Friday, November 13, 2009
Darnton and Digitization: A lecture at UO Portland, 11.13.09
Robert Darnton probably has a lot of ink on his business card. He is introduced as the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the Harvard University Library. He came out to Oregon originally to give a lecture about his academic speciality, 18th Century French literature, but that topic was changed to Digitize, Democratize: Google, Libraries, and the Future of Books
Darton's writings on this topic have appeared in the New York Review of Books a couple of times in recent years, once before the class action suit settlement of approximately one year ago in an essay from June 12, 2008 entitled The Library in the New Age. On February 12, 2009, Google & the Future of Books appeared in the NYRB speculating and offering interpretation on the future of information and research libraries a few months after the settlement.
His talk in Portland covered much of the material that was laid out in these articles. This scholar at seventy is not in denial of the state of the world we live in. He made clear that this was not to be a lecture about the death of the book deflating that belief by statistics that show that roughly a million new titles are released each year. "One medium does not replace another" he said. But quickly adding "At least not right away." Darnton emphasized that change does not reassure continuity and that the future will be digital. He acknowledges our the transition of the digital future has left everything from typewriters to newspapers to the local book sellers but believes that libraries should not be left in the midst of this as archaic. Despite Google.
Google's digitization effort of research libraries, including Darnton's current professional home, Harvard is going to result in something "greater than any imagined library." Their capital, the scale of their effort, the fact they have no real competition and the class action nature of the settlement all contribute to their current monopoly status. "Google will enjoy what can only be called a monopoly—a monopoly of a new kind, not of railroads or steel but of access to information." wrote Darnton in the February NYRB article. In the Portland lecture he said "Monopolies are not necessarily bad, but do we want one source?" Or as he said in a response to a letter about his February article "What worries me is the fact that Google has no competitors." But this enlightenment scholar is also concerned that "we are allowing a question of public policy—the control of access to information—to be determined by private lawsuit."
Yet despite these factors Darnton's message is not one of bleak dystopic visions for libraries. He sees that the large subscription fees for scholarly journals being challenged by the open access library movement and it may result in a shift that will allow libraries to invest more in monographs than periodicals. He feels that much can be gained by research libraries to banning together through coalitions, depositories, integrated catalogs, and library loan policies.
He sees the public sector and democratization playing a role in this. In a response to The Library in the New Age this Enlightement scholar wrote: "Digital technology now makes it possible for this common intellectual heritage to come within the range of the common man and woman. Yet corporate interests, flawed copyright laws, unfair restrictions on fair use, and many other obstacles block the public's access to this public good. By removing those obstacles, the United States Congress can clear the way for a new phase in the democratization of knowledge. For my part, I think congressional action is required to align the digital landscape with the public good."
But can legislation play a significant role in the challenges that Darnton outlined? His caution does not seem to outweigh the possibilities that digital has to offer us.
"...we want to open up our collections and make them available to readers everywhere. How to get there? The only workable tactic may be vigilance: see as far ahead as you can; and while you keep your eye on the road, remember to look in the rearview mirror."
Darnton began his talk with a rearview mirror look at Louis-Sébastien Mercier, a French enlightenment figure he has written about extensively. Mercier produced an early and important piece of speculative fiction in 1771 entitled L'An 2440, rêve s'il en fut jamais which translates as The Year 2440: A Dream If Ever There Was One In this influential and best selling book of its times with a Rip Van Winkle structure, an eighteenth century man wakes up seven hundred years to all kinds of utopian wonders. He goes to a library to see a small room with four small book cases and is told that all that is important was preserved there. It seems to be a pretty dystopic element in a utopian society to have a librarian of the future tell this protagonist that everything else was burned, but Darnton makes the point how those four book cases seem to resemble the computer terminals in our current libraries and that information overload is not a new issue.
The area that seems to excite Darnton most is the opportunity for libraries to digitize special collections. He sees digitization as have revelatory power "It has revealed aspects of Beowulf, including lost vocabulary, which escaped observation by the naked eye." He was also involved in a project that attempted to digitize the letters of Voltaire, Rousseau, Franklin, and Jefferson to reveal "how the Republic of Letters actually functioned as a communication system."
