Reality Frictions (2024), Bontoc Eulogy (1995) | Q&A with Steve F. Anderson

Hi everyone. Welcome to the Billy Wilder Theater, home of the UCLA Film and Television Archives public programs. I'm Nicole Loto, the programming coordinator for the archive. I am thrilled to introduce tonight's program, which is the Los Angeles premiere of Reality Frictions, followed by Bont Talk Eulogy. This free screening along with all of our year-round public programming is made possible by the generosity of an anonymous donor and we are grateful for their support. Special thanks to tonight's community partner Leyong Network SoCal, a local to global network working to amplify the calls to action of grassroots communities in the Philippines. You can learn more about them at their website leyongetwork.org. And a big thank you as well to tonight's theater team, including theater manager Lauren Brown, projectionist Alex Blevens, and the entire student team. So, let's give them a round of applause. Uh, real quick, if you haven't gotten program notes, Adam is giving them out right now. So, if you want to raise your hand, he can bring them to you. It Yes, covered everyone. Well, we'll have them out also in the lobby. Um, it's always really great to work with faculty uh and staff at the US School of Theater, Film, and Television. And today, I am especially excited that we get to host the premiere of Prof, Professor Steve Anderson's Reality Frictions. Several years ago, when I was a student at UCLA, Steve introduced the video essay format to me along with films like Tom Anderson's Los Angeles Place Itself. So, and which the film you're about to see references, so it really feels like a full circle moment. Reality Friction source footage from over 100 films, mostly from Hollywood studios, reflecting on the desire to depict or fabricate truth on screen. One of the films referenced in reality frictions is Marlon Fuentes documentary Bontto Eulogy. A film that investigates the events that occurred in the life of the filmmaker's grandfather, Marcott, who along with many eager people was displayed in the St. Louis World Fair in 1904. When we began conversations about putting together the screening, many of the Hollywood films portrayed in Steve's um essay film didn't feel like exactly the right fit for tonight. And then Adam suggested Vontuly, a film that Los Angeles Film Forum had previously screened, and the program just clicked together. Marlin was excited to have his film shown in this program. In his later career, he had uh switched to practicing more photography, but this was a film that was very important in his life. And sadly, Marlin passed away uh suddenly during the process of putting together this program. We're honored to get to show his film tonight and pay tribute to his life and artistic career. And also want to uh thank his family who was really excited to have this be shown tonight and helped to source the film. Before we get into the films, um like to introduce Adam Heyman, the executive director and head programmer for Los Angeles Film Forum to say a few words and then Steve will come on stage afterwards. Hi all, greetings. Um, I'm Adam Heyman, the film forum. Uh, for those of you who are new to Film Forum, uh, we're the city's longest running organization that screens experimental and avantgard film, video art, documentaries, animation, but all artist driven, non-commercial, handcrafted work. And we're in our 50th year. And so we're having a series for which uh this is the third one of events for our 50th um mixes of works we've shown before of works by people who have been affiliated with film forum classic works from Los Angeles uh and more. And we're having another one this Sunday. Uh Naomi Uman is a wonderful filmmaker and the LA premiere of her feature film Three Sparks which was filmed in Albania. Naomi is now based in Mexico City, but when I started volunteering at Film Forum in 1996, Naomi was one of the projectionists. Um, and we'll also be showing with uh Three Sparks her short film Removed, which is just a fabulous short experimental film that played a lot around, you know, 2000 or so. And uh if you haven't had a chance to see that, please come and she'll be in person. Uh, I brought this image for you because the first public show that I have found record of for film forum which started in Pasadena was zero to conduit by Jean VGO and it was on December 12th, 1975. So it's exactly 50 years ago today um that we uh we showed you that classic. Um, and so I really wanted to thank uh Steve, who also was once upon a time a film forum board member, but for continuing the tradition of great essay film making and for uh sending this our way and uh allowing us to be able to uh present it to you. and Bont Talk Eulogy. As uh Nicole just said, we screened it in 2007 with uh Marlon Fuentes in person in conjunction with a few shows we did with this book, which you will not be able to see at this distance, but it is called F is for Phony Fake documentary and truths undoing, edited by Alex Uassos and Jesse Lerner. And we did a few shows related to that. If you can find it, which is not easy, there's a chapter in it by Fuentes called Extracts from an imaginary interview, questions and answers about Bontto eulogy, which is a a more detailed uh set of questions and answers he posed to himself as in essay or interview form. Uh so I don't know if it's the best to be read aloud but that said I'm gonna read a short bit just so you know