Portrait Of A Lady On Fire (2019) Dir. Cline Sciamma / Ways Of Seeing By John Berger / Jill Soloway On

portrait of a lady on fire (2019) dir. céline sciamma / ways of seeing by john berger / jill soloway on the female gaze, TIFF: MASTER CLASS, 2016 / agnès varda in filming desire (2000) dir. marie mandy / colette (2018) dir. wash westmoreland

* jeanette winterson, oranges are not the only fruit

“I told Miyazaki I love the “gratuitous motion” in his films; instead of every movement being dictated by the story, sometimes people will just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look in a running stream, or do something extra, not to advance the story but only to give the sense of time and place and who they are. “We have a word for that in Japanese,” he said. “It’s called ma. Emptiness. It’s there intentionally.” Is that like the “pillow words” that separate phrases in Japanese poetry? “I don’t think it’s like the pillow word.” He clapped his hands three or four times. “The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it’s just busyness, But if you take a moment, then the tension building in the film can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time you just get numb.””

—

Rogert Ebert, on Hayao Miyazaki

(Also applicable for improv.)

little women dir. greta gerwig / please don't say you love me, gabrielle aplin / seaside improvisation, richard siken / fleabag / first love / late spring, mitski / when you're around, pity sex

The dead are for morticians & butchers to touch. Only a gloved hand. Even my son will leave a grounded wren or bat alone like a hot stove. When he spots a monarch in the driveway he stares. It’s dead, I say, you can touch it. The opposite rule: butterflies are too fragile to hold alive, just the brush of skin could rip a wing. He skims the orange & black whorls with only two fingers, the way he learned to feel the backs of starfish & horseshoe crabs at the zoo, the way he thinks we touch all strangers. I was sad to be born, he tells me,because it means I will die. I once loved someone I never touched.

Robin Beth Schaer, “Holdfast,” via poets.org (via bostonpoetryslam)

cold war (2018) dir. paweł pawlikowski / the lighthouse (2019) dir. robert eggers