love under mercury

the ann arbor film festival starts tomorrow night. for the rest of the week, ann arbor will be flooded with celluloid geezers and digital hipsters. cue your ipod to your digitally restored vinyl collection.

four years ago, i believe, chris sauchak and i attended the a.a festival--fresh, young meat ready to engage what the artistically experienced had produced in the last year. while a large majority of the films i saw that night i have forgotten, there are still some which stand out to my high school senoir year memory and i have not forgotten them. i remember sitting in the balcony of the michigan theater, watching the animated film mosschops and then trying to fit my head in between people's shoulder blades for the next week...or constantly referencing love under mercury because the title was so cool and mercury looks so much more cooler in a wine glass, especially if while holding the glass, you spin in circles. i do remember it being about science, and i do remember vaguely that it had something to do with changes.



i just found out that film was made by a man named steve hawley, from the UK. the film actually won an award later in the festival, which i didn't know at the time. here's some other places it exhibited: lux cinema london july 2000. telluride international experimental film festival oct 2000. rotterdam film festival feb 2001. dahlonega international film festival USA 2001. image forum festival tokyo 2001. 13th onion city film and video festival chicago 2001. he's been making video art since 1990.

regarding this years festival, well i'm still not sure if i'll be attending much of the gala. its the 43rd year, i mean, it has to be way too over saturated by now. well it probably maintains a lot of freshness, i just get nervous around the concept of a once a year artistic community type thing, shouldn't we all? but, there are some things to keep in mind:

wednesday 1pm
FILM JAM! visting filmmakers are invited to bring film and video works not included in the program to share in an intimate, informal setting. i will sit in the back (like in film class) and judge this intimate, informal setting until i get sent home. actually, i might go here with my mom, if she's up for it (she asked me to teach her how to watch movies this evening).

thursday 10pm
an 80minute 35mm film titled sugar will premiere, directed by reynold reynolds (NICK, is this an alias?). here's the description of the film: A young woman takes a shabby one room apartment. it is anthony's home, but he appears to have vanished mysteriously leaving everything behind. she comes to understand that anthony is living below the floor watching her every move, opening the door for uncanny occurrences, visions, nightmares, memories, and revenge. (hmmm....)

plus a lot of other great filmmakers worldwide will be showing their films and talking about them to probably anybody wearing a satchel (i'll bring mine, don't worry: don't want to be left out of the once a year conversation!).

so much has changed inside me since those young days in high school, and to some degree i miss them. a bitterness towards ann arbor and the university which occupies it has boiled up inside me since sauchak and i charged thru parking garages and film theaters in ann arbor. the love i once had for that city, just is not the same love anymore. its not even a real love.

mercury is poison and love is mercury.

to paroose the festival digitally, at your own leisure: http://www.aafilmfest.org/

re: david bordwell / neo formalism

by noel carroll, from prospects for film theory

"what makes something film theory is that it is a general answer to a general question that we have about some phenomenon which we think, pretheoretically, falls into the bailiwick of film. such inquiry is theoretical because it is general, and it is film theory because it pertains to filmic practice. furthermore, sice we can ask so many different kinds of general questions about film, there is no common feature that all of our answers should be expected to share. some theoretical questions about film--for example, about cinematic perception--may have answers that primarily advert to cinematic forms and structures, whereas other different answers to different questions might refer to economic forces. that is, some theories may be formal, while others may be social. our collection of film theories may very well compromise a mixed bag. there simply is no reason to think that every film theory will have something to tell us about the same subject--such as the way in which each and every aspect of film figures in the oppression or emancipation of the film viewer" (engaging the moving image, 362).

michigan ave

i can't help but be emotionally affected by the degree of destruction that metro detroit has undergone in the last 10 years.

today we drove about 15 miles east down michigan avenue to downtown dearborn. prior to reaching dearborn, there is a vast open space of the remnants of a once prosperous line of industry. mainly auto parts factories, car dealerships, gas stations and the like. most were abandonded, and the houses built north of them were in slow decay as well.

between canton and dearborn on michigan avenue, is a large stretch of machinary: a ford motor co. plant. i don't know what this one specializes in, in didn't get a chance to read the signs, i was too overwhelmed by what seemed to be well over a mile stretch of land fenced and gated by this particular ford plant.

on such a nice day like today, i feel like driving all over the city and recording all those things that were once beautiful, trying to discover what made them attractive in the first place. but its kinda hard with ford hanging over your head.

the auto industry has really taken a bite out of this region. and when the industry has failed so miserably it only was able to spit it back up rather than swallow it and produce something new.

warning:

attempting to read david bordwell's science of film and write a critique of it may be hazardous to your health. neoformalism has been known to cause serious side effects such as brain malfunction, loss of emotion, elitism, and the dependence on concrete truth. proceed with caution.

