Sunday, November 10, 2024

A Dialogue with Christopher Jason Bell & Mitch Blummer (FAILED STATE)

Upon the recent success of their jointly directed feature Failed State, I spoke with U.S. based filmmakers Christopher Jason Bell & Mitch Blummer about the political and material reality of their film, shaping a fiction out of documentary footage and what can be done to improve the lives of the working class in an increasingly financialized, top down society, a sentiment made even more urgent upon recent events of the past week here in the good 'ol US of A. 


Enjoy our conversation exchanged via email from August - October 2024.


D: Your film FAILED STATE depicts a myriad of people co-existing at a place in time with individual labor conditions. Dale, who leads the film, appears to work for a lowly delivery service operation that sees him completing a multitude of varied tasks on foot with major physical and scheduling demands. In choosing to cover this extreme segment of the gig economy, what informed your approach in chronicling this specific form of labor? And as a non New Yorker, I must ask, does this job Dale and his co-worker Carl work actually exist?


CB: Initially I was supposed to do another feature and then Covid hit. Mitch was mostly out of work and shooting for fun, and Dale -- doing the job you see him doing in the movie -- was still delivering. I asked if each of them were down to do a project, so we shot some pure doc footage and we started writing around that. It was a way to make a movie at a time when nothing else was really possible to do, and it was also a way to look at a very specific form of work, which is one of the largest in the current American economy -- the service industry, and all that's wrapped up in it: the way people perceive it (some see it as beneath them and, in turn, condescend to those that do it), the large aspect of it that is "care" work (being pleasant with everyone all the time or, in a more draining way, being an ear for them -- a therapist of some sort, or just a friend), the toll it takes on the body, how it's one of the few remaining ways to earn a wage but it is also low paid, etc. Through this we can see a character interacting with other characters and trying to carve out a social life in the few ways they can. It offered a lot of opportunity to talk about a lot of different things.


MB: The job that Dale and Rich (among others in the film) carry out day to do certainly exist - one only needs to look as far as TaskRabbit or Craigslist to find quite wild requests for odd jobs and other forms of non conventional labor. The fact that Dale has worked his way into a “Boss’s” network of messengers is also super realistic. Of course the deliveries get more absurd as the film goes on but if you asked Dale, he’d tell you that everything in the film is absolutely real.




D: Did any of the initial non-fiction documentation make it into the final cut? There's one notable interaction Dale has with another bus commuter a third into the film, the gentleman dressed in white with the black snapback, that comes across as notably more fly on the wall and guerilla compared to everything else in the movie. And with this also comes a very seamless "performance" by Dale, whose responses and mannerisms seem anything but performed. To what extent is the Dale we see in the film fictionalized from the real person?


CB: A good amount of that "following around Dale on a real job" ended up in the final film actually. Indeed, that interaction is one of them including a few others. Otherwise they are either in interstitial "b-roll" moments or part of his labor nightmares, so on. Dale is Dale -- much of the difference comes in how he fits into a movie as a character in a dramatic story. He's very open and talkative and social, and his inclination is to always respond. Well, dramatically you can't really do that, so that's when there was much heavier blocking/direction from us. That's still a part of Dale though -- he can be quiet, moody, whatever you want to say that may look like the opposite of how he is when interacting with other people -- it's just a matter of him tapping into that and us figuring out when and where to place that type of energy.


MB: In my mind this film is just as much a documentary as it is a narrative scripted film - even the constructed and written narrative parts of the film are pulled from details from Dale’s life and people in his orbit. Of course actors and performers come in to give him something reliable and predictable to work against but again - Dale would be the first to tell you that what you see on screen is very representative of his real life. More that you might think of the footage in the film is “documentary or verite” style capture. There may be times I’d ask Dale to repeat something (much to his dismay or annoyance) but a lot of what made it in is raw reality. This is a fact I’m fairly proud of - when many think of documentary filming they think of moments like those on the train where we’re capturing a real person’s audio on Dale’s mic or the more frenetic handheld moments, but we were very intentional with some of our longer shots or locked off compositions, even in a verite mode of filming. 


D: Touching on those "labor nightmares" Dale experiences during his fleeting moments of rest, your film manages to depict a very specific sensory experience I've had from time to time, one I'm sure most of us have, but one I've still to see evoked in another film like this does exactly, which are the flashes of random memory we process and reflect upon, that may or may not hold a more defined meaning for rumination. They just invade your mind. Sometimes you can piece them together. Sometimes not.


Some of these flashes include interior episodes from his laboring and others include exchanges and encounters with many different people. It's during these sequences where FAILED STATE morphs from a somewhat objective document to something more expressionistic & abstract (this of course ramps up as dramatic setups unfurl). When and where exactly in the process did these flourishes make their way into the work?


CB: Oh that's a good question. I know we had written scenes in his apartment pretty early on, and him having trouble sleeping. I also remember toying with an idea from video games where he would be at "full health" after sleeping, but we couldn't get it to work and I know Mitch was a little wary of that idea, hahaha. For good reason! Though it'd be cool to figure out a way to incorporate those kinds of ideas somehow...


Mitch, do you remember about the nightmare scenes? I know the editing at the end in the school was your idea and I think the nightmares were the same. I want to say that they really took shape in post, especially in sound design and color.


MB: Chris of course really led the edit and I gave him small feedback throughout the process as his instincts are largely right, but that’s the best thing about working with Chris. He’s able to maintain his original vision very precisely while also giving Dale a huge sandbox to express whatever he wants to, simultaneously giving me a ton of freedom with the visuals and camera work while honing me in on what he is most strongly reacting to. 


I do feel that I contributed to the editing largely in the sculpting of the nightmare sequences and the quicker pace of cuts towards the end during Dale’s descent into losing himself. I felt that these parts of the film are really reflective of mine and Chris’s styles fusing. Where Chris loves sitting on the wide and holding shots and making our audience experience the reality of what he’s expressing, I like to experiment with cuts which actually can be intentionally jarring or call attention to themselves as a contrast to the rest of the film. It’s like taking the pacing of a Tarkovsky film and sprinkling in the sensory moments from a Kelly Reichardt film. 



D: I've gathered from the film a potent Leftist critique of modern labor conditions and our current technocratic capitalism at large. The title, FAILED STATE, is at once both potentially declarative of the film's central thesis but also is evocative of something more abstract. The "failing state" of Dale's physical & mental capacities or in a more cynical and meaner reading, the "failed state" of how one may reach such a strained & difficult point in their life (opposite what I think the title is really getting at, which is the failure of the American economic model & safety net). 


In the past couple of decades, we've seen an increasing proliferation of films with a faux progressive abstract or phony liberalism. Both in the American cinema but in other national cinemas as well. One that takes excessive pride or credit in a vague championing or attention to a number of ideals - personal identity, civil rights or class & labor. Films like Nomadland (2020) & Green Book (2018) are examples of this.


Compared to this strain of filmmaking, FAILED STATE is a tonic for how it chronicles the thorough details of hard laboring and its correlated effects on one's social life and health ramifications. Beyond your own politics that shaped the film as is, to what extent, if any at all, did you find yourselves consciously reacting to or *against* this mainstream of politically "conscious" cinema?


