San Diego Surf Film Festival 2013, Post 3 (Sat. 5/11)

Saturday's events at the San Diego Surf Film Festival were of bucket list quality -- unmissable. In nearly every way categorizable, the music and images were a notch above what came the day before. So while Friday's events were great for the surfing world I would say, Saturday's events were for everyone.

Case in point, the film Isolated, directed by Justin LePera, is an important film: what starts out as -- and in some ways might retain even in spite of itself -- a journey by foreign surfers into the Heart of Darkness of New Guinea in order to "score perfect surf, dude" turns into a proper heroic journey of mythological proportions -- that moment when the heroes recognize that there is something bigger than themselves -- and all of the sudden the film is both an unmistakeably great surf film and a film about human rights abuses and serious ethical dilemmas caused by a complex mix of national concerns and global trade.

-- -- -- -- --

The morning on Saturday started with a beach clean-up and opportunity to ride some alaias and paipos at the Cardiff campgrounds. Good times with my son out in the sun on a beautiful day, even though the surf was small. I missed the 2-4pm set at the festival, but my son and I enjoyed all 7 hours of music and film through three sets, from 4-11pm. He loved the big wave surfing films, and the highlight of the night for him was the film about Greg Long entitled, "Sine Qua Non: The Psychology of Big Wave Surfing with Greg Long," directed by Richard Yelland (full length link here -- my son said it is his favorite film of all time), and to have Greg Long there to graciously take questions at length from the audience afterwards was really cool to experience.

I couldn't believe that the quality of films could move from great to great. From the inspiring surfing of Danielle Burt (see full short by Chris Grant below) to the mind-bending surfing of Jordy Smith in the hyper-modern mode of surfing today in "Bending Colours" by Kai Neville, all of the films on Saturday from 4-11pm were must-sees in their own right, and the jazz-infused music of Montalban Quintet was a solid soundtrack to the day. I'd recommend tracking down "Setting Sunsets," a short set in Peru featuring an impressive story and computer animation by filmmaker Gene Sung.

San Diego Surf Film Festival 2013, Post 2 (Fri. 5/10)

... I missed the opening night film and festivities on Thursday (5/9), but was at the Friday night events last night at Bird's Surf Shed, San Diego's one and only quonset hut surf shop lined with boards that wrap the walls and ceilings like its a 360 degree IMAX screen. I met my buddy J.R. there and soon after, ran into Greg Noll and was thankful to snap a photo with the surfing legend.

Set 1 included a short film by Andrew Quinn entitled "Stokefest," which is about riding paipos and anything else to keep a smile on the face. Next was a film "TheWaverider" by Karl Lear, about Fijian surfer Isei Tokovou -- it features an impressive cast of surfers and the greatest backdrop on the planet, namely Cloudbreak, but the story itself, which gets stuck in a couple eddies, contains little suspense even though it has a ton of potential -- its the film's potential that I think folks vibe off of the most -- and of course, the dreamlike setting and surf.

The best film of set 1, and the evening as a whole, was the short "Bootleg," by George Trimm and Joel Tudor, a kind of currently-made yet retro-vibe San Diego-west-coast-North-America longboard and alternative surf craft film produced in the same spirit as the brilliant Sundance Film Festival Winner: CATNIP: EGRESS TO OBLIVION?


Set 2 featured an inspiring short that promoted recycling old surf gear, and any form of garbage for that matter, so that it avoids the landfill, entitled, "The Beginning of Something Big" by Doug Walker, and then another brief short.

The evening culminated with the appearance of Peter Townend, briefly interviewed, which was really the highlight of the entire evening, before the screening of Sons of Beaches 72 -- an informative slice of essential early 1970s surf history, but a bit overlong. The story is great, but some of the interviews begin to feel like DVD extras material by the conclusion of the piece. Maybe I was just too tired.

 PT introducing Sons of Beaches 72 which takes place, in part, in San Diego

Looking forward to the events today (Saturday) ... heading down to the beach now.

San Diego Surf Film Festival 2013, Post 1 (Wed. 5/8)

While tonight (Thursday) is the opening night for the San Diego Surf Film Festival (schedule here), last night an event was held for the festival's filmmakers and folks who bought all festival passes -- aka the Nautilus pass!!! -- at the Surfindian in PB.

