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…

Top 10 Films of 2022

 

Smaller and more compact movies stood tallest for me in the strange year of 2022. I've seen many deem this year as "minor" or "weak" for the cinema, particularly in describing a noticeably off festival season, and although I do share the sentiment, I personally prefer the descriptor of "funky" instead. While I do generally agree that 2022 will most likely go down as being of the less fruitful years of cinema of the 2020s, that doesn't necessarily collude to a lack of abundance or eclecticism, either. The highs for me didn't reach like they typically do, but the lows also didn't fall too badly simultaneously. Despite a year's long continuation of the erosion of traditional theatrical economies and worsening aftermath of mega corporate mergers, the precious light and flicker, and the artists globally fighting for their visions within it, remain excitedly vigilant as ever. Perhaps we've reached the end of an era for traditional distribution models, but this certainly is no death rattle. Organization and reform is likely imminent, and telling from history, artists will learn to adapt to make their art possible. I'm glass half-full for the future of this medium. Now, onwards to the films (and a limited series and episode of an anthology show).

10) THE ADVENTURES OF GIGI THE LAW

(Dir. Alessandro COMODIN)

A seemingly non-fictional procedural so vacantly humdrum for its first hour, that one gradually begins to slip into rote hypnosis along its pleasantly repetitive beats. Then suddenly, the onset of an interior fracturing with its subject, slyly revealing a fiction all along, and then some.

*Currently awaiting distribution

9) OUR ETERNAL SUMMER

(Dir. Emilie AUSSEL)

Notably unusual in its structure, Aussel undercuts similar coming-of-age and grief narratives through the insertion of an elongated diversion so inexplicably conceived, that one is blindsided by its constitution making up most of the film's running time. For its events centering on a commune of hippie artist types managing to poignantly reflect back upon the familiar dilemmas of nascent adulthood renders like some grand subversive act. Calls out to the universe for divine answers that it knows cannot emit beyond the limitation of human abstracts.

*Streaming on MUBI

8) FOR 13 DAYS, I BELIEVED HIM

(Dir. Kiyoshi KUROSAWA)

Leave it to Kiyoshi-san to masterfully disrupt and debilitate the aggressive machine of episodic content through his mere mercenary involvement. Produced as part of a Japanese spin-off of Modern Love, an American anthology series I'd previously never heard of based off a New York Times column featuring various op-eds on romance, sex, and dating in contemporary times, Kurosawa's commissioned "episode" (like almost all anthology structures, each entry can be treated as its own singular film) is a brilliant act of defiance so unabashedly unrepentant to his filmic universe, one is bowled over to their knees, both by its stark transgressions to its larger project and by its sheer exactitude as a genre exercise. More precisely, in how Kurosawa transitions aesthetics from start to finish, going from the viscid, Hallmark-like intro of the show's opening, establishing the familiar dynamic of two individuals feeling each other out after the first date, before gradually twisting the cupcake and kisses world of the show into one of socioeconomic disorder and supernatural anomaly. Come for the disobedience and stay for what is ostensibly a refined distillation of Kurosawa's filmography into a neat 40 minutes.

*Streaming on Amazon Prime Video

7) ANAÏS IN LOVE

(Dir. Charline BOURGEOIS-TACQUET)

Like the cinematic equivalent of a fine cut of filet mignon topped with rich garlic butter and a cabernet or malbec to compliment. Classical French romantic romp that smoothly flows in and goes down soothingly with plenty of heart & flavor. No other performance by a woman this year tops the speeding fireball that is Anaïs Demoustier in this movie.

*Streaming on Hulu. Available to rent/purchase on VOD by Magnolia Pictures.

6) DARK GLASSES

(Dir. Dario ARGENTO)

A much welcomed foreign object in the current thematic & symbolically fetishist world of contemporary horror. Argento's directorial return bears the signature hallmarks most known to him (rendered gorgeously in the digital format this time around), but is also noticeably marked with a sensitivity unforeseen in his previous works. I don't know exactly what an "anti-giallo" would be, but the sentiment behind such a term feels specially apt here. The structure and familiar iconography is present, but bizarrely secondary from a place of dramatic relevancy. The expected serial killer plot appears to function as a background device to that of the plights of its main subject, Diana, whose mounting vulnerabilities bare her as a loner whose relationships remain almost exclusively steeped in transaction (parallelling with her main occupation as a high end sex worker). A consistent undercurrent of sympathy for her permeates all throughout, and makes one consider the raised sentiment present on Argento's behalf. A projection of varying consciousness, or the onset of newly formed sensibilities late into the maestro's career?

*Streaming on Shudder and AMC+

5) IRMA VEP

(Dir. Olivier ASSAYAS)

Besides serving as a grand meta-textual exorcism-for-catharsis for Assayas, this also appears to be the project where he's finally fully embraced and wholeheartedly leaned into the sexy, mischievous, and high couture inclinations previously elicited in more reserved forms in the past. Probably even more of a filmmaking sin to his critics, but those people simply aren't fun. Vincent Macaigne & Lars Eidinger give my absolute favorite performances of the year here.