CB: That's a really funny note to bring up re: Nomadland because the film was coming out around the time we were shooting, and I saw it and I contacted Mitch (who had probably seen it before me -- I am very late to most things) and I was like oh no, we have to make sure we are not doing this. It did a lot of things I couldn't stand, and one is that it seemed to (in theory) shine a light on labor conditions, but at the same time seemed hugely dismissive of them. The Amazon warehouse portions were probably the most egregious and the most critiqued -- this is a job where people are peeing in bottles because they can't take breaks and taking painkillers daily for the wear and tear on their body -- but you wouldn't know that from the clean, commercial-doc way that the entire movie is shot in. The Bear (2022) is not a subtle show by any means but it is a lot more realistic to working in a kitchen than the brief stint Fern is able to get at a restaurant. Nothing about working with other people barely able to keep their head afloat, nasty managers trying to make you do more with less, the general condescension one gets for working in the food industry by both customers and owners, etc. What's funny is that I am talking about these from a labor-Left stance but also as a filmmaker -- guys, there is drama here. Comedy, conflict, etc. And none of it is touched upon, so you get a sanitized thing that is really surface level. We didn't want to do any of that and best we could we avoided it.


MB: We spoke about Nomadland A LOT - Chris, correct me if I’m wrong on any of this but I think we were both very disappointed with that film as it was so close to being one which could have meant a lot and related to many of the themes we were trying to get at in Failed State but then missed by a mile.

In Nomadland we see brief glimpses of the service work and labor that Frances McDormand’s character has to undertake to survive and maintain her bohemian “van-life” lifestyle but the film never lingers on it for more than a moment. The emphasis of that film, to me, was to romanticize the aesthetic and beautiful aspects of her journey. There is one part of the film where she is digging in a mine? We see 5 seconds of that, then it’s on to the next. 

We wanted to do the opposite of that - put the emphasis of the film on Dale’s work and find opportunities for storytelling where he is carving out time and energy for a social life and a sense of self beyond his occupation in the nooks and crannies of his schedule where he can fit it. 

I think it’s rare to see films that deal with the work and labor or regular people in mainstream cinema because it’s not pretty. I think in Failed State, we may stylize Dale’s struggles but we were careful not to romanticize them. 


*(I'd like to note that Chris & Mitch sent their replies to my bringing up Nomadland within mere minutes of each other. Chris mentioned this to me and found it hilarious. lol)


D: Count myself in on the Nomadland pile up as well. But I wouldn't expect much genuine labor consciousness anyways from the daughter of a supposed billionaire. 


Mitch, on that point of Dale having to carve out his time and energy for social participation, I want to talk about perhaps the most quietly upsetting scene to me in your film which is when Dale arrives to the airport for lunch with Carl & Melissa only to be left dry & hanging and alone without company. It's suggested earlier when the plan is being made that Dale must sacrifice precious work time in order to simply socialize, so the weight of what may otherwise be a mild inconvenience to the more economically advantaged is a devastating blow to this poor guy. I'm fortunate to have been raised with modest middle class support most of my life, but I've too experienced episodes of being destitute financially, and in those moments, you are truly locked into a raised survival mode, where every dollar that exits your hands and every little thing that accosts your financial standing feels much more like a personal attack. How exactly did a scene with this much personal implication and quite frankly, consciousness for the weight of this situation, come to be in the film?


CB: For most locations we try and figure out what locations we can get away with shooting in. Are they interesting locations? Do they have some sort of innate potent energy? Do they exude "production value"? An airport is a strange place because it is a huge place of transport and transmission, so for a messenger to be there... well, that says enough. Also there's something strange about an airport -- the point of no return through security where you are just surrounded by a completely strange, sanitized area that is full of shops with many that have nothing to do with your trip (luxury apparel stores?)


Anyway, since a large portion of the movie has to do with creating and sustaining friendships during moments of work, I think we knew the story was going to have a few bumps here and there. And I personally would take blow-offs pretty hard, but I would also find myself on the other end of things just not having the energy to go out, or hyping it up a bit. I used to work overnights on the weekends, or live states away and have various family commitments that made me feel like I couldn't go out, etc. For awhile I was making very little but having to pay back student loans and then also living with family that were not super happy that I was staying with them. So I just kind of channeled this energy into something with even more weight, just to show how all of these things can coalesce and dampen a thing of beauty (friendships continuing to blossom, etc). What could've been a very nice day ends up being something profoundly sad. And Dale's reaction to that, of just being super bummed and thinking that nobody wants to be friends with him, is absolutely something I've been through, even if his reaction (like meeting with Melissa in order to say goodbye) is over-the-top for what happened and clearly not a sentiment shared by her. But, emotions are really difficult! And illogical, not 1:1, etc.


MB: I think that almost everyone has had the experience of being "stood up" in some capacity. It's a terrible feeling but it's also a fairly common and normal occurrence. 

Dale was excited at the opportunity to hang with a few friends and getting to JFK from pretty much anywhere in NYC is a serious investment of time so he's thoroughly disappointed when he discovers he was basically blown off. 

This is one of the scenes that a lot of people react to in the film and I think it's because it's such a universal thing that is so within the realm of normal human experience that it affects much of the audience. Whenever I've been blown off, its not like I just pack it up and head out to wherever else I am going. I tend to linger, mosey around, kill time and consider my next move. Seeing Dale displaced in this very public place surrounded by strangers adds to the increasing feeling of alienation he is going through during this section of the film. 



D: Airports are places I've grown up fixating over for their liminal, and sometimes even dreamlike, function in our world. They are of course places of transit, but arrive exorbitantly early or god forbid be delayed and they transform into a vacuous open space cocooned away from the beats of normal life. Depending on the architecture and amenities of the airport, that seclusion from the outside world can manifest in even more surreal ways. It's like a living purgatory of sorts.


In a past talk I had with the filmmaker Paige Smith, she brought up the study of Psychogeography, which explores how psychology and geography interact. Essentially how someone can process and attribute meanings to the places they inhabit and the things and other beings they encounter. Discussing this in relation to an installation piece she was working on which involved the active psychogeographical rumination of walking around by sidewalk, I want to propose this to how you both came to sculpt the reality of Dale's work routine to the more personally etched rendering in the film. One can sense a true native's view of New York City. How much of Dale's personal attachment to his environment informed the fiction you built around him and how much of your own attachments did you ultimately weave into the film as well? 


CB: In the more pure doc moments contained in the film -- we were merely following Dale on whatever job he was tasked with. I think a lot of times these are places he had been to before... generally the same people / companies continue to contract the delivery he works for. He generally has the route mapped out, then, the fastest he can get to somewhere on foot and what subway or bus he needs to take, if needed. In that sense, Dale would see these streets in terms of that -- how quickly can he achieve the package delivery so he can then get another package delivery going? When he is forced to look around -- waiting for a job or on a bus where he can look out the window -- in those moments there are times of peace, wonder, and so on. Keeping with these two modes was crucial to the construction of the film.


