Notes on Film Criticism (V): A Free Replay

There was a time when Marker's essay was the latent theory behind everything I wrote. I don't think 'Vertigo' would mean for me what it means today if it weren't for Marker. To my knowledge, I've properly quoted 'A Free Replay' only once before; but its sentences return to me again and again, claiming their place in my heart and mind—sometimes in the form of ideas, images, or literal expressions that inscribe themselves quite naturally in my writings. These disguised quotes become signposts conjuring a world full of meaning, but mysterious and elusive...

‘Smile’: Jean Epstein & Stephen Dwoskin

Why Jean Epstein and Stephen Dwoskin? Because of their mutual obsession with the close-up; with the drama of proximity, intensity, hesitation, imbalance; because "even more beautiful than a laugh is the face preparing for it"… How to do justice to Epstein's incessant leaping back and forth, to his moves from the general to the particular, to his effects of anticipation, suspension, staccato, acceleration, contraction, release? That's what editing (both on the audio and image level) was made for...

Notes on Film Criticism (IV): Singing With

In written film criticism, it is quite common to refer, too, to the critic’s voice. But what is understood to constitute that voice? Is it that the critic likes to embed sentences within sentences within sentences? That he tends to start paragraphs with a question and tends to end them with a blow? Is it his preference for using three adjectives in a row, for turning nouns into verbs, for certain rhetorical devices? Is a chosen vocabulary – an attachment to certain words – part of the critic’s voice?...

Defiled Garden: ‘The Invention of Morel’ (Adolfo Bioy Casares, 1940)

There's a passage of the novel I’ve always liked. Amongst the group of tourists, there's a woman – Faustine – who every evening contemplates the setting sun. The hero, who has fallen for this woman just by looking at her from the distance, decides to give her something. First he tries – I've tried it, too – the good old, conventional approach: conversation. But he's not seen, he's not heard. And, so, he makes an offering to her: a garden of flowers – which he refers to as his "last poetic recourse". Well, writing is this garden of flowers...

Notes on Film Criticism (III): Prematurely Hostage to Our Coming Biographies

This is going to be about film criticism, I promise. But I have to begin where I have to begin. That is: with a homework assignment I got when I was 9 years old. As soon as the teacher tells the class that we have to write about the most important day of our lives, I'm elated. I know what the most important day of my life is, and I enjoy these writing exercises very much. I wish I could present you here what I wrote that day. But this particular piece of paper disappeared, with many others, somewhere around 2001 – after my parents got divorced...

89%: WordPress Stats, Social Media, and Other Catastrophes

There's a genre of story I've always enjoyed: those about famous writers receiving letters from their readers. The letters are often nice, but not especially profound or refined. And, yet, the very gesture of writing a letter, stamping it, posting it in the mail, is endowed with a ceremonial aspect that carries its own significance. This has been lost with the arrival of e-mail, social media, online blogs and magazines. You would think that, now that the specialness of the gesture is gone, the writing itself – even if only in an attempt to make up for this loss – would become richer...

The Video Essay Podcast + An Annotated List

The latest episode of "The Video Essay Podcast", hosted by Will DiGravio, features a great conversation between him and Adrian Martin. Topics discussed include: audiovisual essays, film criticism, multimedia criticism, writing, love, collaboration, creativity, Raymond Bellour, radio, dreams, Jerzy Skolimowski, François Truffaut, artistic gesture, montage, Robert Mitchum, electric condensation, arte povera, Serge Daney, Jean-Pierre Léaud, heterogeneity, voice, John Flaus, performance, teaching, Marco Bellocchio, academia, audiences...

A Response to Jessica McGoff’s “Text vs. Context: Understanding the Video Essay Landscape”

This text was written in March 2017 as a response to Jessica McGoff's "Text vs. Context: Understanding the Video Essay Landscape". It was offered to 4:3 magazine, which replied that it was not keen to “play host to a back and forth on video essays”. In the interests of open debate, we published it ourselves and now we host it here.

An Experiment in Non-Smoking (III): Reading Lesley Stern’s ‘The Smoking Book’

David Bowie ("Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth …") makes a stellar appearance in 'The Smoking Book'. In 'Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence', playing a war prisoner about to become ashes to ashes, Bowie mimes the act of having a last cigarette. In Stern's story, the narrator's cigarette is put on hold (…) and the description of Bowie's enactment (already a ghost of the real act) operates as the substitute of her own smoking...

An Experiment in Non-Smoking (I)

Smoking doesn't make stress and anxiety go away, but it masks them. Entangled in the smoke of a cigarette I can stand unpleasant situations and unwanted meetings. To inhale and exhale smoke is to cope with a world whose air you cannot breathe. Smoke makes some images go dim, it loosens up links, it makes life liveable by turning it into ash...

Notes on Film Criticism (II): A Small Plot of Land

There are film critics who like to move across wide extensions. They are cartographers; they map territories. Their writing is not earthbound, but enlivened by everything aerial: winds, leaps, flights. I sometimes enjoy reading these writers, provided their pirouettes are beautiful and their landscapes are imaginative. I enjoy reading them if the lines they trace and the connections they make trigger enough vibrations and resonances. But this is not how I write. I'm happier on a small plot of land...

Notes on Film Criticism (I): Reading and Writing

"Has making audiovisual essays changed the way you write film criticism?" Interesting as it is, this question gently pushes towards a yes answer – if only because it is natural, or naturally expected, that your practice in one field will transform your practice in the other (or, at least, I would expect so). But, then, this question also bears a counter-question that is equally intriguing yet, interestingly enough, seldom formulated: "Has your writing affected the way you make audiovisual essays?"...

Five Poems in Search of an Author: ‘The Kindergarten Teacher’ (Nadav Lapid, 2014)

When I was ten, I was obliged to write a poem for a class exercise. Inspired by some tragic news I read in the newspaper, I composed a very tortuous, extremely affected sonnet in perfect hendecasyllabic verses. My teacher, who was greatly impressed, suggested only a small change in order to reinforce even further (as if it were necessary!) the already annoying, monotonous, consonant rhyme. Three years later, my younger brother did the same exercise. This is what he wrote ...

Getting Ahead of Myself

Writing on, with, around film is something I’ve been doing quite regularly for ten years now. On, with, around: for me, those are not pure or exclusive categories. They often overlap and intertwine in ways that are quite mysterious and unpredictable. This is something I value highly and, therefore, I want to keep doing it. But I’d also like to do something different...