what uh he was also thinking and the f because the first question is what was the impetus in making this film. My work in photography was being generated by an increasingly narrative subtext ideas about duration and the use of history and ritual and their artifacts. I was also fascinated by how certain bodies of knowledge and their representational strategies were codified into structures and surfaces that had their own intrinsic veillances and ways of reception. For example, anthropology and specifically ethnographic film had historically contained epis epistemological assumptions about the other. These are deeply embedded in a historical tradition that could be traced to the early 18th century. On a personal level, I wanted to locate myself within the historical narratives that defined the Filipino in America. Art for me has always been an orienting device, and I thought that film was a good medium that could capture the process of passage through the membranes we navigate. It is only in retrospect that a lot of the events that happened to us make sense. In this context, narrativizing discrete yet incomplete fragments of our memories becomes a vital way of knowing where we fit in the grander scheme of things. Growing older necessitates looking back, if only to reassure oneself that the increasing velocity by which we experience the passage of time has some meaning. Film has the power to impose a sense of order, purpose, and interconnectedness onto this vortex of events. Uh there will be obvious linkages between what Bontaku works at second and what Steve calls to our attention in reality frictions. uh and it's wonderful presentation with how constructed documentary and constructed fiction speak to each other and how they speak to each other for the audience and the audience's needs and u truth statements let's say the finding of what things ring true and much more than that but uh with that please join me in welcoming Steve Anderson who is also as oh you know I I'm doing the oneliner the UCLA professor of film television and digital media and is also the associate dean of academic affairs in the school of arts and architecture here at UCLA. Please join me in welcoming Steve Anderson. >> So thanks and uh thanks to all of you for being here. Uh thanks especially to Nicole, Adam and Diego, who's going to be our interviewer after the film is over um for this invitation. It's really for me an incredible honor to be part of the film forum's 50th anniversary. Um, and I want just want to say a few things about how important this uh organization has been to me. It's true. I was a board member for four ten years about 10 years ago. But my history with film forum actually goes back to 1984 when I saw my first film form screening of Hollis Frampton's Zorn's Lema at the Wall and Boyd space which was downtown. More importantly, in 1992, the first film I ever made, which was my thesis film at Cal Arts, screened had its premiere at Film Forum downtown on Industrial Street in 1992. I was included on a program with Stan Brackage and Sue Friedrich and it was reviewed by Kevin Thomas in the LA Times and I couldn't believe any of it. Uh I just I remember thinking this is what I want to do forever. Uh later in the 90s, the film forum series Scratching the Belly of the Beast was also the first place I ever saw the person I would later marry. I didn't meet her then because I was too shy. Um but I first saw Holly Willis who was a film forum board member for many years uh and also one of the curator of that program and now she's the producer of this film. Uh I also want to acknowledge Eric Marin who's sitting right there in the middle. You see that's where you sit if you're a sound mixer. Eric is responsible for the 5.1 mix that you're going to hear tonight. And if you're sitting on the edges, you should move over there in the middle. Um anyway, uh experimental film making for me probably like most people turned out to be less of a vocation and more of a passion. Uh and I just want to express my sincere thanks to Adam and a handful of other passionate individuals um who have kept this organization running for so long with so little thanks, no pay at all. Um, and it really has been something that's been an extraordinary presence in the in the history of this city. Um, and lastly, I want to say what an honor it is um, to be programmed with Marlon Fuentes and Vont Eulogy, which was a pivotal film for me uh, back in the 90s when I was in graduate school and starting my dissertation. And that film had just come out and it sparked a whole wave of other uh fake documentaries, documentaries which called into question the relationship between truth and fiction which is what this film is all about. Thank you all for coming and I look forward to talking after the film. >> Hi everyone. So I'm going to jump right in. Um, I have a a lot of thoughts racing through my mind, but I'll start with the ending uh with the credits uh Holly Willis uh producing um Eric Marin sound design and what came to me actually I had no idea this was going to uh come. I thought of Tom Anderson's Get Out of the Car and how he made it with colleagues at Cal Arts, uh Craig Smith, who did the sound design there. And I remember Eric Marin, uh when he was my uh teacher in in sound design at UCLA, um a couple decades ago. And so I'd maybe to start there uh the team uh that you made uh this film with and colleagues and partner and um what was that like to and and just the