User:Aitantv/p r o j e c t

PRACTICAL

KEY THEMES

• Hybridity
• Tribalism
• Surveillance (hyper visibility)
• Predator/Prey relationships

FORMAT

cooking interview / fieldwork

• sound divorced from image

the host / the host

• the host - director cooking stew for speculative scenes

the guests / the parasites

• specualtive scenes - talk (of the host) from behind the camera

which camera lens?

• Is it a combination of camera approaches?
• Is it a simple handheld DV camera? This could help overlap with Paranormal movies (like Blair Witch) lending it a certain authenticity
• A wide lens for the indoor scenes and a more narrow lens for the outdoors? Or go even wider with the outdoors to reference surveillance.

RESEARCH IDEAS

• food related internet conspiracies

RECEE

• greenhouses south of rotterdam
• Het Nieuwe Oost Cemetery
• Synagogue in Bourtange
• Mevalana Mosque (name after Turkish for Rumi)
• Mescidi Aksa Mosque, Den Haag (very near gallery 1646)

INTERVIEWS

Salimah Gablan, Coffee Meeting, 02.12.22

Yaakov Gablan (father)

• A painter who moved from Iraq, to Israel, to the Netherlands.
• Looking for connection in older life he went to Schak, a chess cafe, enjoying the games and community. The men from the Schak came to his funeral.
• Favourite Iraqi dishes are Kubba Shorba (meat, onion, herbs, spices) and Torshi (pickled vegatables). Also mention of a lebanese fglat bread
• The funeral took place in November 2022. Yaakov was wrapped in a linen showl. Olive branches garnished his body. His paintings decorated the space. Light flooded in through the open doors.
• his children were important to him than his own sibligs who he'd had various disputes with, usually in relation to money.
• He is buried in Het Niuwe Oost Cemetery - specifically wanted to be buried in a public cemetery - but his wife Christine (Swiss Dutch) wanted him to be buried in a Jewish cemetery.

Jewish diaspora

• tribalism - the idiosyncracy of each and every jewish family and custom
• embodied otherness - it's something you can't get away from - it carries through inter-generational - even Salimah's daughters are considered other, 'where are you from?'

Resources

• R - The Hadji, by Leon Unis (Jewish Arab symbiosis)
• R - The Jewish Bride, by Judith Neurick (the disappearing history of iraq)
• R - The Story of the Jews, by Simon Schama / Russel Shortall

TUTORIALS

07.02.23

Rosella

• is there anough depth in the interviews? maybe reveal more or go deeper
• could become a larger patchwork
• could be there interviews pull you out of the fictional elements
• meeting around the table - a group encounter - where all the pieces come together
• the interviews certainly feel like real life
• interesting interaction between the enacted and documentary - you wonder about the connections between the elements - the interviews are so focused on the narration and the fiction is a more spatial/visual representation + but there is connective tissue
• W - Pere Portabella 'El Sopar' (1974) - collective discussion, political action/activism, people meeting, preparing dinner, and eating - the context around the political oppression
• what is the most simple thread - write a scene which concretely depicts this
• more intentionally pushing communicating the relationship between artist-host-parasite
• now you have ingredients but you need the recipe - reduce the ingredients
• the dinner table - a place of universal connection - relatable from different backgrounds - hints at this with G-Zi - now you can expand to have an ensemble cast -
• the interviews/vignettes could be establishing shots of the guests at the dinner
• Bela Tarr - https://www.eyefilm.nl/nl/programma/bela-tarr/125976 - film about banquet with homeless people -
• part of the banquet is the duration of the event -
• Bunuel - discreet charm of b - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Discreet_Charm_of_the_Bourgeoisie - (1973) so might have influenced
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyoAiP4mGhE&ab_channel=FilmStruck
• how to render visual considerations around 'hungry host' - how to maintain the subtlety of the themes between multiple characters - explaining big themes through simple small talk -
• believability - project is closer to reality so absurdism can be relative

Sabine

• who hosts that feast?
• the outsider - is the guest the native
• Peaky Blinder - unwanted guest - episode - shifts the atmosphere - tvtropes.com
• The Party (2017) dir. Sally Potter
• Festen, a celebration
• Eraserhead, dinner scene
• casting - who would the characters be? perhaps people trained in improv - a set of hidden games that can lubricate the social encounter - punctuated by actual happenings
• interviews - a hunger for more details - Isabelle interview somehow harder to decipher + confusion over what is the context, why is it important for me, it's very self-enclosed, how does this connect with the rest of it -
• could you host these other artists in your conversation?
• do they speak about the host? Do they know who the party's for? what's their position? Is it designed like a game? Or more free-flow?
• do all the guests have diasporic backgrounds?
• how do these positionalities come

