How to see early silent films (68mm Biograph)

The IMAX of the 1890s | How to see the first movies (2019/Dave Kehr/MoMA) 11'

Related :

• Louis Lumière (Rohmer/Renoir/Langlois)
• Les films Louis et Auguste Lumière 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12 (YouTube)

On A Dirt Road (contemplative video)

The Unbearable Lightness of Being from Janos Kish on Vimeo.(2018/Janos Kis/Cambodia) 13'18"

There is a cow lounging on the side of a dirt road. Is it a sacred cow? This is not a postcard... the cow is ruminating patiently.  She whips her tail to chase away the flies, and shakes her large black ears. She is alone, abandonned on the side, at a distance in the frame. Not too estranged, not too familiar.

The landscape is planted there for eternity. The road, although losely defined, with patches of grass here and there, is mostly sand, stretching perfectly in the axis of the shot. A symetrical composition only distracted by the excentric position of the cow and a huge tree on the opposite side of the road, as a counterbalance. And behind the cow, a power line with dancing posts that can't seem to keep a straight posture.
The road has no end in sight it seems, as it unrolls up to the horizon, rigth into a perpendicular line of trees, which probably follows a perpendicular road. We can see, from time to time, silhouettes driving the horizon line, through the trees, from the right side to the left side and vice versa.

It's only when the first motorbike, in yellow, drives through the road, at the 3 minutes mark, that we see it slalloming in the background, following a hook on the right, behind a dense bush, then turning to the left again to exit the frame behind a row of trees. Another motorbike, all black, rides the same road at the same moment, but from the back, where we didn't see it coming in, toward us, after crossing the first motorbike.

When the yellow motorbike did its first hook, we notice something moving on the road at this place. There is in fact a second cow that was lounging and merging its grey colour with the sand, like a rock on the road. Now it is standing and moving around, we can definitely see a second cow in the distance, with a whipping tail and long black ears. She is standing right in the axis of the shot, or nearly so, presenting her profile to us. The two cows are a plastic duo. One is close, one is far. One on the left side, one on the axis. One is lounging, one is standing. One is looking at us, one is ignoring us.

This scene is reminiscent of the famous opening of Satantango (1994) where Béla Tarr and Agnes Hranitzky film cattle in an enclosure until the cows move outside in the streets of an abandonned Hungarian village. Tarr and Hranitzky slowly track down the cows as they make their way outside, like if the herd was pulling the camera with its slow locomotion.
But here, Janos Kis chose to keep a static camera (like in most of his short contemplative films), because the cows stay in place and it is the frame that defines the storyline of the shot. The composition is extremely calm and peaceful. Only brievely interrupted by the passage of bikes or trucks, whiches are merely scratching the road surface, like floating on a dirt cloud, dispersed by the wind. The immobile cows dictate a static shot. The animation of the shot comes from the intermittent crossing of vehicules along this road.

The static camera reminds of the work of the Lumière brothers (who shot only short documentaries of a single view by technical constraints, in black and white and silent of course), Andy Warhol (who used extreme long takes of the same view in black and white), James Benning (who films experimental documentaries of static shots of empty landscapes), Niklaus Geyrhalter (who is a German documentarian compiling single takes of various length of places and landscapes)...

My first thought was it must be India. But Janos confirmed me it was located outside of Siem Reap, nearby the world famous Angkor Conservation Park, in Cambodia. It is an ode to this country's peaceful landscape, of a rural back lane, almost abandonned, but still used daily by some lonely riders.

The title refers to Milan Kundera's 1984 Czech book about a handful of adulterous intellectuals living in Prague during the year 1968 when the political liberalization allowed for the Prague Spring, a period of artistic florish and protests. The book was put into film by Philip Kaufman in 1988.
Far from the intellectual romance of this book and film, the title still evokes, out of context, a Buddhist mantra, a Zen koan, which is examplified by the look at this passive cow. This unmoveable cow represents the spiritual detachment of the contemporary world full of attentions and notifications, This dirt road is the antithesis of the speedways of information, back to the roots of humanity in a simplier world, more grounded, closer to nature, more laborious than industrious, in one word pastoral.

*  *  *

A few words from the filmmaker Janos Kis :

"It was early morning, the sky was beautiful when I was driving my car on the dirt road and suddenly realised a cow in a picturesque background. I parked the car nearby but not very close to observe what's happening. I'm not sure how long it took but I realised this was what I was looking for. Everything looked like a painting. My camera equipment was on the backseat. I chose the lens with soft tones, perfect for the occasion. Set up the tripod, camera, microphone and was waiting for the right moment. I never just start rolling if I don't feel the time has come.

Sometimes it takes 5, 10, 15 minutes or more to wait before I start rolling, and at the end : "Did you see the angel going through?" as Lajos Koltai (HSC/ASC Cinematographer) told me once during a directing and cinematography workshop in Budapest. Istvan Szabó (Oscar winning director) used to ask frequently L. Koltai on set after an important shot.

So that day everything was at the right place in the right time. Not only the two cows, but all the motorbikes, the trucks, even the birds and the pagoda music from the distance. I just had to wait for an Angel and cut.