But Darnton's passion in this area was most notable near the conclusion of his formal presentation when he talked about the thrill of being a young scholar at Harvard to handle Herman Melville's personal copy of a work of Ralph Waldo Emerson complete with margin comments by Melville. He returned to find the copy nearly fifty years later at the library he is now in charge of and was still excited by the opportunity to explore Emerson through Melville's eyes. Melville apparently did not agree with one of Emerson's metaphors of traveling through rough ocean waters, an experience the future Moby Dick author was quite familiar with. At one passage in the margin Melville exclaimed "What Stuff Is This?" Darnton is excited and charged up about the possibility of our current technological age having means of sharing such experiences in democratic fashion. I hope he has several years left of doing what he can to help make that dream a reality and sharing his cautions and observations about information, libraries and books in our current state of transition.
There were nearly almost fifty people or so on a Friday night at 5:30 who came out to see Professor Darnton. I applaud the University of Oregon's Portland operation for holding this public event and hope they will continue to do many more in the future. It is a very worthy contribution to the full buffet of our community.
Labels: GRCP 101
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:35 PM
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Thursday, November 12, 2009
Bela Brings the Banjo Back to Africa
Throw Down your Heart is the story of Bela Fleck going to Africa with his banjo and having musical encounters. There is something lovely and and irrepressible about Bela Fleck. He has probably gotten more folk to listen to the banjo, certainly more than traditionalists like Earl Scrugg. My first encounter with Fleck was at a zoo concert in the late eighties when harmonica player Howard Levy. Fleck and the Wooten brothers (Victor and Future Man, look them up if you haven't come across them yet) had a solid interconnected sound that fed my jazz and Grateful Dead oriented ears quite well. When Levy quit the group the Flecktones flecked on as a trio, eventually adding the saxophone acrobatics of Jeff Coffin into the mix. It was only much later that I discovered the work he had done in helping revolutionize bluegrass with newgrass with his buddies like Sam Bush and John Cowen with the Newgrass Revival.
If Fleck wasn't so comfortable, sincere and adept at bringing his banjo into diverse musical settings, this film would never have worked. He can play with anyone, it seems. I remember sitting under the big trees at Marymoor Park as he played Never On Sunday with this big Russian with a huge balalaika and no translator in sight. Or there was the time at Red Rocks in 1999 where the Flecktones featured Tuva throat singer Kongar-ool Ondar, the musician featured in the documentary Genghis Blues. So I knew that Bela going to Africa would probably be a pretty rich experience.
The west African connection to the banjo is an obvious link. You don't have to be Alan Lomax to quickly see that the Akonting or the Ngomi are very banjo-like. But Bela and Throw Down your Heart have a larger scope in mind. During the course of this film, he visits both east AFrican countries (Uganda and Tanzania) as well as Gambia and Mali in the west. The result is a surprising amount of musical diversity. In the marimba rich eastern countries his banjo blends in remarkably, especially in exchanges with the kalimba thumb piano and in the west it fits in side by side with its African ancestors.
There is a lot of music on the Documrama DVD of Throw Down your Heart The film itself is a full ninety minutes and they include another hour of extras. The standout African performer is Tanzania's Anania Ngoliga. This blind musician's energy is exceptionally infectious and a kind of joyous musicality seems to flow out of him totally undaunted.
Again, if this wasn't Bela, I'm not sure it wouldn't work. The concept of a white guy bringing the banjo back to Africa is pretty audacious, silly even. But when you see this film you'll be very glad that he made this journey and shared it with the world at Large.
posted by well-executed buffet at 7:07 PM
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Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Great News for Jazz Lovers
Today's New York Times featured an article about a new and totally unexpected addition to Wolfgang's Vault, a streaming and download music service that contains much of the soundboard history of the Bill Graham's concert promoting legacy and a great deal of the King Biscuit Flour Hour broadcasts of the seventies and eighties. Somehow, they have purchased a large cache of stereo tapes from the Newport Jazz festival with somewhat indeterminate origin. A bunch of these are going to be released on November 17.