*Streaming on HBO Max

4) OUTSIDE NOISE

(Dir. Ted FENDT)

My warmth for this comes from its localized interiority away from everything one could attribute to the contemporary cinema - including potentiality for an enabled discourse to be coated around it. Fendt synthesizes his aesthetic fixations of the bygone filmmaking culture he clearly adores (think Straub-Huillet or Rohmer) and props up a mini-fiction to freely exercise within that space.

*Streaming on MUBI. Available to purchase on DVD by Shellac.

3) INTREGALDE

(Dir. Radu MUNTEAN)

Its comment on urban/rural polarity is finely observed, but even more tactfully accomplished is Muntean's gentle oscillation of expressivity, committing dramaturgical metamorphosis without any rugged display of movieness. A film of constant shifts to new directions, teasing numerous recognizable cogents of genre, before landing on poetic exactitude. The stratagems wave out in the open, then dissipate before your very eyes. 

*Streaming on MUBI. Available to rent/purchase on VOD & DVD by Grasshopper Film.

2) LAKE FOREST PARK

(Dir. Kersti Jan WERDAL)

If James Benning directed Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park.

*Currently awaiting distribution

1) LIMBO

(Dir. Cheang SOI)

A wholly overdue update to noir procedurals I've long dreamt about. Pushing the systematics and material baseis of chance and fate to the forefront by regularizing the urban and architectural conditions in the overall grammar of the film. Pollution, everywhere. Abundant signs of consumption that slowly give rot to the structures and people around, and eventually, within it. Then, a shock mutant turn in the film's antagonist, projecting inhuman extremes synthesized from the murkiest of the trash depths. A film disgusted with its own contents, and therefore modulates itself successfully as a result.

*Currently awaiting distribution

10 Favorite New-to-Me Films of 2022

A clear preference for cinematic modernism is greatly evident in my favorite first watches in the year of 2022. Though it has come to be an aesthetic and ideological wavelength I've been most drawn to extending longer than in the past year, its notions applied to formal structuralism have appeared more pleasing and diverse to me than previously ever. Explorations and experimentations in narrative shape spanning across multiple decades and lands. In my viewing, I tried to give equal priority to the marginal and lesser seen as much as I did to the acclaimed and well canonized. For the first time since I began the blog, no filmmakers on this list will then go on to appear again on my favorite new releases list. The extension between the past and present comes to a halt this time around. Perhaps fitting for a year in which its events and containments, both personal and political, have been unlike anything I can recall living through yet. I won't further elaborate on that, but I will on the movies. Onward.

10) AN OBSESSION (1997)

(Dir. Shinji AOYAMA)

Configured with a profusion of formalistic oddities that obfuscate and obstruct the few moments of objective truth as to render the information back into elusivity and thus functionally useless, Aoyama's esoteric fixation against the machinations of his genre results in a gradual temporal metamorphosis amidst a waning structure. The police procedural destabilizes into post-modernistic affect. The further truth is searched, the more it expands and complicates its fragile meaning. A collapsing of coherence giving birth to a world anew. One senses a sort of formal kinship Aoyama shares with Kiyoshi Kurosawa in how both probe fractures in the increasingly modern and technocratic Japanese society through a genre means.

9) GETTING TO KNOW THE BIG WIDE WORLD (1978)

(Dir. Kira MURATOVA)

Tracking the birth of a new community from humble nascence to ambivalent solidarity. Graces in poetics, with a loving gaze moored by the passions of youth. A more than pleasant introduction in getting to know the big wide world of Kira Muratova.

8) CONTACT (1997)

(Dir. Robert ZEMECKIS)

Zemeckis' trademark keenness towards starry-eyed melodramatic schmaltz, most often rendered by a gush of computerized effects is most well realized here as the film's supreme outward looking optimism matches the maximal form it colors. The God-like eye of the camera that traverses and observes each scene with a childlike curiosity connotates the ever-expanding possibility of human space and percept. What do we see/know vs. what "they" see/know of us. Envisions extraterrestrial contact as a maturing passage of truths, where intergalactic entities baton-pass the wisdoms of the universe in a loving trial of connection, but only when each receiving body endures and reaches a milestone of self-contained reasoning and question first. Look up to the sky and we'll see ourselves. Trust the voyage of the universe.

7) THE BRIDEGROOM, THE ACTRESS, & THE PIMP (1968)

(Dir. Jean-Marie STRAUB & Danielle HUILLET)

A survey of cinema's narrative and aesthetic history observed through three dramatic episodes. Essentialism to classicalism to modernism. An astonishing achievement in self-reflexivity.

6) HAPPY HERE AND NOW (2002)

(Dir. Michael ALMEREYDA)

Prophetic, but not of the doomer-ist sort. One can field the pulsations of Almereyda gently cascading through his own notions of corporeality and wrestling with the difficulties of human sensation and how technology further complicates the value of one's feelings. Almereyda appears rather resistant, if not totally uninterested, in sweeping through the potential pitfalls of modern tech, but instead swept by and lost in its unintelligible dream channel. If life is so much as meaningless, then what is the innate harm in pursuing one's own esoteric fantasies for comfort and rest? Melancholic from afar, but quite the opposite upon closer inspection. Solidarity for the emotionally wounded and weary.

