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Liquid Perception

I've been travelling a lot this month. I am not allowed to film anything new untill I deal with the 10 tapes piled up on my table. So, this is the story, picking it up in the early-middle part, like any good story there are many perfectly fine starting places and relevant vantage points throughout. Be sure to look here, here, here, here for more.

Special thanks to my dear freind Sara Heifetz who performed as 'the voice of Gilles Deleuze' in this video. The text is taken completely out of context, from his book Cinema 1 - the movement image.  

    a subjective perception is one in which the images vary in relation to a central and prevlidged image; an objective perception is 
    one where, as in things, all images vary in relation to one another, on all their faets and in all their parts. These definitions       
    affirm not only the difference between two poles of perception, but also the possibility of passing from the subjective to the    
    objective pole. For the more the privledged center is itself put into movement, the more it will tend toward an acentered system
    where the images vary in relation to one another and tend to become like the reciprocal actions and vibrations of a pure
    matter. What can be more subjective than a delerium, a dream a hallucination? But what can be closer to a materiality made up
    of luminous wave and molecular interaction? (on google )

click to watch the video

Jon Jost

click image to watch the video of jon jost

I met Jon Jost, this weekend, at the Woods Hole Film Festival. I watched his film Oui non. HOly SHiT- it was way too familiar in its conception and form to what I have intended from this space here. Here, where feel I  am always grasping and grabbing at the pieces of this puzzle. Feeling like I have clubbed hands, banging away at this keyboard every so often managing to contrive one second of grace from it.  And he made this film 2 years before I started this. Where will I be 10 years from now?  I will have to take some time thinking about how to write about this film, will certainly help me consider my film with new perspective.

Here is something Jost wrote:
This film is about how we turn reality into fiction, and create reality from fiction. Most visitors to Paris, a real city, arrive with a preconceived and in many senses fictional map, imprinted by history, politics, and the arts, so that the city seen has already been prescribed, just as the spectator’s preconditioning determines which film they will (or won’t) see.

Oui Non is also about the transition from celluloid film to digital aesthetics, from rigidity to plasticity, from filming with the burden of large costs to making of works almost without cost. It asks the viewer to set aside the habits of a spectator, the expectation and anticipation of “a story,” and instead to simply look and observe as in life. And to question.

For the maker it is very much a transitional work, a step from one place to another. It is a farewell to film. (link)

I am suprised his name has not come up in the world of 'videoblogging theory', only that damn (lovely) Trauffaut quote over and over.

Over the course of our short conversation, he said everything I want to tell people about filmmaking, or what isn't said enough, or what I need to be reminded of, and he has 40 years of experience to back it up. On my bus ride back to NYC, he and his wife were incidentally, seated infront of me, while I edited this video.  Kind of awkward but also fitting.

click to see Jon Jost speaking

Child's Play

Made this for my friend Raould who loves the carousel at Prospect park.
Reminded me of these 16 mm films we would watch in elementary school.
I want to make more like it.
Gearing up for a kids feed for The PAN.
That's rightt, a daily 15 min video made by the PAN Group, that is all Gee - rated!
click image below to watch the video! 

Broken

This is a video for a song by House of Freaks.

I will be focusing on making videos for The PAN
Music Moments, using songs by bands I like, which don't have videos.

Filmed on the train down to Virginia and edited it on the ride back to NY. I have loved this train ride, in the past. It provided a much needed transition time from NYC to Richmond.

But this time is difficult. I have not visited since the murder of the Harvey family and I am still broken from it. I don't know if I will ever fully repair. I find myself crying most of the ride down and back. Making the video is difficult because of this, but cathartic, I am hoping...

Notice how the shift in the camera's perspective alters the way the land passes outside the train window. With the camera's lense parallel to the window, the trees pass by so quicky that they become an abstraction on a flat flickering screen. When the camera's lense is at a 45 degree angle from the window the world outside gains enough depth to become a doirama of streets lined with toy houses.

It is amazing how a small alteration in physical perspective can change so much.

What a feelin'

Dancing, with music by Nobody.
click image to download video.

Sudan dancing

More on Sudan. The video was given to me by my friend David who works in Africa for the UN, the audio is a from conversation we had here in NYC.

Going Rates

My friend David, made another short visit to NYC. Here, here and here, you can see videos from when I filmed him last year around the same time, we talked about some of his experiences with taking pictures in Africa. This year, he talked to me about the new job he started organizing and implementing a demilitarizaion effort in Sudan. There's been quite a lot of tumult there recently, but since African news is not a top priority in US media, we don't get to hear much about it.
Here are some links to info on Sudan:
Location and Facts
Latest UN reports from Sudan
Sudanwatch blog

Giddy as ever

Two minutes in a cab with Beth and Jim, priceless. They tell me a story about one of their first dates.

Elevation

Going down, temperature drop, prices cut.

Coming and Going

Click on the picture to watch
A lot can happen in 5 seconds. Leaving home for work and leaving work for home. The days have felt like this, lately.