other last thing with get out of the car with Tom Anderson? Uh just a film that I thought wow this is like get out of the um get out of the way for cinema like a love letter to the city get out of the car by Tom Anderson. is like a love letter to cinema and um so um but I'll get to that later. >> So you can ask me about any Tom Anderson film except get out of the car because I have never seen it. Um but uh in terms of the team uh I actually regard this as a project that was developed very communally. Um so yes Holly produced Eric did the sound the brilliant sound uh design and mix but I kind of did the editing and writing on my own. Um, that said, it started in a class and it might have been the one that you were in, Nicole, um, at UCLA, a video essay class, um, where I was developing the most of the material. I've been collecting this stuff for years. Um, and my process is a little bit unusual in that, um, when I'm collecting material, I don't just keep it on my own hard drive. I actually put everything out in the world. So, it goes on a public media archive that I administer called Critical Commons. Um and so kind of the idea is to try to um not just be writing in public, not just be expressing in public, but actually researching in public and opening up the archive that we are working with to anybody else who might be interested. Um so there's this unfortunate tendency in the academy sometimes to think you have to hoard your research materials and you know don't let anybody know what you're working on until it comes out in publication. Um and this is kind of the opposite of that. Um so you know a lot of the references came yes from the Vivian Sabchack um book in that concept of documentary consciousness. A bunch of the examples came directly out of her work. Um but a lot of the other ones came from the visible evidence lifts listerve. So documentary film studies. I just put out a a a call to that list. You know like any examples that you can think of of you know intrusions of the real world into fictional films. and I was bombarded with responses from this community. So it was really kind of you know social media yeah it wasn't even social media it was just an email list serve um provided a bunch of the research from people who were just think about this sort of thing all the time um so beyond that was I you know I did uh cuts and sort of work in progress screenings with my class showed it to people did a couple of screenings test screenings at UCLA um so it was both an isolated and individual process and also a very communityoriented one >> that's great and can you say a little bit about uh the collecting. Um it's it almost seemed like a cabinet of curiosities within the cinema framework. Uh but I know you also have a a background in collecting and with critical comments. U if you can say a little bit about critical comments and also the a little more of how that became part of maybe um what uh maybe guided you a bit in the construction of the film or how it played a role in it. >> Okay. Excuse me. Now I want to go back to Tom Anderson. Okay. So um around the time I graduated from Cal Arts, I moved to Washington DC for other reasons. Um and Tom and Nol Burch were just starting to work on a film called Red Hollywood. Um, and so they enlisted me as their research assistant. And my job was to go to um, you know, the Madison building of the National Archive and look up who the copyright holders were for the dozens and dozens of films that they were using in Red Hollywood, which was this amazing um, kind of revisionist history about the blacklist era. And they relied on many dozens of of clips from studio films. Uh, and so I would go and look up who the copyright holder. So, remember that you used to have to register copyrights and if you didn't, your film would fall into the public domain after 14 or 28 years. Um, and so I had to look up to see which films were actually still in copyright, see who the copyright owner was, and how much they would charge for Tom and Null to use a 15-second clip of their films. And invariably, the answer was between 50 and $300 a second. And it's like, no, no, no. This is Tom and Null. These guys don't have any money. Um, and even if they had money, the studios reserved the right to um decide which stories they wanted told about their films. And they actually wanted to know what the context was that it would be appearing in. All these things that are completely unreasonable and impossible to imagine. And I remember Tom saying, "Yeah, um, I won't try to do him. Um, but uh it really shouldn't just be the studios that have control over the writing of history. And I think that one statement shaped much of the next 25 years of my life. Um, because I did start working on experimental historioggraphy. My first book was about that. That's where the Marlon Fuentes connection came in. Um, but I also founded this uh public media archive which is in Rick Pringer's terms appropriation friendly. um meaning that you can upload and download anything at full resolution. It consists of entirely unlicensed media. If people sometimes people go to put things on the site where they own the rights and I say we don't want it, you know, we only want things that you don't have the rights to um and they are placed in a transformative context in a critical context. Uh and then that becomes part of this sort of researching in public sort of a sharing of resources >> and um well that's that um um that kind