I hardly cut even the beginning or the end of my film's if not necessaries nor do I color correct them. As for all my films, this one is shot on a Pro Canon DSLR camera with the appropiate lenses and I used a Pro Rode shotgun mic.

The most difficult thing is when shooting extreme long takes outdoor the lighting is constantly changing.
My films are shorts but very slow, a kind of Zen films. All the stories have beginning, middle and end within an invisible timeline.
The storyline is written by the life itself. I'm not directing the film in the classical meaning of the word. I'm just a messenger.

The audience must be very much devoted. As the respected director Bela Tarr used to say "They must make their decisions at the first few minutes they leave, or stay and watch the film till the end."


Find more of Janos Kis's short contemplative films on Vimeo and on YouTube.
His blog is JanosKisPhotoAndVideography


See also :

• Stasis film 3 (behaviourist) 
• 10 min of life at the time
• Live in the moment : Make a 10min pause for a change
• Losing the ability to contemplate nature for itself 
• Oversparse 

Rooftop under construction (contemplative video)

Building (2014/Arthur Caria/Brazil)1'58"

This shot is not only Black & White, but devoid of greyscale as well. Strictly pure black and pure white. For the most part. We notice a shadow on the bottom right corner which divulges a possible video effect used to saturate the contrast to the max. With an odd canted angle this view could be a photograph of the Soviet Constructivism. The aesthetic is sublime. But it is very frontal. This scene is a black cardboard cutout (pure shadow) against a white background (pure light) as only a camera could see it. These minuscule silhouettes remind me of the fine paper cutting of one Lotte Reiniger (The Adventures of Prince Ahmed/1926). But these stickmen aren't animation, this is real life.

From a high vantage point we observe the last level of a building under construction, and a team of busy workers : 8 on top and a couple more on the lower levels (they are caged in a prison of wires). The handheld camera emphasizes the voyeur point of view of a James Stewart in Rear Window (1954).The telelens and the monochromy flatten the perspective and hang the characters as if on a clothline. Their walking around looks even more perious than it probably is. It's like if all of them walked the edge of a wall top, and were about to fall to their death. Yet they hang around with the most natural decontraction. Look at this one kneeling over. See that one crawling on all four. This is scary!

From time to time appears the steel bars left naked awaiting for the next concrete pillars to be poured in for a higher level. These are like weapons erected to kill. And the workers, like magicians, pass through without harm, seamlessly. If you look carefully, you could see a white reflection coming from above, on their hats, shoulders and backs. Especially when they move one over the other, the white delimitation can still define the silhouettes mixed together.

Then the zoom comes in and reaches closer. Two guys hold a hammer. Another two roll up a rope or a wire. Others stand there idling. But who is the boss? It is difficult to tell. One seems to talk while others around him listen. He's got their attention. But look at the one crawling, he's now bending over the edge and slaming a hammer downstairs. This one will surely fall over.
We contemplate their whereabouts without sound, without words, and figure out bit by bit what is going on, who they are, what they want... This is the power of minimalist narration.

Part of a series of "One-Shot-Video-Poems" filmed in 2015 by Arthur Caria. See his website Cinemática Expositiva for more clipoems like this one. Or Unheimlich here.


See also :

• Stasis film 3 (behaviourist) 
• 10 min of life at the time
• Live in the moment : Make a 10min pause for a change
• Losing the ability to contemplate nature for itself 
• Oversparse 

Matthew Barney's new film : REDOUBT (2019)

REDOUBT (2019/Matthew Barney/USA) YouTube trailer (5'29")

IT MUST BE HEAVEN (Elia Suleiman) - Press conference Cannes 2019

 Elia Suleiman admitted being a fan of Jacques Tati. But also a fan of Roy Andersson's films and Tsai Ming-liang's films. Really interesting words on silence in his films too.

It Must Be Heaven received a Special Mention at Cannes 2019.

Elia Suleiman hadn't make a new film for 10 years since The Time That Remains (2009)

Miksang and Contemplative Photography

Quiet Mind - Introduction to Miksang and Contemplative Photography

Co-production Canada-Singapore. 2003. (11')

"Miksang is a Tibetan word meaning "good eye." It represents a form of contemplative photography based on the Dharma Art teachings of Chögyam Trungpa, in which the eye is in synchronisation with the contemplative mind. The result of this particular perception of the world, combined with photography, produces a peculiar and open way of seeing the world. Miksang pictures tend to bring the observer back into the original contemplation state of the author of the picture. The pictures can bring one back to a purer perception of reality that is often neglected. Miksang involves nothing fancy, no special setup; only a visual capture, in the proper state of mind, of everyday's reality" (Wikipedia)

(Photo by  Julie DuBose)

(PAJ Photography)

(Photo by  Julie DuBose)

(photo by April Siegfried)

• Miksang.com (Julie DuBose)
• Contemplative Photography - Miksang (Michael Wood) 11' video interview
• "What is Miksang, really? 
• More Miksang photographies on Pinterest

Desert Films (Gala Hernández)

From the Best Video Essay of 2017 list in Sight & Sound (dec 2017) :


Films desiertos: por una geopoética del desierto cinematográfico (6'04") Gala Hernández

Films desiertos: por una geopoética del desierto cinematográfico from Gala Hernández on Vimeo. 

