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Fiction is not exclusively defined by a narrative thread that is cohesive and well-motivated. This is a type of fiction. Fiction is made-up people navigating through a made-up situation. Motivation and cohesion are not inherent to the form. These made-up situations might be dictated by real life, but their made-up-ness (imaginative freedom) is what makes them fiction. I wonder what would happen if what’s made-up does not have to follow a preset logic (dogmatic), but can move freely around the proposed theme or concept, following desire.

Apply a scene-by-scene approach to a film dictated not by narrative but by situation, character, landscape. Not action-consequence, but motion/movement-exploration. In search of an architecture more concerned with possibility rather than effect.

Je Tu Il Elle 1 Je Tu Il Elle 2 Je Tu Il Elle 3 Je Tu Il Elle 4 Je Tu Il Elle, Chantal Akerman. 1974

Celine and Julie Go Boating 1 Celine and Julie Go Boating 2 Celine and Julie Go Boating, Jacques Rivette. 1974

It's not a terrible failure and it's not some unassailable triumph it's... a thing I did.

Errant Signal

In a Wall Street Journal article, Soderbergh mentions that he edits all his latest films on a Macbook. Then I found a picture on his Twitter from the post-production of High-Flying Bird, which was filmed on an iPhone. The fact he finished a first cut a few hours after wrapping while on a train instils me with hope.

Soderbergh's Macbook source

For [Hong Sang-soo], making a film is not the same as unrolling a narrative thread, but rather organizing “surfaces” or putting “fragments” to use within a given structure. (...) The first question the director asks himself is never “what do I want to say?” but always “what is going to happen?” And the answer is never given in advance, since it will be decided in accordance with a given place.

Romain Lefebvre, Sabzian

"I am a poetry fan; the audience for poetry is quite small, but it does exist. Likewise, just because an art form or a style of film is not popular with a mass audience, it does not mean that type of film should not exist."

Mike S. Ryan, Filmmaker Magazine

Still Life