filmicartchitect

[filmicartchitect]

Lightning (1952)

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EB  Another word that you often critique is ‘authenticity’. Today, authenticity tends to be fetishized in contemporary art in a very uncritical way. The same is true, to some extent, in mass culture. There’s even a book by business management writers B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore called Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want (2007). What, in your opinion, is wrong with it?

TM  Firstly, it has to do with power relations in knowledge: authenticity is always defined by the one who consumes the so-called authentic. It’s almost always construed for the other. And, secondly, if the other is claiming it for themselves, such authenticity could either be a reaction to or a way of internalizing dominant values. That word still righteously circulates in the documentary milieu today with regards to films made on and from Africa, for example.

I made a film on Vietnam (my so-called native land or birth culture) titled Surname Viet Given Name Nam. You can tell immediately by this title that a national identity is not given but construed according to circumstances and contexts (here in its gender politics) – and the more you look into what you think is unique to your culture, the wider it gets. What is thought to be typically Vietnamese turns out to be not so typical after all. In the series of names shown and historically used to refer to Vietnam throughout the centuries, one can acutely discern the diversely political periods of colonization and foreign rules. One sees how the country’s identity is, in reality, a multiplicity and an assemblage – constantly being construed in the present. What is conventionally understood as authentic is highly questionable because you can only be authentic if you confine yourself to locking doors and putting up fences.

‘There is No Such Thing as Documentary’: An Interview with Trinh T. Minh-ha

[filmicartchitect]

Babylon XX (1979)

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Emitaï (1971)

[filmicartchitect]

Again it is a complete shame that Julie never got the accolades and budgets and green lights she deserved. & a big part of that was black male directors whispering in the ear of producers/studios bc their mediocre crap got showed up by Daughters. Your fav late 80s - early 00s black male directors really got together and shut her out (except Spike). 

Digital distributors are still years behind her model. AJ changed the game for cinematography.  Storytelling/Narration is still ahead of the curve. Like imagine if she was able to make her black speculative fiction films!

[filmicartchitect]

The Day Shall Dawn (1959)

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Movement in Julie Dash’s Praise House (1991)

Watch it here

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Praise House (1991) combines elements of theater, dance and music based on the rhythms and rituals of Africa. Julie Dash collaborated with Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, founder and choreographer of Urban Bush Women, to explore the source of creativity and its effect on three generations of African American women.

Cinematography: Arthur Jafa. Production Design: Kerry James Marshall.

Watch it here

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Movement in When I Get Home (2019) 

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HONDO: Inside ghettos, those who make a lot of money have no interest in seeing the ghetto becoming aware. They don’t want millions of Africans to refuse to see James Bond and prefer the work of Sembene Ousmane or Med Hondo.

We are all colonized. As long as people are not liberated, they are ghettoized. Today the Third World countries are colonized mentally, economically, politically, and culturally.

REID: In Mauritania, are your films censored?

HONDO: No, since 1978, my films havebeen sold in Mauritania. Before that they were censored because they criticized the former government. Sembene Ousmane has had a similar history. But not all African filmmakers want to make films as I and Sembene do. All filmmakers are mentally colonized. Some only want to climb the social ladder and own a car or villa or have glamorous sex. It becomes abnormal when they continue to dream impossible dreams. I tell them, “You can’t do it. You are black Africans.” Even if films based on a Hollywood style have won a prize in Cannes, they’ve been killed in commercial outlets. We can put it in these terms: The enemy will not allow us to be independent if we ourselves do not become autonomous. We still have to go to all the festivals — to Moscow, Hollywood, to Chicago — but only under certain conditions. The Western world has created these festivals as markets. Filmmakers there should not have an" illusions about the folklore.

They invite Med Hondo, Souleyman Cisse, a Morrocan, a black American, just to prove that they are open-minded. If Cannes became a promotion festival for African filmmaking or Third World films, then I’ll encourage it. Now we have to go there to insult them if necessary and tell them: “You are a rip-off. You’re robbers. What about the Civil Rights you always advocate? It’s only for whites, not for Africans, not for black Americans. It’s only good for you. You continue to exploit and kill these people.”

