Short Fable on Freedom

A man and a dog walk together through a park at night. The dog walks confidently in front, looking back ever so often. The animal can't understand that the tightness of the metal leash binds it to the man and wherever one goes, so goes the other.

The walk continues, the dog sniffing some lampposts, urinating against them, then walking some more, sniffing a wall, urinating against it. After every sniff a look at the man, looking for his silent, dispassionate approval.

Coming into an area with thick brushes, the man spots a cat moving stealthily among the shadows. He knows that his dog will chase any cats it sees, so he pulls the leash to distract it.

It's too late.

The dog launches into a mad dash in pursuit of the cat, the man's wrist caught in the loop of the leash, dragging him behind. The dog storms through the brush, cuttings its cheeks on the thorny plant but ignoring the injuries in its single-minded chase. The man tries to take a detour around the thorny brush, but there's not enough slack on the leash to do so - his clothes, shins, hands are riddled with blood by the time he comes through the other side.

Man and beast run after the cat, which by now is in full flight across the lawn, zigzagging to throw off its pursuers. There are no trees or walls for the cat to climb, and the longer limbs of the chasers give them the advantage in an open field like this.

They go over a hill and are now very near the park's exit when the cat notices a place to hide - a telephone box. The door is only slightly ajar, certainly wide enough for the cat to sneak through, but not big enough for the dog or the man. The cat jumps in, taking the corner opposite to the door and arching its back and hissing to scare off the dog and the man.

The dog doesn't understand how to open the door and looks back at its owner, who opens the door completely. The dog enters the booth slowly and faces the cat. The moment it had been waiting for is now here, but it doesn't know what to do. Its instincts always told it to chase cats, or any other small animal who ran away, but, facing for the first time its prey, it is paralysed.

The dog stares at the cat, then back at the man who stands motionless, assessing the damage from going through the brush. The cat hisses, the dog barks - it's a stand-off.

The man sucks the blood from a deep scratch in his hand and then smacks the dog across the muzzle. The dog takes a step back, tail between its legs. The man approaches the cat, which claws pointlessly at his thick trousers. He raises his boot and brings it down on the cat's arched back, crushing it. A few more stomps and the meowing stops.

The man pats the dog's rump and it goes into the booth, snatching the cat on its mouth.

The walk resumes, the dog proudly displaying its master's kill as if it were its own.

Tarkovsky on Becoming a Filmmaker

What is important to the education of a filmmaker is not a matter learning a set of skills and techniques, but having a vital, passionate need to express something unique and personal. Above all, the student has to understand why he wants to become a filmmaker rather than work in some other art form and he has to ponder what he wants to say in film's unique form of expression.

In recent years I have met more and more young people who go to film school to prepare themselves to do "what they have to do" (as they say in Russia) or "to make a living" (as they say in Europe and America). This is tragic. Learning to use the equipment and edit a movie is child's play; anyone can learn that without half-trying. But learning how to think independently, learning how to be an individual, is entirely different from learning "how to do" something. Learning how to say something unique and different is a skill that no one can force you to master. And to go down that path is to shoulder a burden that is not merely difficult, but at times impossible to bear. But there is no other way to become an artist. You have to go for broke. You must risk everything in your quest to express a personal truth. It must be all or nothing.

Sculpting in Time, p. 124 (adapted and updated by Ray Carney)

Drama of the Moment

This is an excerpt from Donato Totaro's excellent review of Bela Tarr's "Satantango":

