IT’S BEEN A LOVELY DAY
[via Jos de Putter]
They all think it’s a sport. [They can do it.]
‘
Say such a thing (“connoisseur”) about oneself?
Big difference—
everything is done with machines now.
Ears,
now they’re not hanging out.
Always go on.
Liked the work.
Otherwise would never have kept it up.
Barry Alpert / Silver Spring, MD US / 9-14-05 (11:58 PM)
Written during my first viewing of the first film by the Dutch documentary
filmmaker Jos de Putter. Though the advance program notes had led me to
believe there might be a possibility (”The film poetically depicts a year
in the farm’s life cycle . . .”), I was also worried that I might have seen
this film previously without being prompted to write. Turns out that that
was a French documentary with a very similar subject matter. Since
the “end of an era” theme was more compelling for me than the particulars
of farm life, I believe I must have interfered with the chance composition
and the revision process to achieve a final version in which the presence
of farming may initially be virtually invisible. When the film concludes,
we understand that the filmmaker’s parents will retire without an heir to
run the farm which their family has operated for more than a hundred years.
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