The Digital Archive 2014

  

Cheers! 

[from The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972)]

By mid-year last year, I changed the way I read books, watch films, and write notes. I became more instinctive with my choices. I dropped the Map and scurry through jungles and deserts like a nomad. I hopped from book to book (except for novels), from one film genre (or director) to another, and wrote aimlessly on my notebooks and journals about these encounters, guided only by the spirit of adventure and sense of 'connected-ness' with the world.

Emotional responses to anything visual, auditory, or textual triggered these instinctive drives. Instinct is a force that destroyed borders and limits within me: a total liberation. It also encouraged me to think differently. When I leave an incomplete idea I read from a book or an article, in order to move to another, I allow that unfinished idea to grow inside me, and 'finish' its form by myself, only to find out that, upon checking the material again, I diverged from the path of the writer making my own path.

These activities were, of course, influenced by the fan of the instinctual and nomadic: Gilles Deleuze. Instinct fuels productivity, he said. It's what drives civilizations to progress and allows the creation of new pathways, discoveries, new art. Instinct connects us to the world outside the 'systematic' flow of life. Some moments, revelations, and decisions in our lives came from our instinctual responses to the world. Instinct, on the contrary, is not spontaneous or natural. It is an empowered choice. It can be irrational (not all things in this world can be explained using rational thinking). Instinct is, most of all, a force opposite and against the oppressive, traditional, and conformist 'common sense'.

All the things that we grasp and feel instinctively are not individual objects outside us. They are not imaginary. They are real. They sit within the assemblage (or nested connections) of our lives. It's our eyes, our limited vision (fact: we cannot see the back of our heads or we cannot see the future) that prevents us to recognize these things, and in turn, give value to these events and objects. Instinct allows us to see (fact: we need a mirror to look at the back of our heads or we need to put our future selves into actualities to move forward) the things that we cannot see at present. It extends the range of our vision and our knowledge of the world. To live is to seek the things hidden or absent at present time. To live is to move to a future, to the hours that await us, by instinct.

The whole 'being-instinctive' activity didn't turn out that bad. It was actually enjoyable, even orgasmic. But the problem is I didn't keep track of the texts and books I've read for the past six-months. The films I've watched last year were logged here. But I didn't record the date when I watched them. Also, it's hard for me to somewhat recall who's who and who wrote this or that. They're all mixed up now.

This year, I will try to resolve the lack of documentation. Instinctive forces can be uncontrollable, but I'll try, as hard as possible, to capture these 'seen' objects, and maybe make sense of how they are connected to my life, by creating a digital archive. This archive is not styled in a 'stream of consciousness' fashion as far as modernist literature is concerned. It is a systematic and chronological machine in a list form, the one that you can see below. Although, like 'stream of consciousness,' it will involve a documentation of several notable encounters (anything visible, auditory, and/or textual)  that I will be making this year. 

Anyway, here goes the archive: 

Books

January

1. Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1/1-6/14) [The truth is I'm getting old, I say. We already are old, she said with a sigh. What happens is that you don't feel it on the inside, but from the outside everybody can see it.]
2. Night, Again ed. by Linh Dinh (1/10 - 27/14) []
3. The Double by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (next; re-read) - change of book, Wind and Stone by Masaaki Tachihara (1/11, 27 - 31/14)
4. New books: Mystic River by Denis Lehane (55php) and Long Day's Journey to the Night (play) by Eugene O'Neil (35php) [from a bookshop at UP Shopping Center Stall 1. For 8 years, I used to go there to buy books. Most of my Virginia Woolf books came from there. Awhile ago, while browsing the stacks, it felt rather empty having seen most of the books taken out. The woman said it's their last day because they cannot afford the rent. She said that if ever the owner of the stall agrees on the idea of putting up a computer shop within the bookstore, then it wouldn't be the last day of the bookshop. I left so many memories there. I hope they get the extension. Sad day.]; Word Virus: The William S. Burroughs Reader edited by Grauerholz and Silverberg (150php) [purchased at Fullybooked The Fort before the Sana Dati screening] (1/11/14)
5. Recent Loot from blink: (1/23/14)
   a. Down There on a Visit by Christopher Isherwood (200php)
   b. The Berlin Stories. A Single Man. A Meeting by the River. by C. Isherwood (175php)
   c. The World in the Evening by C. Isherwood (200php)
   d. Four Novels by Marguerite Duras (250php)
   e. Last Exit To Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, Jr. (225php)
6. Reading The Berlin Stories. A Single Man. A Meeting by the River. by C. Isherwood
   a. Mr. Norris Changes Trains (1/31 - 2/28, 2014)
   b. Goodbye to Berlin (2/28 - , 2014)
7. Reading The Beggar by NaguibMahfouz (2/28 - , 2014)