On many occasions the subject of Tarr’s long takes are the Hungarian plains themselves (the puszta), the former stomping grounds of another great Hungarian long take stylist, Miklos Jançso. This unfettered camera stare also has the effect of escalating drama, even when simply perusing the muddy puszta. (...) Why is it that the excessively long takes in Sátántangó, many with little action, movement, or narrative development in any conventional sense, are still fascinating and riveting (setting aside, of course, questions of personal taste)? The answer rests in a distinction I will make between narrative drama and drama of the moment. Most films, both popular and art cinema, derive their drama from machinations of the plot and/or our involvement with the fate of characters. Drama is created by what Noel Carroll calls “erotetic narrative”: questions are posed in one scene and then answered in subsequent shots and scenes (either immediately or later on). Will the hero arrive in time to save the damsel in distress? Who is the murderer? What will become of the kidnapped child? Will the heroine score that new job? Drama arises out of the movement of the plot and story. In contrast to this are the (usually) long takes in Sátántangó where drama is achieved not by large concerns of the plot or story, but by the audience simply wondering what will happen in the very next moment?, or more specifically, when will something happen next?, or when will something different happen? For example, after the young girl has tortured and maimed her pet cat she forces the cat’s face continuously into a bowl of milk. She then leaves it alone and backs up a few yards behind the cat until her back rests up against a wall. The image of the little girl flat up against the wall is itself a wonderful metaphor for the girl’s tragically dead-end life. The camera remains static with little ‘action.’ The girl does not move, the cat is barely able to move its maimed body. But the drama comes from wondering what, if anything, will happen next. The poor cat, unable to move its legs, attempts to lift its head to and fro from the bowl. Will the cat survive or drown in the milk? Will the girl bounce on the cat, as she did countless times before? Will she run up to the cat and kick it like a ball (that was the thought running through my mind.) These are the minor dynamic potentialities that make this a dramatic moment.

Here are a few other instances of the “drama of the moment.” On the first night of their renunciation the messiah followers fall asleep together in a large room. The scene cuts to a slow dolly forward to an owl perched on a balcony. What does the presence of the owl mean? The shot cuts to a overhead ‘ceiling’ shot of one of the characters lying asleep in a fetal position. The camera begins to dolly slowly across the other sleeping people, eventually performing a 360 degree arc by returning to the first sleeper. But the shot continues again in the same arc, and again, and again, and again. The movement and the ground covered is so constant that it may just as well be the point of view of a slowly moving ceiling fan. [2] At some point we begin to wonder, will one of them wake up? Will the arc ever stop? Is this the point of view of a dreaming sleeper (a voice over tells us about the floating dream of one of the sleepers, Mrs. Schmidt)? The previous described dolly shot that follows the doctor into the ruined church leaves the doctor for a close-up of the shell shocked old man chiming his makeshift bell. The camera remains fixed on his face for several minutes. We begin to wonder, will he stop the bell ringing? Why is he doing this? How long has he been doing this? During the pub dance scene a similar effect is achieved by the repetitive nature of the action. Will the bearded man repeating the same annoying phrases over and over ever shut up? Why doesn’t someone tell him to shut up? Once the dance begins the players dance and play on repeatedly. The accordionist plays the same musical phrase over and over and over. When will this absurdity stop? When will the accordionist play something different? The film is full of long takes like these that put the emphasis on the moment by concentrating on the singular.

Another formal quality that goes along with the long takes in achieving this “drama of the moment” are varying rhythmical patterns that establish a constancy that envelopes us and heighten our sensitivity to change. In the majority of cases this rhythmical pattern is sonic: a ticking clock, a whirring fan, the drone of a refrigerator motor, or the constant patter of rain. In the noted scene of the 360 degree overhead tracking shot it is the camera movement itself which becomes a rhythmical pattern. The effect is that each long take achieves a certain materiality, a temporal denseness which helps to “escalate the drama of the moment.”

Meditation on Genius

In Malcolm Gladwell's new book "Outliers" he advances the theory that 10,000 hours of practice seem to be the magical number to achieve the level of a genius. So, contrary to popular thinking, talent is no guarantee of greatness, but grind (plus a bit of genetic disposition) is. An extract of the book giving some examples can be read here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/nov/15/malcolm-gladwell-outliers-extract

This got me thinking about filmmaking and some of its geniuses. The more I looked for filmmakers which I considered good, the more I found long formative periods that would certainly account for the 10k hours or more in some cases. This would dispel the notion that artists are born, not made, at least for making films...

