at midnight i'll take your soul (1964)

jose mojica marins's 'at midnight i'll take your soul' is an intense work of art. there is a trace that lingered inside after the initial viewing, which made me wonder what precisely about this low-budget, nearly amateur, third-world film was so engaging as to stay behind in thought. there is a violence — one that covers the atmosphere from beginning to end, and binds all the events on the stage. the character of coffin joe, along with the performative-presence of marins, conducts much of the intrigue of the film. despite, or because of, jose marins's decision to ultimately play the lead (from his inability to keep an actor interested in committing to the role) there is a high-energy, bleeding-heart-on-the-table quality to the character which would have been - considering the circumstances of budget, production, and genre - either distant or stilted. his characterization breaks threshold and wields iconography :: the top hat and cape at first strikes as silly dress up, until marins introduces the notion of the separated social classes into the narrative ... it was then when i began to see this character, named Zé do Caixão in the original Portuguese, as part of an alienated oligarchy belonging to this industrialized poverty state depicted // the result resembling a highly original, and deeply willed, edgar poe-like narrative. that Zé makes his fortune in the business of dead bodies wraps the intent into itself — reflecting to the Day of the Dead.

how tasty was my little frenchman (1971)

River, that stealest with such silent pace
Around the City of the Dead, where lies
A friend who bore thy name, and whom these eyes
Shall see no more in his accustomed place,
Linger and fold him in thy soft embrace
And say good night, for now the western skies
Are red with sunset, and gray mists arise
Like damps that gather on a dead man's face.
Good night! good night! as we so oft have said
Beneath this roof at midnight in the days
That are no more, and shall no more return.
Thou hast but taken thy lamp and gone to bed;
I stay a little longer, as one stays
To cover up the embers that still burn.

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 'Three Friends of Mine: IV'

biggie and tupac (2002)

la marseillaise (1938)

SEQUENCE :: As the Cinema is capable of extreme shifts of time and space, the possibility has opened (and is almost exclusively utilized) to carry a story across the expanse of any and all material and cognitive potential, compressed into a duration, and confined within a frame. Many scenes will be created; so many, in fact, a form of organization will be required to mediate between the scene and its act.

This is the sequence. It is a unit specific to the rapidly-interchanging fixed aspect of the Cinema, a quality exclusive to the medium. The theatrical play also shares its structuring by act and scene; although, each act normally accounts for no more than 5, 6, 7 scenes, given the limitations of the stage's construction, as well as the immersive requirements of live performance. Thus, the theater has a natural tendency for scenic continuity, or what elsewhere has been described as a slice of life.

Historically, the length of a film's sequence was limited by the celluloid that could fit within a reel. This division, of approximately 8-15 minutes, still maintains itself even in the digital age. A sequence serves to glue a sweeping idea or agenda over a multitude of chronology and setting; it is a macro-action which turns the wheel of the act closer to its realization, but not of such autonomous import as to contain the entirety of the dramatic blue-print within its scope.

A unit is a subdivision of unity.

Unity, per Aristotle, being a quality of wholeness, defined as the containment of a beginning, middle, and end. The prominence of the sequence in the Cinematic structure, and its manner of manifesting out of necessity, speaks to me as a determining, internal proof: our paint is the entire material world, the brush is montage; that which is photographed, the momentary existence grafted out of its historical generation, drives the will of the Cinema. This is the reason why Stanley Kubrick required many takes, or why Jean-Luc Godard ran through the Louvre.

In the revolution Jean Renoir has painted with 'La Marseilles' (1938), “[it] is like an extended theatrical piece, made up of discrete ‘scenes’… as if theater, and along with it, appearance, were integral components of life” – theatricality and artifice being a means for discovering reality, instead of contrasting it. The narrative is on the ground floor of the revolution, our emotional associations attached to characters practicing a function closer to the Shakespearean fool (a passive / analytical agent in a forward moving background), than of the classical-dramatic convention of the individual seeking a consistent want through action. Much like its carrier species, language suffers as well from a great identity crisis: itself of a distinct and static form :: a word appearing just as a word, (for example, “word”) – yet simultaneously a charged metaphor, instantly conjuring the image(s) of something beyond textual representation – language being both of itself (the alphabetical construction of the word “word“) and of another (“word” immediately directing the mind to an idea of a basic element in grammatical syntax).

