Jean-Luc Godard: Still Making Things

In film, we ignore our great thinkers and practitioners at great peril to ourselves. For my entire life, I rejected any consideration of Jean-Luc Godard. I dismissed him as a pretentious, dull intellectual who threw text around on the screen to hide bad filmmaking. I had seen 'Breathless' and had a memory of two people in vivid and somehow ultra-modern black & white climbing on top of each other and walking on a bed in a tiny apartment room. But I dismissed the director as a one-film-wonder and refused to see anything more by him.

Until one year ago.

I have been reading a good book about Jean-Luc Godard and watching as many of his films as I can find on DVD. He's still working. He's still there. I'm glad I managed to find him while he's still working.

I enter a room in mid-afternoon knowing that my camera is only a few feet away. The light comes through the kitchen window and makes shadows of potted plants on the white porcelain tile. The trees outside sway and it seems like rain is coming. I know that there are scenes I could film here. They are all around me in this room with its strange light. I could grab my camera and with the proper attitude make an incredible film. Right now. Immediately. But it's hard to do. It's a battle to persuade one's self to attempt it. I begin to feel foolish. I struggle with myself and laugh at myself for imagining that out of the great universal pile of YouTube videos a single film taken in my kitchen could possibly amount to anything at all in the mind of a single viewer. Nietzsche, in 'Thus Spake Zarathustra,' writes about how one's self is one's greatest enemy and will begin to doubt and mock one's own thoughts and noble efforts.

I view Godard as someone who has spent a lifetime leaping fully into this battle and winning it. He would look around my kitchen, pull out his video camera, turn a gas burner on and film it without a pot to heat. He might talk about holding his palm to the fire and then pressing it against his lover's cheek to burn her. He might briefly show a scalded and blistering hand, a palm print on a cheek, a car bomb exploding next to a busy marketplace. And he would have a film. I think he has fought consistently to make film a nearly mental act. As much a mental act as writing a novel or a poem. I think he is perhaps closer to this achievement than anyone else in the history of cinema. He appears to be willing to put himself into his work the way a writer might. Not a screenwriter. A real writer. I don't think Godard gives one tiny bit of a damn about screenplays. He uses a camera to write. Like Brakhage scratching celluloid with his fingernails.

Last night I watched 'Contempt.' I've read that Godard was unhappy during this shoot and couldn't stand working with Brigitte Bardot. But it's one of the greatest films about marriage that I've ever seen. She is magnificent in it. Mysterious and irrational and like a curse to all foolish and driven men. Once again, I come from a Godard film with a vivid memory of a man and a woman stalking each other in an apartment. Climbing over one another and scrambling across a bed. Almost like a prizefight. The film is forty-six years old and looks like it was shot just last week. Godard is the most modern of artists. I look at his work and I suddenly know what the word 'modern' means. It has nothing to do with being recent. I think it might be something to do with light and the way people behave in it and react to it. How they gaze at or through windows and engage with structures and how they move into or out of the light. Modern. Microsoft didn't name its operating system 'Windows' for nothing.

Here's a short film called 'Une catastrophe' that Godard made for the 2008 Viennale film festival.




Here's is a piece of his enormous 10-hour 'Histoir(s) du cinema.'




Well I certainly want to see all the rest of that. It's spellbinding. I like the way he talks about how Italy was the only country that could resist the domination by American film in the 1940s. How he says the language of Dante made its way into the image and made Italian cinema great. I believe him because the images make me believe him. I want DVDs of this history of cinema. I want them badly.

I got into a big fight in a movie theater this past Saturday night after seeing a Swedish film called 'Let the Right One In.' At the end, a friend of mine said, 'Boy! The pace of that was just unbearable.' I snapped, 'Forget every stupid thing you've ever heard about Hollywood films. It's a disease I recognize. The disease of timing. Timing. You think films need to blast along on a railroad track, gaining speed until the big crash at the end... don't you?'

I'm just that kind of asshole. Three of use made our way up Fairfax Avenue yelling at each other like several idiots. But I meant it and I'd say it again.

But see, Godard doesn't even think the railroad tracks exist. There's no train and there's no end.

So Godard now works in his studio with video equipment. I wonder if secretly, under some indecipherable username, Jean-Luc Godard might be uploading work everyday onto YouTube. Would he do that? Wouldn't it make sense? Perhaps he's shooting video in his kitchen everyday and making something magnificent for us to see. I want the link if it exists!

