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Sunday, May 13, 2012

Cum a inceput un haiku sa ia fiinta intr-o librarie pariziana


(click here for the English version)

Totul a inceput intr-o librarie mititica din Paris, pe undeva prin Marais. Era o librarie de limba engleza, unde puteai gasi editii de mult epuizate, pe care probabil ca nu le-ai mai fi gasit nicaieri in alta parte.

Poate exagerez putin. Mai sunt cateva locuri la fel, si ca sa vorbesc numai de librarii asemanatoare pe care le-am vizitat cat am fost in America, as aminti despre Capitol Hill Books  in Washington, pe langa Eastern Market, apoi in Baltimore, Clayton Fine Books pe Charles Street, apoi in Cambridge, langa Harvard Square, sau in Greenwich Village pe undeva pe langa Houston Street. Sau in Brooklyn, pe Bedford Avenue. Sau Georgetown Bookshop in Bethesda (numai ca aceasta a disparut intre timp).

Hai ca m-am intins la vorba. Oricum, libraria din Cambridge are numai carti in franceza, pe cand in cea pariziana din Marais gasesti numai proza si poezie in engleza. Asta-i treaba.

Libraria aceea din Paris are un nume curios (si bine inteles englezesc), The Red Wheelbarrow (adica Roaba Rosie).

O camera ingusta, ocupata de rafturi pline de carti, parand a fi intr-o dezordine frenetica. Ma gandeam la numele librariei, de unde venea, imi era rusine sa intreb, asa ca mi-am lasat imaginatia sa se joace. Sa fi fost oare Roaba asta Rosie titlul vreunui haiku? Un poem minuscul, al carui sir de cuvinte aparent fara sens sa te biciuiasca precum un kōan, incarcat cu intelesuri imposibil sa le descifrezi?


Mica librarie englezeasca din Paris era de fapt prima mea intalnire cu William Carlos Williams, dar aveam sa imi dau seama de asta mai tarziu, dupa cativa ani, atunci cand aveam sa ii descopar versurile, iar  Roaba Rosie avea sa capete brusc inteles. Era un haiku? Da si nu, as spune, termenul defineste o forma poetica foarte precisa, dand totusi voie, macar din cand in cand, si unor mici libertati.

A fost o a doua intalnire in care asocierea Roabei Rosii cu un haiku a inceput sa capete o forma concreta. De data asta nu la Paris, ci pe sol britanic, in West Midlands (de fapt pe Internet): un colectiv de tineri creatori de film, Black Country Cinema. Unul dintre ei, o veche cunostinta de pe web, Mattie (Mathew Carter) regizase un haiku video: o perla minimalista, filtrand superb intelegerea sa profunda a artei lui Kiarostami.


HAIKU VIDEO - Duminica Dupa Amiaza


(video by jovossuck123)


Iar intr-un comentariu facut acestui video, cineva semnand videogoatbird a citat The Red Wheelbarrow, poezia scrisa de William Carlos Williams! Legatura dinte Roaba Rosie si haiku era deci stabilita!



so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.





Williams a explicat odata geneza acestui poem: a izvorat din afectiunea pentru un negru batran, Marshall dupa nume; pescar prin zona  Gloucesterului; el povestea despre munca lui care il tinea  in apa rece ca gheata. Williams l-a simpatizat mult de tot pe batran, si cam la fel de mult pe fiul acestuia, Milton. In curtea lor se afla o roaba rosie inconjurata de pui de gaina. Iar toate astea s-au transformat incet in poezie.


dépend tellement au moment

une brouette rouge de roue

glacé avec de l'eau pluie

près des poulets blancs
.



so viel hängt ab

von einer roten Schubkarre

glänzend von Regenwasser

bei den weißen Hühnern



tantas cosas
dependen de

una carretilla
roja

lustrosa por el agua
de la lluvia

entre gallinas
blancas.


Hai sa o incercam si in romaneste (numai sa nu trageti in pianist):

Atat de multe depind
de o roaba rosie

Lustruita
de apa ploii

Alaturi cativa
pui albi



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Saturday, January 07, 2012

Matthew E Carter: Life, ay it a game!