***

Writings

January

1. Having an Idea of Cinema (On the Cinema of Straub-Huillet) (1998) by Gilles Deleuze trans. by Eleanor Kaufman (halfway; read 1/1-2/14) [text] [further info]
2. A glimpse of Alain Badiou's Cinema (2013) (1/4/14) [further info]
3. Reading the Figural's Chapter Six: A Genealogy of Time by D.N. Rodowick (2003) (reading since 1/1/14) [further info]
4. [I] a glimpse of Undocumenting History: An Interview with Filmmaker Jill Godmillow by Lynn C. Miller (1/5/14) [text] (for future reading)
5. A glimpse of Kill the Documentary as We Know It by Jill Godmillow (1/6/14) [link] (for future reading)
6. The Anatomy of a Marcos Apologist by Leiron Martija (1/6/14) [link]: It says: 'Listen to me, you blundering little kid. I am a child of democracy. I am aware of its limits, of its inconveniences, of its disadvantages and of what it requires from every one of us. I see you.' Is he truly aware of what he's saying? 
7. A graphological study of Virginia Woolf's last letter before her suicide. [link] (1/7/14)
8. Book Review of Daniel Morgan's Late Godard and the Possibilities of Cinema by Codruta Morari. [link] (1/7/14)
9. Re-reading Gestural Cinema?: Giorgio Agamben on Film by Benjamin Noys [link] (1/8/14) [The power of cinema, and the power of cinematic montage, is to free the image from its frozen state and transform it back into gesture. It can reveal the potential of the image, and release what has been frozen in the image. Montage is not simply a repetition of the identical, because in repetition this dynamic potential of the image is returned to us. On the other hand 'stoppage' in montage interrupts the stream of images. It brings the image to a stop and exhibits it as such, again as gesture. In this way these two opposing conditions, repetition and stoppage, both work to free the potential of the image and to return it to the movement of the gesture.]
10. Serge Daney's The T(h)errorized (Godardian Pedagogy) [link] (1/9/14) [The great suspicion cast by May '68 on the "society of the spectacle," a society which secrets more images than it can see and digest (the image runs past, recedes, runs away) affected the generation that had invested the most in it, the self-taught cinephiles for whom the movie theater had taken the place of both school and family - the generation of the New Wave, formed in the cinematheques. Beginning in 1968, Godard proceeds to pull out his stake and move in the opposite direction: from cinema to school, then from school to family. Regression? Why not say, instead, "regressivism"?]
11. A glimpse of The Total Film-maker by Jerry Lewis [link] (1/10/14): They say it's one of the best books on filmmaking.
12. [Obit] Amiri Baraka's Legacy Both Offensive And Achingly Beautiful by Neda Ulaby [link] (1/10/14): [When asked if he has regrets on writing the 9/11 poem, he said: "No — I have regrets that they didn't pay me my money — cheap criminals. I have regrets about that. But I don't have regrets about writing the poem. Because the poem was true."]
13. Examining Violence: The Critical Potentials of Superiority and Mockery in The Act of Killing (Joshua Oppenheimer, Cynthia Cynn, and Anonymous, 2012) [link]: Interesting assertions, but I need to watch The Act of Killing. (1/12/14)
14. A glimpse of Framer Framed Framing: A Critique on Porno (2013) by J. Pilapil Jacobo [link] (1/13/14) (for future reading)
15. A glimpse of Rilke on Embracing Uncertainty and Living the Questions by Maria Popova [link] (1/16/14): ["I beg you, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."]
16. from Destruction of Meaning  by Simon Hardy Chapter 38: Post-Marxism (B) - Guattari and Deleuze - 'Communists like us' [link] (1/17/14)
17. Speculative Humbug's Thanatotropism, communism and desire in Anti-Oedipus [link] (1/17/14)
18. Kasama Project's 40 Helpful Tips for Anti-Communists [link] (1/17/14) [Laugh out loud satire of the right-wing movement]
19. A glimpse of Jacques Derrida's Spectres of Marx. [link] (1/17/14) 
20. How feminism became capitalism's handmaiden - and how to reclaim it by Nancy Fraser[link] (1/18/14): [what a weird conclusion. It seems to tell that the writer is not a leftist. I'm not sure.]
21. Organs without Bodies: On Deleuze and Consequence by Slavoj Zizek [link] (1/19/14) [a review in Amazon says: Most of the time Zizek is just spouting off (and it's not even the inspired kind of spouting that got him famous!)]
22. Chapter 3. Consciousness of the World and the World of Consciousness from A. Spirkin's Dialectical Materialism. [link] (1/22/14) [The basis of conscious action is termed LOGOS]
23. Film Quaterly's Polcats: Debating Chris Marker's 'A Grin Without A Cat' [link] (1/23/14)
24. What I owe to Chris Marker by Patricio Guzman [link] (1/23/14)
25. Some articles on Time in Cinema:
    
