User:Astrid van Nimwegen/Draft Essay

Readings:

‘The library of Babel’ Jorge Luis Borges

‘Notes on the cinematographer’ Robert Bresson

‘Spiritual style in the films of Robert Bresson’ (1964) Susan Sontag

‘Transcendental Style in Film, Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer’ Paul Schrader

Films I watched of Robert Bresson:

‘Pickpocket’ (1959)

‘L’Argent’ (1983)

‘Au hasard Balthazar’ (1966)

‘Les Anges du peche’ (1943)

‘Journal d’un cure de campagne’ (1951)

About to watch and read:

‘Offret’ film by Andrei Tarkovsky

‘Ivan’s Childhood’ film by Andrei Tarkovsky

‘Sculpting in Time’ book by Andrei Tarkovsky

Draft essay:

Annotations of one film by Bresson and one by Tarkovsky. Annotation of one of the texts written by Sontag, Schrader or Tarkovsky. Quotes from ‘Notes on the cinematographer’.

Essay about in which way these writings and working methods are connected to my practice and thoughts. Also cinema’s ‘claim on the real’: Why and how Bresson distinguish Actors from Models and what, according to him, the difference is between cinema and cinematography.

Films as an ‘experience’ instead of telling a story.

(Use of symbolic elements in my work – referring to the past and history of these symbols.)