Cinema as Portraiture in Dovzhenko's Zvenigora and the Ukraine Trilogy

Anthology Film Archives in New York City is a fabulous place to watch movies. I try to go to their ongoing "Essential Film" screenings — of movies that have been curated from their vault and deemed important to the history of cinema. Just the other day I went to see Alexander Dovzhenko's Ukraine Trilogy — well, at least two films from that set: Zvenigora and Arsenal.
The movies are haunting, disturbing, and beautiful. They're also hard to follow if Russian is not your native language — so I recommend you snag a copy of the synopsis before watching it. The opening scene of the trilogy, Zvenigora, is a hallucinatory, slow-motion shot of men on horseback moving across the screen. Perhaps today it is not a significant effect that a filmmaker would use slow-motion — it is easy enough to do on an iPhone! But seeing it on the silver screen — and in such a glorious presentation — I fell in love with cinema's basic ability to simulate motion. Movies simulate motion by projecting a series of individual images on the screen at a rapid rate. If you take a look at a movie reel you can see each individual frame. Each frame is essentially a photographic image. Now, of course, movies made today, for the most part, are filmed on digital cameras so looking at a movie reel is not possible — but the idea is similar. Thousands of images strung together in a line. Each one is slightly different from the next. Have you ever played with a flipbook — that is what it is like. Most movies are intended to make you forget that what you are seeing on the screen is a series of spliced together individual photographs. But Alexander Dovzhenko's movies, particularly his Ukraine Trilogy, made me aware of the cinema as a series of individual photos. Dovzhenko was a Soviet filmmaker. He made Zvenigora in 1928 — and on the surface, it tells a story about the relationship between Ukraine and Russia, and between technology and nature, superstition and belief, protest and allegiance, father and son. It's a propaganda film. But Dovzhenko was able to use those limitations to make something really incredible. I am not going to dwell too much on the narrative aspects of the film; rather, I want to focus on one aspect of the movie that struck me. The movie has a series of long shots that feature figures of people. Not exactly close-ups but more like photographs — but in a movie.

Creating the On-Screen Cinematic Portrait
Not all of the movies' shots are slow and extended — actually, the movie combines lots of different cinematic effects, close editing, shots looking up at a person from below, to give the effect of being dominated — images layered on another to create dream sequences and quite a few action shots.

Also, the movie plays with parallel images — a mother beating her son contrasted with scenes from war. And there are quite a few close-ups — in one sequence a man is gassed, reminiscent of the trench warfare that plagued the first World War (which is the movie's thematic launching point). For several takes, we see his garish expression, his horror, and his elongated response to the visceral horror of biological warfare. Dovzhenko’s faces reminded me of Carl Dreyer's faces of Joan in the movie The Passion of Joan of Arc — but not as intense a close-up. What I call portraits shots in the Ukraine Trilogy last about five to six seconds — so they are long enough to notice the figure in the frame. And in these shots the figures do not move much, but rather, they stand as if posing for a portrait. I don't think I have ever seen a movie capture portraiture in a moving image quite as Dovzhenko does in Zvenigora.

Nor has a movie made me stop and reflect on the photographic nature of cinema — especially in its early days. By definition, a portrait is a still image. Portraits were done by painters, often of important people, or commissioned by patrons — such as the portraits one can see in a place like The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Or if you were to look through a family's photo album. The characters in Dovshenko's movie are portraits of peasants. They are portraits of soldiers. Of villagers. Of the proletariat. Of a mother and child. Of father and son. I am not sure how Dvoshenko arranged for his casting; but, I would not be surprised if he just took people off the street and filmed them — the movie, despite its flights of fantastic fantasy - has an air of the documentary to it. As if I were perusing the photographs of an anthropologist's field study. The figures in the film are costumed in folk dress; often mustached or bearded, for the men, and dressed in traditional thick woven garments for the women. Some of the facial expressions are exaggerated — for effect. The horror of war. The anger and jeer of a crowd. A startled glance. A loving look. A man without a nose.  It's all there. But the more striking portraits are the ones of just looking on, of reflection. I imagine in the age of the GIF I could take any one of Dvoshenko's portraits, pluck it out of the film and make a five-second animated photograph. Or, I could pluck out some of the portraits (in the few I selected for this post one can hopefully see what I mean).