Contemplative Films cited (in order):

1. Gerry (Gus Van Sant, 2002)
2. Freedom (Sharunas Bartas, 2000)
3. El Cant dels Ocells (Albert Serra, 2008)
4. La Région Centrale (Michael Snow, 1971)
5. Proximity (Inger Lise Hansen, 2006)
6. Cobra Mist (Emily Richardson, 2008)
7. BNSF (James Benning, 2013)
8. Fata Morgana (Werner Herzog, 1971)
9. Desert (Stan Brakhage, 1976)
10. Chott-el-Djerid: a portrait in light and heat (Bill Viola, 1979)

Contemplative Spectatorship (Zen)

"Ensō" (=Circle in Japanese, Emptiness in Zen)

This thread is for all the Zen proverbs and aphorisms relating to the Contemplative Cinema, its making or its spectatorship. How to be a contemplative viewer?

I will post them in this place, in the comment section, as I find them. Feel free to post your own findings in the comments, or to comment your favourites.

Live in the Moment : Make a 10min pause for a change

Andy Puddicombe: All it takes is 10 mindful minutes

TEDsalon London Nov 2012 - 9'24"

When is the last time you did absolutely nothing for 10 whole minutes? Not texting, talking or even thinking? Mindfulness expert Andy Puddicombe describes the transformative power of doing just that: Refreshing your mind for 10 minutes a day, simply by being mindful and experiencing the present moment. (No need for incense or sitting in strange positions.)

Related :

• Do nothing for 2 min / 10 min of Life at the Time / A Slow Year (conceptual videogame) 
• Enso (Zen Circle)
• La révolution du silence (Krishnamurti)

Leviathan (Paravel/Castaing-Taylor)

Leviathan (2012) Q&A at NYFF (30 Sept 2012) 37'16"

Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel

Q : "What does the film say about the commercialization of fishing?"

Lucien Castaing-Taylor : "Nothing.
We are not trying to say anything. But one thing we're trying to do is to make films that don't say anything. Films, like everything humans make, are always about something in some way. But to imagine that they are about something that could be expressed in words, outside of the fabric of the film itself, is kind of ludicrous, because then you wouldn't make the film, you would write it. But fiction films in particular, narrative films, are not reducible to a point, or to making a statement about the world. And non-fiction, documentary, suffers by contrast, with this burden that spectators put on it, that filmmakers put on it, that programmers put on it... which is always elaborating an argument about the world, it is reducible to making a statement about the world (it's usually a political or a value-added statement). And to imagine that the whole swat, that whole domain of reality, of everything that is non-fiction, is divested of its plenitude, of its richness, of the all experiential, sensory quality of actually being in the world, of lived experience itself, so that could be reduced to 'meaning', encapsulated in language, in prose... That is such a travesty for those kind of films, which is why so many documentaries are so weak.
In our earlier work, and particularly in this work, we definitely didn't want to make a film that was reducible to making a point, that was reducible to a set of political propositions about fishing or anything like that."

Q : "[..] You make decisions when shooting, and certainly when editing. What your intention is for the audience to get from this film? [..] Human beings impose or interpret meaning..."

Lucien : "[..] I can't answer it. [..]
Obliging the filmmakers to articulate their intentions about the work rather than allowing the work to work itself on you, and for you to induce or deduce, and to guess at intentions (most of which are unconscious, and can't even be formulated by filmmakers in words, anyway the more profound intentions) is I think a more healthy way to go."

Véréna Paravel : "We didn't want to impose our intentions as a maker, and this why we wanted to share the camera with [the sailors]. This morning we talked with Philippe Grandrieux about something Gilles Deleuze said sur l'art et les animaux..."

Philippe Grandrieux : "First I want to tell you it's an incredible movie. It's so strong, so powerful. All these questions about intentionality... but the world is without any intentionality. There is no intentionality in birds, in flowers, in trees..."

Gilles Deleuze (cited by Grandrieux): "Quand on écrit on doit être à la place de l'animal. On ne doit pas le considérer comme un sujet. On doit écrire à la place de l'animal."

Véréna : "That's it. We shouldn't write for an animal, we should be the animal. This is what making a film is for us. My reference to Deleuze meant that it's not about representing the 'real' but the real is to aim at the 'real'. It's not about demonstration, but more about implication. Not writing for the viewer, but to be this."
Lucien : "Also implicit in what Deleuze says is this implicit critique of so much cinema (which is derived from so many inventions from the theatre, in many regards, in its mise en scène, staging of the characters, and in particular the narrative conventions, and so on) is about the private foibles of humanity : human comedy, comedy of errors, comedy of manners... which could be full of joy and could be immensly amusing, but which is in the end, profoundly familiar (or should we say superficially familiar) and art, or cinema, or literature that aspires to do something more really yokes us back to our nature which is fundamentally animalic. No matter how culturally constructed they are, no matter how psychologized they are, we are all beasts in the end, we are all creatures, we will all turn to dust and be subsumed by something much larger, and greater, and inestimably incomprehensible in comparison to this really rather parochial domain of humanity. Very little cinema seems to aspire to resituate the human in this larger swat of nature to which we inescapably belong."

