- beginning, and working out how to write these notes. a new set of notes at the end of each month. each leads on from the last maybe as they accumulate, they will become notes towards something, making a moving image work, or a more formal essay.
a wandering about kind of writing, walking around in the city, more open to chance, plenty of potential for aimlessness and detours; writing to travel around vicariously while stuck inside.
making a constellation by chance. beginning in the city and continuing to make a map outwards over the coming months.
citywork 1
MARSEILLE (2004)
still from MARSEILLE (2004)
- similarly, enormous spaces are left out of the narrative and we are left to fill them in, possibly making the effect of the film closer to that of the experience of being in a city, the important parts of the day stick out and the gulfs in the narrative maybe make a space in the head of the viewer, like the space at the end of the day in the city of all the things that just passed you by.
- the city is unfiltered, likely shot in actual streets not closed off; the moment when a bus with an advert for 8 MILE (2002) on the side drives through the frame, the trace of a completely different form of cinematic moving image intruding into this slow film (the bus mounted advertisement as the most obviously 'moving image').
- shots that would suggest even the slightest hint of a landmark or even the general look or feeling of a place in either of the films locations (marseille and berlin) are completely absent. maybe suggesting that that look/feeling doesn’t exist, or is broadcast/forced on us, or is produced differently by each person.
WIDOWS (2018)
- the very brief moment where a character in a car pulls away from watching a place, while on the radio there’s a broadcast about Albert Woodfox, a member of the black panthers who spent 44 years in solitary confinement, and Woodfox himself interviewed; what he says refers to not being able to describe his own situation:
“Yeah I don’t know if I have the adequate words to describe what it’s like to be in a state of where nothing you do is gonna change your situation. I went almost 20 years without any disciplinary reports. It made no difference when I went before the review board. No matter how much you change, it makes no difference.”
the way this fragment of text (spoken not written) sits in and over the film, and has no relation to the overall narrative/moving the plot forward, instead it’s a part of the city (chicago) where the film is set and opens up that setting for the viewer, the unfiltered radio, the kind of thing that is come upon by chance in the city.
yet this sound fragment is also there for a reason and has been placed there intentionally by the filmmakers; maybe its democratic-ness comes from sheer juxtaposition and because what it might mean is completely open to (endless?) interpretation.
suggests a different film that overlays the narrative film that WIDOWS principally is, or sits inside or below it: an obscure essay film about the city, or producing the city with sound / image in a different way, that reaches outside itself and again comes closer as in MARSEILLE to the effect of actually being in the city, by leaving things out and by allowing the opaque and the obscure, like the radio fragment;
there’s also a scene in the barbers where one character works that i thought had a similar effect, where the character is talking on the phone but we have no idea what she is talking about or who she is talking to; again this opens up the city, in a way that is so refreshing from how a setting and place usually exists in a cinematic film; it’s full of information we don’t know. watching back i completely misinterpreted this, she’s actually talking to her mother and asking her to look after her children while she’s at work. but then as far as i remember, we still don’t see the mother, and in the same scene the character also has a conversation with a customer, who we also know nothing about, who says
“So, I asked her how does she know it was true? Who told her?”.
perhaps i’m exaggerating but this is so full of suggestion and things about which we know nothing. and again has this effect of opening the city up. (also of course the now famous shot of the politician’s car moving through the streets in one long take where we see the outside but hear the sound (a conversation) from within the car).
this possible film within the film fades away somewhat as the narrative gains pace (the later sequences mainly concerned with the heist).
there’s also the shots that are similarly brilliant yet purposeless within the confines of the plot, that recreate shots from the original tv series, the one i remember is the fairly long take of the elevated subway moving through the city that again has no explanation or relevance for the narrative, its full of people who are all doing different things that we know nothing of other than the awareness that they are taking place.
WIDOWS (1983)
- going back to the original series, watching the 2018 film first gives the shots that are directly referenced in the remake a strange quality, in particular the shot of the dead criminals chairs in the lock up, which already suggests absence, but also the ghost image of the remake.
- the open yet opaque city of mcqueens film is also slightly present, shots of characters looking out of windows and we have no idea what they are thinking, a device also used in the remake, maybe this is just a commonly used shot, but it’s noticeable in both these works.
still from WIDOWS (1983)
- it contains interesting occasional shots of london, particularly central london, that stick out as images of that city. they’re cramped and the frame is quite square, recalling images of cities in films by jacques rivette and rainer werner fassbinder - different to the usual depictions of london?
still from WIDOWS (1983)
the cramped image produces a more built up city than london seems to be; maybe the centre of the city used to be more like this; now it has a strange blandness and branded-ness, it’s impossible to look anywhere without seeing some kind of logo, it’s the place where a traditional idea of street photography goes to die, city centre that isn’t sure exactly what it’s for, the un-urban middle of a metropolis.
- another film with some of this quality is the comic strip film MR JOLLY LIVES NEXT DOOR (1988), which begins with trafalgar square still functioning as a giant roundabout, then passes through a series of difficult to identify locations (demolished?).
stills from MR JOLLY LIVES NEXT DOOR (1988)
- then this image from WIDOWS 83, which must be instantly recognisable to anyone who has ever been to soho, yet i’ve never seen an image of this place anywhere else. the interior is also used heavily as the workplace of one of the protagonists. it’s a crappy arcade. images of an older, cheaper soho, problematic nostalgia for the central district as a place you would want to go, with a use.
still from WIDOWS (1983)