learning to lie

Part 1

it's just a cold.
i'm not contagious.
no, it's only allergies.
i was much worse yesterday.
i'm sure it will be better tomorrow.

Part 2

“The cinema cannot show the truth, or reveal it, because the truth is not our there in the real world, waiting to be photographed. What the cinema can do it produce meanings, and meanings can only be plotted, not in relation to some abstract yardstick or criterion of truth, but in relation to other meanings.”

- Peter Wollen

Part 3

i plan to write on two films that share a common conceit: an earnest inquiry into the nature of time, memory, and being. they share little outwardly. one is an admixture of photo essay, travelogue, and plagiarized ethnography. the other is overly stylized, episodic, and intermittently profound.

what is the appropriate way to approach the unspeakable, and why does Japan serve as an imaginary site of reconciliation for both films?

the first is a problem of form, the latter a problem of content.


Part 4

i smelled a piece of frozen salmon today. the stench lingered in my nostrils for some minutes, until i chased it away with the bitterness of echinacea tincture. tears ensued and i dried them with a frozen piece of chocolate toast. my yin procured this treat from a local bakery and, although it is perfectly edible, it pales in comparison to the dreamy mountain breads of North Carolina.


Part 5

montage, from time to time, takes the place of sincere expression. and yet, no other form is so well-suited for the communication of ennui; one can almost taste:

the lurking listless restlessness,

the spaces in between.

Part 6

Both narrators demonstrate the liminality of being and self, pulled between the paradox of memory, on the one hand, and historic materiality on the other. In [film one], the narrator attempts to position himself firmly within the material by his use of documentary footage, political content, etc. The obsessive lyricism, however, continually pulls the viewer out of the "documented" and into the narrator's interior world, which is always distanced from the lived experience of the subjects documented.

In [film two], the narrator attempts to position himself firmly outside the material realm by use of romance and fantasy. This obsession, however, is interrupted by the episodic construction of the narrative, the intrusion of documentary footage, and by the passing, yet crucial, mention of political events that alter the course of the narrative. The viewer is thus expelled from the narrator's insular world and pulled back into the material. This threat of "the real" looms just beyond the film's periphery and periodically ruptures the diegesis, drawing attention to the insurmountable distance between memory and experience.


Part 7

i'm sure it will be better tomorrow.
i was much worse yesterday.
no, it's only allergies.
i'm not contagious.
it's just a cold.