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Watched on Saturday May 24, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 24, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 24, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 23, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 23, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 22, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 22, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday May 21, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday May 20, 2025.

Watched on Monday May 19, 2025.

Watched on Monday May 19, 2025.

Watched on Monday May 19, 2025.

Watched on Monday May 19, 2025.

Watched on Monday May 19, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 18, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 18, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 17, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 17, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 17, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 17, 2025.

On the Harmfulness of Film Language, on Its Uselessness, and on the Means to Combat It

It was naive to think the ontology of cinema (the world itself!) could ever, or should ever, have been reduced to the fluency of text. Many of our worst today think they can. 

A close up of John Wayne is different from a close up of Gary Cooper, a close up of Wayne at ten in the morning wouldn’t be the same as a close up of him at noon. Barn Rushes is an extreme example. None of these rolls, all lateral shots of the same building, are alike—it is one of the most exciting films to see projected. 

“Learn to see, not to read” 

- JLG,  Ici et ailleurs (1976)

Nick Ray drove the car for one of the shots in this film. I choose to believe it’s the one where a butterfly flies into frame. 

Le Papillon de Gottheim…

Watched on Friday May 16, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 16, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 16, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 16, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 15, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 15, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 15, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 15, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 15, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 15, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 15, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday May 14, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday May 14, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday May 14, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday May 13, 2025.

Watched on Tuesday May 13, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 11, 2025.

Did God spare Martin Maher the Third?

Watched on Saturday May 10, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 10, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 10, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 10, 2025.

Watched on Saturday May 10, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 9, 2025.

Watched on Friday May 9, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 8, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 8, 2025.

Watched on Thursday May 8, 2025.

Watched on Wednesday May 7, 2025.

“my biggest critical inspiration is probably these beach boys lyrics tho[u]gh”

‘Content’, in its natural effort to express itself, becomes form and language: the living organism is not formless

- Jacques Rivette

favorite filmed fragments of history thus far

• Red Line 7000
• The Long Gray Line
• My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure
• Gertrud
• Rio Bravo
• Only Angels Have Wings
• Young Mr. Lincoln
• How Green Was My Valley
• Rosa de Areia
• Ana

...plus 24 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Long Gray Line
2. Young Mr. Lincoln
3. How Green Was My Valley
4. Donovan's Reef
5. The Quiet Man
6. My Darling Clementine
7. 7 Women
8. Wagon Master
9. Pilgrimage
10. Sergeant Rutledge

...plus 29 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

- Monkey Business (1952) dir. Howard Hawks

1. Red Line 7000
2. Rio Bravo
3. Only Angels Have Wings
4. Hatari!
5. Monkey Business
6. His Girl Friday
7. Bringing Up Baby
8. The Big Sky
9. Man's Favorite Sport?
10. El Dorado

...plus 16 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. My Hand Outstretched to the Winged Distance and Sightless Measure
2. The Ground
3. From the Notebook of...
4. Still Light
5. Pitcher of Colored Light
6. The Sparrow Dream
7. Work Done

   
   

8. Sotiros
9. Wingseed
10. The Stoas

...plus 16 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

4/4/2025 at Spectacle 7PM + 10 PM

(not on lb)
WHY THE LONG FACE
Dir. Laurie McKenna, 1997

GOODTIME CHARLIE BIRTHDAY
Dir. Laurie McKenna, 1997
2 mins

AGGREGATE
Dir. Laurie McKenna, 2020
6 mins

OUTCRY (FOR LUTHER)
Dir. Annalisa D. Quagliata Blanco, 2015
1 min

• Star Film
• The Big Stick / An Old Reel
• New Left Note
• Is As Is
• As Is Was
• Falling Notes Unleaving
• Note to Pati
• Light Licks: Pardes: Counting Flowers on the Wall
• Light Lick: Amen
• Note to Tetsua

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Jean Domarchi, 'Le Fer dans la plaie', Cahiers du Cinéma 63, October 1956

It is of little consequence that [Dostoevsky] resolves the opposition between science and faith in favour of the latter. What interests Marxists is the conflict itself, and behind it the internal contradictions of the Tsarist society it reflects, in what is undoubtedly a truncated but singularly revealing way. Again, limiting oneself to simple class content is to commit the sin (unpardonable in a Marxist) of abstraction. Art, in fact, because it lives on conflicts, tensions, irreducible oppositions, contradictory aspirations, is dialectical in its very essence.