As for me -- I haven't lived in NYC in awhile though I frequently visit -- I have great fun memories of it, but a lot of my time was spent working night shifts or overnight shifts during the weekend in order to afford rent and pay off student loan debt. I'd pass by cafes with people writing or chatting with friends, and on Friday night I would be passing by the full bars... life was happening elsewhere! Those feels of anxiety and depression certainly fed into the film.


MB: I’d mostly echo what Chris said about locations and it being a combination of the normal spots Dale would go with places we’d pick out based on logistics or a specific image we had in mind. Often, we'd go to an area or address where Dale would normally go to make a regular pickup or dropoff, but then we would explore that area deeper than his usual route. When we went to City Island I kind of forced Dale to go down to the waterfront where he usually doesn't go and it ended up being interesting and somewhere he never would have gone normally which added to the whimsy of it for him. Exploring the city or whatever area I'm in has always been a regular hobby of mine, whether on skateboard, bicycle or foot and this story spanning a lot of space and aspects of the city was certainly one of the aspects of this story which drew me to it and kept me excited to stay shooting on it over the course of two plus years. There were certainly times we would select locations close to a home base, like where I was living in Crown Heights at the time as there is always a need to be practical and strategic and efficient on a project like this. 

There are times in the film when Dale's environment feels very oppressive. These massive reflective structures surely contain a cold beauty, but they are also walls obscuring the horizon. New York provides opportunity and an anonymity to Dale but there is some visual distinction between hard urban moments and the more idyllic suburban scenes sprinkled throughout the film... I personally love NYC but it can wear on you... I have the privilege of being able to get out quite often, but for many it can feel like the whole world. 



D: That feeling of captivity, of being held back from partaking from the 'fun' or whatever it is other people may be doing that you aren't is dreadful. During my last period of unemployment, which stretched too long for comfort and I guess is an opposite, but nevertheless super dispiriting scenario, that strain of being unable to just enjoy life unburdened by an economic stress just ate me up. I'm from Vegas, and I've grown up and lived here most of my life. Either when you're too caught up in working or desperately looking for it, it's tragic just how much your environment changes in the midst of it all. When Dale is riding on the Ellis Island Ferry where he meets Melissa, both of you employ a rather melancholic montage of New York during sunset. It's a familiar view, canonized in the portrayal of the city over many decades of cinema, but in that moment, the heft of Dale's daily survival informs it differently. What some may perceive as romantic or a city rife with opportunity is perhaps very different for Dale.


Beyond FAILED STATE's gestures towards the gig economy and the form of capitalism our country practices, what are both of your thoughts on where capital and labor stand now and ideally what you think are some core policies or systemic shifts that should be implemented or changed in our system so that the types of pitfalls and traps like we see in the film are remedied or dissolved altogether?


MB: As for policy - I wouldn't be one to presume to give advice to society. But I think we just wanted to have a conversation about the state of the labor in these days. The pandemic really caused a lot of people to question the nature and process and system which is in place which propels the state of work. I am a local 600 member and this international health event sparked a lot of questions as to where our healthcare should come from as well as general labor conditions, hours and norms on the sets of movies and TV shows. People were sharing many stories and the conversation was gaining steam going into a negotiation period for the union's contract. Ultimately the change was marginal and while I understand that gains are made over time and we can't expect a total reversion of labor norms, I think many people were disappointed in the outcome of the negotiations after the advent of covid. 

I personally think that in a world and country as advanced and prosperous as ours that everyone should have access to professional healthcare and that it should be a right which benefits all of society. The employer as a provider of benefits model is clearly less and less applicable to many as time goes on and because of advancements in communication capabilities, many are electing (or being forced) to work for themselves (with an algorithmic overlord) on the gig economy. I don't see this mode of work evil in itself, and I don't necessarily think it should be on employers to provide healthcare to all employees as that allows for people still to slip through the cracks. If we can achieve healthcare for all on a sociopolitial level as a human right I think it would be better for everyone. I also think that workers like Dale should be paid way more. Again, I couldn't articulate policy to achieve this, but whether it's raising the minimum wage significantly or a profit sharing system, we need to invest in the everyday person providing any kind of service. 


CB: Yeah in terms of a solution… not to be too evasive, but it’s something that needs to be decided democratically instead of the top down system we have now. The composition and placement of a union in regards to capital make sense... neighborhood councils (then town, county, state, etc) would be a good way to start steering things in the right direction as well. De-commodify things that are necessary for living (food, housing, and yes probably healthcare). This would require people getting together, dreaming together, seeing what they can do together with what they have, and then doing it. At the very least it would be nice for our country to be working towards something. At best we are not, and at worst, we are and there are no words to describe how grotesque it is.


D: With this blog being a forum for cinephilia, and really of all arts, it’s a must for me to ask about your own experience with films, albums, & other artistic projects - new and old - that mean something to you. What are some works you consider your all-time faves and what have you been enjoying recently?


MB: I have a soft spot for weird mid 90s indies. Everything from Buffalo 66 (1998) to Gummo (1997).

For Failed State I was drawing largely on the work of Sean Baker and Kelly Reichardt.

Baker is an obvious reference, his use of non actors and documentary/narrative hybrid approach. I feel that he starts with character and branches out from there, pulling details for the story out of the performers life which we were certainly doing.

Reichardt is my favorite current working director. I have a tendency to cut like a maniac and keep everything moving really fast, but for a Christopher Bell film I knew I wanted to slow things down and give him shots to hold on. Reichardt isn’t afraid to embrace a long quiet moment and her films exist in the emotional realm firstly.

I’m also a big fan recently of (Ryusuke) Hamaguchi and Todd Haynes… on the more commercial end I love (Denis) Villeneuve’s films.

Chris and I also draw a lot of inspiration from anime and there is at least one direct reference to Dragon Ball in Failed State. Maybe he can speak more about that or just leave it mysterious. 


CB: Some of my all time favorites are really formative. Generally Andrei Tarkovsky stuff, like Mirror (1975), Chantal Akerman, like Rendezvous of Anna (1978), Nagisa Oshima - Sing a Song Of Sex (1967), Three Resurrected Drunkards (1968)... The Up Series... Little Fugitive (1953), Symbiopsychotaxiplasm (1968). Stuff that uses doc elements in interesting ways like Iranian new-wave stuff, Allan King. Peter Watkins stuff especially La Commune (2000). Kelly Reichardt, Bill Douglas' stuff. Donnie Darko (2001) was huge for me in high school and I just rewatched it earlier this year and it held up better than I ever thought it could. Horror favorites are The Exorcist (1973) & The Exorcist 3 (1990), Anguish (1987), Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Kiyoshi Kurosawa's run with Pulse (2001), Cure (1997), and so on. Weirdo maximalist studio movies that are "bad" like Toys (1992). We may go on forever, I'm not sure -- I am always watching very random things and barely keeping up with new stuff, but I'd say in general at the moment aside from random discoveries, I tend to be most excited by any form of documentary work, and with that I include neo-realist kinda stuff, meta stuff, etc. Anything that even alludes to life outside the film or a blending between the fiction and non-fiction kind of thing. And then on the other side, rigorous formal maximalism can be really fun, especially because it's not something you see much anymore to any degree -- much modern "content" has very little concern or interest in the image itself, it seems to be a vehicle for telling a story through acting. I feel like there's more to cinema and television than that and a lot of stuff I watch seems to be in disagreement with me.


