Year of 2010

My Inspirations 2010:

You Only Live Once (Fritz Lang, 1937)
Big Business (James W. Horne & Leo McCarey, 1929)
Dangerous Game (Abel Ferrara, 1993)
The Miracle (Roberto Rossellini, 1948)
In Vanda's Room (Pedro Costa, 2000)
Europa '51 (Roberto Rossellini, 1952) + Man With a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov, 1929)
This Land Is Mine (Jean Renoir, 1943)
The Diary of a Chambermaid (Jean Renoir, 1946)
The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes (Stan Brakhage, 1971)
Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis (Mary Jordan, 2006)
A Spring River Flows East (Cai Chusheng & Zheng Junli, 1947)
Shoah (Claude Lanzmann, 1985)
The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940)
Tropic Thunder (Ben Stiller, 2008)
Venom and Eternity (Isidore Isou, 1951)
Che (Steven Soderbergh, 2008)
Stories From the North (Uruphong Raksasad, 2006)
Film Socialism (Jean-Luc Godard, 2010) + Germany Year Zero (Roberto Rossellini, 1948)
Paraboles: The Art of Speaking (Emmanuelle Demoris, 2010)
Here and Elsewhere (Jean-Luc Godard, 1976) + Méditerranée (Jean-Daniel Pollet, 1963)
Vinyl (Andy Warhol, 1965)

Films completed 2010:

One Day in June (10 minutes, HD)
Rumah Sendiri (20 minutes, DV)
Night Lights (48 minutes, HD) + Death by Moonlight (5 minutes, HD)
Birth (10 minutes, DV)
Cotton (3 minutes, 16mm)

Works in progress:

Eclipses (120 minutes, 16mm)
No Images (40 minutes, 16mm)

Doubles/Self-destruction

(Querelle; Rainer Werner Fassbinder 1982)

On Doors (7): Notes on Méditerranée

1. The circular repetition of images: images that regenerate themselves, but remain the same; silent witnesses, one replacing the other, one already watching the other even before the other has begun. ("The pieces of the game are picked up again. They will be re-diffused, different ones and the same, in the same way and differently.")

2. History: the accumulation of memory - forward going, but inwardly circular - leaving fragments, monuments, images, that seem to be able to speak, but stop before they are able to say their words. How do we reach the beyond, the infatigable - beyond the curtain of fact...who, besides the mute images, is left to bear witness?

3. Blindness: history blind to itself; images blind to each other; humanity blind to human beings.

John Ford's silence

(Pilgrimage; John Ford 1933)

A Letter to Abbas Kiarostami

Dear Mr. Kiarostami,

I have just seen your latest film, Certified Copy. In it, William Shimell muses that there's nothing simple about being simple. I would like to believe the opposite. Your last few films, especially Ten and Shirin, showed how easy it was to be simple. You taught me that the simplest route to simplicity is to be simple. I've always tried to apply that not only to my filmmaking, but to my life as well. Simplicity is not something to be asked for, to be given. It is a pity we seem to think too much. No, simplicity is really quite simple.

You have always been interested in the line separating fiction and the real. I can understand that. After all, the camera reveals itself as much as it hides itself. The simplest way to understand this is neither to hide nor reveal - to let the camera be what it is, to let the audience see what it chooses to see. You seem especially concerned with your power in this film - your power in making the audience believe what it sees, your power to lead/mislead, your power to decide what is real/unreal. I like that idea - that the truth of the matter (whether the couple in your film is a married couple pretending to have just met each other, or vice versa) does not matter as much as its affects; that, like the painting in the museum scene, a copy can be just as beautiful as the original and can be appreciated as such. I find that interesting. I was never much interested in the truth in the first place - the reason; I was always more interested in its effects, the effects of effects, and tracing that network of emotion. That is why I have only been interested in the close up. You taught me precisely that in Shirin - that in the realm of passions, there is only the affection, the face - there is only emotion, that produces other emotions, collective emotions.

Why, then, are you so afraid to be simple in this film? Why are you so afraid of your audience? The heavy-handedness of your scenario makes the 'simplicity' of the camerawork seem forced. Is there really nothing simple about being simple? Why is your scenario fixated on the situation, rather than the affect? It's not enough to have Binoche and Shimell fight with and romance each other (we've already seen that in the Linklater films - they are much more concerned with affects), they have to explain every single banality of their relationship. In the name of simplicity, I shall ask you a simple question: why have you become so afraid of your audience?