5) SANTA CLAUS HAS BLUE EYES (1966)

(Dir. Jean EUSTACHE)

Eustache's form is highly comparative to Rohmer's short work in this same period, but noticeably marked with a far tougher sense of damnation for the degenerate brethren. Most impressively, this inkling of potential moralizing is greatly hidden aesthetically, letting mere kinks in JPL's performance, treated with frigid cinematographic removal, gesture what needs to be understood. Where as Rohmer projected from the inside out of his leads, Eustache opts for ontological display. Internal whims signal out as pathetic behavior, as most spectators would only view such actions and scenarios as is.

4) AN AUTUMN AFTERNOON (1962)

(Dir. Yasujiro OZU)

Pondering in the sun-baked warmth of slow moving time, gently gazing and bracing for the beyond. Simultaneously reminiscing about the past while trying to settle an ambivalence for the coming future. Where as many celebrated auteurs came to finish their careers sometime within periods firmly succeeding their generation, Ozu completed his in the afternoon of his era, just before the coming of a new day. As masterful of a final stroke by an artist as I've ever seen.

3) HAIL MARY (1985)

(Dir. Jean-Luc GODARD)

No other film has managed to wash my emotions with the assiduous grace this has. And by Godard of all people, no less. Revising the Virgin Birth as a tale of female liberation, unfurling with utmost fervency and raw beauty in its passages. I cried upon finishing, and then some more when contemplating it again the next day. The various close-ups of Myriem Roussel have imprinted themselves into my mind forever.

*The trailer Cohen Media put together for their re-release of this is possibly the best I've ever seen in concisely capturing the entire essence of a film.

2) MARGARET (2011)

(Dir. Kenneth LONERGAN)

Something of an apotheosis of written fiction and numerous production economies converging and conflicting against one another. Akin to an infinitely expanding formation, Lonergan pushes extreme thriftlessness and winds up with an object of unremitting abstract function. To ascribe this simply as an accomplished narrative film would be to come short on its major behavioral components relating to various environmental ripples promulgating all through out, in a manner that actively resists communicative clarity in favor of cryptic temporality. The first time I can recall seeing a literal, active social network with all its persons, holistically rendered on a film screen. By Lonergan's literary and theatrical impulses intransigently concentrating on each character's essence, the common limitation of narrative cinema to contextualize motive and consistency is enigmatically faded, filtering to only the most substantial of characterization. Then the ending. Which ruptures the world open momentarily before stitching it back together, and in doing so, provides a rare shard of lucidity that had been elusive up until.

1) L'ARGENT (1983)

(Dir. Robert BRESSON)

The ideal Marxist dialogue for me, as it clashes the perfect bit with Bresson's own spiritual analysis as a Catholic with nihilistic streaks. Amasses its case points for repudiation against objectivism through a succession of transactions that ultimately manufacture behavioral extremism analogous to how an individual should aim to succeed in a capitalist system in the first place. The substantial presence of law enforcement and judicial practice as morality-abiding hands of justice are rendered an absurdity in Bresson's eyes. Moralizing justifications for punishment under a severely flawed economic order is a trivial and hypocritical act. For the film's damned are those who work to survive and those who attempt to hack the system through philanthropic deeds.

On Filmmaking as an Undergraduate (2020 - 2022)

After gathering all of my needed materials for my first semester at UNLV in the spring of 2020 (it was surreal to be packing my bag with textbooks featuring Buster Keaton & a still from Moonrise Kingdom on their respective covers, even though I'm typically cold on Anderson's work), I spent the week before my official start as a film student envisioning what the next two years would have for me. I thought about what my peers would be like, my professors, and where I'd ultimately be by the end of it all (despite me dreaming of this chapter for years, it's of course only on brand for me to already be thinking about everything afterwards). What types of films or directors would the people around me be into? Are they as typical of the contingent of Gen Z vocal on Letterboxd & Twitter? Who ardently valorize the increasingly familiar output of A24 and trendy populism of Parasite & Uncut Gems? Will a solid chunk of students already have competent knowledge (or even deep interest) for the cinema pre-2000? The answer is I wished.

Upon meeting them and getting to know what and where their interests were in film within my first few weeks, I soberingly realized the indie-wood fandom of online cinephilia to be a dream scenario compared to the reality itself. Instead of such charged films as the aforementioned Parasite and Gems being the cherished new flavors of that season, it was 1917 and Jojo Rabbit (for all the most facile reasons you could conjure). Seemingly no love for The Irishman, but a lot for Joker (a professor even agreed the former film to be boring with no pushback at all from my classmates once). This was all so fucked up to me. And this vocal appreciation, even if disappointing, was cinephilia at its average best within the program. For many others, if it wasn't television bringing them to the dance, it appeared to be nothing of discernible foundation at all. This was when the worst realization hit me. Many if not the majority *love* the act of making movies, but have little to no interest in *engaging* with them intellectually or articulately. A total one-way street. For myself, this is nothing short of baffling. Though it is not a requirement for one to be a scholar in the history of their field, in an artistic practice first and foremost (even commercially minded pursuits are dependent on the literacies of art), one would think that those doing the pursuing would at least have some solid grounding and developed ideologies towards the thing they're working at, never mind the exorbitant costs of tuition, an increasingly hostile and competitive industry, and one's own time. Just about every successful artist, regardless of their critical standing, holds some measure of inner devotion to the very medium they work in. I'm not making it a requisite that all filmmakers be ardently studying the works of Mikio Naruse and The Berlin School, but that they at least already possess some kind of formalistic appreciation backed by a sizable enough survey of the chronology before them. Aside from a notable few I got to know, this very, very low bar of expectation was not met nor even attempted outside of classroom perimeters. Yet, the smell of high ambitions and dreams of individualistic prestige strongly permeated the air. Perhaps even a stench. 

