I hope to make it out there, as I would love to see some of the other new works. The fest is also screening some of my favorites from the past year, including Mundane History, The Limits of Control, and The Headless Woman, each of which had me swooning left right up down and inside out.

And if you must, if you can’t resist, you can do the social media thing to BRETHREN ARISE on the Facebook here.

And now it’s going on the Zero Fest East Coast tour.

April 9 – Syracuse, NY
Spark Contemporary Art Space

April 16 – Toronto ON
Cinecycle

April 30 – Providence RI
Cable Car Cinema

There is one more date that is not confirmed yet.

More info here (PDF alert).

It’s spring in New York. Let the light in.

Again, slightly reshuffled towards the middle, and some tracks didn’t make the cut. The beginning and ends are exactly how they happened. Bowie came on just as I arrived on Roosevelt Island. When it was over, somewhere on the BQE, I was 20 minutes from my house in Brooklyn. I turned the stereo off. Night complete.

Play in browser above, or download it here

Here’s the tracklist, (title – artist):

Futureworld East: World of Motion, ‘(It’s) Fun to be Free’ Da Vinci (Load Version) – EPCOT
Metti, Una Sera A Cena – Ennio Morricone
La Boheme – Charles Aznavour
Let There Be Love – Oasis
Ma Thama Zinek Ii – Raoul Journo
So Long, Savannah – Eric Bachman
Untitled (6) – Tim Hecker
Ijesha – Ebenezer Obey & his International Brothers
Paw Paw Tree – The Fiery Furnaces
Trance Manual Remix – John Vanderslice
He Went To Paris – Jimmy Buffett
Beware Your Only Friend – Bonnie “Prince” Billy
(Intermission) – Eluvium
It’s All A Lie – Keren Ann
Friend Of Mine – The National
Evening On The Ground (Liliths Song) – Iron & Wine
Prende La Vela – Folcklor
Wer Du Bist – Françoise Hardy
Wind Through A Broken Glass – Mark Fosson
Les filles n’ont aucon Degout – Serge Gainsbourg & Sylvie Vartan
Cliquot – Beirut
Heroes – David Bowie

One hour, twenty-one minutes.

But two nights ago I saw Liverpool, by Lisandro Alonso.

And now, even if you live in NY, it’s too late to see the film.

What I loved is the sparseness. Generally I gravitate towards films with more blatant structural / formalistic assemblages (probably because I started out in film by realizing the power of editing and montage). But this film is so stripped down, and yet so full, that I wish I could retreat into a black space and watch it any time something overwhelmingly negative or confusing confronts me.

This is a film which gives us so much room to contemplate and yet is so dense and ––

I wish to remain speechless. Isn’t there a bumper sticker that says “the best things in life aren’t things?” That’s very true. And descriptions are things. I just hope to entice you to give yourself over to the possibility of this film in your life, somehow.

I simply can’t ask for anything more than space, time, imagery and sound. Nothing else gets me further along towards whatever ecstasy I seek in the cinema. Plot, character, messages, not as moving as contemplation pieces. No matter what we see, when the film leaves our experience it reclaims whatever part of our cognitive mind it grappled with, and we toss it aside. What if cognition isn’t the goal? What if self reflection is? A film cannot reclaim that. Films can take us new places, even if it’s only in our minds, and within our experience. They can provide a framework for personal peace.

You could read this if you like: http://www.theauteurs.com/notebook/posts/976

Silent Light is available to watch on DVD now. Another movie that swells with power and force, in an incredibly quiet manner.

I’m really excited for MOMA’s program in the next month as well, especially Roy Andersson’s films (which I hope to revisit there) and Michael Almereyda’a new film Paradise, which has come with a glowing recommendation. I’ll see you there, I’d love for you to join me.

Everything is sentimental these days, what can I say?! Enjoy yourselves.

Typical me, will this post still be online this time tomorrow?

I like the idea of this: mostly random, somewhat curated playlists. More to come.

Download it here

TRACKLIST:
Mico Nonet – Gloaming
Little Joy – Play The Part
Harry Nilsson – Everybody’s Talkin’
Eluvium – Requiem on Frankfort Ave
Nina Simone – July Tree
Palace – West Palm Beach
Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan – Dusty Wreath
Del Rey & The Sun Kings – A Happy Day in the City
Werner Herzog – Father Umbrillo’s Broken Nation
Ladysmith Black Mambazo – King Of Kings
Phosphorescent – The Waves At Night
Little Joy – Unattainable
Shigeru Umebayashi – Yumeji’s Theme
Smog – Palimpsest
Spokane – Singing
Jean-Philippe Rameau - Les Boreades Ritournelle
Count Ossie & The Mystic Revelation of Rastafari – So Long
Tom Waits – All The World Is Green
Vincent Gallo – Her Smell Theme
Solomon Lindas Original Evening Birds – Mbube
Luke Jordan – Traveling Coon
Canon Blue – Baptesme
Deaf Center – Eloy
Françoise Hardy – Ein Fenster Wird Hell
Guyok Himself – Sidi Ma Sidi Batai
Headdress – Babylon
Palace Brothers – Wither Thou Goes
Jim James & Calexico – Goin’ To Acapulco
Brian Eno – Three Variations On The Canon In D Major: (i) Fullness Of The Wind

This will run you a good hour and thirty-six minutes. Take your time.

