Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Blogathon. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est Blogathon. Afficher tous les articles

24 novembre 2008

Unspoken Cinema Journal (participations)

Unspoken Cinema Journal

Bela Tarr issue – Call for submissions


To coincide with recent remarks made by Béla Tarr, that his next film may be his last, Unspoken Cinema Journal is delighted to dedicate its inaugural issue to the uncompromising Hungarian master.

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Unspoken Cinema Journal is a quarterly periodical devoted to scholarship, discussion and the promotion of contemplative cinema. Despite its elusive definition, we recognize contemplative cinema as one that departs from the safety of neorealism and transcendental style; to fearlessly explore the undrawn aesthetic boundaries of minimalism, mutism, existentialist and materialist film. We also recognize contemplative cinema as a truly transcultural cinematic avant-garde.

Our intention is to deliver as rich and engaging exploratory film criticism in this field as possible. Unspoken Cinema Journal encourages written and image (still) based submissions from a wide range of styles. We welcome established contributors as much as lesser known cinéphiles. Accepted formats include: polemical writing, manifestos, photo essays, transcribed interviews, traditional academic essays and journalistic reports. We advance no restrictions on ideological or hermeneutic approach. Unspoken Cinema Journal is also committed to open access, we believe that content should be accessible to the widest online readership.

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Suggested – but not exhaustive – topics for the Béla Tarr issue:

Responses to journeys and travel in Tarr’s cinema; constructions of spatio-temporal geography. Explorations of the (a)political and historical landscape of Tarr’s world. Tarr’s cinema versus the conventions of commercial infrastructure. Image essays on Tarr’s cinematographic discourse: A camera as stalker, voyeur or omnipresence. Retrospectives and overviews of Tarr’s cinematic legacy. We are especially interested in contributions on Family Nest (1979) and The Man From London (2007).


Style guidelines
  • Articles, reports, transcriptions 800 - 2500 words and essays 3000 - 6000. Submit as A4 word format (double-spaced), using MLA referencing style.
  • Deadline for issue 1 is 19th January 2009, although we will continue to accept for future issues. All successful contributions shall appear at the forthcoming website.
  • All contact, enquiries and submissions: unspokenjournal@googlemail.com
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28 mars 2008

Film Criticism Blogathon 2006 (backup)

Since I mentionned in my last post Andy Horbal's Film Criticism Blogathon (at No More Marriages!) on Dec 1st 2006, and that the blog was now deleted, I'll re-post the links here for future online reference and posterity.
Luckily a trace of the summary can be found copied at the end of in Noel Vera's own contribution
And thanks to the Wayback Machine, the original archive of this blogathon is not lost.


LIST OF CONTRIBUTIONS
(*) indicates discussion in the comments section

And reminding us that the internet is not cast in stone and that blogposts and bloggers come and go :
R.I.P. offline pages
(please leave a link or a cached page to correct these missing contributions)


Bonus Link :

A Roundtable Discussion "How Film Critics Work" at Undercurrent (FIPRESCI) with Klaus Eder, Julie Rigg, Richard Kuipers, Adrian Martin and Roslyn Petelin
This forum, presented by the Australian Film, Television and Radio School as part of the Brisbane International Film Festival 2005, invited four prominent film critics to discuss their profession and share ideas about perceptive and informative film criticism.
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06 janvier 2008

Contemplative Cinema blogathon 2008


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12 novembre 2007

Contemplative Blogathon 2

I hope that we haven't said everything that had to be said about "Contemplative Cinema" (C.C.) yet. Nearly a year since the experiment at Unspoken Cinema, to run a blogathon over a month on a team blog. It was a great success then. But was it too heavy that it burnt out already? I know I did burn out. But isn't it the spirit of a marathon to play on endurance, instead of a mass posting on a single day, like the traditional format used to be? Well, seeing that nobody else tried this event-blog experience on a long period, I assume it was not approved by the blogathon regulars...
I wish the interest for this perspective on cinema would have lasted beyond the timeframe of the blogathon event... or even have some repercussions in film reviewing, to reconsider the way we write about films that are difficult to put into words. Maybe I missed the examples of this new type of film writing, maybe I'm wrong in expecting this evolution. Anyway, this concept of C.C. needs more critical scrutiny, more deconstruction, more contrarianism, more elaboration, more sampling, more case studies, more participation...
I'm the first guilty, since I didn't pursue my investigations as planned on the blog. I'm lost in my scattered notes, and overwhelmed by the number of themes and films I'd like to explore at the same time. Result, I've postponed everything.


Hopefully this anniversary will be an opportunity to bring forth another series of ideas and posts to discuss this type of cinema. What are the new films since last year? What are the new developments?
I don't know what topic could refresh and inspire new contributions or if another blogathon is even desirable... Anybody out there wants to repeat on January 2008? (I know I'm not trying to be original, and find something completely different for my second blogathon...) ;)
Probably not a month-long event this time though. Maybe just a week-long deadline (Sunday 6th-Sunday 13th January 2008 would be ok?). Go to Unspoken Cinema

I would propose something like "narrative strategies in plotless films". To look at how C.C. films manage to tell a story without the traditional dramatic structure. To see if there is one alternative strategy or if there are various types of contemplative plotlessness in these films to compensate the lack of dialogue and suspense-drive.
Contrarians could even prefer to note how we can find traces of classic narration (or an altered form) in C.C. films.
Suggestions for a topic are welcome. If there are other ideas before January, we can always change it. Find the blogathon banners here.
Well, just to let you know that the Unspoken Cinema team-blog is still alive, or strives to be, and that you are welcome to participate.
What do you think?
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18 février 2007

Outlandish Dargis Empire

I'm a contrarian all year round on this blog, thus for the fun of participating in Jim Emerson's Contrarianism blogathon at Scanners, I'll make it an exercice de style. Following up on Andy Horbal's initiative to study the buzz generated by Manohla Dargis NYT review of INLAND EMPIRE, I've decided to take the aggressive detractor approach and give a detailed reader's feedback.
This is a gameplay of course, as Dargis is a great critic and my tentative analysis is pretentious. Nitpicky mode intentionally exaggerated. For the fun of being contrarian, at least let's not bash a little helpless reviewer, let's go for the best and see where it takes us. Why not? Keep in mind I'm not familiar with american TV culture and English is a second language, this should relativize my following remarks, but what any reader gets from a review says something about the writer. Moreover I happen to share Dargis opinion that INLAND EMPIRE is a masterpiece, and I have nothing but respect for her critiques.

I've read this article back in December and only saw the film last week. I had already a few objections back then when it was celebrated "the most significant piece of criticism she wrote for the NYT". Now reading it again, with hindsight of seeing the film, I'm able to qualify my troubled impressions.

Contradictions of my own contradictions are of course welcome and encouraged.