Aesthetic Thursday: Marta Minujín Reloaded at the New Museum

La Menesunda (on view at the New Museum) has several interactive features.

La Menesunda - So, Marta Minujín created an installation in the 60s in Buenos Aires - it’s been reloaded in New York at the New Museum. Of course, I shamelessly inserted myself into the television screen. The installation has several interactive features — one notable one being the recreation of a nail salon from the period — replete with a performance artist who will do your nails. I felt curious while within the experience — fully jiving with the work's conceit that I was living inside the mind of the artist.

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#newmuseum #modernart #artist #gallery #artreview #performanceart #newmuseum #installation #gelatin #lamenesunda #art #halcyongallery #gelitin #artmuseums #contemporaryart #photography #travel #museum #modern #design via Instagram.

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Aesthetic Thursday: Design Art from the Krewe of Proteus from the 1892 Mardi Gras in New Orleans

"A Dream of the Vegetable Kingdom" — Proteus Pageant of 1892
I have a wonderful postcard of a fairy man that my mother sent me. I'm guessing he is the king of Proteus. He holds a scepter with what appears to be a butterfly at the end. In fact, he's more butterfly than fairy — as can be seen by the gorgeous decal of a butterfly pinned to his chest, and the butterfly adorned on his crown and the sheer fact that he's wearing butterfly wings. His boots are also butterfly-decorated and he is wearing a cape and white leggings. He has a turn-of-the-century mustache that was popular for men at the turn-of-the-century and he seems ready for a magical evening.  

"Proteus, No. 1"

New Orleans Mardi Gras Krewes Are Part of the City's History
The image is of a costume watercolor design for select members of the Mystic Krewe of Proteus — a now-defunct Mardi Gras men's pleasure group. The watercolor has been preserved by the folks at Tulane University's Special Collections Library. The university has amassed a wide assortment of what they call their "Carnival Holdings". This costume, which is in the collection, was designed for the pageant that year — in 1892. Mardi Gras krewes are typically famous for their public parades that entertain citizens of the city with illustrious floats that traverse the city at night and garner people with "throws" — but lesser-known is the glamourous pageants that krewe-members organized every year. They were often masked balls for the upper crust of the city — I say past tense as if they do not occur anymore. In fact, one of the hottest tickets for any socialite in New Orleans is one of these balls or pageants. I have a fabulous picture of my mother and great grandmother at one of these balls. They are truly a feature of New Orleans history — and this winged fairy man, part of Proteus's theme for that year — "A Dream of the Vegetable Kingdom" is highly inspired. I'd wear it!
source: Carlotta Bonnecaze, "Proteus, No. 1," water-color costume design for Proteus pageant, 1892: "Dream of the Vegetable Kingdom" / Schindler, Henri. Mardi Gras Treasures: Costume Designs of the Golden Age. Gretna, La: Pelican Pub. Co, 2002. Print.

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Travel Diary: On a Recent Trip to Rouses Point, New York

Getting Off at Rouses Point, New York

     Taking the Adirondack train line from Montréal on Amtrak, the first stop in the United States is a town called Rouses Point in New York state. Since it is a border crossing, Amtrak has scheduled the train to stop for at least an hour, so agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.) can board the train to check every individual on board. For this journey, I happened to be seated in the front of the car. I looked out the window, and I could see two white vans pull up to the train station. Five or six uniformed agents dressed got out and boarded the train. I was the first person to be checked. I gave the agent, a middle-aged man with a scruffy beard, my passport. "Where are you going?" he asked. I told him I was getting off at Rouses Point, and this was my stop. "Why are you going to Rouses Point?" he asked incredulously. "For pleasure, mostly." "What kind of pleasure?" he asked, still incredulous. 

      I had expected a quick interview, the kind received at the airport customs desk when the agent asks if you are entering the country for work or pleasure. My answer did not mollify this agent, however. He asked me to point to my luggage, how long I was staying in Rouses Point, where I was staying, what I planned to do in the town, what I did for a job — and through it all, I was a bit nervous because I had never been asked so many questions at a border crossing. The questions were easy to answer. I gave him the address of my motel and told him I was taking a short vacation before school was to open up again in September. 