Pertinently, my first semester proved to be the most critical yet in my filmmaking development as it was during this time that enough things clicked momentously for me to properly attract to and be interested in film criticism from my introduction to the writings of Dan Sallitt, Blake Williams, and further attention to Michael Sicinski's work. And my personal revelations made about the medium, unlocked by their observations, was accelerated duly by the initial lockdown of COVID. With the outside world ostensibly put on hold, I now had all the time in the world to devote solely to my continued study of film criticism and practice. These said revelations? As mentioned in my earlier entry, my fixation on photographic detail and freedoms in the edit commenced a slow unfurling of what would actually become a full on grasping of cinema's unlimited spectrum of possibility. In taking in the intimate, auteurist evaluations of Sallitt and the application of avant-garde critique to narrative cinema by Williams & Sicinski, what became evidently clear to me was just how infinitely liberating film itself could really be. And in my personal scope of narrative, the outlining of a fluidity, both in creation and interpretation. One could argue that this maturation of thought is really just that, a maturation less unique in its influence and a more universal appreciation for the entire Gestalt of the thing, but telling from how many, if not most critics and filmmakers still engage with their art, I individually argue otherwise. This strain of thought to treat narrative cinema entirely as a formal free space is (sadly) still an esoteric one. But nevertheless, this properly loosened me up in no longer committing to separate trains of thought for both narrative and the experimental. From this point on, they were one and of the same to me.

The semester came to a gentle close despite the worsening health crisis and abrupt shift to virtual classes. For all the grief I gave my new academic environment not quite meeting my expected standards, I enjoyed it enough and was at least cushioned with elation at the reality of having my life formally committed to cinema for the next couple years. And I got to see things like Sembene's Black Girl (1966) and Brakhage's Mothlight (1963) in proper theatrical exhibition which is in itself a very rare treat considering the dire chances for arthouse screenings locally. So hard to complain there. During the summer, I made the intention to step back from filmmaking for a bit and try my hand at criticism for the first time. As anyone following me for a couple years knows, this would be the genesis for the blog's existence. I'd previously remembered in a sociology class that increased cognitive performance and abstract thought was linked to one's own linguistic growth, and so along with my newly adopted set of film ideologies, I theorized that through regular writing exercises, I'd gradually grow my skill set as a filmmaker via my ability to formally comprehend, think, and articulate complex ideas. This I feel, ended up testing true.

Although I can't pinpoint a specific piece where I felt my cognition develop most significantly in writing it, I still am wholly proud of my essay on the films of Antoine Bourges (Fail to Appear and East Hastings Pharmacy) and my review of Maurice Pialat's The Mouth Agape (1974), a film which by the way, also proved considerably important to my development at that time for its extremely cryptic display of form. To this day I still haven't seen anything toggle two violently contrasting tones as playfully as it does. Or how Pialat achieves sobering flashes of crystal clear poetry out of effortless naturalistic framing and mere accumulation of simple incidence. In fact that sentence I just wrote there, both in its syntactic construction and ideological articulation, would not have come from me prior to my serious endeavor in writing. 

However much I thought I could casually brush off doing any filmmaking for the foreseeable future (especially during confinement) would laughably prove me wrong when after having made the immense intellectual progress I'd undergone, my tendencies to create were justifiably emboldened and reignited with a new and spitting fervor. In mid-late July, despite strongly set rules to keep myself from initiating a new project until I'd theoretically matured "enough" in my thinking of cinema, I spontaneously penned a short script treating the screenplay as a structure of narrative thoughts opposed to a dogmatic, literary translation of the film as I'd mostly done before. In a week, I'd finished writing and developing The Moments Before Annihilation.

Abstracting and dramatizing my real life plights and exhausting pessimism about the general direction of the world (one I should note that had already been in intense motion even before the pandemic, police protests, and degradation of late capitalism in 2020) fueled by obsessive social media scrolling, I sought to make a short piece of autofiction that'd both exorcise my bleak outlook on many things to try and come to understand them better while also softly criticizing my own relative economic comfort and safeguarding from the worst of material oppression and class violence and the internal conflict that sparks existentially. As anyone paying attention to indie film that year would know, what seemed to be an endless littering of uniformly executed films shot at home addressing the world situation was in full swing, so why would I even dare to further pile on to the infinite pile of relevancy-cloying sufferance? Because trying to superficially apply a "meaningful" narrative or reinforce a bullshit morality lesson was simply not my objective.  As with what I've since come to reckon with my work, my aim was to interrogate, with the camera, my most immediate interests, thoughts, and obsessions. Not to make an all-knowing show about the world around me. Instead, a case study with fiction as an engine.

