Recent Excellent Discoveries

A devastating portrait of precise and calculated class revolt. Both master and servant get thoroughly maligned in Losey's brilliant psychological thriller, The Servant.

Brightness (Yeelen), Dir: Souleymane Cisse, 1987
Mishima: A Life in Four Parts, Dir: Paul Schrader, 1985
Elevator To The Gallows, Dir: Louis Malle, 1958
The Cow, Dir: Dariush Mehrjui, 1969
Last Year At Marienbad, Dir: Alain Resnais, 1961
Hedgehog In The Fog, Dir: Yuriy Norshteyn, 1975
My Dog Tulip, Dir: Paul & Sandra Fierlinger, 2009
Fisco Jenny, Dir: William A. Wellman, 1932
Baby Face, Dir: Alfred E.Green, 1933
Dinner At Eight, Dir: George Cukor, 1933
The Servant, Dir: Joseph Losey, 1963
Slingshot Hip Hop, Dir: Jackie Salloum, 2008
O'er The Land, Dir: Deborah Stratman, 2009
H2OhOh, Per Se, Dir: Deirdre Logue, 2000/2005
Godzilla (Gojira), Dir: Ishiro Honda, 1954
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dir: Tobe Hooper, 1974
Nosferatu the Vampyre, Dir: Werner Herzog, 1979
The Wages of Fear, Dir: Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953

My Dinner With Andre, Dir: Louis Malle, 1981

"I mean... what does that mean?"

I'm having a hard time writing. I feel consumed by thoughts and feelings that have been renewed by a class I'm taking. It's my last credit course and I'm glad that I got in on it when it was offered. Our first class started in a hallway. Since then I've been led blind by a stranger, listened to my own breath, and physically felt a room's energy shift while sitting in silence. And somehow it has everything to do with filmmaking.


But more, I am fascinated by what our instructor shares with us each class. Listening to him, I am taken to a deeply contemplative place by his very carefully considered and personal testimony. He is encouraging us to be aware. And what does that mean? What does it mean to enter a room? How do you approach a room, a frame, your own work? Are we present in this moment?


Today I made my grocery list and upon review had written "Sandwich Breach" instead of "Sandwich Bread". And there, in that moment, I felt very present. Yes, I thought, there has been a breach. It happened along time ago, but soggy splinters and fragments burst out every once in a while. I immediately became aware of the slumping weight of my body sitting the chair, the angle of my face, the hard edge of the desk creasing my arms. I saw for the first time how my handwriting has changed over the years. It is smaller. Breach. The h had a small flourish now. Hmm. The Breach had let in stories so old and ancient to me that I thought I had left them to crumble and blow away in some distant wind.


And then I immediately wanted to share all of this and have a great and bountiful conversation about life and time and - what the hell does it actually mean to be present? I wanted to be sitting with Shawn Wallace and Andre Gregory and rant and pontificate and espouse nonsense and weirdness about life, love, loneliness, altruistic acts, cheating partners, open hearts, flawed personal experiences, and all things existential for better or worse.


Please, someone, make it 1981 again.