30 April 2012

Wyndam Lewis: How to acquire the potentiality of six men






In A Code of the Herdsman (1914), Wyndham Lewis wrote:


“Cherish and develop, side by side, your six most constant indications of different personalities. You will acquire the potentiality of six men…A variety of clothes, hats especially, are of help in this wider dramatization of yourself. Never fall into the vulgarity of being or assuming yourself to be one ego.”

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26 April 2012

Portrait of the artist as a young dog

À l'automne de mes seize ans, j'étais étudiant au Cégep du Vieux-Montréal. L'année précédente on m'avait renvoyé de l'école secondaire Eulalie Durocher pour cause d'insubordination. J'avais des notes au dessus de la moyenne et j'étais en enrichi, tout ce que je voulais c'était qu'on me fiche patience et me laisse lire dans le fond de la classe pendant les cours que je trouvais inintéressants. Ça avait bien marché jusque-là, mais ça s'est compliqué quand je suis tombé sur un vieux prof aigri et incompétent qui s'était mis dans l'idée de me faire marcher au pas. C'est à lui et à ses manoeuvres auprès de la direction que je dois mon renvoi de l'école.


Après un mois à livrer des chips, des clopes et de la bière à triporteur pour un dépanneur du coin pour arriver à payer, règle paternelle, une pension auprès de mes vieux, je me suis retrouvé chez ma soeur qui habitait à Dolbeau au Lac St-Jean ou j'ai pu, coup de bol, m'inscrire à un programme d'études pour jeunes décrocheurs. Décrocheur, je ne l'étais pas et ça ne faisait pas encore une année entière que j'avais quitté les bancs de l'école, mais comme ce programme était nouveau et en manque d'étudiants/clients, on m'y a admis. En quelques tests de classement, j'ai obtenu les crédits de secondaire 5 pour les matières principales et trois mois plus tard j'avais mon diplôme en poche. Fuck you Eulalie Durocher.

Fier de mon coup, l'automne suivant, à seize ans, il y a de ça près de trente ans, j'étudiais en Lettres Cégep du Vieux-Montréal. J'étais jeune, j'avais du feu dans les yeux et j'y croyais dur comme fer, j'allais devenir écrivain, poète.

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Jeanne Moreau in La Notte

Copyright matters

A free internet is wonderful for democratized, unresearched commentary, and it works well as a library of sorts for content that no longer requires a defense of its copyright. But journalism, literature, film, music — these endeavors need people operating at the highest professional level and they need to make a living wage. Copyright matters. Content costs.


David Simon
 
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The Singer, woodcut by Vassily Kandinsky

Mind and spirit

That part inside each of us that makes plans, determines actions, and commits us to a path is called the mind. That part inside each of us that carries out plans, fulfills actions, and walks the path is called the spirit. The mind is the ultimate master of the body, and the spirit is its servant, to carry out the directions of the mind. The mind uses the spirit to accomplish all that it does. If the spirit acts too much on its own, you will fail. Insure you commit all things to your mind and strive to bring your spirit under subjection of your mind and the two will work as a seamless duo.


Yagyu Munenori, 1571 – 1646, in The Way of the Living Sword

20 April 2012

New dealers


The gig was transporting high-grade weed from California to far-flung Eastern states. Colin has since driven "thousands and thousands of miles," he says, and gotten to know everyone from big-time dealers who "roll with guns" down to working-class guys with families trying to make ends meet. "Cobbling together a full load between a bunch of different schools, plus teaching summers, I'd pull in about $20,000 a year," he says in edgy, rapid speech that hints of excessive caffeine, or nerves. "I made double that in a month driving East twice. When my wife lost her job, it just felt bleak. I would only have ever done this because of the recession."
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Tools and filmmaking


From A BitterSweet Life:
This blog post by Peter Webber encompasses my every thought about the true value of technology and the tools in filmmaking. The act of creation is centered not on materials but on a vision and its realization. Take Pablo Picasso and his cardboard sculptures hanging on the walls of museums or Joseph Cornell’s boxes made of found objects. The unavailability of tools should not hinder the artistic process while the availability of them should not hinder the essence of creativity, to create something original, both personal and universal, and timeless.