Thomas Wolfe Said...

Are we mistaken in assuming that the whole vocabulary of abuse which is exhausted every week in the journals of our red and pink-complexioned comrades - the sneers against a man's talent, the bitter denials that his work has any substance, sincerity, truth, or reality whatever - is really what it seems to be? No doubt we are mistaken. It would be more charitable to believe that these pure spirits of the present day are what they say they are - collective, selfless, consecrated - and that the words they use do not mean what they seem to mean, and do not betray the romantic and deluded passions that seem to animate them, but are really words used coldly, without passion, for the purposes of collective propaganda - in operations completely surgical, whereby the language of the present day, with all its overtones of superstition, prejudice, and false knowledge, is employed clinically, scientifically, simply to further the Idea of the Future State!

No more, no more! Of what avail to crush these vermin beneath our heavy boot? The locusts have no king, and the lice will multiply forever. The poet must be born, and live, and sweat, and suffer, and change, and grow, yet somehow maintain the changeless selfhood of his soul's integrity among all the crawling fashions of this world of lice. The poet lives, and dies, and is immortal; but the eternal trifler of all complexions never dies. The eternal trifler comes and goes, sucks blood of living men, is filled and emptied with the surfeit of each changing fashion. He gorges and disgorges, and is never fed. There is no nurture in him, and he draws no nurture from the food he feeds on. There is no heart, no soul, no blood, no living faith in him: the eternal trifler simply swallows and remains.

And we? Made of our father's earth, blood of his blood, bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh - born like our father here to live and strive, here to win through or be defeated - here, like all the other men who went before us, not too nice or dainty for the uses of this earth - here to live, to suffer, and to die - O brothers, like our fathers in their time, we are burning, burning, burning in the night.

Thomas Wolfe
('You Can't Go Home Again' published in 1934)

Brilliance Exploding Out of Echo Park Film Center

Look at this. It's ragingly brilliant. It's a film called 'La Vida Nueva' by Kaymen Barber at the Echo Park Film Center in Los Angeles.




I love the shots going down the streets while shooting out of a car. Just wonderful. This film grabs attention and does not let go. It keeps hitting you with people who want to tell their stories to the filmmaker. You know, it's not easy to get people to want to tell you their story. Not easy at all. This Kaymen Barber has some serious talent and better not stop making movies because he's going to waltz himself straight into a professional filmmaking career and blow a few directors I know clear out of the pond.

It looks like the film is shot with a silent camera and then sound is recorded later. Frankly, I think the technique is totally captivating and it is something I never would have thought of. It's so good in fact that I want to steal it. That's how good it is.

Here's another film. It's called 'Thick Strings and Shredded Cheese,' by Carla Orendorff.



This is a young filmmaker learning fearlessly. She's good. This film is moving in a very simple and direct way. I love the shots of the photos and the spools of thread. The way the filmmaker animates them on the table. I've never seen that before. It's something new. To do that in the middle of a documentary with a voice telling a story is a very unique and wonderful approach.

Here's yet another. It's called 'Spray Cans and Stencils.' It's by John Tavares. It's about artists and what they do.



I think what you have here are three artists showing their respect for each other. The two spray can and stencil artists are doing their thing for the film artist and the sense of mutual understanding that comes through this film is very subtle but unmistakable. I love the quick shot of the painter taking a digital photo of his work on the wall. He is serious and proud. As he should be. This is a fascinating documentary that I wish lasted at least an hour because I want to see more.

I once had a big conversation with friends about how best to find real intelligence in kids aside from IQ tests and things like that. I said that if you want to find intelligence you go and hand cameras to kids and see what they make. That's one way you can find someone's mind. But I never had the will to prove it. It looks to me like someone down at the Echo Park Film Center is doing this and it's paying off. I haven't been down there yet, but I think it's a great place anyway. I can tell from the films.

Echo Park Film Center also has a YouTube Channel.

United Kingdom Ready to Jail Anyone Who Photographs a Cop

If you like photographs, stay the hell out of the United Kingdom. The straggling Western nation appears to have not noticed that the unconstitutional Bush junta is no longer in power in the United States and persists with its little-partner notion of a totalitarian security apparatus defending itself against... well... defending itself against civilization. The thug nation has decided to give police the authority to stop people who are photographing police in public. They are already doing this to an alarming degree, but now it will be an offense punishable by 10 years in jail.