The first name that comes to mind is Ozu (as all great film directors came out from the Late Spring), I thought also at Maya Deren's Meditation on Violence, as the timing of this short made by Matthew E Carter is perfect. Well, Mattie builds on Ozu and on Maya Deren, but, I must say, he is here totally original. It's the science of Ozu in the details, the science of Deren in the timing, and it's original. Great art builds on masters while being truly forceful and original.





(Vlog of Mattie)

(Black Country Cinema)

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Sunday, November 06, 2011

The Way a Haiku Began In a Parisian Bookstore


(click here for the Romanian version)

It all began in a small Parisian bookstore, in the Marais. An English language bookstore with some out of print titles you can probably find only there and nowhere else.

Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a little. There are a few other spots like this one, and to say here only about such places that I visited in the US, in DC, the Capitol Hill Books near the Eastern Market, and in Baltimore, the Clayton Fine Books on Charles Street, in Cambridge near Harvard Square, or in Greenwich Village some place near Houston Street. Or in Brooklyn, on Bedford Avenue. Or the Georgetown Bookshop in Bethesda, but this one is no more.

Wait a little, the bookstore in Cambridge I'm talking about had only French language books, while the Parisian one in the Marais was featuring English language novels and poems. So it goes.

The Parisian bookstore had a curious name, The Red Wheelbarrow. It was my first encounter with it, and I was shy to ask the people there about the origin.

The space was very tiny, and the shelves were jammed with books, seemingly in a total disorder. And my imagination began to play. Was this Red Wheelbarrow the title of a haiku? A tiny poem, whose apparently nonsensical string of words was wiping you like a kōan, jammed with hidden senses impossible to decipher?


That small English language bookstore in Paris was actually my first encounter with William Carlos Williams, and I realized it when, after some years, I discovered his poems and so the meaning of the Red Wheelbarrow suddenly made sense for me. Was it a haiku? I would say, yes and no, the term designates a very precise poetic form, while also allowing now and then some fuzziness.

It was due to another encounter that the association between Red Wheelbarrow and haiku started to take a concrete shape. Not in Paris this time. This chance meeting was now on British soil, in the West Midlands (on the net, actually): a collective of young filmmakers, the Black Country Cinema. One of them, an older web acquaintance, Mattie (Mathew Carter) created a haiku video: a minimalistic gem, superbly filtering his deep understanding of the art of Kiarostami.


HAIKU VIDEO - Sunday Afternoon


(video by jovossuck123)


And in a comment to this artwork, another interesting video artist (whose pen name is videogoatbird), came with the poem of William Carlos Williams! The link between the Red Wheelbarrow and haiku was now made!



so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.





Williams came once with an explanation: this poem sprang from affection for an old Negro named Marshall; he had been a fisherman, caught porgies off Gloucester; he used to tell how he had to work in the hold in freezing weather, standing ankle deep in cracked ice packing down the fish. Williams liked that man, and his son Milton almost as much. In his back yard there was a red wheelbarrow surrounded by the white chickens.

And the affection for the old man somehow got into the writing.



dépend tellement au moment

une brouette rouge de roue

glacé avec de l'eau pluie

près des poulets blancs
.



so viel hängt ab

von einer roten Schubkarre

glänzend von Regenwasser

bei den weißen Hühnern



tantas cosas
dependen de

una carretilla
roja

lustrosa por el agua
de la lluvia

entre gallinas
blancas.


Let's try in Romanian (and don't shot the pianist):

Atat de multe depind
de o roaba rosie

Lustruita
de apa ploii

Alaturi cativa
pui albi



(William Carlos Williams)

(Vlog of Mattie)

(Black Country Cinema)

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Black Country Cinema


Black Country Cinema is a collective of four young British filmmakers from the West Midlands. Drawing from influences such as Ozu, Kiarostami, Miyazaki, Hitchcock and Jennings, they are blurring the lines between documentary and fiction. What they look for in their films is honesty, authenticity and minimalism (I'm quoting from their artistic statement).

I knew so far some works by one of the Black Country Cinema members, Matthew E Carter (Mattie). His videos are amazing. To say that he is one of the best video authors would mean to say too little. He has genius.

Let me show here a short movie made collectively by Black Country Cinema. The film is named Walk 17: a young part-time postman is talking about a place he likes to visit whilst delivering on his route.



