_AIVs_WUxjH96-QR5V2jT1-NJHEwIlYLlw/s1600/boonmee7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><img border="0" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfb7VGIPsYmgXtLUigJvkikJsn49HAwMQ0L_Ur2Fq85qfQfKbJa26IJIol-cgQqj2uE32SS2Wo0-e6C9HOftW7AqcVB_YsML8A07yf_AIVs_WUxjH96-QR5V2jT1-NJHEwIlYLlw/s320/boonmee7.jpg" width="320" /></span></span></a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Dennis Lim, who also did a wonderfully easy-going interview with Apichatpong at the Toronto Film Festival (which I shot and made <a href="http://blog.waysofseeing.org/2010/10/apichatportrait.html">a video</a> out of, it's titled <i>apichatportrait</i>), also wrote one of the best reviews </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://artforum.com/film/id=25679"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">at</span></span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> the Artforum:</span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘I saw Uncle Boonmee twice in Cannes (despite Apichatpong’s objections: “Better to leave it all jumbled,” he told me when I interviewed him), and it strikes me as both his simplest work to date and a step forward in his ongoing project to change the way we experience movies. For the receptive viewer, Apichatpong’s sensory immersions induce a state of simultaneous relaxation and watchfulness. This time, despite a few enigmatic detours, there are no midmovie reboots. The title spells out the premise, which crystallizes the sly paradox at the heart of the film. We watch a movie about a terminally ill man (Boonmee, a farmer suffering from kidney failure, tended to by loved ones, including the ghost of his wife) ever alert to signs of life. A water buffalo freeing itself from its tether, a disfigured princess who sees her reflection by an idyllic waterfall, the talking catfish that performs underwater cunnilingus on her, the insects whose chirps and buzzes engulf the nighttime jungle scenes: Might these be Boonmee’s past (or future) incarnations?</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(...)</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">An otherworldly fable, Uncle Boonmee often alights on earthly sensations (the taste of raw honey, a lingering embrace) and political realities (the violent history of Thailand’s poor, rural northeast and, at a remove, the current clashes in Bangkok). Much like another high point of the festival, Manoel de Oliveira’s The Strange Case of Angelica, it’s both a radiant ghost story and a tale of cinema itself, concerned with the act of perception and the mysterious conjuring of alternate worlds. Both films are by artists who defy most existing categories. At 101, Oliveira is a man out of time or, perhaps, of multiple times. No less an outsider, equally at ease in a variety of idioms and registers, Apichatpong synthesizes the Western avant-garde tradition with Buddhist thought, animist belief, and Thai pop culture. As Uncle Boonmee confirms, his vision is above all a generous one. In the threat of extinction—a dying man, a disintegrating country, a disappearing medium—Apichatpong sees the possibility of regeneration.’</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; white-space: normal;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXTNKIYHazYCUA_lXJz7hfsSnX1Yh3uv9iae13d2tYimFUG27e984SZgaW8TuysbzE8c7up4exWqbOwiWa16ddqXsGpxDy06PPni9WXgu8Ojits5cNO0aR1mR-xsz0n5Y1LBj48g/s1600/boonmee2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><img border="0" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXTNKIYHazYCUA_lXJz7hfsSnX1Yh3uv9iae13d2tYimFUG27e984SZgaW8TuysbzE8c7up4exWqbOwiWa16ddqXsGpxDy06PPni9WXgu8Ojits5cNO0aR1mR-xsz0n5Y1LBj48g/s320/boonmee2.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></span></a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Daniel Kasman also does well summarizing the non-summarizable </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/1888"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">at</span></span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> MUBI:</span></span></span></div></div><div style="background-color: transparent; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘The film is full of life, dead and alive, and suffuse with gentleness. Boonmee and his family greet the dead with smiles and love, and the film emits a luminescence as tactile as the milky forest chiaroscuro of its 16mm photography and as ambient as the tender embrace between Boonmee and his dead wife, the netted, soft rainbow pastels that paint the dead woman's view of her sleeping sister, and Tong’s silent willingness to follow the family into the deepest forest and emerge a changed man. The natural, unexplained and unexplainable flow of reincarnation that pulses through the film—which diverts to tell the story of a water buffalo, of a scarred princess and her catfish lover, of a magic cave of chalky silver, strange shapes and blind fish hidden in the woods, of briefly stepping away from a troubled, mournful life—calms everyone, and the film itself. The Ghost Monkeys look like frightful beasts, eyes like red bulbs as they creep and swing through the trees, but Boonmee creates a world where there may be anxiety over the unknown but there is no fear, only acceptance and care. A richness of time, a human time. Passings and returns ebb out of human life into the unexplained, into the myth and folklore, where sharing fresh honey on a sunny day is as beautiful as embracing a ghost, the dark life of the jungle, or the simple heartbreak of the final draining of Boonmee’s beleaguered kidney. It is probably as simple a film as Apichatpong, whose cinema is lovingly cryptic, can get, as if a human radiance humbly simplifies everything, from the mysteries of death and melancholy, to the origin of the world and friendship, family, and the dead gathering over a night’s dinner.’<br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk5RRqFYnVL-SI7-utrMImJeGI20HT4dHJRgFC26MmK4SBrNZib2su-CsQKVIkSFvXmQT4_L1QkKr9-lGI7IWOBnaX7stGG6cU4v2ijXklthCWN_74zLJ_-Jx15sQ5-E8HWcWnEQ/s1600/boonmee6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><img border="0" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk5RRqFYnVL-SI7-utrMImJeGI20HT4dHJRgFC26MmK4SBrNZib2su-CsQKVIkSFvXmQT4_L1QkKr9-lGI7IWOBnaX7stGG6cU4v2ijXklthCWN_74zLJ_-Jx15sQ5-E8HWcWnEQ/s320/boonmee6.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></span></span></a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Michael Koresky is very correct in reminding us (</span></span><a href="http://www.reverseshot.com/article/uncle_boonmee_who_can_recall_his_past_lives"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">at</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Reverse Shot) the clue to Apichatpong’s art: the audiovisual sensory experience the films are offering. Acquiring this particular attentiveness is the only way you’ll enjoy the films from beginning to the end, and the only way you’ll follow the “train of thought” </span></span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: italic; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Uncle Boonmee</span></span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> is:</span></span></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">What should be mentioned first is the quiet. But when discussing Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives many will undoubtedly initially gravitate towards the monkey ghosts, the talking catfish, the materializing spirits. Yet it’s the hushed beauty of Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s films that perhaps most unites them, and which helps make his latest—the surprise Palme d’or winner at this year’s Cannes Film Festival—what it is, atmospherically, temperamentally, spiritually. The natural wonder of Apichatpong’s Northern Thailand, the swaying branches and grasses of its restive jungles and fields, its crickets and birds, breezes and hums, are all-encompassing on screen, thanks to the filmmaker’s immersive, simple yet forceful sound design, itself a gentle Buddhist gesture. Watching and listening, we are united with every living thing on screen, and we become aware of our place in the cosmos. It’s what separates him from most of today’s acclaimed art-house formalists: he offers long takes, but not exclusively or even meticulously. His pace is unhurried but he’ll stop a scene if necessary; his cutting is intuitive and impulsive, rather than overdetermined, resulting in a cinema that more effectively mirrors a dream state than that of any filmmaker outside of David Lynch. His tone is solemn yet he’s not above deflating the mood with a smile, so good-natured is he. He’s political yet focused on the smallest gestures between people—or between humans and animals. The silence and the silly song, together—two chambers of the same open heart. </span></span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(...) </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">That we never know for sure is part of the film’s poetic miracle: the title might be misleading (we’re never told whether Uncle Boonmee can recall his past lives or not), but the possibility of soul transmigration seems to exist within every person and animal we meet, from that sprightly ox to the hairy Boonsong to the insects that bring this world to buzzing life—even those flies that Jen casually zaps with an electric swatter on her porch.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">(...)</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">And in this tenderhearted vision, these forces never come into conflict. They merge into one joyous, mournful entity—like the harmony created by that exquisite silence and that buoyant karaoke tune.’