Flaherty the 3rd night

Jill Godmillow rules.  They showed her "What Farocki Taught" projected on 16mm.  So beautiful to see it like that.  Jill really knows about simplicity.  She shows us what it is to be political.  Local, detailed, specific like a dead rat.  All hail resistance to the pornography of violence (that oh so indulged tendency here at the Flaherty this year).  Hers is a lesson in how to pay homage, how to participate in the conversation, how to keep the conversation going.  Hers is a lesson in how to be pedagogical while resisting the temptations toward polemicism and pedantism.

The Flaherty audience actually cheered when the opening title came up.

Also, I love the coda of the film, where she presents a tiny landscape film of landscape with chemical factory.

Then there was Johan Grimonprez's work in progress, which should be titled, as Jill so eloquently suggested, "Love," but is actually called something to do with shadows and a book. Many very good things were said tonight, some phrased as questions.  Such as, does there have to be a dialectical relationship between love and violence?  Can the women who speak for empathy get to speak more?  Can the talking heads somehow be tempered?  What is the role of self-consciousness?  Also, I really wondered, why do you think love is "cheesy?"  And if you do think it's cheesy, then why do you say you think love is the answer.  If so, do you actually not believe there is "an answer."  It feels like a film grappling with wanting desperately to believe in some sort of meaning, but rather just revels in the rambling insights of a sociopathic South African mercenary CIA arms dealer maniac.  Grimonprez's excuse is that the project is a commission.  Of course, all of the artists were particularly generous on the point that the work is a work in progress.  And so, as together a front as he presents, the film seems at loose ends with itself.  One of the most beautiful things about this work is the way that it wants to assert the lie of the myth of human evolution as innately a killing species and that war is somehow human.  Though of course, to be real, humans are the only animals that we know of who have war.  Except for ants... right?  But I digress.

The audience was incredibly kind and generous.  I, however, was seething inside, not able to access my inner charity.  Rather, I wanted to ask: Is this film part of the problem or part of the solution, and if you think of it as a solution, can you please explain to me how?  Michael Moore already covered a lot of that material about Prince Bandar and such.  I know I'm not supposed to talk about the film, cuz it's top secret and all, so, let me just say that, I really think Johan should take Jill's advice and study what Farocki taught.  Labor.  It's about labor.  And complicity.  And simplicity.  And keeping it real.