"The Trippy Dream Factory of David Lynch" by Manohla Dargis (NYT, Dec. 6 2006)

Dargis calls it "art", ranks it in her top10 of the year, people call her review her best job ever... Then I'd like to know what is an art review and how good can get criticism with great literary style.
I'm not siding with John Podhoretz and Andrew Sullivan who called her "pretentious" and "poser", on the contrary, I think she is too superficial and dilutes the density of Lynch works in a populist rhetoric meant to vulgarize "art", which obviously goes against her stated intention to place this movie above all.
Where is the critical reflexion about Lynch's world vision? Where is the aesthetic analysis other than qualifying actors and set furniture with colorful adjectives, and dropping as much pop culture references as possible? I don't know what was the bottom line for this review, and maybe the editor watered it down afterall.

paragraph 1 : lyrical intro, obligatory(?) filmography reminder.

  • I wouldn't even mention the triviality of the "vine" metaphor, and the insisting cliché about Lynch's "creppy-creepy" persona if this article wasn't acclaimed as a model of criticism.

paragraph 2 : vague overall description of the atmosphere

  • I wholeheartedly agree with the infamous A-bomb, INLAND EMPIRE is art. I wish Dargis had developped this angle and actually treated it as a work of art by giving up any reference to conventional filmmaking and conventional reviewing. Instead she produces a standard movie review with a plot rundown, nods to the actors, nods to the image, trivia, name-dropping...
  • "Dark as pitch, as noir, as hate" : not so subtle wording.
  • I'm not sure what to think of the Mad Magazine reference... is it really appropriate? Are we really in the same kind of humor there?
  • I'll pass on the TV reference (Ralph Kramden) which I don't know, and the painting style (Edward Hopper) which is another recurring cliché associated with Lynch (will critics bring it up in every Lynch movie?).
  • "I’m still trying to figure out what the giant talking rabbits have to do with the weepy Polish woman" : useless bit of non-information. Some think that the stream-of-consciousness note-to-self creates an informal tone that feels like a confidence... I think this is more appropriate to the blog format, while in print we don't need all the speculations going through the critics head, just to fill space in a word-limited column. Or at least could be formulated in way to commit the reader's imagination instead of laying down straightforwardly key pieces of the puzzle and revealing an approximate link between them at the risk of spoiling the experience for readers who didn't see the film. I'm not against spoilers in general (thus the critic can develop a thorough analysis of every elements). But droping a spoiler without any critical point to make is just a mean space filler.
  • "weepy" : The tone of the whole sentence is very light and almost mocking. I don't see why. I take offense to this pejorative qualifier, it gives the wrong impression to the reader who hasn't seen the film. We see the face of a woman in tears indeed, but nothing says her emotion is exagerated or faked (she weeps already when the TV show starts), in fact she might have serious troubles. Lynch films her in a very dignified way.
  • "may be a whore or merely lost or, because this is a David Lynch film (after all), probably both" : oversimplifying generalisation. Is she saying that whores and lost girls are Lynch's auteur trademark or that he systematically mixes up prostitution and confusion when portraying women? I doubt either are insightful propositions. (see comment above about useless spoilers)

paragraph 3 : plot rundown, caricatural description of characters

  • The Wizard of Oz reference was already a stretch for Mulholland Dr., it's dubious for INLAND EMPIRE.
  • The "once upon a time" reference to fairytale is also out there.
  • Although one thing is important there is to pay attention to how the film starts.
  • Now, the derogatory terms to caricature the screen appearance of actors with funny words : "hilarious", "bulging eyes", "East European accent" was it really necessary? are they really representative of the scene or just a cheap shot at the most superficial details? Dargis seems to enjoy laughing at a freak show, while Lynch was installing the quirky calm of a possessive inescapable encounter.
    Why not talk about the gradual oppressive intrusion of this stranger in her intimate space. Or the awkward silences, the poses, the offbeat timing as if suspended in time. The time feels soft, actually making uncomfortable moments last longer, until it jumps to tomorrow, leaving the scene unfinished, as if it never happened...

paragraph 4 : Mulholland Dr. (tabloid-friendly) synopsis.

  • There is more critical analysis of Mulholland Dr. in this single paragraph than in the full article for INLAND EMPIRE!
  • "Mr. Lynch loves women, or at least their representations" : again, underdevelopped generalisations. I'd like to know more about this.
  • Should the form of a review attempt to match the form of the film, or at least adapt the review formula to its narrative specifity?

paragraph 5 : see paragraph 3

  • Continuation of the rough plot description in a very face-value, lineary way that might not be the best approach to a Lynch movie, or to a film called "art". There is this, there is that, one, two, three characters, this is what they do, that is what happens then... INLAND EMPIRE is not made to be summarized to fit in a conventional plot. If it's art, let's take liberties with the usual narration of a film review...
  • More uncalled-for derogatory terms "foreign-accented visitor", "butched-up as a neo-greaser". Maybe it's hip for a journalist, but is that GREAT film criticism I wonder?
  • "almost-unrecognizable" : star-gazing type of remark for the fanboys. How insightful is it to the film?
  • "(...) kind of" : mysterious unfinished sentence to hint at more twists, although the reasons (of the interruption and of the secret) will not be developped here.
  • Why mentionning the porn-name anecdote, the costumes... instead of installing the love triangle tension, the cursed film, the mannered spelled out inhibition, the upper-class cordial uppity, the naive clumsy lust...?

paragraph 6 : synospsis of the "film(s)-within-the-film"

  • Why go for a pedestrian description that is no use to grasp the originality of this one-of-a-kind film, nor to get a sense of its mysterious atmosphere? Citing the various disconnected scenes for the sake of an inventory without helping the reader to assemble it all in a coherent impression of the film and without adding the insight necessary to begin to interpretate the story only makes the review more unintelligible and disparate than the film actually is. At least in the film the montage and the recurrent places give an intuitive understanding of the circumvolutions, which the review lacks.
  • "Susan spends a lot of time in a sinister house" : I don't know how much Dargis appreciated the film and how much she wants to convince her readers that this art is a must see, but this kind of tired sentence doesn't shine the best light on what Lynch meant to do. It denotes that time is wasted, and that the house is repulsive instead of captivating.
  • "chew the fat and their naughty lower lips" : I guess to find 2 phrases using the same verb in a row is great poetry (is it?) but why choosing to highlight the listless aspect of the scene instead of its latent sexual ambivalence (conflation of adultary with prostitution, sex slavery with sweet infatuation)?

paragraph 7 : set design description

  • The prevalent role of places and the labyrintine architecture gives the film its structure indeed. But again, the pedestrian inventory, disconnected from the scenes described in the previous paragraph miss the connections that would give us an idea of what is going on and what Lynchian ideas are at work.
  • "weepy" changed to a preferable "weeping" here.
  • "money-for-sex transaction" : I find the phrase used there to kill the possibilities left opened by Lynch. The woman who is asked to undress appears to be a prostitute indeed, but the ambiguity of the scene relies precisely on the absence of money. Both characters' faces are blurred as if on a surveillance tape trial exhibit. The guy asks "Do you know what prostitutes do?", but this could be role playing within a married couple/adulterous lovers (theme of the film), and the importance of multiple interpretations are key. A review narrowing down the freedom goes against the film.

paragraph 8 : The only reflexive analytical paragraph so far.