    [Rhizomes.net] Feeling Time: Deleuze's Time-Image and Aesthetic Effect by Dyrk Ashton (2008)
    [Screening the Past] Untimely Cinema: Cinema Out of Time by Jodi Brooks and Therese Davis (2012)
    [Cineosis] Cineosis Table by David Dreamer. (2010) [This guy blogged about Metro Manila (2013) using Deleuze theories.]
    [Sense of Cinema] Antonioni's L'Avventura and Deleuze's Time-Image by Hamish Ford (2003)
    [WebCache] Gilles Deleuze's Bergsonian Project Part 1 by Donato Totaru (1999) and Part 2.
    [Film International] Andrei Takovsky's Mirror viewed Through Gilles Deleuze's Time-Image by Kierran Horner (2011)
    [personal blog] Guide to Reading Deleuze's The Movement-Image, Part I: The Deleuzian Notion of the Image, or Worldslicing as Cinema Beyond the Human by Christopher Vitale (2011)
    [MUBI] Deleuze's Theories on Cinema: The Time-Image
    [Wig: Journal] The Dimensionality of Time in Cinema by Laura Ivins-Huley (2010)
    [SSRN] Movement and Time in Cinema by Thomas Powell (2004)
26. E-Flux Newest Issues [link] (1/30/14) [I missed three issues.]

February

1. Additional articles on Time in Cinema:
   
   [BLOG: networkologies] Guide to Reading Deleuze's Cinema II: Time-image, Part I Towards a Direct Imaging of Time in Crystal-Images by Christopher Vitale (2011)
   [BLOG: Media Assemblages] Deleuze, Cinema, and Zen: Break the Motor by Amit S. Rai (2008)
2. How do we Recognize Structuralism? by Gilles Deleuze from his Desert Islands and Other texts [link] (2/7/14)
3. At Some Other Berkeley by Katy Fox-Hodess from Jacobin/A Magazine on Culture and Polemics [link] (2/11/14)
4. The Greatest Affirmation of Life by Naxos [link] (2/11/14)
5. Gilles Deleuze by Daniel Smith and John Protevi. Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. (2012) [link] (2/13/14)
6. Happy Death of Deleuze by Finn Janning. [link] (2/12/14)
7. A Conversation with Nicole Brenez: 'Each film is a Laboratory' by Raul Arthuso and Victor Guimaraes [link] (mid-Feb 2014)