As far as streaming content I'm having a lot of fun diving into Japanese comedy -- shows like Gaki no Tsukai. My wife and I just watched Fantasmas (2024) by Julio Torres and it was fantastic and he's really amazing. There's so much in that show that looked better than anything I have seen in a long time.


I do like anime and grew up really only having access to Dragon Ball so I have a big heart for it and am pleased to be watching a new Dragon Ball series and all the frustrations that will inevitably come with that. Shonen in general is very satisfying so I stick with that and try to do artier stuff in general, for lack of better words. Serial Experiments Lain (1998) was something I knew about forever and only watched in the last few years and I'll never forget it. Getting back into rock music while still dabbling in hip hop/rap (Ghais Guevera, Denzel Curry mostly). For rock it's mostly new shoegaze (blue smiley, julie, tanukichan) though many of those bands tend to blend genres which I find really exciting.


*FAILED STATE is currently touring film festivals and will next be showing at the Ocean City Film Festival in Maryland in March 2025.

Sunday, April 14, 2024

Top 10 Films of 2023


There are many words I could, and would, spit out to describe the previous year in cinema, in lieu of a more formal analysis. Whether out of intellectual exhaustion or lack of cohesive thought due to the general incoherence of modern day film discourse, to even begin to extrapolate the present moment in this medium, a task I'm normally not averse to speculating on, seems anything but intriguing to me as I type this the night prior to yet another Cannes press conference and upon news of the United States and Iran inching ever closer towards a larger regional war in the Middle East. Perhaps I'm just drained from inundation or giving into what I perceive as trickling feelings of a broader cultural deluge, marked by the dreary post-pandemic, late capitalist malaise most of the world appears to be suffocated by right now. To even begin to try and cohere 2023's film output into thematic or aesthetic reasonings instantaneously brings me to tedium, an ironic notion considering that the year brought with it some of the strongest works of its decade from a diverse spectrum of artistic ends. Enough of the rote intellectualizing, let's get to the fucking movies.




10)  MASTER GARDENER

(Dir. Paul SCHRADER)


A near final tone poem from an ailing monastic mind, effortlessly constructed with grand sweeping aesthetic + ideological flourishes only a seasoned artist of Schrader's fabric can construe. Room for only the most acute forms of gesture, unburdened by countervailing forces in an assured search for personal catharsis.




9) FERRARI

(Dir. Michael MANN)


Mann displays a fatigued urgency to memorialize Enzo as a hollowed out vessel, pushing and accelerating towards the salvation of his namesake company, as carnage mounts in the periphery. Capitalistic ambition as a vortex of death, swallowing up those in its wake, giving literal meaning to the metaphor of the motor vehicle as a big metal coffin.




8) ASTRAKAN

(Dir. David DEPESSEVILLE)


In awe of the seemingly effortless poetry weaved here. Much less of the Pialat-Bresson homage I was hyped up to believe, but even better since Depesseville's conjured a filmic language specifically of his own, abandoning common moral straits of coming-of-age cinema and hyper fixating solely on the interior world of his protagonist Samuel, and all the profound, loving, perverse, disturbing and violent renderings understandable only to him and no one else, including us the spectator.




7) SHOWING UP

(Dir. Kelly REICHARDT)


A diffusion of emotions documenting process, labor and the interpersonal as being equally critical to a finished work of artistic creation. A new mode for Reichardt, whose naturalism is occasionally interrupted with more obvious directorial intervention than ever before. I'd like to see more of this.



 


6) MAY DECEMBER

(Dir. Todd HAYNES)


Continue to be perplexed by DP Christopher Blauvelt's cinematography, which appears to somewhat emulate a certain mode of celluloid imagemaking with its soft textures, blown out lighting and aggressive grain, but rendered entirely through digital tools and noise applied in post. Here, the effect is given a metatextual role, shrouding Haynes' tabloid drama with an amalgam of the past and the present in contentious dialogue. The attempt to translate and cohere what's happened before is muddied and filtered through impulses and motives removed and autonomous of the inciting entities.




5) KNOCK AT THE CABIN

(Dir. M. Night SHYAMALAN)


Completely devoid of excess emphasis of its thematic tenets, Shyamalan neatly culls towards quantities of physicality and the description of presence within frames, both singular and in succession. Each character is induced to exist as a chess piece of unique dynamism, all strategically advancing towards an end game of increasing stakes. And as the world around them bends ever so graciously towards the side of dubiousness, does the emergence of an upsetting tragedy with one of its central characters strike with a crystalline point of inflection, marred in the moral stress of its own difficulty. It is exactly here where some have seemingly been put off by Shyamalan's effortless capitulation to Christian righteousness, when it's in fact anything but. By exonerating the meek through brutal theological martyrdom, a "greater good" is anointed, that must apparently be fed casualty and demise to appease such a world order. For the film to accept this stance conflictingly, is perhaps the most downbeat method of harsh critique devised. In a world of increasing strain and suffering, giving in to actors and ideologies cloaked under the guise of greater salvation, does nothing but soften the blow (to the head).





4) FALLEN LEAVES

(Dir. Aki KAURISMAKI)


Star-crossed lovers joined together by the toolkit of cinema. A series of unvarnished pleasures for the remaining romantics left in the world.




3) THE PASSENGERS OF THE NIGHT

(Dir. Mikhael HËRS)


A sprawling canvas of unalloyed warmth in the caring company of Hers’ ensemble of starry-eyed dreamers. Charlotte Gainsbourg once again reminds us all why she remains one of the most endearing actresses of her generation, this time channeling her characteristic diffidence into a new mode of sanguine heart that'll just melt you to your core. If you ever need a pick me up, look no further than this.




2) NOBODY'S HERO

(Dir. Alain GUIRAUDIE)


A pitch perfect farcical exercise on France and the greater EU's centrist fecklessness about a wide range of "others" based largely on mere perceptive assumption, and the cacophony of ridiculous conflicts that arise from both sides-ing the fuck out of every situation, as to not be totally committal to either stance both liberal and conservative. Also that Guiraudie manages to keep Mederic's paranoid Islamophobic impulses and his inability to simply turn down an interested female co-worker (to the point of having to excuse himself by identifying as gay to her) on a relatively equal plane of dilemma is an impressive feat of fictional line threading.




1) THE KILLER

(Dir. David FINCHER)


An exception to the unwashed is granted a conscience by fate, forcing tension within his role against the rigidity of an ever oppressive world of transactions and commoditization (the titular Killer operating out of an abandoned WeWork office is a hilarious touch). The battles may still be physical, but with personal autonomy comes existential friction. What previously was just routine technocratic exercise, elevates to a war between the mechanisms of capital and a soul with a wounded heart, informed with years of skilled navigation operating as a hand for such a system. The circumstances are personal, but work is work and ultimately, revenge is just a job.

