JOURNAL: POLAND IS A LAND YOU MUST PAY ATTENTION TO

This is so incredibly important. You need, need, need, need, need, need, NEED to know about Franek Kimono. He's brilliant. Imagine Rocky if he were Polish and decided to record a disco album. 



My coworker and I discovered him during a morning absorbed in Polish music exploration, a pursuit I highly recommend. Time and time again I've found Poland is a frequently overlooked rich treasure trove.

Franek is actually the creation of a man whose name, Piotr Fronczewski, I cannot pronounce but nevertheless is an actor and singer who in 1983 decided to record the Franek Kimono album as a joke and stumbled into success. I am not in the least surprised, the album is incredibly delightful.


A longtime favorite Pole of mine is the film director Andrzej Wajda. His films are masterful and poignant and I am fully aware that's the least substantive sentence, I essentially have told you nothing about him. Let me put it this way: his films, from the first viewing, have reached themselves deep into the folds of my mind. I regularly reflect on them, tracing the outline of their images. Ashes and Diamonds (1958) and Katyn (2007) both deal with war from which I've pieced together histories we don't hear often. I never knew Poland was invaded both by the Nazis and the Soviets during WWII and suffered under each, the Soviet control lasting for decades.

Perhaps you're crazy and history and movies about the terror and tenderness that occurs during war isn't your thing. I still think you should watch them. Particularly look for a reference to Antigone in Katyn. In fact, brush up on your familiarity with Sophocles' and Anouilh's versions of the play, then watch Katyn. With a box of tissues. And some candy canes, for 'tis the season.

xoxo,
Marge 

THINGS YOU MUST LISTEN TO TODAY

because I can't stop thinking about the character of Gertrude Stein in Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris (2011) saying the job of an artist is to find an antidote to the emptiness of existence. I would say Existence is not empty, but that we live emptily. So listen to the First imagining you're with me sitting on a living room floor at the foot of the record player, eyes closed and sharing a drink. Listen to the Second for words most beautiful about love and searching ("I will love you...til the ocean is folded and hung up to dry // In headaches and in worry / vaguely life leaks away"). Listen to the Third being quiet and still, remembering moments you're grateful for. 

swimvation continued

Because this is what I'm like:

Friday night some friends are over so I pull out the quilt I've been piecing together for months (you know, the one where if people ask me "Are you making a quilt?" I say, " Uhhhh.....yeah.....kind of...." because I feel embarrassed?). It's mostly pieced together and looking at this Alicia (I think it was you) says, "You've done a lot, are you proud of yourself when you see this?" And I, who had just been feeling overwhelmed thinking of all that's left to do and can't seem to narrow my focus to these last few stitches that are needed to perfect one section, I say, "Sometimes I can't feel that."

And we hear as film students all the time (mostly from people who are NOT in the filmmaking trade themselves) that obviously we're not all going to be that filmmaker we admire, there's a lot of us, we can't all be that filmmaker who gets screened in theatres, even limited-run art house cinema kinds of theatres. And as I'm an average human I think, Oh, I can't be, I shouldn't even try to make a feature length documentary. 

But at least for the moment at this point I can remember Werner Herzog's funny voice I heard on NPR this morning saying, "You have no excuse not to make a feature film. People can make a feature film these days for $10,000." Which is really, extraordinarily cheap if you weren't aware. (DON'T WORRY MOM, I'm not planning on anything like that.) And Werner sometimes eats his shoe if someone (Errol Morris) makes their first feature length.

Maybe you can see, though, why I'm doing this to myself if you understand that I LOVE FILM. I can't help myself, I don't want to watch movies all the time, but if you want to see me get excited, ask me a nerdy film question and if I don't know the answer I'll spend hours trying to figure it out. Poke my eyes out and make me blind: I still love film, I'll just listen to it. The beauty of the innovation and history and effect and humanity of it all makes me cry. Poke my eyes and cut out my ear drums and I'll learn braille to read about it and find some way to tell you about it.


This is what I uncontrollably want.

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! 

you could try

"I want to listen to James Brown with you."

Would you like to know something silly? My career choice involves reading forty year old newspapers, avidly watching music videos, studying movie credits, pretending to look at everything as though there were a camera frame around it, noticing how when i use a remote I'm not just changing a channel I'm editing a show/commercial/movie, and listening to people talk about Freud.

Yes. You read correctly: I would actually like to do scholarly work on music videos. In fact, I'm thinking about including the evolution of the "independent woman" in music videos from Destiny's Child (skipping over gag me kelly clarkson) to Ne-Yo in my class presentation of my personal film theory.

"I want to watch music videos with you." 

ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

also, it has been seeming like a good decision to....oh gosh, say it out loud, use words, type, type, type...

it kind of still seems like a good idea to move home for the month of january.

it also seems so permanent.
so different.
so much of an end to lovely things.
but my documentary heart is longing, longing, longing to be a lonely girl set loose on the world. and i've never been able to deny my documentary heart.

they say it's possible to be in love with a person but

Nothing quickens my heart like this:

"The exceptional technical facilities of the AFI Silver include film formats from 16 to 70mm, high-definition digital cinema video projection, broadcast quality video recording and distance learning capabilities via satellite, fiber and the Internet. Whether it's silent film at the proper frame rate with live musical accompaniment, 70mm wide screen spectaculars or digital cinema, the AFI Silver offers state-of-the-art technology in each of its three theatres - with seating for 400, 200 and 75, respectively - as well as in its world-class conference room, all available to rent."

http://www.afi.com/silver/new/about/about.aspx

Seriously. Whisper that in my ear and I'll fall to pieces.