In the meantime, they put up three shows from the 1959 festival. All give one the aural allusion of practically laying on the stage during a set of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers featuring a very young Lee Morgan, Bobby Timmons, and Hank Mobley. This is one of the most killer groups in the history of jazz and to hear them in this setting is a wonderful treat. They also released a Count Basie set from this fifty year old Fourth of July Weekend. I'm not sure if the Count's performance is considered to have been part of the Atomic Basie period, but it certainly was explosive. The tape reveals how Basie shows of that era were big reviews with other acts like Lambert Hendricks and Ross were encapsulated within their sets.
The third act in the initial release was Dakota Staton. I had heard her name, but I knew nothing about this artist prior to encountering the Newport set. This jazz singer from Philly may not have been revolutionary the same way that Ella and Sarah Vaughn were with their flamboyant chops. What I like about Dakota is that she simply delivers the songs. I found myself not really focusing on performer but instead on the words of tunes like Who's Got the Last Laugh Now and The Party's Over. I love her siren of the fifties sound. She is the kind of performer you would see featured in a movie that had a scene in the club where she would do a song and two lines with the leading character.
But what a wonderful democratic thing to be available on your computer!!! Of course, a funky little thing called copyright and performance rights was not figured out so I plan to be hanging out a Wolfgang's. The last line of the NY Times was "Enjoy it while you can." I consider myself warn.
posted by well-executed buffet at 4:52 PM
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Tuesday, November 10, 2009
What is Film? Day Two
Saturday, November 7 was the second day of UO Portland's What is Film? conference. The schedule was mostly devoted to academic panels of papers and folks came out internationally from around the world. I love hanging out on the edges of scenes like this overhearing elevator conversations like Elevator conversation: "Silent Running is an important film. It is a forerunner to Wall-E. " This could be my crowd.
I showed up for the Q and A of a panel of papers that we about Film Production and technology issues. There were three presenters in this group. Amanda Kirchner from the University of Iowa had read a paper clled "Composite Perfomances: Recognizing the Human Elements in Computer-Generated Performances" I didn't hear her paper but got the idea of what she was talking about. particularly when she fielded a question regarding who owns the rights to Brad Pitt's body scan. Another question came up where some one had asked how we should recognize and give credit when there are motion capture performances. Who should get the credit the actor or the animator. Will Vinton weighed in and said the animator should get props. Amanda also made mention of the fact that the MTV movie awards this year had a category for best digital performance.
What I like about early sessions at conferences like this is that folks are pretty fresh and full of caffeinated. Q and As can sometimes become conversations shared. Here educators got into a conversation about how todays' students will stay away from any course that has theory in the title, The word concepts is apparently less dry and threatening.
I had intended to take the streetcar up to NW Portland and see the new Pander Brothers film, but rain and other adventures called me away from a reasonably timed collection so I returned to the conference to attend a panel session Audiences and Fans in the Digital World.
The first panelist, Elissa Nelson of the University of Texas presented a study and history of the Internet Movie Database. It was a bit of nostalgia because IMDB was one of the first Internet applications out there besides Grateful Dead Usenet groups that really caught my attention of a contributive online media that belongs to the people. I had forgotten all about Col Needham and the early days of that database. Nelson covered how the IMDB has evolved and plays a role for anyone wanting to know about movies: "blockbusters, mainstream, indie studio, and indie indies" Movie audiences consult IMDB in a huge way, often consulting the ratings and peer review. IMDB is also trying to currently situate themselves as the primary vortal for online viewing. It will be interesting to see how that turns out.
Next in this group was Rachel Thibaut of U Mass Amherst who focused on the Auteurs , a vortal and online for film fans that are fond of Criterion Collection releases and alike. She bemoaned the fact that it primarily had a male audience participating in it and talked a lot about "cinephillic practices." This last turn of phrase has been the source of much amusement to me since I heard it. "i'm a practicing cinephilliac. I can't help myself" And so on and so forth.
The last panelist, Chuck Tryon of Fayetteville University rambled about all kinds of issues and anecdotes regarding this topic but left me with a few interesting leads. I had heard of Four Eyed Monsters, its directors Susan Buice & Arin Crumley and how this film's popularity evolved through social networking and am now inspired to check it out. Additionally, Tryon told a story how the second screenings on the opening night of Bruno were greatly impacted by folks IMing, texting and Twittering their friends who attended the first show telling them that it was a dog and they should stay away. Neither Tryon or myself know how true the story is, but it makes reasonable sense when you consider Dave Chapelle's concert rumor incident in Portland in the Summer of 2009. Flickster also sounds like an interesting development.
