Last night I went to the outdoor cinema again, this time to watch Compostelle. It’s a hiking trip movie. It’s a film that is centered of walking from point A to Point B, over a period of months.
The three main characters are Fred, the adult ‘éducatrice’, Adam, the problem child, and Estella, the girl/woman walking the Camino for the second time, after aborting her first effort. she does so with a leg missing.
Yesterday I went to Gland for a mid-afternoon run before watching Disclosure Day at an outdoor cinema. The run route took me along the Toblerones up to Vich, and then I turned East and ran along a road I often cycle along, before then heading back down, over the motorway, and then over the railway line, back to Gland, and then back to the field where the film screening was taking place.
Two or three weeks ago a friend asked whether I wannted to go to the outdoor cinema so I thought “maybe” and last night I did. We went to see La Venue de L’Avenir by Cédric Klapisch.
Years ago I wrote an essay about Klapisch within the context of the Cinéma de L’Auteur. Author theory Cinéma. The concept is simple. Some directors are so individual in their art form that it stands out. The best known of these films is L’Auberge éspagnole which then had two more films made.
Two nights ago I saw that Netflix was recommending that I watch The Platform 2, so I watched The Platform instead. The Platform is a Spanish film that takes place in a pit/prison. Within this prison every cell is stacked vertically and those on the first floor get first dibs on food. Those at the bottom fall victim to the greed of those on the top level. If you have not watched the film yet, stop reading now as I will include spoilers
I like to experiment with Bard and chatGPT. I like to see what their limits are, but with time and effort I like to get beyond their limits and get them to do what I want, without failing too often.
DJI and other brands have had self-editing options for years now, so the idea that software would edit the footage taken by the brand’s devices is not new. What is new is the desire people have to let AI replace their own creativity, and inspiration, to give the AI’s creative vision rather than their own.
Two days ago I watched Nanook of the North, a documentary about an Inuit man and his family. This isn’t a documentary in the conventional sense. This documentary dates back to 1922 when the Documentary film was a brand new genre. This is one of the first documentaries, if not the first. I read about it for years, until, when I was watching Northern Exposure I did a search and came across the documentary on Filmin.
Recently Netflix added a Browse by Language option which means that you can browse for content by original language. Yesterday I saw that I can browse for content in French, Italian, Polish,, Korean, German and many more languages. I could list more but that’s dull. Instead I want to focus on the opportunities it opens up.
With YouTube, Apple Films and other platforms you can search for films but they are either in French, German or Italian in Switzerland and it’s hard to find content that is in its original language.
Today I went on a video walk with the DJI OSMO pocket three or whichever number it has and I took a series of frames. Before going for my daily walk I searched through the Vision Du Réel virtual Film Festival list of films and I found “The Bridge”. It’s available for all to watch during the festival. I didn’t watch it in full but from what I saw it’s a series of shots in the style of Dziga Vertov’s Man With the Movie Camera.
Last night I went to see Interdependence, an environmental film in eleven parts. It is a collection of short films that explore environmental themes around the topics of air, water, and earth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSKBBztInug
When I watched one part it reminded me of Les Vacances de Mr Hulot, a french film from 1953. It looks at a dystopian vision of the future where people go to the zoo to see animals on screens and inflatable balloons serve as sea mammals. At one point everyone puts on a gas mask because of the pollution.
Yesterday I went to see Arrest - screened at the Black Movie film festival. It’s an independent film festival taking place in Geneva at the moment. I’m a volunteer at the event and in exchange for standing at the door and checking tickets, I get to see any film that still has space.
The provisional title of this film was 1983 and because I walked in a few minutes into the film I missed the beginning. The entire film takes place in a prison cell and looks at how two characters were interrogated. It looks at the dynamic between both characters.