Walk 17 has been awarded 2nd place for the Best My Street Film at the 2011 Open City London Documentary Festival.



(
Filmofilia)

(Vlog of Mattie)

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Sunday, July 03, 2011

Days of Not Being Wild


Mattie created this video, a subtle replica to WKW's Days if Being Wild. A serene video (though also nostalgic) vis-a-vis a gritnik movie (though also romantic). The first part of the video is a stylistic tribute to the great Asian masters (the arrangement of scenes from some movies of Ozu, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, and of course, Wong Kar-Wai, is recreated with masterly craft), while the second part is rememorating a journey Mattie has made in Sai Kung: which is part of Hong-Kong, the city of Wong Kar-Wai!





(Vlog of Mattie)

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Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Spring Time Memories


It's sad that Mattie has come so rarely on youTube for the last months, but each time he is back his new work is incredible. Such a mastership of the cinematic language, such a science of expressing moods through the flow of images!

Here is a trip to his grandmother, a quiet monologue of her about the times of her adolescence, as quiet as old ages are, while the video camera is gently playing with white tones over white tones, coming sometimes with a bit of gray, as to remind us that there are also variations in colors, just a bit, and then it goes back to the tones of white.



(Vlog of Mattie)

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Friday, October 29, 2010

Vlog of Mattie: Contemplating A Brief Encounter


(video by Mat)

Mattie has been absent from youTube for six months and the prodigious son comes back with a gem of elegance and subtlety, a beautiful video of five minutes that speaks volumes about his love for the world of movies.

The title calls in mind, of course, the great classic from 1945, that Brief Encounter, a point of reference in any history of cinematography: woman meets man; gradually they fall in love; but she is not free. This calls in mind, of course, another point of reference, 2000, In the Mood for Love. And other great movies.

The story told by Mattie is also of a brief encounter. Once a boy met a girl and a sparkle was in the air for a minute. From her? From him? From both? They never met after. Had it really been, that encounter? Or was it only his ardent desire to recreate, in spirit, the Brief Encounter?

(Vlog of Mattie)

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Sunday, April 18, 2010

Vlog of Mattie: Spring in a Small Town

A video made by Mattie: he is a young British video artist, with an amazing cinematic culture, a great sense of image and a deep knowledge of the masters of movie history. The title of this video calls in mind one of the greatest movies ever: Spring in a Small Town, made in 1948 (and with a great remake, in 2002)


- A Hong Kong Village -
(video by Mat)


I am very excited: I found both movies (the one from 1948 and the remake) on the web and I will put them on the blog!


(Vlog of Mattie)

(Chinese Cinema)

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Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Dance of Snow


feel the heat, keep the feeling burning, let the sensation explode

A great video created by Mattie, one of the most gifted video artists I know. Great masters of the cinema come in mind while watching. Some likeness with the imagistic approach in the movies of Wajda, maybe, at the beginning. And Ozu, of course: the delicacy of the images tells me a lot of Mattie's profound passion for the cinematic universe of the Japanese film director. And this image, is it not like one from In the Mood for Love (so, Wong, Doyle, Lee)?


But the whole structure of the movie, its rhythm like of a sarabande calls in mind Regen of Joris Ivens. Yes, the same pace, and the same order of things! It's just amazing!


And I come back to In the Mood for Love, for I think the same tagline should be for the Dance of Snow:

feel the heat, keep the feeling burning, let the sensation explode.



(Vlog of Mattie)

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Friday, November 06, 2009

Winter Dreams


A scene with the perfection in delicacy that only Japanese stamps can achieve, and another scene telling that Mattie, the author of the video, understood very well the aesthetic lessons of Ozu and Hou Hsiao-Hsien.


You should watch the whole: it is meditative and subtle, with a bit of paradoxical. Un Soir, Un Train by Delvaux comes maybe in mind


(Vlog of Mattie)

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Thursday, June 04, 2009

Net Friends



Great video: it's a poem about the beauty of net friendships; the net friend is suggested here (with some ambiguity that's on purpose); the friend is never showed full face; it's Mattie, and the images are the style of Blwolf and of Mattie! The lesson is subtle: follow the images in a movie, rather than the plot.