* * * 

Interview de Véréna Paravel par Laure Adler (Hors Champ; France Culture; 10 Oct 2012) [MP3] 44'

Véréna Paravel : "C'était vraiment important pour nous que la paternité du film soit distribuée. C'est à dire que le film a été fait par nous, certainement, parce qu'on a orchestré cette symphonie de la nuit et des éléments. Mais les éléments nous ont aidés aussi à faire ce film. Les pécheurs nous on aidés aussi, pusiqu'on leur a accroché les caméras sur la tête. Donc on a cette perspective céphalique-là. On est accorché à leur tête, dans leur corps, dans leur mouvement de tête. Puis on est avec les poissons qui se batent [..] Y'a une absudité, c'est dégoutant.
On est dans une bestialité inter-espèce, où au font les hommes se confondent avec les animaux. Les hommes finissent par ressembler à ces bêtes. Ou les bêtes nous ressemblent tellement. On passe de l'un à l'autre. C'est un film liquide. Y'a une fluidité dans le montage ou on va de la mer, au ciel, aux poissons, au pécheur, aux oiseaux qui sont des prédateurs... C'est cette guerre où on est tous des prédateurs.
Et puis il y a le monstre. Revenons au Léviathan, qui est là. Et si on le réveille, c'est le chaos, c'est le trouble de l'ordre qu'il y a au départ, s'il y en avait un. On est en train de réveiller le monstre. Le Léviathan il est partout : c'est les hommes, c'est le bateau, le film lui-même.
C'est un monstre ce film, et c'est pour ça que personne n'arrive à le classifier maintenant. [..]"

* * *

Related CCC Filmography :

• La Région Centrale (1971/SNOW/Canada)
• The Seasons (1975/PELESHIAN/Armenia)
• Confession (1998/SOKUROV/Russia) 
• La Peau Troué (2004/SAMANI/France) 
• Les Hommes (2006/MICHEL/France)
• Sub (2006/LOUSTAU/France) 
• At Sea (2007/HUTTON/USA)
• Sweetgrass (2009/CASTAING-TAYLOR/BARBASH/USA)
• Alamar (2010/GONZALEZ-RUBIO/Mexico)
• Two Years At Sea (2011/RIVERS/USA)
• Hurtigruten Minutt for minutt (2011/NRK/Norway)

Related : 

• Stasis films 2 (landscape) / Contemplative TV cruise
• Losing the ability to contemplate Nature for itself 
• L'eau dormante (Bachelard)
• Immanent Hutton (Sitney)
• Temps et récit (Ricœur) 

Conférence sur rien (John Cage)

Qui est John Cage ? [MP3] 1h23'
Rencontre avec Jean-Yves Bosseur, Joëlle Léandre, Saladin Matthieu, Bastian-Dupleix Isabelle (BPI; Centre Georges Pompidou; Paris; 24 Sept 2012) [PDF]

Célébrer la mémoire de John Cage, qui aurait eu cent ans en 2012, dans une bibliothèque ? Nul doute que le musicien, performeur, poète et penseur aurait trouvé l'idée cocasse ; lui dont la pratique, comme celle de Dada, Duchamp ou Satie, défie le monde de l'art et ses institutions.
La Bpi relève ce défi. Dans ses espaces, parmi ses collections de livres et de disques, Bernard Fort interprètera la Conférence sur rien (Lecture on nothing), méditation poético-philosophique précisément réglée, que John Cage considérait comme une composition à part entière.
Puis dans la Petite Salle du Centre Pompidou, le compositeur Jean-Yves Bosseur s'entretiendra avec Matthieu Saladin sur la personnalité, l'influence et l'actualité de Cage. Cette rencontre sera ponctuée par les interventions musicales de la contrebassiste Joëlle Léandre, dont l'oeuvre est tissée de multiples rencontres (de Cage à Steve Lacy en passant par Fred Frith). 

Conférence sur rien (Bernard Fort) 44'22"


Related :

• Sound is just sound (John Cale)
• John Cage: Lecture on nothing (4 March; 3.58AM GMT) [Listen]
• John Cage: Q&A from Norton lectures 1988-89 (5 March; 5.28PM GMT) [Listen]

Fogo (Olaizola)

Fogo (2012/Yulene Olaizola/Mexico/Canada) 1h01'
Cannes 2012 - Quinzaine des Réalisateurs

The deterioration of a small community in Fogo Island is forcing its inhabitants to leave and resettle. Places once occupied by humans are now becoming part of the tundra landscape. In spite of a condemn future, there are some residents who decide to remain, holding on to their memories and grieving for the past, when life in Fogo was different.

