On Storytelling

There are some actions in life that upon reflection seemed to have been integral parts of the result of a certain process. For instance, when K. came to pick his things up because of a small quarrel we had, how would I have known that that moment was in fact the first step towards our total separateness which would occur a few weeks later.

Of course, this is the basis of good storytelling…setting up elements that resonate later. However, in real life, you only assess their meaning after the fact. In movies, the scriptwriter knows why that or this bit is inserted there. Although he may try to camouflage it.

I guess the art is in the camouflage?

—–
1 july 2008

A story’s limits have to be communicated to the viewer. Either by habit like in Hollywood movies, or explicitely outlined like in “In Bruges” or even better yet, seamlessly integrated like in my next project.

If no limits are determined, the writer suffers an anxiety as to where he can go exactly. This is the Korine syndrome where the film becomes a series of vignettes. It works because the sheer weirdness is such an unique voice (to some). These films I will designate as sprawling narratives. Not to be confused with the seemingly sprawling narratives of Malick who in fact delineates the world of the movie concisely.

Ruiz

Moi, je ne crois pas à la théorie française, saussurienne, qui veut que la pensée réside dans la langue. Je crois, avec les Russes, Vygotsky et d’autres, qu’il faut concevoir la langue comme un aéroport : la pensée atterrit dans la langue. C’est pas la langue qui produit la pensée. Ça c’est un accident…

HC. C’est comme l’image qui invoque…

RR : L’image n’est pas liée à la langue, c’est autre chose. C’est ainsi que le concevait Stanislav. C’est un mathématicien qui faisait des bombes atomiques, et entre deux bombes, il faisait un peu de philosophie. Avec un collègue à lui, ils ont inventé un système qu’ils ont appelé la méthode Monte Carlo. Un modèle très étrange. Selon lui, il y a deux types de pensée : visuelle et auditive. La pensée visuelle concerne 90% des êtres humains, la pensée auditive, beaucoup moins. Dans la pensée visuelle il y a comme des enchaînements d’idéogrammes, des séries restreintes d’images qui s’associent par association libre, et qui traversent le langage de manière octogonale, à une très grande vitesse, sillonnant l’esprit en zigzaguant. Et, peu à peu, s’établit à l’intérieur du langage ce système instable. Quand il se stabilise, la pensée meurt. C’est exactement aux antipodes de la théorie française de la pensée.

On peut aussi passer par Vygotsky, un personnage que les étudiants en cinéma devraient approfondir : le Mozart de la neurologie… Vygotsky a travaillé avec Eiseinstein qui, paraît-il, a fait partie de son groupe qui s’appelait la Troïka, composé de jeunes neurologues de 20 ans. Ils avaient la chance de disposer de cerveaux humains, un peu abîmés, fruits de la première guerre mondiale. Ils ont fait énormément avancer la neurologie, au point où maintenant, on a prouvé que toutes leurs hypothèses étaient vraies. Vygotsky aurait donné la méthode à Eisenstein qui est le seul metteur en scène de cinéma a avoir une véritable formation scientifique sérieuse. Certains ont des formations scientifiques. Il y a deux français ici qui sont physiciens [ndr : Claude Nurdsany, Marie Pérennou], mais ils ne parviennent pas à lier les deux choses. Eisenstein a lié ces deux choses de façon organique.

Some Art Ideas

1. Art As Hobby
Find people with corporate jobs. See if they make art. Be varied in the selection of art they make. Buy their art at a low price and expose it. The exhibition of their art is the artwork. Sell it.

2. Take pictures of the books in my library which I’ve yet to read.

3. Somebody’s reflection faintly etched “inside” a mirror.

4. Make a committee of well-known artists that will approve all my art before it is publicly released. The debates are documented.

Rohmer

Conte d’été
1. Assertive characters with powerful commitments to their principles. It gives them an aura of determination and self-confidence. Nobody is never truly vulnerable. Instead they always negotiate rationally with circumstance.
2. Thick-bottomed women. Shapely.
3. Verbalize their psychology.

On The Room Short Film

As I write this reworked version of my initial synopsis. As I create the short film within the short film. I am learning to at times go beyond the cinematic fabric of the thing. That is, to momentarily disregard cinematic concerns and to involve myself more deeply into the treated subject.