Perhaps it will be itted that the road which leads from Marx to Minnelli, Mankiewicz and others is shorter than it seems. And why condemn film-makers who bear witness to a serious crisis in the American economy's system of purely material values? I agree that the only solutions they offer are escapist. It is nevertheless true that we have yet to see such lucid and serious testimonies of the decay of our own culture.

English, translated by Diane Matias

Portuguese, translated by Miguel Fernandes

• The Bad and the Beautiful
• A Star Is Born
• The Barefoot Contessa
• The Big Knife
• Citizen Kane
• The Lady from Shanghai
• Monkey Business
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
• While the City Sleeps
• Strangers on a Train

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• A Talking Picture
• The Family Jewels
• Bigger Than Life
• Moonfleet
• The Boy with Green Hair
• Good-bye, My Lady

Every* film mentioned in Lucas Baptista’s essay MITOS DE ORIGEM E DESTINO (PT, EN) and the essays cited in it. The essay is not, nor does it intend to be, a history of film theory; so this list is not a canon or history of film. This is a blueprint of a blueprint of a fraction of the theoretical bricks that the critic of today must articulate upon, synthesize, or reject; all in the effort to begin to approach the mythic question posed in the title of Bazin’s essential volumes on cinema: Qu’est-ce que le cinéma?

*took liberties with films not named but alluded to. (“Eisenstein’s sound work” but not “Langs American Phase”)

Films numbered by what texts they’re referenced in, of course many repeat: 

Original Text [1-30]

Jean-Claude Biette, “Le papillon de Griffith” [31-35]

Jacques Rivette, “Lettre sur Rossellini” [36-54]

André Bazin, "The Myth of Total Cinema" and "Montage interdit" [55-68]

Dziga Vertov, "The Birth of Kino-Eye" [69]

Sergei Eisenstein, "A Dialectic Approach to
Film Form" [70-74]

Alexandre Astruc, “Naissance d’une nouvelle
avant-garde: la caméra-stylo” [75-77]

Rivette, “L’essentiel“ and “Notes sur une révolution” [78-86]

Michel Mourlet, “Apologie de la violence”, “Trajectoire de Fritz Lang”, and “Sur un art ignoré” [87-124]

Annette Michelson, “Film and the Radical Aspiration” [125-136]

Eisenstein, "A Course in Treatment" [137-138]

P. Adams Sitney, “The Idea of Morphology" and “Structural Film” [139-227]

Peter Wollen, “The Two Avant-Gardes”, “‘Ontology’ and ‘Materialism’”, and “The Two Avant-Gardes: Europe and America” [228-248]

Peter Gidal, “Theory and Definition of Structural/Materialist Film” and Malcolm Le Grice, "Abstract Film and Beyond" [249-281] (Not on LB: The Erlanger Programme (1972), Window Box (1976), 'A' Film (1974), Soft Edge (1973), Movie No 1 (1972), Dialogue (1973), Grün (1968), Praxis (1974))

Stan Brakhage, "Metaphors on Vision"

1. The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat
2. Baby's Meal
3. A Day in the Country
4. Van Gogh
5. Journey to Italy
6. Stromboli
7. The Taking of Power by Louis XIV
8. Kuleshov Effect
9. The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty
10. October (Ten Days that Shook the World)

...plus 271 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

WIP

feel free 2 rec

• Faustfilm: An Opera
• Faust's Other: An Idyll
• Axiomatic Granularity
• Brancusi's Sculpture Garden at Tirgu Jiu
• Episodic Generation
• Analytical Studies II: Un-Frame-Lines
• Roseblood
• A Trojan House
• Film
• To Lavoisier, Who Died in the Reign of Terror

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Tried making a best first watches of the year, but 2024 was mainly a year of learning for me so didn’t think that would be very interesting. This is more of a timeline of moments that defined my year with film.