</span></span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;"></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">In the second half of the film, the film journeys into the jungle... About this Apichatpong </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://interviewmagazine.com/blogs/film/2010-09-27/apichatpong-joe-weerasethakul/"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">says</span></span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">:</span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘In terms of my intention, it was more about going back to the jungle and seeing it as a different place–a place that we feel alienated from, which is different than maybe when our ancestors encountered the jungle. But it is still our home. I always take my characters home.’<br /><br /><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNsQ0yzG_TNXTJUvHR0mRz0jLwtV4wJoB7WE_XIbDNVcsWhghzfMDyUgsRx4TcSLtBG_yFOQGSxSayxMUcmPc_G1EA1oBR4j8TvRYj_QEG1tt3v-Hfl9anvB17Jg16K3Zs_614Pw/s1600/boonmee3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><img border="0" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNsQ0yzG_TNXTJUvHR0mRz0jLwtV4wJoB7WE_XIbDNVcsWhghzfMDyUgsRx4TcSLtBG_yFOQGSxSayxMUcmPc_G1EA1oBR4j8TvRYj_QEG1tt3v-Hfl9anvB17Jg16K3Zs_614Pw/s320/boonmee3.jpg" width="320" /></span></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Then it journeys into a cave... Wendy Ide </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/cannes/article7133691.ece"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">at</span></span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Times tries to explain why that might be:</span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘The film’s enchantment is at its most potent during a pilgrimage by Boonmee and his family to a cave high in the hills – the throbbing growl on the soundtrack creates a kind of aural architecture for the dying man’s gateway from this life to the next. It’s spine-tingling stuff. Directly afterwards we are returned to the mundane reality of life after Boonmee’s death – a place where prosaic funeral arrangements are discussed in featureless hotel rooms, and the ghosts have retreated to the forests. But by this time, the film’s spell has taken effect and its curious magic is evident everywhere from the saffron of a monk’s robes to the gaudy fairy lights of a low-rent karaoke bar.’</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Apichatpong more or less agrees </span></span><a href="http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/a-conversation-with-the-top-prize-winner-of-cannes/"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">at</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> New York Times:</span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘There’s the scene in “Boonmee” where they go into a cave, which is like a womb and also like going back home, when we were in caves.’</span></span></div></div><div style="background-color: transparent; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></div></div><div style="background-color: transparent; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">So, if I tried to put it all together: </span></span></div></div><div style="background-color: transparent; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; "><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; "><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Uncle Boonmee is a </span></span></span><a href="http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/film/cannes/article7133691.ece"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">disarming</span></span></span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> & </span></span></span><a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/asia/news/e3i6478fc41cf5464a55943f3ff6da955da"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">gentle</span></span></span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">lovesong "</span></span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "><a href="http://chomontherox.blogspot.com/2010/06/uncle-boonmee-comes-home.html"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">where the past, the present and the future (and the multiple universes) blur, mingle and interact",</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">where "</span></span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "><a href="http://cinema-scope.com/wordpress/web-archive-2/issue-43/spotlight-ghost-in-the-machine-apichatpong-weerasethakul%E2%80%99s-letter-to-cinema/"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">nothing is solid</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">"</span></span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">, and "</span></span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "><a href="http://cinema-scope.com/wordpress/web-archive-2/issue-43/spotlight-ghost-in-the-machine-apichatpong-weerasethakul%E2%80%99s-letter-to-cinema/"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">there are moving particles</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">" </span></span></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">everywhere, so much so that Death is Home. That’s why “gradually becoming” is the whole purpose of the movie, wh<span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: normal;">ere "<a href="http://cinema-scope.com/wordpress/web-archive-2/issue-43/spotlight-ghost-in-the-machine-apichatpong-weerasethakul%E2%80%99s-letter-to-cinema/">transmigration of the soul</a>" allows</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> a new symbiosis of all living (and dead) creatures, where fables are taken seriously as a nearly forgotten memory of past wisdoms. Film (as light projected through moving celluloid) is a metaphor for all this, and all this is a metaphor for Film. </span></span><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; font-size: medium; "><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Anf1V9d605fzRLN_aNFdIAcqCo7n1IxTSFwpGq7eBEA5WhE72pfhifm5c1jBeKGen_vAu20FnwgcIFNFoDMVbVBmpRTfqK7WKguN4oAk0RJhQTZErjcwE5eA20ygbOYSVSy8bQ/s1600/boonmee5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><img border="0" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Anf1V9d605fzRLN_aNFdIAcqCo7n1IxTSFwpGq7eBEA5WhE72pfhifm5c1jBeKGen_vAu20FnwgcIFNFoDMVbVBmpRTfqK7WKguN4oAk0RJhQTZErjcwE5eA20ygbOYSVSy8bQ/s320/boonmee5.jpg" width="320" /></span></span></span></a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I just love the following sentence by Kong Rithdee (</span></span></span><a href="http://www.bangkokpost.com/entertainment/movie/37872/of-monkey-ghosts-and-men?awesm=fbshare.me_ANHGV"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">at</span></span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> Bangkok Post) who has found a beautiful metaphor for the last film of a “conceiver” who defines editing as “a disruption of space”: </span></span></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; font-size: medium; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">‘With your eyes wide open it's also a dream alchemy that fuses into the memory of a place where time and space fold into each other like the soft petals of an eccentric flower, or like proof of quantum physics, or _ why not? _ both.’</span></span></span></div><div style="font-size: medium; "><br /></div></div><div style="background-color: transparent; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div></div>Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-76422367645976455832010-10-18T01:42:00.013+03:002010-10-18T02:05:17.788+03:00apichatportrait<div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/15931273?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" width="409" height="230" frameborder="0"></iframe></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div>Unable to find the right words to describe Apichatpong's films (other than <a href="http://blog.waysofseeing.org/2010/09/apichatpong-weerasethakuls-uncle.html">this</a>), I'm posting this silent video I finished today. It's a reaction to his spiritually joyful art.</div><div><br /></div><div>Both the footage of Apichatpong AND the horizontal colors were shot during <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFf5nBNxKNI">a conversation</a> between Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Dennis Lim at the Toronto Film Festival 2010, a day or two after I saw <i>Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives</i> for the first time.</div><div><br /></div><div>Please try to see it full-screen...</div><div><br /></div>Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-88127454083257013292010-09-22T18:19:00.006+03:002010-09-23T10:27:43.208+03:00Let the Light Shine Through: an interview with Adam Rokhsar<div><br />
</div>This is the first of (what I hope will be) a series of conversations/interviews with artists I like. I am proud to begin with <a href="http://makeyourselftransparent.tumblr.com/">Adam Rokhsar</a>, who has been making some of the most inspiring videos I know (and <a href="http://vimeo.com/rokhsar">uploading them on the web</a>) since March 2009.<br />
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I wrote about Adam Rokhsar’s art about a year ago; you can read my post (which I still agree with wholeheartedly) <a href="http://blog.waysofseeing.org/2009/06/adam-rokhsars-videos.html">here</a>. Since then, Adam has continued making videos that proved my initial suspicion that he was a true artist. <a href="http://vimeo.com/rokhsar">This</a> is the link to his Vimeo profile.<br />
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I did no edits to his answers without his approval and had his final confirmation before posting this. Hope you’ll enjoy reading Adam’s answers as much as I did...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjFtf4rqlGqm3v15rXCTpTfNmrlymwFZVgmlbIqhtlcMVNg8fqnw8wVgfdJfvrBPFonDbEQZxZEQH-bvSmbncSm4N1K7HdBZSHbDAdThxYLLCgfFVawGhyphenhyphenRl6NiIl68L81smQh4Q/s1600/rokhsar1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="189" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjFtf4rqlGqm3v15rXCTpTfNmrlymwFZVgmlbIqhtlcMVNg8fqnw8wVgfdJfvrBPFonDbEQZxZEQH-bvSmbncSm4N1K7HdBZSHbDAdThxYLLCgfFVawGhyphenhyphenRl6NiIl68L81smQh4Q/s320/rokhsar1.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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<b>How would you introduce yourself? </b><br />