It is always itself and something else.

ambush in waco (1993)

"It's about pushing vision as far as it will go, to the point that vision breaks down," says Trevor Paglen. "It's about, 'How do you know what you know?" That series was done in [the post-9/11 environment, in which] people were being arrested just for photographing the Brooklyn Bridge. Photography had begun to signify a really political act..."

battle for haditha (2007)

When the actors are pulled from the same environment as that which is being depicted, there is a sense of memory retrieval in their performance. What is gained is an idea: it's the idea of a heightened authenticity; in appearance, tone, and gesture; – this gain is supported by the participant's approval of what is being depicted, and in their attempt to physically match what previously occurred. A similar technique is used in the films of Paul Greengrass, – much of the Haditha massacre reminded me of his 'Blood Sunday' (2002), released only five years previously. How does this differ from a professionally dramatized production? The form the acting takes is certainly affected: mumbly, conversational, camera-aware, familiar; spontaneous moments occur as if distilled by the deliberate arrangement of wild elements, but once subsided, the narrative continues along with a feeling of separation from non-fictional reality similar to that of the professionally staged. Each individual photographed carries a strong sense of empathy with the scenario they find themselves in: even reprehensible extremes of action become perceived as something at work in a larger field of behaviour, something bred not of the individual's demeanor, but as a manifestation of society, of zeitgeist, as something the spectator could never understand unless standing where the character stood at that exact moment in time. This technique of 'direct cinema' makes visible the invisible subtleties existing within a group (by presenting realities unimaginable unless resulted from true jeopardy) – and if used on both sides of a binary, of the Self and of the Other (the United States marines // the Iraqi insurgents), all of the performers will be blanketed with this curiosity and openness for empathy. It is, then, back in the structural narrative of the film where ideology represents itself.

reefer madness (1936)

...but with Amor we have a purely personal ideal. The kind of seizure that comes from the meeting of the eyes, as they say in the troubadour tradition, is a person-to-person experience... [This is] completely contrary to everything the Church stood for. It's a personal, individual experience, and I think it's the essential thing that's great about the West and that makes it different from all other traditions I know... It was important in that it gave the West this accent on the individual, that one should have faith in his experience and not simply mouth terms handed down to him by others. It stresses the validity of the individual's experience of what humanity is, what life is, what values are, against the monolithic system. The monolithic system is a machine system: every machine works like every other machine that's come out of the same shop.

– Joseph Campbell, 'The Power of Myth'

fetishes (1996)

fetishes (1996)

The work is of sympathetic magic: showing a thing being felt in front of the camera, and not acted, will run deeply into the mind of the audience – even when the we are completely disassociated from the act itself (after all, it's only a movie). The effect is one of an intensely energetic connection with the image, by pulling at the dormant senses (touch / taste / smell) by way of sight / sound. These senses are simply waiting to be engaged by one's private associations and built-in, biological empathies. The entire sensory realm is intimately reachable with the Cinema. Nick Broomfield is at peak form with this document of an upscale professional domination BDSM studio in Manhattan.

I don't understand why the urge is with me. it's very real, it's as real as the real world that I walked in from tonight, which is the business world. And then when I walk out of this world, I walk back into the real world again. It's somehow like the internal clock in your body. Almost like it's a drive. It's a drive that has to be satisfied. And it's an insatiable drive. It's insatiable like the fantasies are insatiable. You never fulfill the said fantasy, or you think you get the best one and then you do it, and then two weeks later you think of something better. It's an insatiable drive.

A note, however, regarding the emotional reaction(s) of the submissives themselves: despite the amount of precaution taken by the company, Pandora's Box (i.e.: the safety word "mercy," which guarantees the submissive complete control of the experience at its most elementary level), those who engage still become overwhelmingly reactive; intensifying their breathing, dramatic atmospheric shifts in the room, rushes of adrenaline, exhibiting genuine fear and / or pleasure. Yet all of these fantasies being played out are knowingly illusions: one could even say, regarding 'Fetishes' (1996) specifically, an illusion within an illusion (stage-plays within a film). I normally ask myself while watching any movie, "But why do I become swept-up emotionally at the sight of silly old people doing silly things in front of a camera?" 'Fetishes' is a perfect example of how existence is, primarily, an aesthetic experience. I become wrapped up in a narrative because the images make visible a reality invisible, entangling with the deepest of my psychic world as something equal to an externally fixed memory.

the broadway melody (1929)

Culture is a communal zen-state –
a suspension in a psychic by-product, evolving Buddha eyed,
in an ecstasy of time and space
(and why obsolete clothing fit at some point with social confidence).
Culture fills the gaps of my reality.

ambush in waco (1993)

