Universal Language & the Avant-Garde: Viking Eggeling, Hans Richter, and Jonas Mekas

MAYA STENDHAL GALLERY 545 West 20th Street May 10–July 28

Lori Cole, Artforum

Hans Richter boiled his film projects down to light, material, and intensity in an attempt to create a “universal language” based on visual perception. In Rhythmus 21, 1921, he plays with the abstract movement of a pulsating, shifting black square. Richter’s artistic collaborator Viking Eggeling responded to this language in kind, evoking musical composition in the changing lines of his Symphony Diagonal, 1925. In this exhibition, the genesis of the two artists’ filmic ideas becomes apparent through a haphazard arrangement of quick sketches that reduce forms to the simplest geometry. The show also documents Richter’s social reach as a filmmaker, with photos of his Dadaist companions, news clippings about his various achievements, and announcement cards from exhibitions. Even transcripts of Richter’s lectures are on view, delivered when he was the director of the film department at the City College of New York, where Jonas Mekas was a student. Despite the abrupt juxtaposition of Richter and Eggeling’s monochromatic drawings with Mekas’s lush, piercing, often blue-hued Film Stills and Installation Quartet: Birth of a Nation, 1997, there is a formal affinity between the rhythmic quality of Richter’s experiments and Mekas’s project—evidenced by a flickering montage of 160 portraits shot between 1955 and 1996 of avant-garde greats such as Stan Brakhage, Chantal Akerman, Hollis Frampton, and even Richter himself.

Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox (Trailer)

Here's a link to the trailer. It looks intriguing:

http://magicsoapbox.com/doc/?page_id=12

June, I Hardly Knew You

Not too much to report this past week, as I was away visiting my father in Florida. The trip itself was nice and relaxing. We just kind of took it easy and relaxed, as it's currently the rainy season down there and there were literally monsoon-like downpours nearly every day I was there. In addition to my Dad, I got to see my uncle and his family. That was a lot of fun, as I hadn't seen them in about three years or so. We went out to eat a couple of times, and had a delicious meal at Morton's in Boca Raton. I can't recall the last time I ate so much. I had a shrimp cocktail, an iceberg wedge with Bleu Cheese dressing, filet mignon, hashed browns, creamed spinach, a piece of molten chocolate cake, an iced tea and a coffee. I feel full again just thinking about it. Interestingly, while down there Marie-Line sent me an invitation to join A Small World. Which I did. It's pretty fun, and there seems to be some interesting people on there. Very jet set. I only have three members in my network (including an old friend from Bard College whom I haven't seen since I was a student there), so if you're a member also and you want to connect hit me up. Oh, and don't email me asking me to invite you. Apparently, I haven't earned that privilege yet.

Moviewise, the only things going on are twofold: firstly, I've started writing again. Still working on the screenplay for what will hopefully be my second feature. Or, rather, what will be my second feature. Roland emailed me to ask what it was about, so I sent him the 3/4 page synopsis. He seems really enthusiastic about it. I told him that I'd email the completed script to him when it's... well... completed.

Also, I've started an official film blog. It's the same thing as what's being posted here, although it's also now being officially hosted on Blogger. I'll probably post there a little more frequently than here, as the software I use to update this site is antiquated (to say the least) and Blogger is pretty fricking easy to use. I'd like to figure out a way to seamlessly integrate To Here Knows When (as I've decided to title the blog, after a song on My Bloody Valentine's Loveless album; I was listening to it when I created the blog), and hopefully an idea will come to me. Anyway, if you have a blog and you'd like to trade links, feel free to hit me up. I'll also link to friends' sites and anything else of interest that strikes my fancy.

Lastly, July's approaching and I'm pretty excited about it. The month promises to be a little Bard reunion of sorts. I'll be spending the 4th itself at a barbecue at [redacted, because she's now a lawyer and doesn't want her name listed anywhere on the Internet]'s, which should be fun. There will be some other college friends there, too. And Tracy Paulding called me earlier today. She's coming into town during the beginning of the month, and so there'll probably be a little dinner with her, Carmel Holt, Abby Fleischer and Paul Winkler. And Chris Koning also arrives at some point in July (not sure when, exactly). Very much looking forward to seeing everybody and catching up. Non-Bard NYC friends, I'm getting tired of looking at your same old faces (kidding, kidding). Seriously, though, July promises to be a fun month. Maybe I'll even get down to the beach at some point. It doesn't have to be anything fancy, but I would like to see the ocean (not counting Florida) at least once during the summer months. If I have to, I'll hop in a Zipcar and go down there by myself. Anyway, happy happy summer so far to you.

Audio Mixing is Almost Done

Bill and I met to do some audio mixing on Monday. It felt really great to do some work again. We watched the entire movie through, taking down notes and making changes as we went along. The two scenes that have the ADR-ed dialogue came out super well. Bill did a fantastic job of slipping all of the lines. There was one that I noticed was a frame off (one of Melody's lines), and we fixed it. Between the clean audio of Andy's and Melody's lines and the background audio, Scene 3 looks and sounds really fantastic. I'm super jazzed about it (and the rest of the movie, of course). We're going to meet again soon, and Bill thinks that'll be our last session. Then it's on to color correction. I'm excited to wrap this up and move on to the next and last stage of things. It's hard to believe that audio mixing is practically done. We've been at it since February.

Almost all of the festival applications I was preparing are done and mailed. I'll finish today. Remaining are Woodstock and Telluride. Then, it's back to working on my new screenplay. I'm really, really eager to write again.

The trailer for the Raindance Film Festival is out. I like it. I can relate to it. I also hope that they accept Matutinal Reverie for their 2007 festival (keep your fingers crossed for us and wish us luck!!!!).

Below is the notice for Marie-Line's upcoming concert at the Cutting Room (24th Street between 6th Avenue and Broadway). I'm going to try to attend, but as it's so far in the future (nearly two weeks away) I can't guarantee that I'll be there. Hopefully, though. The last one was fun.

15th Raindance Film Festival Trailer

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