March

1. Top Ten Philosophical Issues of the 21st Century. [link] (3/2/14) [I'd add:
   * Finding new modes of resistance in the age of control societies.
   - Addressing Deleuze's Postscript on the Societies of Control
   
   * What is philosophy of the new media?
   - extending D. N. Rodowick's Reading the Figural
   
   * Who/What is the new enemy?
   - ruptures from Negri's Empire
   
   * Can emerging radical philosophy still be institutionalize by traditional educational institutions/publications?
   - addressing the Sokal Affair
   
   * What is 'memory' or 'remembering' today in the age of internet?
   
   * Finding New Modes of Learning
   - Addressing recent Educational Strikes against rising cost of education around the world
   - Anthony Fontana's Multichronic Classroom
   - Initiative of The Global Center for Advanced Studies
   
   * What is accelerationism?
   - implications of Virilio's writings
   - (link)]
2. Reviewable Books. Invisible Culture. [link] (includes D.N. Rodowick's Elegy for Theory)
3. [Rhizomes.net] The War Machine and Capitalism: Notes Towards a Nomadology of the Imperceptible by Dr. Robert P. Marzec (3/27/14)
4. [Verso Books Blog] True Communism is the Foreignness of Tomorrow by Alain Badiou (3/30/14) 

April 

1. [Axon Journal] Naming the Ruins: Towards a Southeast Asian Poetics by Dinah Roma (4/6/14)

****

Images and Other Visual Ephemera 

January

1. Beyonce x Frida Kahlo [link] (1/5/14): Chimeric. Pop art. 
2. Frida Kahlo x Ripped Male Body [link; thru Teng Mangansakan's FB page] (1/5/14): Chimeric. Digital transformation. Queer. Pop art.
3. Negative of Jesus (look at the dot on the nose for 15 seconds) [link] (1/17/14)

****

Videos 

January

1. Movement-Image and Time-Image in Deleuze's Philosophy of Cinema by Thomas McDonald [link] (1/4/14)
2. Prehistoric Megastorms: Hypercane from The History Channel [link] (1/6/14): Apocalyptic hurricanes from the old world re-imagined on screen for television. 
3. Megastorm: World's Biggest Storm from Discovery Channel [link] (1/6/14): Featuring the wrath of Typhoon Haiyan
4. A talk on Giorgio Agamben. Gesture, or the Structure of Art from the European Graduate School. (2011) [link] (1/8/14)
5. A glimpse of Who are you, Anna Karina? [link] (1/8/14): A peculiar interview with Anna Karina, her origins, her initial career as a model.
6. The 400 Blow(job)s [link] (1/13/14): A spoof involving The 400 Blows by Francois Truffaut
7. UCBerkeley Lecture Series: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak on Situating Feminism [link] (1/18/14)
8. Short Film: Brotherly (2008) [link] (1/22/14)
9. Docu: Deleuze's Postscript on the Societies of Control [link] (1/26/14)

