Columbus (2017) - Kogonada [illustration by Tony Stella]

" For me, it’s the pursuit of something. Like really genuinely trying to get to the bottom of something. A conversation between two people who already feel certain of their views are less interesting. There is something about a question that requires you to be in pursuit. It’s movement. I find it hard to navigate small talk. Those kinds of conversations drain me. I do want something deeper, and I almost feel apologetic for it. The question of existence, and why am I here, and what does it mean to be modern, and all of our choices. Those are constantly fascinating to me. Is it pretentious to ask those questions? I don’t know. But I’m genuinely interested in the answers—or in pursuing them. And every human is also an ongoing mystery. As many years as I may know my close friends or my wife, as much as I feel that there’s no other question to ask… It’s like, my wife is changing every day. And I need to stay interested. I can’t be so arrogant to believe that I’ve got anyone figured out."
- An interview with Kogonada

by midnight marauder

"It’s also about texture and this idea of a secret. The chemical image has a secret, whereas the digital image does not. The fact that the chemical image is unstable, also that the contours are much less precise, gives it a shroud of uncertainty, whereas the digital image is crystal clear and has no depth. The effect on an audience of a crystal clear digital image is that they feel they are inside the movie. I think you need the distance that film creates between movie and audience, which allows the audience to project themselves into the film."

- László Nemes

Москва, СССР 1987 - by  Igor Mukhin

كلُّ هذا الهدوء لا يخفى شيئا
من الحكمة
.أو الحزن

فقط شخصان يتقابلان فى ليلة
مضجرة
 ينظران إلى نقطةٍ فى الجدران المتقابلة
.إلى نقطة فى الهدوءِ الضيق

مكعبات الضوء التى تتراصف
 فى الزجاج المحجَّر
.الوقت الذى يجف على الطاولة

 الأسماء و المدن و الصلوات التى
تيبس فى الحلقِ
.و تنكسر

شخصان يتذكران
.كمن يرفع جثة الماء من البئر

فقط شخصان يتقابلان
.و احدهما يقع فى صمت الآخر

 بسام حجار -

"There was so much going on at the time…the noise, the smoke and general commotion, people running all about, the screaming. With the cameras of the period, you had to calculate exposure and manually focus. Later, I learned how to keep my head and clearly see what was going on, as if it was in slow motion. It is a trick to see frames among chaos, while not forgetting shutter speeds and f-stops, focusing, and all that."

- George Azar

Bal (2010) - Semih Kaplanoğlu

Cinema is absolutely related to emotions and to the associations they have. People everywhere have shared memories and shared life experiences, and it is these which activate our memories. Sometimes a smell can remind us of childhood; well, cinema can also have that effect on us: it makes us retrace our memories and experiences. So, when I start a film, I don’t begin by writing a narrative. I try first to locate a certain basic emotion, then try to make that emotion more tangible, more concrete. I don’t begin by writing a script. First of all, I try to organise the setting, the lighting, the colours that will surround this emotion. And the narrative eventually comes out of this discovery process.

For instance, I like the way Alfred Hitchcock uses objects in his films. If you don’t think about the objects when you make your film, you can’t support your story with them. Every element of a film has to be in harmony with all the other elements. Neither the acting, nor the music nor the script can be made more important than the others. All the elements have to be organised and used to their fullest extent.

For me, a leaf is as important as an actor. This may be an object. It may be a tree. It may be the colour of the bark of a tree, or the face of an actor who is not necessarily ‘acting’. Everything is done to find this emotion. And everything exists to serve the emotion. From the very beginning, this emotion emerges from the naturalness of time, space and objects.

I use no artificial lighting because, if I decide to use a space, I want to reflect the current situation of the space, the current atmosphere, that is: the light, seen unaided by the eye to serve the emotion. For this reason, I avoid artificial lighting which destroys atmosphere. And that is also the reason why I use natural lighting. If the interior setting has a fluorescent bulb in it, I use that. If the exterior setting has a street lamp, I might boost up its voltage just a little but that’s about it: I will still be using original sources of light.

I still use 35mm, although I am not sure if I will be able to continue to do so. I wish I could, because shooting digitally requires a totally different mental process. In fact, it seems to me that, when you use digital, everything undergoes a radical change. The idea of looking for an area in which pure cinema can manifest itself, as it did with 35mm over the past century, has not yet surfaced in the era of digital film. Film made with digital technology will eventually evolve into something else. I don’t know what that will be. I don’t know whether it will be called film any more, but it will definitely evolve into something else. But we haven’t got to that point yet.

When I start working on a film, I go to the location I have chosen many times. I spend a lot of time there. I pick out all the sounds and make a lot of separate sound recordings prior to writing the script. And when I sit down to write the script, I try to recall all those sounds and hear those sounds ingrained in the script as well. I like placing limitations at the beginning of a project, such as with the Trilogy. I decided right from the beginning that I wouldn’t use any music: I would try to use the background noise or the actual location sounds and try to manipulate them into a sound world that would act as a kind of music. When I send my sound engineer out, I give him or her a list of sounds that I particularly want and that I want them to record. Also, in the post-production stage, probably sound is the part I spend the most time on. Sometimes it takes about three months for me to have a complete sound design. It is a very important part of my work.

