Documentary and philosophy (2 of 3)

Usually good philosophical texts exude passion, emotion and underlying dramatic structure of intellectual kind.  Their structure comes from their thesis, assumptions, inner conflicts and the way points are developed.  Therefore one could break down a philosophical discourse into a dramatic grid not unlike the Hollywood three (or four or seven or whatever) act structure.  Once that is done, it would be possible to seek proper emotional or dramatic representations of the elements of this structure and present them visually.   (Various attempts to revolutionize the aristotelian/hollywood structure are still returning to the basis)

A single “philosophical thought” is never a hundred percent purely abstract.   It is so because, language, even when dealing with abstract terms (such as truth, justice, beauty, knowledge, meaning etc), does not leave them in our minds totally abstract.  Each of the above terms (and any other philosophical word) triggers some sort of mental image.  For example when we say or hear the word “truth” it never stays in our minds removed from reality.   It is always a specific truth.  It is always “the truth”.  We may not fully realize the specificity of our abstract thinking but it is always there, obvious or hidden yet always present.  Therefore it is safe to assume that underneath an abstract term lies always a specific image.  Respectively no specific image is devoid of abstract meaning: whatever we see triggers associations in our mind.  

The above point gives hope to the thesis that there is a common ground between visual and abstract: perhaps a translation of the world into a language and translation of the world into visuals both come from the same base. This primal ground would be a pre-language and pre-visual unity. It could become a well from which one could dig out primal “communicative elements”. “The communicative elements” would be the images and sounds laced with pre-cognitive meanings joined by their common origins. They would be the alphabet for a true philosophizing cinema. Would it push the field into a new form? Hopefully, yes.

(2 of 3)

Documentary and philosophy (1 of 3)

I am late. 

Months time ago a colleague of mine, an accomplished documentary film director asked me to write something about the connections between documentary film and philosophy.   In our talk the “philosophy” part came almost as an afterthought, an addition to the main theme which was documentary filmmaking as a genre.  Before our meeting the colleague had attended a screening of “Lawnswood Gardens” and saw a few previous titles of mine, also dealing with philosophy, hence I guess the phrasing of his request.  

In my mind my screen interest in philosophy is really only a skin deep.  It just so happened that during the last decade as a film documentarian I have been hanging out with various academic crowds of “lovers of wisdom”.  It influenced many of my productions dated from the first decade of the 21 century.  Some deal with heavy subjects of “truth”, “universalism” or post-modernity.  Yet, they were always the subjects of filmmaking rather than attempts to philosophize with camera.

Therefore what follows are just loose remarks coming from a practitioner rather than a theoretician. 

It seemed and still seems to me that an exploration of documentary film technologies and its subjects would yield similar conclusion regardless if the discussion was triggered by documenting thinking, object production or character representation.   That is assuming that as my spiritual and professional guru (I’ve never met him) Krzysztof Kieslowski stated documentary filmmaking tends to follow a thought as opposed to feature filmmaking that usually follows a plot. 

Yet, if a documentary by its nature is closer to the process of thinking rather than to storytelling than indeed perhaps zeroing in on meeting between philosophy and film could be interesting for exploring theory of a film-making craft. The distinction between theoretical thinking and following a story would however in itself require a closer examination.  Such examination would clearly exceed the preliminary and sketchy nature of these quickly jotted remarks.   For example the implied assumption that story presentation and its consumption is somehow simpler and inferior to “pure” thinking would need to be closely analyzed in terms of what is “story”, what is “thinking”, how they differ, how overlap and perhaps influence each other. 

Anyway,  

I was delaying my response, dragging my feet due to difficulty in voicing something that would not seem obvious, banal or too esoteric.   Finally the pressure to deliver has outweighed the hesitations.  I have decided to put forth a few intuitions accumulated during those long hours of exasperation when I racked my brains trying to give screen justice to abstract subjects.  They come as points to myself, indications of potential ways to proceed in practicing the craft rather than (God forbid) rules, which of course I don’t know.   So here we go:

(end of part 1 of 3 )

Universal in Red with Black

"Red with Black" 

written/directed by Pawel Kuczynski

“A mystery conjured into a cow.  Reflections on the margins of “Red with Black”, a film by Pawel Kuczynski” is an essay by Aleksandra Drzał-Sierocka in “The contexts of art, the contexts of aesthetics” (in Polish, just published by Authors and Officyna”.)

