I wrote down this update three weeks ago, on October 23rd, and today, on November 13th, I have updated the update.
I have been watching countless hours of interviews, film critics and video essays on certain films and filmmakers these days. Revisiting some and finding tens.
Still watching, but seeing less. My eyes are tired and I have decided to listen to the interviews and to watch them only when necessary.
I have been reflecting on why and how I make films, mainly through identifying or rejecting certain questions and answers from those interviews, critics and essays.
The same.
I have been playful towards the editing of ‘Your Mario Dancing’, a film we shot throughout the first two-thirds of the year in course. I dismantled it on paper and worked-out a new cut. I like it better now.
Yesterday I sent the final cut to the sound designer. These weeks I did take a wilder stand on the new montage and perfected it. I also made tons of traditional animation, a new record for me at least. Feeling proud.
For the how I make films superficial meditations, I slightly stepped into part of the making-of footage of the above-mentioned film.
Finally, I am getting into this. Several times during the master’s course I was asked if ‘Your Mario Dancing’ could become a subject of research. I normally replied with a cold ‘no’, but I kept on considering it, since I collected a bunch of questions from the experience. That ‘no’ came from the fact that I want to work on a new film. This week I decided to bring up both the process we used for the film and its making-of footage to my one-on-one meeting with Danniel Danniel. From the beginning I pictured the making-of footage as a tool of reflection, and Danniel came up with some great insights, so why not?
I have been wondering about entertaining films, entertainment, art-making, art films, film festivals, unentertaining films, orthodoxy, living life, charades, art movements, outsider artists, academic research, artistic research, resources, artistic collaboration and groups of people who look like malfunctioning zoos. I have not thought of why or how I produce visual art pieces. I have not been painting since I came to Amsterdam.
For Lino Hellings’ workshop, Sam told me that we should go to the zoo, and we did, and what a great idea it was. Still not painting, but have been drawing a lot. My close friend, collaborator and colleague Alejandro Bonilla Rojas and I had a two-hour Skype call a few days ago and it was partly sponsored by a few techniques I successfully pirated from Lino. What a good feeling.
I have been thinking of two ideas; one of them I wouldn’t shoot, the other one I would like to co-direct.
I wrote down the first one and archived it. After posting this piece, I wrote to the co-director I had in mind but has not answered back and it started evolving into another film project I would like to work on during the master’s course. Not bad.
I have been speaking less, interacting less or the same, listening more, spying more, recording less, shooting less, writing more, transcribing, reflecting on those things I let myself say and finding a new meaning in them. I want to summarize more, both while expressing thoughts and executing actions.
Still on the same page, except for some particular moments. I have also been using the Cineville card a few times per week, always by myself, always jumping from one cinema to the other, getting to know the city.
I currently see two paths for my current research. One of them would be around bringing points of view and techniques from several absurd-related makers and movements to a certain filmmaking idiosyncrasy.
Right now I’m somewhere else.
This transitional weather has had something to do with everything that is going on around the city. I found a tape in a box, on a sidewalk.
It was an American Beauty tape.
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