Because I see now that it was a mistake to thread on the cinematic fabric, to pull the story into it.

Today I see that the art emerges from the discovery of cinematic glimpses within a foreign world. My role then becomes to give birth to these images in a way in which the viewer will recognize their cinematic inheritance but also their instant newness and unseen-beforeness.

Can you film an anus?

sexcuse mais je dois dormir trop de sexcuse mais je dois dormir a cause du sexcuse mais je dois dormir pour penser au sexcuse mais je dois dormir

Golden Tracks

1. ras kass - anything goes remix
http://www.zshare.net/audio/118204016bb407c1/

I had this on an old tape. It turns out that it was not on the actual “Anything Goes” single but as a b-side on the Jack Frost 12”. Something about that flute.

On Rivette

Jonathan Rosenbaum:

To my mind, the most radical innovation of Out 1: Spectre, because of this interest, is the effective obliteration of any distinction between “good” and “bad” acting: everything becomes potentially interesting as “behavior.”)

Jacques Rivette on “Noroit/Duelle”

The ambition of these films is to invent a new approach to film acting, where speech, pared down to essential phrases, precise formulae, would play a role of ‘poetic’ punctuation. Neither a return to silent cinema nor pantomime nor choreography: something else, where the movement of its bodies, their counterpoint and inscription in the space of the screen, will be the basis of the mise en scene.

I often amuse myself for my dressing up in nice shirt and dress pants just to see Juliet Berto in Duelle.

ideas for film II

1. the discarding of ideas
2. the meaning of montage (see book put together my Montand’s wife in “La Guerre est finie”
3. The primacy of the camera–all else is secondary.
4. Straub-Huillet base all their films on already existing material–The tension between the wholly original and the referenced….(the impetus behind a wholly original segment in a wholly original story)
5. A film that reflects on its own formal/stylistic devices. For instance, if WKW would include in his story annotative comments about his use of slow-motion…
6. Something has to replace the clichés of self-reflexivity. The beautiful tracking shot of a tracking shot in “Contempt” as the credits are read out…should be replaced today by something new that indicates the same issues…The ‘essence’ of this sequence which I’m in love with….is something I wish to reproduce…but maybe it can be done without going through the path of self-reflexivity. The obvious alternate path would be to have a sequence with narrative meaning (unlike the extra-diegetic sequence of Contempt). So now the question would be…what are the other filmic emanations apart from extra-diegetic self-reflexivity, diegectic sequences,…I am not sure. What about the false takes an actor makes, when he taps into the ‘wrong’ feeling and the director must correct her/him? What about the kind of footage that is never in the script but ends up being shot out of sheer opportunity at the moment of filming (and the audience can feel that)?

7. A movie directed by Michel Gondry about a man who tries to convince a woman that they met the year before at a 35mm screening of Marienbad. Seeing that the woman is clearly unconvinced, he makes a short film recreating their encouter. The man is played by Peter Greenaway. The last remaining print was destroyed in an Afghan cave before a special screening for US Soldiers. During a trek to a humanitarian mission, Olivier and Hugo find bits and pieces of the print and try to put it back together.

8. Obsessive-Complusive Personality Disorder is defined by absolute denial that there is a problem. Good way to explore in an explicit way that space where the viewer knows more than the protagonist.

On Hal Hartley

I remember that in Amateur, like most of my other films, a lot is not shown. I was more interested in what happens when people talk about something that happened in the past or something that will happen in the future or is simply happening somewhere else. There’s something else going on. The immediate intimate manoeuvering of people around each other while they are dealing with information. I thought that I don’t want them to talk about what is happening or will happen, I want to witness them doing; I want to look at the actual event. It’s funny, I talk to other filmmakers and they tell me “Well that’s why we got into filmmaking in the first place”. That was our first urge.” My first urge was to watch the people conversing or struggling with each other about other things.

The thing about calculation that I’ve always resisted is that there’s an assumption being made that I know who you are and I know what you think is important and what is funny and what is moving. And I really don’t think that’s true in life: I think that we’re mysterious to each other and that’s one of the reasons for instance that we keep telling ourselves stories. Stories can be told and retold because we really don’t know how we’re going to react.

Your talent often arises from your weaknesses and misconceptions.

Foods

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