“In films, we resist.”
April 12, 2010
Apparently, I’m intense.
If you, reader, have had this conversation about said “intensity” with me, thank you. Your physical reactions – from tilted head leaking smirks, to outright pity – are loads more expressive than whatever attached comment you thought would protect me. If anything, I’m earnestly thankful that you would spend the time with me, knowing full well revelations would only lead me back to one, me.
I can’t explain it, and it’s not necessarily in this lifetime that it’s worth explaining – but that goes without saying. Saying nothing.
I just feel it. Live it.
A major project is in the queue.
It’s core is waiting.
Whether that wait is in transit, in the liminal, the subaltern, on the toilet.
I’ve been memorizing a lecture by Pedro Costa, entitled, “A Closed Door That Leaves Us Guessing”
The Rabbit Hunters (2007)
Some gems from that lecture:
The pleasure of making a film is in making a film, it’s not in showing a problem. The first reason to make a film is for the pleasure of making it, the pleasure of the work. If there’s no pleasure in the work, there’s nothing.
The article, or transcription is so rich, I’m just dropping my finger anywhere on the page:
At bottom, being a student of cinema is a very solitary labour, because it involves working on your own feelings. To be good, you must work on your own feelings. It is perhaps impossible to really know yourself, but when you direct an actor, when you have an actor in front of you, you can only work with feelings.
Ok, so it’s fundamental material, but it’s packaged in a way that you just can’t knock… really.
The Rabbit Hunters (2007)
You directors who want to make films, you must work to make each shot, each image, each speech from an actor, each sound, you must work to make them like the first shot ever made, the first sound ever heard. That doesn’t mean originality or something like that. Not at all, in fact it’s exactly the opposite. It’s a matter of working with the oldest feelings, as Chaplin did. He worked and worked and worked, to show feelings as if it were the first time.
The Rabbit Hunters (2007)
.Fin.