       I was anxious about finding my motel and getting settled in for the afternoon. I looked at the agent and told him if I could get off after he inspected me. He looked at me for a moment and then explained that agents had to check the entire train for any suspicious activity. "What if someone on board were carrying contraband," he told me. "Then everyone on the train would have to be checked to make sure there was no cross-involvement." It made me think that the necessary act of boarding the train made me somehow connected to all the passengers on board this train — just an hour or so ago, I had been in Montréal boarding this train, and it felt effortless. The train leaves the city, crosses the St. Lawrence River, and then it's farm and rural countryside. At Rouses Point, the landscape opens into the United States in a quite unceremonial way. 

        At that moment, I felt self-conscious because I thought everyone on the train was listening in on my conversation with the I.C.E. agent. He told me to go to the café car and ask his boss for clearance. If the head agent OK'd it, I could get off the train. I hurried through the Amtrak cars to the café car, which is usually occupied by travelers who want to eat a snack, look out at the scenery, or talk to the train crew who tend to sit in the cafe car to take notes and to prepare for the next stops on the route. Four agents were seated at the tables, looking serious, and doing their job. "Excuse me, sir. I have just been checked by an agent, and I would like to disembark here, at Rouses Point. 
       The conversation was simple — "Sure. The agent said. You can get off the train." I was so ecstatic. I rushed back to the agent who had interviewed me and said, "I can get off the train!" He looked at me like I had missed a step or did something wrong in the Byzantine procedure of being checked in at the border. "Are you sure you spoke to my supervisor?" Yes. I told the agent his supervisor's name and gathered my things. I was nervous, so in a moment of excitement, I exclaimed, "Have a nice day. Thank you for protecting our country!" I think I said it in such a heightened tone that it made everyone on the car chuckle. I got off that train in a hurry.

A View of Lake Champlain Through an Open Door

Visiting Rouses Point

       The town of Rouse Point is a nondescript postage-stamp kind of a place, replete with a singular lake-style beauty. Lake Champlain is its main attraction — and while I was there in Summer, it was August, so few people were milling about. The town is very close to the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec — so I imagined I was in a unique mashup of anglo-francophone heaven. Sitting in a café on the first day I arrived, I noticed a francophone couple seated next to me — and I marveled at how I often do not think of the United States as sharing a border with French-speaking folks. The Family Dollar, where I picked up some supplies, had a sign on the door that warned folks "No Canadian Dollars Accepted Here. Card Only. Or American Cash." I started to fantasize about teaching in a rural country schoolhouse in French-speaking Canada, close to the border, and I would spend my weekend hiking through the woods, going back and forth across the border. How my students would love me, and I would become immersed in French and truly make it my second language. Would I live on Lake Champlain? I felt like I was in a different yet familiar America.

A Ratty Motel On Lake Champlain 

    So. I was staying at this ratty dump of a motel on Lake Champlain. I woke up in the middle of the night. A red light was emanating from the window — thus, I took my phone and captured a grainy photograph of the dot.

     I stayed in Rouses Point for the weekend, then I planned to hop back on the train back to New York City. I thought, will I see the I.C.E. agent again? I walked to the station from the motel earlier than I needed to —  the Amtrak station is handsome. There is a museum inside dedicated to the area's train history — Rouses Point at one time in history was a bustling spot for train travel — especially freight — than it is now. It just so happened that as I was waiting for my train, a man arrived, spraying the station grounds with what looked like weed killer. He saw me waiting — I was the only person at the station. I asked him if the train museum was open. He said, "No. But if you give me a couple of minutes, I will open it for you." And sure enough, he did. He showed me the museum, and I learned that the station had been in somewhat disrepair for years. Still, when President Obama had opened up Federal dollars to bolster the country's transit infrastructure, the Rouses Point station was given money to renovate their station. The town had been in an economic slump ever since the Pfizer pharmaceutical plant had closed down, and 1,200 people lost their jobs. Also — the guy with the weed killer turned out to be not only a local but was at one time the mayor of Rouses Point. He told me about his several train trips to New York City — on routes that I had never heard of — and he ended the conversation with an announcement that he had to get back home and cook for his wife. "It's my turn today — I am making gyros."