The problem is Mr. Kiarostami, you seem to have overestimated your power. Maybe you used to lie well in the past, but not anymore. The petty conflicts which overinflate the characters' emotions are irritating and clumsy. Because although you might think that it's not about the truth, your scenario obsesses over the truth, makes it the center of the argument - and now the situation (idea) does not correspond with the affect. How, then, can you disregard truth, when you are lying to me in the most inept way?

Your film reminds me of a Rossellini film, The Miracle, which I like very much. The difference is that Rossellini says what he wants to say the only way he can say it, which is most often the simplest way. The simplest way you've found seems contrived because you are no longer content with being simple. You do not arrive at the simplest way by going through the most difficult way - you simply use the simplest way. Of course, you could use your film to argue for the difference between 'real' simplicity and 'forced' simplicity. To this, I'll just say fuck you Mr. Kiarostami.

To add to this argument, Mr. Kiarostami, if your name wasn't signed on this film, it would have just been another piece of uninteresting garbage (another case you can make regarding originals vs. copies). But precisely because you made your last few films, along with all the films in your career (save the last scene of Taste of Cherry, the smart-assness of which you have extended here to feature-length), this film is a steaming pile of shit. You have just turned your back on whatever aesthetic you had before. For that, I cannot forgive you.

Yours,

The Grapes of Wrath

"I'll be all around in the dark. I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look, wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build, I'll be there, too."

The Grapes of Wrath; John Ford 1940

scr: Nunnally Johnson
original novel: John Steinbeck
prod: Darryl F. Zanuck

On Doors (6): Trapdoors

Silent apparitions-

"That is the substance of remembering - sense, sight, smell: the muscles with which we see and hear and feel - not mind, not thought: there is no such thing as memory: the brain recalls just what the muscles grope for: no more, no less: and its resultant sum is usually incorrect and false and worthy only of the name of dream."

(Love Streams; John Cassavetes 1984)

"Because there is something in the touch of flesh with flesh which abrogates, cuts sharp and straight across the devious intricate channels of decorous ordering, which enemies as well as lovers know because it makes them both..."

(Interiors; Woody Allen 1978)

"Perhaps a man builds for his future in more ways than one, builds not only toward the body which will be his tomorrow or next year, but toward actions and the subsequent irrevocable courses of resultant action which his weak senses and intellect cannot foresee but which ten or twenty or thirty years from now he will take, will have to take in order to survive the act."

-- Texts from "Absalom, Absalom!" by William Faulkner

On Doors (5): Cassavetes' faces

(Too Late Blues; John Cassavetes 1961)

Fritz Lang's Westerns

(Rancho Notorious; Fritz Lang 1952)

(The Return of Frank James; Fritz Lang 1940)

(The Return of Frank James; Fritz Lang 1940)

(More) Notes on Antonioni

Posted because the new film I'm shooting is called 'Eclipses.'

Antonioni has always been the grand master of negative space in cinema. Instead of sculpting his scenes to present a cogent whole (a self-enclosed narrative), he fills his films with painstaking detail only to direct attention to the things we can't see. Indeed, even the mysterious title of his 1962 film, L'Eclisse, attests to that – we never see an eclipse in the film, nor is one ever alluded to. The title's significance lies perhaps in the original Greek etymology of the word – an 'eclipse' means to be absent, to cease to exist. This title literally comes to the fore in the last scene, when the characters literally vanish from the narrative, leaving the unhinged camera to roam the places they used to frequent when they were together as a couple.

Yet, the last scene's power ironically lies in the 'presence' of the characters. The absence of the two lovers, played by Monica Vitti and Alain Delon, is powerful to us only because of their hitherto ubiquitous presence. Antonioni's camera is hinged so tightly to their experience – the operative shot in the film is the insert shot, in which we see what the characters see, see what the characters touch, are allowed to occupy the same space as the characters – that its unhinging at the end becomes disorienting. That is, the empty frames only become significant because the camera, the locations, the places, even the incidental passers-by, are imbued with the presence of Vitti and Delon (just as the gaze of the missing woman imbues every frame of L'Avventura).

