My friend A. send a nice quote, translated from an interview with Jean Luc Godard in Zeit.
We [he and his partner Anne-Marie Miéville] try to imagine the film together. We try to recall it. It’s as if clouds take shape, very slowly. I try to see things with my eyes closed because you don’t see the same thing with your eyes open. It’s not any different with a camera. You use open eyes to see with closed eyes.
Elsewhere online (here) I found a few other quotes from the same interview. I liked this one, for its summoning of an entirely solitary film-making practice.
Godard: It’s not as easy as it used to be to use a camera to see something you otherwise wouldn’t see. Directors are either confirming what they already know – or they’re confirming themselves with the camera. Like a knight would confirm himself with a lance. I’m going to shoot my next film alone – but really alone. I’ll adapt. I won’t film the actors together, but instead, one after another. I’ll make reservations in the hotel, too, if they come here to Switzerland. These are different films, but they’re possible. Fortunately, I wasn’t able to make all the films I wanted to.
KN: Why “fortunately”?
Godard: [laughs] Because they wouldn’t have been good.
The first part of this brought to mind a film I’ve never seen but which has always intrigued me as a concept – Wim Wenders’ documentary Room 666 for which, at Cannes Festival in 1982, he set up a static camera in an empty hotel room, inviting a number of directors to come in and give their thoughts, alone to the camera, on the future of cinema. Despite the fact that I’ve never seen this film I’ve often thought of remaking it – creating a contemporary performance and dance-makers ‘version’ of it. Maybe, as a form, the solo to camera has been too entirely colonised by all those many reality show diary rooms, and confession-cams, but I’m still intrigued by the solitary space – a hotel room, a question and a camera. I might work on a proposal.
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Meanwhile I got back from a site visit to Rovereto for Manifesta 7.