DON'T FORGET TOMORROW!!

I did imagine I would have a desk covered in a beautiful Iranian mat, spilling forth with books, strange trinkets I've collected like broken Kerr jars and pieces of animal bone, and gifts from other people like old photo slides, Franz Muscha prints, intricately embroidered quilt squares, and drawings.

I didn't quite foresee all of the nooks and crannies being stuffed with mini DV tapes, external hard drives, and film equipment.

What I never in a million years would have thought possible would be me, sitting here, at the afore mentioned desk, adding "moving back home–in the wintertime–to make a documentary" to my list of options post-graduation.

NOT THAT I'M NECESSARILY DOING ANYTHING ON THIS LIST (like getting one of those aboriginal-type piercings ((totally politically correct)) where there's a stick through my nose). 

{imagine annoying gameshow voice here:} WWWWelllllllll folks, is this just some temporary insanity, orrrrr is thiiii-iiissss the REEEEEEAAAAALLLLL DEEEEEAAAAALLLLLL?
only time will tell.
Purchase necessary. Prices and participating organizations may vary. Not intended for pregnant mothers. But not just for men. Not all supplies included in this box. 

did you realize I see film as something that explains the divine?

I don't imagine that heaven is much different from this life we lead now. But I assume some bonuses might be that our possibilities are expanded like they are in animation and with special effects; and I assume all film will be restored to its original quality and we can watch them as they were meant to be watched.

These are things I think as I reread my film history book.

There is danger in my brain.

I disagree with myself very often, by the way

Part of me wants to ignore the romantic in me. I want to blunder happily along my single, film-obsessed life until the day I wake up and realize I'm in love with something other than film, in fact, in love with somebody.

Most parts of me would be horrified to find myself in this situation. I do not receive information well, I struggle with information until everybody ends up with lots of battle scars.

Once I watched a strange French movie with a boy. The people in the movie learned by putting on headphones and having a voice tell them a bunch of facts. I said I'd hate that, he said what's wrong with that, I said if you can't ask any questions why would you believe any of it?



Lately I can't get enough of Bob Dylan's song I want you. Perhaps leaving out the complexity of the character of Bob Dylan, it's everything I've found endearing and infuriating when boys have told me they liked me. The harmonica is the happiest, most sincere troubadour in the world and I stare wide-eyed thinking about how someone's just described an entire planet in one word. 
 

sh-boom. no really, dynamite. how much for that dynamite?

yesterday––in a class which I can't decide if I shall refer to it as "avant garde class" or "that wednesday night class" because "critical issues" is such a boring name––I watched this scene from the Antonioni film Zabriskie Point and I desperately wanted to buy some dynamite.

Watch this so that it fills your entire screen and imagine how dreamy it would be to watch on the big screen. (P.S. you'll probably have to go to youtube to do that just because I still have not bothered to change my blog's configurations.) 

 

many happy things happened before and after this clip (for example, I decided to learn how to make official em dashes in my typing but I also made the resolution to continue my obnoxious habit of "over"-utilizing parenthetical phrases) (as if you could over-utilize parenthetical phrases), however, this is all for tonight.

why do i always have uncontrollable cravings for salt?

I should be her for Halloween

Things I love
(excluding all human forms because if I included people someone is going to get upset and cry. Probably me, because I do that. A lot now. Ever since Paraguay, I cry a lot. And it's stopped bothering me. Which may or may not be progress. But there are living people out there now who have seen me cry which didn't used to be a real thing. We can call this side effect number one after having seen freshly dead people. Oh my gosh that's a horrible thing to say. Don't ever say that out loud I'll smack you. And cry.) (OK, also, I would like to note that crying a lot is a relative thing. And, don't worry, my school offered me counseling because of what happened so if it were to become a bad thing then I would just go in for counseling, OK? But really all that's happened is that where previously I would think "I could cry right now" or I would try to hide I was crying, now I just let it all happen. Out in the open. And actually I feel pretty good about it but that's another discussion.)


1. salt


2. film

These are two reoccurring things in my life. Please reference the title of this blog post. Also, reference how I was sitting in Monte Python CLASS tonight, basking in the glow of projector light, thinking to myself how blessed (pronounced bless-ed) everything is. Also, how my grasp of history post 1877 and Muybridge is a lot better than history pre moving pictures. Film makes everything make sense.

And, yes. You should be jealous that I am studying Monte Python and their influences. I'm getting back into funny.


And if we're going to get away from all things concrete, I love


3. challenges


And I have quite a few challenges on my radar. And I'm certain I'm going to divide and conquer all of them. For example, I AM going to watch (at least one ENTIRE episode of) Twin Peaks even if I want to pee my pants in terror. Because I'm not going to be stopped by fear. I'm way stronger than that. 

(Other challenges you'll have to ask me about because they're for personal conversations not for dear internet.)