Meditations XXI

Short Fable on Freedom

2009-02-15T13:28:00.001Z

A man and a dog walk together through a park at night. The dog walks confidently in front, looking back ever so often. The animal can't understand that the tightness of the metal leash binds it to the man and wherever one goes, so goes the other.

The walk continues, the dog sniffing some lampposts, urinating against them, then walking some more, sniffing a wall, urinating against it. After every sniff a look at the man, looking for his silent, dispassionate approval.

Coming into an area with thick brushes, the man spots a cat moving stealthily among the shadows. He knows that his dog will chase any cats it sees, so he pulls the leash to distract it.

It's too late.

The dog launches into a mad dash in pursuit of the cat, the man's wrist caught in the loop of the leash, dragging him behind. The dog storms through the brush, cuttings its cheeks on the thorny plant but ignoring the injuries in its single-minded chase. The man tries to take a detour around the thorny brush, but there's not enough slack on the leash to do so - his clothes, shins, hands are riddled with blood by the time he comes through the other side.

Man and beast run after the cat, which by now is in full flight across the lawn, zigzagging to throw off its pursuers. There are no trees or walls for the cat to climb, and the longer limbs of the chasers give them the advantage in an open field like this.

They go over a hill and are now very near the park's exit when the cat notices a place to hide - a telephone box. The door is only slightly ajar, certainly wide enough for the cat to sneak through, but not big enough for the dog or the man. The cat jumps in, taking the corner opposite to the door and arching its back and hissing to scare off the dog and the man.

The dog doesn't understand how to open the door and looks back at its owner, who opens the door completely. The dog enters the booth slowly and faces the cat. The moment it had been waiting for is now here, but it doesn't know what to do. Its instincts always told it to chase cats, or any other small animal who ran away, but, facing for the first time its prey, it is paralysed.

The dog stares at the cat, then back at the man who stands motionless, assessing the damage from going through the brush. The cat hisses, the dog barks - it's a stand-off.

The man sucks the blood from a deep scratch in his hand and then smacks the dog across the muzzle. The dog takes a step back, tail between its legs. The man approaches the cat, which claws pointlessly at his thick trousers. He raises his boot and brings it down on the cat's arched back, crushing it. A few more stomps and the meowing stops.

The man pats the dog's rump and it goes into the booth, snatching the cat on its mouth.

The walk resumes, the dog proudly displaying its master's kill as if it were its own.

Tarkovsky on Becoming a Filmmaker

2008-12-16T16:23:00.000Z

What is important to the education of a filmmaker is not a matter learning a set of skills and techniques, but having a vital, passionate need to express something unique and personal. Above all, the student has to understand why he wants to become a filmmaker rather than work in some other art form and he has to ponder what he wants to say in film's unique form of expression.

In recent years I have met more and more young people who go to film school to prepare themselves to do "what they have to do" (as they say in Russia) or "to make a living" (as they say in Europe and America). This is tragic. Learning to use the equipment and edit a movie is child's play; anyone can learn that without half-trying. But learning how to think independently, learning how to be an individual, is entirely different from learning "how to do" something. Learning how to say something unique and different is a skill that no one can force you to master. And to go down that path is to shoulder a burden that is not merely difficult, but at times impossible to bear. But there is no other way to become an artist. You have to go for broke. You must risk everything in your quest to express a personal truth. It must be all or nothing.

Sculpting in Time, p. 124 (adapted and updated by Ray Carney)

Drama of the Moment

2008-11-18T15:04:00.002Z

This is an excerpt from Donato Totaro's excellent review of Bela Tarr's "Satantango":