The logic is that someone might be trying to elicit information about a police officer that is likely to be useful in an act of terrorism.

It would be useful to have a photograph of a police officer's shiny round face because then we would know exactly how to shoot something directly into the officer's mouth. Is that what the new law protects against?

I would not under even the remotest of possible circumstances ever travel to the UK. It has become utterly barbaric and is a total surveillance police state. Also a helpful British gent in a hurry once dropped an entire ice cream cone onto my ex-wife's blouse in the West End. But if I did go there, would it be acceptable to pull out my camera and imagine inside my private little mind that my Nikon was an AK 47? Nikon. AK 47. If I aimed it at a fat Brit cop and imagined pulling the trigger and sending a hot lead bullet through his unsuspecting head, would I be committing a thought crime that might lead to an act of terrorism? If I imagined his undersized head exploding in a spray of scarlet and dull gray puffballs of brain against the 'No Littering' sign, would I be committing an imagination offense? If I thought of my shoes all sticky and dripping with his blown off face as I tried to scrape it onto the curb, would I be offending and likely to commit an act of terrorism? What if I took a picture and then Photoshopped the cop into a smashed and broken body on a London sidewalk and hung it in a fancy gallery? What if I used thick red paint to write giant letters across my photograph that said, 'Clean Up Your Dead Cops Or Else.'

Perhaps I will enter Great Britain on a sly low-flying radar-proof night flight and disembark all in black with a knapsack full of James Bond terror and make my way to the GPS point of my imaginary crime. I will pull my Nikon AK 47 and pull press the button trigger and fire take a shot at of an imaginary police officer with a tin pot on his head that will pop off into the air and clatter to the ground as his cranium swells into a horizontal mushroom and bursts shards of bone in a perfect exit circle to stipple the display window before his body curls to the sidewalk in a lazy gelatinous slump.

How about that, Great Britain? Are you listening, home of Shakespeare? Wistfully remembering when you were a civilized nation? Are you reading my mind? Are you angry? Frightened? Suspicious? Taking all this seriously? Analyzing? Storing? Registering? Confident you've got me figured out?

Hey, what if I shot Shakespeare and blew his brains all over the Prime Minister? Words. Words. Words. All over his shirt. Red words. Black words. White words. Spraying out like a water cannon shooting gasoline.

Remember, poets don't teach. They destroy.

Read the poem, k*nt It was written specifically for the poor fallen UK. It totally pissed off the moderators at BoingBoing.net really bad because I slapped it into their comments area and when they censored it I told them they were a bunch of hypocrites pretending to defend freedom of expression. But I play nice with them and read their posts, but still they're pasty super-duper white cream goofballs. I mean, if you can't print 'k*nt' in your blog, what's the fucking point?

Away: Cell Phone Camera Film from NFB Online Catalog

Filmmaker Peter Mettler shot 'Away' on his cell phone camera in Costa Rica. His subject matter is how disconnecting from technology or the modern world can sometimes lead to a better use of technology. In this case, he lets technology lead him toward artistic expression. This fellow is a real camouflage lens. The film is beautiful and it has ended up in the catalog of the National Film Board of Canada.

There is Only One Sun: Sci-Fi by Wong Kar Wai

I'm very happy and also very ornery about what I'm about to say. Firstly, Wong Kar Wai is one of my favorite directors. He's the Hong Kong filmmaker who's made Chungking Express, In the Mood for Love, and 2046, among others. His films are fantastic swirls of color and he totally loves to film womens' feet. I don't know if it's the feet or the shoes he's in love with, but I think whatever he chooses to photograph ends up looking like he went shopping on another planet and came back with an entire film. He's incredible and he is a light-artist.

Well, he's gone off and made what might turn out to be my favorite science fiction film of the past five years. It's a ten-minute short called There is Only One Sun. But he shot it as a commercial for Phillips televisions. That's really too damned bad. A fucking commercial. I guess he took the money and was fascinated with the television company's fixation on bright vivid colors and crystalline picture quality. Whatever. Phillips can go take a dump. Pioneer makes much better television screens anyway. Wong Kar Wai wins the exchange and leaves us another masterpiece. I'm sure he ripped Phillips off in some clever way. I would. A gigantic multinational corporation asks me to make them a big juicy commercial. Well, I'm damn sure going to bamboozle them right on down the road and slip a little artistic time-bomb right under their nose. That's what this film is.