Interview :

"Basically in those kind of shots, where they are just walking and we are shooting the landscape, it took us a long time to set up the camera, to decide the place and to frame... So we were working on that for a few hours and then I just gave them directions from which point to which point to go. And everything else was all improvisation. They just had to walk. When I talk about improvisation, it's when they talk to eachothers in the dialogues. So the dialogues are really improvised. [..]
The film is about life, it's about people who love their land. I think all those concepts were appearing in the film little by little. Maybe I didn't have them all clear in my head. I was inspired by what I saw in that place. And one of the things that stroke me the most was to meet these two characters, Norm and Ron, who are young guys compared to the rest of the island's population. Thye never got married for exemple. They used to live outside of the island where they could find more jobs, but they decided to come back to the island even though they probably knew they couldn't find a woman there. But they don't care about that. they don't care about founding a family. They wanted to be in their land. That's one of the things I wanted the film to reflect. And that's why I decided to tell this story about this question of staying or leaving the island. [..]
I think the rhythm of the film is connected to the life on the island, where the people are really connected to Nature. The weather is one of the most important things. I exagerated the slow rhythm a little bit maybe to illustrate the idea that it's dying. That's why the characters sometimes stop and stare for a while. It was my way to reflect the idea that they were thinking about the end of something. The end of the life in that place. Or the end of the world. It was my way to say it in a subtle manner. [..]
If you see my other films, especially the last one, Artificial Paradises (2011), which I shot in a Mexican jungle, the connection with Nature and the character is also very special. But it was also because I chose a real character in Fogo, who was connected to Nature. So I don't show my personal connection with Nature, but theirs."

Yulene Olaizola (Quinzaine des réalisateurs; 22 mai 2012)  

Related filmography :

• La nuit nomade (2012/Marianne Chaud/France) 
• Paraísos artificiales (2011/Yulene Olaizola/Mexico/Netherlands/USA) 
• Le quattro volte (2010/Frammartino/Italy) [critique contemplative]
• Alamar (2009/Gonzales-Rubio/Mexico)
• La Vie Moderne (2008/Depardon/France)
• Hamaca Paraguaya (2006/Encina/Paraguay)
• Les Hommes (2006/Ariane Michel/France)
• Honor de Cavalleria (2006/Serra/Spain)
• Profils paysans: le quotidien (2005/Depardon/France)
• Hukkle (2002/Palfi/Hungary)
• Profils paysans: l'approche (2001/Depardon/France)
• Freedom (2000/Bartas/Lithuania)
• Mother and Son (1997/Sokurov/Russia)
• A Humble Life (1997/Sokurov/Russia)

* * *

La Nuit Nomade (2012/Marianne Chaud/France)

An ethnographic documentary on a small tribe, dying out to rural exodus, of 20 families in a remote valley of the Indian Hymalayas (Kashmir region). Marianne Chaud is a French student in ethnography who has been studying their language and is able to talk to them directly, without interpreters, which they are quite grateful and admirative about. She follows them in the harsh conditions of this high mountain climate, on foot, only assisted by a sound engineer, during a few months. A totally immersive document about real people victim of the exploitation of the luxury business (the kashmir wool) for which they raise kashmir goats at the price of great sacrifices for them and their families.

Related :

• Interview with Yulene Olaizola (5')
• Stasis films 2 (landscape) 
• Losing the ability to contemplate Nature for itself
• Solitude (France Culture) 

Sombre; Un Lac (Mariel)

La forêt dans "Sombre" et "Un lac" de Philippe Grandrieux (Charlotte Mariel)
23 mars 2012 (forumdesimages) 1h09'

Charlotte Mariel prépare une thèse de doctorat en cinéma, sous la direction de Nicole Brenez, sur l’appréhension de la nature où s’entrelacent science, cinéma et poésie. Elle écrit parallèlement un mémoire de philosophie sur H.D. Thoreau et J. Mekas. Existe-t-il une manière naturelle d’être au monde ? Pouvons-nous, au cinéma, faire l’expérience, non d’un retour à la nature, mais de la nature ? Munis de telles questions, nous pourrions approcher du traitement de la forêt dans Sombre et Un lac. Philippe Grandrieux y révèle, avec force et humilité, ce qu’a à voir le cinéma avec la poésie, le conte et la vie. Charlotte Mariel Ce cours de cinéma a eu lieu le 23 mars 2012 dans le cadre du cycle de films "Mille et une forêts", au Forum des images, Paris.

Filmographie citée :

• Sombre (1998/Philippe Grandrieux/France)
• Un lac (2009/Philippe Grandrieux/France)

Bibliographie:

• L'Enfer in Divine Comédie (Dante; 1321)
• Henri David Thoreau 
• L'adolescent (Dostoievski; 1875)
• Aurore (Friedrich Nietzsche; 1881)
• Tractatus logico-philosophicus (Ludwig Wittgenstein; 1921)
• Eloge de la main (Henri Focillon; 1934)
• Francis Ponge
• La barque le soir (Tarjei Vessas; 1968)
• L'anti-nature: éléments pour une philosophie tragique (Clément Rosset; 1973)
• La perte de l'évidence naturelle (Wolfgang Blankenburg; 1991)
• Forêts: Essai sur l'imaginaire occidental (Robert P. Harrison; 1992)
• Le Silence des bêtes, la philosophie à l'épreuve de l'animalité (Élisabeth de Fontenay; 1998)

P.S. Grandrieux se prononce [granrieu] (le D du milieu est muet)!