What is Film? didn't change my life, but it did recharge my batteries and it was great to hang out in a room with folks whose passions are near the same frequency of mine/.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:01 PM
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Monday, November 9, 2009
A Trip to The Moon In the Gutter
I wouldn't say they are the best films in the world, but I have a shortlist of movies that are cinematic worlds within themselves. In these films, cinematic craft and the language of movies are applied to unique environments and setting and create an islands of individual reality and experience. My list of these experiences is made up of works from the seventies through the early eighties. I'm really not sure if this is due to whether or not that time period was ripe for directors to plumb films like these or if my desire to have cinema take me to such a zone of time and place were major factors in putting these movies in this basket.
Here is the list: Wim Wenders' American Friend, Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Coppola's Rumblefish, Scorsese's Mean Streets. and Jean-Jacques Beineix's The Moon In The Gutter.
All of these films have directors who are much better known for other films, but all of them are filled with themes, stylistic devices, and a kind of spirited cinematic consciousness (or self-consciousness, perhaps) of the film medium that was also evident in the French New Wave where the possibilities of film were identified, stretched, expanded and sometimes exploited.
Wenders in American Friend carries on a subtext of cinematic history when he gives his take, as other filmmakers have done and will continue to do, on Mr Ripley and other dubious figures on the ethical razor's edge of Patricia Highsmith. McCabe and Mrs Miller brought us into a world where film stock was pulverized to give a look and feel to the wet cold northwest that a resident of this region can appreciate, but also returned to the multi-character anarchistic overlapping soundscape that was his calling card with MASH. Copolla stripped down SE Hinton's world in black and white with dynamic camera and some coloring outside those lines in Rumblefish. Scorsese's camera, editing, and use of music were all exercised in a wqy that allowed the world to experience a sometimes harsh and brutal world of second generation Italian immigrants in New York City.
The one film on this list you may not likely know about is Jean-Jacques Beineix's The Moon In The Gutter. it has finally gotten released on DVD, so I may at last retire my very worn out air check from the Bravo network of the mid eighties. This film has gone down in the books as being Beiniex's sophomore disaster, sandwiched between the aclaim of Diva and Betty Blue. But I'm hoping that with its new accessibility that more folks will visit this strange world.
Moon takes place in an undisclosed harbor town where Gérard Depardieu, stil svelt as a leading man lives in a world echoing the New Orleans of Streetcar Named Desire seeks revenge on his sister who was raped and posed as committing suicide. He lives in a huge ambling building of squalor and colorful characters. These include Bela, a oversexed bombshell who lusts after Gérard. Gérard's life changes into a kind of fairy tale when he meets up with a mystery woman in a red car and her drunken self-destructive brother.
The mystery woman, Loretta, is played by Nastassja Kinski, in the era where she seemed to be starring as the obscure object of desire in the films of every major auteur of the time (Wenders, Coppola, Paul Schrader) She is such a force that there doesn't need to be an explanation for Gérard's reaction and response. She arrives and siren calls.
This is a case where plot doesn't really matter. This space with its unique blend of style, color and music that will either transfer a viewer to another time and place or it will bore them to tears. I was pleased to find that I still like going to this place after not being there in a decade or so. I can't speak for anyone else which side they will be on after viewing it, but I believe it is worth a couple hours to find out.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:54 PM
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Sunday, November 8, 2009
Beginnings Again
Chicago is one of those groups easy to malign because they kind of deserve it. The three double albums they released between 1969-71 were central to my early adolescent confusion years. I liked jazz and I tried to like rock 'n roll. I had copies of the Hendrix Band of Gypsies and the second Led Zeppelin album. I didn't get them. Black Sabbath, Grand Funk, most of Steppenwolf, and Deep Purple were lost on me as well. I loved Simon and Garfunkel, but preferred Bookends over their overbloated finale of Bridge Over Trouble Water. (Ever considered that Let It Be and Bridge were the most bombastic of exit soundtracks for those musicians. Well, I guess only Otis could leave the building whistling over to the dock of the bay.)
