I’m a rather firm believer in free will and I also resonate strongly with the concept of destiny. I’m aware the two seem to contradict each other and as with many other grand questions regarding life, I tend to answer with both yes and no – because this is the only way language can attempt… Read More Prompted by a passage from “The Angel of Darkness” by Sabato
In 𝗠𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗰 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗲 Gilbert Rouget argues that “𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘵𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘳𝘩𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘮 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘭 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦.” In other words, there is no intrinsic power of music which induces trance. Music here acts not on the physiological level, but as a code (a). It plays a symbolic role,… Read More On music and its effects. Notes and quotes without a conclusion. Digressions and ricochets + a video of a dancing parrot
When L. imagines how, in a few years, the new students will “close their eyes with the tiredness of being alive”, one can easily replace “being alive” with “identity,” since being alive (incarnated), means being subjected to certain limitations, conditions, and contingencies, all of which are limited and limiting (even the very fact of having… Read More Payal Kapadia’s “A Night of Knowing Nothing”
I wasn’t expecting this video to turn into a cinematic experience. First of all it’s fascinating as a recording of a process, with all the ensuing preparations, accidents, and recalibrations. Secondly, it works as an implicit view on cinema, where what one chooses to shoot and in what way is a testament in this regard.… Read More Static shots. Perception. The specificity of cinema. A concert by Etran de l’Air
“Last night I had the strangest dream. I was in a laboratory with Dr. Boas and he was talking to me and a group of other people about religion, insisting that life must have a meaning, that man couldn’t live without that. Then he made a mass of jelly-like stuff of the most beautiful blue… Read More Margaret Mead’s dream
“One may ask, on the other hand, whether reality can be staged so accurately that the camera-eye will not detect any difference between the original and the copy. Blaise Cendrars touches on this issue in a neat hypothetical experiment. He imagines two film scenes which are completely identical except for the fact that one has… Read More I shield myself with Kracauer against the mindless expansion of AI
Mesmerizing time capsule, with a restoration featuring a superb contemporary soundtrack by Jeff Mills, which brings out surprising latent qualities of the film. Supposedly praised by Renoir and Vigo, it further fueled my hunger for rewatching (and watching) dozens of French movies (oh, the ultimate cinephilic cliché, but what can I do), and my recent… Read More Études sur Paris (André Sauvage, 1928)
So many times, when watching a movie, I experience a sense of frustration: I cannot touch the image, I cannot grasp it, fix it, or retain it (remember that moment in Godard’s “Les Carabiniers” when Michelangelo literally tries to enter the projection screen?) A frame is replaced by another in a way that, although logical… Read More When cinema is no longer needed
The fixity of the frame leads one to see/notice what one normally doesn’t see/notice: a myriad of gestures, facial expressions, the jewelry on the driver’s hands, the play of light on the persons’ bodies and on the inner surface of the car, countless details and events happening outside the car. What one can see through… Read More “Ten” by Abbas Kiarostami
