Invisible Cinema

Film-Makers' Cooperative Benefit

While seeing the Dylan documentary on Monday, I recalled one of my earliest memories of my parents listening to folk music.  I felt that this realization was preparation for the next evening, where I was summoned straight into the center of the present, composed of past prophecies and future memories at the  Film-Makers' Cooperative Benefit Concert.

This benefit, at the Angel Orensanz Foundation, was held in a neo-gothic synagogue, and there is something subversive & sublime about doing anything but religion in any kind of religious setting.

I use the term "superstar" frequently in regard to experimental film, and I do not want this word to lose its meaning.  Suffice to say, this description is almost an understatement when discussing the film & music worlds who celebrated this event. 

The Sun & the Earth. 

The first film, "Sarnia Tunnel" by Ken Jacobs with"Drumming - Part I" by Steve Reich was one of my favorites.  The b/w trains reminded me of Lumiere, but with flicker.  (Does life get any better?)  Even the intermittent projection with the black screen seemed so perfect to me, so like a memory, so like a prophecy.  My personal experience of seeing avant-garde cinema is that it reveals eternal images that I do not even know I am waiting for, until I see them  . . .

Which brings me to Hans Richter's "Ghosts before Breakfast."  Surreal!  This film had my name written all over it . . . like I was invented to see this film or this film was invented for me to see it.  Perhaps a little of both.  The floating black top hats had sprung from 1927 or quite possibly from anywhere.  Apparently we live on one great timescape!

I really loved the piano performance by Philip Glass for the Harry Smith films.  (See what I mean about superstars?)  I couldn't see Philip Glass's hands as he played, but a friend told me that his left hand never left the piano keys.  It was really the most beautiful sound.  And the music composed for "Ghosts before Breakfast" was perfect too.

It was so exciting to see films by Bill Morrison, Emily Hubley, Donna Cameron, and I'm sorry to have missed Jenn Reeves and Ron Rice.  (Even acolytes need to sleep.)  Love all these films.

Thank you to M.M. Serra & Bill Morrison & everyone at the Film-makers Cooperative!  You make everything look so easy . . .
 

 

Cinema of butterflies

My notes from working with the optical printer:

Flower in shadow, butterfly, 2nd butterfly, 3rd butterfly, pink flower, water lily-yellow, three flowers, flower & dragonfly, slo-mo dragonfly, abstract pink flowers, pink & yellow flower, yellow water lily & reflection, leaves, daisies, bee & purple flower, white butterfly, light pink big water lily, hot pink flowers, big red flower, two small pink flowers, wide angle trees, wide angle person, close-up pink flowers, white flowers, more white flowers, cherry blossoms, superlight magnolias, dust!, pink flowers in branches, fish, just leaves, exotic looking flower, 2nd exotic looking flower, blue, bunch of pink
flowers . . .

(This is the optical printer)

             

Captured - the most beautiful book on Earth

My deliberate intention was to refrain from writing tonight, because my heart begins to race, the adrenalin flows, time ceases, and the all over visceral experience causes great sleeplessness.  Too late now!  I just picked up a copy of Captured: A film/video history of the Lower East Side by Clayton Powell. 

This is the bible of experimental film. 

Captured documents so much of the avant-garde in more than 112 personal accounts.  I touch my hand, it really exists.  Poetry, interviews, landscapes, photos, memories, and visions, all in print.  It's like no other experience.  Some of the most poetic names ever include:  Jonas Mekas, Nick Zedd, Tom Jarmusch, Mike Kuchar, Philly, M.M. Serra, Jeanne Liotta, Bradley Eros, Gary Goldberg, Rachelle Starr, Howard Guttenplan, Brian Frye, Ed Halter, and Clayton Patterson.  All of these people have helped me directly and/or inspired me to learn about cinema.   And they should be famous & filthy rich!

If you have not purchased this book yet, here's the ISBN:  1-58322-674-5, you can get it from Seven Stories Press (see link above).  Or at the St. Mark's Bookshop or other such lovely book stores.

Cinema forever and ever and ever . . .

Clayton Patterson, the captain of this dream . . .

Apollinaire on film

It's almost too good to be true!  I always thought that if Apollinaire lived longer, he might have become a filmmaker.  I was so happy to recently discover a grainy b/w film clip from 1914 which includes the poet.  (That's him in the hat.)  Please see the movie at Guillaume Apollinaire site officiel!

Everything ecstatic

In between reading Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl and Bling (both I totally recommend), I've picked up A Sense of the Mysterious by Alan Lightman.  The author is both a physicist and a novelist, and this book discusses the spiritual struggles of the most famous scientists of the past century. 

