Sunday, November 22, 2009

IT IS IN THE INSIGNIFICANT MOMENT THAT SIGNIFICANCE BECOMES DISTURBED

I found the following quotes in Mubarak Ali's blog. I like them so much that I copy them and post them here, too.

http://supposedaura.blogspot.com/2009/10/my-hand-outstretched-to-winged-distance_13.html

Nathaniel Dorsky in Devotional Cinema: "If you have ever looked at your hand and seen it freshly without concept, realized the simultaneity of its beauty, its efficiency, its detail, you are awed into appreciation. The total genius of your hand is more profound than anything you could have calculated with your intellect. One's hand is a devotional object.

"If a film fails to take advantage of the self-existing magic of things, if it uses objects merely to mean something, it has thrown away one of its great possibilities. When we take an object and make it mean something, what we are doing, in a subtle ot not so subtle way, is confirming ourselves. We are confirming our own concepts of who we are and what the world is. But allowing things to be seen for what they are offers a more open, more fertile ground than the realm of predetermined symbolic meaning. After all, the unknown is pure adventure."


(Gregory Markopoulos: It is in the insignificant moment that significance becomes disturbed and the power of filmmaking is established.)

4 comments:

filmvirus said...

In the beginning was the Gaze

Before the Words and Concepts overtook the capital there were “Alabama: 2000 Light Years from Home” (1969 / Wim Wenders) and “Summer in the Cities”(1970 / Wim Wenders)

celinejulie said...

Ah, yes! Maybe that's why ALABAMA: 2000 LIGHT YEARS FROM HOME is one of my most favorite films by Wim Wenders.

Talking about gaze, I think I like the gaze of Raymond Depardon very much. I saw four of his documentaries, and I think there is something "undidactic" about his gaze. His gaze is neither "too detached" nor "too close", neither "too cold" nor "too warm". There is "something free" about his gaze, and that's why I feel so great watching his films.

I also think there is a "benign gaze" in Agnes Varda's films, contrary to "wicked gaze" in David Lynch's films. Hahaha.

celinejulie said...

This is my reply to my friends on Facebook:

I just noticed that there's no film by Dorsky in Ubu.com, but when I read his writing in Canyon Cinema's website, I began to understand why he may not want his films to be easily seen on the internet:

" It is the direct connection of light and audience that interests me. The screen continually shifts dimensionally from being an image-window, to a floating energy field, to simply light on the wall. In my films, the black space surrounding the screen is as significant as the square itself. Silence allows these articulations, which are both poetic and sculptural at the same time, to be revealed and appreciated."

celinejulie said...

I like films full of symbols, and I also like films devoid of symbols. Many years ago whenever someone asked me why I liked a film very much, I used to think wrongly that I should answer this question by talking about the "meaning" or the "theme" of the film, but that is not the right way because I love many films of which I don't understand the meanings or the themes at all. Later, I learned to be sincere and say frankly that I love a film because I love an image or a thing in that film, and I don't worry at all if its "meaning", in the case it exists, is within the realm of my understanding or not. What Dorsky said confirms my belief that some films can be really great though they are devoid of "messages" or "meanings".