of sharing of resources is uh part of the critical comments uh from uh what I've remember and and I know it's not uh I can't find it in the same place I used to go to for many years at the critical comments. I think it's on another uh site, but uh just that that sharing that uh that critical comments serves. Um, I find that here too that it's like a sharing of I mean uh just to be frank, it's like I'm back in uh graduate school and I'm in a cinema studies class and within the film whether I'm watching it in a movie theater which is very special. it hits much harder or if I'm watching it on a computer screen or even phone there's like a it's like a course a ma a master's course but a serious one that reminds me of um more of the cinema pedagogy Jean Lucard used to talk about and um and many others so the teachings the sharing and it's more of a sharing than a teaching uh that's happening here is huge and so is there and I know that start that critical comments is a lot about that. So if you can I don't know just say a little bit about that sharing especially with the public and how that uh is an element in in the film if it is. >> Um sure. So um I'm a real believer in work in progress. Uh and in the video essay class there's this insistence that everybody has to bring in their cuts at every single stage even especially when they're not ready to show things. Um, and so in the the class where this project got significantly developed, I imposed that same uh expectation on myself. So I had to do the thing that I never ever ever want to do, which is to show things before they're ready, but I did it. And that became such an important part of the feedback loop. Um, and people gave me all kinds of advice and uh uh uh suggestions. Um, and one of them was, since you're talking about the kind of the pedagogical function of the project, uh, the first few versions of this were full of quotations and citations and long explanations of how semiotics works. Um, and basically the feedback that I got was, take that out, >> you know, for the love of God. If you want this to be a watchable movie, we don't want to hear that stuff. you know, save it for your lectures, save it for the academic context. And I did aspire for this film to find audiences outside of the classroom, outside of the university. Um, and so I did. And, uh, it's an interesting challenge because when you do that, um, you know, are you dumbing it down? Are you losing something about the argument or what you're trying to say? And so the challenge becomes how do I refer to Vivian's idea or Laura Mulv's argument here or Steuart Hall without citing them and actually just making that something that I invoke or invite people to who maybe know the text or idea Hartman people who maybe recognize that gesture critical fabulation um without having to name it without having to cite the author of it. Now, that's something that I think I'm at a place in my career and my professional life where I can do that. I don't necessarily A bunch of my graduate students are here and thank you so much for showing up. I really appreciate it. Uh, but give it a few years before you start dropping the citations and the references. Um, there are people who still expect to see that stuff. Um, so I think there is a the pedagogical function works on a lot of levels. I'd like it when these films can be received u on different tiers and some people are like I recognize I I know I know that movie that movie that movie and those references and other people who are like oh that's kind of that's kind of interesting I hadn't thought of that before. Um so that's to me the beauty of videographic scholarship as opposed to academic publishing where I I doubt if this many people in this room right now have read my two books combined. Right. Um, but I've had the privilege of showing this film now about in front of about a dozen audiences and I feel confident that I've actually reached more people um with this than I have with the other 20 years of my academic career. >> And and just to uh connect a little bit uh uh technologies of history and technologies of vision with the film, I I just finished uh reading uh technologies of vision and I love technologies of history. had me thinking uh so uh widely about the intersection of technology and cinema and culture and uh and now with technologies a vision I I saw kind of the like understanding myself my generation the 2000s a little before that of course after that but with the film it occurred to me today that this is u a similar kind of uh uh just sorting through uh more contemporary history and where we're at. And it was uh a very um strong in terms of let's look look yeah it's an analysis of cinema and uh but at the same time it's an analysis of what's going on in our world and this in this uh and and the film in particular it's very uh relatively current. uh the 2010s and the 2000 the first half of the 2020s almost uh to a couple years ago uh the ref the references of the films and and the commentary. Um so just the that kind of kind of I mean in a sense it's a documentary consciousness but uh that's happening in your books that's happening in your film a telling and uh sorting through making sense of uh our our history and this film our current history. if you can say a little bit about uh kind if that was part of the role that uh it played. >> Sure. And I have to say I'm in awe of you reading those books in preparation for this. That's just amazing. Um so