Artwork by Matt Beard -- especially his ink on bristols -- Gage Hingeley's photos on canvas stood out the most to me in the Surfindian gallery set-up with a screen (visible in the background of the image above) on which the evening's short film was screened. Happy to see a Tyler Warren piece in the gallery there too.

Next door, the local band The Saline Solutions was playing ... sounded good live, certainly a surf guitar texture to it -- you can hear it on "So Good Now"-- straight forward, never a boring musical interlude between lyrics -- also hear "All the Way," which has a late 1960s feel to it during the chorus, and there's a touch of the Chili Peppers, a touch, in "Sew my Shadow."

Duncan Campbell's short film "Bonzer: The Mothership" was the evening's main event. It was cool to get a chance to get a photo with Taylor Knox there -- he is featured in Campbell's short film -- and to get a picture with filmmaker Duncan Campbell of Campbell Brothers Surfboards whom I had read so much about previously in surf magazines.

A bit over 20 minutes in length, Campbell's "Bonzer: The Mothership" is a signature document that traces the history of the Bonzer, the iconic, singular surfboard design that has inspired innovation and clean surfing lines for over 40 years. As Duncan Campbell stated when he introduced the film: he and his crew started filming their story from day one, and the end result is an homage to capturing their first feeling of stoke -- the feeling that surfers try to re-experience each time they paddle out. Hoots rang out during the footage of 1970s barrels all the way to recent images of Rob Machado and Taylor Knox taking the Bonzer to new spaces.

San Diego Surf Film Festival, 2013

... looking forward to attending, tweeting, and blogging at the San Diego Surf Film Festival this week and weekend, May 8-12.

Film Analysis from Point Zero, Part 3

 Part 3 of 3...

... film analysis from position zero is not to imagine a space where there is no intervention on the part of the cultural theorist, the idea that one might remain entirely objective, the supposed/ illusory non-intervention of the ethnographer.
 
To start from position zero is to not-have-experienced-previously, while bringing one's past experience to to the film --

-- like a zero in a multiplication, an example taken from Zizek's Less Than Nothing, it is present and it changes the entire equation -- everything multiplied by zero becomes zero, creating something new in one's hands.

The new creation is the combination of the film observed and all of the valid associations that emerge at point zero -- at the rough draft stage, associations could include connections/ connotations /denotations that one does not intentionally desire to make, they just happen. Associations that come to mind could have links to personal experience or themes in the film one is watching -- the issue is that, as long as one can write about the way in which the associations are linked in a convincing way to other readers, the associations are valid and in a sense, beyond critique. Like the memorable reminder at the end of Ratatouille (Bird, 2007) --

"In many ways, the work of a critic is easy.
We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment.
We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read.
But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so."

With transnational analysis in mind, where there is still a lot of room for theoretical creativity and spontaneity, connections that might link films from across the globe -- without appealing to universals; in contrast once could locate precise networks of capital or particular representations of time -- could appear suddenly logical even though in other circumstances one would think such connections should not/could not be positioned together within a single analysis.

A model for this type of inquiry, as I see it, can be found in an article by Emily Davis entitled “The Intimacies of Globalization: Bodies and Borders On-Screen.” In this essay, Davis analyzes a diverse set of visual filmic narratives in order to explain the relationship between representations of migration, sexual identity, and commodification in narrative film. For example, she asserts that Dirty Pretty Things (Frears, 2002), Maria Full of Grace (Marston, 2004), and the “Badlaa” episode from the X-Files TV show depict how globalization has commodified the body. Davis proves her point when she examines the inhumanity of the organ trade in Dirty Pretty Things and the power of xenophobia to propel a narrative of alien infiltration in “Badlaa.”

Such an analysis might include the particular and the universal at the same time. 

To say "no!" to such creative connections in film analysis would be equivalent to denying Sergei Eisenstein his dialectical montage.

The end result is useful, a load-bearing wall, a well-engineered bridge.

Film Analysis from Point Zero, Part 2

Jack Kerouac said that each paragraph is a poem, so maybe these entries are just attempts at poetry after all -- didn't Richard Hugo once say: poetry may not be factual, but it does convey truth.

