SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY.

       I.
She walks in Beauty, like the night
 Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
 Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
 Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

       II.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
 Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
 Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
 How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

       III.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
 So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
 But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
 A heart whose love is innocent!

vincit qui patitur / amor vincit omnia

***



***

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
     If this be error and upon me proved,
     I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

***

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)

Love (III)

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked anything.

"A guest," I answered, "worthy to be here":
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"

"Truth, Lord; but I have marred them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.


George Herbert

able to reach

Οἶον τὸ γλυκύμαλον ἐρεύθεται ἄκρῳ ἐπ᾽ ὔσδῳ ἄκρον ἐπ᾽ ἀκροτάτῳ λελάθοντο δὲ μαλοδρόπνεσ,
οὐ μὰν ἐκλελάθοντ᾽, ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐδύναντ᾽ ἐπίκεσθαι. 

As a sweet apple turns red on a high branch,
high on the highest branch and the applepickers
   forgot—
well, no they didn’t forget—were not able to reach 

- Sappho (translated by Anne Carson)

Aminta

Forse, se tu gustassi anco una volta
La millesima parte de la gioie
Che gusta un cor amato riamando,
Diresti, ripentita, sospirando:
Perduto è tutto il tempo
Che in amar non si spende. 

Aminta (Torquato Tasso, 1573), Act I, sc. i

The village graveyard

The fallen leaves are red and dry.
Autumn burns. The still lake mirrors
a blue October sky.
In the cemetery the forgiven and unforgiven
lie side by side.

Hoarfrost on the goldenrod.
On the northern mountains new-fallen snow.
Time like a kindly god
reserves some open spaces in each row
for the living dead.

How long do we have who follow the sky?
Beneath the rustling maple leaves
in a green plot eleven by five
these ashy bones compact our fond belief
that the sun won’t die.
—F. D. Reeve

virility and courage

Socrates (Roberto Rossellini, 1971)

Le seul film intéressant sur les événements,
le seul vraiment fort que j'ai  vu (je ne les ai évidemment pas tous vus),
c'est celui sur la rentrée des usines WONDER,
tourné par des étudiants de l'IDHEC,
parce que c'est  un film terrifiant, qui fait mal.
C'est le seul qui soit un film vraiment  révolutionnaire.
Peut-être parce que c'est un moment
où la réalité se transfigure à tel point
qu'elle se met à condenser toute une situation politique en dix minutes
d'intensité dramatique folle.

C'est un film fascinant, mais on ne peut dire qu'il soit du tout mobilisateur,
ou alors par le réflexe d'horreur et de refus qu'il provoque.
Vraiment, je crois que le seul rôle du cinéma, c'est de déranger,
de contredire les idées toutes faites, toutes les idées toutes faites,
et plus encore les schémas mentaux qui préexistent à ces idées:
faire que le cinéma ne soit plus confortable.

J'aurais de plus en plus tendance à diviser les films en deux:
ceux qui sont confortables et ceux qui ne le sont pas;
les premiers sont tous abjects, les autres plus ou moins positifs.
Certains films que j'ai vus, sur Flins ou Saint-Nazaire, sont d'un confort désolant:
non seulement ils ne changent rien,
mais ils rendent le public qui les voit content de lui;
c'est les meetings de “l'Humanité.”

Jacques Rivette

Les Cahiers du Cinéma, no. 204, September, 1968

(via David Phelps, here)


La Reprise du travail aux usines Wonder (Jacques Villemont, 1968):

darkness (light)

***

"This mere existence, that is, all that which is mysteriously given us by birth and which includes the shape of our bodies and the talents of our minds, can be adequately dealt with only by the unpredictable hazards of friendship and sympathy, or by the great and incalculable grace of love, which says with Augustine, ‘Volo ut sis (I want you to be),’ without being able to give any particular reason for such supreme and unsurpassable affirmation."
— Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951

"Amo heißt volo, ut sis, sagt einmal Augustinus: ich liebe Dich - ich will, daß Du seiest, was Du bist."
“Amo means volo, ut sis, Augustine once said: I love you - I want that you be what you are.”
— Martin Heidegger, in a letter to Hannah Arendt, 1925

Death Don't Have No Mercy

"Death Don't Have No Mercy," performed by Reverend Gary Davis, from Lionel Rogosin's Black Roots (1970)