Starting with Classic Hollywood, those 10k hours would be fairly easy to achieve for most filmmakers. After all making films was a day job for them with punch-clocks and monthly wages. Let's look at John Ford's career for example: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000406/. That's 20 years and a bit between the first movie and Stagecoach. Similarly, Billy Wilder (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000697/) 20 some years between debut feature and Sunset Blvd, although one can make a point he achieved greatness before that. What they do have in common though is how often and how much they worked day in and day out at their craft, unlike contemporary filmmakers who direct a film every 4 or 5 years (if they are lucky).

Speaking of contemporary filmmakers, some of them share too this practice period before the first great work.
* Ming-Liang - 11 TV films during a period of 6 years before the breakthrough "Rebels of a Neon God"
* Mike Leigh - 9 TV plays over a decade before "Meantime"
* Ozu - 12 features over 7 years before "Floating Weeds"
* Tarr - 5 features over 9 years before "Damnation"

Is this all a coincidence? Or maybe there is some worth in hard work, even in the artistic field..

How to make a movie

Copied, with the utmost respect, from http://pedrocosta-heroi.blogspot.com/2008/02/como-fazer-um-filmehow-to-make-movie.html

Meditation on Duty

First a disclaimer.

I didn't write this post to make me look like a hero. What happened doesn't so much flatter me, but rather denigrates those around me. I only did what was normal; it was everybody else around me that are at fault.

* * * * *

On my way to work this morning (11th of September), I heard two men shouting at each other. This was in a very busy part of London, near Victoria station and close to the bike rails in the corner of Grosvenor Gardens and Buckingham Palace Road. It happened at 9 am in the morning, and the streets were packed with people walking to work and tourists. I stopped to see what was going on and there were two old men in their early 60s engaged in a shouting match. They weren't dressed for work like all those office workers walking by us and I might say they looked rather like pensioners. The shouts gave way to fists and soon they were engaging in the clumsy style of streetfighting that is little more than grabbing the other person's jacket with one hand and throwing haymakers with the other. I ran in their direction but when I got there I wasn't sure what to do. If I grabbed one, the other would surely continue to keep punching and would have an advantage that could make him cause even more damage. So I did the only thing I thought I could and shouted that the police was just around the corner and coming over to get them. This made them stop - probably just to acknowledge me, but they did stop. Another man came up and just stood there looking at the 3 of us, doing nothing. I shouted to him to grab one of the fighters, so we could break them apart, but instead he walked away. Thankfully, two bus drivers who were nearby taking a break came over and started telling the men to break it up.

And that was that. Some more insults were traded before the old men got on their respective bikes and rode off in opposite directions. They had their faces busted up, with mouses under the eyes, cuts on cheeks and at least one of them had his nose broken. Besides that, no real or permanent damage.

What shocked me about this whole thing wasn't the two people fighting, as that happens naturally. It wasn't that I couldn't break it up because, to be honest, I am not trained to do it and I did the best I could. What shocked me is that all those commuters in the street saw what was going on and didn't do anything. These guys could be killing it each other and clearly it was none of their business. They looked at the situation, analysed it, and realised that there was nothing to be gained from it. I too did that analysis as I walked to work, but I chose to do something, even if I was woefully equipped to do it. There's something to be said here about hypocrisy, selfishness, society and community, but I will let you draw your own conclusions. Just remember that next time, when you don't want to get involved, that you could be staring at yourself being beaten down, or you could be staring at yourself under the wheel of a truck or you could be staring at yourself fainting in the tube as the other travellers curse you for delaying their journey.

p.s.: apparently this is quite common - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect

'Begotten' as Terminal Cinema

This post is a sort of add-on or follow-up to Andrew Schenker's excellent article on "Terminal Cinema" over at Senses of Cinema - http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/08/47/terminal-cinema.html

Schenker uses some very good examples to illustrate his idea of terminal cinema in his article, and I found yet another example, Elias Merhige's Begotten.