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I think of myself as an artist-scientist. This is a recent realization, that I could possibly be a synthesis of both and not forced to approach my work from one perspective at the exclusion of the other.<br />
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I have been going back-and-forth about what to write, if anything, to explain my work. As an artist, I want to create a space for people to experience the piece without my text intruding into their thoughts. I try to never intentionally create work that "ought" to be understood in any particular way; if I do, I throw that stuff out. I can't learn anything about myself or the world when I make work that has a meaning I know consciously.<br />
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However, as a scientist, I want to share what I learn from my investigations into the invisible structures of the world. If a visual effect is created by exploring some hidden pattern buried within a digital signal of music, I want people to know that. I want them to know they are seeing some relationship that I found, not made. It doesn't so much change what the work means -- it changes what the work is.<br />
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I struggle with these two perspectives. I created a piece recently in which the video content was pulled from the wall off the killers' apartment in the Hitchcock film "Rope." I took the digital video of a painting on their wall while I watched the movie, and then cracked open the video file. I broke the compression algorithm several times over. The video starting to look very slippy, liquid-like, but I could still see the figure inside the painting. Then I wrote software that analyzed a music track I wrote months ago, fed the results to a very simple learning algorithm, and that algorithm in turn chopped up the video even more. I wondered, should I share all that when I share the piece? I decided not to. I am still unsure of how to reconcile these approaches, and I think that speaks to an uncertainty about what I am still.<br />
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<b>Which video is that? </b><br />
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I called that video <a href="http://vimeo.com/12968518"><i>Spirit is a Bone, Heaven is a Truck</i></a>. Half Hegel, half Steve Malkmus.<br />
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<b>Do you edit your videos?</b><br />
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I try not to edit the videos. If I do, it's just to cut off a little at the beginning or end, or if something really ruins the rhythm. I don't like to edit videos or music for that matter. When I try I tend to get compulsive about it unless I enforce a strict "first thought best thought" policy -- I might do an edit wherever the mouse happens to land me on the track. I trust accidents of my hand more than conscious editing decisions. I do my best to honor my errors as hidden intentions.<br />
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<b>How do you think <a href="http://www.makeyourselftransparent.com/?page_id=5">your past as "a therapist and behavioral science specialist"</a> affect your videos?</b><br />
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When I was getting my graduate degree in counseling psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, my professor John Fantuzzo told my class that the job of the therapist was to "make the toxic invisible visible." I find myself obsessed with the same task as an artist -- to make invisible things become visible.<br />
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The other ways that being a therapist informs my current work are very hard to trace. During the six years I worked in mental health services, I met many people, saw many things, and encountered a variety of situations many people don't get to experience. It was a privilege, to be let into strangers' lives. I have counseled homeless families, runaway kids, juvenile sex offenders, addicts, pedophiles, victims of sexual abuse, developmentally disabled adults... It effected who I am profoundly, and must effect my work in ways I can't yet imagine.<br />
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<b>There is a dark side to your videos, as if the discovery of the “toxic invisible” is bound to be horrifying at moments... Maybe that’s one of the answers? But it’s unlikely that your experience as a therapist is the only cause of this...</b><br />
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I don't think about my work in terms dark or light. It makes me so happy to make it, that's all I experience -- it's a wonderful feeling. After I finish a piece, sometimes I think, well, that was dark. I don't do it intentionally. I don't like to work when I know the conclusion ahead of time.<br />
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Whether the darkness you see is related to the traumatic material I encountered as a therapist -- of which there was plenty, especially when working with juvenile sex offenders and child victims of sexual abuse-- I'm not sure. I am interested in trauma, whether it's a force that pokes holes in our lives or whether its the part of reality our lives haven't covered, like the Lacanian Real traumatizing us with science and its hidden structures. I hope to make work that returns those structures back to the realm of human thinking, where they can become pure potentiality instead of a brutally unmovable pattern.<br />
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<b>I notice that you use the word <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><b>“</b></span>invisible<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><b>”</b></span> a lot: “Invisible structures of the world”, “toxic invisible”, “invisible things”... You’re not the first at all but I find it interesting for a visual artist. In Joyce’s <i>Ulysses </i>there is a short poem:</b><br />
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<b>I am the boy</b><br />
<b>That can enjoy</b><br />
<b>Invisibility.</b><br />
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<b>Anyway, the “toxic invisible” is a way of looking at human psyche, while the “invisible structures of the world” sounds more metaphysical... These two aren’t necessarily related. Or are they?</b><br />
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I think you are right, that the toxic invisible and the hidden structures of the world are related. I like reading Zizek. He says, there are unknown unknowns, and there are unknown knowns. Things we don’t know we don’t know, and things we don’t know we do know. That’s the toxic invisible and the hidden structuring of things right there.<br />
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I never heard that poem, but I like it. Thanks for sharing it. I used to read Joyce a lot when I was a kid. My dad is a big fan.<br />
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<b>On your website you talk about "<a href="http://www.makeyourselftransparent.com/?page_id=5">augmenting our humanity with technology</a>". How do you think we can go about doing that?</b><br />
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Right now I am really interested in neural networks. I don't like calling them that. How can you say something works like the brain when the materials are so radically different? A neuron is nothing like the set of computer instructions that make up an artificial neural network. The morphology of the two are fundamentally unlike.<br />
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That said, I am fascinated by what <a href="http://academicearth.org/courses/machine-learning">machine learning algorithms</a> can do, and the way they are transforming our world. We have seen only the very beginning of it -- computer vision, natural language processing... where these things lead us are going to change what it means to be human, and I want to start using them right now to create art. So far the work I make with machine intelligence that isn't very different from other kinds of art. I am still making videos, images, and music. But I think there is potential for machine learning to allow for a radical shift in what kind of art is possible, in what art means. It is hard to imagine right now, but I am trying to imagine it. I want to make that happen.<br />
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It's important to me that artists get their hands on these tools. They are hard to reach. They require knowing programming, and math, and not so easy math at that. Plus they're mostly created by scientists and engineers who are not necessarily thinking of artists when they instruct others how to build machine learning algorithms. I would very much like to see these tools stolen and re-purposed to make art. Some artists do it now, but I know from my work as an art educator that to many people it feels out of reach. This is a problem. The new kinds of art are going to be very important for all of us, if we are to make sense of what it means to be human in the face of a new kind of intelligence.<br />