If we have the chance, we should always go to Hollywood with our films. When the films are not sold or shown in a theater, if they are good and professionally recognized as such, then we want them to be shown the way U.S. films are shown in France or Africa. When they don’t show the films, tell them, “You, Motherfuckers. You’re rip-offs, gangsters, mafiosi…” And then in Moscow, if they don’t buy the films, do exactly the same thing. One must go to such festivals to fight, and to make contacts under certain conditions. For WEST INDIES (1981), I went to MGM in New York, and they told me they were ready to invest $1.5 million right away if only I changed the subject. I told them: “Fuck it. If it’s not the same subject, why ask me to do it? Do it yourself.” If Hollywood asks me to do a film, I’ll say O.K. and propose a film on Malcolm X or any other story on black Americans. I want them to leave me free to do the film as I feel it and as black Americans feel it. Otherwise, I’m not interested.

— Med Hondo (from Jump Cut, no. 31, March 1986, pp. 48-49)

Interview was taped on July 6, 1982, with Med Hondo, actor, director and spokesperson for the African Filmmakers Committee (Comit Africain de Cinastes). The other members of that committee are these: Sembene Ousmane (Senegal), Paulin Vleyra (Senegal), Souleyman Cisse (Mali), J.M. Tchissou Kou (Congo), Karamo Lancine (Ivory Coast), Abacar Samb (Senegal), Daniel Kamusa (Cameroon), Diconque Pipa (Cameroon), Jules Takam (Cameroon), Mustapha Alassan (Niger), Safi Faye (Senegal), Ola Balugun (Nigeria), Film du Ghana, Sidiki Baka (Ivory Coast), Haile Gerima (Ethiopia) and Julie Dash (USA).

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“They must act within their own society — write poetry, books, paint. So-called intellectuals bear the responsibility of representing the thinking of Africans, black-Americans, Arabs and Asians. They have an historical duty to light the world. If they do this, it’s not to end up with a Mercedes. Those types who want that are my enemies, not to be killed, for I don’t carry a gun. But they are no friends. They’ve betrayed human history and their own people.”

— Med Hondo on what is the role of the Third World artist (from Jump Cut, no. 31, March 1986, pp. 48-49) 

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News From Home (1977)

“Some people think that in editing, first you choose the scenes that you are going to include and you find the structure and then you work on the rhythm. For me, that’s impossible. The narration is organic. It comes from the shocks, the contrasts, the colours—it comes from the rhythm itself. When I was working with Chantal, it was very important for us not to know where we were going. It’s what we used to call “discover while doing.” We were ready to be lost during the process, and to understand the meaning of the film little by little. The process of editing has to stay mysterious and surprising until the end of the work; it has to stay alive, so that the film stays alive after it’s finished. If you know too well where you want to go, you don’t feel like going anymore. A film that stays alive is a film that is not locked in a particular signification, but which creates different feelings, different meanings, different links for each viewer.

Sometimes I’ve been asked to compare editing to writing. Some people say that a film is written during the editing. In some ways this is true. But I feel there is something more physical, and more instinctive in editing than in writing. The words are more linked to an immediate meaning than the images. And as I told you before, I need to work with this “non-meaning” dimension, because meaning often disengages the senses. I like more the idea of shaping. Editing has a lot to do with weight and lightness. I like to compare editing to sculpture.” 

— Chantal Akerman’s editor Claire Atherton, from interview The Art of Living.

[filmicartchitect]

A fifth rewatch of “When I Get Home” film and as much as I wish I could put it into words correctly, I think experiencing it is the best way to understand (or not, which is the best aspect of it) all the chills it might give you. I love reading her thoughts on placement, symmetry, and architecture (cos I got the same interests), but the way she imposes her vision into her work and with confidence is something that inspires to learn even more about her creation process. 

Using the medium as it’s been done before with music videos, by breaking all full feature expectations, imposing black narratives… While I hate the overuse of slow motion in nowadays action movies, in this case, it’s like the chopped and screwed style never made so much sense and was like a fusion between sound and visual, and it had a singular rhythm. 

Hate reading someone’s references so forgive me for sharing some thoughts, 

- Editing and camera movements remind me so much of experimental filmmaking from India and the influences it got from Soviet cinema, too.  - Dense textures (and use of colors!!) is so alike DP K. K. Mahajan’s style. - CGI “creatures” are like Ousmane Sow’s sculptures in movement?? that segment was INSANE.

Who knows where she’s going to take us on her next project; her minimalism is next level, 80s architecture got an upgrade, she gave a solid first step into Afro-Futurism, plus she has pulled together a team of super talented creatives of color.

Also, listening to the album is a complete different experience now that you have the camerawork in mind. Got a satisfying mood since then *hands waving*

[filmicartchitect]

Soy Cuba (1964)