Passe mon bac d’abord

I’m all kinds of too busy lately. I dolled up this blog a few months ago and I’ve barely touched it except for the occasional list or bit on James Benning. It’s frustrating. The truth is I’ve been swallowed up by a class on Michael Snow at the University of Toronto. My life has become a long stream of Elder, Sitney, Fried, and Michelson. I’m loving the material, though; and, I’ve finally gotten to see 16mm prints of Wavelength and La région centrale (twice! (the second of which was rocky; not a film to watch at 9AM)). But more than Michael Snow, I’m finally getting familiar with a huge chunk of avant-garde cinema that I’d been ashamedly unacquainted with. I plan on posting a few entries on some of the material that has really stunned me toward the end of the semester.

I’m also in the process of solidifying a June internship at Kino Arsenal in Berlin, which I couldn’t be more excited for. Nothing is set in stone yet; it’s all sort of stumbling into place. It’s still in its infant stages of organization, but if it happens, I’ll have some…thing up on here as that plays out as well.

I’ve also somehow managed to make some work in the last couple of months that I think is interesting, and I’ll be sending some of it out in the next couple of months to some programs that I probably have no business even hoping for, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I won’t mention that again unless something comes of it. I have some of the work hidden away online for viewing if anyone wants to take a look, but I’m not making it public so that I can still apply for certain events that prohibit that kind of thing.

In mean time I’m spending most of my free time at the Cinematheque. Their ‘Best of the Decade’ program, which is about to wrap up any day now, has allowed me to catch up on some titles I’d missed (Beau travail, L’intrus, In Praise of Love, Longing, Three Times, Platform) or been meaning to revisit (Werckmeister Harmonies) or vowed to never not see on the big screen whenever I have a chance to (Syndromes and Century, Tropical Malady). What I learned from all of this: Claire Denis and Apichatpong are two of the best we’ve got, I do not think I will ever ‘get’ late Godard (nor most of the early stuff) despite how pretty it really is, and standard-definition, non-anamorphic, interlaced transfers should be avoided at all cost for any Bela Tarr film.

And speaking of Decade summations, I will make one at the end of the year, to give all of 2009, and what I’ve missed from years previous, a chance.