The short
film
To practice
his craft a writer is not limited to trying to produce a best
selling novel. He can write non-fiction, journalism, poetry,
drama, a short story. Some of these forms are commercially
viable, some are not. The same is true for the film artist. He
is not limited to feature filmmaking. He can make documentaries,
experimental pieces, short works. In fact, the short form makes
it possible for the independent artist to put aside the
pressures of the marketplace to develop his craft, to explore
different styles and genres of filmmaking, to pass through his
apprenticeship and build a body of work.
Nostalgia
for the future
Struck by a passage from John Banville’s remarkable novel “The
Sea,” I now realize that when I was younger and thought about
what my life should be like in 20 or 30 years, what I really did
was project into the future an imagined past already experienced
through literature and film. Sitting in a book-lined study, my
future self puts down his pen and looks out the window at the
Petersburg snow swirling around the street light. As Banville
writes: “I was, one might say, not so much anticipating the
future as nostalgic for it, since what in my imaginings was to
come was in reality already gone.” What the creative act does is
give the past a future.
The end of
film
I came to filmmaking in middle age at the beginning of the end of film.
Film captures what is transient, but the black and white stocks
I have used have themselves become historical artifacts: Ilford
negative, Kodak 50 ASA reversal. I can accept the fact that we
are rapidly moving toward digital display and exhibition, with
film—at least for a while—remaining an origination medium. But
digital post-production is already killing off black and white
film. Why originate in black and white when you can shoot color
and just turn the color off in post?
With every
technological advance, something is lost. Those of us who see
through photochemical black and white will have our vision
digitally altered for us. I will be shooting Kodak black and
white reversal as long as it is available. But in time it too
will be gone, and our old work will have the quaintness of a
fresco.
