Notebook's 6th Writers Poll: Fantasy Double Features of 2013

One of my favorite annual events, the publication of the Notebook’s year-end Fantasy Double Features poll. One of my favorite things to write, and read. I wrote a small piece I’m very proud of, which I’m happy to have published in such incredible company.

Notebook's 6th Writers Poll: Fantasy Double Features of 2013

My contribution:

For this assignment, the brief was: pair an 'old' film and a 'new' film, each seen in 2013. Instead, I offer two old-new films, each rediscovered in their own way for the first time in 2013, and each in their own way the most moving cinematic moment(s) of my year.
First, an untitled film, or rather, one whose title I won't share. A fragment, really, just seven seconds long, nearly silent, and certainly without speaking. 'Shot,' if you can call it that, by an app that records video from Skype, and thus far never seen any larger than 320 × 240 pixels. A film I made, accidentally, in 2010, its existence forgotten since then, which somehow arrived in 2013 as new and, importantly, complete. A film that presents at most a single gesture, or maybe two.
This fragment has made me smile and cry more than any other in 2013.
I've told you nothing of it. Publicly, it has never existed, never been seen except by my own eyes. Privately, it makes sense only as a tiny piece of a much larger history, to which only two people could ever be privy. I wonder if, were this private diary to survive, it could ever be understood.
Sappho's poems survive only in fragments.
Second, a silent film, lovingly restored by cinematic saint Kevin Brownlow, and projected on 4K at the 2013 TCM Classic Film Festival in front of a crowd much too sparse. The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925) is the story of a long-distance relationship—begun in tenderness, trampled by circumstance, sustained by faith, and reunited by commitment. It is other things as well; there's tenderness and comedy, both to be found in brotherhood, and the tragedy and revelation of disillusionment's double-edged sword. But most of all, this story is of unfaltering love. To be close, then to be far away, then to draw close again; to hobble and stumble and run to hold your love again.

2013

I gave up the cinema in 2013, despite all contrary appearances. I don't have much to publicly say about this change of commitment that isn't buried beneath my forthcoming contribution to the Mubi year-end poll, but I do still without reservation present a non-chronological list of my year in cinema, in rough order of preference.

My definitions of cinema continue to change, and this year I felt more connected to short-form and internet content than ever before, and less inclined to consider television as 'cinema' except where the work in question was originally otherwise 'cinematic' according to my definitional instincts.

May this list offer you hints and gifts and reflections for your own journey through the world, and through the world of moving images.


[Untitled] (David McDougall, 2010)
The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972)
The Big Parade (King Vidor, 1925)
The Three Disasters (Jean-Luc Godard, 2013)
From Greece (Peter Nestler, 1966)
A Single Man (Tom Ford, 2009)
Lola (Jacques Demy, 1961)
Häxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages (Benjamin Christensen, 1922; original score by Demdike Stare, 2013)
The Blackbird (Tod Browning, 1926)
Cluny Brown (Ernst Lubitsch, 1946)
Up The Danube (Peter Nestler & Zsóka Nestler, 1981)
d kat (Adam Cook, 2013)
Chile Film (Peter Nestler & Zsóka Nestler, [1974])
he didn't call his painting anything (Alexandre Galmard, 2013)
Joan of Paris (Robert Stevenson, 1942)
Black Roots (Lionel Rogosin, 1970)
Passage to Marseille (Michael Curtiz, 1944)
Die Judengasse (Peter Nestler, 1988)
How to Make Glass Manually (Peter Nestler & Zsóka Nestler, 1970)
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Present (Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, 2013)
Ödenwaldstetten (Peter Nestler, 1964)
Semi-Auto Colours (Isiah Medina, 2010)
Cassini Mission (Chris Abbas, 2012)
The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Masao Adachi and 27 Years Without Images (Eric Baudelaire, 2011)
Comrade X (King Vidor, 1940)
Mouse vs. Cookie (Pavel Golovkov, 2013)
Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow, 2012)
Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine, 2012)
Joe Biden - Return of the Mack ('DangerGuerrero', 2013)
Pachamama - Our Land (Peter Nestler, 1995)
Ellie Lumme (Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, 2013)
Viva Zapata! (Elia Kazan, 1952)
Louis C.K.: Oh My God (Louis C.K., 2013)
Why bring a child into this world? (Unilever, 2013)
Bhowani Junction (George Cukor, 1956)
(∃u) [u ≤ f and u ≤ m] (Isiah Medina, 2013)
My Brother's Wedding (Charles Burnett, 1983)
Declaration of War (Dustin Guy Defa, 2013)
Venezia 70 Future Reloaded - Apitchapong Weerasethakul (Apitchapong Weerasethakul, 2013)
everything is embarrassing (Kurt Walker, 2013)
Forever Young (Adam Cook, 2013)

ทรูมูฟ เอช " การให้ คือการสื่อสารที่ดีที่สุด " TrueMove H : Giving (2013) 

Venezia 70 Future Reloaded - Wang Bing (Wang Bing, 2013) 

Venezia 70 Future Reloaded - Jia Zhang-ke (Jia Zhang-ke, 2013)
Empire (Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2010)
[Thai Life Insurance commercial] (2010?)
[Thai Leukemia commercial] (2010?)
How easy it is to forget... (2012)
That Hamilton Woman (Alexander Korda, 1941)
The Loves of Pharaoh (Ernst Lubitsch, 1922)
Socrates (Roberto Rossellini, 1971)
Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer (Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin, 2013)
Iron Man (Jon Favreau, 2008)
The Glass Slipper (Jarrod Whaley, 2011)
The Man Phoning Mum (John Smith, 2011)
Fear (Roberto Rossellini, 1954)
Happy Anniversary (Jean-Claude Carrière & Pierre Étaix, 1962)
The Circle (Frank Borzage, 1925)
Hackney Marshes (TV version) (John Smith, 1978)
The Girl Chewing Gum (John Smith, 1976)
Incendiary Cinema (Ken Jacobs, 2005)
The Art of Vision (Stan Brakhage, 1965)
Venezia 70 Future Reloaded - Celina Murga (Celina Murga, 2013)
Silver Linings Playbook (David O. Russell, 2012)
Seven Psychopaths (Martin McDonagh, 2012)
Dolce&Gabbana The One: "Street of Dreams" (Martin Scorsese, 2013)
Rupture (Pierre Étaix, 1961)
Iron Man 3 (Shane Black, 2013)
Poppy Fields Forever (John Warren, 2012)
Black Gold (Phil Karlson, 1947)
Life Is But A Dream (Ed Burke & Beyoncé Knowles, 2013)
The Sixth Year, Episode 3 (Alex Ross Perry, 2013)
B. waiting outside of a school (Isiah Medina, 2013)
Venezia 70 Future Reloaded - Pablo Larraín (Pablo Larraín, 2013)
Illegible Object, Omni-Ordering Eye (Venkatesh Rao, 2013)
Venezia 70 Future Reloaded - Isabel Coixet (Isabel Coixet, 2013)
Hell Is Other People (Jarrod Whaley, 2009)
My last minute (Leos Carax, 2006)
Iron Man 2 (Jon Favreau, 2010)
Phil Spector (David Mamet, 2013)
The Godfather Part II (Francis Ford Coppola, 1974)
Wrath of the Titans (Jonathan Liebesman, 2012)