"How Nikki and the other characters wind up in these rooms — how, for instance, the pampered blonde ends up talking trash in a spooky, B-movie office — is less important than what happens inside these spaces. In “Inland Empire,” the classic hero’s journey has been supplanted by a series of jarringly discordant scenes, situations and setups that reflect one another much like the repeating images in
the splintered hall of mirrors at the end of Orson Welles’s “Lady From Shanghai.” The spaces in “Inland Empire” function as way stations, holding pens, states of minds (Nikki’s, Susan’s, Mr. Lynch’s), sites of revelation and negotiation, of violence and intimacy. They are cinematic spaces in which images flower and fester, and stories are born."
  • "How Nikki and the other characters wind up in these rooms is less important than what happens inside these spaces" : 1st insight engaging with the film purpose. Although instead of asking why the same actress appears in milieux that have nothing to do with each other (without explanatory narrative transitions), a better insight would be to note the way Lynch re-use the same actress to play different roles in the same film. The fact we can recognize Laura Dern each time doesn't mean we are expected to believe she is the same person. This is art. Let's think outside the box and forget about long lived narrative conventions. Lynch obviously introduces a shift of time and place, possibly fantasized by the character itself. So the pertinent question is not to make sense of the logistical link between each story but the mood they describe and how they resonate in relation to each other. For instance Lynch puts rabbit heads on the sitcom actors so we don't identify them, he blurs faces (because they are symbolic/archetypal scenes) to prevent the viewer to draw immediate conclusion about the persons themselves.

paragraph 9 : 2nd insight of the review.

"Each new space also serves as a stage on which dramatic entrances and exits are continually being made. The theatricality of these entrances and exits underscores the mounting tension and frustrates any sense that the film is unfolding with the usual linear logic. Like characters rushing in and out of the same hallway doors in a slapstick comedy, Nikki/Susan keeps changing position, yet, for long stretches, doesn’t seem as if she were going anywhere new. For the most part, this strategy works (if nothing else, it’s truer to everyday life than most films), even if there are about 20 minutes in this admirably ambitious 179-minute film that feel superfluous. “Inland Empire” has the power of nightmares and at times the more prosaic letdown of self-indulgence."
  • "Each new space also serves as a stage on which dramatic entrances and exits are continually being made" : Well, I used to find it interesting before seeing the film, but actually only a few scenes function that way in the film (sitcom, small house at the end).
  • The "20 min too much" comment feels quite petty, the kind of thing you say of some pretentious director who doesn't know what he's doing, not of a film you call "art".
  • "prosaic letdown of self-indulgence" WTF does it mean? again, I'm afraid Dargis has issues with artistic vision that are too personal, too far away from traditional cinema. I can't tell if she actually admires this film.

paragraph 10 : banalities about Lynch and subconscious. Nod to photography

  • The kind of useless press-kit info that is repeated in every review. I realized by reading other interviews that this concerned only the preparatory phase of the work, then ideas came together and he had a larger crew and an uninterrupted shooting schedule that was prepared in advance. It's fine to mention it, but to build the buzz of a film on geeky trivia doesn't elevate it to art territory.
  • Seriously though, the surrealist gameplay of automatic writing doesn't quite correspond to the practicality of a film set. It implies to write mindlessly, beyond attention span, in order for subconscious word associations to surface without the conscience to register and filter it. Maybe some improvised scenes allowed to last 40 min could take an actor to act subconsciously. But these are rare occasions in the film with Laura Dern alone. Most of the scenes are fairly constructed and reworked in post-production.

paragraph 11 : Impressionistic conclusion

  • "Inland Empire seemed funnier, more playful and somehow heartfelt" : something the lame director Bob Brooker in Mulholland Dr. could say.
  • Somehow Dargis attempts to sympathize with readers disappointed on first viewing, by sharing a similar experience, and then promising a funnier second viewing. In principle I don't approve appeal to sympathy, especially when it relates to (re)viewing recommendations. A critic should leave the decision to buy a ticket or not to the reader. The consumation-driven rhetoric is for the marketing campaign.
  • "It’s easy to get lost in a David Lynch film, but Ms. Dern and her amazing rubber-band mouth, which laughs like the sun and cries us a river, proves a magnificent guide." ain't it corny?
  • "rubber-band mouth" : derogatory qualifier, and only refering to a couple of shots of Dern's distorted face.

Conclusion:

I don't see how this particular review is any different from any other one. It doesn't strike me as such a writing mastery (I'm French, I wouldn't know), nor does it feature the greatest filmic insights we've read in a long time. As for the film, I'd wonder if she liked it if she didn't call it art and put it in her year-end top. Lots of nitpicky notes, seemingly off-the-cuff, on details of minor importance and few demonstrations of the greatness of the film. From the review alone I would say she liked it but will move on quickly to the less artsy fare. These words don't shine with passion and adoration as we could expect it from a glorified art piece. But maybe Dargis just doesn't like art that much... ;)

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25 janvier 2007

Nuri Bilge Ceylan interview (Climates)

My notes on radio broadcast : L'avventura on France Culture with Laure Adler. (offline now)

FORMATION

  • Inspired by Antonioni : L'Eclisse, L'Avventura, La Notte. (Not especially in Climates though).
  • Formating experience when seeing at 16 yold Bergman's The Silence (1963). Then difficulty to track down more Bergman films (not available in Turkey).
  • Autobiography by Roman Polanski was a transforming experience, that gave him an impulse to become filmmaker.
  • Discovery of Antonioni, Bresson, Ozu, Bergman at the London Cinematheque.
  • Quits film school after 2 years out of 4, to start making cinema. Learns filmmaking by staring in a short movie for a friend.

AUTEUR

  • Nuri Bilge Ceylan is a totally independent auteur : screenwriter, producer, camera operator, editor, set designer, director of photography, actor. A filmmaker must learn how to do every trade in cinema not to be slave of standard technique and be able to create a sophisticated film [Bergman said the same thing]. Creativity starts where standard formula ends. He wants to be creative at every stage of the production.
  • He was originaly photographer which helped him to understand the technique of cinema.
  • Use of non-actors (his family) : he likes their spontaneity potential, their resource to give something fresh.

WORLD VISION

  • Turkey : NBC is a Solitary person, not political bond with Turkey, no special connection with other turkish filmmakers Yilmaz Güney (Yol), so he has the feeling he could live in any country and do the same kind of cinema. Though, he doesn't want to live elsewhere.
  • Iran : The image of Iran changed thanks to Kiarostami and iranian cinema. He thinks people in Iran are like in the movies.
  • Likewise Turkey's art offer a new perspective to the world.
  • Humanistic, meditative, contemplative cinema. Looking at the world through plan sequence. Lots to contemplate, to see in the film. Little dialogue and action.
  • Lots of things happen between people and their relationship with nature. Perception of time, of seasons = cosmic influence on people's lives. Wind, wave in the sea, snow, sun beam... elements of nature remind man of being a tiny dot in the universe, which alters our relation to suffering.
  • Off-centering of self, learning of self-identity. NBC likes his characters to lie, and that the audience be active to figure the smallest gesture that betrays this lie. In Hollywood cinema we usually believe everything the hero says, and he doesn't like that.