Voir aussi:

• Tropical Malady (Jacques Aumont)
• La forêt (Hervé Aubron) 
• Losing the ability to contemplate Nature for itself / Losing the ability to contemplate Art for itself

Louis Lumière (Rohmer, Renoir, Langlois)

Louis Lumière (1968/Eric Rohmer/France) Documentaire TV

Jean Renoir et Henri Langlois interviewés par Eric Rohmer à propos des prises de vue des opérateurs des frères Lumière des origines du cinéma primitif.

The Lumière Brothers' First Films (1996/Thierry Frémaux/USA) DOC 61' part 1-2-3-4-5-6-7

Related :

• Les films Louis et Auguste Lumière 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12 (YouTube)

Boredcast (AVfestival12)

RADIO BOREDCAST PRESENTS... (Vicki Bennett - People Like Us) website

Time is a curious thing - on one hand we complain about being so busy we just don’t know what to do with ourselves, and on the other hand we literally don’t know what to do with ourselves and say we are bored. Given that we need more time, when we are not killing it, it is also strange that (in the western world) we are so obsessed with speed - the one thing guaranteed to make us miss out on the detail, complexity and depth of experience in exchange for thrills and illusions of gaining something, that “something” often being more time.
In Spring 2011, AV Festival director Rebecca Shatwell asked if I'd like to curate/program me a month-long radio station for AV Festival 12. I was delighted… and also amused - because it seemed like an insane volume of time (if you'll excuse the sonic pun) to be trying to not only keep on aleash but then put into 31 large pens with 24 smaller boxes inside with more little boxes inside that forever decrease yet multiply like Russian Dolls. The first thing that struck me is that 744 hours is quite a long time. 744 minutes is a long time. Four weeks lined up in iTunes is a long playlist. It would be easy to think about how to fill this up as quickly as possible, but that’s Speediness rearing it’s rather worn out head again. “Slow” is subtle, it avoids the obvious, the short cut or the first hurdle; it is to start at the end of the race and see where we are running to. The only thing to be stretched is the concept of what Slow actually might be - the only aim to make it an engaging, entertaining and unpredictable a listening experience as possible.
From August 2011 until this day (well it's not really finished, let alone started yet), my mind has been dancing a little dance, probably a waltz, toying with the ins, outs, longs, shorts and ups and downs of the subject of A Slow As Possible.  The first thing I knew was that the preconception of "Slow" may appear drawn out, long, stretched, and possibly quite…boring. So I decided that it had better not be that. Then I had to think of a name. Spent weeks toying with various ridiculous titles and just couldn't think of one. Then in an email talking about our Broadcast Project (working title), I spelt "Broadcast" wrong… and there was the title. Totally nothing to do with boring at all, no. And the project has often behaved much like this - so many things have either worked themselves out magically or been the opposite of what I expected. For instance, this has been about Slowness but it's been such a huge exercise in collecting, assembling and outputting data, of inviting participants, communicating with 90-100 people at once and trying to gauge in advance how this was all going to work aesthetically as well as having to imagine where the conceptual gaps may be and plug them, that this has been more a case of As Fast As, or As Soon As Possible. But the whole process has been as amazing as it has been immersive.
I decided to invite people who I knew also had worked in radio, and also people who (ironically) were able to work fast and who I knew would respond well to this theme, either because their work somehow related to this already, or because they were very inspired kind of people. Participants were asked to participate as radio hosts making a free form/regular radio show, or as an artist making new work, or to compile a mix of other people/their own work.  Of the approximately 100 people that I invited to participate with radio shows, new audio, mixes and so on, 99% said yes AND delivered!  The enthusiasm and diversity of response was a great thing to witness, to see how each person understood the concept of Slow in relation to their lives and work and then undertook the task. It was a pleasure to get to interact with so many people that Iadmire, and all at once. It transformed the nature of a lot of peoples work that took part.
I simultaneously started the marathon task of downloading 2.5 months of audio from various music blogs, grabbing from and searching through my own and other peoples hard drives, searching for both content but also ideas. As a result I identified a number of themes that would need addressing, and my job would be to provide a very wide scope of material that may not be covered by the outside participants. I also made my own radio shows as "DO or DIY with People Like Us" and also "Radio Boredcast", covering themes that may be missing. The deadline arrived and the pieces of work started arriving from participants, at which point the only thing I could do was buy an A2 notepad and LOTS of post-it notes and get the hell away from the computer, and then begin the job of making a calendar.  It took a month to fill the month - and would have taken another month to listen to a month - so Slowly I listened as Fast As Possible. Then I made lots of selections called "Radio Boredcast Presents…" which are playlists covering related genres like minimalism and dub, as well as more esoteric themes as "Sounds of the Ether" and "Safe Harbours". Then came the response to themes within AV Festival's programming. There would be a crossover in to many of the musical events, themes and participants. There is a whole section on Sleep for instance - to coincide with Steven Stapleton's Sleep Concert, a Remembrance of Peter "Sleazy" Christopherson, plus the Opening Weekend programming reflects many events going on in relation to people like John Cage, Kenneth Goldsmith, Phill Niblock and so on.  Also there are other related themes that we get to exclusively address, for instance the 30th anniversary of Touch - where I have programmed, with the help of Mike Harding from Touch, 30 hours of Touch music. The month ends with a gradual speeding up of the station, to reflect upon speed in relation to slowness, a reflection on the pace in contract to our perceptions, looking at what speed we might expect life to be.

