Invisible Cinema

What is Poetry? Part 4

"Angelo Poliziano, a broadly educated humanist, a philologist, jurist, historian, philosopher, and poet, versed in Greek and Latin, and a prominent figure in Italian culture, was the model of Renaissance erudition.  As Eugenio Garin has noted, his poetics, dominated by interpretations of Antiquity, was based on an idea according to which 'to imitate . . . is to become aware of one's own originality in the relationship that links it to the other, to find in oneself the means of creation with an example before one's eyes, to assume its intimate nature through a sort of looking into oneself.'"

- Philippe-Alain Michaud:  Aby Warburg and the Image in Motion

Tenderness

Why are my favorite writers fired?

Kittypie - NYUFF, April 6!

Finally!  I'm in the New York Underground Film Fest!  My super 8 film to video, "Kittypie,"  will be screening on Sunday, April 6, in the Tropical Grime program at 7:45.  Please stop by and say hello.  :)  Also, be sure to check out these NYUFF highlights:

Inside, Outside, Upside Down, Thursday, 4/3 7:00  ("Observando El Cielo" by Jeanne Liotta + more!)

Nasty as U Wanna Be, Friday, 4/4 8:45 (Cannot be there on Friday, but I want a DVD!!!  This show is mandatory for bloggers! :)

I-Be Area by Ryan Trecartin, Friday, 4/4, 10:45  ("I exist because of Command-v."  - R.T. -- It hurts that I will not be able to attend this screening, but this video is available now on UbuWeb!  Your avatar will be pleased . . . )

Also be sure to check out, Roberta Beck's, Revolution 9 on Friday, 4/4, 9:45  and James Fotopoulos, The Phantom Menace, Sunday 4/6, 4:15.

Is this the end of the NYUFF?  The secret name of cinema is transformation:

• Light Industry  Developed and overseen by Thomas Beard and Ed Halter

• Migrating Forms  Developed by NYUFF's current directors, Nellie Killian and Kevin McGarry

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    The Secret Name of Cinema is Transformation
    Transform, transform
    anything everything --
    stairways into planets
    buttercups into navals
    icebergs into elephants --
        everywhere
        everything
    the old scene renewed by seeing
    the unseen seen anew
        transformed

   --- James Broughton

L train vision #1

(for Dave)

It is a recent phenomenon that my best ideas come to me as visions, and as irrational as the process may sound, it is amazingly cool!  :)  This morning on the subway (for reasons unknown) I was thinking about the Fassbinder film, "Gods of the Plague" and the nonchalantly eternal declaration, "Life is expensive." 

(Actually, now I realize that Fassbinder makes perfect sense for the L train . . . )

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I almost never discuss narrative cinema here, but today is different!  In terms of the young American narrative cinema, I have a simple vision to share as a cinephile:

A chick punches a hole in the egg shell!   

A specific example would be the young, brilliant, beautiful, degenerate art star, Ryan Trecartin, who in his video,  "I-Be Area,"  mentions the following:

"Look, I think I just saw a highly advanced, 3-D text message of my future self giving me the middle finger."

(Youthful consciousness - devastating, sublime, imaginative . . .)

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Real or unreal, the best films and videos are the ones that haven't been made yet!