Drift was made by Tim Sessler with a Canon 7D DSLR camera shooting through an airplane window on a cross-country flight.
Drift: A Film by Tim Sessler
Category Archives: Short Films
Our Lady of the Sphere: 1969 Experimental Collage Film by Lawrence Jordan
Lawrence Jordan began his filmmaking career by learning from and working with the great artist and filmmaker, Joseph Cornell. This is a 1972 film that is a mysterious trip through a subconscious world of imagery that suggests hidden communications and magic behind observable reality. His technique is mainly focused on using cutout illustration collages. I like his work because it leaves things unsaid, unexplained and it does not work too hard at being funny.
You can watch a lot of Jordan’s films at Mubi and read more about his life and work.
A Day In the Life of Havana
It's seldom that we get a view from inside Cuba. Here's a short film by photographer Jason Row about the city of Havana – it's beautiful old buildings, absurdly preserved American car fleet from the late fifties, the crushing poverty, and the eerie calm of living under the boot heel of a great slobbering pig dictator whose every breath is an insult to all Cubans everywhere. Why those poor sorry dimwits haven't walked into the dictator's house and eliminated him is far beyond my own comprehension or even my interest. People who are ruled by blathering psuedo-communist retards are truly beneath contempt. How's that for some travel commentary? To hell with Havana. Let's take Cuba and put up a Marriott. How difficult could it be? They have four soldiers riding in a 1959 Ford. Their guns are rusted shut. They don't like their boss. What are we waiting for? Don't we want the cigars? The music? The dancing? Come on Obama! Get it going! Forget all those nations of rapists in the Middle East. Go get me Cuba!
Further Up Yonder: Timelapse Shot From Space Station
A Happy New Year timelapse video shot by astronauts aboard the International Space Station. It was made by Giacomo Sardelli who downloaded NASA images which he then edited into a timelapse film of extraordinary beauty.
A Country Doctor: Film by Koji Yamamura
Japanese animator Koji Yamamura made this 2007 animated version of Franz Kafka's A Country Doctor. The hallucinatory tale involves a doctor who is apparently deceived into traveling through a winter night to treat a seriously ill young man. Nightmare distortion and time warping comes into play as the film seems almost to place us inside the head of this befuddled doctor who may himself be the diseased party in all of this. Beautiful hand-drawn art and a deep, mysterious soundtrack make this a brilliant Kafka film.
Via Open Culture
R.E.M. Blue: A Film by James Franco
Let’s just be clear about one thing first, there’s really no such thing on the planet as a ‘music video.’ There are films. Period. I don’t give a damn if you work on celluloid, draw them on wax paper or use a video camera. You are making a film and that’s just the way you need to think.
James Franco made this. There’s a lot of amusement about him and I guess that’s what he gets for stepping out into the world and declaring himself an artist. He’s too handsome to get away with that apparently. He could probably solve it the way Marlon Brando did by breaking his nose a little.
I picked Franco’s film because I notice that he seems to try to work in a similar way to me. He enjoys layering images to some extent and he tries to capture that dirty, glaring, subtle, harsh, gentle, dry, shimmering air of Los Angeles. He is aware of the long avant-garde tradition in film and immerses himself in the jiggering, jumping, hallucinatory techniques that have fascinated filmmakers for a century. You’ve got to look at this film as poetic expression, not like a piece of confusion as at The Playlist who write about the film but can’t seem to figure out why they are writing about it.
I see a little too much star power being thrown around this film. Just a hint of hey look at us. Although Lohan’s performance will be seen as yet another artifact in the starlet’s easily-predicted short life. The only reason you’d put Lohan into a film like this is because you are smart enough to know she’ll be gone soon and you want to capture a little wiff of that death glamor. Franco’s no fool and he’s bastard enough to use dumbass Lohan for her death magic.
But he doesn’t use her enough. He backs off to show himself working when he should be glorying in her doom and squalor. There’s nothing so Los Angeles as a slightly stupid pretty girl getting herself measured for a coffin. Franco misses the beat. Afraid to be the kind of creep any real filmmaker wants to be. Franco’s a good boy with a nice mom at home and a well-rolled joint in his mouth.
To work this way a filmmaker must be willing to lose themselves in the shots, must sink into the material and allow the film to emerge from the unconscious. There is absolutely no other way. If it takes six months to a year for five minutes of film, then it does. Franco has hit on some shots and some overlaps but missed on others. You cannot make a film to go with a piece of music, the film must come first. I don’t know how you get around this working with a band. If I were going to do it the film might not finish when the band’s song did. I might keep going so the band would have to start up another one I guess. Why would a filmmaker obligate themselves to a band? R.E.M.’s not good enough to do that to me. Maybe Franco has a better disposition than I do. Franco’s impression that he may have been making a music video weakens the film.
To get a film like this made one falls in love with Los Angeles. You snoop around and try to tease out what fascinates about this place. What have all those private-eyes seen? Where’s Bogart? The criminals? The moguls? Who lived in that Art Deco building trying to be a star and never beat the laundromat? Why does that dying girl think she’s beautiful?
Franco should look at the still image in this post. It’s an overlapp during a fade from one shot to another. This is an area where I tend to function, it’s the zone in which my films exist. The overlap is everything. Because the image here is a damn good one. But did Franco notice it? I’m not sure, and in this kind of film I have to be sure. It’s got to be not an accident.
I don’t think Franco has quite enough balls to get this film made. But he tried. He admires a way of working and it shows. He’s in a club and he wants to prove himself. I like that, because after all it’s experimental anyway. The whole point is to reach and miss and reach again. Only nice boys smoke pot, Mr. Franco. The artists never waste that kind of time. They’re too busy killing with their cameras.