Anyway, I was staying at a baby sitter whose son, a few years my signature had accumulated a very hip record collection. I sat and listened all the way through the Chicago Transit Authority album in the late fall of 1970 and it opened up a wide world of music. Questions 67 and 68 is still one of my favorite of pop tunes. Terry Kath's prowess on guitar seemed more musical to me at the time than Hendrix or Page even when he had seven minutes of hot licks and feedback called Free Form Guitar. It was worth wading through because the tune that followed it South California Purples was blues that pulled you into it, not as a giant Cecil slurp like Zep or Hendrix at his more bombastic. Their cover of I'm a Man also was probably the first time that I really responded to latin music, I think even predating the first time I heard Dizzy and Chano Pozzo's Manteca (I still remember that bridge the first time and how it made me feel like I was soaring)
But, of course, it was mostly the horns that attracted by attention. Introduction, Does Anybody Know What Time it Is?, Listen, Poem 58 and the barn burner jam Liberation made me sit up and take notice. It was a sound unique. I had heard the horn lines in Blood Sweat and Tears, You've Made me So Very Happy and Spinning Wheel for quite some time, but this was different. The aforementioned Questions and Beginnings bridged my jazz ears and turned it into something like a personal invitation to love this music and this band.
And I did love those first three albums numbered I, II, and III with their distinctive logo being revisited each time. I dug them so much so that I somehow figured out how to cobble the bills together to buy the massive eight album set of them recasting the songs in concert at Carnegie Hall with little heart and without the precision and clarity of a huge band, a vehicle with many wheels cruising down the freeway.
Even Lester Bangs hammered on the Carnegie Hall megaset, which he first feigns cred because of its girth and the fact it came from that Tiffany record label, Columbia!
So who cares if it's Chicago's worst album? Does it really matter that the songs sound exactly like they do in the on the studio albums except for being measurably more sodden and stuffed with long directionless solos? Or that the brass arrangements sound like Stan Kenton charts played backwards? Or that technically competent as Chicago may be, there are too many times you can hear all the parts better than the whole?
Decidedly not. ...
Because of the Carnegie mega boxset debacle, I am always skeptical about encountering any live recordings by this band. Yet I had always heard that they were pretty interesting when they were out on the road breaking in their first couple of doubles. I used to have a copy of a bootleg I had heard about on cassette for a long time, a recording from Toronto in 69 or 70. And more recently I encountered a recording of the band from August 1969. Their take on Beginnings that night at Filmore West really takes off, I think. But you can judge for yourself.
Beginnings_CTA_81669.mp3
Beginnings_CTA_81669.mp3
posted by well-executed buffet at 4:48 PM
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Saturday, November 7, 2009
Portland on WIF Day 2
Oh Come on, city of Portland! The Skidmore Fountain stop under the Burnside Bridge has got to be one of the busiest on the Max lines and the schedule board is surrounded by a fence. It would only have taken a bit of time and ten feet to have moved it around the kiosk. But maybe more bums would be peeing on it then? Who knows what logic is at work here? And besides that the glass is so scratched up you can't even read the times.
The rain was absolutely horrendous on this afternoon. I bypassed the Skidmore stop on the train because I wanted to see if a friend was playing at Saturday market. It was a very wet miscalculation. I decided to try to get a break from the rain so stepped into Cameron's Books on Third and Stark. I've been going there for almost forty years. It still has that wonderful old musty smell. I found my way to two three and a half foot high stacks of quality movie magazines: Sight and Sound, Moviemaker, American Cinematographer and so forth. I looked at every single one of them and easily found four that fit into the ten dollar budget I gave myself. One has a fifteen page tribute to Sam Peckinpah. It has inspried me to work my way through his and Don Siegel's films sometime soon. Crouching inside the window going through the window at Camerons looking at some old books is something I have done a few times. Powell's used to be more like this in its early years.
When I left Cameron's the rain was coming down even harder. Storm drains were blocked and their floodwaters had to be negotiated. I got to a Max. Never has a 6 block ride been so welcome. My refuge was the reconstituted Virginia Cafe on 10th and Taylor, across from the Multnomah County Library. The place is much the same. The drinks are on special most of the time and the Reuben is among the best in town. I had one with a beer and read about Sam Peckinpah. A guy had to come out and wipe down the floor every ten minutes or so due to very wet patrons. The waitress was awesome and had really decent body art and a great spirit. We are both natives and shared the same attitude about the weather. There is something about the rain. And this town...