Look at these beautiful images from the film then go watch it here on NoFatClips. By the way, I found this film via an excellent short film blog called Short of the Week.

The Spider: Animated Short

Director Juan Delcan of Nola Pictures made this short animation of a poem by Gabor Barabas. Apparently, the spider animations are inspired by the work of sculptor Louise Bourgeois. I like the ever-flowing background and the way the lines transform so smoothly from one shape to another. I like the poem also.



The Spider from Juan Delcan on Vimeo.

'9': A CGI Film by Shane Acker

'9' is a short computer animated film by Shane Acker, produced while he was an animation student. It is being made into a feature film by producer Tim Burton. The original short sets a fascinating apocalyptic mood and builds to its climax with expert precision. The little burlap sack character holds my attention as he or she deals with spare parts from old machines and fights off a life-sucking metal insect creature. The character appears to be fighting to preserve something - perhaps the life force itself.

Here's the original short film:





And here is the feature film trailer:





I look forward to seeing this one.

Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' Speech

This is the speech that Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered on the Washington, D.C. Mall in 1963. It is quite possibly the greatest speech delivered in the United States since Abraham Lincoln's 'Gettysburg Address' and 'Second Inaugural Adress.'

It is possible that the past eight years of terror and bigotry from an American presidential administration can be overcome. That's my dream.

New Film: 'Christmas Black'

The sun is low and cold when Christmas time comes. The lights flicker and dark boxes are slowly opened. Trees spin round faster and faster until the light explodes.

The film uses two movements from Respighi's 'Pines of Rome.' The music and film start slowly, quietly, as if conserving or gathering their resources. Then the music builds to a martial crescendo and the film images begin to fragment.





This film took me the better part of two months to make. It uses footage taken during December and some older footage that fit the subject matter. Last night when the moon was full and apparently showing at its largest for the year, I went out and took some video of it and decided that the shots were the missing element that I had been puzzling over for the past several days while editing my film. The editing took me about a week to complete. There are many connections to draw between the images that appear. Some of them are very quick, but the overall impression should be a little bit on the mystical side.

I've been very impressed lately by the work of Kenneth Anger. His underlying mystical concerns and his total lack of fear in his image-making are extremely important. He makes me think that it is the intent behind an image that determines whether it will become a part of memory or not. If you see a cup in a coffee commercial, you don't remember it five years later. If you see one in a Kenneth Anger film, you remember it forever. The intent behind an image functions a bit like magic.

I don't necessarily completely like everything Anger has made, but I admire his willingness to film beauty that frightens people. There are many very tough and hardcore underground filmmakers, but I think there are very few who are unafraid of actual, shocking, terrifying beauty.

Marcel Duchamp In His Own Words

I found a film about Duchamp. I've always liked his playfulness that never overpowers his keen eye for beautiful forms. He created art objects that he called 'ready-mades.' Films are sort of 'ready-mades,' aren't they? Watching people like Duchamp gets the brain working in a different way. Suddenly the lamp on your desk becomes more interested and full of unique possibilities. What if I lit the lamp and balanced a leg on top of it? Or a pair of eyeglasses glued onto a gun as a sighting mechanism?

That's the kind of thing Duchamp does to me. He plays with notions of art. But he plays seriously.

I am ready to post my new film. It's called 'Christmas Black.' Then, after that, I think I'm going to make a very nasty, blunt film that will combine real world photography with some video game footage. Like machinima, a technique I've used before. The story will be simple: an off-duty police officer stands in his apartment. He leaves. He walks several blocks and approaches a passerby from behind. He shoots the passerby dead and is suddenly standing in his apartment again. He leaves. Walks. Shoots another person. And so on and on... It will be two things - an interesting point of view on what video games do best and a loaded cinematic gun aimed directly at the cop who killed the subway rider on January 1, 2009. It's my little way of helping to metaphorically get rid of him. Art is anger, baby. Put it in someone's face and pull the trigger. Then just hope for the best.

Here's the Duchamp film. Part 1:



Part 2:



Part 3:

Oakland Erupts in Violent Protest Over Filmed Police Killing

This is what you get when a police officer is filmed shooting a helpless individual in the back:


Oakland protests turned violent last night over the killing of an unarmed man who was lying face-down on a subway platform by a uniformed BART officer. The killing was performed in front of onlookers with cameras rolling.