The full list of participants in Radio Boredcast with new and exclusive recordings and shows are Carl Stone, Pseu Braun & Alex Orlov, Touch, Rob Weisberg, Nicolas Collins, Andrew Lahman, Chris & Cosey, Jonathan Dean and Transmuteo, Cheese Snob Wendy, Kevin Nutt, Tony Coulter, Daniel Menche, Scott Williams, John Wynne, Chris Watson, Jem Finer and Longplayer, Tim Maloney, Ergo Phizmiz, Matmos, Dave Soldier, Charlie and Busy Doing Nothing, Andrew Sharpley, Nancy O Graham, Gwilly Edmondez, Anna Ramos & Roc Jiménez De Cisneros, Doug Horne, Irene Moon, David Suisman, Radio Web MACBA, Mark Gergis and Porest, Jez Riley French, Don Joyce, Carlo Patrao and Zepelim, Dorian Jones, Jason Willett, Zach Layton, Primate Arena with Alex Drool and Eran Sachs, David Toop, Dylan Nyoukis, Jared Blum and Gigante Sound, Ed Pinsent, Adrian Philips aka Mr Rotorvator, Axel Stockburger, Craig Dworkin, Felix Kubin, People Like Us, Language Removal Services, Daniela Cascella, John Levack Drever, Joel Eaton, Clay Pigeon, Gudrun Gut, Charles Powne, Carl Abrahamsson, Andreas Bick and Silent Listening, Phantom Circuit, Patti Schmidt aka Wheelie Houdini, Leif Elggren, Ken Freedman, Erik Bünger, Douglas Benford, Christof Migone, BJ Nilsen, Andy Baio, Adam Thomas aka Preslav Literary School, Caroline Bergvall, Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza, Tapeworm, Brent Clough and The Night Air, Ilan Volkov, Nat Roe, Steven Ball, X41, The Long Now Foundation, Sharon Gal, Michael Ruby, Jonathan Leidecker, DJ/rupture, Gordon Monahan, Michael Cumella aka MAC, Lloyd Dunn and nula, DDDJJJ666, and Kenneth Goldsmith.

While listening, you may hear adults talking for hours about slowness and children complaining about how boring it all is, thematic freeform radio shows, mathematical experiments and time-based compositions, field recordings of nature’s cycles and underwater rumblings, musical meanderings through memory and inner worlds of sleepless nights; across landscapes and back through time, discovering the world of ritual and speaking in tongues by way of babbling poets and bubbling brooks full of musical elephants, a voyage into deep concréte through art gallery toilets, scientific discussions on insects and evolutionary biology,ultrasound recordings of bats, journeys through very slow cheese, soundscapes from faraway lands with long phone calls full of language removal, testcard music and shipping forecasts, vast sweeping summaries of the entire history of everything, and then… Silence. Outside of this will be programming of thematic playlists all the way through “Acconci” (Vito) to “Zzz…” (Leif Elggren & Thomas Liljenberg)

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Radio Boredcast is hosted by BASIC.fm, and there's a free Android and iPhone app that you can download now as one way to listen to the radio station while on the move. BASIC.fm already exists in it's own form, and magically will change into Radio Boredcast throughout the month of March.



Daily Program : 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20-21-22-23-24-25-26-27-28-29-30-31

Schedule highlights :

• John Cage: Lecture on nothing (4 March; 3.58AM GMT) [Listen]
• Chris Watson: Luskentyre (4 March; 7.27AM GMT)
  Luskentyre is a 32-minute time compression of a cycle of the tide on a beach in the western isles of Scotland.
• Kenneth Goldsmith: Seven American deaths and disasters (4 March; 9.58AM GMT) [Listen]
  Lecture by KENNETH GOLDSMITH 11.06.10 à Université Paris Est Marne-La-Vallée, Cité Descartes
• Radio Boredcast presents… BORING (5 March; 1.18PM GMT) [listen]
  Radio Boredcast asked a bunch of young people how they felt about boredom...
• John Cage: Q&A from Norton lectures 1988-89 (5 March; 5.28PM GMT) [Listen]
• Cheese Snob Wendy: Enjoying cheese is slow (5 March; 6.59PM GMT) 
• ...