On many occasions the subject of Tarr’s long takes are the Hungarian plains themselves (the puszta), the former stomping grounds of another great Hungarian long take stylist, Miklos Jançso. This unfettered camera stare also has the effect of escalating drama, even when simply perusing the muddy puszta. (...) Why is it that the excessively long takes in Sátántangó, many with little action, movement, or narrative development in any conventional sense, are still fascinating and riveting (setting aside, of course, questions of personal taste)? The answer rests in a distinction I will make between narrative drama and drama of the moment. Most films, both popular and art cinema, derive their drama from machinations of the plot and/or our involvement with the fate of characters. Drama is created by what Noel Carroll calls “erotetic narrative”: questions are posed in one scene and then answered in subsequent shots and scenes (either immediately or later on). Will the hero arrive in time to save the damsel in distress? Who is the murderer? What will become of the kidnapped child? Will the heroine score that new job? Drama arises out of the movement of the plot and story. In contrast to this are the (usually) long takes in Sátántangó where drama is achieved not by large concerns of the plot or story, but by the audience simply wondering what will happen in the very next moment?, or more specifically, when will something happen next?, or when will something different happen? For example, after the young girl has tortured and maimed her pet cat she forces the cat’s face continuously into a bowl of milk. She then leaves it alone and backs up a few yards behind the cat until her back rests up against a wall. The image of the little girl flat up against the wall is itself a wonderful metaphor for the girl’s tragically dead-end life. The camera remains static with little ‘action.’ The girl does not move, the cat is barely able to move its maimed body. But the drama comes from wondering what, if anything, will happen next. The poor cat, unable to move its legs, attempts to lift its head to and fro from the bowl. Will the cat survive or drown in the milk? Will the girl bounce on the cat, as she did countless times before? Will she run up to the cat and kick it like a ball (that was the thought running through my mind.) These are the minor dynamic potentialities that make this a dramatic moment.

Here are a few other instances of the “drama of the moment.” On the first night of their renunciation the messiah followers fall asleep together in a large room. The scene cuts to a slow dolly forward to an owl perched on a balcony. What does the presence of the owl mean? The shot cuts to a overhead ‘ceiling’ shot of one of the characters lying asleep in a fetal position. The camera begins to dolly slowly across the other sleeping people, eventually performing a 360 degree arc by returning to the first sleeper. But the shot continues again in the same arc, and again, and again, and again. The movement and the ground covered is so constant that it may just as well be the point of view of a slowly moving ceiling fan. [2] At some point we begin to wonder, will one of them wake up? Will the arc ever stop? Is this the point of view of a dreaming sleeper (a voice over tells us about the floating dream of one of the sleepers, Mrs. Schmidt)? The previous described dolly shot that follows the doctor into the ruined church leaves the doctor for a close-up of the shell shocked old man chiming his makeshift bell. The camera remains fixed on his face for several minutes. We begin to wonder, will he stop the bell ringing? Why is he doing this? How long has he been doing this? During the pub dance scene a similar effect is achieved by the repetitive nature of the action. Will the bearded man repeating the same annoying phrases over and over ever shut up? Why doesn’t someone tell him to shut up? Once the dance begins the players dance and play on repeatedly. The accordionist plays the same musical phrase over and over and over. When will this absurdity stop? When will the accordionist play something different? The film is full of long takes like these that put the emphasis on the moment by concentrating on the singular.

Another formal quality that goes along with the long takes in achieving this “drama of the moment” are varying rhythmical patterns that establish a constancy that envelopes us and heighten our sensitivity to change. In the majority of cases this rhythmical pattern is sonic: a ticking clock, a whirring fan, the drone of a refrigerator motor, or the constant patter of rain. In the noted scene of the 360 degree overhead tracking shot it is the camera movement itself which becomes a rhythmical pattern. The effect is that each long take achieves a certain materiality, a temporal denseness which helps to “escalate the drama of the moment.”

Meditation on Genius

2008-11-17T11:52:00.004Z

In Malcolm Gladwell's new book "Outliers" he advances the theory that 10,000 hours of practice seem to be the magical number to achieve the level of a genius. So, contrary to popular thinking, talent is no guarantee of greatness, but grind (plus a bit of genetic disposition) is. An extract of the book giving some examples can be read here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/nov/15/malcolm-gladwell-outliers-extract

This got me thinking about filmmaking and some of its geniuses. The more I looked for filmmakers which I considered good, the more I found long formative periods that would certainly account for the 10k hours or more in some cases. This would dispel the notion that artists are born, not made, at least for making films...