And still we must all ask: Why has the cop not been arrested on suspicion of murder?

The photos above say plenty. But here is an iReport from CNN with Oakland youths explaining why they are so angry. One of them calls the killing 'a modern day lynching.'

BART Police Officer in Oakland Filmed While Killing Helpless Man

Subway riders in Oakland, California shot videos on their cellphone cameras of a group of police officers handcuffing several young men on a subway platform. A couple of the officers throw a man face-first onto the ground, sit on him with their knees and then one shoots him to death.

There's lots of video of this horrific killing.

Here's one angle on the homicide. The killing happens at the 1 minute 15 second point in the video. Watch the officer in the back pull his gun, aim it and fire it into the man's back.



Here's another angle from which you can clearly see the officer drawing his weapon and aiming it down at the victim:



This alleged police officer shoots a totally helpless man in front of dozens of onlookers while being filmed!

The alleged officer's name has been released. He is apparently Johannes Mehserle of the BART Police Department in Oakland, California. So, there are news reports that this man is being moved from place to place in order to protect him from harm because he has received death threats.

People with cameras filmed this police action starting well before the seeming execution. Why would they do that? Possibly because they knew there was something suspect in the police activity. Watch the video of the moments just after the killing. Look at the other police officers. They're just standing there. A man has been shot in the back and these other jackasses are standing around as if someone's received a parking ticket. Do these officers have Nazi regalia in their homes? Are they skinheads? Are they Ku Klux Klan?

Cities burn for stuff like this. Rodney King. Remember? The cops only beat that guy with sticks and Los Angeles went up in riots and flames. This man was shot to death in public in Oakland. Looks like murder.

Protests are forming.

BART officials have made statements urging calm until the facts are known. BART can put the facts up its ass. The facts are on video.

Questions:

Why wasn't the killing officer arrested immediately on suspicion of murder?
Why do the other cops stand around looking bored after the killing?
Why are the bystanders already filming from so many angles well before the killing?

2008 Holiday Animation

Here's a holiday animation I did for CandlelightStories.com. All the backgrounds and scenic elements were painted in a cheap software package called 'ArtRage.' The character and animation were done in Flash CS3.

You can watch a high-definition version on the home page at CandlelightStories.com.

Have a very happy holiday and an excellent 2009!

Hero Journalist Throws Shoes at Bush

This is the first person in nearly eight years to react rationally and intelligently to the presence of George W. Bush in the same room. During a surprise visit today in Iraq by Bush, an Arab journalist took off his shoes and threw them directly at the supreme asshole of the Western World. I cannot think of a better thing to do than to throw shoes at this son-of-a-bitch. In the Arab world, showing someone the sole of your shoe is a terrible insult. To actually throw your shoe at a person is to call that person filth.



In the history of the United States there has not been a president who has conducted such a brutally violent assault on freedom of expression, freedom of thought, freedom of the press, freedom from illegal detainment, freedom from torture, freedom from illegal wiretapping, and freedom from fear itself. This prick and his friends have been torturing and killing thousands upon thousands of people. They have prevented journalists from even taking the photographs that they should be taking during a war. They have lied in order to conduct the invasion of a sovereign nation. Journalists in the U.S. are too frightened to even write critically of this creep or to adequately investigate his acts. Much less to throw their shoes at him. Several weeks ago, as Bush ascended a podium holding many of the world's leaders at the G20 Summit, they all refused to shake his hand. It was the first behavior from world leaders toward Bush that seemed suited to him.




I suspect that the Iraqis will go easy on this man because they all secretly agree with what he did. It was not any kind of life-threatening act. I think anyone who understands what this awful man has been up to for the past decade would agree with throwing shoes at him. I have not seen a more beautiful expression of the world's hatred for this man than this magnificent shoe-throwing display.

Once the worst president in U.S. history has left office, those who are too afraid to speak out about what he has been doing will begin to talk and then this shoe throwing episode will be remembered for what it really is: a great big 'Fuck You' from the journalists of the world. This Arab shoe-throwing journalist is a true camouflage lens.

Perhaps with all the stress associated with being so hated and reviled by all the world's leaders, Bush will get cancer. Then he will wither. And finally go to hell.

The shoes. The lovely shoes.