The Newest New Wave
Despite the fact that I am excited by the possibilities of new technology, the following blog is probably going to make me sound like an old grump.
Writing about social media over the last few days got me to thinking about the massive strides that film technology has taken in the years since I left school. At twenty-six, getting into Bristol University where they taught the rather grandly named Postgraduate Certificate in Radio, Film and Television (or the RFT course, as we called it) meant I finally had access to a veritable cave of filmmaking wonders in all its mid 80’s glory: Bolex cameras, Nagra synch-sound recorders, Steenbeck 16mm film flatbed and low band U-matic editing equipment and best of all an impressive VHS library of the greatest films ever made. I was thrilled. I never looked back.

Now all that stuff belongs in a museum, and VHS has long been consigned to the dustbin of antiquated media format history. Its all so shockingly pre-digital.

At sixteen, your average London-teen now has a phone with an HD capable 8 megapixel camera, and a computer with pro-branded animation and editing software, complete with history’s most comprehensive visual library: Youtube, which also doubles as an unparalleled means of distribution. Its all there, and it’s all taken for granted.

Film maker Aaron Stewart-Ahn who tweets as @somebadideas (and is a must-follow) touched on this when he tweeted (and I paraphrase) that the average 24-year-old has better tech than Jean Luc Godard and his cameraman Raoul Coutard, but that we don’t see films as brave, funny, entertaining, ambitious or unashamedly intellectual as the ones they made together. The technological advances of that era such as lightweight cameras also liberated the imagination of these film makers and led to the French New Wave. Nowadays there seems to be an overall diminution of ambition, an unfortunate limiting of horizons.

The fact that it is now possible to make films at a fraction of the cost one would have incurred in the 60’s or 70’s and then beam them at no cost at all into the phones and computers of literally millions upon millions of people around the world is astoundingly effortless. And perhaps that is the key to the question of quality.

The ramifications of all this change have yet to be fully revealed, and whilst the possibilities remain exciting, there is no doubt we are at a very different place to where we were say in 1991 when Francis Ford Coppola said the following in an interview.

“To me the great hope is that now that (with) these little 8mm video recorder and stuff now, people who normally wouldn’t make movies are going to be making them. And, you know, suddenly one day some little fat girl in Ohio is going to be the new Mozart, and you know, make a beautiful film with her father’s little camcorder and for once this whole professionalism about movies will be destroyed forever and it will become an art form. That’s my opinion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WOnRAvdK2s%22%20%5Ct%20%22_blank
It is a prescient interview that in some ways anticipates the brave new world of Youtube. I love Youtube and can spend hours grazing it’s fertile plains. Yet it must also be said that we have yet to discover this new Mozart of the movies, there or elsewhere. The genius Coppola predicted has not risen from the wheat fields of Ohio. The new messiah is not yet amongst us. Writing in the 1940’s, Jean Renoir was firmly of the opinion that advances in technology in fact meant a diminution of inventiveness in the cinema. It’s certainly true that there is a magic in Melies’ Trip to the Moon that is sadly lacking in John Carter of Mars.
In the end, perhaps there is a limit to what can be expected from this democratisation of the means of film production. The most important commodity in all of this is not in fact the technology but the talent.
And that is always in limited supply.



19 April 2012

Night fishing



Based on a Korean folk tale. Made entirely with iPhones. The Guardian has more details about the film, including this summary:
Paranmanjang, which means "a life full of ups and downs" in Korean, is about a man transcending his current and former lives. He catches a woman while fishing in a river in the middle of the night. They both end up entangled in the line and he thinks she is dead. Suddenly, though, she wakes up, strangles him and he passes out. When the woman awakens him, she is wearing his clothing and he hers. She cries and calls him "Father".
No subtitles available.

Monroe, Miller



Warming trend


Gigantic - Pixies