Starting with Classic Hollywood, those 10k hours would be fairly easy to achieve for most filmmakers. After all making films was a day job for them with punch-clocks and monthly wages. Let's look at John Ford's career for example: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000406/. That's 20 years and a bit between the first movie and Stagecoach. Similarly, Billy Wilder (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000697/) 20 some years between debut feature and Sunset Blvd, although one can make a point he achieved greatness before that. What they do have in common though is how often and how much they worked day in and day out at their craft, unlike contemporary filmmakers who direct a film every 4 or 5 years (if they are lucky).

Speaking of contemporary filmmakers, some of them share too this practice period before the first great work.
* Ming-Liang - 11 TV films during a period of 6 years before the breakthrough "Rebels of a Neon God"
* Mike Leigh - 9 TV plays over a decade before "Meantime"
* Ozu - 12 features over 7 years before "Floating Weeds"
* Tarr - 5 features over 9 years before "Damnation"

Is this all a coincidence? Or maybe there is some worth in hard work, even in the artistic field..

How to make a movie

2008-10-16T17:44:00.001+01:00

Copied, with the utmost respect, from http://pedrocosta-heroi.blogspot.com/2008/02/como-fazer-um-filmehow-to-make-movie.html

Meditation on Duty

2008-09-11T23:14:00.003+01:00

First a disclaimer.

I didn't write this post to make me look like a hero. What happened doesn't so much flatter me, but rather denigrates those around me. I only did what was normal; it was everybody else around me that are at fault.

* * * * *

On my way to work this morning (11th of September), I heard two men shouting at each other. This was in a very busy part of London, near Victoria station and close to the bike rails in the corner of Grosvenor Gardens and Buckingham Palace Road. It happened at 9 am in the morning, and the streets were packed with people walking to work and tourists. I stopped to see what was going on and there were two old men in their early 60s engaged in a shouting match. They weren't dressed for work like all those office workers walking by us and I might say they looked rather like pensioners. The shouts gave way to fists and soon they were engaging in the clumsy style of streetfighting that is little more than grabbing the other person's jacket with one hand and throwing haymakers with the other. I ran in their direction but when I got there I wasn't sure what to do. If I grabbed one, the other would surely continue to keep punching and would have an advantage that could make him cause even more damage. So I did the only thing I thought I could and shouted that the police was just around the corner and coming over to get them. This made them stop - probably just to acknowledge me, but they did stop. Another man came up and just stood there looking at the 3 of us, doing nothing. I shouted to him to grab one of the fighters, so we could break them apart, but instead he walked away. Thankfully, two bus drivers who were nearby taking a break came over and started telling the men to break it up.

And that was that. Some more insults were traded before the old men got on their respective bikes and rode off in opposite directions. They had their faces busted up, with mouses under the eyes, cuts on cheeks and at least one of them had his nose broken. Besides that, no real or permanent damage.

What shocked me about this whole thing wasn't the two people fighting, as that happens naturally. It wasn't that I couldn't break it up because, to be honest, I am not trained to do it and I did the best I could. What shocked me is that all those commuters in the street saw what was going on and didn't do anything. These guys could be killing it each other and clearly it was none of their business. They looked at the situation, analysed it, and realised that there was nothing to be gained from it. I too did that analysis as I walked to work, but I chose to do something, even if I was woefully equipped to do it. There's something to be said here about hypocrisy, selfishness, society and community, but I will let you draw your own conclusions. Just remember that next time, when you don't want to get involved, that you could be staring at yourself being beaten down, or you could be staring at yourself under the wheel of a truck or you could be staring at yourself fainting in the tube as the other travellers curse you for delaying their journey.

p.s.: apparently this is quite common - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

'Begotten' as Terminal Cinema

2008-09-07T23:33:00.003+01:00

This post is a sort of add-on or follow-up to Andrew Schenker's excellent article on "Terminal Cinema" over at Senses of Cinema - http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/08/47/terminal-cinema.html

Schenker uses some very good examples to illustrate his idea of terminal cinema in his article, and I found yet another example, Elias Merhige's Begotten.