It got me thinking; is this transmedia movement really still trying to posit itself as the sole way for true independents to make quality work? I haven’t really felt a need to defend my favorite works from its clutches any more. Here’s what I just put on the twitter:

“There’s a reason that pictures have frames.”

Although at this point, any further arguments against crowd-sourcing and transmedia from me seem a bit pointless…

like opening a thread that had been closed and deemed a case of “to each his own.” A walk in an opposite direction.

I don’t think transmedia is or ever will be a “threat” to my work. Don’t need to revisit this in words. Why look back? But read Bordwell!

At a certain point, as a filmmaker rather than a writer, having theories about a process is pointless to me if I don’t embark on that process by practicing those theories. Right now I’m more interested in making films that show the medium’s potential. I’m sure at some point I’ll more passionately revisit this. I also think that just as I was shouting about how I’m not interested in crowd sourcing and transmedia style filmmaking, I’m not even interested in thinking about it these days. It’s an option, but not one that interests me, hardly stirs up any emotions after a while. It’s the past.

I think I was trying to make this point. To people who don’t believe a film should take certain recommended paths, they’re simply going to lose interest in those paths if they’re made to feel they don’t have a choice any more. You can’t force someone to be interested in something, let alone excel at it. You’ll end up with a lot of stale attempts at story bibles that reveal themselves to be stale attempts at a shortcut to fame.

Another old Bordwell standby is here:
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=339

These articles are good for you.

Chris is arriving tomorrow morning and we’ll be working on assembling a fine cut of Brethren, having been at various stages of a rough cut for about a month now. Also looking forward to St. Nick at Rooftop, Headless Woman at Film Forum, United / Arsenal at Floyd, and Blue Moon at everywhere.

How gorgeous is a night without words? Imagine, only images and sounds, and lovely ones at that.

Lovely is subjective, and let’s keep it that way.

One of my most rewarding feelings in the past couple of weeks was hearing Jim Jarmusch mention tonight that he can never talk about a film immediately after he’s seen it. He also never really claimed to be able to talk about it at all, I think, in the capacity of “talking about films” that so many journalists, bloggers and even filmmakers do. I know for a fact he never talks about his own films that way. He mentioned that in a few days, little bits and impressions will come to him, but I would bet that he never really comes to a giant conclusion or composes an encompassing internal write-up. Jem Cohen endorsed this bit of tangling oneself into a mindfuck from which escape is impossible, while Jarmusch apologized for it.

I mention this and speculate on it because this is how I function. I still can’t talk at much about Syndromes and a Century, although I know there is something there with it inside me. When I want talk about The New World, I have learned I can only bring it up, and the person will either know what I’m referring to or not, but explanation won’t bring them closer, and will likely push us both further away. Some of my favorite parts of that film are pure motion, gestures, glances, arm movements. That’s all I’ll say further. You know what I mean or you don’t. What can I say about Cohen’s Empires of Tin? ….

I know that any time I try to explain things, or worse yet to judge and evaluate, I end of completely destroying something I really care about, be it a piece of work, an image, a cut, an emotion, a moment, a situation, a process, anything. Further explanation only increases the impossibility of logic. That stated mindfuck ends up bothering some people, like Jarmusch, while Cohen seems perfectly happy to have it. I am in both camps. Sometimes I revel in it. Other times it makes me sick. Usually I wish it hadn’t been said, realize it didn’t need to be said, regret saying anything. Granted, there are times when I’m happy to have it, but never at the expense of something beautiful, which often I cause without thinking. That is what I do always have trouble figuring out. It is why I prefer silence so often, why I am drawn to the contemplative rather than the hyper-kinetic; it’s why I don’t write here very often, and why I don’t usually talk for hours after a screening, and why if I do talk it’s not in any logical way about the film I’ve seen. This silence is sublime for me alone, and a magical bond if shared. It’s confidence that we’re all doing our best, and we know what the hell that means, because we don’t at all know what it means. It means we are there, together.

I do have theories about so many things, myself, my life and my work included, but I should always try to focus on impressions, as it’s only then do I feel I can talk without doing any damage; It’s when I don’t mind my own business that I lose something, that I end up full of regret. I have to retain my belief in restraint through practice and discipline, as I’m certainly guilty of not doing so.

I write this for many reasons, one of which is that I will soon have to start explaining myself with Brethren. I have and will continue to see that restraint is something I strive for but don’t always know how to achieve, sometimes I blindly work towards the opposite. Time reveals things to me, or more likely, time fools me into posturing about having revelations. There’s nothing to reveal, is there? There are only impressions.

And restraint is the controlled release of emotion, not the total withholding of it. Isn’t it? There’s no possible way to totally withhold an emotion. I have to learn how to gauge this controlled release, to estimate and execute it. Like a scientist. Like a demolitions expert. Exactly.