For this reason, as many have pointed out, Antonioni consistently directs our attention to the 'out of field,' the space that exists outside of the frame, the emptiness between frames/scenes. Antonioni's favorite narrative technique is the ellipsis – the omission of narrative information to point out a lack (an eclipse), a gap of knowledge. In L'Eclisse, a drunk is seen speeding down the road into the night; in the next scene, we see the crashed car being fished out of the river. In Blowup, this is taken to the extreme when he introduces creative geography to question the normalcy of the diegesis – in a fantastic scene, Redgrave runs out of frame after her initial meeting with Hemmings, only to run into frame again, many scenes later, at Hemmings' studio, as if no time has elapsed in between. The characters often slip between the gaps in Antonioni's films – a change of light, a shift in the camera's direction and they become absent, they cease to exist.

This leads one to wonder – where do the characters go when they become absent? What space do they occupy? The answer might lie in Antonioni's fascination with monuments. L'Eclisse, especially, is set in Rome, where old and new monuments within the same space. In one overhead shot from a plane, we see the ancient Colosseum sitting uncomfortably with modern buildings. Even the stock exchange scenes take place within a classical building replete with columns and dome.

In fact, going back to the principle of constructing a negative space, couldn't we even say that Antonioni constructs scenes like monuments? His characters inhabit these anachronistic time capsules (even the 1960s fashion and decor look dated today) that not only define the time they occupy (positive space), but also the time that has passed and the time that would come (negative space). Antonioni's characters are in the ever-renewing present; they touch and gaze at things (monuments themselves) to continually affirm their presence in the world, in relation to the world, and in relation to time. Indeed, monuments were first constructed by man to affirm his presence. The first megaliths were erected in Europe to indicate human presence, by way of transforming its landscape; by constructing what is in front of them (positive space), ancient man could transform what was around them (negative space). They could declare they are present (not absent), immediately protecting them from what has past (an empty landscape) and what is to come (the monuments' immortality).

Similarly, Antonioni's characters are caught between the two-way flow of time – one present recedes infinitely into the past, the other present extends infinitely into the future. This is the specific angst that his characters have to deal with (what separates them from those of Ozu, another master who shares a similar sensibility of time/impermanence) – the reticence of coming out of a past that no longer suits them and the anxiety of lasting into a future that would not include them. They only have the present, but they are constantly haunted by the image of time. The stock exchange is the central metaphor in L'Eclisse because it is undeniably set in the present although haunted by the specter of collapse. It is the ringing image of impermanence, the instability of everyday life, the promise of change. After all, isn't change the only factor that terrifies all of Antonioni's characters?

Notes on Va Savoir

Yes, Rivette cuts on continuity at times, but only at times - most of his cuts are irrational - mid-sentence, unexpected scene changes - but even when he cuts on continuity, he does so to surprise/stun. Just as in the scene where Bonaffé meets Balibar for the first time - it's clear they know each other, but yet Bonaffé pretends he doesn't - he makes to stand up, then abruptly sits down again - gestures neither reveal nor advance - gestures are mysterious, inexplicable.

Yes, Rivette cuts on continuity - but no, it's better to say that he cuts around it - a circle - just like the circle his camera inscribes - the camera never just follows, it encircles, traps, moves away - its own gestures are mysterious - dancing together with those of the characters.

Rivette constructs his films like Scheherazade - it's always about what's next, how does one go from one scene to the next scene, and the next... So every scene contains a new element, if only to carry the film forward. Having a big 'whatsit' (like that of Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly) is useful because it organizes (encircles) the gestures into a quest, and a quest always brings you to a new place - it is a strategy that constantly renews itself (like Feuillade, Lang, Hitchcock...). But within it, gestures and dialogue are mysterious - they fit uneasily with this forward-advancing scheme - they come from elsewhere.

Something is always withheld from view - that something is always the empty center of his films - the characters circle around it. The gestures seem to come from this empty 'essence,' this point of indeterminacy between theater and life, life and cinema, cinema and theater (another circle, or rather, concentric circles) - and thus their gestures evoke the mysterious, even in the most mundane (Out 1, Gang of Four) - also the reason why the sound of his films (always boomed location sound) is always clear and mysterious.

A note from Brecht's journal

Notes on Godard/Lanzmann

I have been rather perplexed by Godard and Lanzmann's famous debate, (of which a slightly reductive account can be found here).

