It’s been a quiet year for this blog, mainly because it hasn’t been one for me. Travelling and filmmaking have taken precedence for the moment, and, alas, next year may not be so different. But this isn’t to say there aren’t lots of things I’d love to write about, and to prove it, here’s a list of fifteen things I’ve been meaning to write this year—notes for each of which have been sitting, neglected, in the draft box of this blog account for some time. I’m presenting them here in the hope that it may guilt me into knocking a few of them out in the new year. Fingers crossed.
- TO DIY OR NOT TO DIY: A discussion of the limitations and possibilities of the DIY film distribution movement, as exemplified by the likes of Arin Crumley and the Workbook Project.
- 10 REASONS NOT TO DESPAIR ABOUT DUBLIN CULTURE: An optimistic run-down of some of the promising cultural spaces, events and activities currently developing in Dublin.
- VISION: An exploration of the nature of directorial “vision”, particularly how directors like Garrel can make a film as if “through their eyes”, with a distinct singularity of perspective, despite not operating the camera and not micro-managing the composition of the images. Thinking about notions of images with and without “integrity”, perhaps bringing in Serge Daney’s notion of the image vs. the visual.
- DIRECTING ATMOSPHERES: Analysing and comparing the directorial strategies and peformances of some of the great auteurs that have been caught in the act, at length: Lynch, Tarkovsky, Cassavetes, Kiarostami, and a few others based on second-hand accounts: Garrel, Malick, Wong Kar-Wai.
- COPYRIGHT IS THEFT: An attempt to articulate and justify my instinctive disdain for copyright and intellectual property laws, and tease out some of my own contradictions that I’m sure are lurking in there somewhere.
- STOP: The critically acute and self-aware but ultimately self-defeating politics of the The Sopranos.
- COUNTER-WIRES: Looking for hints of alternatives to the institutional structures exposed so well in The Wire, from within the show itself—despite its admittedly “wholly pessimistic” creator’s belief that there is no hope of change.
- SWEET AND SOUR CAUSES: A comparative study of two recent films, each of which followed a boy and a girl from alienated family contexts as they wandered around together for a day—Kisses (Lance Daly, 2008) and Only (Ingrid Veninger and Simon Reynolds, 2008). I want to link both back to the wandering and family-making of Rebel Without a Cause (Nicolas Ray, 1955).
- COMPLEX: Some thoughts on the bizarre mix of cinematic sheen and historical fidelity that was The Baader-Meinhof Complex (Uli Edel, 2008).
- ROBERT KRAMER RESOURCES: A compendium of all the available English written material on Kramer, based on what I discovered during and since completing my thesis. (I really should have gotten this together for the tenth anniversary of Kramer’s death last month.)
- …THEN LET THEM SHOOT HDV: The pros and cons of filmmaking as both a tool and an end in itself in first and second level education, as well as in projects with “disadvantaged” communities—drawing on my own experience as a teenager filmmaker and subsequent involvement in the Fresh Film Festival and as a workshop facilitator for young people.
- WES ANDERSON (or I HAVE THIS “FRIEND” WHO HAS THIS “PROBLEM”): Trying to get to the bottom of my problem with Wes Anderson’s films.
- WHAT HEART?: Trying to get to the bottom of my problem with the Coen Brothers’ films.
- YOU AND ME, PROBABLY: Taking The Devil, Probably (Robert Bresson, 1977) and extending its observations and implications on to my own generation’s lost and alienated.
- THE TIME OF DAY: This will be a hard one. The thing that got me into film: the ineffable emotional dividend of certain moods, tones, sounds, textures, shades of light… drawing out some aesthetic and philosophical ideas from the power of this, and using a lot of frame grabs from Terrence Malick movies.
Hi Donal. Haven’t exchanged words with you in quite a while. Nice to know that you’re busy with your filmmaking and travelling (maybe you’ll stop by Singapore one day?). I received the package of your short films you sent me many months ago. I really liked your films and wanted to write a long reply to you but decided I should wait till I had some of my own films to send over (admittedly, there are I made two in film school but they’re not things I’m very proud of). However, I’m glad to say that I’m currently working on a couple of films – a short film which I made very hastily over three nights not knowing what it was all gonna be about, and an edit of a (hopefully) feature-length film cut from abandoned footage that my fellow filmmaker friend shot (if you happen to be in Rotterdam, his short film, One Day in June, is playing at the festival). I’ve also got some other projects floating around in my mind. By the way, it’s nice to know that I’m not the only one with a real problem with the Coen brothers. I was fully capable of loving No Country for Old Men if not for their yen for making their characters as alien (non-human) as possible and taking such delight in orchestrating death, especially for characters which are a little more human than the rest (usually women). Their attitude towards humanity is comparable to Beavis and Butt-head. Anyway, I really look forward to articles 3, 14 and 15.