Begotten is an experimental horror film with no dialogue and with a mythical resonance that is impossible to compare to any other. All the characters and situations are symbolic and echo creation myths from different cultures. There is a narrative somewhere in there, but it is made obscure through the lack of psychological motivation, reaction/POV shots and the aesthetic choices taken by the director with the photography and the editing. All frames of the film were treated individually until they became extremely grainy and with such high contrast that at times it's impossible to tell what you are looking at. As a film aesthetic, it is unrepeatable. There is no other film that could be shot this way, that could follow this style of filmmaking. The closest Merhige came to recreating the aesthetics of Begotten was on some of his music videos, commissions which he got on the strength of Begotten itself and could be seen as extensions of that film, rather than completely new works. Looking at his filmography over at imdb (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0580729/) we find that his plans for a trilogy didn't happen. Supposedly this was because of lack of funding, but honestly, how can another film follow Begotten's aesthetic?

Lynda Barry's Principles of Creativity

2008-08-31T13:38:00.003+01:00

the thinking part of you is not the doing part of you or the experiencing part of you
the thinking part of you can tell you that a decision has been made but it's not the part of you which decides things
this is why thinking is not the same as creating though the thinking part of us seems completely unaware of this

I took this from page 207 of Lynda's book "What It Is" on creativity, writing and creating art in general. It's a wonderful book and she is absolutely right. She advocates that writing (or drawing) is a physical activity, not a thinking activity. If we stop to think while creating art, we lose the creative impetus we had in the beginning and end up over-analysing things and, inevitably, becoming too critical of what we've just written/drawn. So, relax, focus on what you are about to do, and then do it - no thought, no analysis, nothing. Set yourself a time to do the writing/drawing and then put it away. Feel free to come back and have a look and correct things later on, but while you are doing it, just do it, nothing else!

What I don't agree is when she goes against creating art in a computer, as she says it's not physical enough to keep the momentum going. I differ on this as I quite often find myself running my fingers over the keyboard while waiting for the inspiration to surface, in the same way she will draw spirals or write the alphabet. In this way, my fingers kind of move spontaneously, expecting the "doing part of me" to tell them what to type. I guess that Lynda doesn't have typing fingers so she can't relate to this, but that's how it works for me.

And here's a chow-chow dog I drew earlier... on the computer!

Quotes from Kiarostami's "Ten on Ten"

2008-08-25T22:28:00.004+01:00

But I don't believe the job of a filmmaker is to excite or move the viewer, merely through creating special moments. By simply showing the reality, one can make people think about their own or other people's acts or behaviour, and see and accept reality as it is. It's from this point that the viewer's duty to complete a work or a film begins.

In this cinema, what eventually remains on the screen is the actor. I believe that in a good movie, everything should fade away in the interest of the entirety of the film. A good shot is not one that stands out. A good musical score is one that goes almost unnoticed.

I don't believe the film is to be understood. Do we understand a piece of music? Do we understand a painting? Or the exact meaning of a poem? It's ambiguity that attracts us to a work, not understanding the subtext of the story.

I believe we can the viewer experience mental effort by using omission. He can become involved in the making of the film through his imagination. For the creative viewer this involvement is more interesting than false climaxes or the playing of ridiculous guessing games.

The first generation of filmmakers looked at life and made films. The second generation of filmmakers watched the films of the first generation, looked at life, and made films. The third generation just watched the films of the first and second generations and made films. The fourth generation, which is us, looks neither at life nor watches the films. We merely go through the catalogues and base our movies on technical capabilities.

High and low-brow in Werckmeister Harmonies

2008-08-18T12:40:00.003+01:00

I won't go into detail about the film in the title (more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werckmeister_Harmonies) but rather make an observation about it.

It is a film that is pretty much a gold standard for European Art cinema: the director is a recognized auteur, it is shot in b/w, most of the actors are not professional, it has very long takes and develops at a slow pace, is fairly cryptic in its meaning and themes and wasn't made to be part of an established film distribution chain ending up in multiplexes. So, it is a high-brow film in all aspects, save for one.