(The videos of blwolf)

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Thursday, April 30, 2009

Mattie - A Love Letter to Ozu


If you know Ozu's movies you'll be amazed by this video authored by Mattie. It's incredible: it's like Ozu came to Wednesbury to make these images.

Mattie is producing unbelievable videos.


















(Vlog of Mattie)

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Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Mattie - A Homage to Humphrey Jennings


You should watch this video, St. George's Day, made by Mattie. I tried to put it here, unfortunately it's not fit with the available with in the blog.

So I captured some images from it. Mattie presents it as his really pathetic attempt at being like Humphrey Jennings.


I think is a very good video and it captures the spirit of Jennings. The images speak for themselves. But you should watch the video: it has a perfect rhythm, and this cannot be rendered by a few disparate images.






And here is a film made by Humphrey Jennings in 1938. Lindsay Anderson said that Humphrey Jennings was the only real poet that British cinema had yet produced.


(Vlog of Mattie)

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Monday, April 13, 2009

Vlog of Mattie: Homage to Josef Sudek

Still Life from the Studio of Josef Sudek


















I believe that photography loves banal objects, and I love the life of objects.

The words belong to Josef Sudek, the photographer who lived in Prague; an eggshell, a pin, a leaf, something that’s looking as the shape of an old book: Sudek took banal objects and pulled out grains of sky. Minimalism: one more detail would have spoiled the image, one less detail would have made the image poor.

And here comes Mattie, who loves the minimalism of the images of Sudek and Ozu, and dreams of re-creating it on his vlog. Watch his video; it is a search for the banal objects of Josef Sudek: looking for them, finding them, asking them about their beauty, playing with their answer.

Unfortunately the width of my blog cannot accommodate the size of the video, so I give you some screenshots instead:








Interesting is that Mattie had the visual acuity to grasp those small details giving a kind of Austro-Hungarian, Central European flavor, characteristic for the image world of Josef Sudek. I don't know, it's probably the way the objects are arranged.

(Vlog of Mattie)

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Friday, April 03, 2009

The Early Spring of Mattie


(video by Matt)


This guy is fabulous. Mat, or Matt, or Mattie, as he changes often the way he likes to be called. Carrying for his gorgeous images only a lover ca do.

At the end a discreet tribute to Ozu: Shoshun (Early Spring) is his movie from 1956.

(Vlog of Mattie)

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Thursday, March 26, 2009

Ghosts, by Matt


(video by Matt)

As always, Matt is amazing, able to create here a mysterious whole. Maybe a bit too cherché, though.

(Vlog of Mattie)

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Sunday, February 22, 2009

Vlog of Mattie



Mattie (or Mat, or Matt) is a formidable vlogger; his videos speak in unforgettable images of his passion for some great movie makers.

Here are some thoughts Mattie has put on the frontispiece of his youTube channel. Three short meditations leading to the conclusion. Each one calls remotely in mind some organization of a haiku while it has the apparent weirdness of a koan. I recognize in them the philosophical approach expressed by the movies of Ozu: it is the void that gives sense to our immanent.

We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel,


But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends.


We turn clay to make a vessel,


But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the vessel depends.


We pierce doors and windows to make a house,


And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends.


Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not.

(Blogosphere)



(Filmofilia)

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Monday, February 16, 2009

Mono No Aware


Matt made another superb video: it's snowing a lot and he's going home. The title is Mono No Aware: the elegiac feeling of the transience of things; more than that: your empathy toward things, your sadness that they are passing. Lacrimae rerum says Virgil in Aeneid, tears for things: sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.

The term Mono No Aware was coined in Japan in the Edo period and it is essential to understand the Japanese aesthetic. You see, some structures transcend civilizations: Mono No Aware has a correspondent in Lacrimae rerum.

How do they get this effect of Mono No Aware, the Japanese artists? Look at the video of Matt: he is a Briton, but he loves the movies of Ozu and Hou. I talked here about Millennium Mambo; the video of Matt calls in mind the final scene of Millennium Mambo, and that in turn is a tribute paid by Hou to Ozu: it snowed in Tokyo that winter. It is not by pure chance that Hou moves suddenly the action of his film to Japan, and creates a Mono No Aware effect.

