Letters to Jane: Project #3

Taking cues from Von Trier’s The Five Obstructions and also, mainly, Godard’s Letter to Jane, students authored video essays using only still images for their video track. As often happens when limitations are imposed, the results are surprising, funny, poignant, powerful. Here’s a sampling: Only an Honest Man // by Maxwell Kuehn * * * [...]

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On Superfluity

So many fascinating write-ups about Tom Wolfe and This American Life (the made-for-TV version) last week, that I felt compelled to post a few extracts. What many of you noted was how a finished literary text — already compressed and, I think most of us agree, already perfect in its God-given form — can be [...]

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Ce que je ne suis pas

Here’s a nice snippet from the Believer/Varda interview, in which she gives voice, I think, to the irritation some of you feel in the company of your Michael Moores and your Morgan Spurlocks. The resistance, perhaps, being a reaction to an artist who ventures out of his depth? Into contrivance? Into shtick? BLVR: You used [...]

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