In the time since I started making films and gradually stringing together notions of what transfixed me in a formal sense, what I consciously identified as a major pleasure point over time was that of minimalistic practice. Think Bresson, Ozu, Akerman, or more recently, Angela Schanelec or Ricky D'Ambrose. Saying much with the fewest, most filtered aesthetic gestures necessary. I make no qualms that my attraction to it from the stance of a filmmaker with limited means is in substantial part to its material accessibility. When monetarily restricted, it simply becomes an imperative to create by what can be reasonably retrieved and achieved. As a failure to do so results in no movie. Although, that's not also to make it sound like minimalism is strictly denotated by an obedience to physical limitation, either, as it is of course a broad philosophical detail in its own right, and one whose core tenets I strongly adhere to. It's a world-view and a way to make movies.

I shot the film like a still photographer would a home catalog for interior design furnishings and items. Substantially influenced by a Filmmaker Magazine article* detailing Ricky D'Ambrose's work method for Notes on an Appearance (2018), I was drawn to the idea of treating every detail inside each frame as no more an object, even people, thusly reducing everything to a functional variable for the fiction being expressed. Ultimately, this links all the way back to Bresson's ideation on "modeling", but where most of his films still mediated some degree of realism to slightly offset his academic direction, which I actually like best, D'Ambrose's hyper-fixation on secluded objective specifics, used linguistically with images as words and phrases, seemed a better outfit, especially in representing the molecular reality I was attempting to visually cohere. The house I'd been in for 2 years at this point was and still is not one with ornate adornments in most rooms, with white walls lining the entirety of the space, and amalgamated with my own ascetic enforcement of daily routine, limiting the film's sight to a concise presentation of highlighted objects and distinctly shot bodily expressions appeared as the most logical pathway I should take. Chronologically, I felt it right to employ longer takes to translate the extended psychological duration of each passing day. In writing this, I just touched back upon, for the first time since then, how elongated each day in quarantine really felt like. With society in suspension and the abstract notion of "progress" frozen, my register for time still moving forward was completely fucked up.

As for sound, it was then that I also began to heavily fixate on the usage of organic ambience opposed to traditional score or musical cues, which makes itself apparent in the film's sound design. In a manner that may be logically bound to my ideas on unembellished imagery, fabricating the photographic space with a matching score resonates to me not as a given default or necessity to drama, but an active choice with its own set of rules. Those who've seen the film know there to be two distinct breaks in diegetic continuity that occur. One in the opening segment after the photo montage when my character picks up the shredded dollar fragment, of which a cartoonish tingling is heard, and in the closing shot, where Schumann's Piano Quintet plays over the moving clouds and into the credits. My ideation that prefers music and sound FX placement to be kept at a minimal, does not ostracize these things, but rather prioritizes them as accents to be sparsely deployed for exalted dramatic affectation. It's only there when it really matters. As I hoped to have properly used in the cited instances.

The film took only 2 weeks to complete (with more than half that time spent on sound design & mixing). I was most proud of it then for being the film that most matched my interests at the time and still today I view it with high personal regard. Tangentially, it was also with this film where I made the spontaneous decision to reboot my (still) not-legally-recognized FilmStreet brand with a new logo and production intro, to better fit my new overall filmmaking oeuvre. At the time I had the original identity commissioned by my cousin in high school, I was still under the naive impression that I'd follow in the footsteps of the classic Hollywood filmmakers I adored most, hence the prominent art-deco design and literal film street made of celluloid (I was not yet fond of digital either).

Furthering into my second semester in the Fall, and then third and fourth in 2021, the stars gradually diminished in my eyes as I came to painstakingly accept my (mostly) lone existence in my film program. I often found myself holding more conversations and bonding with faculty members than I did other students (and even most instructors weren't to my preference either, but who else could I have articulate dialogues about Howard Hawks or Wong Kar-wai with). Though I don't at all recoil from my open proclivity towards the cinema found in the periphery of mainstream Hollywood, this partisanship in a city with minimal incentives and institutional pillars for education and access quantifies to immediate isolation. Even if my hopes of finding a thriving social scene for so-called 'alternative cinema' was crushed, I did befriend and get to know many promising technicians: hopeful cinematographers, production designers, editors, sound engineers, etc. Ultimately, possessing advanced literacy and extensive knowledge for films, while an ideal, is not necessary to the competent making of one. I came to terms with this and moved forward accordingly. After all, I did at least meet a few fine folks who are dedicated cinephiles and thinkers of their form.