Sunday, December 31, 2023

10 Favorite New-to-Me Films of 2023

It's been a long year to say the least. Unequivocally it's one of the longest feeling of my lifetime with all of its eventful happenings and revelations, and yet with the calendar year proving to be a real endurance test, its cinema has felt anything but. Despite the average running time for many new auteurist outings seemingly calcifying to a comfortable place of 2+ hours, the act of patience, whilst still a virtue, took rest this time around as the films I had the privilege of experiencing this year - both old and new - solidified as notably stronger than recent years past. Though this in part can be attributed simply to the curatorial nature of my own choosing of what to see, I like to think that conditions informed from my real life experiences instilled new fervor to the works of years past I finally was able to catch up with, and the newly produced ones which also had more juice going for them than usual as well. Whatever the chemistry or math, it's once again been an honor to revel in so much good shit. Of the films released prior to the current release year of 2023, and the "catch-up" year of 2022, here are the very best I witnessed and considered.



10) LE SYSTEME ZSYGMONDY (2000)
(Dir. Luc MOULLET)

Light & friendly comic foil with an astonishing canvas of color and location. From the tones of the natural mountainous environment to the striking discernment in choice of character attire.



9) A VOLUNTARY YEAR (2019)
(Dir. Henner WINCKLER & Ulrich KÖHLER)

Albeit a much less logistical and theoretically ambitious film compared to Köhler's prior In My Room (2018), I'm more swiftly entranced by the acute leanness in form and keen eye for his subjects' behaviors here which cogently hybridizes two of his reoccurring focuses (humanity's animalistic urges conflicting within austere social settings and humanity's relationship to its surrounding environments and infrastructural organization) into a neat little father-daughter helicopter parent drama. Can't speak much for spotting Winckler's direction, so my observation, whatever its validity, reaches and applies to what I've seen of Köhler's only.



8) ANA AND THE OTHERS (2003)
(Dir. Celina MURGA)

Starts off with quaint familiarity (the much mentioned similitude with Rohmer is well warranted) featuring some of the most relaxed pans & tracking shots I can ever compare to memory. Cryptically teases an internal motive from the otherwise wandering Ana, before spending its entire second half teasing a mere glimpse of that motive to be enacted upon and seen to its conclusion. Murga keeps her direction emotionally hidden throughout in all the ways that work well for me and maintains a structural fluidity that allows for Ana to float along freely, largely untethered to broader fictive strata, which is crucial for the turn towards urgency from stasis it takes in its final stretch. The drama of the seemingly aimless drifter shaped and encouraged to its most neat form.



7) HEREAFTER (2010)
(Dir. Clint EASTWOOD)

The grief-themed drama uniquely transformed via the mere permeation of Eastwood's "late style" automata. Every step forward efficiently gives way towards Eastwood's most abstract impulses, which in turn allows for the emotional centers of each scene to pool up until all that's left is the pure substantiated weight of that accumulation.



6) THE IDIOTS (1998)
(Dir. Lars von TRIER)

Far more self-effacing and even carefully put together than I ever imagined it to be (yes, I actually believe this.) Chastises with its surface provocation only to the extent of establishing its canvas of personalities before briskly maneuvering into LvT's commonplace of centered interactions to extract from the film's actual core. Much of it chronicling the dissolution of its titular subjects, identifying the pain points and structural fragilities of their game as an endeavor little beyond abstruse fulfillment. But yet within it, expectedly from Trier, a tangible tension is outlined, tracing some iota of heartfelt desire to sever from the daily trivialities of nuclear-based middle class life, which then deviously serves to complicate the end of the protagonist Karen's emotional arc in the film's silently merciless coda.



5) CALIFORNIA SPLIT (1974)
(Dir. Robert ALTMAN)

Two altering masculinities bonding at a temporary stop in each's lives during a malaise period in American life. Tethered together only by loosely attributed commonalities. Multiple traps that allude to transactional motive or temptation is constantly teased on Seagal's behalf, but Walsh's kinder instincts and Altman's cool reserve keep the film perfectly above obvious conflicts, allowing for a greater platform of easy-breezy characterization. A total knockout.



4) DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978)
(Dir. George ROMERO)

Comes off to an extent as Romero reconfiguring Night of the Living Dead (1968) with the downbeat volatility of The Crazies (1973) to further grasp the national crises of the past decade. That our four protagonists consist of a duo of Vietnam-coded vets disillusioned with serving a state seemingly beyond disrepair and a couple of commoners intent on continuing the nuclear tradition forging on in a collapsing structural order, seeking temporary refuge in a shopping mall is obviously no happenstance on Romero's part, and yet the results feel anything but fine tuned to this grand thematic cohesion. A logical procedural through and through. In a manner that resonated to me streaks of Howard Hawks' direction, Romero optimizes his fiction and characterization to lean form with a suspense vehicle that gracefully cascades into a cantankerous symphony of pain and pleasure, augmenting American sickness and then releasing it with good old fashioned genre movie violence before repeating the cycle again and again and again.



3) MAN'S GENTLE LOVE (2002)
(Dir. Jean-Paul CIVEYRAC)

In many ways the closest a film has come to transmitting the same broken-hearted sensations I felt while reading Norwegian Wood the very first time. Plays in the familiar space of the impressionable young romance that's forecasted with an impending expiration date, but Civeyrac keeps proximity to his protagonist ever so fragmented and distant enough that even with his built-in POV narration annotating an exclusive perspective, the rifts sowed between this interiority and Civeyrac's observational tendencies establishes a unique grammar oscillating between the public and the personal. Operating almost entirely upon the deceptively simple ellipsis of Raoul's life before and after his trials with Jeanne, which sees his entire internal fabric deteriorate upon the abrupt conclusion of their budding intimacy, and ending unresolved, is an unrepentantly bold and anti-sentimental maneuver, but one that aptly hammers in the melancholic strains such circumstances would invoke in reality, converging real life psychological afflictions stained in the photographic canvas of Celine Bozon's Vermeer-esque impressionism. Where life and art meet.



2) CURE (1997)
(Dir. Kiyoshi KUROSAWA)

Kiyoshi persistently posits the externalities of psychoanalytic methodology and occult phenomena to trace the origin of Mamiya's unknown ability and motive, using the strained tension between these two polar maxims to explain a truth to form major unease, as it becomes increasingly evident that neither is such from the incoherent chaos in the details. Eroding the self to emerge the other end a new man.



1) THE BIRTH OF LOVE (1993)
(Dir. Philippe GARREL)

Fiction knitted so loosely, that a complete propulsion of spontaneous behaviors eminently rise to and hold the fore as narration. Perfectly accomplishes what Hong's cinema has never quite reached for me yet.

Sunday, November 19, 2023

A Dialogue with Paige Smith


With the release of her new short film Black Box Investigations, I spoke with Vancouver-based filmmaker & visual artist Paige Smith about her body of work, subjectivities of the human body itself, contexts & mediums, and the joys of playful interaction in art.

Enjoy.


D: Your newest work, Black Box Investigations, plays like something of a natural apex of your numerous films, installations, & photographs to date, which from my observation, involves a preoccupation with your own identity - and the ones you share with others - as it bumps up with larger structural forces. Having traversed through multiple disciplines over the course of a decade (or longer), what brought you to this very project?