KNOW YOUR PROPAGANDA

The scene right before the final raid sequence is a revelation - it follows so swiftly and naturally, I'm having trouble telling if it's the product of the writer's intent, perhaps some mechanism at work in his subconscious (if not intended), or of my own projection: the whole of the Branch Davidians sit around a large television, screen-light flickering, as the sound of gun-shots and screaming fills the room; their eyes are glossy, they stare fixated, eating pop-corn casually, the score's a menacing drone as the camera pushes closer into the crowd; the message is a clear one: here sit the crazies indoctrinated. This should be no surprise, this is the same message building throughout the film, as David Koresh and his followers are depicted as trigger-happy fundamentalist wackos lacking total social cohesion and control. The strongest device affirming this is in the sect's consistent placement as the thing being looked upon – who's unified point-of-view of the film, albeit in the form of several characters, is either mocking, skeptical, or status-quo.



The Davidians are placed on the outside; one is made to feel as if violent action against the sect is not only justified, but should occur. What is so fascinating about the scene with the television is that after it fades to black, the final sequence of the film begins: a failed law enforcement raid on the denomination's compound: all gun-fire, blood, and screaming. The hidden formal code through out the film has suggested for us to smirk quietly at the loonies; this presentation is made so strong one is almost compelled to reach out to all the confused, misguided people and cry, "If you could see what I see!" Yet, it's impossible not to make the connection between the image of the Davidians gazing at the violence on television, and what the average (prime-time and record-breaking) NBC audience household must have looked like: the family gathered on the couch, television glowing, eating popcorn, docile, in a state of expectancy, with the sound of screaming and gun fire from the raid sequence filling the room — it's almost as if asking: On which side did the crazies sit?

By the time 'In the Line of Duty: Ambush in Waco' aired on NBC in May, 1993, the siege of Mt. Carmel had ended in fire and Koresh and most of the Davidians were dead or in jail. Seeing Mt. Carmel go up in flames, I wept for those who died — I felt like I knew many of them personally. Meanwhile, the movie won the ratings war and was widely praised for its artistry and craft, especially my portrait of Koresh and Tim Daly’s performance as the “cult leader.” For me, such praise was a bitter reward... In our lust for money and fame, I believed that we had missed the opportunity to tell that larger, more important story. Sadly, in the end, I’d accomplished what I’d set out to do — written a movie that was both fast and good. But what did “good” mean? I had used my talent to create a drama so effective it convinced millions of people that the lies they saw on the screen were true...

One woman at the end of the table spoke up. Her family had seen 'Ambush in Waco' and, taking it as truth, blamed her for introducing several relatives to Koresh’s “cult,” an involvement that had led to their deaths in the fire. Ever since the movie aired, her family had shunned her. “I do forgive you,” she told me. “But I want you to know that your movie destroyed my life.”

Ars longa, vita brevis – art endures, life is short.

— Phil Penningroth

a woman of paris: a drama of fate (1923)

backroom casting couch (2011)

In 465 BC, the playwrights began using a backdrop or scenic wall, which hung or stood behind the orchestra, which also served as an area where actors could change their costumes. It was known as the skené, or scene. The death of a character was always heard, “ob skene”, or behind the skene, for it was considered inappropriate to show a killing in view of the audience. The English word 'obscene' is a derivative of 'ob skene.'

2001: a space odyssey (1968)

Rhythm appears as it disappears. This is the perception of Unity. Everything in life is composed of rhythms; this is the simplest element of Nature – and consequently of the dramatic-narrative, a reflection of this Nature. The smallest unit of a thing is not the smallest-of-all-things, but a paradox: two unstable elements in a harmonious singularity; of which all substance springs, and all form resonates – as above, so below. The material universe, the law, narrative: each when broken down to its finest logical component is left with an equivalent relationship of MATTER // ANTI-MATTER :: ACTION // REACTION. Manifest from the unfocused inner-charge of one's self, something begins to stir; this is the magnetizing towards an intersection, an impression to be washed out of you, and on its exit will be called a feeling felt. Tension, Suspension, Relief. Or, per William Archer, "To engender, maintain, suspend, heighten, and resolve," the state. A great task hanging over the artist, then, is the recognizing, and bringing to fruition, novel arrangements from a sophisticated cultural palette, of various devices, justifications, and abstractions. Adhering to the principles of Nature, the widest perception of the work will be of one movement, of an elegance, of one identification, a symbol to be downloaded, locking as a node into the society's field of play – thus, the structure / design which contains the temporal energy of the film is taken as the highest expression of the unity's rhythm: the more specific and detailed the emotion, the higher complexity required at its most efficient – always, however, as simple as its function. Relationships.