"I hate to explain, to insist, to convince : the audience shall guess. (...) I think the point of view of a film should be close to life. As if you observe a couple of strangers in a cafe, trying to figure their relationship, their problems." interview in Libération (01-17-2007)

"People who talk too much always bothered me. Most of is being said is hollow. (...) I never liked when feelings and reflexions are expressed through dialog. I prefer to make my characters say unsignificant things, while the underlaying subtext reveals their feelings and reflexions. I like to show everybody's real-life weaknesses, this superficial side of us." Interview in Les Inrockuptibles (01-16-2007)

FILMOGRAPHY

  • Clouds of May (1999) was compared to Kiarostami by critics. Life of rural people, joy of contemplating nature.
  • Uzak (2002) Istanbul under snow. Shot in NBC's own appartment. Watching Uzak is like watching a scientist experiment to observe humans like lab animals. Mamut: solitary and depressive afraid of being invaded by a stranger. Mutic game between the 2 men. Problems of vital space. Solitude, despair, delusion. Sounds of nature. Sounds interacts even image is still.

CLIMATES (2006)

  • Couple fighting to figure if they will part or not. Played by real-life couple of the auteur.
  • Ebru co-wrote the scenario, she was involved in the project at the beguining so him and her were meant to be in the film.
  • Male POV : man is mean, indecise, violent, seductor and woman more innocent, fragile by contrast. Every man by instinct is interested by his friend's girlfriend. 10 commendments "thou shall not covet your neighbor's wife" = Men's competition (unsaid tendency): "I scored more (women) than you".
  • The fact that at the ending the woman is to the East, in the snow, alone, helps the man to love her more because she needs security.
  • HD is the future of cinema whether we like it or not, so better as well master it now. Freedom of images, corrected colors. He filmed some beautiful steadycam shots for Climates but he dropped them all on the editing table to only keep stationary shots, because they didn't feel right. Echo with the still photographer in him.
Another contribution to the "Contemplative Cinema" blogathon at Unspoken Cinema.
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13 janvier 2007

Gus Van Sant on Bela Tarr

Another contribution to the "Contemplative Cinema blogathon" at Unspoken Cinema.
My notes on Gus Van Sant's text "The camera is a machine", written for the 2001 Bela Tarr retrospective at the NYC MoMA. Published in French in Trafic #50 (summer 2004)

Upon viewing Damnation (1988), Satantango (1994) and Werckmeister Harmonies (2000), Gus Van Sant reconsiders the cinematographic grammar and the influence of History (industrial revolution age) on the birth of cinema.

The films of Bela Tarr follow one of many singular paths that Cinema could have adopted if the mainstream hadn't been formated by industrial necessities. His work shows a new genuine and fruitful orientation, a cinema radicaly new starting over at its point of departure. And this cinema could only be born outside our western culture.
Bela Tarr seems to be influenced by the stationary views of steam engine machines from the XIXth century. [Reference to the famous Lumière brothers' seminal film : L'Arrivée d'un train à La Ciotat (1895)]
He learnt cinema from its origin as if Modernist Cinema never existed.


In Werckmeister Harmonies there is a 5 min long shot of a mob storming down a street to go burn down a hospital. A spectator asked Bela Tarr why this shot had to last so long and he replied sincerly :
  • "because the street to cross was that long"

[Which is the same answer Tsai Ming-liang did about the length of the opening shot of The Wayward Cloud, where we watch two women cross an underground tunnel, end to end, in wide angle.]

Without the shortcuts and ellipsis of the conventional vocabulary that would tell us : "The crowd moves forward", instead with emphasis on the lyrism and poetry, by sharing ideas his long take says : "The protesters progress, grimacing, raising high up their torches, some marching in synchronized rhythm, some not, sometimes turning round and movnig around, and once arrived they had come a long way."


Bela Tarr's work has an organic and contemplative approach rather than truncated and contemporary. We couldn't find this manner of contemplating life in an ordinary modern film. His films are so much closezr to the daily life rhythms that it appears we witness the birth of a new cinema. Bela Tarr is one of the few filmmakers truly visionary.
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09 janvier 2007

Over There : documenting contemplation

2nd post for the Contemplative Cinema Blogathon at Unspoken Cinema.

Continuation from Là-bas (2006/Chantal Akerman/Belgium/France)

In February 2005, Chantal Akerman is asked to make a documentary on Israel. Taking position, shaping a vision is complicated. She's afraid to picture this difficult nation too lightly, to give an uneducated judgment of the conflict, to oversimplify politics at work. Not belonging to Israel is also a worry. She doesn't feel at home and she can't identify her peers either. These are the dilemmas Akerman contemplates hampered by the inhibition of her neurotic denial. Although reluctant to confront a caricatural banality of long-lived clichés, she installs a camera in her rented appartment nonetheless and lets it capture life through the windows.

The reflexion about the conception thus becomes part of the documentary itself, like a very personal meta-film, which turns out to be a creative justification on the impossibility to produce satisfying images. The limitations of cinema, as a regard, in descriptive explanations. What Akerman can't bring herself to say, the strict formality of her montage reveals it. This contemplative aesthetic takes a long pause to ponder, through the physicality of wait and silences (in place of intellectualized polemics), over the state of being in Israel, the resentment of exil, the uprooting of dispora. The ambivalent Jewish fate.

The cinematic space and the auteur's scope, in a symbiotic analogy, are both divided in four constructs layered in depth: Inside, Frontier, Outside, Away.

Her spontaneous, neurotic seclusion, takes a political dimension in the context of her own double exil. She's first exiled from motherland, Israel, because her family lives in Europe, and she's exiled again, as a foreigner, once in Tel Aviv because she can't pretend to be Israeli. A feeling of being elsewhere, always out of place.

She's a child of the second generation. Her mother bears the wounds of the death camps in her flesh, Chantal does in her subconscious. She says if she had been raised in Israel she would have ran around with the other kids in the street, but in Bruxelles, going out was forbidden and she watched the kids from her window. In this film, again, she assumes the childhood conditioning and watches from behind closed windows.

INSIDE (Exil) : Bunker-appartment, safe hideout, passive observation, centrality, immobility. She is in Tel Aviv, but the closed doors make her appartment an alien territory, away from Israel, which only shows out of the windows. A microcosm in truncated details, out of context. All screens pulled down on the windows create a camera obscura, the reality from outside filters in through the gaps. We're in Plato's myth of the cave : the silhouettes at the windows are the only reality she knows of Israel.