P: When you're 18 and you just start film school, you just start art school, or you just start anything, you're trying to figure out yourself. It's really hard to determine what you want to say as an artist.


So it was like, okay, I got to figure out what I want to say, you learn all these technical skills, you learn all this theory, you hear about all these other amazing artists and it's like, well, who am I? And why do I need to add to this conversation? So for a lot of my early work and what I was starting, I was really looking at the medium itself because that's what I was learning in school was medium.


So I was really interested in the apparatus of filmmaking and how that in and of itself frames and influences what we see. That fascinated me and was my starting point. The way I put that more simply nowadays is that I'm interested in context.


I'm interested in what lies beyond the frame, what lies behind the frame, who makes what device it's made with, you know, that these choices aren't neutral or objective. The choice of what kind of camera you use doesn't just influence the options of settings you can have, but is manufactured and created from an industry and from companies and from individuals that have a certain objective in mind. I'm not saying it's some nefarious thing, but Canon has an objective of what kind of image they're trying to make possible with the kinds of cameras they develop, so it's just that. I'm just always thinking about context.


For this work, I went back to school during the pandemic to do this diploma program in visual art, and I was taking a photography class. We were doing this reading. It was like the philosophy of photography or something. I forget the name of it. It was just really interesting because he was talking about photography through philosophy. So I was really inspired by this reading because I love thinking about context and I love thinking about the medium of filmmaking.


For Black Box Investigations, I was really fascinated by this term the writer comes up with, comparing a camera to a black box, like a black box is a device or a system where you can put A into this black box and know you'll get B, but you don't know exactly what's happening in the middle, and that's kind of what being a filmmaker is like. There's so much technology involved in our art making and there are people that definitely do know the inside of the black box, but there are very, very few of those people who know everything within the black box.


I was just interested in this, making us more aware of that context of a camera. And like my own identity, I don't know. It's something I struggle with more and more, to parse in my own artwork, but it is something in the last few years now I've been working with myself in front of the camera. Originally it was just out of practicality. It was just, okay, I'm here. I don't need to find someone else to do the idea in front of the camera. It's also a practicality matter because when you're making films that don't make money or very little money, I don't have much I can offer an actor or performer, and the types of things that I have to get.


Being recorded in front of the camera is not something they benefit for an actor's reel or something. Eating a camera on film isn't like- no one's going to use that in their actor's reel you know! While I wouldn't say it's like my identity per se, I think that that's not what interests me about it. But, I think that what I’ve come to realize is that, that in of itself is a context, if that makes sense. That I myself as the artist, I'm not neutral either, and I think that's partly why I’m trying to offer this transparency. That's just me in front of the camera. In Black Box Investigations, I have these shots where you see the disposable camera and then you see what the disposable camera sees.


And part of that is like, okay, there's my camera, I'm filming with my little Canon DSLR. There's my living room. There's my dirty kitchen. I'm trying to be transparent in that way. So maybe my own body and self is part of that transparency.



Stills from Black Box Investigations (2023)

D: There exists a polarity, if not tension, between capture formats from consumer digital to disposable film that I can’t help but perceive as self-reflexively motivated. In the film, we can see camera bodies anatomized alongside yours, and the organic & inorganic is rendered through a symbiosis of sorts. Thematically and aesthetically, it evokes relation to your previous works The Big Reveal (2022) & Tethered Connection (2022) in how human features are printed, coded, or overlaid with the artifacts of other elements. Can you speak more about this?


P: … If only you could write my grant applications. I'm definitely playing with this idea. I'm trying to play with this idea of a camera body versus a human body. And questioning in just the same way I was saying in the last question, this lack of neutrality, this lack of objective. Truth in a camera's ability to capture the world in the same way I think a human body would. Our eyes aren't neutral in the sense that physiologically, we all see differently.


I just think in this less specific sort of way, like the words organic versus inorganic, I'm drawn to that in what you're talking about, because there's also this fluidity that I'm interested in, in playing with when making art. I heard it in some class somewhere, but someone was talking about this desire to create solid art, where you know exactly what you're going to get at the end. You have an image in your brain, of a photo you want to capture, and then you go and you create it and you capture it. Like what a digital photography pipeline is. It's a great example of that. And then if you compare that to analog photography where you would then go into this middle process where you'd go into the dark room and you'd have to work with all the chemicals to develop. You can become a scientist of it. You can become really precise. But you can't 100 percent control it. You know what I mean? And there's something about trying to break down that divide, if that makes sense. Like, I want to play in this fluid space.


Maybe another way to explain it is I'm very fascinated by this Cartesian model of fluid space. The body and the brain being seen as separate and as distinct entities and I'm very much against that. It feels very inhuman almost. It's like the brain was seen as the masculine and the body was seen as the feminine and there's a bunch of other parts too, but just even that, like this organic versus inorganic, these black and white categorizations even, that's what I mean by fluid. I'm trying to play in this gray, messy middle area.



Tethered Connection (2022)


The Big Reveal (2022)

D: I think what you're getting at is that between our perception and the camera's perception, that there is an experiential abstract in between there that those two things can capture only on their own and so by pitting them against one another, you edge closer to whatever that in-between thing is. 


P: Yeah! And another way I sometimes explain it is like, I don't think there is an objective truth, to anything, honestly. Maybe that's too bold to say, but in a lot of cases, I don't think there's objective truth to everything. But I think there's poetic truth. I think that's what I'm more interested in exploring in art is this kind of poetic truth. I don't want to make artwork that is a science paper or journalism or something where you can read it and cognitively process and understand it. But I want something where people can viscerally understand it. And then I still think that that's truth seeking and that's still almost like knowledge making too.


I didn't mean for this last film, Black Box Investigations, to be about the body, but because making art for me is so much about being in my body, it's like when you write a paper, I'm not thinking about how my body feels at all, but when I'm making artwork, I'm trying to viscerally be in tune with my emotions because that's how I can be like is this working or not so it's hard for that to not end up in the work somehow. The Big Reveal and Tethered Connections seem like they’re more explicitly about the body because they're about sexuality. I just think that's my background, so it's always going to be there somehow in my work.


And I think what you're getting at is the real challenge of artistic expression, because obviously this expands across all these different mediums and fields, and so it's like, whatever that is that's visceral that's in here that you're trying to express, you're trying to figure out. Like, do I express that with the camera? Do I do that with a pencil or any words? That's really it. 


D: It's like, how are you translating the thing?


P: Yeah, that's what it is. That's the perfect word. It's like you're translating. That to me is kind of what making art is. That's why I also think art isn't complete, and some people might argue with this, but I don't think an artwork is complete until there's a viewer, and I'm not saying that in the sense of there's to be a lot of viewers. I make work that's experimental so I don't have a huge scope of viewers but I feel like that that's a translation in and of itself too. I make the work and then that work then gets translated again by the viewer.


D: It’s funny because I never thought I'd be quoting Alejandro Iñárritu in this, but every year I like to watch those Hollywood Reporter director roundtables they do on YouTube, and there was one that, and I always remember this, where the moderator poised the question of continuing to make movies even if deserted on an island, and his (Iñárritu’s) answer was along the lines of, “if I was on an island, I wouldn't even bother because, what's the point of that?”