Going Home — Waiting Again at the Train Station 

     

The train station at Rouses Point

     Finally — the train arrived — and the I.C.E. agents boarded the train. I had been joined at the platform by this very loquacious guy who was waiting for a friend whom he hadn't seen in a decade or more. No one could board or get off until they did their job. The I.C.E. agent did notice me, however, and he said to me, "You know why I asked you so many questions a couple of days ago?" No. I said. I did not know. "Well. I saw that you were staying at that ratty motel on Lake Champlain, and I wanted to tell you how much of a dump that place is." I laughed to be polite, but I resented his friendliness that seemed after-the-fact. He told me he lived in Rouses Point and apparently, his house was very close to the motel where I was staying.

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Coming Out Stories: Inspired By a Quotation From the Documentary Paris is Burning, I Write about Growing Up Gay in Louisiana

Paris is Burning © 1990 - a documentary about the gay ballroom scene in New York City.

N.B. This post is about growing up gay; and as such, it deals with content that some may find offensive. I know there is a lot of heat about the Tayler Swift Song "You Need to Calm Down" - but I will say to my possible haters: "You are somebody that I don't know / But you're taking shots at me like its Patron." And I don't even drink Patron!

     I am a slow learner. Growing up gay in South Louisiana in the early 1990s I had no idea there was a subculture just for me. I could have had a family. I could have been like the fem boys and the drag sisters and mothers of the street. I could have jumped on the Greyhound bus in Mandeville, Louisiana and landed as a street kid in New York City. However, as a twelve-year-old kid who had a semblance of his own gayness, I did not come out to my friends as gay until I was seventeen years old (which is an entirely different story) - and I was not out to any of my family members until way later in life (when I was in my 20s and 30s). I remember my mom asked me when I was about sixteen if I were gay and I flat-out said: "No, Mom." I did not have to think about it. I was not ready to go down that road. I think I had a deep sense of secrecy because I had internalized that my gayness was not something to share. It was a part of me but it was not something I wanted other people to know. And as the kids in Jennie Livingston's documentary Paris is Burning attest to - coming out as gay was not a safe option - even for the ballroom kids. In fact, it was the rejection of their gayness that led the ballroom kids to ascend on New York City's underground club scene in the first place where they ineluctably formed their own version of families (called "houses").

     I recently watched the documentary (which I am ashamed to say was my first viewing). I had only seen clips on Youtube and had listened to Ru Paul Charles preach about the film on her cable TV reality show Ru Paul's Drag Race  - which has gathered a lot of its aesthetic and jolt from the ballroom culture. Ru Paul rightfully references the show on her show - and I think she sees it as "a peering into" the world of drag culture that perhaps not many people are privy to. I could have used the truth of Paris is Burning growing up. I am sure my story is not unique. Growing up in the suburbs - which the filmmaker Xavier Dolan once said was "the place where dreams and ambitions go to die" - I wanted something more than "this provincial life." Thank you, Belle. Little did you know that as a gay kid Disney's animated bibliophilic French country girl was my hero. When you are gay - and you do not have a lot of representation in movies and on television - you go and find it; you make it; you see it in the subtext - which is probably why gay folk are really good at reading between the lines (and why some of us have made a name for ourselves in literary theory). Looking back on it I was crafty as a kid. I consumed gay identity - but I did it covertly and I was careful about learning how to be gay. I think I failed because when I went to my twenty-year high school reunion no one was surprised; I realize now that the superlative I received in the yearbook for "most friendly" was actually a substitute for "most gay." In the 90s there were emerging examples of gay representation but you had to look for it. I did buy a copy of XY magazine at the newsstand (I had to go in the back and look behind the Playgirls; but I found it - and I was internally satisfied by the magazine's outright celebration of gay male beauty. As a way of marking my gay desire, I did cut out my favorite pin-ups and pasted them in my notebook (that is a true story). I also hunted the shelves of the local public library for gay-themed books. I stumbled upon a copy of Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar and read its frank discussion of surreptitious male desire and came to understand that homosexual desire was not only universal (not just tacked on to my identity) but something that existed and has existed for a long time and in different civilizations and dispensations.