Strangely, though I had only completed my second semester, I recognized the fleeting passage of time and that soon enough, my days as a film student would come to a swift end and I'd be graduating. Conscious of this, I knew I had to set my sights soon towards a capstone project of sorts. A film that'd have to prove as my most ambitious endeavor to date, and one that'd emotionally serve as a bookend to this chapter of my filmmaking pursuit and life. By the end of 2020, I'd regularized a habit of taking extended walks in my neighborhood, both for casual exercise and my own mental well-being. In December, my walking shifted to a nocturnal activity as I found great ambience by the sum of Christmas lights and decorations enthusiastically put up by my neighbors (Halloween is a very lively affair here as well). One night while on such walks, after more than a couple days of repeat gazing at the blissful scenery around me, I was struck by a marriage of separate film ideas I'd compartmentalized over time all at once. These included: a movie set entirely during Christmas (a holiday I still am quite sentimental for and cherish annually), a movie that justified the unique "hyperreality" of the iPhone's camera, a movie that prominently featured a video diary component complete with aged digital video, and a singular scene from a script I'd written earlier for a screenwriting class with two female characters ruminating on each other's lives with melancholy permeating the air. I recall briskly picking up the pace of my steps and soon dashing back home possessed with massive inspiration to sit down, pull my sleeves up, and begin writing. Over a month later, an early screenplay for Tracy's Diary was completed.

The film is a single-location chamber drama set on the night after Christmas. It follows Helena, a young adult woman whose just finished hosting a gift giving party for friends, and is in the process of cleaning up with a close companion, Emily, before a mysterious parcel she'd spontaneously placed under her tree from before is casually questioned and prompted to be opened. Its contents initiate an emotional journey that explore an elusive old friendship with a girl named Tracy through a series of cryptic video logs. I've yet to explain much on how I ended up with the narrative I did, but to be quite honest, there isn't really much for me to talk about. I sort of just arrived at everything as is. However, what I think I can comment on, is the way in which Christmas and all its relevant aesthetics serve as the backdrop for the central drama, which is not in itself bound to the occasion. 

I remain minimally sentimental these days about many things, however, the end of year holidays do still mean an awful lot to me in the comforting sense of community they foster. It is perhaps a strongly American sentiment, as they symbolize and function as the few moments in a year where time off for familial and friendly gathering is (mostly) encouraged and respected within the uber-capitalist framework of the United States. The same old loop of canonized songs on the radio (with the yearly inclusion of trendy pop sensations who disappear by the next rotation), the abundance of decorations that signify the season and mass consumption equally, and the proliferation of themed specials on television and food tie-ins laced with noxious amounts of artificial coloring/flavoring. My description of how these traditions have been co-opted entirely by commercial interests sounds damningly cynical, not that I'm not still, but I do still adore them. In my life, I've experienced on more than a few occasions, unexpected reunions with people I've long been disconnected with around Christmas time. Sometimes these occur in person at gatherings I've been invited to, and sometimes they've manifested in the form of gifts I've received in the mail or given through mutuals. Just as recently as last year, the latter happened again from an old caretaker of mine from whom I hadn't seen or heard from since 2010-ish. Yet somehow, I was still thought of and considered by this person. And that strange & lovely alchemy of separation, elongated distance, then reunion is something I am bewitched by. It's semi-regular occurrence during the autumnal holidays has crystallized it in my mind as a faithful happening I clutch close and hold near and dear. This is where Tracy's fateful return to Helena's life is ultimately sourced from.

Unlike all my previous directorial attempts, I knew it was time for me to employ a workflow that more accurately represented the production cycle of professionally made films. This primarily meant sending out casting notices to audition trained actors, who I'd most likely never met before, and working with an actual crew to record sound on set and assist with overall production, who also might've consisted of new collaborators. It was as exciting to finally be stepping up my game as it was daunting, staring down at all that needed to be done to ready the film for production, and the complicated logistics inherently packaged with the video diary integration.

In my ideation of how the movie should be, my mind began presenting the scenes I'd written with an old acquaintance of mine from high school, Jen Funderburk, as Helena. I first found the thoughts silly yet reasonable considering her real life embodiment of how I'd written the character to act and appear like, and sure enough with time, I was entertaining the convenient match-up as a tangible option. The caveat being, however, that she had no prior acting experience whatsoever. But given my practice at this point working exclusively with people who weren't actors prior to filming and the philosophies of Friedkin & Bresson being further interwoven into my system, the precedent of casting and working with a non-actor was nothing but familiar territory for me. Yet working with professionals, was not. Before I'd even completed the script, I went and contacted her and pitched the project and my interest in her playing a lead role. Without any negotiation, she accepted and became the first to board the project, still a year away from being made (for reasons purely economic), to my surprise. I was wholly grateful and relieved to already have momentum this early on in development to say the least.

Performing numerous script rewrites in subsequent months, it dawned on me that Tracy's video diaries would need to be filmed over a span of time to maximize the chances of chronicling a great number of interesting scenery as I encountered such places naturally in the chronology of my own life. A major thing I knew was happening relatively soon was another trip back to the Philippines over the summer (which had originally been planned for the previous year but was cancelled for the big obvious reason). Realizing the prized opportunity of shooting abroad, and with incredible ease considering the freeform nature of simulating that off the cuff filming style everyone attaches to home videos, I made sure to incorporate the environments of my trip as a justified story element. In the end, among my favorite scenes and images ended up being ones taken from this visit. Shooting the video diaries as a whole during the spring and summer proved to be the most fun and liberating time I've ever had making anything.