The point being that there should be an audience there, and if you're just making something, whether it be a movie or a sculpture or whatever, and it's just for you, it’s as if it doesn't even exist at that point.


P: Yeah, and that's the part that I resonate with the most, but I also respect that there's lots of artists that really do find pure joy in just act of creation and the joy they have in that translation. I feel like the fascinating part about art is that last step of viewer interpretation. I would agree with "island man."


D: And obviously I think it would not be great to classify or categorize, but I do think that there are some mediums that lend themselves more to being community based, which is where I think you're coming from. But then there are those who are on their own island more - there's a spectrum there for sure. 


P: 100%. 


D: When you were talking about the joy of going into your art and then using it as an opportunity to explore and find something that you didn't think would be there originally, this actually hits quite closely to something my prior interview, the filmmaker C.W. Winter, really fixated on. Which relates to going in with those root ideas, but then not wanting to make solid art.


P: I respect that lots of artists work in different ways. My partner is a filmmaker as well.


It depends on what project they're working on, but they've done lots of projects where they pre shoot the whole film. They go and pre-shoot shot for shot without the actors so that they know all the angles they want, and  it's just a different way of working.


I did a bit of work in the camera department during film school and right after. And in that way, you're working on the exact shot list you’re getting. There's a lot of skill, talent and beauty that can come out of that, but there is so much pleasure in working these alternative models and on a smaller scale. It aligns more with visual art making. If you’re creating a painting, you're not gonna have a regimented perfect plan of how you're going to do it.


You might have your process and everything, but ultimately, you have to be adaptive to what the paint looks like on the canvas. For me, and it sounds lazy, but it truly isn't, I don't work well when I'm stuck in that pre production mode.


If I had to try and figure out all my ideas with a paper and a pen, I would never get anything done. I work best when I'm in the moment. Frankly, most of my work comes from this place of doing a lot of research and thinking and reading and then I allow my brain to wander if that makes sense.


I take too long of showers. I go for too long of walks. I try and give my head blank time. One of my favorite ways to come up with ideas is go watch slow cinema. I often get my best ideas during that. And it's because I get an image stuck in my head. I'll get one image and I'll have to go and figure out how to make that one image and then the rest of it often comes. I'm just more in tune with my body in the moment, as opposed to, too much, um, thinking.


D: What you're saying is something that also resonates a lot with me and in essence it's really just allowing yourself to swim in a liminal space, right?


P: Yeah, I like the word swim in particular and it allows for improvisation as well. I think ultimately that's always going to be it, right? It's like there's always going to be theory and then impulse and then it's always going to be like that. You might have an impulse that just comes out of nowhere and you end up chasing that instead. And sometimes you don't know why you're chasing it. And then a year later, you're like, “oh!”


It’s cool that art is one of the spaces that we're kind of given permission for that too, you know. We have to justify and even in art, there's all these systems in place to make you kind of justify. Okay, why are you doing that?


I just started a Master's Degree and I'm TA’ing for this great professor. He’s a painter and he was talking about how art school nowadays is very much driven by conceptual art, which makes sense because that's what's very popular and I found that in film school as well.


We learned a lot about concepts, ideas, theory, and that's amazing, but the professor I'm working with, Doug, he's coming from a place of very materially based teaching and he's like, you could spend a whole semester on just one fricking question, like, how do I mix these two colors together? You know what I mean? Why isn't that a justification to a curious inquiry, you know? 


D: These three works curiously deviate from contemporary trends in avant-garde cinema for their makeup being strongly guided by performance art/installation practices. Whereas many experimental filmmakers today have seemingly fixated on the diaristic or structural, how do you feel that making sculptures and other gallery art has informed your work back in film?


P: ​​Part of it is I like all types of art. I think great artists steal. Like, I love to steal other people's concepts and translate them into my own ideas. I don't mean to literally steal, obviously.


That's why I like watching slow cinema because I'll watch a film and then come up with an idea for a photo that has nothing to do with the slow cinema but you know something about the way it's approached. I'm not super interested in what's popular if that makes sense just because like that's always going to be a changing thing so I just have to work within what makes sense to my brain and my way of seeing the world so for me I was always interested in context like I was explaining earlier, so it just always made sense to ask what is beyond the frame of the cinema even?


My work has been screened both in cinemas but also in art galleries. Tethered Connections is the clearest example because it's a purely installation based work where it's a 30 second looping piece that's meant to look almost like video cam footage and then it's played and displayed on a computer itself. Then it's installed in a gallery space. It's meant to, in some way, make you explicitly aware of what's beyond the frame because the frame itself is part of the work, you know?


Lens based making in general is kind of what I'm calling it, but I'm frankly open to anything because I love the cinema so much. And like, I still have so much work that plays in cinemas and I still appreciate cinema so much, so why do I say all this?


Because I'm just so interested in what's outside the frame and making the viewer aware of that. I never even thought of my work as performance art until this last year, because when I applied to art schools, some of the professors were like “ah, so I see you're interested in performance art” and I was like, I am? Oh, I didn't know that. I've deeply admired performance art for a very long time.


I try to keep a broad touchstone of everywhere, but I've always admired performance art because it's so visceral and it's so much about the body. There's so many amazing women within performance art as well. I think it’s an under-appreciated field in some ways, partly because it's ethereal.


Is that the right word? Because it disappears. So that's why I never thought of myself purely as a performance artist, because lots of performance artists documented. What is the final-ness of this work going to be?





D: So when you’re viewing these mediums that are displayed in frames, whether it be a movie or a photograph that's hung up on a wall or a painting, can you talk about this and the importance of where you experience them? Maybe it might be in a gallery or a movie theater or at home.

P: I'm hyper aware of the spaces that my work shows in. I try and think about how I can show the work in a way that makes sense in the space it's showing. There's two ways my work ends up being seen.


In film festivals, projected in a cinema of sorts, or in these art gallery contexts. I'm happy that my work has shown in traditional art gallery spaces, but it's also shown in some more experimental art spaces, so there's been quite a variety of space. When you work in an art gallery context, you have a lot more say in how your work is shown, because in a film festival context, It's just presumed that your film's going to project, it's going to screen. You give them a DCP, and there you go. When you're showing in that kind of context, I try and be more aware of making those kinds of questions more explicit within the work.


I don’t know if you've heard of this term, it comes from theater. It's called the Proscenium Arch. I had a film professor introduce me to it. It's this great concept. It comes from 20th century theater. The proscenium arch is this structural element that actually frames a stage.In theater, it’s making the audience directly aware that they are watching a performance. So I try and use little cues like that.


Almost all of my films involve a human looking directly into the camera and making the viewer aware I'm watching them back. For The Big Reveal, one of the last times I showed that, I had a show at Cineworks. That work was made on 16mm and then hand painted. We installed it where the projector was just on the ground and it was designed to loop. And then the film strip itself. It's only a little over two minutes long. The loop itself is maybe 50 or 60 feet long. So we just made a giant loop that filled the ceiling and hung from a shower curtain and wrapped back around. So, how can the viewer not be consistently and obviously aware of a giant projector and a giant film loop.