So maybe everything in my initial post on Point Zero is not factual -- the no-forest in Dante's Inferno exists (its not zero/nothing [0]), the no-geographical location exists, the metaphorical space exists... for these abstractions, generalizations about an idea or entity exist...  or perhaps they exist as nothing (which is still something, not less than nothing).

Point Zero:

-- is poetry, because it stems from a desire to use both emotion and the intellect to their fullest potential simultaneously, shattering mundane conscious experience, leading us to consider that we never really understand reality; rather, we simplify reality to make it manageable or comprehensible:

                                   "For the way of comets

                                    is the poet's way. And the blown-apart

                                    links of causality are her links.

                                    ... she is the one that mixes up the cards

                                    and confuses arithmetic and weight,

                                    ... the one who altogether refutes Kant,

                                    the one in the stone graves of the Bastille                                  
                                    who remains like a tree in its loveliness."

                                                       --  Marina Tsvetaeva, from "The Poet"

-- is a place, like a point break. It requires preparation to get there so that one can let go.

-- can be understood in some sense as the Taoist Way, it is empty and desires nothing.

In a practical sense, there remains a fruitful possibility for the one starting from Point Zero in terms of transnational film analysis, for in a comparative framework, the idea of film analysis from Point Zero allows one, or can lead one, to compare films that come to mind without a pre-established hierarchy of expectations, high/low, north/south/east/west/, male/female. I guess I'll never be able to, or refuse to entirely start at Point Zero because I can't abandon the historical-material conditions of our age.

Yet the ideal end result would be to allow a spontaneous set of associations to emerge (ex nihilo) without necessarily looking for them -- a set of associations that are each connected to historical-material, historical-particular spaces (locations, experiences, cultures) of origin -- that flow consciously and unconsciously to the observer due to/stemming from the content of the film.

Film Analysis from Point Zero, Part 1

(first a preface, which ended up being longer than the entry itself...)

This entry, the first of three, is a reflection on an ideal starting point when analyzing film, literature, culture, etc. These entries in a sense present nothing new -- one of my favorite lit. professors as an undergrad proposed, as I remember it at least, that it doesn't necessarily matter whether or not one likes a work of fiction, what matters is that one uses a fictional text to respond to the questions that the text itself asks -- rather than, conversely, imposing one's ideology onto the text. (An ideological imposition onto/response to a text could look like this: "I don't like film x because it does not conform to my preconceived/learned/inherited understanding of reality.")

What I am basically attempting is to respond to texts on their own terms. In addition, I've been thinking about Charles Seife's Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea and Slavoj Žižek’s ideas in Less Than Nothing.

So, these entries on Point Zero are probably works of fiction more than anything -- for, just as others have concluded, Terry Eagleton has nicely negated the possibility of a non-ideological reading of a text in Literary Theory. Starting an analysis from Point Zero is impossible. I guess that's what I like about it.

My desire is to meditate on this fraction of a second, or series of fractions of seconds, that occur at the initiation of a writing about/response to cinema. I'm interested in these two questions: Isn't a response to cinema a work of creativity, just as the film itself is a work of creativity? And from what starting point does one's response emerge?

-- -- -- -- -- --

My (hope is that my) film analyses start at position zero: emptiness, nothing, absence, invisibility, no-expectation.

Film analysis from point zero emerges from a place of no-substance, no-place, from a darkened theater or living room -- like the forest in Canto I of Dante's Inferno which is no-forest, no-geographical location, a metaphysical space -- when the electric shadows and sound waves begin, each cinematic artifact registers an affect, emotional, or intellectual response that connects one attuned (the viewer at status zero) to a visual environment ...

... the visual environment of the film is a series of ones (1's) and zeros (0's)... as in The Matrix, a reality comprised of zeros and ones. Each number greater than one a combination of ones rather than individual numbers in their own right ... all we are/have is ones and zeroes ...

From position zero, creation begins, both in terms of the production (out of nothing) of a film, and in terms of film analysis (out of nothing) -- the end result is a new entity, a new series of ones out of zero. Ex nihilo.