I think it is clear by now, I love this town.
On the way home on Max I got so engrossed in Ipod listening to the great organist Shirley Scott ond reading the Willamette Week's 35th Anniversary salute to the things that make Portland Portland. I went all the way out to the Expo Center, which was a major scene this weekend because of the Catlin Gable Rummage Sale. It was no big deal because the reserve train on the end of the line took off within five minutes or so.
Here are my three favorite articles from the Week's anniversary tribute.
Cartoon Look at Blazer hairstyles
We've Come A long ways baby.
Colorful Quotes from Seven Colorful Mayors (1974-2009)
I guess I didn't realize til I read this that there were 20 years where this city was run by either Bud Clark or Vera Katz. I think that is very significant to the history and culture of this city.
Mix Tape
Here one can explore a chronological mix tape. Nostalgia for me knocks off at 1990. I don't really need to be reminded of Harden My Heart either. Weird there is no place for Johnny and the Distractions, Paul Delay or Curtis Salgado. Now that's Portland.
Seeing that The Dharma Bums were on the list in 1991 reminds me of a story from a year or two before that. They lived in NE Portland, right near a friend's sister. Another mutual friend who knew was visiting from out of town. "Where do the bums live?" he asked me. I said more so over down by the where the freeways intersect.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:50 AM
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Friday, November 6, 2009
What is Film? Day One
A View from a White Stag Window
What is Film? Change and Continuity in the 21st Century is a two day conference staged by the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication's Portland Oregon extension campus located in the historic White Stag/Made in Oregon building on Couch and Front. It is basically a coming out party for the University's new Cinema studies program, although it appears that program will be staged at its Eugene mothership campus. Regardless, I applaud the UO extension for apparently positioning themselves in our community as a fabulous resource offering this nearly free conference and offering some intriguing free evening events. (Geek Love Author Katherine Dunn talking about ebooks? I'm there)
What is Film? looks like two conferences in one. Day one was kind of laid out as an overview of events that mostly dealt with development, distribution and empowering the Portland film community. The second day seems to be primarily an academic conference with film studies types from around the country. I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to get a bit of a recharge so decided to take Friday off and with issues of price and location not being an issue, I decided to drive over to the Delta Park and take the light rail downtown to see what the scene looked like.
I ended up going in a little late because I had to put some finishing touches on the first round of a schedule for Spring quarter. The first day was kind of overloaded with independent distribution and government partnership topics so no big deal there. The panel I ended up going into at midstream was not my first choice. Still New Developments in Film Marketing and Distribution turned up some interesting moments. Lyla Foggia, a refugee Hollywood corporate president, now returned to her homestate bluntly respnded to a Northwestern professor's question of how to try to get young people into the industry with "Filmmakers today do not seem to be studying the principles of good filmmaking. Another Oregon native (and UO alum)and Paramount exec Mark Christiansen agreed. Christiansen is involved with the viral marketing phenomena associated with Paranormal and talked how it will bring in lots of knock offs of that film as was the case with Blair Witch and Tarrantino.
Gary Garfinkel, a Showtime executive seemed to get a bit defensive and be a bit in denial about Netflix's success in streaming content. He talked about how a lot of the world is still linear about their viewing habits and they differ from the folks in the audience who have well-ordered Netflix queues. But he also told an anecdote about how when he recently visited a Blockbuster, the only folks there were himself and the guy who worked there, who followed him around like a stray wanting someone to talk to . He also said that Showtime and the other pay services are very protective of their window with the content which is generally 15-18 months where a product is not available in another broadcast delivery medium. He also said that an independent film maker will generally receive about 25k for the exclusive rights.
It was then time for lunch and a screening of Arusi Perssian Wedding a family documentary of sorts by Iranian-American filmmaker Marjan Tehrani. Tehrani films her brother and his very blonde west coast wife as they prepare for a trip to Iran for a Persian wedding ceremony during the height of Bush's axis of evil diatribe. The film was a part of last season's Independent Lens series on PBS. There were some great moments in the film where the couple encounter cultural differences but I also was left with some questions about the father of the filmmaker and the groom. There seemed to be a general creepiness about him and lots unexplained regarding his wealth and ability to travel in and out of Iran. What the filmmaker did well was put US-Iranian relations into historical and cultural terms. Overall, not a bad way to enjoy a slice or two of gourmet pizza.
