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In 2020, I moved to a new flat. I had also ordered batteries online for a new camera. I missed the delivery and was left with a note telling me to pick them up from the sex shop below me. Did I need to go in there? I need to make a film. But without those batteries…
What do you want to make?
Work(ing Together) in Process is a film that will also expand into an installation. It explores my relationship as a filmmaker to the man I met behind the counter of this shop, Marty. Through our encounters with each other and the people who pass through this extraordinary place, inquiry is made about our own personal and creative crises. This occurs while unravelling the process and problems with filmmaking and bringing camera between us.
The work serves as an audio-visual blueprint of a long term process in which two friends from different worlds make a film together. For Marty, this means examining his own self through image and image making, beyond the terms he ascribes himself as a disconnected ‘junkie’ living without a fixed address or connection to so called modern society. For myself it is embarking on and attempting to employ a filmmaking process that departs from traditional documentary systems, and also questioning the role of my lens amongst this collaboration. For both of us, a constant effort of letting go in order to regain- to turn my lens into our lens and tell a collective but individually unique narrative.
Throughout the work, we examine the nature of our relationship, collaborative filmmaking and what our male bodies mean in a heteronormative shell of a place.
Methodologies: How the work will be made
The film will be composed of video material collected over the course of the last year; this is an ongoing process. A key element of the research this year will be to examine strategies which make this inherently disorderly approach clear to a viewer.
We build the structure of the project together through editing. We open up the cutting room floor so we can both look at the material; we remove ourselves from the 'set' and reflect upon our narrative, while crafting it. We review the footage (together and individually), and try to understand it; shaping it through discussion and further iteration. In moulding the work, we exchange energies and talents, often trading my technical know-how for his personal and spiritual insights.
Holding a ‘monopoly of technicality’ is an intrinsic challenge to the method. Over time I share these skills with Marty. As he shares his perspectives, we challenge my strong, and his non-existent, notions of film and failure. This doesn’t solve problems. Rather, this subject of agency is a key issue surrounding the work that is addressed.
Why do you want to make it?
Because I am compelled to do something, to create by pulling from the roots of my own human condition and those of the humans around me.
When we first met, Marty confided in me that he was struggling with a creative crisis, one he knew he needed to get out of by doing something – but he didn’t know how. I was struggling with similar things and needed a companion to try things, a “subject” (although I struggle with this word now) and a setting to help make a film that satisfies my urge to make outside of ‘professionality’. Marty is in many ways my opposite: he is twice my age for one, but he challenges me to see things inversely, and acts as an alter ego to me, evident through his constant belief in 'letting go'. I believe this duality of difference we share is powerful, especially when expressed through creative means.
Workflow
The workflow of this project is inherent to its final result- fragmented, contrasting, potentially confusing and (il)logical. We plan shooting days intermittently, when schedules allow and our energies are open for it. Sometimes I pass by the shop as a surprise, sometimes we plan it in advance. Often we wait for moments to find us while the camera is rolling, with people coming in the shop or us finding words to describe our workflow. Other times, we plan to interview each other, often about the workflow itself, or our lives or our struggles with this disorderly process.
This is continuing as it has, but we as we are transitioning from doing the process to forming an outcome of that process, so has that workflow. The open ended shooting is starting to require a script with specific goals. This change is emblematic of the disorder, the conflict that the film actively sought but begrudgingly finally found.
Relation to Previous Practice
I come from a world of cinematography and entertainment-commercial business filmmaking. I have struggled with the fascination of making documentations of people and places, and I want to hold a dear connection to what I put in frame. Decentralizing the process opens up a world of new possibilities for us to work within. Sharing every idea from absurd to serious, this is important to me- to unlearn things, recycle codes and conventions.
In my previous work Dear Moritz, I made use of a filmed encounter in public space to build a larger film around it, thinking through its happenings and implications. This was a first step in authoring my own work, still within the realm of encounters on the 'streets' as I did before Piet Zwart, but not in traditional documentary or 'talking head' format. It had opened up a new method for me of using my immediate surroundings and people as a starting point for asking questions revolved around the lens and employing more critical thought to what I put in frame. I want to continue this, on a larger scale in terms of film length, narrative and presentation but also trying to develop a way to tell stories together with participants of the work.
Relation to a larger context
With the speed of visual cultures today, there is a need for work which questions what visual culture is and can be. How can the foundations of 'film' be shaken, by those invested in it themselves (a so-called 'filmmaker' like me) and those so distant from it (a self proclaimed rejector of films like Marty). I believe the material of the medium can be challenged within itself, in the questions we discuss through this project and also in the style of the work. Avoiding polished images, (traditional) actors, rigid lines to stay inside. Also, how can representation be explored, collectively? Who is film being made by and for?
I'm also curious about the footprint of image making on our earth. How can small-scale-local projects prove a creatively lucrative form of expression, rich in story but limited in capital, crew, technology and ‘talent’. How can a film listen to the environment around it, and have it also be a part of the authorship instead of being impeded upon within the authoring?
Who can help you and how?
In regard to mentors: Barend who has already assisted and I will consult again regarding technical tools like colour correction to add depth and character to the space. Stefanos has been useful in helping me consider the project beyond a standard film, embracing the experientiality of the setting. Laura Huertas Millan and Gustavo Vinagre have provided inspiration and provide potentially further support in the construction of a sort of ethnographic fictive approach to filmmaking and avoiding the pitfalls of the white western gaze. Through assistance with my writing I also will continue to benefit from my thesis supervisor Steve, who helps me to realize the potential and influence of writing while making.
In regard to other makers outside of the institution: the films of Jean Rouch, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Apichatpong Weerasathakul, Werner Herzog and Abbas Kiarostami. The writings of Edouard Glissant, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Jacques Ranciere, Chick Strand and Rolando Vazquez.
Timetable
December: Prototyping different edits. I would like to have a 'picture lock’ at this time. It would mark one year since we started filming.
January & February: Developing edits further to a point where decisions start to become more final. If needed, plan extra shoots for necessary shots. This will also be a moment where I will spend time writing, reading and watching heavily. Working on the project through indirect means, gaining perspective and shaping it to be the way it needs to be.
March & April: Working in a more practical manner (maybe simultaneously with Stefanos seminar) to start to craft the final presentation.
Bibliography
Text
Eaton M. (ed.) Anthropology-Reality-Cinema, The Films of Jean Rouch (1979), BFI
Feld S. (ed.Trans.) Cine´Ethnography Jean Rouch (2003), Minnesota Press.
Gains J.M. & Renov M. (eds.) Collecting Visible Evidence (1999)
Clifford J. "On Ethnographic Allegory", in Writing Culture (1986) The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, California Press
Glissant, E. (1997) Poetics of Relation, University of Michigan Press.
Vazquez, R. (2020) Vistas of Modernity, Jap Sam Books.
Ranciere, J. (2003) The Politics of Aesthetics, Continuum.
Cooper, S. (2005) Selfless Cinema?, Legenda.
Minh-ha, T. (2023) Traveling in the Dark, Mousse Publishing.
Espinosa, J.G. (1966) For an imperfect cinema, Cine Cubano.
Films
Moi, un Noir - Jean Rouch (1958)
Chronique d’un Été - Jean Rouch (1961)
My Crasy Life - Jean-Pierre Gorin (1992)
Koker Trilogy - Abbas Kiarostami (1987-1994)
Sol Negro - Laura Huertas Millan (2016)
I Remember the Crows - Gustavo Vinagre (2018)