Apu Not Forgotten- On "The World of Apu"- briefly

With friends visiting from out of town and planning upcoming events, I forgot about Satyajit Ray's film "The World of Apu". The film is short and doesn't use the score to manipulate tears from the audience. It is a seamless fusion of word and image. A love story about a starving artist and fate. When I see corny trailers for contemporary films marketing obtuse love stories, they make me cringe. I see denial being peddled like crack during a depression. The movie begins with Apu having to drop out of school because he can't afford tuition. He's not too disappointed because he's confident that he'll become a successful novelist. A good friend invites him to his cousin's wedding to enjoy some food, drink, and have a good time in the country. When Apu arrives, the bride's mother is enamored by him. Thinking it odd, she dismisses it attributing it to Apu's good looks. The marriage is arranged. Nobody's met the groom who apparently comes from a good family. When he arrives, he is unstable and noticeably mentally ill. Whether out of desperation to marry off his daughter, the father insists that the groom's condition is due to traveling a long distance. If the girl isn't married as planned, she'll be forever disgraced. Someone has got to marry her. Apu being the eligible bachelor and not related, is the prime candidate and chooses to help save the girl's honor. They go back to Calcutta to his small roof top room and fall in love with time. It's amazing how when done by an amazing director/storyteller like Satyajit Ray, this obvious set up is beautiful and resonant. No, I don't want some one to do the Hollywood version or Euro-minimal deconstruction of Ray's film. It's perfect as it is. Yes, there is tragedy. Heaps of it. It's what makes it perfect and none of it is drab. Not one bit.

I tried reading Armes again after the film. And found “Third World Filmmaking and the West” drier than before. When I compare it to Robert Stam and Ella Shoat's “Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalism and the Media”. Armes' book misses the Chutzpah.

The next book on the shelf is "Assassins", by Stephen Sondheim.....

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charulata

I'm a sucker for female protagonists. When I got an email alerting me that "Charulata" or "The Lonely Wife" was waiting for me at the library, I ditched "The World of Apu". Charulata is based on the novela by Rabindranath Tagore, "Nastanirh" (The broken Nest). It is such a beautiful film and I wish Armes had gone into better detail about just how wonderful it was. In his chapter about Ray, Armes like many film writers, gives a general synopsis of the film. He summarizes the story line and very quickly goes on to the next film as if trying to finish a term paper. He doesn't go into detail about the lighting for example which is one of the key elements that distinguishes Ray's filmmaking from others of this time (1964). It's high key and frames the characters so gently allowing for their actions to replace dialouge- of which there is little. Charulata's story is a classic woman's tale. It is also a pleasure to see a woman of color lead in a complex position, which ironically we see less of in the 21 century. She's smart and talented and married to a well-off intellectual. Without the need to work, she stays home and is so bored she relies on opera glasses for entertainment, using them to look out the window and even her husband. Ray frames the camera around the glasses illustrating Charulata's distance to her community, husband and general 19th century role of wife. It's a tragic love story heavily focused on how ill equipped Indian and Western societies are to supporting strong female role models. The film's story hits home. As an artist at home with 2 kids looking at oatmeal splattered on the wall, life borders between being an adventure and subdued.

Almost done with Roy Armes. He's not a colorful writer.

More soon.

Apu

This weekend I attended a great workshop at El Museo del Barrio. I was invited to participate in a Creative Capital Professional development workshop. During it I got into a conversation about culture background with a fellow attendee. As part of marketing, we're suppose to look into all avenues one of them being cultural background. My conversation was about how as second generation Americans we felt on the margins between our parents' cultural connection and the one we were born into. Education has tons to do with it. It is where all the propaganda, ideals, and beliefs begin to take shape. How does it affect how we make art? Moving along to "Third World Film Making and the West", I've found my way to the directors' chapters. First one up is- Satyajit Ray. Armes begins the chapter with a bit about his life going into some detail on Ray educational background. Ray was always made conscious of his bordering two cultures. From his stories to his camera work, the Hindu and the British merged through critic commentary. For Ray, it was just how he worked and saw the picture. I just got one of his most famous "The World of Apu". The version form the NYPL is dubbed, but on dvd with special features (bonus!) At 110 mins., I will watch it while the kids are napping. It's safe to say that Tinkerbell the Movie has nothing on this.

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jackel hot hot

Last we met I had just gotten the film "the jackel of chochtel”. It was incredible. The filmmaking was far beyond it`s time. Sadly it seemed to diasappear into the obscurity of world cinema instead
of simply being regarded as a truly great piece of filmmaking. The film is about a man convicted for the murder of a woman and her five children.
While living in rural Chile, the two find each other. He was a wandering hobo and The woman recently evicted from her house after the death of her husband a farm hand on the land.
After a night of drinking, the two argue and ignited by something the woman said, the jackel strikes her eventaully killing her. He then goes on to kill the children all under the age of 8.
The film mixes real footage with fiction seemlessly bringing to question poverty, captialism, and lack of education as the leading factors to crime in modern society.
"Dead man walking" has nothing over this film. I was tempted to rent it but got discouraged at the thought of the over use of close ups in US films. That's one of the things I noticed most in The Jackel.
In order to include the complicity of legislation and society, the camera makeas a point to focus on the enviornment. We tend to blame the individual. This isn't new news and it's such aan important
role in how we aim to reshape the world if we ever get the chance. Seems hopeless. Part of the sucess of the jackel is it's honesty regarding the possible fact that it all will never get
the chance to reform. The story builds hope while thee jacakel iaas in prison and rehabilitated. He learns to read, write, gets counciling,
and time to reflect. Even when the brutal murder occured there was a moment where the realization hit and regret filled the moment.
The true tragedy after the deaths is the execution of the jackel and the perpetual penial system. It's not surprising the film was made in 1970 while Allende was president. It was a great moment in history
because something else was possible. Now before I get accused of being a commie freak I'm for a different progressive, intelligent, fair, humane, healthy, relational difference in our political, governmental,
and religious insatitutions. I wake hopeless most of the time if I've got to be honest. the jackel reminds me that there was a moment when
Cahnge became real let's hope Allende's history isn't repeated.