shot / reverse shot

I. SHOT
on the subject of the river, jean renoir has written:
"there are creators who sense things in advance and those who understand things only retrospectively. those who seem to march at the same pace as the great mass of men are obviously the most successful. but the really great ones think ahead, which is not to say that they are always right comercially."
REVERSE SHOT
in reaction to this statement, andre bazin has written:
"renoir is too ingenuous to mean to praise himself by this observation, but he is aware of being one of those who, with skill and felicity, have sought to show their contemporaries what the cinema can teach them about themselves, their era, and their problems."
II. SHOT
on the subject of leaving hollywood for france, jean renoir stated (1951):
"i think we are entering a new middle ages, we should not complain. the middle ages was a great era."
REVERSE SHOT
in reaction to jean renoir, andre bazin has written:
"i have not found a kindness like his in any other director in the world, with the possible exception of orson welles (and i think his is superficial), certainly not in any of the run-of-the-mill directors. a single example: during our conversation at the hotel the telephone rang constantly. after the third or fourth call my wife, who was sitting next to the phone, offered to ask who was calling before passing the phone to renoir. surprised, renoir said, 'what for? i always answer.'"
III. SHOT
jean renoir on the france / america distinction:
"in france, after shaving, one carefully wipes the blade with a little gadget. but in america razor blades are so cheap that men throw them out after each shave. i could never get used to that. throwing out a blade which is still sharp? why, it's inhuman."
REVERSE SHOT
jean renoir on the france / america cinematic distinction:
"i know that the american cinema will collapse because it is no longer american. i know too that we must not spurn the foreigners who come to us with their knowledge and talent; we must absorb them. it is a practice which has served us rather well from leonardo da vinci all the way to picasso. i believe that the cinema is not so much an industry as people would have us believe and that the fat men with their money, their graphs, and green felt tables are going to fall on their faces. film making is a skilled trade and it is craftsmen grouped together for their own protection that will perhaps make french cinema the best in the world. knowing that, i feel that i still have everything to do in a profession which, if it were free, could add so much to our understanding of men and things."

letter to bob dylan (from rouge press 2004 vol 4)

Filmmaker Robert Kramer (1939-1999) once remarked: ‘Everything I’ve ever wanted to say was sung by Bob Dylan.’ Near the end of his life, he began to imagine a collaborative project with the singer-songwriter. A letter was sent, and never answered. When Paul McIsaac looked through the effects in Kramer’s Paris studio apartment shortly after his death, he turned on the CD player: Time Out of Mind filled the room. Recently Kramer’s daughter Keja found this letter on his computer; it is printed with her kind permission and that of his collaborator on the project, Bobby Buechler.

Thoughts

So much of the world has changed since those wonderful days talking to Robert about a Dylan movie. He would say that history was frozen then in some sort of playful moment that day. Even the serious among us could think about playing with fantasy. Today we are at a crossroad moment in history. I’m not sure if I can imagine how any of those Dylan movie thoughts translate to the present. Maybe Dylan still fits.

It was in the spring of 1998 ... Robert was in the southwest and I was in Berkeley. The plan was to meet a few days later in Baker, California. He said, ‘Where do you want to meet?’ I said, ‘at the thermometer ... at noon.’ There was no agenda but to cruise the Mojave Desert in wildflower season. We drove and talked ... walked Zabriskie Point, Furnace Creek and the Red Cathedral. More than I really wanted to walk. We talked about lots of things ... making a movie together and ramblings. It was there, somewhere on one of those long straight roads that the idea of making a movie with Dylan came up. There was not much to say ... how do you reach him and what do you say? How do you avoid an agent, a middleman? It was very much in passing that the thoughts of this project came and went as drove for days ... in the funky Death Valley hotels and again in the glory of the Great Basin. Robert would draft a letter and I would figure out how to get it to Dylan. We passed it back and forth and then sent it through the back doors hoping it would get to Dylan unread by other strangers. The letter is what it is ... written very much the way Robert made movies ... ‘Clear and vague’, open ended with a dream in mind of telling a continuing life story Robert told in many ways ... one of them through film ... written to someone whose work Robert loved. I don’t know if Dylan ever got the letter. It would have been a great movie. In some ways they were very much alike.

Bobby Buechler
Berkeley, California,
September 2004

Hello:

I’m from NYC. The 50’s were bad. I got reborn in the 60’s. I left the states at the end of the 70’s. I’ve been living around, mostly based in Paris, and I make movies.

Throughout this life you’ve been one of the voices in my head. We’ve walked together through a history, for better or worse. I like Time Out of Mind a lot. Maybe you are talking about someone, her, but what I hear (my story) is that love gone wrong, or gone just the way it’s gone, is Am*r*c*, the USA dream, is just us trying to navigate the river. Love sick.

