The End of the Line (documentary)

along with We Live in Public, my favorite Sundance 2009 film:

dear administrators responsible for firings and budget cuts and all-around letdowns,

kindly stop hijacking Obama's volunteerism rhetoric as a way of getting us to do more for less (or nothing). i'm just sayin' ...

i'm lame on "causes," but ...

i was deeply moved by the amazing documentary The End of the Line. see it. visit the website. follow the campaign link to reclaim your piece of the ocean. and forgive me if i suddenly seem to have found my activism and act a little nutty in my enthusiasm ...

beyond words ...

mylittlefilm. i wrote about it, its evolution and its potential "meanings," at maybe (early 2007 entries). mostly trying to explore affective experience of place(s) in the context of my evolving work with textuality that happens off-the-page.

some of you saw this at PSU. i later submitted it as my "manifesto" for that Kairos issue, but it didn't get accepted (although a different short film did). and while i now see some elements as a little corny, it was a lot of work, so i want to honor that. that is to say, i wanted this to be cooler than it is. so while it originally enjoyed the pithy title "beyond words," i've renamed it to reflect my sense of it at this point in time. i still recall feeling quite proud even as i cringe a bit. but so ...

n.b. MBV may object, so this may soon disappear. we'll see.

project updates (you. can't. wait.) ...

i want to write something witty and fresh, a nod to a new year ... and i will. until then, know that both the book and the doc have happily found greater clarity. the process of preparing to tell other people about one's work, maybe (as in, say, a sabbatical report, for one ...)

for now, i'll have to be brief. so ... although it's still surveying historical discourses, the book is about much more than how we've talked about film in Composition. maybe too much, but i like it because of how the theoretical and ethnographic elements i bring to the conversation sort of "complete" earlier arguments, arguments for film in Composition that were hopeful and passionate but not ideally sound (i.e., lacking reasonable reasons and/or substantial forms of evidence). so i suppose i'm thinking that the book will both round out and honor those earlier arguments, and this seems to me a fine purpose in and of itself (but there's more ...). the documentary is now focused more broadly on DIY filmmaking and distribution practices and is not centered on M Dot Strange but looks at his work as one case study. i would also like to look at Andy Blubaugh's fine work as another case. additionally, i see the documentary coalescing around inquiry regarding The Shared, Communal Cinematic Experience narrative, a story i've long found enchanting, a story i've long defended. and while the narrative obtains, i now see it as a narrative, perhaps a "myth" worthy of reconsideration in light of the audience-engaging practices of DIY filmmaking/distribution via Web 2.0. it's sort of ... duh. but on the other hand, critical ideational/ideological breaks are contingent upon time. for me, it's time.

and but oh, i still find great (truth) value in The Shared Communal Cinematic Experience, so i am likely to find myself engaged in more of a dialogue than a straight-up, didactic sort of argument about the alleged superiority of DIY film practices. i'm glad for this.

more ... coming soon ...