The main plot element is the arrival in a small village of a circus that features only a stuffed whale and a mysterious firebrand orator called The Prince. The result of their presence is that the village goes into temporary destructive madness. Sounds original? Yes it does, because there's nothing quite like it in high-brow literature or film (save the book it was based on of course). But if we look to lower-brow literature, to a book called The King in Yellow, we will see exactly the same overall plot -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_in_Yellow.

The sheer brilliance of this film, combining elements from both high and low-brow art, is undeniable and I think it's exactly because of these mixture that it works so well. Is that then the solution to an art cinema that is sometimes too hermetic even for those who appreciate it?

Cruelty

2008-08-07T21:04:00.003+01:00

This quote is from Richard Dawkins on the 1st episode of his TV programme on Darwin:

The total amount of suffering in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute it takes me to say these words, thousands of animals are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, feeling teeth sink into their throats. Thousands are dying from starvation or disease or feeling a parasite rasping away from within. There is no central authority; no safety net. For most animals the reality of life is struggling, suffering and death.

Excuse me, can I have a go too?

The total amount of suffering in the human world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute it takes me to type these words, more than one new person will enter a life of human trafficking and slavery, one woman will die due to complications from childbirth, five people will become infected with HIV and eighteen children will die from poverty, hunger, easily preventable diseases and illnesses. There is no central authority; no safety net. For most humans the reality of life is struggling, suffering and death.

The Shark Expert

2008-08-07T13:50:00.001+01:00

The shark expert should really be called a shark biologist. That's the correct name for his occupation, but when he is asked to provide his opinion on shark-related matters for TV or newspapers, they just call him an expert. Maybe expert is a better word, for this shark biologist also cares about the sharks's soul.

Every day the shark expert observes and studies the sharks. He sees how they communicate, how they mate, how they define their territory, how they occupy their spare time, how they hoard their possessions, how they aspire for a better life, how they avoid the taboo subject of death, and so on.

He has known them since childhood. When one of them dies, whether naturally or grotesquely, the expert feels a bit sad. But this feeling doesn't last long as he knows that death is natural and part of living. Besides, there are lots of sharks in the sea anyway, and the tendency is for the population to increase.

The shark expert is fascinated with these animals, but no matter how much he likes them, he wouldn't want to live with them.

Kaufman on screenwriting

2008-08-02T12:06:00.001+01:00

Different writers, similar quotes. A common thread/attitude across the globe - even more so than myth theory and hero journeys.

I have something I'm interested in and then I decide I'm going to explore it. I don't know where the characters are going to go or what the screenplay's going to do. For me, that's the way to keep it alive and make it interesting and worthwhile.

Realistic and naturalistic are not the same thing, and I think it's interesting to play with surrealism or dream logic and try to create a poem, a metaphor, something that sort of conveys a feeling or makes something happen in your gut that you don't necessarily intellectually understand.

Dusan Makavejev on screenwriting

2008-07-24T15:16:00.001+01:00

And how he creates his films compared to a more traditional approach:

I would show them these films, and they would say, yes, we like these films; do another one! And I would say, okay, can I get some development money. They said, no, we have to have a script first. I said that if I have a script first you cannot get this kind of film. A script is a verbal attack on a visual world. Potentially a film has a universe of visuals to deal with. Once you tame it and restrain it within a script that means you have a hundred pages of dialogue. It is heavily cut off in terms of visuals.

Art in a nutshell

2008-06-20T09:40:00.001+01:00

It's about living your life as a never-ending process of exploration and discovery. Art is one way of doing that, one of the best, but even non-artists can do it when they put themselves in the right state of open-ended, non-grasping, detached awareness (what many meditative traditions call "seeing") and allow themselves to take in experience without filtering it, censoring it, judging it, or otherwise attaching themselves to it. (Even intellectual understanding is a block to this kind of "seeing." You need to break free of ideas and conceptions and categories as much as anything else.) Work to become a "seer" in this way in all of your experience. Work to become God's eyes and ears--half-inside, half-outside, tasting, relishing, savoring, loving, caressing everything around you (even what your mind tells you is evil or bad or wrong or stupid--which is why you have to break free of those categories too, thinking without thoughts, as I phrase it somewhere else).

