Thanks, Doug. I couldn't write quickly enough to catch some of the most
intriguing formulations. Also I didn't have the light from the screen to
help me see where and what I was writing because I wasn't seated in the
center of the first row as usual. A radical change of pace when Imamura as
actor playing the director took over the film presented difficulties as
well. Barry
On Wed, 21 Nov 2007 11:39:33 -0700, Douglas Barbour
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>catching the thoughts before they vanish too, Barry; i like that aspect
>here....
>
>Doug
>On 21-Nov-07, at 4:31 AM, Barry Alpert wrote:
A MAN VANISHES
via Shohei Imamura
I think that people sometimes theatrically
produce themselves.
You are movie makers.
This is maybe not the best place to stop.
Director, what’s the truth?
I don’t know.
For example, this is a stage set.
Take the set down!
Mind in the moving . . .
It just means the camera films.
Barry Alpert / Silver Spring, MD US / 11-21-07 (6:28 AM)
Written during my first viewing of this 1967 work, which Donald Richie (the
pioneering Western champion of Japanese film) terms “in many ways Imamura’s
most brilliant film”. Though I started out trying to write an acrostic and
an intuitive text simultaneously, only when the director began to play
himself in the film did I begin to become excited. That’s when the above
lines were written. Though the mixing of fact & fiction within a presumed
documentary idiom would later become widespread (consider the work coming
from Abbas Kiarostami & the House of Makhmalbaf), “A Man Vanishes” can be
regarded as early innovative activity in this range. The first six minutes
of the film are available for your viewing pleasure on YouTube right now,
amongst the first ten results of a google search on “Shohei Imamura, A Man
Vanishes”.
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