the wizard of oz (1939)

Natural philosophy being the knowledge of the principles, properties, and operations of things, as they are in themselves, I imagine there are two parts of it, one comprehending spirits, with their nature and qualities; and the other bodies. The first of these is usually referred to metaphysics: but under what title soever the consideration of spirit comes, I think it ought to go before the study of matter and body, not as a science that can be methodized into a system, and treated of, upon principles of knowledge; but as an enlargement of our minds towards a truer and fuller comprehension of the intellectual world, to which we are led both by reason and revelation. And since the clearest and largest discoveries we have of other spirits, besides God and our own souls, is imparted to us from heaven by revelation, I think the information, that at least young people should have of them, should be taken from that revelation... For, without the notion and allowance of spirit, our philosophy will be lame and defective in one main part of it, when it leaves out the contemplation of the most excellent and powerful part of the creation.

— John Locke, 'Some Thoughts Concerning Education'

niagra (1953)

shot in technicolor.

queen of blood (1966)

The sighting of Nature's balance; something alive and breathing, distant from its creation, reflecting the equilibrium of the source of its origination. This is the confrontation with the specter of the Real. Look to these events as gashes or as wounds in the material world, who's blood is the unconscious, manifesting ghosts of repressions, of inversions, of the peripheral, – what keeps the normative grounded being a phantasm.

duel in the sun (1946)

— I cannot paint
What then I was. The sounding cataract
Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock,
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood,
Their colours and their forms, were then to me
An appetite: a feeling and a love,
That had no need of a remoter charm,
By thought supplied, or any interest
Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed, for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompence. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes
The still, sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

— William Wordsworth, 'Tintern Abbey'

le feu follet (1963)

media
"newspapers, radio, TV, etc." 1927, perhaps abstracted from mass media (1923, a technical term in advertising), pl. of medium, on notion of "intermediate agency," a sense first found c.1600.

medium (n.)

1580s, "a middle ground, quality, or degree," from L. medium, from neut. of adj. medius (see medial). Meaning "intermediate agency, channel of communication" is from c.1600. That of "person who conveys spiritual messages" first recorded 1853, from notion of "substance through which something is conveyed."

à nous la liberté (1931)

pretty baby (1978)

This world of Imagination is the World of Eternity, it is the Divine bosom into which we shall all go after the death of the Vegetated body. This World is Infinite & Eternal whereas the world of Generation or Vegetation is Finite & Temporal. There Exist in that Eternal World the Permanent Realities of Every Thing which we see are reflected in this Vegetable Glass of Nature. All Things are comprehended in their Eternal Forms in the Divine body of the Saviour, the True Vine of Eternity. Reality was forgot & the vanities of Time and Space only remembered and called reality, such is the mighty difference between allegoric fable & the spiritual mystery. Let it here be noted that the Greek fables originated in Spiritual Mystery & Real Vision. What is the irresistible compulsion to ask the Original question? Vulgarism, joking, sexual images, – the preparation of the new wine – pompeian red – the Dionysian Rites, Mystery Cults, Old Comedy, the Phallic Procession, ... these are the antecedents, sprung from a cultivated instinct, of the dramatic-narrative: all roads lead to Athens. They are psychic cornerstones, the grounding of the virtual space; i.e.: CIVILIZATION, – who requires a repression of urges, drives, and desires. The energetic make-up of each person is variant to their physiological predisposition, ecology, locality, and history; any obscene ritual hiding within ourselves may differ on appearance, but what they all create is the inherent support needed for integration into the public symbolic order – consolidating surplus energy and promoting adaptation. This deconstructive coalescence / purging stabilizes any structural tension from the normative: warding off necessary derangement, by enacting it. Illusion reflects the eternal contradiction.

north by northwest (1959)

Vibration // Form // Numbers :: Sound // Geometry // Sequence

in bed with madonna (1991)

ONO
Pop songs are a very strong form of communication. ... Pop music is the people's form, you see. Intellectuals trying to communicate with the people usually fail. It's like trying to communicate in archaic German or French in Japan. If you go to Japan, talk Japanese. Forget all the intellectual garbage, all the ritual of that, and get down to the real feeling — simple, good human feeling — and express it in a sort of simple language that reaches people. No bullshit. If I want to communicate with people, I should use their language. Pop songs are that language. They're a very strong form of communication. Another thing is that we are trying to be more and more aware of the healing power of sound. It's true that certain sounds will heal illness, heal all sorts of negative forces in the world. A pop song may be very short, but it is very powerful.