Big shoutout to Rob and the Filmmaker’s Co-op. Got to see a lot of great films there, (and even more distributed by them) they are one of the most important film institutions in the world. them. 

Reading Serge Daney for the first time should be an entry on its own. As well as reading more Fred Camper.

And of course starting Still Light Magazine with some of my favorite people is what I’m most proud of this year, and most excited about in the next.

shoutout diagonale et co

shoutout COLD VISIONS

writing in notes:

• After Earth

  The first film I watched after my father died in February, probably my favorite Shyamalan film now. Dumped my feelings into a post here which I don’t urge anyone to read, but I heavily appreciated the messages from friends here and elsewhere.

• The General Line

  Got obsessed with Eisenstein after a spontaneous watch of Strike one night. Watched all of his films in about a weekend and read both The Film Sense and The Film Form in the following week. Changed the way viewed films forever. Since then I’ve read and seen lots that enlightened me to the limitations of his form, but no doubt Sergei is one of the greats and I hold his work very close to my heart.
  
  “ on march 9th your sergei vacation ends and your back to your clint 9-5” - Boomlight

• The Bridges of Madison County

  Begun my year with Play Misty for Me to start a complete Eastwood binge, which I enjoyed very much. This 35mm screening of The Bridges of Madison County was an unforgettable highlight though, seeing it with my friend Av and meeting new friends Brian and Matthew, then leaving the theater to a violent hurricane (very appropriate to the film) in a veil of tears. 

• Glider

  The Museum of Modern Art’s Mechanical Magic series of Ernie Gehr’s digital films, (plus some prints) where I got to meet my good friend Nick: who, if anyone, introduced me to experimental film. Ernie Gehr and P. Adams Sitney chopping it up in a Q&A was a delight. I didn’t realize how important Gehr’s digital era was until months later though!

• Neighbors

  Some good online friends: Hardee, Mehram, and Owen visited NYC and after a very pleasurable Buster Keaton Essential Cinema screening at Anthology Film Archives an elderly man in the audience stood up (spilling his drink on Mehram) and gave a monologue on how silent cinema was the most free form of cinema. 

• Déjà Vu

  Showing one of my best friends, Lovepreet, many of my favorite films at my place was a delight. Tony Scott’s Déjà Vu being my favorite of them.

• There Was a Father

  The Ozu EC was my first exposure to his films, this and I Was Born, But… brought a great load of tears in the Maya Deren theater. I look forward to beginning Shigehiko Hasumi’s book on Ozu and seeing many more of his films in the new year. 

• Hours for Jerome

  The Dorsky/Hiler retrospective at MoMA was the first event this year that felt like a cinephilic summit for me. Met most of my dearest friends in the film scene here and in the standby line at Anthology’s epilogue to the retrospective. Will never forget speaking to Jerome Hiler about Keaton and Ford after a screening. 

• Thunderbolt and Lightfoot

  I told myself I’d get into Cimino proper this year, I never did. But my rewatch of this film was extremely valuable and reminded me of The Highwaymen and my father.

• Episodes from the Secret Life

  The Barry Gerson retrospective at Anthology: where a 16mm print burned multiple times before they had to switch to projecting it at 24FPS. Amazing to see so many films from a great filmmaker I had never even heard of.

...plus 14 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. The Bridges of Madison County
2. A Perfect World
3. True Crime
4. Gran Torino
5. The Mule
6. Bronco Billy
7. Sully
8. Hereafter
9. Breezy
10. Cry Macho

...plus 32 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Barn Rushes
• Blues
• Fog Line
• Doorway
• Harmonica
• Manhattan Madness
• The Country Doctor
• Bobby the Coward
• Flaming Creatures
• Normal Love

...plus 17 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• The Thousand Eyes of Dr. Mabuse
• 2 x 50 Years of French Cinema
• 3:10 to Yuma
• The 39 Steps
• 3 Godfathers
• The 47 Ronin
• 55 Days at Peking
• 7 Women
• The Actress and the Poet
• Advise & Consent

...plus 807 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.