Begotten is an experimental horror film with no dialogue and with a mythical resonance that is impossible to compare to any other. All the characters and situations are symbolic and echo creation myths from different cultures. There is a narrative somewhere in there, but it is made obscure through the lack of psychological motivation, reaction/POV shots and the aesthetic choices taken by the director with the photography and the editing. All frames of the film were treated individually until they became extremely grainy and with such high contrast that at times it's impossible to tell what you are looking at. As a film aesthetic, it is unrepeatable. There is no other film that could be shot this way, that could follow this style of filmmaking. The closest Merhige came to recreating the aesthetics of Begotten was on some of his music videos, commissions which he got on the strength of Begotten itself and could be seen as extensions of that film, rather than completely new works. Looking at his filmography over at imdb (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0580729/) we find that his plans for a trilogy didn't happen. Supposedly this was because of lack of funding, but honestly, how can another film follow Begotten's aesthetic?

Lynda Barry's Principles of Creativity

the thinking part of you is not the doing part of you or the experiencing part of you
the thinking part of you can tell you that a decision has been made but it's not the part of you which decides things
this is why thinking is not the same as creating though the thinking part of us seems completely unaware of this

I took this from page 207 of Lynda's book "What It Is" on creativity, writing and creating art in general. It's a wonderful book and she is absolutely right. She advocates that writing (or drawing) is a physical activity, not a thinking activity. If we stop to think while creating art, we lose the creative impetus we had in the beginning and end up over-analysing things and, inevitably, becoming too critical of what we've just written/drawn. So, relax, focus on what you are about to do, and then do it - no thought, no analysis, nothing. Set yourself a time to do the writing/drawing and then put it away. Feel free to come back and have a look and correct things later on, but while you are doing it, just do it, nothing else!

What I don't agree is when she goes against creating art in a computer, as she says it's not physical enough to keep the momentum going. I differ on this as I quite often find myself running my fingers over the keyboard while waiting for the inspiration to surface, in the same way she will draw spirals or write the alphabet. In this way, my fingers kind of move spontaneously, expecting the "doing part of me" to tell them what to type. I guess that Lynda doesn't have typing fingers so she can't relate to this, but that's how it works for me.

And here's a chow-chow dog I drew earlier... on the computer!

Quotes from Kiarostami's "Ten on Ten"

But I don't believe the job of a filmmaker is to excite or move the viewer, merely through creating special moments. By simply showing the reality, one can make people think about their own or other people's acts or behaviour, and see and accept reality as it is. It's from this point that the viewer's duty to complete a work or a film begins.

In this cinema, what eventually remains on the screen is the actor. I believe that in a good movie, everything should fade away in the interest of the entirety of the film. A good shot is not one that stands out. A good musical score is one that goes almost unnoticed.

I don't believe the film is to be understood. Do we understand a piece of music? Do we understand a painting? Or the exact meaning of a poem? It's ambiguity that attracts us to a work, not understanding the subtext of the story.

I believe we can the viewer experience mental effort by using omission. He can become involved in the making of the film through his imagination. For the creative viewer this involvement is more interesting than false climaxes or the playing of ridiculous guessing games.

The first generation of filmmakers looked at life and made films. The second generation of filmmakers watched the films of the first generation, looked at life, and made films. The third generation just watched the films of the first and second generations and made films. The fourth generation, which is us, looks neither at life nor watches the films. We merely go through the catalogues and base our movies on technical capabilities.

High and low-brow in Werckmeister Harmonies

I won't go into detail about the film in the title (more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werckmeister_Harmonies) but rather make an observation about it.

It is a film that is pretty much a gold standard for European Art cinema: the director is a recognized auteur, it is shot in b/w, most of the actors are not professional, it has very long takes and develops at a slow pace, is fairly cryptic in its meaning and themes and wasn't made to be part of an established film distribution chain ending up in multiplexes. So, it is a high-brow film in all aspects, save for one.

The main plot element is the arrival in a small village of a circus that features only a stuffed whale and a mysterious firebrand orator called The Prince. The result of their presence is that the village goes into temporary destructive madness. Sounds original? Yes it does, because there's nothing quite like it in high-brow literature or film (save the book it was based on of course). But if we look to lower-brow literature, to a book called The King in Yellow, we will see exactly the same overall plot -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King_in_Yellow.

The sheer brilliance of this film, combining elements from both high and low-brow art, is undeniable and I think it's exactly because of these mixture that it works so well. Is that then the solution to an art cinema that is sometimes too hermetic even for those who appreciate it?