LENNON
So is a heartbeat.

— September 1980, Playboy Interview

the haunting (1999)

au revoir les enfants (1987)

The magic of the voice reaches men's secret feelings. He translates historical philosophy into the language of the people. He has the ability to call up long forgotten history and make those who hear him feel as if they had always known about it.

What is worth staging? This question has bothered me ever since I began to think myself, along with the medium, out of existence. If the cinematic pursuit is one toward the capturing of pure-presence, why ever depict a story? What should be left to exposition and what necessitates its fleshing out and staging? Why didn't the mass populace embrace the Ben Jonsons or George Chapmans of the world in the same way as the William Shakespeares? Assuming the historical-collective prefers to watch, of all possibilities in all the culture of the past, entertaining people doing entertaining things... then, what? And why? Normally, this tendency toward populist dramatic-poetic novelty is observed as a massive short-coming of the given society, or sign of its decadence; however, this argument seems to disregard a sweeping trend across time (seen in the commonality between the handful of artists who, by quality alone, act as representatives of their century), attributing to one's taste what may be of nature.

Poetry in general seems to have sprung from two causes, each of them lying deep in our nature. First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one difference between him and other animals being that he is the most imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons; and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated. We have evidence of this in the facts of experience. Objects which in themselves we view with pain, we delight to contemplate when reproduced with minute fidelity: such as the forms of the most ignoble animals and of dead bodies. The cause of this again is, that to learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men in general; whose capacity, however, of learning is more limited. Thus the reason why men enjoy seeing a likeness is, that in contemplating it they find themselves learning or inferring, and saying perhaps, 'Ah, that is he.' For if you happen not to have seen the original, the pleasure will be due not to the imitation as such, but to the execution, the colouring, or some such other cause.

Something is worth staging. What? And what is the worth? Why sit through someone walking up the stairs, fumble their keys, and enter their apartment? Why watch the daughter point her finger and teary-eyed scream at her dead-beat father in that hand-held, shot / reverse-shot, highly-emotional 'pivotal' sequence? Why montage? Why idle? Why scripted discussions? Why hold back any information at all?

We connect with the frame through the eyes of the characters. Say, as a filmmaker, you have a piece of blurry footage for whatever reason: if the eyes of the actor are fudged to the extent that the spectator can not lock with its gaze, the image is unsuitable for classical dramatic emotional-transference. Although the direction of the gaze eventually moves around the frame to observe finer details of the composition, it is with the eyes of the characters that the gaze always returns to, and ultimately where the strongest view-point of the work is embedded. We lock on from eye-to-eye; close / medium / wide — we make eye contact. What is going on? I notice two things within myself: through the eyes of this other individual I see myself reflected, conjuring a 1) personal association - automatically feeling-up and relating my own experiences, history, and local consciousness / unconsciousness while being moved by my 2) natural empathy (emotional responses to pain and pleasure). The result of a Cinematic experience seems to be the inner sensation of an emotional-temporal symphony, a sculpted wavey-trace of minutely conducted bursts of adrenaline, affirming rhythmic pulses of positivity and negativity relating to my life and world-view, — this, over the course of two hours. What is remembered are impressionistic strokes of sensation, sketches of minutiae, pictograms, sometimes the idea behind the arrangement, and usually never the dialogue. Hitchcock once noted that the film of the future will be a box the individual spectator can hook themselves up to and injected with chosen emotions as they imagine themselves doing anything as anyone.

What's to be made of this?

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget how you made them feel.” - the Thoughts.

One's life is a finite amount of images, no matter how vast.
In the end, each image would have mattered and held its significance.

heart of glass (1976)

They are hypnotized.

dead of winter (1987)

No perception is without memories :: Wherever an image has once been, it carries with it that trace in every new encounter, and so on, to other encounters... In the usual course of a montage of images, certainly one of linearity, the 'next' image is a modifier of the previous image but in a strict line of continuity so that what you understand is causation and consequence... Every shot, sequence of shots, series of sequences and entire films have two directions. One is toward the reality it depicts and the other toward the composition and enunciation of that depiction...

There is the frame.
The frame is usually a cut-out, an extract, an excision from the pro-filmic. The frame establishes a border between what is on-screen, within the frame, and what is off-screen, beyond it. This ensures a homogeneity. It implies a continuum between the on-screen and off-screen. The one is simply a fragment of the other as a part is to a whole. Every fragment refers back to a unity...

'Montage,' Sam Rohdie —