Technical Travesty: MIP Screenings 2007

Me, Ed Malcomson and Tab at the 2nd screening of 'Relative Silence'

Seriously, how difficult is it to project a film in the correct aspect ratio? I expect technical glitches every now and then, after all, you're dealing with imperfect machines designed and maintained by imperfect beings, or, shall we call it, 'human error', but still, the screening was not at some local multiplex where Truffaut may have had good cause to retitle his second film 'Shoot The Projectionist', this was at an established and well-respected 'art-house' cinema where they cater for films shot in the (1.37:1) academy ratio. As far as I can recall, all eight films on the billing were shot in square 4x3 (ours most definitely was and also the one where I have a cameo role), so what did they project at? Seemed like 1.77:1 to me, whoops, there goes people's heads. What's doubly irritating is that after the premiere, we made note of the technical problems and went back to the editing room to rectify them so as not to suffer the humiliation in front of a larger audience, it felt like old times as we were fiddling with our piece for what seemed like seven hours (in fact, it may well have been that long), but sure enough, we washed our hands of it for good... Only to get butchered by an idiot who not only managed to lob of heads/objects but due to the nature of the medium (i.e. miniDV), what already possesses a deteriorated quality was made far worse by the zoom "to suit a widescreen audience". I honestly think the best thing to do is not attend your own screenings or, if you're due to give a talk, arrive later, because to watch something you've put a lot of time and effort into and have it ruined by general incompetence is a fucking travesty.

In other news, I heard that Béla Tarr's new film The Man From London is receiving boos from the Cannes' audience, no surprise from a group of rich, capitalist pricks who have no concept of cinema beyond the wank that comes from the anus of Steven Soderbergh.

I'm not smiling today but at least Inland Empire is coming my way this Wednesday and Thursday.

South Stoke #2

Žižek on A Short Film About Love

How does he [Tomek] capture Maria's desire? The answer, of course, resides in the very purity and absolute intensity of his love: he acts as the pure S*, the subject whose desire is so burning that it cannot be translated into any concrete demand - this very intensity, because of which his desire can only express itself in the guise of a refusal of any demand ('I want nothing from you'), is what makes him irresistible. This second metaphoric substitution is not simply symmetrical to the first one: their difference hinges on the opposition of 'to have' and 'to be'. In the first case, we are in the dimension of having (the loved one doesn't know what he has in himself that makes him worthy of the other's love, so, in order to escape this deadlock, he returns love), whereas in the second case, the loving is (becomes) the beloved object on account of the sheer intensity of the love.
What one has to reject here is the notion that Tomek's love for Maria is authentic and pure, spiritual, elevated above vulgar sensuality, whereas Maria, disturbed by this purity, intends to humiliate him and later changes her attitude out of a feeling of guilt. It is, on the contrary, Tomek's love that is fundamentally false, a narcissistic attitude of idealization whose necessary obverse is a barely concieved lethal dimension. That is to say, A Short Film About Love should be read against the background of slasher films, in which a man observes and harasses a woman who traumatizes him, finally attacking her with a knife: it is a kind of introverted slasher in which the man, instead of striking at the woman, deals a blow to himself. The reason his love for Maria is not genuine does not reside in its 'impure' character: the murderous burst of self-inflicted violence is the inherent obverse of its very 'purity'. This inauthenticity of his love is corroborated by his inability to undergo the experience of desublimation, of the splitting between the woman qua impossible-idealized Thing and the flesh-and-blood woman who offers herself to him - that is, by the way this experience sets in motion the murderous passage à l'acte: the measure of true love is precisely the capacity to withstand such a splitting. Maria's love for him, in contrast, is fully authentic: from the moment Tomek tells her he wants nothing from her, true love - which, as Lacan points out, is always a love returned - is here, and her humiliation of Tomek is merely a desperate attempt to disavow this fact.

* This S has a line running through it from top right to bottom left although I can't find the symbol on my keyboard or in Word.

~ from The Žižek Reader, Chapter 8: There is No Sexual Relationship (p. 197 - 198)
[edited by Elizabeth and Edmond Wright]

Street of Competition

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1 May 2007

Dear Christopher

Congratulations! You are a winner in the recent competition in Vertigo and have won a copy of our fantastic DVD Quay Brothers: The Short Films 1979-2003.

Please find enclosed your prize, which I do hope you enjoy watching. If you would like to find out more about BFI DVDs, please go to our website.

Best regards

Jill Reading
BFI Press Officer
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1. I have never bought a copy of Vertigo magazine in my life and the only time I've taken a glimpse through its pages was when one of our lecturers brought in her own copy to class. After spotting an easy question about the Quays pictorial appearance in The Falls (Name the director? answer: 'Peter Greenaway'), I e-mailed the answer (so much easier and cheaper than the old snail mail system) to the good ole BFI, and voila...
2. ...I won a DVD I already own! If only I had waited, but then, this is me we're talking about, the world's greatest anti-capitalist-capitalist, condemn the ethics, buy the products! Although I consider my material being to be a little more productive than merely buying redundant items, after all, film is my research.

Who's complaining though, it's a freebie!