Jarmusch also said he was weary of any filmmaker who claims to know what they have done. Does anyone, filmmaker or not, really know what they’re doing? I want to believe the answer is no. So much greatness and beauty comes from accidents, blind experiments, belief without evidence, not-a-chance-in-hell’s, NATURE.

I have no idea what I’ve done with Brethren, (or with Legends for that matter), nor do I know how to explain it (them). I have done it though. And they’re not incomprehensible either. Hopefully, they’re simply indescribable and also incredibly intimate.

I also have almost no idea what I’ve written this time around.

# # #

Also, I’ve been doing some serious design work this past month, non-stop, exhausting stuff. And there’s a lot more coming up. Not sure when I’ll get to show that stuff, but it’s good work I’m excited about. See you soon.

So what does it say about me as I’m realizing more and more that I am trying to forgo as much control as I can, at least in the production phase (I’ll take total control over development and post, and as much over distrib as I can, if I can). On a recent production, I didn’t shoot the way a filmmaker is supposed to, wherein they create options for themselves. I shot in a way as to create limits. While this particular day was meant to be somewhat documentary, it was also heavily stylized and featured five talented actors in a prominent way. I felt the best way to ensure I didn’t get caught up in a traditional film narrative would be to not work as a traditional film director might. On this production in question, I spent a whole day hardly looking at the monitor, hardly talking to the actors. I started without a story, then came up with one, but only shot pieces of it, and only from one angle. I talked to the actors once while the camera department was setting up and that was about it, maybe once again every hour or so, tops. And while this was happening, I had the camera shooting other things, so much so that I didn’t even shoot most of that story, whether or not the actors knew it. And I didn’t stand beside the camera and tell them where to point it. After we got going, I just had them leave it in place for a while. I never called out action or cut. I served more as a first AD I think, and the director was nowhere to be found. Was it a subconscious decision based on the fact that I didn’t conceive of the piece as having a narrative? Of course, this approach is the type of control over the scene I exerted, but that was again an attempt to relinquish some control, if at all possible.

Through relegating control of the scene and limiting the resources I gather, I am forcing myself to develop a film built on tangents to the cinematic language, I suppose you could say. My aims with this particular film is not typical narrative style filmmaking, and I sought to ensure I didn’t use that as an unnecessary crutch.

This is what drives my editing process, the aim to not approach the piece as films and scenes are normally approached, and why I’m allowing myself time to work through it. It is not only impossible, but it is counter-productive for me to seek that emotional and narrative drive that most editors are taught to focus on. I haven’t worked that way in a long time, in which an editor’s job is to push the emotions, then the narrative, then continuity, or something (and so on, in whatever order Murch lays out in his writing) but I still tend to inch towards sculpting a typical narrative style arc sometimes, so it’s important I tell myself I don’t need to push this approach if I don’t want the final product to have the typical purpose of narrative film.

If I’m going to make exploratory films, I have to be the first in line to start exploring and working through nontraditional approaches. I’ll hope you come on board later, when I’m ready for everyone to join in the experience.

Yesterday I drew out this image and taped it on the blank wall above my edit station. I wanted to photograph it then and post here how it would be my official guide for the coming weeks, but I never got around to it. Plus, it was brand new; it could be an ephemeral decision based on desperation. So I did nothing.

Actually, that’s not true. I wrote an entry having nothing to do with the sketch, but I didn’t publish it. As a filmmaker who seeks new ground in language, sounds, and images, I constantly try to define a distinct method or approach to my work without using typical filmic wisdom and guidelines. Butat the same time, I have reservations about nailing down my thoughts into concrete declarations because I feel I must also work against the idea of declarations, I shouldn’t replace axioms with other axioms.* Also, the ones I come up with rarely hold up. I make declarations but after introspection and distance, I usually decide these statements are made to justify my work not excelling on a level we normally look for films to excel in. On the plus side, I feel like I’m more inclined to work my mind into a rigid strategy, only for it not to work completely, in which I get so bogged down that I have no other option but to abandon whatever rule I’d set for myself or move on and tell myself I was aiming for something intangible. I feel I mistake these impulses for discoveries, when they are merely parts of a greater mission in search of discovery. So I am cautious about posting to this blog, lest I come back in a day or two and just delete the entry later. Countless times I have written something and then chosen not to publish it. **

Today, I worked all day having forgotten about the image. Shows you how effective it is to tape something above my desk. I never even considered it. And yet felt I made significant progress, more than I’ve made in a while. I decided I should definitely post the picture. Only now I post it as a reminder to keep making declarations if it helps and to also be completely able to forsake them.

Do whatever you need to do, just keep going. Try to be practical, try to be idealistic, and try to just plow through all the shit that isn’t working; it will either work itself out or it won’t, but most likely, you’ll be the one to make it work. Or you will be the one who seeks out the one who can make it work. You win.

* I will say however that Bresson’s Notes on the Cinematographer almost always hold up for me, but I don’t kid myself that I have the mental capacity, strength, or experience to make declarations as prescient as his. I accept that mine will fade away rather quickly as I keep working toward whatever greater goal I have with my work.

**I promise to start saving those decoy blog posts and publish them at later dates, perhaps with commentary as to what they referred to or some other sort of perspective.