February

****

Sounds 

January

1. Ikot-Ikot by Sarah Geronimo [check youtube]: Sang by a transgender on a jeepney. She sang it well. (1/5/14)
2. The Double Life of Veronique Soudtrack [link]: Musical works by Zbigniew Preisner interest me, especially his collaborations with Kieslowski's latter works. (1/6/14)
3. Gustav Mahler's Adagietto for Symphony No. 5 played by Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra [link] (1/8/14)
4. Hooray for Today! Medley [link] (1/10/14): Heard this at McDo Pantranco while I was reading the book Night, Day. It was catchy. I never thought it was a McDo Medley, until I search the lyrics online. 
5. Recordings of Daniel Smith's Lecture Series (Sep 2009) [link] (1/13/14): Materials - Deleuze and Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus, “Savages, Barbarians, Civilized Men,” pp.139-271 and A Thousand Plateaus, “1227: Treatise on Nomadology–The War Machine,” pp. 351-423 + “7000 B.C.: Apparatus of Capture,” pp. 424-473.
6. Audio Interview: Lav Diaz and Hazel Orencio [link] (1/14/14): This is actually the interview that gives authority for people to post Lav Diaz films on Karagarga. 
7. Top 13 Circuit Tracks of 2013 by Tony Vuong [link] (1/23/14)
8. Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima (Animated) [link] (1/25/14) [I love this guy's illustrative videos on several avant-garde music of the 20th century]

****

Sites 

January

1. Antonio Da Silva's notorious site. [link] [gay content, R-18] (1/3/14)
2. Kurt Kren: Structural and Action Films (1957-1995) [link] (1/6/14) (for future viewing)
3. Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan's site with Published Works and Unpublished Notebooks. [link] (1/9/14): I miss mathematics! 
4. British film critic Raymond Durgnat resource site [link] (1/9/14)
5. French film critic Serge Daney in English resource site [link] (1/9/14)
6. The Third Persona [link] (1/10/14): A blog on movie characters facing away from the camera. It's a rather creepy and strange sight, but very intriguing. 
7. 50 of the World's Best Breakfast [link] (1/12/14): I need to cook this for my partner. 
8. 35 Famous People's Darkest secrets [link] (1/22/14): I couldn't believe that Mahatma Gandhi is an anti-semite (further proof). My doubts on his nonviolence campaign has doubled. This is unbelievable. 

****

Others 

January

1. NYTimes Blog: The Scientific 7-Minute Workout [link] (1/10/14)
2. ABS-CBS: The 4-minute Workout [link] (1/19/14)
3. Neila Rey Workouts [link] (1/23/14)

February

1. Baked Tomatoes and Eggs Recipe [link] (2/5/14)
2. Global Center for Advance Studies [link] (2/28/14)

****

"My Hero Film": Make your own film for the world

...laugh or be sad forevaaa...

A customized HD Film!

Dan, a friend of mine, urged me to watched a video over the internet, a beautiful short film he said. So I did with critical expectations. At the start of the film, I observed a unique style of rapid editing, mise-en-scene elements were reminiscent of an Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu film, global in scope and, of course, its language is Swedish. Sweden, for me, is Ingmar Bergman and Tomas Alfredson, two filmmakers who have made Sweden a central point for Slavic cinema studies. A contemporary short film from Sweden is a fresh venture, exciting and inviting. However, when the hero was revealed, all these expectations collapsed into a pulp and I started to laugh from its candidness. As happy as I was, I was thinking, hmmm... awesome! Quite unexpected! Though these embedding technique have been around for quite a while over the net, it has always been applied on picture forms but not usually on video.

It has been circulating on Facebook for a while now, Dan said over the phone after I called. After a few minutes of researching, I finally found the source of the video: FWA (Favorite Website Awards) (http://www.thefwa.com). It is an advertising site producing high quality flash and shockwave videos. Fascinating testimonials from the website (here) includes:

from Yahoo, "Favorite Website Awards - when it comes to flash style they have the newest in the new.";

from HOW DESIGN MAGAZINE, "Meet some designers who are doing it right at this site. You'll find links to the cream of the crop in Flash Design, interviews with the designers and the opportunity to submit yout own site for consideration.";

from Project Cool, "if you can find new Flash ideas here, you're a true expert."

Their videos uses contemporary techniques on professional filmmaking. Most of the videos assimilates the conditions of spectacle by infusing certain cinematographic techniques such as frontal close-up positioning (see video here) and asymetric framing with some mid-level computer generated images. All of their videos as shot using High definition camera.