Both filmmakers agree that it is the cinema's duty to bear witness. Unlike the simultaneous non-images of television, cinema's responsibility is to absorb the trauma of the incident and (perhaps not re-produce or re-present) but inflect the change that has taken place.

Godard's dismissal of Shoah might have been missing the point - history is not only contained in images, but also in people. But people, like images, can also lie.

My worry, on the other hand, is for a generation that no longer experiences the Holocaust as presently as the previous one, a generation for whom the Holocaust would be nothing but myth. In that case, the image's power to indict and to record the real remains paramount. And yet, Lanzmann's 'fictions of the real' and 'silences of images' cannot be overlooked.

On Doors (4): Abdication

(French Cancan; Jean Renoir 1954)

(The Golden Coach; Jean Renoir 1952)

Rossellini's Ten Commandments

Roberto Rossellini's Ten Commandments to his students at the Centro Sperimentale, as paraphrased by Tag Gallagher:

1. The camera is a pen, a plain ordinary Bic, easy to use. It's enough to know what you want to say - if you have something to say.
2. The camera is a paper tiger. Don't mythify it.
3. Therefore the image must exist first in your head. The camera can't substitute for the absence of an image in your head. Therefore learn to think in images; it's useless to expect miracles from the camera. 'You really have to reduce filming to the simplicity of a pencil, so you have no more worries about the medium and all your worries can concern your thoughts.'
4. Making films is easy. People say it's difficult in order to stop you.
5. When I say film I don't mean commercial cinema, which is dead, and only good for letting filmmakers tell themselves, 'Ah! How wonderful I am!'
6. Make films that will be useful for others, not for yourself.
7. What's useful? Knowledge, without which we'd be beasts. The brain is used to think with, not just to wear a hat.
8. Using film to spread knowledge means doing research. Ideas and subjects aren't invented by moonlight but in the library.
9. I don't like being known as a director. I prefer to be a good pilot, a man. The principal craft is to be a man, curious, fascinated, responsible, occupied with the problems of the world.
10. My only role here is the guardian of your liberty.

Nessun Dorma

or, free indirect discourse -

(India Song; Marguerite Duras, 1975)

On Doors (3): La Belle Noiseuse

(La Belle Noiseuse; Jacques Rivette 1991)

On Doors (2): The Diary of a Chambermaid

The closed door marks a boundary - the forbidden territory of desire.


Desire and violence occupy the same space. In Renoir's films, desire only leads to violence and death.


Renoir shuts the door on desire and violence - but only to let it burst through more forcefully.


Renoir's fascination with backs - doors in themselves, slightly ajar.

(The Diary of a Chambermaid; Jean Renoir 1946)

On Doors (1): Vanina Vanini

In response to Pedro Costa's seminar.

(Vanina Vanini; Roberto Rossellini 1961)

Rossellini and Giotto

(The Seven Virtues: Charity; Giotto 1305)

"But in later years I came to understand that the arresting strangeness, the special beauty of these frescoes derived from the great part played in them by symbolism, and the fact that this was represented not as a symbol (for the thought symbolized was nowhere expressed) but as a reality, actually felt or materially handled, added something more precise and more literal to the meaning of the work, something more concrete and more striking to the lesson it imparted."

(The Miracle; Roberto Rossellini 1948)

"And quite possibly, this lack (or seeming lack) of participation by a person's soul in the virtue of which he or she is the agent has, apart from its aesthetic meaning, a reality which, if not strictly psychological, may at least be called physiognomical." -- Marcel Proust

(The Miracle; Roberto Rossellini 1948)

Il pleure dans mon coeur

Rain and cherry blossoms (2/27/2010)

Thoughts on the close-up (1)

"There is no close-up of the face. The close-up is the face, but the face precisely insofar as it has destroyed its triple function [individuation, socialization, communication] - a nudity of the face much greater than that of the body, an inhumanity much greater than that of animals."

(The Brown Bunny; Vincent Gallo 2003)

"The close-up has merely pushed the face to those regions where the principle of individuation ceases to hold sway. They are not identical because they resemble each other, but because they have lost individuation no less than socialization and communication. This is the operation of the close-up. The close-up does not divide one individual, any more than it reunites two: it suspends individuation ... It absorbs two beings, and absorbs them in the void ... The facial close-up is both the face and its effacement." -- Gilles Deleuze

(The Brown Bunny; Vincent Gallo 2003)