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I worry that we look at the machines around us and try to be more like them. I worry that we end up meeting the machines where they are and not the other way around. I think of the film "The Big Lebowski", when The Dude says, "Jackie Treehorn treats objects like women, man." I love that line. It gets to the heart of the issue: how we treat objects and people. I am not talking about intelligent robots. Look at the iPhone. It contains assumptions and rules encoded in it about what it means to relate to something. We push it, it does what we want. <span id="goog_775438380"></span><a href="http://www.cparity.com/projects/AcmClassification/samples/330542.pdf">Clifford Nass and Bryon Reeves<span id="goog_775438381"></span> showed that</a> people treat computers and machines as social agents, even if they know better. Their book came out nine years ago. Now I watch little kids flying through iPhones and games and wonder, what are they learning from these objects they treat as friends? Are they learning how to participate in mutually fulfilling, respectful relationships? What kind of relationship are these machine-human relationships modeling for us?<br />
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<b>I’d like to hear more about the relationship between the “machine learning algorithms”, the “new kind of intelligence” and your videos... Can you be more specific? Please feel free to be technical...</b><br />
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I remember when I first watched the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-organizing_map">self-organized map</a> (SOM) I programmed, well, organize itself. I had given it pictures of faces of my family, going back four generations. It was important to me when deciding how to program the SOM that I could see its learning process. I guess I wanted to get to know it, and I did -- I watched as the it learned what we all look like. It found the features that linked our faces in those particular photographs, I watched it move from its fantasy of my mom's face to my sister's, to my great-grandfather's. Strange but true: some researchers call the data that neural networks generate "fantasies." The way it moved made me immediately realize the accuracy of the term "<a href="http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/~russell/intro.html">Artificial Intelligence</a>."<br />
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Since then I have become curious about what other learning models look like. I want to see the different kinds of intelligences people have been making. Right now, I am very interested in <a href="http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~hinton/nipstutorial/nipstut3.pdf">deep belief networks</a>, and am getting a lot out of Geoff Hinton's research on them. Building a generative model is infinitely more interesting to me than building a model that only classifies, which I encoutered a lot in the <a href="http://marl.smusic.nyu.edu/">Music and Audio Research Lab</a> at NYU. Back then I was drawn to the hidden Markov model for exactly that reason; though it classified, you could always generate a state sequence and from there sample the gaussians to get new input data. The deep belief nets are more beautiful to me. I am eager to try and implement then in Max, which is where I built the SOM.<br />
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<b>Can you tell us more about the programs you’re using? I downloaded the demo versions of some of them and tried to use but got lost very soon. I would have loved to join the course you’re teaching in New York. How can videomakers learn more about these? Any suggestions? Books? </b><br />
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I’ve been building everything myself in Max. My plan is to make the software I use free for anyone to download. Videomakers, musicians, people with no experience or interest in the technical side of AI -- this is my target audience. I really believe that no matter how complex these tools are, they should always be available to everyone and explained in such a way that people can understand what they are. Often I think programmers lose sight of how foreign their work is to non-programmers. I put a lot of time into making the software accessible, which often comes to do lots of visualization tools to make it clear what the algorithm is doing. When I finish the SOM library, I plan on posting in on my website and in the <a href="http://cycling74.com/">Cycling 74</a> forums.<br />
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As for books or courses, it’s hard to find a non-technical introduction to machine learning and AI. I can tell you, learning this stuff was slow going for me. I was always playing catch-up: with the math, the programming skills, the theory... it took a while and lot of work. I got good at reading articles I didn’t understand at all, and not letting that discourage me. I’m not above looking up every single word in a journal paper that I don’t understand, even if it takes a month to get through it.<br />
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I’m trying to address the lack of educational resources on AI for artists at <a href="http://www.harvestworks.org/">Harvestworks</a>, which is a non-profit arts center where I work as technical director. Within the next two months, I plan on running a course called AI for Artists, which will be designed to get people’s hands on new machine intelligence tools and give them an understanding on how the tools work without requiring four years of college math.<br />
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<b>You talk a lot about technology but you use home videos and other personal things from your childhood as your starting points... Are they "starting points"</b><b>? How do they affect the form of the videos? Is that part of the process of being transparent? One of your videos is called "The story I am trying to tell you..." Is there a story you're trying to tell us?</b><br />
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Family is definitely a starting point, that’s a good way of putting it. I have a lot of video material of my parents and sisters. They are very important to me and I think a lot of my work -- and who I am -- really has its roots in what it was like to grow up in my family. Our particular dynamics. I’ve noticed whenever I make a new program, the first thing I usually to do try it out is give it images of my family.<br />
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As I get older, I can’t help but feel a strange mix of wonder and sadness when I see the video footage of my sisters and I as kids. Computers make it easy to think that we can store the past in fixed form and bring it with us, but they can do nothing to address the fact that we cannot really cross back in time to become those memories. We can only have them. The tension between being and having is something a former therapy supervisor of mine taught me about. He believes that art is an attempt to reach back against the losses that come with time, the way your identity goes fractured, and make yourself whole again.<br />
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<b>Why is your blog titled "Make Yourself Transparent"?</b><br />
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When I created <a href="http://www.makeyourselftransparent.com/">Make Yourself Transparent</a>, my goal was to make a place for my friends and I to share all the work we weren't finished with, wasn't quite ready to let out, etc... this is part of the idea behind the title. I decided to not wait until I was proud of my work. I wanted to just get it out there, in the hopes that I would spend less time thinking about how it would be perceived and more time making it.<br />
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<b>A "part of the idea"... What’s the rest of the idea? And by the way, I’m not a big fan of your videos before </b><b><a href="http://vimeo.com/3711133"><i>Ontology</i></a>...</b><br />
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I definitely agree with you -- the work before a certain point is simply not interesting to me. I don't think it feels like art. I only really felt like I started to hit a stride very recently. Maybe I will always feel like I am finally getting started. I think Faulkner said, you have to murder your darlings. Well, it's hard. I get attached to my work. So I try to put it out there and turn away. That's how I murder them. The less tightly I hold on, the more I realize I'm not really responsible for the work anyway. Then it's not such an ego boost. It's more about a way of living. I want to be transparent to the mystery -- that's what Joseph Campbell says. Be transparent to the transcendent. You don't make yourself into a light by trying to shine. You try to be very clear, don't be grabby, don't hold on to things. The light isn't mine. I am doing my best to let it through.<br />
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</div>Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-5118611520870818672010-09-21T18:28:00.006+03:002011-03-16T14:11:44.372+02:00Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Director's Statement for "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives" (2010)<div><br /></div>I saw Apichatpong's huge masterpiece <i>Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives</i> a few days ago and can't get it out of my head. I think there's nothing like it in the history of cinema, or in Apichatpong's own filmography.<div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-5d7sEfQDd_wc3mjvxcL1YBiUiIb9rnKm37UWZak-RmX7SLZXUD3DLmJYsQ1oDbFN4BFRnjKJgk_ClIpCYGO7izTeZGDroeDa06yqdpiPQg5khXsembgrGWLOv44IuTez3z075A/s1600/background.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-5d7sEfQDd_wc3mjvxcL1YBiUiIb9rnKm37UWZak-RmX7SLZXUD3DLmJYsQ1oDbFN4BFRnjKJgk_ClIpCYGO7izTeZGDroeDa06yqdpiPQg5khXsembgrGWLOv44IuTez3z075A/s320/background.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br />I hope I'll write a lot about the film in this blog, but for that I'll need to see it a couple more times. The first experience was too visceral, too sensuous, too overwhelming for me to actually start writing about it. Luckily, it will play in Istanbul at the Film Ekimi festival on October. Soon, that is! Can't wait!