When I studied microbiology, I must admit, I wasn't that into it.  For so long I wanted to get as far away from science as I possibly could.  Although it was a fabulous way into publishing, and believe me, I worked it.  While employed at Cell, where I met my friend, the cinetrix, I would read reviewers' comments on new manuscripts (always over the copy machine).  They would make remarks such as "beautiful" and "elegant."  I used to marvel at what they could possibly mean.  A few years later, my friend, Denise, a geneticist, described one of her experiments to me, and I finally understood . . .

A simple example of scientific elegance is Galileo's observation of the changing appearance of Venus.  Using one of the first telescopes he discovered that Venus changes sizes and goes through phases as it moves along its orbit.  This effect could not be supported by the Ptolemaic system, and Galileo's observations provided proof that the Earth is not the center of the universe.  I love that Galileo made this discovery not by observing the physical properties of Earth, but by an indirect study.  Observing Venus in orbit, presumably around the Sun, eventually led to a new discovery that the Earth was not static but in orbit as well.  It was a discovery that showed how nature is connected.  Contemporary scientists can pursue this in ways we cannot even imagine. 

I really think that science and poetry (I use poetry and cinema interchangeably) are two sides of the same coin.  In Apollinaire's lecture "L'Esprit Nouveau et les Poetes"  in November of 1917, he discussed the miracles achieved by contemporary science and to rival those achievements, he emphasized how poets must embrace invention, prophecy, and surprise.  In the Intro to Apollinaire's Calligrammes, this idea is described so beautifully: "Through prophecy the artist will constantly be able to look into the unknown and anticipate the mysteries of the future; through surprise the new will constantly be created and recreated."

Maybe it's really true what people say, that there is a fine line between love and hate, and maybe I've been trying to cross over all of this time.

The zombie video

As an experimental filmmaker, it is a rare occurrence to participate in theatrical movie productions.  But when I had the chance to hang out on the set of my friend & experimental filmmaker, Tim Reardon, who was shooting his new zombie video, I had to go.  The most basic premise of this horror piece is that people are transformed into zombies through their iPods.  My beautiful friend, Athena Soules, makes an appearance as a fashionista trying to get into her apartment without getting her brains sucked out.  While Nick Zedd stars as Osama bin Laden.  (Do you need to know anything else?)  Also, I made the acquaintance of one actor, whose real name coincidentally is Lazarus.  This video is really meant to be.

I saw just one scene being filmed and that was on Fillmore Street in Brooklyn.  I learned from one nice resident that this is where Henry Miller used to live, and he wrote about this street in Tropic of Capricorn.  While Tim was filming the scene with Athena & Lazarus, several little kids came over to ask about the video and maybe some of the screaming.  We all played with a big adorable puppy.  It was lovely. 

I'll keep you posted on the premier!

 

Fragment of seeking

I have returned only a moment ago from the screening of Usher  plus short films by Curtis Harrington at Anthology Film Archives.  Fragment of Seeking reminded me so much of Maya Deren - the beautiful black & white dream state photography and the fluidity of the visible and invisible worlds.  All of the films included in this program conjured Edgar Allen Poe and a surrealist morbidity. (I mention this with the highest regard.)  After the show had ended, Curtis Harrington answered questions, and I enjoyed his anecdote about an early screening with Kenneth Anger’s film, Fireworks.  An elderly philanthropist told them they were sick!  Such is the life of an experimental filmmaker . . .

These short films also paved the way for Curtis Harrington's later work in the horror genre, with features such as Night Tide, starring Dennis Hopper.   See how innocent he looks . . .

There was such a feeling of the supernatural in these films that has resonated with me even after the screening has ended.  I have just reread Poe's, Anabelle Lee, but this program also made me think of the following poem by Apollinaire:

    On Prophecies

    I’ve known a few prophetesses
    Madame Salmajour learned in Oceania to tell fortunes by cards
    It was there too she had occasion to participate
    In a tasty scene of anthropophagy
    She didn’t mention it to everyone
    Concerning the future she was never wrong

    A Ceretanian cartomanceress Marguerite something or other
            Is just as clever
    But Madame Delroy is the most inspired
            The most precise
    Everything she’s told me about the past was true and everything she
    Predicted has come true in the time she said
    I know a sciomantic but I didn’t want to interview my shadow
    I know a water diviner he’s the Norwegian painter Diriks

    Broken mirror spilt salt scattered bread
    May those faceless gods spare me always
    All the same I don’t believe but I look and listen and please note
    I read hands rather well
    For I don’t believe but I look and when it’s possible I listen

    Everybody is a prophet my dear Andre Billy
    But for so long people have been made to believe
    They have no future and are ignorant forever
            And born idiots
    That they’ve become resigned and it never even occurs to anyone
    To wonder if he knows the future or not
    There’s nothing religious in any of these matters
    In the superstitions or in the prophecies
    Or in anything that people call the occult
    There is above all a way of observing nature
    And of interpreting nature
    Which is completely legitimate

*********************************************************

Looking ahead

There is so much cinema to look forward to this Fall and Winter.  After the past week, I would like to begin thinking about the extraordinary screenings to come from now until October 3.  (There's so much!)  Just seeing the film stills, makes my heart beat faster.

