this is love: it makes you better

Earlier today if you would have asked me, I would have told you that love is the Beatles song I should've known better or the Lovin' Spoonful's Darling be home soon. That could possibly be what love is. But moreso:

I just came from a screening of a documentary project I've been helping with for over a year. It's the kind of project that gets to the essence of what I love about film. The technology to make a moving picture came around at the turn of the 20th century. There are various pioneers that led to the advent of movie cameras and projectors–Muybridge, the Lumière brothers, Edison. Their first films are called actualities, they filmed a few moments of some activity reveling in the new medium of documentation and not bothering to fabricate any structures or narratives (until Georges Méliès who has lovely little films you might've seen).

Last fall I watched an actuality of a man standing at the base of the Eiffel Tower filming the people who walk past him. Silent and black and white, it takes my breath away. Imagine being there as the first movie cameras are being manufactured, being one of the first to hold and film.

How do I ever forget that breathless joy? For some reason or other film is my undying passion. Moving pictures! 

did Hollywood kill vintage creativity?

or in other words, Persistence of Vision.
(and my answer is no)

"I address you all tonight as you truly are: wizards, mermaids, travelers, adventurers, and magicians. You are the true dreamers."1

I read a book where Georges Méliès2 told me that Prometheus was set free, Prometheus who gave fire to man and gave us light to project our films.

In another book I read, "At the heart of cinema are machines that, in essence, pull a strip of sensitive plastic past a light."3

In my favorite book we honored the growers of turnips.4


I no longer droop from weariness/wariness of my dreams. I have a secret bad dream journal where all my nightmares go. The little booklet hides deep in a recess where no one can find it. When I write my dreams into it they lose their power. There's nothing better than taking power from the nasty night frights. A doctor I went to for heart burn told reminded me that I should have a bedtime ritual. I've started drawing a picture every night before I go to bed, I make it something whimsical and as I tuck the covers under my chin I imagine dreaming about my whimsical drawing. It hasn't happened yet but my imagination is coming to life.

Will you dream with me, please? This year can we imagine the fantastical, the wondrous, the unstoppable? Can we dance with Godzilla in the New York City streets, can we march through the hills, and craft houses like wild things? Can we speak beaded words and braid documentary tales and watch watch watch whales?

YES!

Everything,
EVERYTHING
is possible.


1. The Invention of Hugot Cabret by Brian Selznick, page 506.

2. Georges Méliès was a magician who quickly realized the magic of film. He is most famous for his 1902 film "A Trip to the Moon" which you might have seen revisited in the Smashing Pumpkins' Tonight, Tonight music video.

3. Page three of my very first film textbook, Film Art an Introduction 7th Edition by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson.

4. The last in the Chronicles of Prydain series.