<br /><br />Meanwhile, here's something we can begin with to start analyzing this irreplaceable masterpiece. Apichatpong's Director's Statement, from the <a href="http://filmswelike.com/films/uncleboonmee/presskit/files/UncleBoonmee_PressKit_FWL.pdf">Press Kit:</a><br /><br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">"<i>Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives</i> is an homage to my home, </span>and to a certain kind of cinema I grew up with.<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I believe in the transmigration of souls between humans, plants, animals, and ghosts. </span>Uncle Boonmeeʼs story shows the relationship between man and animal and at the same time destroys the line dividing them. When the events are represented through cinema, they become shared memories of the crew, the cast, and the public. A new layer of (simulated) memory is augmented in the audienceʼs experience. In this regard, filmmaking is not unlike creating synthetic past lives.<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">I am interested in exploring the innards of this time machine. There might be some </span>mysterious forces waiting to be revealed just as certain things that used to be called black magic have been shown to be scientific facts.</div><div><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">For me, filmmaking remains a source all of whose energy we havenʼt properly utilized. </span>In the same way that we have not thoroughly explained the inner workings of the mind. Additionally, I have become interested in the destruction and extinction processes of cultures and of species.<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">For the past few years in Thailand, nationalism, fueled by the military coups, brought </span>about a confrontation of ideologies. There is now a state agency that acts as a moral policeman to ban ʻinappropriateʼ activities and to destroy their contents. It is impossible not to relate the story of Uncle Boonmee and his belief to this.<br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">He is an emblem of something that is about to disappear, something that erodes like the </span>old kind of cinemas, theatres, the old acting styles that have no place in our contemporary landscape."</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-65205923530857927312010-09-02T18:30:00.056+03:002010-09-03T01:44:27.228+03:00Philippe Grandrieux's "La Vie Nouvelle" (2002)<div><br /></div><a href="http://blog.waysofseeing.org/uploaded_images/la-vie-nouvelle-title-782285.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://blog.waysofseeing.org/uploaded_images/la-vie-nouvelle-title-782283.jpg" style="display: block; height: 169px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a><br /><br />Let me begin by quoting a part of the lyrics of the famous French song sung by a client of Melania: Jean Ferrat's <i>Aimer à perdre la raison, </i>from a poem by Louis Aragon. I don't find the poem, or the song, that beautiful in themselves, but they mean a lot to me as an element of <i>La Vie Nouvelle</i>:<br /><div><br />Aimer à perdre la raison<br />Aimer à n'en savoir que dire<br />A n'avoir que toi d'horizon<br />Et ne connaître de saisons<br />Que par la douleur du partir<br />Aimer à perdre la raison<br /><br />Ah, c'est toujours toi que l'on blesse<br />C'est toujours ton miroir brisé,<br />Mon pauvre bonheur ma faiblesse<br />Toi qu'on insulte et qu'on délaisse<br />Dans toute chair martyrisée.<br /><br /><br />In short, the first part talks about loving someone so much that you lose your mind, so much that the only thing on the horizon seems to be the loved one. The second part, not sung in the movie, describes the person being loved, who turns out to be broken, injured, insulted and martyrized by the society.<br /><br />Perhaps the heart of <i>La Vie Nouvelle</i>, and the sublime art of Philippe Grandrieux can be explained by the two verses above. Broken, painful existences in search of love, seeking some form of communion with the other, who have their own miseries. Many people mistake <i>La Vie Nouvelle</i> for a sick porn movie, which it certainly looks like at points, I admit I had to struggle with it a long time. The violence on the screen is near unacceptable, especially because the director is flirting with it. But in fact, and this is clear to me as sunlight, the violence and the abuses in Grandrieux's films are always confessions, exorcisms. The "New Life" being talked about here begins after the discovery of love, or, maybe a phrase that can be used interchangably with love in Grandrieux's cinema, the discovery of an other. The harsh reality that came before only makes this "new life" more meaningful.<br /><br /><br />As Grandrieux says himself in the wonderful Nicole Brenez <a href="http://www.rouge.com.au/1/grandrieux.html">interview</a> on <a href="http://www.rouge.com.au/">Rouge</a>:<br /><br />"...always this story of what it is to be human, i.e. confronted with alterity, with the Other who is infinitely possible and yet infinitely closed and inaccessible, no matter what one does. And it’s from there that one journeys, works, loves, fucks…"<br /><br />By the way, "La Vie Nouvelle" is the official French translation of Dante's text "La Vita Nuova", a collection of gorgeous love poems. The hommage seems unmistakable.<br /><br /><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://blog.waysofseeing.org/uploaded_images/la-vie-nouvelle-1-782720.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://blog.waysofseeing.org/uploaded_images/la-vie-nouvelle-1-782719.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 169px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://blog.waysofseeing.org/uploaded_images/la-vie-nouvelle-2-782504.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://blog.waysofseeing.org/uploaded_images/la-vie-nouvelle-2-782502.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 169px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a><i></i></div><div><br /></div><br />Human beings are animals, dogs in <i>La Vie Nouvelle</i>, with potential for extremely elevated feelings. But the lack of these in daily life is the cause of the suffering. This animality, corporality, and the biology that drives it finds its perfect expression in a scene shot with a THERMAL CAMERA, nothing less, so what is recorded on celluloid isn't light, but the heat of human (and/or animal?) bodies. Here's what Grandrieux says about the scene, again from the Brenez <a href="http://www.rouge.com.au/1/grandrieux.html">interview</a>:<br /><br /><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">"(...) the principle is that it is no longer light which makes an impression. With infrared photography, you must use an infrared light, a beaming light that illuminates the bodies, and the reflection of that registers on the celluloid. But here, there is no light. It is the animal warmth of the bodies which imprints itself on the celluloid. The scene was shot in total darkness; no one could see anything except me through the camera. All the participants were in an absolute blackout, and they moved around in a deranged state."</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><br /><i><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://blog.waysofseeing.org/uploaded_images/la-vie-nouvelle-17-782546.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://blog.waysofseeing.org/uploaded_images/la-vie-nouvelle-17-782545.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 169px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a></div></i><br /><br />Adrian Martin's <a href="http://www.kinoeye.org/04/03/martin03.php/">incredible article</a> at Kinoeye touches at the heart of the matter. Reading the following paragraph the first time brought tears to my eyes, because it is so accurate, and reminds moments at the very extremes of my cinematic experience. The "French client" he talks about in the last sentence is the one singing the song <i>Aimer à perdre la raison</i>:<br /><br />"Mise en scène—the art of bodies in space—is always, subtly or overtly, a dance, but this is the dance of death, the living death of everyday power relations. The two scenes of Mélania's prostitution, one placed directly after the other in Grandrieux's cinema of cruelty, provide an inventory of bodily postures figuring fright, uncertainty, panic and stress, a primal, physical language of animals under threat: Seymour's instant post-coital blues, Mélania's vulnerable nakedness, and the icy upper-body stress of the French client, who finally withdraws into himself and away from the Other in order to masturbate in a fuzzy, atomised blur."<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://blog.waysofseeing.org/uploaded_images/la-vie-nouvelle-3-782390.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://blog.waysofseeing.org/uploaded_images/la-vie-nouvelle-3-782388.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 169px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a><a href="http://blog.waysofseeing.org/uploaded_images/la-vie-nouvelle-9-782300.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://blog.waysofseeing.org/uploaded_images/la-vie-nouvelle-9-782299.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 169px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a><a href="http://blog.waysofseeing.org/uploaded_images/la-vie-nouvelle-12-782675.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://blog.waysofseeing.org/uploaded_images/la-vie-nouvelle-12-782673.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 169px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div>Here's Grandrieux talking about the making of La Vie Nouvelle (Brenez <a href="http://www.rouge.com.au/1/grandrieux.html">interview</a>):<br /><br />"The film was made under the sign of enormous heat, vital energy, the blazing sun. That surpasses desire, it is even more archaic and formative; it comes from the sun itself, from a star beyond us that we aspire to, in a totally chaotic way. This aspiration towards great energy and happiness, it infused the film, which we made in a wild state of joy, six weeks of shooting like a single stroke, without a second thought [arrière-pensée]."<br /><br /><br />And finally, and again from the same <a href="http://www.rouge.com.au/1/grandrieux.html">interview</a>, here's a quote by Grandrieux you might have encountered elsewhere on this blog, one of the finest ideals ever set for art:<br /><br />"Not a film like a tree, with a trunk and branches, but like a field of sunflowers, a field of grass growing everywhere."<br /><br /></div>Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-28693301246212751552010-06-12T20:14:00.015+03:002016-02-13T11:59:15.377+02:00Claire Denis on narrative in cinemaThis is something Eytan sent me this morning, it's one of the best descriptions of how I approach narrative in cinema. From Jonathan Romney's <a href="http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,,338784,00.html">interview</a> with Claire Denis (bold emphases are mine):<div>