FRONTIER (Curtain) : Initial distanciation from her environment, ambiguity conceal/reveal, overframing. The large bay-window filling the screen, replaces the cinema screen, stands for a TV screen to display movies or the News. Relating her experience to the theatre audience.

OUTSIDE (Street) : Homeland, heartland, motherland, Tel Aviv, Israel. The first layer is the invisible street down below that emits a muffled ambient noise (sound without visual). The second layer across the void, is the facade of the building, replicating/mirroring her "inside", only as seen from outside, behind their walls and curtains (partial visual without sound). Each window is a TV screen to contemplate, with its own "soap opera" with recurrant characters.

AWAY (The world) : Ideal hope. Immense, global, invisible macrocosm, out of reach, impossible to grasp. Represented by 3 elements. The planes in the sky, going to another exil. The sea, open on all sides, the polar opposite of her cealed bunker. The phone line connecting to friendly voices, breaking the exil, folding space, canceling the distances.

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Sous le ciel lumineux de son pays natal (2001/Franssou Prenant/France)
A companion film to Akerman's documentary would be a similar work by Franssou Prenant who tells her return to Beyrout in Lebbanon (on the other side of the Israeli border). She interviews her friends, off-screen, who stayed there and recall her memories from before the war, her impressions of the changes, against a handheld reportage through the streets.

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La-bas (2006/Akerman)

This post is my contribution to the Contemplative Cinema Blogathon. Check Unspoken Cinema for all the updated contributions and the roundtable discussions with other participants.


Là-bas / Over There (2006/Chantal Akerman/Belgium/France) ***

The film starts and ends inside someone's empty living room, respecting the rules of dramatic unity (one space, one time, one action). A precautionary look at what's happening outside. The shots are always static and patiently pursued in long takes. If the framing is artisticaly composed, it lets however the audience's gaze wander around and select our own acumen. Little action animates this quiet scrutiny of the neighborhood, from various angles, through the straw-screens. A textured curtain of proximity and disconnection. Lacking any hint of a narrative subject, these silent images denounce the passivity and voyeurism of a cinema viewer, which strangely echos the filmmaker's own state of mind in Israel.

After a while, mundane noises announce a presence we'll never see. As we imagine her making coffee in the kitchen, eating fruits, walking around, typing on her laptop, Akerman invites us to share a slice of her dailylife and witness her self-imposed seclusion. Thus the camera isn't Akerman's own eye, but a supervisor planted next to her. It rolls, nonchalant, as she stays off-screen doing other things.
Her voiceover commentary will come later to incorporate her developping ideas. She talks about triviality (food, traveling, mood, work, family memories) in a diary fashion. It could be an essay film in-progress, observing itself being made. From the notes, to denial, to idle shooting, to making of, to meta-documentary, to film. All in one.
A phonecall in French, with her mother or a friend, explicits her situation : she's fine, a little tired, her stomach was sick, she has work to do. Another phonecall in Hebrew and English, with a local friend, says she'd rather stay home. Three interlaced idioms remind us the communication barrier in a foreign land. From this remote sanctuary, the phone links to the world, literaly, all the way to Belgium, and right outside in the city. It's her only human contact. Our only context to the film. And an opportunity for a diegetic monolog.

Shortage of food imposes a leap to the shops. Not the israeli salads! they made her sick... This upset stomach could be a psychosomatic symptom due to her resistance to go out, or a subconscious incompatibility. Everything seems to approve her self-imprisonment. Her vocal introspection shares with us the irony of these coincidences.

All the while the digital camera peeks views of the buildings across the narrow street of her only landscape, over-framed by the curtains. Her neighbors become the involuntary protagonists. Through recurring shots of extensive length, we get to familiarize with some of them appearing now and then at the windows. There is an old retired couple up there, watering the plants every day. Noises of cars driving in and out. An old lady smoking on a tiny balcony. Children shouting nearby. A group of people in the street.
We can only imagine the words of their conversation. We listen what we can't see off-screen, we see what we can't hear. Our senses are dissociated. The mind will reconstitute the puzzle of a larger reality. Our voyeurism projects a judgement on them as we profile their supposed personality. These shots unroll silently, patiently, waiting for something to show up, or not.

And the montage cuts from this window to that balcony, like if skipping channel on a TV. They are like small silent films, from a surveillance camera. The almost-real-time contemplation translates the apprehension of dailylife rhythm in this quarter. We are there. We live there.
The sun drags the shadows across the facade, from underexposed to overexposed. The intensity of daylight evolves and creates a new environment, more or less oppressive. Texture, color, depth constantly vary.
The images fabricate a de-facto narration, in the absence of a stated plot, because they contain their own fragmented stories, those of real-life people, an intimate microcosm. The scarcity of sightings makes the observation riveting and the wait rewarding. At the antipode of Rear Window, Akerman recreates a dramatic tension out of nothing (what's already there) with her frame.
Them on one side, and her on the other end, and us. The narrow field of the tele-lens, the minimalism of details, transcend the archetypal features of a neighborhood, so we can relate to this confrontation to the "Other" painted in universal tableaux.

Là-basOn her exceptional visit to the beach, we can at last breath the open air. Same contemplative static shots observing from the distance the stroll in the sand of an orthodox family and tourists alike. Both the people and the filmmaker face the horizon. Over there. One always dreams of a hopeful elsewhere. The titular "Over There" that meant Israel from a european perspective, here, in turn, names the world beyond the sea : Europe, home, USA.
Just when she returns from the shop, she learns about a bomb attack on the beach, around the corner. Akerman is under shock in her appartment, and doesn't stigmatize the incident in spectacular pictures like the Israeli news. This bomb hides in words to us.
The phone rings again and she lies about her fear to appease her friends. The shot angles are the same routine but the atmosphere is more severe and the tone more serious. She notes her aunt Ruth in Bruxelles and her friend's mother in Tel Aviv both commited suicide around the same time. Why suicide in Israel just like everywhere else? Isn't it the promised Land?

The film is making itself in the camera magazine, overcoming her initial reticence. The intuition of the filmmaker succeeds where her intellect backpedalled.

Berlin Festival 2006 - Forum
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01 décembre 2006

Defining a critic

The Film Criticism Blog-a-Thon hosted by Andy Horbal Check others' contributions and comments at No More Marriages!
all weekend (Friday, December 1 - Sunday, December 3)

I'll probably post more later, but here's for starters, a compilation of aphorisms by critics, directors or writers trying to define what is a "film critic".