I like showing my hand. I both want to make magic for the viewer, and make them be like, “how did she do that?” but also show something about it that feels like, “well, this is how she did it.” If you look long enough, you can figure it out. You know what I mean? I don't want to pretend that I'm not constantly stealing, and I mean that in not a real stealing way. You use that little weird trick. Okay. I'm going to use that weird little trick. And I want to tell everyone else about that weird little trick so we can all do it. 


D: To be self-reflexive?


P: That's exactly what it is.


D: Moving beyond this film, I’m equally fascinated by your installation work as well. Particularly Who is this city for? (2021) & Hometown, or Fragment of Northeast Sector (2021). Both interactive pieces that seek to activate the political imagination of their audience through a clever linking of structural realities with an earnest playfulness deeply specific to you. I’d love to know how these projects originated and anecdotes, if any, of their effect.


P: Who is this city for? was a zine project I did, coming from this place of fascination, again, with context, specifically with place. And even more specifically with maps and cartography, something I'm going to be exploring more in the future, hopefully.


I was interested in this field of psychogeography, which simply put, is the exploration of how psychology and geography interact. And there was this great method that was developed where you explore a space by having no destination in mind and you are just meant to walk. It's usually encouraged that you do it in a small group if possible and you explore a neighborhood. Or an area and you try to really be in tune with your feelings and your physiological and psychological responses.


You know, when we have a stroll, we go for a walk to get to this place or we're going to work or we're going to school or we're going to see a friend. You know all these places. The space is used as a transit space. This method makes you more aware of things that seem objective and neutral like sidewalks and street lights and trees in your neighborhood and the houses and the buildings and those aren't neutral decisions. They affect us. For me, this one was about my particular neighborhood and my fascination with the trees in my neighborhood and how I felt that they really defined the the space. It was connecting that. It relates to that context thing again and same with Hometown, or Fragment of Northeast Sector. That was the beginning of this interest in maps, and I don't love the execution of that work.


Frankly, I was working with new material I hadn't fully figured out yet, but it was kind of this work that transitioned my fascination with the context that the TV provides and the context that a map provides in this context of media versus the context of something like cartography or placemaking.


And so that work (Hometown) is I'm deconstructing an old CRT TV and it's playing with this imaginative ability of map making as a future making tool. I think you said playful.. That is what I'm trying to be. I was exploring what I would say were environmental issues, because that work I was trying to use a map of sensitive ecosystems from where I grew up in Coquitlam and those areas that are being taken away. And then in Who is this city for?, I was dealing with housing affordability and urban development. How I thought the trees were an allegory for that. So they're both serious topics, but I like to add this sort of playfulness. To give ourselves permission to think about it like this, that's the playfulness if that makes sense. 



Who is this city for? (2021)

D: It’s interactive! The audience can play along with the work. 


P: That's the hardest part of filmmaking. Maybe that's why I'm always trying to make the viewer aware of the film because I desire to make the film somehow interactive and maybe that's why I've been making more works that aren't just films because it's like, haha, now they can touch it!



Hometown, or Fragment of Northeast Sector (2021)

D: Have you seen that movie by Alex Koberidze, What Do We See When We Look at the Sky? (2021)


P: No, but I like that title!


D: Particularly with these projects here, if we can link it back to the cinema, I think there's something of a through line. There's a segment in there that I fondly remember. It's still memorable to me as kind of like an all time movie moment. When the female protagonist in the film quite literally switches actresses in the beginning of the movie. You see the first actress fall asleep. I think she falls into a coma or something, and you see a close-up of her face. Then the movie tells you through narration, to close your eyes and to place your hands over your face. Then upon hearing a sound cue, to open your eyes. And upon completion of this process the actress is suddenly replaced on screen.


P: I love that! I love art that teaches you the rules of how to view the art. And I love it telling you to do that, but knowing people, some people in the audience were like “No! I'm not doing that. I want to see what's on the screen!”


I want to watch the movie just for that moment. It sounds great.


D: With this blog being a forum for cinephilia, and really of all arts, it’s mandatory for me to ask about your own experience with films, albums, & other artistic projects - new and old - that mean something to you. What are some works you consider your all-time faves and what have you enjoyed recently?


P: I really try to have a broad sense of taste. I think it's good to exercise that.


I really love Tsai Ming-liang's films. That's who I was thinking of when I was talking about slow cinema earlier. He was one of the first slow cinema filmmakers I discovered. I haven't seen all of his films, but the works I've seen, I really resonate with.


I really like animation. I've never made an animated film, but I believe there's something unique and special within that. I love experimental animation as well. There's so much great Canadian animation out there too. I really love this film called Boy and the World (2013). It's a Brazilian film. I think there's something special about non North American animation, especially animation that is friendly for children because animation within a North American context, it's only aimed at children, frankly, or it's explicitly adult content.


I also really do have a sweet spot for the Ghibli apparatus. One of my favorite films is My Neighbor Totoro (1988). It gives credit to a child's way of seeing the world and the child's brain to understand in a different way. That's no less valuable than an adult's perspective. And I think that there's something really powerful about that. And I love to try and take that energy into my work, too. Maybe that's partly like the playfulness. I'm not creating work for children at all, but I think that there's something about giving yourself permission to have a childlike wonder of the world that is really powerful as an artist.


I played a video game that was called Pathologic. I played the second one. It's a Russian video game and I really like it because it's very much about the medium itself. I think that's why it fascinated me. It’s very self reflexive but also very depressing though. I don't know why I like it. I usually don't like such sad art, but yeah, I don't know..


I really, really love Leviathan (2012), and all the works (by Lucien Castaing-Taylor & Verena Paravel). It literally made me seasick. Like, I felt sick watching it. And I just can't not give a film credit for that. Do you know what I mean?


D: Where did you watch that?


I watched that film at The Cinematheque in Vancouver. I arrived right before the film was starting and I got a horrible seat right in the front, but maybe that was the best thing. Cause I was like, “oh my god, everything is this boat!”


I haven't seen it yet, but De Humani Corporis Fabrica (2022), it's a shame I haven't seen it yet because it seems so in line with Black Box Investigations. Even just hearing about that concept, I must admit, inspired me because it was just so fascinating.


I also love the one that's- what's the one with the sheep? The herding one?


D: Sweetgrass (2009), right? 


P: Yes, yes. They lend such a unique POV. I wish that was the one I preferred more because they're both tragic, but that one has a light earnestness to it.


I don't always come back to cinema, I make art in so many spheres, but it's hard to not come back to it. The attention people give to cinema, especially when it's seen in a theater. I didn't appreciate it enough when I was only making films and it's so fun to go see your work in a theater with an audience and be like, “oh my god, they're all watching it.”


Like, they're paying attention. A lot of my favorite artists still end up being filmmakers for that reason. Cause they really stick in your brain. 


Yeah… but it's like-oh! I love Stan Brakhage. He's amazing. I love the photographer Stan Douglas. He's amazing. There's a lot of people. I should name more women…

A Dialogue with Christopher Jason Bell & Mitch Blummer (FAILED STATE)

Upon the recent success of their jointly directed feature Failed State , I spoke with U.S. based filmmakers Christopher Jason Bell & Mit...