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Jonathan Romney: But the way you tell stories, you don't make it easy for the audience. I saw <i>Nénette et Boni</i> the other night, and what's amazing about that film is that it's a very simple story. A brother and a sister and they meet again. But we don't know everything about them. You take out all the things that other film-makers would put in so we know where we are. We don't know where we are in this film and we have to find ourselves, we have to find the story. Is that a conscious process?<br />
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Claire Denis: It's conscious and unconscious. Because again I am not trying to make it hard. I hate that. But I am trying to float on the impression of what a story could be. But for me, cinema is not made to give a psychological explanation, <b>for me cinema is montage, is editing. To make blocks of impressions or emotion meet with another block of impression or emotion</b> and put in between pieces of explanation, to me it's boring. Again, I am not trying to make it difficult but I think, <b>as a spectator, when I see a movie one block leads me to another block of inner emotion, I think that's cinema. That's an encounter.</b> I think cinema is linked to literature by a lot of social ways. Our brains are full of literature - my brain is. But <b>I think we also have a dream world, the brain is also full of image and songs</b> and I think that making films for me is to get rid of explanation. Because there is, I think, you get explanation by getting rid of explanation. I am sure of that.</div>
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Something I <a href="http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/a_film_by/message/35819">wrote</a> on a_film_by four years ago:</div>
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"Here's my problem with taking 'the story' too seriously. As Zach [Campbell] points out, what we call the story of a film only exists in our minds. What there really is in the film is bits and pieces of information/happenings. Those can be taken in time-based cause/consequence relationships and we have a story.<br />
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OR we can take those in a more poetic way, as a continuous flow of thought/feeling/images that sometimes create interesting effects not because they construct a story but just because they contrast or draw parallels between different ideas.<br />
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And I'm not talking about contrasts/parallels between different scenes. It could be that in the same scene, same shot, different thought/feelings might be aroused by different elements.<br />
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If a character expresses regret by the way she looks in a funeral scene, what we have is more than that character feeling regret during a funeral. We have the ideas of regret and death meshed together, which creates a different idea impossible to express in words. This would, of course, have to be helped by the composition since cinema is a cinematic medium.<br />
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I find that most of my favorite narrative films also work in this poetic way. <i>Au hasard, Balthazar</i>, <i>Viaggio in Italia</i>, <i>I Was a Male War Bride</i>, <i>Some Came Running</i>, <i>The Birds</i>, <i>Objective, Burma!</i> are all great examples of this."</div>
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Or we can summarize all this thanks to a simple quote by Jean Mitry: "Le roman est un récit qui s'organise en monde, le film un monde qui s'organise en récit," Tag Gallagher's <a href="http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/firstrelease/fr0301/tgbfr12a.htm">translation</a>: "The novel is a narrative that constructs a world; film is a world that constructs a narrative."</div>
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Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-19705525328845657682010-05-31T01:06:00.005+03:002010-05-31T02:12:20.504+03:00Douglas Sirk's "A Time to Love and a Time to Die" (1958)Buildings define spaces, and they are crumbling. War is Hell, and the lighting is Hell in <i>A Time to Love and a Time to Die</i>.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsWVCi_rKD5vBoPWDtwGFWc2uT54BD1_dcMOCEgdf-csA7aW0YFdkqEpGPg3qj-yK1TPjEg7mYDmAveXFyUIBWbj0dcpxfGWRgcUYvBcIBxIRsExPuZU4FOHHWIzxa3treYirx9A/s1600/a+time+to+love+and+a+time+to+die+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsWVCi_rKD5vBoPWDtwGFWc2uT54BD1_dcMOCEgdf-csA7aW0YFdkqEpGPg3qj-yK1TPjEg7mYDmAveXFyUIBWbj0dcpxfGWRgcUYvBcIBxIRsExPuZU4FOHHWIzxa3treYirx9A/s320/a+time+to+love+and+a+time+to+die+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br />The only paradise is in the short moments of peace the lovers have, which are usually cut off by sirens or the bombs exploding. Still, the blossoming flowers appear everywhere...<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: auto;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFDN-bYBqIImLVqqPnUGPybwl7OnUfbW0krughkgxOtZikh0hw6z7xpHgXX-t69Aos57qn_iof2jFYZ8s4fHSv_RKyM7lYuefhaa_1lhCpTh5EU8H0CglY2unqCb2knQUfJJ8izg/s1600/a+time+to+love+and+a+time+to+die+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFDN-bYBqIImLVqqPnUGPybwl7OnUfbW0krughkgxOtZikh0hw6z7xpHgXX-t69Aos57qn_iof2jFYZ8s4fHSv_RKyM7lYuefhaa_1lhCpTh5EU8H0CglY2unqCb2knQUfJJ8izg/s320/a+time+to+love+and+a+time+to+die+3.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb2r-B2Lw7O1N5OLkokJX8JLzTtpqgpOUiL-P07WOU1YGdkefF4H31JTilliiPYr7SvezewBxWdZk3HklTOsrHAAMQiNVGOnxJ3zn2rcXy0-JRabVkN1JJTjxsW9tnlbVeNbdynw/s1600/a+time+to+love+and+a+time+to+die+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb2r-B2Lw7O1N5OLkokJX8JLzTtpqgpOUiL-P07WOU1YGdkefF4H31JTilliiPYr7SvezewBxWdZk3HklTOsrHAAMQiNVGOnxJ3zn2rcXy0-JRabVkN1JJTjxsW9tnlbVeNbdynw/s320/a+time+to+love+and+a+time+to+die+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br />About Sirk's <i>The Tarnished Angels</i>, I <a href="http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/top_tens/index.html#meranda">had said</a>: "I felt so fragile, as if everything could break like a glass at any given moment". The same here: The whole world, everything we build might crumble down at any moment. True, this is a story at a time of war, a time of absurdity, but if we are in a world where such absurdities can happen, what does that tell about the every other moment in history? Isn't it pure luck for the lucky few that things are standing still... And what is it worth, if it's just pure luck?<br /><br />Intricacies of composition, visual puzzles, filled with ruins, or the standing artifacts of civilisation (especially the museum...). Binding's house as a perfect example of how the materiality around is such a lie, just an extension of human egos (Tag Gallagher talks about "Wills"), threatened by an absurd destiny (which is forewarned by the title itself). Life itself is only a reflection, and Love slips away, even though we're trying to hold on to it (i.e. the last shot of the film).<div><div><br />Like Stan Brakhage says in <i>Telling Time</i>, aesthetics and empathy are one and the same. Film-aesthetics, not as a collection of pretty pictures, but as a rhythmic succession of durations, a perception of time-itself ("A Time to... and a Time to..."). And empathy (Tag Gallagher talks about "understanding"), not only for the characters whose stories we're watching, but also for a vision of the world (Douglas Sirk's, in this case).</div><div><br /></div><div>Similarly, Tag Gallagher <a href="http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/05/36/sirk.html">reminds us</a> that the Greek word "Melodrama" actually consists of two words: "Melo" (meaning "Music": rhythm, form...) and "Drama" (emotions, identification, conflicts...).</div><div><br />There is joy in the experience of <i>A Time to Love and a Time to Die</i>, a dark, frightening joy...</div></div>Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-91296648414479217022010-04-29T01:53:00.011+03:002010-04-29T02:37:59.752+03:00Semih Kaplanoğlu's "Yusuf Trilogy" (2007-2010)<div><br /></div>Yesterday, I went to see <i>Bal</i> (<i>Honey</i>) for the third time.<br /><br />I went there because I felt like I needed the movie, because it was the only real thing around. <i>Bal</i> would offer me a ride to the very essence of things, while everything else seemed bland... I needed therapy, and it was with this mindset that I went in, not knowing what to expect, except to be healed... Healed I was when it was over.<br /><div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEMi90yrWRQxPsjjhmRQ3HKcygB0pYWsxdWZ6C3a76fXmqLAhkWhRJ_fAF3ukiGgrr2Jjs7iNnXkdXDmaimLRiuZOjd4NKFU70zHqF1M3agBQNVX-8OoDJJ0IQEHPKsjSD9MI3iQ/s1600/vlcsnap-00028.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEMi90yrWRQxPsjjhmRQ3HKcygB0pYWsxdWZ6C3a76fXmqLAhkWhRJ_fAF3ukiGgrr2Jjs7iNnXkdXDmaimLRiuZOjd4NKFU70zHqF1M3agBQNVX-8OoDJJ0IQEHPKsjSD9MI3iQ/s320/vlcsnap-00028.