That's ultimately what it is to be an artist. And the more you do it, experience after experience, hour after hour, life after life, the further you'll see and the more you'll understand and the more you'll be able to experience and the richer the experiences will be--and, if you are an artist, you'll be able to share your seeing and understanding and experiencing with others, to help them move farther along their own spiritual paths.

That was Ray Carney by the way. Not an artist per se, but definitely moving people and artists along their spiritual paths.

Nihilism by Eugene Rose

2008-06-12T14:27:00.000+01:00

If there is no immortality, the Liberal believes, one can still lead a civilized life; "if there is no immortality"-is the far profounder logic of Ivan Karamazov in Dostoyevsky's novel-"all things are lawful." Humanist stoicism is possible for certain individuals for a certain time: until, that is, the full implications of the denial of immortality strike home. The Liberal lives in a fool's paradise which must collapse before the truth of things. If death is, as the Liberal and Nihilist both believe, the extinction of the individual, then this world and everything in it-love, goodness, sanctity, everything-are as nothing, nothing man may do is of any ultimate consequence and the full horror of life is hidden from man only by the strength of their will to deceive themselves; and "all things are lawful," no otherworldly hope or fear restrains men from monstrous experiments and suicidal dreams.

Still not sure about ANY of this.

Tsai Ming-Liang on preparing a new project

2008-05-10T19:02:00.001+01:00

It's strange that with every film I make, I never know... I know where I am going, but don't know what's there. I don't know where I will end up so I'll just go and see.

Pedro Costa's Low-budget Ethos

2008-05-06T21:25:00.002+01:00

I now shoot on video, which is very cheap, so it's very simple for me to make a budget. All I need is enough money just to live every month, me and three or four friends: one for the sound, one to help me with the camera, another to assist me - and the actors of course. We always try to have this balance or harmony, all being paid more or less the same. I want to show that cinema is not a luxury, it's not just for very rich and glamorous people. It can be made with less money. It can be made with justice.

Carney's Nightmare is Shared By Me

2008-04-28T03:38:00.003+01:00

These are some of my favourite paragraphs from Ray Carney's wonderful essay on The Path of Artist in his website. Take it away, Ray:

I have a recurring dream about a world where the museums have been bought up by the superstores and are run the way they are. Decisions on acquiring paintings are no longer made by art curators and specialists, but are governed by the marketplace. Artists buy their way in by purchasing "wall space" for ten thousand dollars a square foot, just like Coca Cola or Dockers does to get into your local Wal-Mart. But since there is always more demand than space available, simply getting a painting into the store is not sufficient; a work has to bring people in to justify its existence, to keep the shelf space from being reassigned to something else.

The museum of the future keeps track of how many people look at each painting each day. The figures are published and studied by the heads of other museums to see which paintings attract the most viewers. Bidding wars ensue to get the hottest paintings. Paintings whose drawing power falls off after a few days or weeks are removed and replaced by others. Work that doesn't seem certain to attract viewers is not put up in the first place, even if it can pay the wall fee. Corporate entities grow up to evaluate the potential popularity of each painting and to invest in it (or withhold investment) according to the predictions. In order to attract viewers and boost attendance figures, the artists of the future work in concert with vast armies of publicists and press flacks, whose job is to attract an audience to their work.

The artists themselves do everything they can to stoke up interest, giving magazine and newspaper interviews, making the rounds of television talk shows, making outrageous claims for the importance of their work. Of course, there are no more landscapes and still lives. And no more portraits. In the museum of the future, paintings that require time and experience to understand were long ago shoved aside by works with flashy, dazzling effects. Individual works vie for attention with every gimmick imaginable–free baseball caps, t-shirts, light shows, neon-lighted frames, holographic posters, multimillion dollar television, radio, and newspaper ad campaigns. The hushed subtlety of classic art gives way to coarse obviousness; the quiet beckoning of the old fashioned museum is replaced by blatant hucksterism. The paintings of the future are full of violence and nudity and sensational allusions to contemporary issues. It is the end of art as we know it.