For instance, when we were working on the sounds of a scene in Honey where the child is walking in the forest, the foley artist started to walk up and down in the laboratory for the sound recording. He was over two meters in height, and over a hundred kilos in weight. When I closed my eyes, I felt like it was a giant that was walking, not a child. There was no rhythm to his steps. And a boy doesn’t always make the same sounds when he is walking in a forest.

I said to the man “You’re going to walk on grass, dirt, sand, and then on stones.” I made him walk four times to record four different sounds, and mixed those channels to make one sound. The man said that my work would take a long time to finish. Of course it would take a long time to finish. Even if the audience isn’t aware of such details, it can certainly feel them.

Likewise, I can wait for snow to fall to shoot a certain scene, or I can sit for hours waiting for a cloudy atmosphere to form outside in order to shoot the scene the way I want it. People can say that it’s stupid because, with digital technology, you can add in anything you want afterwards. But not the emotion of the scene: that depends on its authenticity.

Since my objective is to create a meditative effect in my films, I don’t want to use anything that can spoil that effect. Even if I do use a digital camera one day, I won’t make colour adjustments that can spoil the sense of reality of the film, and I won’t add snow or rain effects. If the scene is rainy or snowy, I’ll shoot it in the rain or the snow. I like waiting for the rain. You may think this stupid, primitive – a waste of time. But for me it is the right thing to do.

- The Cinema Militans Lecture 2012 - Semih Kaplanoglu

Albert Cossery by Pedro Uhart

و جلسا على طرف الطريق و أغلق سراج عينيه ، فلا توجد أى سيارة تمر على الطريق ، و الصمت يسود المكان . لا يُسمع سوى خرير السواقى الذى لا يتوقف ؛ تسكب مياهها الموحلة عبر الحقول الممتدة فى الليل .
سأل سراج : هل تعتقدى أننا إبتعدنا كثيرا عن البيت ؟
قالت هدى : لا ، هل تريد العودة ؟
قال سراج : لا أعرف . أريد أولا أن أنام قليلا.
قال هدى : كما تريد !
و تثاءب سراج طويلا ، نظرت إليه هدى و راحت تتثاءب مثله ، ثم ضم كل منهما الآخر إليه ، و ناما متناسين العناء الذى يبذله الناس تحت تلك النجوم البطيئة الكسولة .

- كسالى فى الوادى الخصيب - ألبير قصيرى 

December 30 ,1991
Dear friend,
           The day after I wrote to you, I finished The Catcher in the Rye. I have read it three times since. I really didn't know what else to do. Sam and Patrick are finally coming home tonight, but I won't get to see them. Patrick is going to meet Brad somewhere, Sam is going to meet craig. I'll see them both tomorrow at the Big Boy and then at Bob's New year's Eve party.
           The exciting part is that I'm going to drive to the Big Boy by myself. My dad said I couldn't drive until the weather cleared up, and it finally did a little bit yesterday. I made a mix tape for the occasion. It is called "The First Time I Drove". Maybe I'm being too sentimental, but I like to think that when I'm old, I will be able to look at all these tapes and remember those drives.
            The first time I drove alone was to see my aunt Helen. It was the first time I ever went to see her without at least my mom. I made it special time. I bought flowers with my Christmas money. I even made her a mix tape and left it at the grave. I hope you do not think that makes me weird.
            I told my aunt Helen all about my life. About Sam and Patrick. About their friends. About my first New Year's Day. I told her about how my brother leaving and how my mom cried. I told her about the books I read. I told her about the song "Asleep". I told her when we all felt infinite. I told her about me getting my driver's license. How my mom drove us there. And how I drove us back. And how the policeman who ran the test didn't even look weird or have a funny name, which felt like a gyp to me.
           I remember when I was just about to say good-bye to my aunt Helen, I started crying. It was a real kind of crying, too. Not the panicky type, which I do it a lot. And I made aunt Helen a promise to only cry about important things because I would hate to think that crying as much as I do would make crying for Aunt Helen less than it is .
          Then, I said good-bye, and I drove home.
          I read the book again that night because I knew that if I didn't, I would probably start crying again. The panicky type, I mean. I read until I was completely exhausted and had to go to sleep. In the morning, I finished the book and the started immediately reading it again. Anything to not  feel like crying. Bacause I made a promise to Aunt Helen. And because I don't want to start thinking again. Not like I have his last weak. I can't think again. not ever again.
I don't know if you've ever felt like that. That you wanted to sleep for a thousand years. Or just not be aware that you do exist. Or something like that. I think wanting that is very morbid, but I want it when I get like this. that's why I'm trying not to think. I just want it all to stop spinning. if this gets any worse, I might have to go back to the doctor. It's getting that bad again.
                                                                                                    love always,
                                                                                                    Charlie


- The Perks of Being a Wallflower - Stephen Chbosky