When I wasn't actively cramming my sights onto my camcorder's internal drive, I spent the rest of my free time that summer in airports, airplanes, & hotel rooms continuously rewriting the script and creating a storyboard/paper edit to visualize the film to exactly what it needed to be and for the most economical production schedule for my cast & crew. Something I found out during this was just how much I enjoy doing this work exactly when I am sat down in an airport lounge or flying. I can't elucidate further as to why, but the ambience properly stimulates my mind like none other. Can't wait to do this again for future projects.

In September, a month after returning from the Philippines, I got to work on finally sourcing cast and crew with my set date for production being in early December, when my household and others would've already gotten our decorations up. I mainly was in need of a sound recordist on set and an assistant director/production assistant to be a helpful extra pair of hands. For cinematography/camera operation, I'd be handling the duty once again since I knew best how to perform the image making I was looking to achieve. It's funny actually. I've no desire to work professionally as a cinematographer ever, yet I've always naturally fulfilled the role on my films. And over time, gained incremental skills and knowledge about cameras, lenses, lighting, and set logistics to probably be decent at it. Oh well. I'll pass the baton over to someone else at some point.

When it came to my search, I went about each in differing ways. For crew, all I did was reach out to some folks whom I'd gotten to know and was again lucky to fill out the few roles I needed with as little negotiation needed. Out of unforeseen circumstances, my original sound person did have to drop out a few weeks before shooting, but replacing them went on to be a sweatless endeavor as well. As for cast, the process was far busier.

I sent out casting notices through all channels I could possibly think of. Through social media postings, word-of-mouth, corroboration from any faculty I could get to advertise, and was even granted a presentation in front of class once. Because of my immense budgetary limitations, casting locally was the only option, but even if I had the choice to, I still would've opted to keep things local since this was essentially my way of getting to know what talent existed in the area. For the next couple months, I virtually auditioned an average of 2-3 actresses a week for the roles of Tracy and Emily. I minimized the emphasis on line readings during my auditions and instead shaped each interview to be a simple conversation to get to know each actress better. This I feel was a more appropriate avenue given how much I like to apply the real life likeness of my actors to the characters and dialogue I've written. I'm less interested in creating performances than I am finding them from what is already there. Overall, the process went splendidly, the actresses seemed far more comfortable and less anxious with the audition method I configured from scratch, and I wound up with a good pool to select from, which made me happy. What did not make me happy was having to actually choose and send "thank you but unfortunately" emails to those I didn't choose. I fucking loathed having to be on the other side of that exchange for once. Alexis Taylor was cast as Tracy and after unfortunate scheduling issues with the initial actress, Alyssa Leonesio was cast as Emily. The daunting part of pre-production was finally over and I managed through it unscathed and with a strong group of people. Onto the next headache. 

Production was planned to occur in only two days max. Though this still remained a college endeavor, I was really against impeding upon the free labor those I brought on were offering. I realize fully how goofy this thinking is, especially when most student projects around me typically shot for exponentially longer, and with considerably sizable crew, but still. Maybe it's the ardent leftist in me acting out. People have lives to live beyond work and schooling after all. Fortunately, only a day (6 hours) was needed in total to complete everything on set. The first hour proved a little awkward at first as everyone was fitting into their roles (including myself, directing isn't exactly a daily exercise), but afterwards, pure euphoria (at least to me). Completely to my astonishment, Jen not only proved her ability to keep up with her more experienced scene partners, but truly locked herself into the exact performance I'd been conjuring in my head for a year on at that point. It was a pure joy to watch from just behind the iPhone's screen. And when it came to the big finale where she was needed to reach an emotional high and produce tears, that worked itself out quite organically also. Never have I been so proud with a performance as a director. Also not to leave out Alyssa and Alexis (who recorded her dialogue during post) too, of course.  Given their training, I was not the least bit concerned. To have a year's worth (mind you, the longest I've spent preparing a film) of imagining manifest itself like it did was cathartic magic. 

Editing the film became my life for the next three months and not much happened creatively that I once haven't already gone over. Like with my previous three films before this, getting to sculpt the 'best' performance out of multiple takes has come to be one of the most enjoyable and rewarding parts in the production cycle for me. It goes hand in hand with my overall dogma of cinema being an act of construction first and foremost. Tracy's Diary was officially completed in March of this year.

With completion of the film also came my final semester at UNLV. Undoubtedly, this semester went on to give me my highest of highs and lowest of lows emotionally. My best time in classes happened here, as did my personal frustrations with the program reaching their absolute boiling point. I could go long on the latter, but I'm bereft of the energy and motivation to do so now. Those who should know, know already. I was unexpectedly chosen to speak at an honors ceremony for the department before my graduation where I used the opportunity to praise what needed to be praised and openly criticized what needed to be criticized. I didn't fucking care to give a testimonial quite frankly. Most of what I feel was my growth during my schooling, was based more on my own individual endeavor, with the love and support of a few very good people I'd met, than my development being owed to the school. Not really.

I graduated in May and have been alive ever since (I think). I spontaneously began work on a new film the same month (the quickest I've transitioned from one project to another) with some fine folks I might've not met nearly as soon if it weren't for film school. Now, for the after.

Thank you Roudi, Cole, Lorelei, Andrew, Spencer, Jennifer, Alyssa, Alexis, Natalie, Kyara, Frano, Pierre, Leo, Gavin, Dario, Professor Levner, Professor Edmiston, Professor Tylo, Professor Park, and Professor Angel.