Haha! Anyways, I enjoyed the video immensely... Great stuff!


Ciao!
***

In Response to the (Digital) Revolution Article at Sinewaya

...for it delayed my sleep yesterday night...

Lars von Trier and Dogme 95: they use hand-held digiCams

I recently found a blog, Sinewaya, just around 1 AM yesterday night after visiting Edgar Paule's Viewer Discretion blog, which i happen to also found last night after a visit at Chard's Lilok Pelikula. Such blogs exist, they are undervalued, not often visited, but contains intriguing and provocative statements about the local cinema and cinema at large.

I couldn't sleep last night after reading Kenneth Roland A. Guda's article about the (Digital) Revolution, entitled You Say You Want a (Digital) Revolution? This web article was written last March of 2008, more than a year ago under the pretense that the digital revolution is a political awakening in the local independent industry.

This pretense i agree but the more salient argument that one can make with this so-called local Digital Revolution is perhaps of a note that it is another stylistic movement, a similarity to the Coming-of-Sound period in cinema last 1929, what many critics and silent filmmakers called as the 'death of cinema'. Silent cinema, that is.

My long and dense comment goes a long way below(with sub-comments in [red italics]):

I am amazed by your vision of cinema. Intense and political! Your arguments run from rock n’ roll to capitalism to filmmaking to advertising to filmmaking, a rare treat indeed. I am trying to piece together the points you have raised, and I am sensing that you focused on the emerging local digital filmmaking movement. This was written last year, and i think I can sense a criticism on Video blogging when you mention about the ‘democratization’ and that everyone can be a filmmaker which i think should be gnawed upon even more.

But I tell you, yes, everyone is a filmmaker. I can even reduce it by saying “Every [contemporary] man is a film camera. (Kino Eye)” This was the very idea of a famous Russian director from the Soviet Montage film movement in 1920s, Dziga Vertov, whose philosophy of man is highly linked with cinema. He said: “In the face of the machine we are ashamed of man’s inability to control himself, but what are we to do if we find the unerring ways of electricity more exciting than the disorderly haste of active people…I am an eye. I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, I am showing you a world, the likes of which only I can see”. Vertov wasn’t really into capitalism when he said this. On the contrary, he saw cinema as a tool and our eye itself.

[The first and second paragraph of my comment was in response to his argument about the democratization of the film medium. He states that:

"The very idea of democratization (everybody can be a filmmaker with a DigiCam) as marketed by the mutinationals (Sony, et al) would lead us into believing that everything — every image, every moment — can be worth capturing in megapixels, even the most private moments (think those video scandals)."

It doesn't seem very clear what he is trying to point to --- to capitalism per se or to advertising of such products --- and to what point he is making.]

We must also note that like many art (literature, painting, architecture, etc.) cinema is historically contingent and ever evolving medium. In 1929, the coming of sound, many filmmakers and theorist declared that cinema is dead. Sound is somewhat alien to many silent filmmakers that time, they considered it as an intruder to their quiet little haven. However, we [can observe that during] the 1930s and 40s, the transition period, cinema is not dead but at the zenith of perfection. (if that happens, we won’t be blogging about it at all hehe!). 1930-40s is a period in cinema when the greatest films were made, Citizen Kane (Welles, 1941), La Grande Illusion (Renoir, 1937), The Rules of the Game (Renoir, 1939), It’s a Wonderful Life (Capra, 1946), Children of Paradise (Carne, 1945). These films have made a great impact on the rest of the history of film. The style of each one, The Rules of the Game and Citizen Kane’s deep space cinematography, La Grande Illusion’s mobility of the camera, Children of Paradise’s mise-en-scene decor and historical significance (Carne filmed it during the Nazi Occupation in France, such a violent time to film a masterpiece!), have influenced dozens of [contemporary] filmmakers and have established film studies itself.