    I say I am a slow learner because I have accumulated gay culture in drips and drabs. In 1996 I discovered the musical Rent - and I listened to it with my friend Jonathan like a billion times - along with tracks from Tori Amos's album Under the Pink and Crash Test Dummies. As a teenager, I was a theater kid. Being involved in community and school theater helped me to form my first sense of belonging. It was the closest I got to the ballroom scene as a kid. Not to say I was out in the small theater world I participated in (nor were any of my friends). We were the kids who did not do sports, were not especially interested in academic accolades, and we just wanted a space to hang out, to be on stage, to work together and to put on plays. My closest friends were straight boys and girls; and very rarely did sexuality ever come up in conversation; I never had a gay friend or lover in high school, and, as an adult, I was surprised when someone I knew in high school had come out as gay as an adult. Austin, for example, was a shy kid in my Seventh Grade American history class; his father was the vice principal of the school; he made excellent grades and he was intelligent and well-spoken; however, I don't think we ever socialized. Ever. Why didn't we connect as kids? Being gay is not an immediate reason to become besties, apparently. I had heard on Facebook that he had come out in college and he was, according to a mutual friend, very gay.

Video Installation: Striking a Pose at the Great Falls in Paterson, New Jersey

Adam Driver plays a bus driver-cum-poet in the movie Paterson 

In this post, I document a recent visit to Paterson, New Jersey to see the Great Falls. 

On the way to our mutual friend's wedding, my friend and I stopped at the Great Falls in Paterson, New Jersey. It is an exciting site because in Paterson (back in the day) engineers (with the support of Alexander Hamilton) discovered a way to harness the sheer power and velocity of the falls by converting moving water into energy using a series of waterways and hydropower. The falls are the second-largest waterfall east of the Mississippi - by volume ( but for me: it is just really relaxing and beautiful). The town of Patterson has a lot of history and impressive architecture - and there is a third reason - Adam Driver - he plays a New Jersey Transit bus driver-turned-poet in the movie Paterson - where in one scene he makes a pit stop at the Falls to conjure up some inspiration. I don't claim to be an Adam Driver; however, I am certainly one to espouse the practice of making art from the everyday details of life.

Where do you go to sit and relax (and perhaps get inspired)? Do you have such a place? Or, do you have to find it?

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Dinner at Amherst College's Valentine Dining Hall Yields Dogtime - Plus Some Thoughts on the Fourth of July

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A Great Dane lies her weary, hungry head on the dining room table. #dogs #dinnertime #greatdane #dogface #dogportait #amherst

A post shared by Greig Roselli (@greigroselli) on Jul 4, 2019 at 8:17pm PDT

    For July, I will be a student at Amherst College, studying punishment with Professor Austin Sarat. I am here with fifteen or so educators. We live on campus during our time here as National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Scholars. I am living in a dorm on campus — called the Charles Drew House. The house was once the home of a guy named Seelye who was an Amherst Alum. Now it is a themed-house named in honor of the African American surgeon Charles Drew. Today is a National Holiday — the Fourth of July — so there are no classes, and the college is closed; however, the dining hall is open during the holiday, so those of us who have nowhere else to go can eat here! One of the teachers has a service dog — a Great Dane named Daisy. Tonight for dinner, before watching the Fourth of July fireworks at the University of Massachusetts campus, I chomp on edamame and chicken breast. Daisy joins us. So does Mike - a Catholic High School Theology teacher and Aklima - an English teacher in Flushing — and Matt — a Middle School teacher from Philadelphia. Anne - a social studies teacher from Florida — joins us too.
    I am excited to be in a new place. A new environment — even if it is just for a month. After dinner on campus — we pile into a public bus headed for the fireworks display. It is a slab gray bus and the bus driver, sporting a blue tee, flashes a smile, and welcomes us aboard. American fireworks are a display of patriotism - that is for sure — but it is also a day when people do not mind staking out a patch of green, laying out a blanket, and lounging in the dark with a bottle of beer and snacks. I lay on the grass, feeling tired from all of the excitement and take in the show. For such a small town - it feels like everyone is out tonight. The fireworks are colorful and loud — emanating sound and light from the center of the UMASS football field. It transpires in a flash. Lights. Shouts. Ohhhhhs. Ahhhhhs. And darn. The buses are not running to take us home to the Charles Drew dorm. We walk back, up to the hill, past picturesque houses and driveways, to the dorm. I say goodnight to Emily Dickinson. "I dwell in possibility," I say to my pillow. Goodnight.

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