More Film Thoughts

Yesterday BC and I watched two films that pretty much spanned what was possible in 1972: Tarkovsky’s Solaris and John Waters’ Pink Flamingos. Both made extreme appeals to the senses, but in completely opposite ways. When I was but a wee art student, one of my roommates was a film student. She had never made a film, or even shot any footage, and yet she considered herself a filmmaker. I was confounded by her identity, as mine was so steeped in a physical engagement with my medium. Today I feel a kind of connection with her, in that I’m starting to think and see from a filmmaker’s perspective, but I haven’t begun making my film yet. I also loved how all the film students dressed–they all smoked, and wore vintage clothes and had Louise Brooks or Errol Flynn haircuts, and had way more sex than the photographers. Or maybe they just talked about it more: “You’re not a lover till you blab about it,” Bob says at the opening ofJack the Modernist. Speaking of Bob, did you see that he made the cover, the ENTIRE cover, of the BAR’s art section this week? Anway, the approach I’m taking to my film will be somewhat similar to Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon, but gay, hairy, weird, very sensual, and funny. I want to put the fun back in “avant garde!” There will also be singing flowers, an animated sequence, and talking dust bunnies. But enough for now, I have to finish being a photographer… For the LAB show in Feburary, I’ve decided to make a kind of transitional piece, called RGB, like my current photo series, but consisting of one big triptych, B, and 2 videos, R, and, you guessed it, G. D of course will be my star, and there will be lots of gently blowing hair–your eyes must put them all together into one blinding white light of sensuosity! Stay tuned for more developments…