yeah so uh you know there's kind of this standard conventional wisdom in uh in you know when we write about films historical films right that they're about the moment that they're about but they're also about the moment in which they are made. Um, and actually, you know, I Marlin's film, uh, Bontak Eulogy came out in 95. There was a whole bunch of these films. Jesse Learner's Ruins, Cheryl Dunie's Watermelon Woman, uh, Peter Jackson's Forgotten Silver. There was a lot of experimentation with um, with the idea of history and what we could know about the past through these experimental films. Uh, and that just happened to be the moment when I entered graduate school and that was like the thing that I latched on to because it seemed to be such a very current um, uh, issue for that moment in time. This, you know, this film, I think, spans I've been collecting these clips for much longer or noticing things and think like, yeah, I should really try to get my hands on that. I'll say this about streaming media because it makes it so much more difficult to actually work with the the media that we take in as consumers. Streaming media just washes over us and there's no way for us to to capture it to grab it. It's or it's difficult or illegal to do that. um when things are were on hard media, when things were on DVDs and Blu-rays, we had uh exemptions to the DMCA that let us capture those things to work with them to put them in our electronic publications to make video graphic work like this. Um streaming media is is is an apocalypse for our ability to work with with media and I hate it and I hate that we pay for it. Um but we there's no choice anymore. Anyway, sorry that's a that's a digression. Ah yeah, I lost the train of thought. Um oh so but um in the course of finishing this film um it did begin to seem like it was important to get it done now. Uh, and I think that was because of, you know, the current presidential administration, um, but also the rise of generative AI and some of that's in here, but some of those examples are quite a few years old now. And things have come an awful long way since then. But what I was hearing from my colleagues, some of whom are documentary filmmakers, was generative AI is going to undermine our ability to tell to speak our truths on film. I was like, come on, guys. We haven't believed what you've been telling us on film forever. you know, like we know that documentaries are this combination of of fact and fiction with with good intent behind them. Um, but it isn't the fault of generative AI if, you know, their veracity is being called into question. Um, and so I really did feel like I wanted to make the argument that, you know, generative AI brings its own set of problems, but these are boundaries that we've been negotiating for a long time and we have some skills at doing that. We are not just, you know, idiotic stooges of, you know, OpenAI and the other companies that are putting this stuff out into the world. Um, we can do what we have always had to do, which is do some additional resource research, triangulate our sources, you know, think about whether something actually makes sense or is it something that's obviously been generated by software. Um, so those kinds of things I think are very much a part of the moment that we're in. uh few years from now, things are changing very quickly and those skills that we've developed may no longer be as applicable or as reassuring as I feel like we can still hold on to some of that right now. Um but that's I think that's very much a part of the reason that I wanted people to see this film at this particular moment in time. Yeah, I remember uh about a couple decades ago when I was at UCLA that we were we would talk about the resuscitation machines and how uh like painting uh uh was challenged by photography. It didn't kill photography. Sorry. Uh it didn't kill painting. It was challenged by photography. Later cinema u challenged photography didn't kill photography. And even the TV uh challenged uh cinema, it didn't kill cinema. and the internet and computer, etc. And now we're in another iteration and that there's the the the freakout of uh it's going to kill what came before it rather than the challenge. And and so right now you articulated it in a way where it was kind of being present to agency of of being able to to um sort through that challenge that we're in right now. It's even difficult to even talk about. I it's hard for me to even grasp you know what's going on right now in the present but uh there is a um almost like uh meeting the meeting the moment the challenge uh with agency uh in within the medium uh whatever the future of cinema will be it's uh another uh um opportunity to uh kind of engage the resuscitation machine uh right and so um and I know the film kind of ends uh closer to that with inquiry into AI and um that part in particular and and towards the last uh fourth of the film uh it starts to I think for me kind of get into this inquiry before that I want to uh talk about or a little later about the super cuts and also your use of uh the split screen which I thought was very interesting but right now since we're kind of on AI the it's the com your commentary um isn't as um you're kind of leaving us much more in inquiry towards the end. Um so if if there's anything else you'd like to say about that and uh kind of where where you're leaving us and uh what it says about uh both the future at large but also uh maybe