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From the Urban Dictionary:
1. Don't Hate The Playa/Playette Hate The Game
Do not fault the successful participant in a flawed system; try instead to discern and rebuke that aspect of its organization which allows or encourages the behavior that has provoked your displeasure.
2. Don't Hate The Playa/Playette Hate The Game
Don't dislike someone for their actions, consider instead the situation that causes it.
This is a link to Tim Reardon's films! Check it out for animation, optical printing, hand painting, 16mm, super 8, digital video . . .
Here's one of his new films . . . I think it's so sweet:
Irene
2007, Animation, 4 minutes by Tim Reardon
A stop motion collage (music video) for the new album, "fascinating tininess..." by Leyode.
It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness . . .
From the Canyon to the Stars, NYFF, Sat. Oct. 6, 12:00
This still was taken from Jeanne Liotta's new film, Observando el Cielo, composed of celestial field recordings gathered from the past seven years!
I've seen excerpts of Jeanne's star films, and OMG they contemplate infinity! Don't search for Godard in this work, search for Galileo, Einstein, and the Hubble Space Telescope. What worlds did they uncover? What phantasms were pondered? How did Galileo prove that the Earth was not the center of the universe? How was Einstein's General Theory of Relativity proven? And the discovery of new galaxies? The document is the poem . . . Jeanne describes it the best:
“Seven years of celestial field recordings gathered
from the chaos of the cosmos and inscribed onto 16mm film from various
locations upon this turning tripod Earth. Neither a metaphor nor a
symbol, but angling for a fact in the midst of perception, which time
flows through. Natural VLF radio recordings of the magnetosphere in
action allow the universe to speak for itself.
The Sublime is Now. Amor Fati.” —J.L.
“The astronomers announced the observed abundance.
Philo of Byzantium observed that bang.
The fresh mythology
of who is powerful and why
Before the sun rises on Sunday, the search.
home.)
Where is home cowboy? My mind of universes erupting continuously,
observed by stellar matter
on Wednesday morning in the universe.
Human exploration: footprints and gods,
One small step for a man, and it was brief.
Testosterone is paid and left hungry,
and fell away towards the lingering concerns.
The Sun constantly fills space with
mystery tunes migrating outward,
away, out of harms way.
So galaxies of the Virgo cluster glow like years…
It was inner space, the universe inside time
years, years ago
Astronomers have gazed out at the compass of all existence
For years they found nothing
cause no one had looked.
Humanity has been fascinated by truths
We want to understand the seen
Object of Desire,
mirages. In each case, astronomers say, of dark and luminous matter
the exotic ghost-action
the universe, the news, knocks out Pluto and Xena
Genesis and the Sun cancel out
We are, as fallible
equivalent of a candles flicker,
out there. Until it ends.”
—from The Science Times series by Jeanne Liotta, 2007
September 25, 2007.
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So I've been thinking about the idea of the hero as an archetype and how that relates to cinema. I quickly checked out Joseph Campbell on Wikipedia (I know, I know), and this excerpt seems to summarize the theory:
"Heroes were important to Campbell because, to him, they conveyed universal truths about one's personal self-discovery and self-transcendence, one's role in society, and the relationship between the two."
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For me the idea of a hero relates to my favorite writers, filmmakers, artists. I guess I had an epiphany after watching the first part of Ric Burns's doc on Andy Warhol. You know, the one where everyone is like, "oh there was darkness, and then there was Andy!" I'm not saying that it isn't true or that the documentary isn't inspiring or educational, but this idea of the artist seems old fashioned to me . . . Old fashioned because now so many people are realizing their potential to make and share art. Think about that . . .
And then . . . I went on-line and read this:
"The view proposed by the annual "Views From the Avant-Garde" program is scarcely spotless; much of it is dull and derivative. Yet it also lays claim to many of the supreme masterpieces (and most of the significant world premieres) in recent NYFF history: Stan Brakhage's Commingled Containers, Jean-Luc Godard's Origin of the 21st Century, Ken Jacob's Star Spangled to Death, Peter Kubelka's Poetry and Truth, Andy Warhol's Blue Movie, and Luther Price's extraordinary series of found-footage Biscotts." - N.L.
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(Nathan, I'm proud of you for addressing the A.G. You have my attention & I think that you are a brave writer. You take risks. Love that. But next time you do this, I'd like to ask that you send me an email. Would that be possible? I want for you to write about experimental cinema, OMG, I am too tired to do it myself . . . Go ahead! )
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Back to the Voice - I have a bit of a problem with the "dull and derivative" aspect of the review. I mean, we could grab anyone off the street for that observation, right? Bloggers, film critics, poets, ask yourself, is anything you write derivative? Are you re-inventing the English language from nothing? If you agree that we are all a bit derivative by default, would you agree that what we write has no relevancy? What about those big Hollywood movies or even David Lynch or Apichatpong Weerasethakul? Are those films derivative of anything in cinema? Hmmm, interesting how the rules change when we begin to discuss the New York avant-garde . . .
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Anyway, so I was thinking about Andy Warhol and the idea of celebrity and the idea of how I hear over and over that there are essentially no more masters and I wondered how it would be if there were no artists like Jean Luc Godard, no Vertov, no Apollinaire, no Marcel Proust and (even no more celebs!) . . . I wondered at how important they were to me at one point in my life, and it made me realize, that a world without these "great artists" or "auteurs" was very scary!
And yet here I am in experimental cinema, which has no real hierarchy (kind of like the blogosphere). There are inventors & masters, but they are not treated that differently. It is an environment where screening films with your friends replaces the one great auteur. Could this be the cinema of the future?
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(You know how the sun rises each morning? That's how I feel about cinema. It is always new.)
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What I am thinking is that perhaps searching for the old school version of "master artist" is what some would call "an inappropriate goal." (FYI, I am the princess of inappropriate goals, so don't take my comments personally!) We don't need another hero, you know? We have each other . . .
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Back in the day, Godard invented the jump cut, and before him Rossellini took his light camera out into the streets, and before him the Lumieres & Edison invented the movie camera, and then there was cinema. The revolution is still happening. Open the lens, darlings. Look at YouTube, look at what people are documenting, how people are spending their spare time, it's marvelous!!!
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Have you picked up a video camera lately?
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I bet you are thinking, oh jmac's just upset, because her movie, Kittypie, is just languishing on the Net. Well, you would not be wrong. When I talk about these things they are so inextricably tied in with my identity, wanting recognition, & wanting to see experimental cinema come up from underground. But in most ways, I choose my invisible world, and somehow I am able to find beautiful friends who can see it too!!!
Thanks for reading! Love to all! See you at the NYFF!