I passed on the keynote panel Government/Film Industry Relationships in the Digital Age to catch up on the outside world through my digital device but very much enjoyed the final panel of the day Filmmaking in Oregon: The State of the Industry This session included Colin O'Neill, a local independent filmmaker who returned to Oregon after serving time as a technician at Lucas' film operations in the bay area and two pairs of brothers. The Freeman Brothers, Todd and Jason who grew up in the household of a Baptist minister who used to show them 16mm horror films on Saturday night. It sounds like faith still plays a role in what they present to the screen, but I am still trying to get my head around the concept of Christian horror films or thrillers. I guess I need to check them out.
The "stars" of this final panel were the Panders, Jacob and Arnold. These sons of well-known Dutch-born Portland artist Henk Pender (Check out the perspective mural at the Portland Center for Performing Arts someday, if you haven't) were here (coincidentally?) on the eve of the premiere of their new independent feature, Selfless. They are best known for their work in comics/graphic novels and music videos. They are now concentrating more on filmmaking in recent years because the market for comics has pretty much disappeared, they said. The last comic they made was created to make a movie. Their notoriety in other media helped them acquire funding, distribution and interest in their film project. Much of the session explored the relationship of local filmmakers and their relationship with the Hollywood infrastructure or what it takes to go alone instead.
"Making movies isn't smart. We're morons" said Todd Freeman. It doesn't make commercial sense and is more of a kind of calling. The panel talked about how Portland is not known as a feature film town. Arnold Pander talked about how Portland has had these eras of being known -- animation with Vinton, Blashfield and Priestly, comics with Dark Horse, and infomercials with Boflex, et al. O'Neil said what's missing is for a Portlander to make it big and have a community grow up around him as was the case with Robert Rodriguez and the Austin scene. Well okay, but don't we have Gus Van Sant and Todd Phillips here among us?
Still, I came away feeling that their message of trying to get people to help support Portland independent film is a good one so will probably head over to the Cinema 21 to watch the Panders' Selfless instead of hoping I stumble upon an academics presentation of a paper that has some good takeaways. Stay Tuned.
posted by well-executed buffet at 3:07 PM
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Thursday, November 5, 2009
Adventures with Literary Form:
Lydia Davis @ PAL 11.5.09
"A good piece of writing should surprise you each time you read it."--Lydia Davis
Lydia Davis writes short stories, sometimes very short ones. Her new collection, The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis compiles over 700 pages of them. New Yorker writer James Wood aptly describes her work as being "crookedly personal." She read an essayPortalnd ARts and Lectures that covered a wide range of her influences that informed her experimentation with form of the story outside of the traditional conventions. She is intrigued by form outside the conventional one that was embraced by her parents, both of whom had stories published in The New Yorker. Her journey is one where she has explored the "line between poetry and prose." "I go the course I go." she explained during the Q&A when asked if there were other authors she wished were influences.
Davis' influences are folks like Samuel Beckett, Franz Kafka and Grace Paley and poets Russell Edson and Sparrow (who also runs for US President in every election since 1992.) Paley's work showed her she could take the material from her life and explore it in a literary way. Her lecture illustrated how she would be influenced by a form another writer would explore and make it her own. For instance, she used a Q and A format that David Foster Wallace used in his Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and transform it into an account of her jury duty experience only including answers and eliminating questions that were asked.
The most entertaining moments in the evenin was her take on on letters of complaint, a form she expanded on from the work poet Walter Bernstein. The first letter she wrote was a letter to a funeral director, which at first was a real letter, "then I got carried away with language, and then it was too literary to be sent. Her letter to a frozen pea manufacturer complained about the unappealing inaccurate depiction of a product. She left her text for a moment to mention how her letter about this Cascadia Farms product was received by parent company General Mills who did not reply directly, but sent her a bunch of coupons for Jolly Green Giant goods
There is a lot of paradox to Davis. She writes some of the shortest of short stories, yet is also known for her translation of Proust's Swan's Way. Proust, of course is known for long lyrical, and complex sentences, which sometimes can go on for pages. Her stories are often dark and strange, but she seems like a non-atypical teacher of writing. She is attracted to eccentrics like Glenn Gould and Flannery O'Connor, but loves the order and precision of Bach. She seemed surprised and maybe a little bit offended by the amount of editing that took place when one of her stories was accepted to the New Yorker, even though her parents had both been published by that magazine.