what you're thinking about in terms of going next with this. Okay, I'll I'll try and I think I have two answers that are kind of contradictory. Um, one is we can't relinquish our um ability to recognize the truth when we see it. You know, whatever technologies are interceding in that exchange. Um, that's important. It's important for our ability to function as like members of a so-called democracy. Um, so I I don't see the the solution to that being in other software. I don't think machines are going to tell us which which machines are lying to us. Um I think that really is on us and I think the the narration says as much that responsibility will continue to to belong to us. Um and I I think we that's going to be difficult. It's going to be harder. We're going to have to use the skills. We're going to have to develop new ones. Um but I I I have to hold on to that as a necessary part of our existence moving forward. we're already in a up dis dystopia. But that's I think you know Jordan Peele was on to something with that. So no. So yes, we cannot let go of that. Um the other the other answer I want to go back to my sort of historical uh personal narrative about film forum because um I was also a student in addition to Tom Anderson and James Benning and others. I was a student of Chick Strands at accidental in the 80s and uh film forum just showed uh Chick's film soft fiction last weekend I believe and that had just come out when I was started as an undergraduate at accidental and so she showed it to us and she would sit in the back smoking you know um and at the end of the film the students wanted to know like which of those first-person interviews which were which were real and which were were fictional and and her response is like when do you want to know that poor. >> If you know chick, that's like a pretty good does a pretty good impression. Um, but what she was telling us, and I think this planted that seed pretty early on, was that truth could be a creative variable and that could be a source of really interesting artworks. Um, and so I think there's room for both of those things. And I think, you know, I kind of there's a part of me that that loves the things that I see coming out of some of these Genai platforms and they're doing things um blending uh components that we recognize and ones that we don't. Um and thinking about those things. I don't know. I think we have to embrace the contradictions. This is not something to be resolved with watermarks or or legislation or, you know, um sort of protocols or the guardrails. Um, I think this is something that's part of an ongoing negotiation and we're going to have to sort it out as we move forward. >> I don't know if that answered your question. >> Yeah. Uh, the sorting out is part of um how I saw a bit of the assemblage of the film with the super cuts and the the split screen. First want to go into the split screen. splits it. It's used in such a wonderful way because when it is used in cinema, it's seldom used, but when it is used, it's much more like plotting. Uh there's like a plot here and there's another one over there. And here it's uh from taking a bit from uh one of your books, the analog digital. Like there's this uh toggle between like yes, you're seeing it there and you're seeing it there. And uh it's not so much about plotting. I mean, if it is, it's a very very abstract plotting of society that you're thinking about briefly when you're looking at those two things, but it's more of like you you said in in your book, it's more pleasurable uh to see the these two and uh and to just u consider uh what it is uh that we're looking at. Here you have the date uh right and we it's just a fascinating way to use the split screen and uh you use it quite a bit and so I I wanted to see if you can just say uh a little bit more about that the use of split screen and and um and and your thinking around it. >> Uh so I think the way I want to answer that is in terms of affordances. Um, and one of the dilemmas when you go to make a video essay is whether the argument like we think of it in a scholarly context, you know, does this argument lend itself to the videographic form or should it just be a written text essay? Um, and sometimes for some topics, yeah, they really should just be written text essays. And the worst way, I'm sorry you all who were in that class, this is going to be repetition. Um, the worst way to make a video essay is to start from a pre-written text and convert it because then the process becomes basically illustration. You're adding the images that maybe you were otherwise would have had to describe in your text essay. Um, the way I do it and the way I think um that results in the most interesting videographic work is when the writing and the editing happen in parallel and literally sometimes in dialogue with each other. The moments that I still that still make me the happiest in this film are the ones where I kind of talk back to the family like to the family Nancy talking when I talk back to the screen. Um you know and it's like uh you know as as a matter of fact the the funeral sequence was believable. Um so that's a case of doing something that the videographic form can really uniquely do. Um, also, you know, coming down to it and just saying like that was a really awesome sequence or she's a great skater. We don't do that stuff in peer-reviewed scholarly academic publications, right? That's an indulgence that we're allowed in the