jackal in, art in

I'm just getting back from an art event meeting. It's for a big exhibition I'm a part of for El Museo del Barrio's S-Files 2011. We meet at Socrates Park in Queens. Very exciting. Yesterday I had another meeting after work for another exciting project funded by the Puffin Foundation at Brook Park in the South Bronx (more on my website). For both spaces I will be doing my "Illegal Death" piece. meetings are great. Talking to adults is great. The weather has been pretty melancholy though adding a bit more stress to my already stressful life. My husband is super taking care of the kids while I go to work. I feel bad at times because he hasn't gotten a break this weekend- neither of us have breaks actually. We work and watch the kids. That's pretty much it. Add my parents to the mix- and home- and it becomes a festival for shattered nerves. What we do for art. Makes emails from the NYPL so incredibly remarkable, as if I were meeting a lover.

I decided that in order to continue reading Armes book, I was going to need to watch some films referenced. So one is in and I'm updating my blog. More soon after I watch:

El chacal de Nahueltoro
The Jackal of Nauhultoro
Dir Miguel Littin (b.1942) Chile

Need to watch films to make more sense

Third World Film Making and the West by Roy Armes, is one of those books I wish I had read while doing my thesis in graduate school. The film references are amazing. Sadly though, I haven't heard of most the directors/filmmakers Armes writes about. The further I read the more I realize that I must see these films in order to make the reading more worth while and get a proper education in film as Armes intends his book to provide. I will now go to the New York Public Library and see what I find. I will post after watching a film.

Fight, fight, fight

15 years ago people were pegging digital tools as having the potential to change established systems and the dominant culture's influence in general. Until 2008, I didn't think it would happen. Obama's election was exactly what we had been hoping for when we first ran out to buy our first laptops in the late 90' hooking up our almost 256mb system to our phone lines and using the Internet. But the big revolution never came. Information wasn't changing our life styles or choices. We were too hypnotized by the glitz and overwhelmed by the plans we soon had to purchase to have the Internet. Storm clouds cleared when we elected President Obama and we were hopeful- then, we were not. In the last few months we have seen two governments toppled on the strength of Twitter, blogs, flicker, etc. People in Tunisia and Egypt shook things up and succeeded. Will things go array as they have here with conservative hew-haws holding on tight at all costs? Who would have thought that we would have lost the Net Neutrality War? The working class is still struggling everywhere and there are still starving artists. My Korean colleague died at the end of January because she starved to death. She was an amazing filmmaker and screenwriter who only had enough to pay the rent. Her thyroid condition made things much worse helping to sign her death sentence. To be honest, I would expect something like that happening here in the US. Our system of having artists help themselves seems to have spread.

In the latest essay I read from Digital Dialectic, “ 'We Could Be Better Ancestors Than This': Ethics and First Principles for Art of the Digital Age” by Bob Stein- the main point is to make tools accessible for everyone to make art, live, function because it is just unethical not to. Stein is a publisher and was part of the Voyager company who developed “Who Built America” a disc by the American Social History Project. Apple refused to distribute it with an educational bundle for schools when Voyager refused to edit the sections about abortion and gays (for Trekkies out there: can you see images of Captain Janewood refusing to comply?). The matter was resolved and Apple continued distributing it. I haven't looked up where Stein is now, but I don't think he is advising the president's people.

I naturally side with Stein on: keeping the system fair and changing the dominant culture's control over it, getting digital corporations to re-evaluate in bigger terms not just from the cash, Id and ego perspective, and to fight fight fight for what will make the world a better place from all aspects (spiritual, mental, and emotional).

Go get Linux!

Almost struck out, but along came a Russian

Thank heavens that Lev Manovich wrote an essay in this book (“What is Digital Cinema?"). If he hadn't I think I would have used the first of three strikes. The Digital Dialectic isn't a horrible book, I just feel that some of the writing isn't very seductive. I totally avoided the book for a few weeks. After a great start with discovering Buffalo Heads through the dedication, I found the first essay to be dull. Trying to alleviate the situation I jumped around but dozed off. Manovich was manna from heaven! He is so specific in his writing and gets to the point. His thesis pretty much is that digital cinema is a beautiful bigamous marriage between the photograph, painting and collage. His describing the loop as a function comparable to photography's capturing the decisive moment felt as if my brain had gotten a dusting. His essay seemed to be his book in a nutshell, and I wonder which came first.

I don't think I will read the entire book cover to cover. I've decided to select some essays instead. My next book is more theory so I may do this again instead of using a strike. The next essay will be on ethics and the digital world. Let's see how it goes.

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