The reason the dream scares me is that when I wake up I realize that it is not a vision of some hellish nightmare future, but the world we actually live in. It’s only that what the dream symbolically represents as museums and paintings is our present movie theaters and the films that play in them.

I find this especially interesting as I know several intelligent, cultured people who are aware of this dichotomy between 'real art' and cinema, and yet do nothing to change it. They are the kind of people who will go to a museum to look at contemporary art, find a uniform Rothko wall of red impressive and important, and yet consider 'art' films to be boring and pretentious. Also the same people who'd never read a Stephen King or Tom Clancy book and yet consider Indiana Jones a great, GREAT film.

Why is this?

Why must cinema always be relegated to a second-tier of the arts? A sort of dirty mistress we go to when we need to sate our most base desires for adrenaline and lust but that cannot provide any sort of intellectual or spiritual satisfaction. If I went into Tate Modern tomorrow and threw a bucket of paint thinner on Picasso's The Three Dancers it would be a disaster. People would see it as a disaster and a crime against humanity. An irreparable loss. But if by contrast I destroyed all copies (and negative) of Tarkovsky's Andrey Rublev who would cry over them besides a small number of cinephiles? Would there be such a sense of loss? Would it make headlines?

Aren't we far enough from the early days when cinema was little more than a carnival gimmick? Isn't it time to consider it an art form like painting, sculpture, music? Not just in words and empty classifications, but truly to realise it and incorporate it in our view of the world of human expression. Of course, as Carney says above, it is cinema's own fault that this happens. We might be 100 years removed from the simple thrill of watching a train come our way (link) but looking at box office numbers shows that there has been little evolution. The thrills, fears and cheap emotions are now more complex, crammed as they are in a 90-minute package, but they remain pretty much the same. Going to a multiplex is the same as going to a rollercoaster, except it lasts longer and you can eat popcorn while doing it. Very sad but if we aren't the ones making and watching the films that go beyond this, who else is?

Film and meaning

2008-04-20T11:05:00.002+01:00

From Aaron Gerow's excellent book on Kitano Takeshi, in reference to Sonatine:

Ueno chastises another critic for attempting to reduce the film to various conceptual meanings. 'Viewing a film is to have your existence in some way threatened', he asserts. Ascribing meaning to a film is to him a self-defence mechanism, one that not only avoids the work, but also, by implication, the assault that Kitano launches.

Figgis on digital film-making

2008-04-08T00:03:00.002+01:00

There's always some ingenious means for dealing with reality. One of the main structural points of new digital film-making is the way it has more of a relationship with documentary than with the conventional feature film, even though, at the end of the day, it's a drama. But audiences have become much more familiar - and, I think, much more comfortable - with naturalism in terms of the environment than with fake naturalism, as characterised by Hollywood film-making.

Meditation on Perfection

2008-04-02T22:43:00.003+01:00

One of my biggest flaws is a love of perfection. I remember as a child playing Legos with friends. They built walls with no regard for colours or symmetry. Myself, I cared about everything. I would separate the bricks by colour and size, and then build them in rows of a single colour, making sure that all of them sat perfectly on top of each other - no holes or irregularities.

Later, I would engage in quick and frustrating affairs with women out of this love of perfection. During the initial stage of a relationship, when everything is idealized and rosy, this perfection would be real and part of my life. As soon as something went wrong, a hairy armpit, an uncomfortable silence, a hint of racism, then it was over. There was no point in going on.

Part of my adulthood was realising that in life, things are not perfect. They will never be perfect down here in the cave. The most perfect of buildings will rot and be useless 100 years from now. The greatest paintings will lose the vivacity of their colours and never look the same for our descendants as they look to us now. The perfect bodies of models and athletes decay, go flabby, develop cancers. Acknowledging this and understanding that all we can do is aim for perfection (knowing we'll never reach it) is a sign of maturity but one I have to strive every day to remember and reconcile in my life.