Beginning on Sunday, September 11, Ocularis will be screening films by Michael Auder.  Love this.  Love the Chelsea Girls, love Nico, love the Velvet Underground, love it, love it, love it.  Michael Auder will be there in the flesh.  The entire Ocularis calendar is incredible, so please review their website.  An Evening with James Fotopoulos on September 25, looks especially intriguing (see left.)  Love New York!

Continuing forward to Sunday, September 18, the illustrious Mike Olshan will be screening Worlds of Wonder (beautiful nature documentaries) at Freddy's Bar & Backroom.  I live for this kind of cinema.  Those of you who know Mike's film collection, know that it dazzles.  This show is part of his series, Movie Madness, every Sunday, not digital anything!  Love 16mm!

Then on September 27, the Film-makers' Cooperative will have their 2nd Annual Benefit Concert at the Angel Orensanz Center.  I especially look forward to seeing work from Jennifer Reeves, Ken Jacobs, & Michael Snow, and hearing the music of Philip Glass and Lee Ranaldo.  I would like to see this event unfold in a way comparable to when Karl Lagerfeld launched his designs with H&M.  People wanted a little piece of his genius and beauty, and everyone went crazy in the streets.  Awe inspiring.  Love cinema!

On Friday, October 1, please be certain to eat well & get enough rest, because the New York Film Festival is to follow. Ten programs in two days!   The Ninth Annual Views of the Avant-Garde will take place on Sat. & Sun. Oct. 2 &3, and it is composed of limitless beauty.  (The film still below is by Larry Gottheim.)  In the past, I have found this program to be quite moving.  Maybe part of this feeling is because the avant-garde is being honored.  Gives me shivers.  Love the avant-garde! 

There is so much to see!

Filmvideo

 

Here's the live update on my film!  It is taking quite awhile to complete, and my only defense is that I've been living!

I began the endeavor last Spring (as in 2004) which included Super 8 footage from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.  I slowly gathered rolls of film as I visited the Garden several times last Summer.  My plan was to compose a film entirely of freeze frames.  I began to transfer the Super 8 to 16mm on the optical printer last Fall.  If you have never tried the optical printer, you really must run over to Millennium and sign up for a class right now.  This is my favorite part of filmmaking, but also the most time consuming and expensive aspect of the process (for me.)  Using the optical printer allows one to see the film frame by frame, picking up the tiniest, most fleeting gesture.  One frame of film equals .042 seconds.  So this is really ephemeral photography.  The optical printer is used for many techniques such as cropping, dissolves, slo-mo, fast-mo, reverse motion, collage, etc. etc., but my favorite trick is the freeze frame.

While working on the optical printer, I thought that it would be cool to incorporate the negative version of the prints into the film.  So I went back to Lablink (love those guys!) and had a clean 16mm print made, which I took over to A-1 (love those guys too), who made a test negative for me.  Everything looked great.  I continued on the optical printer, trying to work around certain obstacles that had cropped up, like a big black scratch line going through some of the Super 8 originals.  Grrr.  And I realized that since I wanted to get the negative cut, I would need to optically print the footage from A-1.  Then it was Christmas, and I put the project on hold.

During this time, I spent one afternoon creating a rough editing plan in order to see what kind of time measurement I should use for the freeze frames.  I decided that the cuts needed to be equal in length, and that one second seemed to work well.  The editing would be very simple, except I soon realized that editing a 3-5 minute film, composed of 24 frame segments, was going to drive me crazy.  This is about 180 splices at least of still images.  On an intellectual level I know that this is perfectly within reach.  I know that Tony Conrad cut in sections of one or two frames, when he made The Flicker.  And The Flicker  is one of my favorite things ever.  And that film is 30 minutes.

Draw your own associations, but I just feel in my heart that I'm meant to hustle Final Cut, and finish the whole thing on the computer.  I'll need to learn the program, but I think that my film is really meant to be a video.  Or maybe a filmvideo.

But first I'll need to do some more printing of the footage I gathered last month.  I was really surprised when a family pointed out an iguana camouflaged in the foliage around the lily pools.  You won't see it in the final film, but it's there!  xoxoxoxoxo

Detach head from body

I will save my criticisms of George Bush for a later time.  For now, please see Maureen Dowd's Op-Ed, United States of Shame.  (She's a redhead too.)

Right now, I want to see the people who are suffering from Hurricane Katrina, be given the obvious: food, water, medical attention, peace, a home, and money thrown at their feet.  Then I would like to see nurturing, gentleness, and some love!

Consider a mother in the presidency.  What would she do?