Hello Again,
I'm back on Facebook to let you know what I've been up to since I stopped posting or answering posts a few years back. An explanation would be too long and tedious to write or to read but suffice it to say that I've been hard at work. And today, a day so different, along with every day since Nov. 8, 2016, requires more work than ever, and more communication. For the last 40 years I'v
e made a feature film a year, last year, 2016, three, two with my Bay Area Citizen Cinema workshops and one with the International Academy of Filmmaking in Bologna, Italy. I've done close to 50 features since NORTHERN LIGHTS, most of them variations on the Direct Action idea. We prepare with emotional exercises in joy, rage, despair and personal intimacy and, with some sort of skeletal outline, a prediction as to the direction our film will take, we go out into the world with notions, hunches and predictions, to discover the film from the collective input of cast, crew and strangers we meet along the way. This way we get a fresh look at the way people react to circumstances spontaneously, rather than pre-imagined and contrived. I never get tired of the "miracles of the ordinary" which appear in the midst of the day to day routine. I’m never sure how a film emerges out of this hybrid of ideas and experiences, but I suspect the world is filled with a cornucopia of drama because we are all seekers and yearners in the midst of responsibilities, many of which wear us down and paralyze our imaginations. And paradoxically, our attempts to realize the deeper joys and insights we seek come from moving towards our fears and sorrows. I've recently been inspired by Yuval Harari, (HOMO DEUS) who tells us that the distinguishing factor of being human is to recognize that we suffer, and our primary goal in discovering “truth" is to try to free ourselves from it. Maybe "we suffer therefore we are" and the usual categories of "identity" we agonize about are really besides the point, stories out of worry, attractive illusions rather than truthful descriptions. He says that reality is discovered through the door of suffering. I have made my films because I saw the films of Ingmar Bergman and John Cassavetes, both filmmakers who avoid easy answers and inspirational bromides. Both make me laugh and cry, but I never think of them as manipulators with a pamphlet full of solutions. I think what they show is what the existential movement of the 60s and 70s was about. We are alone with other people who are alone, and the only hope of community is through the free association with others, social and potentially empathetic as we hope to be. The palpable reality of the human in touch with the human. So much is conveyed by looks, by body language, by the mere presence of another person. Our work in the cinema has shown us both the fear and the joy of close human contact. When we work for the joy of the work and the thrill of the aesthetic chase, we create our own rewards. Still, there is the real world, survival, and the present day economy, not so friendly to alternative movements. And so I am coming once again to the Internet to see if a cinema movement can be supported intellectually, emotionally and financially by people like myself, looking for cathartic Art in a money-haunted, entertainment- obsessed society. As always I'm trying to lean forward rather than back. I've never been satisfied with either the Hollywood mainstream film or the Indiewood so-called alternative. If you already feel, like I do, that the real cinema today comes from other places, i.e., Taiwan, Iran, the Philippines, Armenia, Turkey, Denmark, Russia, etc., or if you’re interested in getting educated in film which challenges, rather than condescends, then check us out. I believe we have something to show, something to share, something to view on a screen and something transformative which challenges Post Modern sterility. I’ve never wanted to be in the film business, created by so many bottom line hard-body fortune seekers and I've survived up to now. But I’m not satisfied that enough people who would support our kind of work know about our work. Mainstream or slipstream… I want that to change. On this space we'll soon be posting a flyer about how people can get involved in the Players Workshops we do which result in feature length films cast with workshop members who have the means to support the project while playing major dramatic roles. You'll also hear about other upcoming screenings and grass roots distribution efforts. I'll be posting a schedule for a retrospective to be held in my screening room of Direct Action films produced in the last 20 years. I'm feeling the need to show and to discuss and this is my first attempt to begin new dialogue in a time when we are in danger of being dragged into a world of alternative facts and fake news with no respect for Truth. But as I'm aware of a long standing misuse of the word "Truth", I'll just say that I'm hoping we can work on making a cinema which assists in helping us discover the nature of suffering in the search for "the way things seem to be".