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /></div><div>Now that I'm getting familiar with it, the road it offers feels less bumpy, like a free-flowing conversation. This familiarity does not ruin the experience at all, it breeds no contempt, no boredom. It's the other way around, <i>Bal</i> feels closer and closer to home, like a memorized prayer that gets more elating each time it is read (not that I'm a religious person in any way). Is it just coincidence or a case of selective attention that I ran into the following two quotes by Beckett today?</div><div><br /></div><div>“All poetry, as discriminated from the various paradigms of prosody, is prayer.”</div><div><br /></div><div>and</div><div><br /></div><div>“...art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear and does not make clear.”</div><br /><div>In his thoughtful article on Semih Kaplanoğlu's <i>Yusuf Trilogy, </i>Fatih Özgüven gives us some clues on how to approach these seemingly distant films. Here is my own summary of what he says, or rather, what I understand from it:</div><div><br /></div><div>The trilogy consists of three films with peculiar titles: <i>Yumurta</i> (<i>Egg</i>), <i>Süt</i> (<i>Milk</i>), <i>Bal</i> (<i>Honey</i>). The following explanation for the titles only work in the context of the trilogy as the films create their own meanings:</div><div><br /></div><div>Honey represents the Father, who acquires his knowledge of the world through work (the bees are working and Yusuf's father works in order to obtain honey and teaches his son how to). Milk represents the Mother who has a more innate knowledge of life, just as milk comes naturally. She is also the one insisting that Yusuf drinks milk. Egg is life, or birth, which can only happen through the coming together of what's innate and what's acquired.</div><div><br /></div><div>This above paragraph can be taken as a mythology of how human beings are created, OR as a mythology of how artworks are created. To draw the parallel between art and life isn't very hard here, especially since Yusuf will become a poet. The distinction between life and art is superfluous anyway.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The expending symbolisms above work as clues to the trilogy, they clarify, but shouldn't be taken too far. Semih Kaplanoğlu's films also appreciate the thingness of things. So, in a way, an egg is an egg, milk is milk, honey is honey... Quoting D.H. Lawrence:</div><div><br /></div><div>“Life and love are life and love, a bunch of violets is a bunch of violets, and to drag in the idea of a point is to ruin everything.”</div><div><br /></div><div><br />When I first heard that a Turkish film-maker whose works I had not seen before was going to make a trilogy with the titles <i>Egg</i>, <i>Milk</i> and <i>Honey</i>, I thought it was ridicule, a poor attempt at something. Now with <i>Bal</i>, it all seems so very clearly, unshakably profound. In <i>Bal</i>, there is a scene in the classroom where a girl reads a paragraph from a textbook. It goes something like this (as much as I remember): “We eat food in order to obtain our energy. Without them we would be incapable of doing ordinary things such as walking, running, playing...”<br /><br />So foods are not just foods, we exist thanks to them, they are our connections with other species, or the outer world in general. They are connections that become part of us. Notice that eggs, milk and honey are all foods obtained from animals (without actually killing them; animal meat is always gross in the films). As shown in the trilogy, human beings also use food for spiritual purposes in their rituals, as if they have metaphysical powers.<br /><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXT7ReXSbvYP-ZLN2JDw2LCc1naEmuBdX7eo_40yV97-mF78VSUFEnKk-hX7xdmjHOLCj3BZPdgn8Q0yQkxl69miUNXQh_12JOB3wf50C9mgjXoCUyrDKjjFofxL-s0Qu5cAgLag/s1600/vlcsnap-00027.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXT7ReXSbvYP-ZLN2JDw2LCc1naEmuBdX7eo_40yV97-mF78VSUFEnKk-hX7xdmjHOLCj3BZPdgn8Q0yQkxl69miUNXQh_12JOB3wf50C9mgjXoCUyrDKjjFofxL-s0Qu5cAgLag/s320/vlcsnap-00027.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br />(SPOILERS in the following paragraph:) </div><div><br /></div><div>Our senses are another connection we have with the outer world, and they are also metaphysical. Little Yusuf rings a little bell, supposedly hoping that it will somehow bring his father back. He shuts the light on and off in the evening, as if he's hoping his dad will appear all of a sudden (just like in his dreams). He also learns to taste honey, feels a need to embrace the trees... The first poem he ever hears is a Turkish translation of Arthur Rimbaud's <i>Sensations</i>:<br /><br />“On the blue summer evenings, I shall go down the paths,<br />Getting pricked by the corn, crushing the short grass:<br />In a dream I shall feel its coolness on my feet.<br />I shall let the wind bathe my bare head.<br /><br />I shall not speak, I shall think about nothing:<br />But endless love will mount in my soul;<br />And I shall travel far, very far, like a gipsy,<br />Through the countryside - as happy as if I were with a woman.”<br /><br /><br />The film ends with the sound of breathing dissolving into the sound of the forest.<br /><br />For me, first and foremost, Semih Kaplanoğlu's <i>Yusuf Trilogy</i> is about the line between us and the outer world, or rather, about the fact that such a line actually does not exist.<br /><br /><br />I find it best to end with Semih Kaplanoğlu's own words about the <i>Yusuf Trilogy</i>, partly because it mentions layers I didn't even talk about here:</div><br /><br />“Seeing at the Forum section of the 55th Berlinale, where my second film "Angel's Fall" had its world premiere in February 2005, how some directors look upon their own provincial towns opened new horizons for me.<br /><br />Soon after my return home, I started writing about the Anatolian provinces; the short stories I wrote created a trilogy. The three, feature-length films will be titled Honey, Milk and Egg. I intend to begin the shooting with Egg, the third chronological story in the trilogy. The films will be shown in reverse order, i.e, as Egg, Honey and Milk.<br /><br />What I'm looking at here is a longish cinematographic flash-back. Call it an internal journey, if you will, towards the authentic and away from the globalising face and appearance of the world's provinces. For it is in our provinces that the feeling of time, so eroded by civilisation, still clings.<br /><br />This will also be something of an archaeological dig, extending from the last days of the mother-son relationship (with the death of the mother in Egg) to the beginning (the birth of the son in Honey). I hope in this way to narrate the burden and pain of passing time so that I may be able to invite everyone to remember and think about his own time. We all have mothers we love and it is highly possible that much is hidden in the time we spent with our mothers, and the time we are no longer able to spend with them.<br /><br />I wish to note that my films are not only bound to the story, that is, the screenplay. I am of the view that time is the raw material of cinema. My expression is plain, spare in dialogue, shaped by visual and audio details and focused on conveying the sense of time passing with every breath.”<div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-70445408998090495952010-04-24T15:25:00.005+03:002010-04-24T15:30:44.790+03:00Semih Kaplanoğlu's "Bal" (2010)<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">English title: <i>Honey</i></div><div><br /></div><div>It's a film that deserves multiple viewings but I'd just like to react to my first viewing. Warning: This post has SPOILERS!<br /><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTu0UiLpArqv5GSTni-AIaq-GJjuFmBc0rTeRONMkGlr9CHhseIY6a6c3_ovSl5C5BXpfwt8VzsuTu4LdVU-pEyKSzY21wbRUDhNDB90o2Bfk16tRG72rLZ1hX_eHZHxLnX9Bs3Q/s320/bal.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5463679649164111090" style="display: block; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: auto; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 200px; " /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 238); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; "><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div>Who would have guessed that the trilogy would end anti-climactically, down-beat, dissolving into life itself, with the sound of breathing...<br /><br /></div><div>As <a href="http://twitter.com/cihansgenc">Cihan</a> said beautifully after the film, you fall down into the film after a while, and there is no turning back.</div><div><br /></div><div>Primitive, expressive, conscious, depressing and joyful, Kaplanoğlu's last film is not about anything. It is off life itself.</div><div><br /></div><div>Primitive it is, somehow reminding us our primal reactions to nature, to parents, to language, to poetry. Before consciousness.</div><div><br /></div><div>A film OFF life, its depressive nature also offers joys, some urgency, and a blatantly sensual beauty grasping the eyes first, then the mind, and later my philosophy of life.</div><div><br /></div><div>In a Semih Kaplanoğlu film, expect to learn to be patient... And find out for yourself how that minute attention later spills over to the rest of things in your life.</div></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-63978521804343659032010-04-12T01:33:00.017+03:002010-04-22T01:07:13.969+03:0029th International Istanbul Film Festival<div></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwoMc9E_m_UWyjt_-s0xPpbMgXvrsj44JeUeM_R9xG5-Vltg34OHoYvcRlhs7SuLsCJbrJbS9wbCU6IA__YdzyFagd1i9FyTXNVekWkqwv-ju1xISajNlB6mobc8tmyNuhisy9/s1600/festafis_2010.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwoMc9E_m_UWyjt_-s0xPpbMgXvrsj44JeUeM_R9xG5-Vltg34OHoYvcRlhs7SuLsCJbrJbS9wbCU6IA__YdzyFagd1i9FyTXNVekWkqwv-ju1xISajNlB6mobc8tmyNuhisy9/s1600/festafis_2010.jpg" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 288px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 200px;" /></a><br />