*

Ricky D’Ambrose on 'Notes on an Appearance'

Review: The Adventures of Gigi the Law (2022, Comodin)

 

Since the ultimate surge of global ire against law enforcement in 2020, depictions of police officers and their policing in film have inspired greater critique amongst audiences, whom for many and for the first time, are cognizant of the systemic politics construed in the media they regularly intake. Films and shows like Spike Lee's BlackKklansman (2018) and Brooklyn Nine-Nine evoked discussions on the ethics and role of portraying a line of work with a deeply problematic history and corruptive nature. I am personally of the belief that every artistic work, deliberately intended or not, is subject to politicization, for it is politics that binds together our ability to engage with every issue and topic under the sun. Within attempting to understand the various facets of police work and how different filmmakers choose to frame them through infinite narrative and aesthetic strata, what is ironically seldom seen, is the unmediated and unfiltered procedure of actual laboring in law enforcement as a working class predicament adjacent to any other. In the Locarno-selected and special jury awarded feature The Adventures of Gigi the Law, director Alessandro Comodin anatomizes the insular dimension of enforcing law to its most rigorous form, and as a result, seamlessly makes mundanity appear uniformly to the fantastical, thus brilliantly interrogating the nature of the work entirely.

Fashioned with a minimalistic verite flavoring, the film chronicles the non-linear duty of Gigi (short for Luigi), a local patrol officer tasked with surveying a small rural district gently existent somewhere in the Italian countryside. Though I must admit my overall ignorance to the system of Italian law enforcement, the gradual unveiling of Gigi's patrolling doesn't take too long to note itself as nothing much beyond involved and largely abstained from tense conflict. During an early scene (and the film's most openly dark) where Gigi and a patrol partner for the day stumble upon the descriptively gruesome scene of a young woman's seeming suicide at a railroad crossing, the duo inform a nearby agency to instead deal with the conflict in front of them. When subsequent details of routine confirm Gigi's role as largely that of a helpful pair of eyes, one can concur about a network of specialized sectors serving individual designations within Italy's police force. Straining away the hands-on investigation and civic offense many commonly associate with the job, Gigi's simplified duties made up of relaxed drives on delegated routes and casual roadside wellness checks on the incidentally encountered signal to a small life of a few consistent variables stringently arranged, assembled to be deterrent from much unexpected contingency. The same old yesterday, today, and tomorrow. 

Comodin maps Gigi's constrained experience through revolving segments of three key camera placements. A diagonal close-up of Gigi in the driver's seat of his patrol car, a reverse shot of the same set up aimed to the front passenger seat (often cut to playfully to reveal an arbitrary deputy) and perhaps the most mesmeric, a POV mounted on the dashboard, spectating the world and beyond from behind a glass frame, or windshield. Deploying a filmic philosophy comparable to that of James Benning, where landscapes act as functions of time, the long, often static, and routinely assembled takes sketch the work of this benign branch of policing with a dulled point. After an hour or so in, this explicit dullness, which starts as cordial before gradually transitioning to inconsequentially meandering, shows subtle signs of wear as Gigi, plainly professional and likably friendly for most of the duration, begins expressing personal frustrations partially unbeknownst to the viewer, but hinted to be brought on by the monotony of the job. Gigi's expected professionalism slips as he grows ever more flirtatious with his attractively described radio dispatcher Paola. An amiable run-in with a next door neighbor envelops into heated exchange over unkempt garden plants on Gigi's end. And concern (or beef) for a vaguely introduced character named Tomaso spirals into an apparent obsession, climaxing in a distinct scene at night where Gigi confronts the man in the tangled and overgrown web of his yard as the film's presentation abruptly shifts to handheld photography for the moment. This unforeseen manic episode is bookended with a shock whip pan to a nearby speeding train and a suggestively framed shot of an unknown woman in police uniform, unbuttoning her shirt before Gigi's normalcy is jettisoned back into. His situation is then left off with a finely instituted role change as he trains a new female hire, who he opens up to and then appears to be replenished by (but also questionably resembles the woman in the fantasy sequence, possibly suggesting more to Gigi's condition).

Though elusively put together and not by any means a conventional representation of fantasy, the insular world building that Comodin invisibly constructs by his usage of routine depiction and enclosed reality cleverly devises and contextualizes the everyday industriousness of Gigi's mundane labor as itself an entire lived in world of its own rules and behaviors, viewable only through the construct of this line of work. The observation not only resounds as one completely unseen and unimagined in the cinema by myself, but also places new questions and ideological graspings to that of policing and labor in art overall. The well-studied observation about the abstract of role assignment (boosted by the wearing of uniforms and handling of specialized equipment, e.g. a police car) creating separate trains of personable characteristic and perception is cross-examined from both the dilemmas of fiction and psychological attribution ingeniously and effortlessly. And if we are to continue the dialogue on the politics of representation, probing both the labor and how it shapes, and therefore propagates, motives and actions from the individualistic level to the systemic, should undoubtedly be recognized as well. A truly idiosyncratic and illuminating work, this one.