Barend

• cinematography - nice - geometrically c
• feedback loop in connection with the chanting
• the interviews feel surface level -
• Salimah - hospitality/art connection drawn but not explained
• Isabelle - cooking/hosting, less poetic somehow more kitchen sink, less-stylized
• the dialogue is not reaching a depth
• MEVLANA MOSQUE - art feeding off it feedback loop, a somewhat existential/spiritual thread, geometrically composed (precise) - fit with the chanting - connects with the chanting - nicely choreographed - Aitan is outsider in the space, you are an alien in that space
• the mosque and the basement -
• W - The Sandman written by Neil Gaman - an episode with a muse who'se been caughy by a writer, he captures the muse
• W - Flux Gourmet
• PERFORMATIVE -
• INTERVIEWS - portraits, non-assuming, reportage (like news item),
• Is it important for you to be a character in this? How important is it to translate this story?
• W - IDFA - All You See dir. Iranian filmmaker
• important to find subjects with same stakes
• If it is about you then maybe you should be a character. Own your story.

Ine

• Cinematorgaphy - nice images, but what are we looking at? Or why are we looking at it?
• We get to know two figures
• the mantra - the artsit, the host, the parasite - it's a little bit heavy and a conflicting theme - the parasite feeding off of another organsim - seems an attempt at unity
• Interview 1, Salimah - gentle and genuine - the camera is generous to her but we don't see the painting - feeding/eating lightly touched upon -
• Interview 2, Isabelle - curacao, memory - dancing in the kitchen - again we don't see what she's doing - intellectualise a lot in order to connect the images
• The Parasite - The stairs to the parasite - very gripping - seems to suggest there's a recipient of the food - does the person have a disease, a pest, a hostage, many connotations - this gest is so suggestive - food exchange caring, hospitable, tells more about love than talking about it - the gestures are meaningful - very gripping - these gestures are becoming symbols - a very relatable 'real' space
• Mevlana - a continuation with the stairs - not allowed to see much of this figure - by showing the figure as a shadow it creates a story - hiding/revealing - public space but inside/outside -
• hungry host = angry host /
• kammer spiel (German) - chamber play -
• maybe there are more gestures that can express the idea you're trying to translate - the idea of hiding, and shadow
• a story about the past which is still in the present in you - think of the implications of the choices you made - think about gestures that belong to that or spaces - tell the story you want to tell - why is the ghost a hungry host hostage parasite? What are the implications?
• The mosque and the cellar is really so much more compelling - the stuff relating to crypto Jews that really use your voice

13.02.23

Group mentor session, Cihad

• 'The Artist' is a bit of a loaded term - consider using Host-Parasite.
• Also more manageable having a duality as opposied to a trinity
• you are trying to connect with ancestry - the questions/journey might be more interesting than the answers
• W - Emilie Jacir - works with letters as a form describing checkpoint in Bethlehem

13.03.23

David Tutorial

• GRAPHIC TREATMENT - powerpoint (bullet points or ticks) / educational / pragmatic / academic / open university / depersonalise / news report text + sci-fi /reportage location. Biopolitical slant e.g. tick box on identity papers 'marginality' 'ethnicity'
• PHOTOGRAPHY - should be slick, precise, only strong images. Cemetery + data center is especially vague / sloppy
• make data center more ambiguous - connect surface of data center with pixels
• interactive imagery - go into the pixels, the grain
• COOKING - stock imagery v. paranormal tone - cooking tutorial - 'how to cook your great grandmother' - 'is he really saying the quiet part out loud'

Barend Tutorial

• tripod implies precision - forensic - intentionality - constraint - didactic
• VO - makes it legible and self-contained
• loop - change some wordingh for beginning/end
• cemetery - handheld - sneeky -
• picture - present the initial interaction - use blue our of Leah to cut to the next scene -
• could the feeding take place on the ground -
• complete - finish - water-tight
• Parasite by Proxy (Or How to Cook Your Grandmother)
• on screen graphics - don't subtitle - add to the irony while being completely strait-faced