"The undefined place where the critic stands. When I was a critic, I thought a film, to be accomplished, should express simultaneously an idea of the world and an idea of cinema. Today, I expect the film I watch to express either the joy to make movies, or the anxiety to make movies and I don't care for everything in between, i.e. all films that do not vibrate."
"Anybody can become critic of cinema; the candidates don't need a tenth of knowledge required for literary, musical or painting critics. A filmmaker today shall accept the idea that his/her work will be eventually judged by someone who hadn't ever seen a Murnau film."
François Truffaut (French critic-filmmaker), "A quoi rêve les critiques?" in Les Films de ma Vie (1975)

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"Oeuvres are of infinite solitude; to grasp a work of art, nothing is worse than the word of criticism." Rainer Maria Rilke (German poet)

* * *

"The critic is meant to make see and make listen" Jean-Louis Bory (French critic)

* * *

"I don't believe, as a matter of criticism, in the existence of objective truths or more exactly, I value more contradictory judgments that constrain me to consolidate mine, rather than the confirmation of my principles by weak arguments." Cahiers #44, 1955.
"The critic is meant to continue -- as much as possible within the readers' intelligence and sensibility -- the shock of the work of art."
"Don't be so severe with the film, put yourself in the shoes of the filmmaker, and find out his/her motivations"
André Bazin (French critic)

* * *

"The best in criticism, it's the dialogue that is, sometimes, established with the radio audience or the reader. Business as much profitable when your point of view is disputed by the contestant. Critical dialogue and tea for two."
"We write our critiques for filmmakers first. Readers shouldn't feleft outout though. They are asked to bear witness, we feel more liberated in presence of a third party to express our sentiments."
"Paraphrasing Flaubert: to be a critic of cinema, one shouldn't know personally filmmakers, actresses, producers... But we know some of them! That's the problem."
"A critic : a resistant -- to pressure, to fad, to consensus"
Michel Boujut (French critic), La Promenade du critique, 1996

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"To be a disinhibited critic, one should be a creator in becoming" François Weyergans (French critic)

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"Every competent critic is an aspiring filmmaker" Roger Leenhardt (French critic)

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"A critic is someone who shoots at his own regiment" Jules Renard (French writer) cited in Godard's Nouvelle Vague

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"To be a critic is to be able to reflect on films. The question of criticism is this : shall criticism evolve because the status of cinema has changed?" Jean-Michel Frodon (French critic)

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"What is annoying, isn't that a critic suggests reservations on our films. It's the manner, the tone, the facile and demagogical use of controversial tricks : this semantic of hatred and contempt." Patrice Leconte (French filmmaker), infamous letter against French critics in 1999.

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"To me, criticism is included in cinema. There is no art without commentary." Robert Guédiguian (French filmmaker)

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"The 'critic' of cinema [in the popular press] (often not a specialist, but a journalist from the "culture" pages) is no longer delegated by the community of readers to the front line of cinema, (s)he is the inert "mirror" of the supposed social class of such readership, and is the commercial target of this publication. He/she is commanded to scout for films that will give readers a pleasant, gratifying image of the imaginary demographic they supposedly belong to, of which the publication is the mirror, rather than the spearhead." Alain Bergala (French critic), Cinemas Vol 6, N°2/3, 1996.

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"Like/Like not : matters to nobody; this, apparently, is meaningless. Meanwhile all this means : my body is not the same as yours. Thus, within this anarchy of taste and distaste, kind of distrait mesh, little by little is outlined the figure of a corporeal enigma, calling complicity or irritation. Here begins the intimidation of the body, forcing the other to bear liberally, to remain silent and courteous before pleasures and denials that (s)he doesn't share." Roland Barthes (French semotician), 1975

* * *

"Criticism is the art of Love. It is the fruit of a passion that is not self-devoured, but aspires to control a vigilante lucidity. It consists in a tireless research of harmony within the couple passion-lucidity." Jean Douchet (French critic), Cahiers #126, 1961.

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"Criticism is a business of provocation rather than conviction. Its best role is to call forth, about a film, some reactions, preferably violent, in the reader." Louis Seguin (French critic), Cahiers, 1969.

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"The efficiency of criticism relies on nothing but the seduction of words" Michel Mourlet (French critic), Cahiers #163, 1960.

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"The critical judgment constitutes the only cultural valuation. The artist exists only under the look of the critic. Artists don't exist without commentary! Death of commentary means the disappearance of the artist." Michel Ciment (French critic), 1999.

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"Criticism is hermeneutic by vocation, normative by fatality, impressionistic by facility and aesthetic in practice." René Prédal (French cinema historian), 2004

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"Open criticism gets its efficiency and its fecundity from its ability to discussion and welcoming." Raymond Barkan (French critic), Cinéma 60, #45.

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"My definition of a good critic is somebody who communicates their enthusiasm for work they find of merit, without ruining the option of you, the reader, also discovering the film's merits. " Lisa Nesselson (American critic), Variety

* * *

"The role of the film critic is to write well, or speak well. A critic is someone who I think should try to tell a story about the film that they're reviewing. And the story can be the story of their response to it, the story of their coming to understand that film, coming to a position on it." Adrian Martin (Australian critic), Undercurrent #1, 2006


p.s. Sorry for the approximate translation. Now what are your thoughts provoked by these phrases? Add other quotes if you have more, I'm always interested in these kind of encapsulated thoughts. Thanks.

[EDIT : See also Citations sur la critique]

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11 octobre 2006

Contemplative Cinema blogathon (update)

The blogathon on contemplative cinema I called earlier will be re-scheduled to January 2007 (Monday 8th)because the hasty date I originally picked (Nov. 15th) was already taken by Hitchcock, and I didn't know. I didn't mean to overlap, and I want to participate to this one too.
So this gives you a couple months more to think about it, and hopefully to give more time for other vocations to join in. Sorry for the inconvenience this postponed date may cause. Please tell your friends about the blogathon and its new date.

Blogathons schedule :

See you all there!

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01 octobre 2006

Unspoken Cinema

Let's talk about "boring art films"

I'd like to call for a blogathon on contemplative cinema, the kind that rejects conventional narration to develop almost essentially through minimalistic visual language and atmosphere, without the help of music, dialogue, melodrama, action-montage, and star system. Contributors are invited to pick a film or an auteur fitting this (undefined) profile, or to ponder over the general characteristics, roots, aesthetics, significance of this emerging trend in contemporean art films. Feel free to chime in and help define this nebulous "genre" in the comments. It requires a new form of criticism because a capsule summary is usually detrimental and misrepresentative of what the film has to offer. I often find myself at loss when confronted with the description of a film where nothing is happening. How could we best give justice to these films that defeat all codes of cinema history we've been conditionned to detect and connect with?

Without imposing a final exhaustive list before the discussion, a few names to illustrate the type of films in question and to help whoever is not familiar yet to draw correspondances :
  • Bela Tarr, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Pedro Costa, Saruna Bartas, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Carlos Reygadas, Tsai Ming-liang, Aktan Abdykalykov, Bruno Dumont, Elia Suleiman, Lisandro Alonso, Aleksandr Sokurov ... (wordless and plotless?)
  • Jia Zhang-ke, Aki Kaurismaki, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Wong Kar-wai, Hong Sang-soo, Lucrecia Martel, Theo Angelopoulos, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Claire Denis, Pen-ek Ratanaruang, Jim Jarmusch ... (contemplative narration?)
  • Marguerite Duras, Michael Snow (conceptual?)
  • And even documentarians : Wang Bing, Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Chantal Akerman, Victor Erice, Raymond Depardon ...
These films catch the critical attention of festivals around the world, every year, but aren't given much exposition or theorized much... So if you feel strongly about "boring art films", positively or negatively, or particularly like one of them, please join this collegial effort to explore, decypher and understand better this cutting edge, marginal cinema.