Related :

• As Slow As Possible (AV festival 12)

Silent Art (Abramovic)

This is a silent party

Silent Party (Sundance 2012) 24 Jan 2012

• Silence for a Talkie (Brooks Barnes; NYT; 24 Jan 2012) 
• Marina Abramovic Throws a Silent Party at Sundance (Jada Yuan; NewYorkMag; 24 Jan 2012)

Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present (2012, HBO documentary) 99' IMDb

MOCA Gala 2011: An Artist's Life Manifesto (12 November 2011, Los Angeles) video 4'44"

Marina Abramović: The Artist Is Present (MoMA 14 March - 31 May 2010)

For every day of the run, for every hour that the museum was open, Abramovic sat stoically in a chair in the middle of a squared-off space where museum-goers were invited to sit across from her and look into her eyes -- one at a time, for as long as they wished. Meanwhile, upstairs in the gallery, live performers, many of them nude, recreated works from Abramovic’s 40-year career. The show became a phenomenon, eliciting long lines, attention-hungry scenesters, public weeping, and even a video game. In the process, it made performance art a topic of popular discourse. The show also made Yugoslav-born Abramovic a cover-girl celebrity at the age of 65.

Losing the ability to contemplate nature for itself

Should something happen at the end of the pier?

Must this trail lead somewhere at all?

Tok Tokkie, Namibia

Would a cataclysm make this place any more spectacular ?

Antarctica

No need for suspense here

Namibian desert

Who said a desert was emptiness?

Little Sandy desert; Australia

Does unfamiliarity frighten you?

Would a back story improve your impressions?

Beardmore Glacier; Antarctica

Is it plain to you?

Over-dramatized oil war or peaceful oasis?

Lybia desert

There is still beauty where there is "nothing"

Bonneville salt flats; Nevada

 If you find this boring get the hell out!

Atacama desert; Chile

THAT IS CONTEMPLATION

If you're not moved by the immensity of the landscape, by the humbling scale, by the subtle variations in uniformity, by the depth of emptiness, by the simple beauty of Nature... you're not ready to immerse yourself in contemplative cinema which requires you to leave at the door your conformist expectations, your need for patronizing signposting, your self-indulgent entertainment craving. CCC is the antithesis of the horror vacui, there is no fear of emptyness, by embracing the absence of oversignificance. CCC is not merely an uneventful static landscape... far from it, there are macro narratives and micro dramas going on in a minimalist film. But being able to handle the breath-taking contemplation of a simple scenery for more than a hasty glance at a postcard (these pictures above stand in for the real life location where you could experience the view over there, in situ, not just the snapshot on a webpage they are here), is the minimal requirement to enter the understated universe of time-based cinema (as opposed to action/word-based cinema). Go walk deep into the non-industrialized Nature for a while to shake off your conditioned automatism that make you find boring anything that is not instantaneous, pre-digested and dumbing down.  

Related:

• La perte de l'évidence naturelle (Wolfgang Blankenburg; 1991)
• Losing the ability to contemplate art for itself
• Starting from basics all over again
• Stasis films 2 (landscape) / Contemplative TV cruise / 10 min of life at the time / Flâneries urbaines sans paroles  
• L'eau dormante (Bachelard) 
• Immanent Hutton (Sitney) 
• Casting a glance (James Benning) 

We are losing our Listening (Treasure)

5 ways to listen better (Julian Treasure; TED talk; July 2011)

• Making meaning from sound (extraction, pattern recognition differencing, signal from noise, pink noise)
• Filters to pay attention (culture, language, values, beliefs, attitudes, expectations, intentions)
• "Sonority is time and meaning" (Jean-Luc Nancy)
• Visual and auditory cacophony / personal sound bubbles
• Impatience, sound bites, personal broadcasting, desensitivised 
• Conscious listening creates understanding
• Exposure to silence
• Discriminate channels of sounds within an ambient sound
• Savouring: enjoying mundane sounds (the hidden choir)
• Listening positions : active/passive; reductive/expensive; critical/empathetic...
• Live to listen: listen consciously in order to live fully, connected in space and in time to the physical world around us
• Every spiritual path has listening and contemplation at its heart

If people were aware of sound quality and richness, they wouldn't tolerate that the art of cinema continues to rely on artificial soundtracks added in post-production for over a century now!



Related:

• Losing the ability to contemplate art for itself  
• Starting from basics all over again 
• The aesthetic of silence (Susan Sontag) / Foster child of silence and slow time (Keats) 
• Anthropologie du silence (LeBreton)
• La révolution du silence (Krishnamurti)
• Une philosophie des silences et des timbres (Bachelard) 

Anthropologie du silence (Le Breton)

Le silence essentiel à l’écoute nouvelle. Hors du bruit, du grondement d’une civilisation moderne, du tintamarre quotidien, il est un chemin vers l’écoute d’une humanité tapie au fond de l’être. Silence solitaire, silence partagé, silence lourd de sens, à contresens de ce qui voudrait nous éloigner de nous-mêmes. Des mots à lire en silence pour se redonner des espaces où mieux se dire se conjugue avec mieux se taire.

- Anthropologie du silence, David LE BRETON (Faculté des Sciences sociales, Université de Strasbourg II), 1999 [PDF]
- Du silence, David LE BRETON, 1997

Elephant GVS (Bouquet)

Cours de cinéma de Stéphane Bouquet : "Elephant" de Gus Van Sant
14 Jan 2010 (forumdesimages) 1h15'

Lire aussi:

• Temps, Saint Augustin, Gus Van Sant (Dekens) 
• Gus van Sant on Béla Tarr
• To cut or not to cut... (Klinger/Rousseau)
• Sabouraud a minima 1 - 2 - 3