The video of Matt, like the final scene of Millennium Mambo, puts us in front of a reality that is beyond our power to control things; we live in the country of snowmen, our dreams will die once the sun melts the snow, things and dreams and our lives will pass, while snow will come again, and again, and again. Here, in front of the snow that keeps on falling, we have the revelation of the transcendental: the moment of stasis.

(image from Tôkyô boshoku - Tokio Twilight of Ozu)

(Vlog of Mattie)

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Friday, January 30, 2009

The Dream of Matt


I watched a couple of years ago the Dreams of Kurosawa, and I wanted to write on the blog something about, also on Ten Nights of Dreams by Sōseki, which are fabulous.

I decided to start with this video, authored by Matt (friends call him also Mat, so it's up2u).

It is a gorgeous video. Matt has definitely what we call esprit de finesse. His eyes see subtle details that we do not observe, and all he sees is rendered with a great sense of balance for the whole.

There is also another thing: the passion Matt has for the great masters of cinema; this video was created by him having in mind some images from movies by Tarkovsky and perhaps Wajda (think at Brzezina), or maybe from other movies that had followed the same path. And so the images in this video belong to the same world of the masters, speak the same language, use the same words.

I would say only one word of warning: there is a risk of narcissism in the video. Or not? Anyway, it's gorgeous.

(Vlog of Mattie)

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Monday, December 01, 2008

A Black Country Sonata


This video is amazing. It's created by jovossuck123, a young Briton who has a deep passion for art movies. The real name of jovossuck123 is Matt; friends call him Mat for short.

His videos are all about this kind of movies. Mat has lists of preferences and created videos commenting his choices. His number one is Ozu's Late Spring: I always come back to this movie, it astonishes me.

What makes Ozu such a great film director? He is really one of the few who could be considered the greatest. There are a lot of books about his art, written by big shots, like Bordwell, like Richie, like Schrader, like Vick. Every aspect of Ozu's movies was scrutinized.

I believe his greatest gift was the way he was telling his stories. Each of his movies has a simple story, told with decency and economy, but with such grace!


Let's come back to the list of preferences of Mat. You'll find there Kiarostami's The Wind Will Carry Us, and Hou's Dust in the Wind, and Ray's Pather Panchali, and other great names.

My number one is Pather Panchali, no question about it, but I'm talking now about Mat's preferences, and Ozu is really a great master and a great wizard.

Let's talk about Mat's video, about his Black Country Sonata. He created it as a tribute to Ozu, and it's made with exquisite finesse. Each image is a gem. As you watch the video, you feel the mastership of the author, as well as his deep love for Ozu's movies. I was so captivated that I captured some stills from the video.

Some images reminded me also some other great film directors. Take this image for instance:

It's just the first of the video: it recalled in my memory a movie from 1930, Alexander Hammid's Bezucelná procházka (Aimless Walk). I had the chance to find the movie on the web and to watch it a few times. It's no more available and it's a pity: a stroll towards the outskirts of Prague, following freely your own thoughts, distracted by buildings and landscape at random.


There is then by the end of the video an image with a pair of scissors; its elegance in simplicity reminds me the photos of Josef Sudek (who was believing in the love of art for banal objects)



Now look at the image below:

(still from Mechanics of Love)
It's from Mechanics of Love, made in 1955 by Willard Maas and Ben Moore. Well, I promise to tell you soon about this five minutes jewel, you'll not find it on the imdb.

The image from the video recalls for me also another image, from Meshes of the Afternoon, the masterpiece of Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid:

(still from Meshes of the Afternoon)




This image is so exquisite: the minuscule leaves on the contortionated stem shaping a hieroglyph, bringing a plus of fantasy to the elegant geometry of the whole.





The moving clouds appear often in Ozu's movies, to bring the short moments of stasis during the development of the plot (or the final stasis); they recall also scenes from Bresson's movies (creating also the short stasis to support the development of the story).




I like a lot the scene from the video where the author sits down in the yard, framed very Ozu-like.



And this image is great: the clothes moved slowly by the wind


Well, this is the Black Country Sonata: black-and-white like most of Ozu's movies.

(Vlog of Mattie)

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