The author is kind to my 2008 effort portraying painter/sculptor Henryk Musiałowicz.  The essay title refers to Musialowicz openness to nature: “this great artist is enchanted by a cow and does not hide it.  To him art is a road to self discovery and as such should be based on a watchful and courageous search (...)

The director does not respond to questions about the meaning, mystery and rebirth which are posted every now and then by Musialowicz.  Instead he leaves them hanging and allows to reverberate.  Clearly sometimes more power comes from stating the uncertainty than from solving it.  

All that composes the unusual climate of “Red with Black” which is a very intimate and reflective film.  Even though it presents a specific person, it attains a certain degree of universal dimension.” 

I am glad that the reviewer talks about "universal".  However never during the making of this project I consciously attempted such a response.  Rather, I was just trying to offer my purely emotional reaction to the Maestro and his art.  

The question arrises where does the "universal" come from: is it the result of a subject, a narrative approach (conscious or unconscious) or does it, to a large degree, result  from a viewer's sensitivities?  

More information about this project and links to a trailer: http://www.directing.com/red.html

A second later

A part of the poster for a Tokyo art event 

 More info at www.dis-locate.net/stateofdoubt

The poster image triggered in me the following reaction:


A second later

is even more painful

than

the moment of the blow itself.

Tears will come to both

although

only one is crying already.

They will both be dead

although

only one is feeling it now.

They will both regret,

each for different reasons,

however neither knows it at this moment. 

We,

on the other hand,

.......

Vertical

Recently I've been taking a lot of pictures always trying to maintain a 16X9 cinematic ratio.  Yet last night while I was watching the Euro 2012 finals an image started knocking to my lenses and did not want to subject itself to horizontal proportions.

I did allow it to speak but but now I regret the moment of weakness. With the regular HD screen proportions the subject most likely would come across better.

Plastic sex?

Federico prepares "Fellini Casanova"

“Fellini Casanova” combines realism with fakery. Donald Sutterland’s acting, camera and actors’ staging and space organization all fit “natural” representation of reality. Plastic bags pretending to be sea do not. Then there is a third stylistic element: grotesqueness of secondary characters and their costumes.

Can naturalism be smoothly combined with breaking off the cinematic “fourth wall” and with outrageous, flamboyant stylistic choices?

Why does the Maestro do that? Some say the directorial maneuvers of Fellini spring from him despising the main character and his world. This interpretation assumes that we the viewers have to suffer a bit because the film is about a shallow man for who sex is plastic and shallow.

Indeed, contrary to the tangible intoxication with the world displayed in “La Dolce Vita”, “Amarcord” or “8 1/2” not much joy is on the screen of “Casanova”.

“The defiance of realism is total” somebody wrote at imdb - I would say not really total, but there are glimpses of yearning to transcend it. What Fellini started in "Casanova" Lars von Trier expended upon in "Dogville"

Another contributor at imdb wrote: “It is clear, anyway, that after 8 1/2 he could only go this way - towards a progressive abandonment of any kind of mimetic "realism". - that’s clever but I don’t think the film fully supports this statement. At lease not from the 2012 perspective.

From jet another imdb review: “This is Fellini's last great movie. After this he seemed to get so disgusted with the modern world that he withdrew intellectually; you see this a lot in older men. They turn away then they get out of touch.” - that’s too easy of an assertion for my taste. While some geezers indeed go misanthropic, film directors on screen usually don’t.  The joy of filmmaking prevents them from doing so. Would Fellini be different?

Accuracy

"Accuracy of observation is the equivalent of accuracy of thinking"
(Wallace Stevens)

Thinking and looking might be not that far away from each other as we would instinctively assume.  Of course thinking and looking means different things to different folks.   A very few live while thinking and think while living.   It is for them that living is genuinely thinking, thinking is genuinely living.  There are plenty of others who, claiming to think and proclaiming themselves as thinkers, use thinking merely as a pose, either artistic or academic, as something external to themselves, something they use for PR of their personalities.  Something dead. 

If we are honest to our instincts we smell either the corpses directly the intellectual rats they attract.  Usually the posing “thinkers” leave bitter taste in our mouths or rather ears or even better - minds, but since they usually are good at self promotion is it difficult to spot their shtick at the first glance. 

Similarly looking is plagued by the same sins of posing, falseness, inaccuracy, pretentiousness and haste.   A very few look, fewer see and even fewer observe accurately.