MUSINGS

Phil Solomon

1. admin 01.18.10 / 5am

   PSALM III: “NIGHT OF THE MEEK” (2002)

   (In Memoriam, Anne Frank)

   It is Berlin, November 9, 1938, and, as the night air is shattered throughout the city, the Rabbi of Prague is summoned from a dark slumber, called upon once again to invoke the magic letters from the Great Book that will bring his creature made from earth back to life, in the hour of need.

   A kindertodenliede in black and silver on a night of gods and monsters…

   In Germany, Before the War

   I’m looking at the river,
   but I’m thinking of the sea,
   thinking of the sea,
   thinking of the sea

   I’m looking at the river,
   but I’m thinking of the sea,
   thinking of the sea,
   thinking of the sea…

   ––Randy Newman
2. admin 01.18.10 / 12pm

   PLEASE HIT PLAY, THEN PAUSE AND ALLOW FILE TO FULLY LOAD UP BEFORE PLAYING. THE FILM IS 23 MINUTES.

   PLEASE DO NOT TRY TO RIP OR EMBED ELSEWHERE. I AM EXPERIMENTING WITH PUTTING UP FULL FILES FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE NOT SEEN MY WORK ON FILM, SO PLEASE TRY AND RESPECT MY WISHES SO THAT I CAN CONTINUE TO DO SO.

   thanks.
3. Alessandro Cima 01.22.10 / 5pm

   Your experiment is a success. Just beautiful. And frightening. I would like some more please.

   Would you mind if I were to write about your work over on CandlelightStories.com? Lots of readers. Thousands per day. You have forbidden embedding, so perhaps I could link over to this post? I’d certainly love to embed… but… perhaps when you are ready. Let me know.

   Beautiful. Good grief, this Internet thing is like a little magic box, isn’t it?
4. admin 01.22.10 / 6pm

   Hello Alessandro -

   I never mind when anyone wants to write about my work - quite the contrary - I am always fascinated by what other people see, because I can’t possibly have that experience of ‘first contact’ with these works, for lack of a better phrase. And this film has never been written about in print, save for some capsule reviews or program notes.

   Please feel free to link to any other website, of course. I don’t want the work embedded elsewhere because I want to control the context and the conditions of viewing as much as possible. This little box on this page makes sense to me on this site, with its black and grey demeanor and its relative graphic quietude, but YouTube does not. This is highly sensitive material and my intentions easily “misread” - so I am very skittish about its conditions of reception, viz. context. This is a film I wish I hadn’t felt the compulsion to make, as it was something of a constant moral minefield for me, an experience I never had before in my filmmaking. I’m hyper-aware of the potential problems of my use of this material (by both the referencing great works of film art and weighted historical subject matter) and I’d like to at least keep it in the context of the rest of my work as an artist in this little house on the highway…
5. Alessandro Cima 01.22.10 / 10pm

   Yes, I see your concerns. I think you are technically okay with your references to films but that has nothing to do with you wanting to be cautious about it. The film took me by surprise today with its strength. I am totally new to your work. This is the very first example of it I have ever seen. So of course it led me over to Wikepedia and then on to a wonderful interview on something called Cinemad, I think. I thought you hit several nails so directly on their heads that I was thumping my desk quite loudly with the flat of my hand. I liked your Grand Theft Auto mention for the reason that I recently made all my friends laugh when I told them I was using the game as a puppet show and filming things from it directly off of the TV screen. It is amazing what you can get out of that peculiar game.

   So, your Stan Brakhage clips are extremely interesting, but I am very much interested in seeing your films here on your site. So I hope this experiment goes well for you. I gather that there is a certain about of hesitation toward web/video methods in serious film artists. That hesitation and difficultly with form and medium interests me a great deal. Brakhage said something interesting on a DVD about the 24 fps being a constant backbeat and video being to mushy and too much in the realm of pure thought. I wish I could be in a room to argue that point with him.

   One thing I might offer is that on some occasions I have noticed that when I put a black and white film on a slightly grayer background, it works better than when it’s on a very dark background because many people watch internet films in daylight with open windows behind them. In that case, the blacks in the movie tend to meld with black or very dark surroundings and make the movie box vanish. I don’t know if that’s useful at all but it’s something I’ve been driven nuts by in the past.

   Your film totally made my day. I spent quite some time trying to describe it to my wife this evening at dinner. When I mentioned Frankenstein I think she might have gotten the wrong idea a bit, but oh well… I’ll just have to let her watch it.
6. alan caudillo 03.03.10 / 10pm

   Gripping beautiful and heart wrenching Phil. I long to see your work projected, but I’m grateful that you put this online. You are an immense talent.
7. admin 03.04.10 / 1am

   Thank you, Alan.

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