30 minutes from a 3-hour long interview. From youTube.
In this Israeli documentary, the filmmaker comes to terms with his memory loss around his participation in the Israeli war in Lebanon, and his role as facilitator/witness to horrible slaughters of Palestinians in that war.
The animation is beautiful, and allows the audience to come closer to an incredibly difficult topic. It allows the viewer to take the journey with him as he comes to terms with the horrors of war.
Most remarkably, the film was made with the full support of the Israeli government, and received 6 Israeli 'academy awards', while presenting the troubling reality that Israeli troops facilitated a slaughter that echoed the reality of the Nazi slaughter of Jews in the concentration camps - a theme brought up by the film itself.
I went to see it last night when my friend called me up and invited me. She said, "Its animated, its a journey into the past to deal with war trauma memory, it's right up your alley". And so it was.
I learned alot from the techniques of that film. I know I need to make longer pieces in order to draw the viewer in slowly, bring them closer to the difficulty of human violence and loss. This film taught me a great deal about creating that journey for an audience, and making it palatable enough to watch it.
I am most curious about the triggering, the performer-cued video actions that make each production unique.
video in the show produced by boris firquet
Created for Public Domain, Private Dominion (volume 3), an invitational film festival that screens 11/2.
Curated by Ben Hernstrom with copyright-free footage selected by Justin Crimone, the festival provided footage to filmmakers who used it as the raw materials for new short films.
My 7-minute film is a meditation on how looking at war from the perspective provided by the media invites us to take the warrier's viewpoint. Are we complicit, by participating via our imagination? What does the experience of the passivity of viewing do to us, looking at war from this perspective?
I hosted a zombie film festival at the Brillobox last night. The films were awesome, the show, poorly attended, as Pittsburgh enters a new ice age.
I really, really needed to see all those films. Zombie flicks with their seams showing. The 'hey, there's a boom mike in the shot' moments, the 'wow that makeup is bad' moments. Since most of the 32 were 3 minutes long tops, you knew it would be over quickly anyway.
The rawness of the metaphor of 'humans devouring each other for sustenance' still gets me. I love horror like this because it extremes a reality I perceive on a daily basis - people feasting on their own perceptions, feeding on their own judgements of what they imagine to be true, taking satisfaction in their own omnicient narrative voice - fuck, I'm doing it RIGHT NOW in this blog.
Its part of the necessary psychology of being alive.
Best line of the night: "I think you complain just to hear the sound of your own voice." This is my inward response to the noise of other people's complaints most of the time. I hear a lot of it in my job.
Some people complain at the drop of a hat. From how they talk, crossing the street is akin to breaking a leg. Wait five minutes? Noooo, the sky's going to fall.
Best line of the night: "I think you complain just to hear the sound of your own voice." This is my inward response to the noise of other people's complaints most of the time. I hear a lot of it in my job.
Some people complain at the drop of a hat. From how they talk, crossing the street is akin to breaking a leg. Wait five minutes? Noooo, the sky's going to fall.
God forbid they have to survive cancer or something. Yeah I'm harsh but I grew up listening to how much work people have to learn how to walk again after breaking their back, or, the particulars of various surgeries, etc.
I'll admit, I fake sympathy at times. I realize that sometimes people complain about mundane stuff because they believe they are not allowed to discuss what is really bothering them.
I'll admit, I fake sympathy at times. I realize that sometimes people complain about mundane stuff because they believe they are not allowed to discuss what is really bothering them.
Sometimes, people complain because its how they deal with the world. Do they realize that they create their own misery in their own complaints? That they're eating their own exhaust?
Of course I am being an absolute hypocrite right now, complaining about the complainers. On some level I search with how to deal with what I percieve to be patterns of behavior in others, particularly customers at my job, in a way that I don't injure myself with my own response to other people's behavior.
By injure myself, I mean, respond in a way that pollutes my own consciousness (i.e. flying off the handle, judging, complaining, and otherwise making myself miserable in response to the everyday absurdities & entitlement of customer behavior). That sort of reactivity costs me valuable art production time outside of my job.
For the most part, I succeed. I didn't realize what an inner journey it is until I was watching the zombie films last night. There's something therapeutic about watching strangers eat each others guts, sitting there in the dark, with a roomful of acquaintances. And laughing a little at all that fake blood and earnest, clumsy overacting.
For the most part, I succeed. I didn't realize what an inner journey it is until I was watching the zombie films last night. There's something therapeutic about watching strangers eat each others guts, sitting there in the dark, with a roomful of acquaintances. And laughing a little at all that fake blood and earnest, clumsy overacting.
micronarrative videos created as animated text with sequenced audio.
each video is just over a minute in length. this constrains the narrative. language use can be examined more easily.
the choice of sequenced audio refers to the inner necessary logic of story present in each narrative fragment.
I produced 6 of these to be sprinkled throughout the night at the Slumber Party film screening put on by the Matchwood Festival in Braddock on Friday August 22.
I expect to produce more. They point to the joint-like structure of narrative content. Created between-fillers, like putty, which is what a great deal of language is to story -- language provides the timing of dissemination of information, the pacing of 'plot', the power of the moment of delivery of content to the audience. the timing of a story as part of a seduction of the audience, as it were.
the choice of sequenced audio refers to the inner necessary logic of story present in each narrative fragment.
I produced 6 of these to be sprinkled throughout the night at the Slumber Party film screening put on by the Matchwood Festival in Braddock on Friday August 22.
I expect to produce more. They point to the joint-like structure of narrative content. Created between-fillers, like putty, which is what a great deal of language is to story -- language provides the timing of dissemination of information, the pacing of 'plot', the power of the moment of delivery of content to the audience. the timing of a story as part of a seduction of the audience, as it were.