Maybe we could answer some questions :
  • What is/isn't a Boring Art Film? What have they in common? Is it a coherent family? How should it be (re)named?
  • Why "boredom" is the new "great"? How to champion boredom against entertainment? How to "sell" a "boring film" to the general audience? When does it become actually boring in a bad way?
  • How are these auteurs different from eachother? Is it only a formal/superficial familiarity?
  • Where this trend comes from? Cinematic filiation? Artistic influences?
The last couple of years, I read and gathered some articles on the subject, but if you have more references to share, paper or online, drop it here and I'll add to the list for everyone to read.
Online :

Bibliography :

  • Des films Gueule de bois - notes sur le mutisme dans le cinéma contemporain (Antony Fiant in Trafic #50)
  • Vers une esthétique du vide au cinéma (José Moure, 1997)
  • "The destruction of plot and narrative" in Film as a Subversive Art (Amos Vogel)
  • Transcendental style in film : Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (Schrader, 1972)
  • Sculpting in Time (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1989)
  • Lanterna Magica (Ingmar Bergman, 1987)
  • Light Keeps Me Company (Sven Nykvist)
  • Devotional Cinema (Nathaniel Dorsky)
  • Visionary Film (P Adams Sitney, NY 1979)
  • Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema (David Bordwell)
  • La Lenteur / Slowness (Milan Kundera, 1995)

On Boredom : (only tangential theme of the blogathon)

  • L'Ennui / La Noia / Boredom (Alberto Moravia, 1960)
  • The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude (Martin Heidegger)
  • Essays and Aphorisms (Arthur Schopenhauer)
  • Anatomy of Melancholy (Robert Burton, 1621)
  • A Philosophy of Boredom (Lars Svendsen, 1999)

I'm not sure about the deadline, I'm thinking Monday the 13th. [UPDATE] New deadline : Monday, 8th January 2007.
I also would like to try an experiment to expand the blogathon experience, and open a collective event-blog (online now already) for the occasion, during the month of January. So participants will become member-administrator and be able to post new entries.
Either you stick to the classic blogathon rules and crosspost your entry on this collective blog on deadline, or you can visit the blog all month, ask questions, suggest themes to address, add references and comment on the ongoing discussions to collect and share the most critical material around "boring art films" available.
Crossposting all entries is not meant to "steal the thunder" (and comments) each individual bloggers could get on their own blog but hopefully to help focus a productive discussion in one place. Well if this sounds inacceptable, we could always go by the traditional blogathon standard.
* * *
New Contributions to the blogathon :


BLOGATHON (rules reminder) :
Every blogger is welcome to join this event and write a post on the topic proposed (here, "boring art films") on the deadline fixed by the organisator/host (HarryTuttle). Simple as that. Thus creating a wealth of articles by various writers focusing on the same idea on the same day, a blogosphere mindstorming, or a thematical special issue in electronic form. Every post participating to the blogathon will be listed and linked here. You may leave a comment to this post to show your interest, or just publish your post on deadline. Don't forget to send me a link to your contribution by email or in the comments. Happy blogathon everyone!
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03 août 2006

Drawing Restraint 9 (2005/Barney)

DR9 : Drawing Restraint 9 (2005/Matthew Barney/USA/Japan) +++

Opening Sequence
(pre-credit prolog) : Fade from black. Shape of an eye in a melon-sized fossile rock. The rock is shaking, a transparent fluid leaks out to the floor. Frame widens showing the stone stored under layers of papers. This is an abstract symbolic reminder of the subterranean elevating tracking shot through layers of earth in the opening of Cremaster 3.
-- Giftwarpping sequence, to send a prehistoric krill fossile to General MacArthur to thank his decision to end the anti-whaling moratorium, accompanied by the sung letter wrote on 13 july 1946.

(CGI Credits) : a CGI whale is sliced in the sea in a stylized fashion. Flensing knife-shapped letters assemble the words : Drawing Restraint 9.
-- Cut to a flyover shot over Nagasaki waterfront. Then a construction site on the beach where the mold for a petroleum jelly pier (holographic entry point) is built to the image of a land flensing ramp of ancestral whaling tradition.

Avant Garde cinema
Avant Garde cinema is less accessible immediately, but takes us closer to the unspoiled essence of an artist's mind.
AG cinema is less "movies" than Conceptual Arts, channeling a certain reflexion on art, form and metaphisics. Which could be terribly alienating to the casual observer. This level of freedom of expression is never achieved within mainstream cinema, where the artistic vision of the auteur is always encumbered by plot points, continuity, plausibility and commercial interests.
Matthew Barney claims his formative inspiration from Chris Burden, Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman, Joseph Beuys, Marina Abramovic who influenced the emergence of the Performance Art movement in the 60ies and 70ies.
Body-art developped in the 70ies, the artist and his own motion is the work of art itself, video serving as an objective recording of reality. These happenings are spontaneous events with a physiological mise-en-scene. The body might be pushed to the limit of physical tolerance or subjected to a trivial/repetitive routine.

Drawing Restraint series (1987-2005)
A comprehensive survey of Drawing Restraint projects is currently exhibited at the San Fransisco MoMA. June 23rd - September 17th, 2006. Before it has been exhibited at Kanazawa, Japan (2005) and Seoul, South Korea (2006)

The organizing principle of this Drawing Restraint series comes from Barney's original combination of sport, medicine and art. To build stronger the athlete shall constrain his muscles, they would grow bigger. Thus the athlete is a masochistic alchemist who creates matter with self-imposed discipline and exercise. The cycle of muscular regeneration is compared to the digestive process in a ternary Path :
Situation (mouth) - Condition (stomach) - Production (anus)
The complex process of ingestion-digestion-assimilation becomes allegorical of the creative existence of the artist.
After looking closer at the other (non-filmic) installments of the series, the deeper subtext of DR9 came to light for me, making sense of the visceral and cluless admiration I initially experienced. Barney's aesthetics is definitely the coherent vision of an auteur, it is also founded on an intelligent reflexion which could be analyzed more carefully by an art critic, to sort out his positioning in the history of Contemporean Arts. I'm merely interested here in the elaboration of his universe and its resulting filmic instance.

