Big film event this weekend. I headed down to Portland to show films at 40 Frames, a semi-regular screening series run by my friends Alain Letourneau and Pam Minty: my own films on Saturday, and on Sunday, The Fetishist by Jim Trainor and The End by Christopher Maclaine. You'll note the poor "quality" of the snapshots - I forgot my iZone digital at work, and was forced to use the old 1.2 megapixel Radio Shack one instead. Oh well. I arrived in the late afternoon, and Alain picked me up from a coffee shop downtown. We went to the 40 Frames loft, where I used Alain and Pam's copious equipment to build up my program. Here you see my mess - I've never been the most fastidious filmmaker. Alain noted that the picture could easily date from '76 or so, what with the editing bench, his beard and mug, the old map of Oregon, and the poster from Kramer's Milestones in the background.
The audience for my show was... small. A humbling reminder that I'm not a huge draw. But everyone who did turn up was very interested. Here's Sam Miller, who designed the 40 Frames website.
Matt McCormick...
...and Morgan Currie also came. I've been seeing quite a bit of them lately. A pleasant consequence of my westward migration, I guess.
Josh Mabe, who I met ages ago at a Robert Beck Memorial Cinema Show, also came, with his sister, who he was visiting.
Pam's friend Tracy (on the right) also came, with her husband. She'd just bought an old Sony reel-to-reel, which Pam was planning to use to transfer tapes Tracy's father - a BBC producer - had made ages ago. Coincidentally, Carrie gave to me a reel of tape from her family just before I left, on the off-chance Alain and Pam had a machine to play it. We monkeyed around with the machine for awhile after the show. It worked perfectly. But all our problem was getting a decent signal into the computer. Frankly, I find it astonishing that contemporary computers can effortlessly accomplish so many mind-bogglingly complicated things. But when it comes to something really (really!) simple, like recording a standard, line-level track, it's huge, bafflingly complicated production.
I slept quite well on Pam and Alain's surprisingly comfortable couch. Though I've always been a fan of couches. Alain put on a copy of Wong Kar-Wai's As Tears Go By for me to watch. Quietly. Generally speaking, I'm not a huge Wong Kar-Wai fan - though, shamefully, I've missed his last couple films, which I hear are quite good. In any case, I really liked this one, which was quite different from others I've seen: quite raw, rather than arty & arid. Felt all Hong Kong, without the New Wave-y style he picked up later on. And as Alain noted, it's really hard to believe that's Maggie Cheung.
Unfortunately, the audience was small on Sunday too. But they were enthusiastic. And the films looked great, both nights. Alain and Pam have right about the best screening space for 16mm I've seen - perfectly dark, perfectly masked, bright image, and good sound. Not to mention careful presentation. Alain even went to the trouble to EQ the soundtrack to The End, which Maclaine recorded with a mike and mag projector. I'd never heard it so clean. It's odd - I've seen The End upwards of 30 times now, and yet every time I see new connections between the sound and image. Maclaine's narration is so wonderfully evocative and enigmatic: "Here is a character. Here is the most beautiful music on earth. Here are some pictures. What is happening?"
No comments:
Post a Comment