In line with the central topic, that of digital filmmaking, we can approach it not as a political agenda of sorts, but as a way of comparing it with the COMING OF SOUND in 1929. It is THE NEXT FILM MEDIUM, and we see its existence on many films both foreign and local and it is evident that it will flourish in the years to come. When Abbas Kiarostami started using the digital camera after filming The Wind will Carry Us (1999), he declared that its much a better camera than the celluloid one, and many critics were 'shocked' by this declaration. This shift of medium is also observable in many directors like David Lynch in his Inland Empire (2006) and Brillante Mendoza in his Masahista (2005). Kiarostami used the digital camera because, he said, it is the new realism in cinema attributed to its closeness to us, audiences, that, in line with your democratization argument, we can document daily life with it. Lynch used it for psychological effects, a purely stylistic cause. Mendoza used it to add atmospheric/mood effects.

[I would add on this that one famous group of filmmakers who extensively use the video medium is none other than Lars Von Trier and the gang of Dogme 95 avant-garde filmmakers.]

We can say that the use of the digital medium is itself a manifestation of a new realism in cinema (with Kiarostami), and more importantly, a stylistic choice of the filmmaker. I cannot see how this medium can be used by young filmmakers to propel themselves to fame. If I am a ‘young filmmaker’ i would still use the old ones, the celluloid camera, because of its grainy effect which can add ‘pa-pogi’ epek sa mga judges ng film festivals.

[The paragraph above is my response to his crude argument about the 'rock-n-roll young filmmakers'. he wrote:

"What saddens us, therefore, that many young, aspiring filmmakers still buy this (rockstardom) bullshit. Many young filmmakers continue to aspire for fame and toiling in the digital realm, hoping to eventually break into the “big time” – pay a high price for their naivete, ultimately pawning their wide-eyed idealism at the altar of compromise. The best artistic minds are everday lost to advertising agencies, television sitcoms, and other commercial endeavors."

It is clear that he connects the advent of digital filmmaking with the rise of young 'rock-n-roll' filmmakers obsessed with fame and distinction. But what makes a famous young filmmaker these days? Are Mikhail Red, only 16 years old, and Pepe Diokno, 21 years old, popular as rock-n-roll filmmaker stars somehow?]

In line with your attack on advertising, if this advertising concerns the publicity of either a mainstream film or an independent film, I say leave it that way. This is how the film industry works ever since cinema was born in 1895. Without advertising, no people would enter on nickelodeons (old movie theaters during the 1910s) to watch screwball comedies and silent melodramas. One has to be informed to gather audiences, and what is cinema without our faithful audiences. What is a film industry without a proper information dissemination scheme, for as we all know, advertising is a form of information dissemination. if we are concern with the quality and accuracy of the information, then it is a question of value, another topic we are not concerned with.

Finally, you mention of ‘world class standards’ to attain in order for our local filmmakers to attain fame and distinction. And I say this, such ’standards’ exist, we call them not ‘world class standards’ but ‘film studies’ per se. If, say, we put Tokyo Story (JAPAN, Ozu, 1953) as a primary example, Western film scholars discovered the film in the 1970s and it is hinted as the one that opened the window to Yasujiro Ozu’s filmmography to be studied in depth. Every film, wherever it originates, has a focal point: the camera and the techniques. And these techniques are learned from film schools, or if lucky, from self-experimentation. What unites every film is the camera, and film theorists and historians are experts on every aspect of the camera, how it can transform a series of ordinary moving pictures into a remarkable story, how it can distort reality, how it produces ideas and meanings. Film theorists read every film that way, and not only ‘that’ way but many ways. One can engage an ideological study on a satirical film, to explore its themes and motifs. One can engage a formal study focusing on the technicalities of the film (mise-en-scene, cinematography, editing, sound). Such ‘world class standards’ are not standards at all but ‘analytical point of references’. Say, how one film differs from another film, how their camera works look the same but function in different ways.