DR9 : Matthew Barney's Cinema
As odd as it sounds, there is no fundamental difference between the installments he performs alone in his studio, strapped to an elastic band (DR1 to 6), and the making of this grandiloquent movie, only the scale differs. And it's impressive to see an artist develop his one idea through many different ways, indifferently. Here adaptated or transposed to the japanese tradition of whaling, the Drawing Restraint concept develops along the same "Path".
DR9 is the most narrative and explicit piece in the series, yet is hardly a narrative movie by cinema standards. This is mainly the cinematic recording of one of his sophisticated performances. Unlike narrative directors, Barney fully enjoys the multimedia potential of cinema. His use of cinema is free of prejudice and conventions, opening a fresh field of experimentation because he's not beholden to professionalism. Cinema isn't his only medium of expression, so his films aren't formated by distribution necessity or audience expectations.
Dialogue delivery and familiar body language are excluded. Barney's films are usually wordless, because his work develops the expressive physicality of the human body. He's a self-conscious athlete (football, wrestling, climbing) exploring the significance of intense muscular efforts. Therefore his mise-en-scene is mainly focused on choreography, gesture and apprehention of space. Compared to traditional cinema, this posture vis-à-vis acting performance is particularly interesting. Although the magic of cinema special effects and editing allow him to materialize life-threatening Body-Art fantasies like mutilation and amputation, for the audience to see, without the artist's real pain (which used to be determinant in traditional Body-Art).

Structure
Like in every experimental work, it's important to understand what is going on, and to pay attention to the forms that convey the directing concept, before flat out rejecting the "megalomaniac superficiality" of it all. Here the form is almost too simple, looking like an overextanded music video with funky production design. From my uneducated opinion, I'd assume Barney doesn't care too much to personalize the cinematic form itself, appropriating a ready-made medium quite naively and humbly, with very conventional use of editing and mise-en-scène, unlike most Avant Garde directors who usually strive to pervert the function and experience of cinema by altering it's traditional perception (eg. Brakhage, Kubelka, Tscherkassky, Martin Arnold, Mekas...). But maybe I'm underestimating this aspect. His true experimental work is in the very performance, and the elaboration of a coherent neological mythology.
There is a great description of the narrative story on Bjork's website
Two parallel events unwind simultaneously on the same ship without direct interaction but symbollical, mirroring allegories in contactless dialogue. The Occidental Guests never take notice of what is happening on the top deck.
The first event, articulating the rhythm of the entire film, is the processing of a Field Emblem sculpture made of petroleum jelly on the aft deck.
The other event is a wedding between two Occidental Guests inspired by Shinto ceremonial protocols. The petrolatum mold is the pulse of this happening, regulating at the slow pace of chemical solidification the protocol of everybody on this ship (and on the shore).
The bookend elements, Holographic Entry Points, that enclose the two events after the prolog, symbolize the Ise Shrine tradition of perpetual life recycling through (identical) reproduction. These flensing decks are ramps used to haul a harpooned whale on the beach in traditional whaling (before the industrial ships age). One is old, made of concrete, the next one is new, made of petroleum jelly, under construction during the duration of the film. Echoing the ancestral ceremony that rebuilds every 20 years the Ise Shrine anew to the side of the old one, which is burnt down in celebration of continuation. The ashes are kept in a box aside the new shrine.
Likewise the brand new ramp is cast out and revealed at the end of the film, and the concrete ramp is destroyed after a metallic box is hauled from the sea. So the fact the events take place during the shrine renewal process imprint this cycle of renovation to the film, which is at the heart of the Drawing Restraint concept of creative regeneration under constraining discipline.

The Occidental Guests seem to come to this peculiar ceremony without knowing eachother, like an arranged marriage. Their first encounter is anti-climactic, as it takes place in a quiet waiting corridor. Meeting wasn't a purpose of theirs apparently, unless their inner emotion is measured by the overwhelming etiquette. Then finaly unite after an erotical anthropophagic ritual.

The linear timeline goes: separation, transfiguration, union, mutation
  • Separation. Barney and Bjork are isolated, they are two dissociated halves (like in Plato's soulmate myth)
  • The petrolatum filling the two halves of the Field Emblem mold allows their reunion (chemical reaction)
  • Transformation with ablution and new costumes
  • The tea ceremony is a social restraint preventing contact
  • A storm breaks out when the cross bar (restraint) of the Field Emblem is removed at night
  • Chaos releases sexual energy drawing Barney and Bjork together
  • This is the opportunity for creativity and production. Like the blubber from the symbolic whale is flensed out and burnt in the boiler, the flesh of humans is mutilated and consumed, to give birth to a new hybrid.

Official Website
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Following up in the next post(s) :

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This post is a contribution to the Avant Garde blogathon organised by Girish, check out the other participants:

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26 juin 2006

Leonard Cohen Tribute

I don't usually post non-cinema related stuff here, cause I don't know how to write about anything else, but this blogathon honors a documentary from Toronto 2005, Berlin 2006 and Sundance 2006 : Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man (2005/Lian Lunson/USA) I haven't seen the film unfortunately (not distributed in France yet). Although I can't miss the opportunity to show my admiration for my most favorite songwriter with a quick post.

Leonard Cohen is the anti-hero, a romantic loser who can't afford love. He remembers affairs in hotels around the world. He collides supreme poetic moments and crude erotism in a novelist way. Solitude, existential struggle, self-pity modesty, political cynicism, resistance of ideas and revolution. He's a modernist akin to Antonioni, Bergman or Cassavetes. I like the melancholy of his stories, its indirect angles, his mundane poetry, his careful and useless details that make all the difference in memories.
Not to mention the beauty of his chords.

I'm Your Man is my dearest song for it will always remind me of my girlfriend.
Few favorites among many : So Long Marianne; Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye; Suzanne; Who By Fire?; Sisters of Mercy; Chelsea Hotel #2; The Partisan...

And of course :

Famous Blue Rain Coat
Composed and written by Leonard Cohen, 1971

It's four in the morning, the end of December
I'm writing you now just to see if you're better
New York is cold, but I like where I'm living
There's music on Clinton Street all through the evening.

I hear that you're building your little house deep in the desert
You're living for nothing now, I hope you're keeping some kind of record.

Yes, and Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
Did you ever go clear?

Ah, the last time we saw you you looked so much older
Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder
You'd been to the station to meet every train
And you came home without Lili Marlene

And you treated my woman to a flake of your life
And when she came back she was nobody's wife.

Well I see you there with the rose in your teeth
One more thin gypsy thief
Well I see Jane's awake
--She sends her regards.

And what can I tell you my brother, my killer
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you
I'm glad you stood in my way.

If you ever come by here, for Jane or for me
Your enemy is sleeping, and his woman is free.

Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes
I thought it was there for good so I never tried.

And Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear

Sincerely, L. Cohen


It's like a great film. It's not a song, it's a letter. It's not a letter, it's a written monologue. It could be the synopsis of a Cassavetes film : New York, a love triangle, brotherly friendship, love/hate antagonism, miscommunication. A woman encompassed in a firstname. A suggested past between the characters, symbolized by objects (raincoat, lock of hair, rose), establishing a powerful melodrama without the need to elaborate any further, everything is there.

I'd like to mention Jeff Buckley's interpretation of Hallelujah, because he plays it even better than its author and transcends it. Simply magnificent!


Check out also other participants of this Blog-a-thon :

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