I decided to try to take on her collected stories volume chronologically as they are presented instead of the "dipping in" method that one can apply to such a anthology. I am only about a third the way through the collection but there is a distinct difference in the decade between her first collection Break it Down published in 1986 and the one that came out a decade later, Almost No Memory. Many of the works in the first volume feel more like exercises. The work I have read in Almost No Memory is still filled with strange characters with weird thoughts and settings, but they feel more like complete worlds. I look forward to continuing to explore Davis' universe.
I brought my volume of Collected Stories to be signed at the reception where I experienced am awkward moment with her. I always take off dust jackets when I read and travel with books. Pam has offered me Bo-Dart plastic covers, but that feels too much like carrying around a library book. I hastily put the jacket on in the morning for the volume's impending autograph not realizing I had it upside down and backwards. Lydia did not really know how to deal with this. She flipped the book over and gave me a look like I'm sure she gave to her children when their collars or layer of clothing were disordered. Still, she was quite gracious and signed and dated the book for Pam and myself.
This well-prepared evening with Davis, a practitioner in short form contrasted nicely with the more extemporaneous presentation by Wally Lamb , a modern master of very long fiction in the first lecture. I suppose one could say hat together one could say they represent a kind of spectrum of the current state of American letters.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:25 PM
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Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Seasonal Fortnight
What a difference a couple of weeks make! This is the tree I look at through my office window . Last year I believe it held some leaves until it was time for Christmas break. No such scenario was followed this year. The image on the left was taken somewhere around October 17. The one on the right was taken on October 30. Alas, tis Autumn.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:11 PM
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Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Bunuel's Death In the Garden
La mort en ce jardin or Death in the Garden is a film by Luis Bunuel. I checked it out primarily as a curiosity for a completist. I don't think I had heard about this one before. 1956 seemed too late for his Mexican period, and too early for the French films of Bunuel that most folks know best. in fact, this film can be seen as being on the cusp of both, it was an international co-production.
Death in the Garden is filled with lusty diamond miners, a prostitute, corrupt South American military officials, and lots of creepy stuff in a jungle. It is acknowledged as being influenced by Clouzot's Wages of Fear which came out three years earlier. Death in the Garden is in essence two films in one. The first half revolves around South American miners who are at odds with a militaristic government, They have these stand offs that look like recreated scenes from another Spanish native, Goya. The second half of the film does resemble it at times, showing a diverse group of characters responding to deplorable conditions in the jungle,
This film features Simone Signoret, a couple of years prior to her international fame in Room at the Top, Michel Picoli plays a priest in his first of many Bunuel films. And Georges Marchal is scene dubious adventurer who is reminiscent of the kind of roles that William Holden would play in Hollywood films of this same era.
And the color photography of this film is absolutely lovely.
It is an adventure film but also a Bunuel film. There are touches and asides that are definitely rooted in Bunuel's surrealism and negativity against the church. This is most distinct in the second half of the film where a mixed bag of characters and types (ala Stagecoach or Lifeboat ala Bunuel) are attempting to escape the jungle. The long hair of a deaf mute woman is caught in vegetation looking like some kind of horrific goddess. At another point a priest is faced with the crisis that he would have to pull pages of his bible to start a fire amongst the damp vegetation. And then there is this horrific image involving a snake I would just as soon be able to forget.
There are a handful of master film artists who use the camera and camera movements in a clear and specific way that one gets the feeling they are truly and fully in control. Bergman and Bresson also come to mind. This is the case with Death in the Garden as it is in many of his other more noted films. The camera sometimes moves away from the crowd and action and tilts upwards following a vertical line of trees towards the sky or panning over a courtyard. In these cases, one does not feel he is sweeping over the setting as a man with a broom, but rather a master bringing us into a world he has created.