I’d like to make a movie with you. Not a movie about you, not a documentary or a report, but the two of us, make a movie together over a period of time: pieces of this and that, scenes you imagine and I imagine, try to piece something together that is as rich and varied, as clear and vague as the trip itself has been. A movie that works like a dream or a vision, large enough to put anything we want inside it, another kind of river.

I have no idea how to approach you. People say it’s hard. I’m not comfortable with the star thing, and I don’t know anything about it. I’m not going through your agent or writing a proposal or something like that. So all I can propose is the obvious: If you’d like to see some of my movies, I can arrange it. Or if you’d like to meet somewhere to talk, I can be there. Just let me know. I’d do a lot to make this film happen, but I can’t do the hollywood thing. Please understand, there’s no lack of respect or empathy here, it’s just how it is, old dogs/new tricks, there’s no point in pretending.

Robert Kramer
Paris, France

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© Bobby Buechler and Keja Ho Kramer 2004.

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i often wonder what it would of been like to attend college during the 1960s. Anyone from this period seems to look back on it with a love hate realtionship, a period that brought both the dark and light sides out, and sides out that we don't talk about anymore. young adults today get confused in this mess...what really happened? not that there is some sort of golden knowlegde behind this era but there is a mystique that captures the fancy of so many in our generation today. you can simplify this and reduce it until you are content with an answer but i won't accept anything.

i'm particularly interested in the time period in the world before the 1960s. The 1940s and 50s were interesting periods in world history which seem naive and quaint in comparison to the 60s. the generation that raised our parents, when i think about it, seem cold and impersonal. my grandfather never once hugged my mother or told her that he truly loved her. when he was on his death bed he finally laid bare all that had kept him from being a human with emotional expression a conversation that i will never know the exact details of.

a youthful sincerity seems evident in the letter above, even though it was written well after the 60s milieu. i've had many teachers in both high school and college that seem to hold onto these precious moments of the 60s with a youthful sincerity, as if they were going to be taken away by the younger generations. maybe it was their privelege to experience the revolution that wasn't a revolution and leave us to ponder middle class existence with a computer, a weblog and millions of artifacts scattered with little to no unity anymore.

a contradicting victorian approach to my life

the grip of temperature

beneath the field of winter's edge
the sun climbs up the mountain's ledge,
pouring through in shades of red;
breathing life to what was dead,
we hear the song lovers sing;
of newborn lust beginning to cry,
echoing the young lady's sigh
and in the cradle life will lie,
welcoming the spring.

of all the conversations sprung
a reminder comes of what's been done,
the sharpening of the blinding sun;
left drops of amber on our tongues,
young lovers turn the locks and sing;
i remain frozen in free form,
washing the past of what's been worn
await to be melted await to be torn,
welcoming the spring.

written on 03.13.2003

vraie verite: the inside voice

there is a certain attitude that mistakes my own self, taking things such as "artifacts" which nick so aptly pointed out to be great revelations. those marks of human reproduction from the past seem elusive...and sometimes i forget this and fail to see the chaos in the exchange of information, searching for an absolute conclusion. hardy once wrote, "he's the man were in search of, that's true and yet he's not the man we were in search of. for the man we were in search of was not the man we wanted."

there is no end to artifacts, they flow almost automatically and naturally today with weblogs. what do we search for? surely not a "truth" of any sort. i would speculate it is more of a connection to an experience. we desire to read and relate, to participate in a physiological understanding that captures not just the mind but the entire body (should there be a distinction? once, many years before critics wanted to know what the writer's thought, what were their intentions. this is no longer the question of interest. it still remains a question but is best left unanswered in regards to blogs specifically. true, what is written will have to be, dare i say (you can tell, with hesitance), discerned. there will be no consistent form any longer as walter benjamin (for a quote and gloss, clickhere) might have argued today, we all must understand that there will be a counter-example to every possible example. but the i wonder what sort of difficult read of our generation this will create in the future with these "impressions"...these digital recordings will be lost once computers upgrade to something like an ultra personal computer if we haven't printed our writings onto something of material form, a "hard copy" of a sort. will there be a large gap in history, missing any sort of real passionate writing? only that which remains in the academic and public minds will be those professionaly published, dissected or marketed: essentially any tangible work (a film, a television series, letters, anthologies, essentially that which the publishing world takes seriously). again, i find myself taking this issue much to seriously. i am almost ashamed to find that when i desire to avert my focus from a matter, i come back twice as serious. possibly it is my desire to be taken seriously, so i'll present myself seriously. but this is illogical--vraie verite or true truth found in the expression of the soul will not bring me closer to any sort of arguable truth, this is too romantic. possibly i meet myself where the critic and the artist cross paths and this tension, if it truly exists, is exhausted from reality and would rather ponder the abstract?