I'm seeing a lot of films these days, thanks to the <a href="http://www.iksv.org/film/english/program.asp">Istanbul Film Festival</a>. I'll just list here the films I like. Will update this post as I see more. In an arbitrary order of preference:<br />
<div><br />
<br />
Sublime:<br />
<div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i>Around a Small Mountain</i> - Jacques Rivette</div></div><br />
<br />
</div><div>Great Films:</div><div><i>Five Fingers</i> - Joseph Mankiewicz</div><div><i>Homage by Assassination</i> - Elia Suleiman </div><div><div><i>Nymph</i> - Pen-Ek Ratanaruang</div></div><div><br />
</div><div><br />
</div><div>Good Films:</div><div><i>Chronicle of a Disappearance</i> - Elia Suleiman</div><div><i>Divine Intervention</i> - Elia Suleiman<br />
<div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i>The Time That Remains</i> - Elia Suleiman</div></div></div><div><i>Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans</i> - Werner Herzog</div><div><i>Mother</i> - Bong Joon-ho<br />
<div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i>White Material</i> - Claire Denis</div></div><div></div></div><i>Istanbul shorts</i> - Maurice Pialat<br />
<div><br />
<br />
I'm not sure what I feel about:<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i>Face</i> - Tsai Ming-Liang<br />
<i>Karaoke</i> - Chris Chong Chan Fui</div></div><div><i><br />
</i></div><div><br />
</div>Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15748975.post-2666811932150219152010-04-02T20:31:00.014+03:002010-04-04T14:43:50.392+03:00Hou Hsiao-hsien's "Millennium Mambo" (2001)<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br />According to Wikipedia, the word "mambo" has at least two meanings:<br /><br />In the Voodoo religion in Haiti, it refers to </span></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mambo_(Voodoo)"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">the female high priest</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, "whose responsibility it is to preserve the rituals and songs and maintain the relationship between the spirits and the community as a whole (though some of this is the responsibility of the whole community as well). They are entrusted with leading the service of all of the spirits of their lineage."<br /><br />As a "</span></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mambo_(music)"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">music form and dance style</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">", "the word derives from a ki-kongo based language, the language spoken by West-Central African slaves taken to Cuba". It means "conversation with the gods".<br /><br /><br /></span></span><div class="separator" face="Times" style="text-align: center;clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; "><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyKpT-GHOhf6FMX3-Y-5W3K1ZACKDxgBkeNS2P0iGTPZVSZZzDm26RThJqm6viuk_XLVL8fgp1pi6OoIXW4adQAL93A5a4jBEmDpes_DCBrQXCh1f83E-tyitMD04vYQngQmXr-w/s1600-h/millenium+mambo+b4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyKpT-GHOhf6FMX3-Y-5W3K1ZACKDxgBkeNS2P0iGTPZVSZZzDm26RThJqm6viuk_XLVL8fgp1pi6OoIXW4adQAL93A5a4jBEmDpes_DCBrQXCh1f83E-tyitMD04vYQngQmXr-w/s320/millenium+mambo+b4.jpg" width="320" /></span></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Whichever one Hou was thinking when he titled his </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Millennium Mambo</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, he was trying to make a film about modern life where the main purpose was to have an interaction with the invisible spirituality beyond the visible world (through the character of Vicky, if we accept the first definition).</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Actually, again according to Wikipedia, the word is also </span></span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mambo"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">a greeting in Swahili</span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> 'commonly used by young people in East African countries especially Tanzania and some parts of Kenya. It's considered a slang greeting, and translates to "things?" as in "how are things?"'. Is this Hou saying "Hello!" to the new millennium and asking, somehow ironically, "how are things"?</span></span></div><div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br />All of these work as explanations... I'm sure there could be others.</span></span></div><div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /><br /></span></span><div class="separator" style="text-align: center;clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; "><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfJczXcZbKTe2aqu-9agu-pO4pH558X_7x27teJuB0rBJ6V_nVeWMYSLQ4c3wi-DApOtqWIJtxBKjB_i8Xwkjsn-YCy_Hp0VN6_AmVYQCk30waOxl0AePAEIvEUI9kFhAOYwaPqg/s1600-h/millenium+mambo+b5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfJczXcZbKTe2aqu-9agu-pO4pH558X_7x27teJuB0rBJ6V_nVeWMYSLQ4c3wi-DApOtqWIJtxBKjB_i8Xwkjsn-YCy_Hp0VN6_AmVYQCk30waOxl0AePAEIvEUI9kFhAOYwaPqg/s320/millenium+mambo+b5.jpg" width="320" /></span></span></a></div><div style="text-align: center;margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="text-align: center;clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; "><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_KsS51TiqA40w3g2SaG7bmtWVrQDhpYkBaxnmINvxfIJV1gwwz44GKPolkzVxQxO7TlgNbDyt9cV2v0L9e4iFQI6bvyeVkhP92GfdvtdGziWD7WEKfPS8-xtZ3G5QdKESw4sT-w/s1600-h/millenium+mambo+b6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_KsS51TiqA40w3g2SaG7bmtWVrQDhpYkBaxnmINvxfIJV1gwwz44GKPolkzVxQxO7TlgNbDyt9cV2v0L9e4iFQI6bvyeVkhP92GfdvtdGziWD7WEKfPS8-xtZ3G5QdKESw4sT-w/s320/millenium+mambo+b6.jpg" width="320" /></span></span></a></div><div class="separator" style="text-align: center;clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Bland lives, lived without hopes, without love... Lives spent smoking cigarettes, perhaps because dying isn't necessarily worse than living... Meaningless music all around... </span></span></div><div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /><i>Millennium Mambo</i> is a film of despair. The only character who seems to have real hopes about life is a 80 year old grandma living in a village far from the urban landscape. Not so surprisingly within the context, and considering Hou's love for cinema, this same village also has a film festival. </span></span></div><div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br />It is a film of despair, a continuation of his previous film </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Flowers of Shanghai</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> (1998) in lots of ways, just in a different time period. I'd like to point out that the films that will follow </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Millennium Mambo</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> will all have very joyful, happy, hopeful, and loveful moments, just as there are in earlier movies, beginning from </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Green, Green Grass of Home </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">(1983). There are many films of his I haven't seen but I guess it wouldn't be a mistake to call this period a relatively depressed point in his filmography.<br /><br /><br /></span></span><div class="separator" style="text-align: center;clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; "><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_3MLjXrIqrAOqU6peoENu0SIlshT8hgMsKz_ANkQPX4Ku8_fiZZFSljzsN_QxU0uL3vjD1TS6ucNU3KglFyg6GPMwxrqT8oPSRDNt4CP7keyfTh1xnI7yE1aV-bjy4O76ehOEPg/s1600-h/millenium+mambo+b1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_3MLjXrIqrAOqU6peoENu0SIlshT8hgMsKz_ANkQPX4Ku8_fiZZFSljzsN_QxU0uL3vjD1TS6ucNU3KglFyg6GPMwxrqT8oPSRDNt4CP7keyfTh1xnI7yE1aV-bjy4O76ehOEPg/s320/millenium+mambo+b1.jpg" width="320" /></span></span></a></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div></div><div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br />The moments of joy in </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Mambo </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">are all too brief to give us hope, they look almost as a revolt to the blandness all around. In a film like </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">The Flight of the Red Balloon</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">, six years later, there is real faith in human warmth and the power of love. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><div class="separator" style="text-align: left; clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="text-align: center;clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; "><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhge-tbUczYdTt2xQ26tFIbFi9ts63E1sFk7EMScL1vv7fD5316vcdnN4T9FXLjKYiQjay7aVkBVn3Js2tuYINRxWNBImBc1xWZgCLnD-qAjdv3TyglD31-w6ZbfeThuBhM8PAz6A/s1600-h/millenium+mambo+b2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhge-tbUczYdTt2xQ26tFIbFi9ts63E1sFk7EMScL1vv7fD5316vcdnN4T9FXLjKYiQjay7aVkBVn3Js2tuYINRxWNBImBc1xWZgCLnD-qAjdv3TyglD31-w6ZbfeThuBhM8PAz6A/s320/millenium+mambo+b2.jpg" width="320" /></span></span></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="text-align: left; clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">You can find </span></span><a href="http://aschenker.blogspot.com/2007/05/audio-in-hous-millenium-mambo.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">here </span></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Andrew Schenker's wonderful blog post about the sound on Hou's <i>Millenium Mambo</i>.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="text-align: left; clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div></span></div></div>Yoel Merandahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11326291445495139912noreply@blogger.com2