A Fool on the Bus

2008-03-15T23:40:00.002Z

Coming home from a night out on one of London's many articulated buses. I sat on the rear of the bus and watched as a drunk leaned on the accordion in the articulated joint. He was very drunk and holding an open can of Foster's beer on his hand. He had several more in a plastic bag.

Another man leaned on the opposite side of the joint. Noticing how the drunk swayed wildly with the bus, he started laughing. The drunk started laughing too, and for a while they laughed together. The drunk wanted to offer the other man a beer, but he couldn't do it while holding the beer he was already drinking. So he put his nearly-full beer on the metal floor of the bus and fumbled in his bag.

At that time I thought it would be a matter of seconds before there was beer everywhere; a common occurrence on a Saturday night in London. I was wrong. The bus made a fast and sharp left turn and the can of beer, miraculously, slid down the metal floor to the other gentleman's feet - without falling over. He stopped it with his foot. The drunk gave him a can from the bag. The bus, as if it had been scripted, took a right turn. The open can, now free from the man's foot, slid back to the drunk.

All of this, not a drop of beer spilled.

There's an archetype in mythology and fiction called the fool that represents those who live outside of society's norms because of madness, divine inspiration, mental handicap or constant drunkenness. They are used in fiction as the voice of God, since they are unencumbered by the responsibility of being sensible, rational or accountable for their actions. They are also quite often portrayed as being protected from above as otherwise they'd be helpless in a word unfit for outsiders. Was someone or something protecting our fool on the bus from losing his beer? Reminiscing on what I saw I still find it hard to believe what happened - a moment of the metaphysical.

Film Directing - Meditation #2

2008-03-08T01:11:00.002Z

The director has two jobs in a film. First, he has to create the world in front of the camera. Second, he has to decide how to show it.

To create the world he must visualize locations, characters and the ethical, moral, physical rules that govern them. It's a very difficult job and it requires a real visionary since these are created from a blank.

The director must be totally honest with himself. He must filter his emotions and experiences into something that is consistent and believable. Something that the audience can understand even if it has to learn how that world works. This is why it is said that very young people cannot become good directors - they just haven't had enough experience and self-analysis to build this world without resorting to regurgitating what other people have done before.

Directing is full of hacks whose only vision is to make the least possible effort and opt for the easiest solutions. Characters defined by their stereotype (wacky best friend, adventurous rebel, idealistic romantic) and/or profession (the serial killer, the cool professional assassin, the creative arts professional, the honest lawyer, the cynical cop). The locations typical and cliched like the abandoned warehouse, the luxury penthouse, the dark alleyway, the sunny park. And, maybe even worse than anything else, ethics, morals and rules that are just a repetition of whatever is society's dominant set at the time.

In some extreme cases, such as with propaganda films, this world has already been created by other visionaries and the director only has the job of delivering it.

The second job for the director is to decide the staging, camerawork, editing and other technical aspects like lighting and sound design. There are several schools for these. Some advocate using shorter takes, analytical editing and an overall classical continuity style that has been tried and tested for the better part of filmmaking history. Others prefer a static camera and long takes, with the actors moving inside and outside the frame, somewhat resembling the beginning of film although not because of technical limitations. Lighting and sound can be realistic or exaggerated and distorted to convey the psychology of the characters.

All these are a fraction of the possibilities offered to a director, yet depressingly, most directors opt for what's been tried and tested before in their genre inside the industry instead of making the hard decisions. To improve directors must not only work preparing and making films, but also analyzing their own work and that of others in a receptive, non-prejudiced way.

Ultimately, the great directors can be readily identified by their films and body of work. This is not because they have a large font size on the credits but because they made all the options above consistently throughout their career. Created a consistent world and showed it in a consistent way. Of course, artists and craftsmen improve their work during their career, but there's a common thread through it, and that is shaped as much by their professional as by their personal life. Anything else is being dishonest with the audience.

Joyce on rendering humanity

2008-02-07T14:36:00.000Z

“One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cutanddry grammar and goahead plot." - Joyce