[The last paragraph concerns my comment on his rather hyperbolic note on film festivals:

"The prevailing philosophy in many of our local film festivals has always been to promote and recognize films of “world class quality,” whatever “world class” actually means. Following this philosophy, filmmakers only have to follow foreign trends and compete in “international standards” for fame and fortune to come their way."]

----------------------0----------------------

Tropa de Elite (Jose Padilha, 2007)

But let us look at Sinewaya in another way. Sinewaya: Contemporary Media Criticism, according to their site, (in Tagalog)

"ay isang kolektibo ng mga mahihilig manood ng pelikula at naniniwala sa makapangyarihang potensiyal ng sining na odyo-biswal. Ang Sinewaya rin ay isang online film journal na naglalathala ng mga kritikal na sanaysay hinggil sa masiglang ugnayan ng pelikula at lipunan." (A group of cinema enthusiast who believe in the potential of audio-visual art. It is an online film journal that publishes essays on engaging relationship between film and society.)

I admit, we need local online film journals like this. With Criticine plague by the death of its founder-editor, Alexis Tioseco, another synthesis of local media and cinema is what we need.

Sinewaya stopped publishing articles March of 2008 and sporadically emerged around November this year. I have tracked back some of their previous articles and have linked them to a multiply website here. The group of students published the articles on their blog and their multiply simultaneously. It seems that they worked in a collective and hidden fashion. They identify themselves as Philippine Collegian writers and staffs. Furthermore, from their About page:

"many of us were activist writers and propagandists who liked to watch movies at the UP Film Center and SM North, but could not exactly reconcile this rather costly interest (P30 in 1994; P71-P81 today) with the spartan lifestyle activists were assumed to live."

One must note that the degree of political activism in UP Diliman is still at high level of engagement and popularity. It runs with the cliche: "Pag-UPian ka, aktibista ka." (If you are from UP, the you are an activist.) It is almost not surprising that we find such activist writers cooking film medium with politics and social agenda. Sinewaya has a thing for alternative filmmaking. They have raised several commentaries on the nature of it (in their article: Kritisismo at Exsperimentasyon sa Pelikula), its potential as a counter cultural medium (in their article: Visual Meditation: Documentary filmmaking as countercultural practice), and they even interviewed a Brazillian documentary filmmaker, Jose Padilha, the director of the 2008 Golden Bear winning film, Tropa de Elite (2007) (in their article: Documentary Filmmaking as Commitment: Interview with Brazilian filmmaker Jose Padilha).

Recently, Sinewaya published a criticism on Armando Lao's Biyaheng Lupa (or Soliloquy, 2009) which they observe that

"Kung meron mang bago sa Biyaheng Lupa, iyon siguro ay ang paggamit ng voice over sa kalakhan ng pelikula. Imbes na marinig natin ang sinasabi ng bibig, pinaririnig sa atin ni Lao ang takbo ng utak ng kanyang mga tauhan." (If there is something new in Biyaheng Lupa it is the use of voice over at the expanse of the film. Instead of hearing the monologue from their mouths, Lao enables us to hear from their minds.)

It has been actually used on films throughout its history, from a scene in It's a Wonderful Life (1946), George Bailey's thoughts were voiced over. Another extensive use of voice over was from the film by Wim Wenders, Wings of Desire (1989), to function the same as with It's a Wonderful Life. This technique is called stream-of-consciousness that cinema adapted from modernist literature.

I call the writers of Sinewaya to continue publishing articles. We are in great need of cinema writers in the Philippines, now that a surge of films from the independent circuit is pushing its way to the popular media.

I have to stop here... but i wished not, there are still things to talk about. But I am a human being and I need sleep.

Ciao! ;-)

---

A Source worth looking into:

Film vs. Digital (@ KenRockwell.com)

---

***