scenes from America

On Feb. 9, a man scrawled a message on the roof of his house in a suburb of Los Angeles: "I Want 2 Be Heard." Then he barricaded himself inside when deputies showed up to evict him, surrendering after a few hours. In October, a woman in San Diego chained herself to her front porch after the bank that held her mortgage refused to renegotiate the terms. She remains in her home, but has received a second eviction notice.

[...]

"This is a cold place in the winter and I will not give people a death sentence for not paying their debts," Sheriff Jones said in an interview. "These are human beings, responsible middle-class people who fell on hard times, and I just can't toss them out onto the streets."

[...]

"I may lose my home, but I'm only leaving in handcuffs," Ms. Millington said.

[...]

In an interview, Ms. Kaptur said, "I'm thrilled that the American people are rising up and exercising the power that Wall Street has taken away from them."

um modo de filmar muito correcto

"There is a Portuguese director that I like very much, Pedro Costa, who has a very appropriate way of filming. One time, he told me that I film the rich, and he films the poor. I told him that I film souls - and there are souls as much in the rich as in the poor."
- Manoel de Oliveira

[«Há um realizador português de que gosto muito, o Pedro Costa, que tem um modo de filmar muito correcto. Uma vez, ele disse-me que eu filmava os ricos, ele filmava os pobres. Respondi-lhe que eu filmo as almas – e as almas tanto há nos ricos como nos pobres.»]

Many thanks to André for this.

Overton window

never thought I’d live to see the day « ads without products

Swanberg promises

For those of you thinking that I might have a response to Glenn's thoughts on the work of Joe Swanberg (and Filmbo's followup, plus other assorted defenses and critiques in the works)... well, watch this space.

Update: Craig weighs in. And I can't wait to join the fray.

Kluge Marx Joyce Eisenstein etc

Alexander Kluge's 570-minute adaptation of Karl Marx's Das Kapital, News from Ideological Antiquity. Marx – Eisenstein – Das Kapital, has been released and is now available only on DVD for under 30 Euros.

I don't see any evidence that there are English subtitles on the disc, but even so -- this is a truly monumental release from one of the most impressively skilled and radical filmmakers.

You can read more about it here.

to reflect concretely on a limited amount of work

"It’s not important to know then all, but just to know a few well. You don't need to know all the museum when you go to a museum, but only a few paintings. In my case, in fact, for example, I know three paintings by Cezanne very well. It didn't do me any good at all to the museum all the time, but to reflect concretely on a limited amount of work. That’s culture, as they say. It does not consist of having it all, but in having reflected concretely on a few things."
- Jean-Marie Straub

"The fault I find with our journalism is that it forces us to take an interest in some fresh triviality or other every day, whereas only three or four books in a lifetime give us anything that is of real importance."
- Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust

"Comme l’on serait savant si l’on connaissait bien seulement cinq á six livres!"
("How wise one might be if one knew only some half-dozen books well!")
- Gustave Flaubert, in a letter to his mistress Louise Colet, 17 February 1853

(the full paragraph: "Tantôt j’ai fait un peu de grec et de latin, mais pas raide. Je vais reprendre, pour mes lectures du soir, les Morales de Plutarque. C’est une mine d’érudition et de pensées intarissable. Comme l’on serait savant, si l’on connaissait bien seulement cinq á six livres!")

inspired by a debate with Miguel Marías (here).
(some information gleaned/confirmed here)