videographic form. That's a little different. So, split screens for me falls into this category because, oh, that's something that I actually couldn't do or I'd have a very hard time simulating through some version of a phrases on the page. This is something that is going to be uniquely uh kind of conveyed through through the videographic form because I can do split screens or cut out the sound or uh you know slow it down you know step print it make a still frame all of those kinds of things uh get to the unique affordances of the video form um that kind of justify its place in the the scholarly work I guess >> um and and since you X-rayes uh that when watching the film I had this experience of uh uh that kind of text image relationship um but I don't know if text is the right word but it's a commentary but we do it we do kind of uh u consider that maybe this was uh some kind of writing some kind of essay and but the way that you uh have the commentary kind of uh not just say something about the image, but rather say something about maybe what we're imagining uh as a third con image, right? The the marriage between u uh what's going on in front of us and then what we're thinking about. And somehow, you know, like in a comic, it'd be the thought bubble. Somehow your your commentary is pointing at what may be in our thought bubble. Uh, and I just I so I just wanted to see if you can say a little bit about and then I'll go back to the supercut, but something about just your commentary. Uh, I know you already said a bit about it, but how you approached it because it's it's uh we see uh this might be a good uh segue into the super cut. we see uh in on YouTube there's a lot of video uh video essays type uh clips uh more and more and it's a I think growing genre in YouTube studies if if we can uh say that and um but the the way you do it you can uh kind of feel uh this um knowledge of uh voice over kind of more formally in cinema and how it was done in many different ways you're bringing I think I don't know if formality is the word but a a a dynamic way of approaching voice over and commentary that in on the internet on YouTube is is usually not there. So if you can say a little bit about u commentary and and voice over >> um yeah so uh I think I have to bring it back to Tom Anderson. Uh Los Angeles plays itself was an inspiration for this film on many many levels. There are sequences in here where I stole Tom's cadences where I I literally just like reproduced his way of speaking or his way of writing. Uh in fact my an earlier film of mine screening surveillance was um it was 2017 2018. Um, and in that one I explicitly and embarrassingly like did an impression of Enki King, who was my classmate at Cal Arts, Tom's narrator, who has this amazing like grally kind of worldweary voice. It's he's Tom's surrogate. And I tried so much so hard to sound like Enky. Um, and so that sort of like the literalness of the voice comes from those kinds of things. I was a I uh saw and and liked a lot of Chris Marker films and I've actually kind of with another kind of project that I've returned to now returning to that idea of sort of essaistic or um epistolary subjectivity >> in that project that's quite different. So, I've always loved the essaistic mode and the ability to merge the personal viewpoint with a more scholarly, analytical, critical, whatever you want to call it, um, viewpoint like where there are multiple takeaways. You can learn something about this person, but also learn something about their thinking, also learn something, an argument about the world. Um, so I don't I I don't try to That was another bit of feedback I got was stop trying to talk like Enki. Um, and so I kind of tried to sound more like myself uh with this narration this time around. Um, but that's I think that's the best answer I have for that. Let's uh maybe we can open it up soon, but uh just one last thing circle back to the supercut. So the we uh YouTube uh videos that are essayistic and that many of us may see on social media and this kind of growing genre um they uh often uh use this super cut and so you cut between uh one film and another in a TV show and it and and this assemblage is um I think within I don't know with maybe the history of cinema now kind of um more formally being um I guess engaged uh uh and maybe it's again the challenge of the the current machine the c the challenge of YouTube uh to cinema and finding a way to to navigate maybe even integrate parts of it. But um just uh the role of just uh editing and the supercut and if uh that kind of relationship to what's going on on YouTube played a role in uh not not necessarily influencing how you were editing but having some kind of dialogue with uh those forms of editing. >> Yeah. So um so I was trained as an editor. I worked as an editor. I regard myself as an editor. Um, not a director. Um, and I think, you know, you get the idea from this movie pretty clearly. I don't love movies. I'm not a cinnaphile. I actually do kind of love TV. Um, but, you know, film is kind of a spillover from that for me. Um, and what I love is not movies or narratives, but moments. I I like um clips. I like I like lines of dialogue. I like individual shots. I like things that happen in the blink of an eye. Um, and so it's a real it's a gift to have this form that lets me just pull out those moments that that that quicken the heart, right? The things that are sort of like um moments that I want to call attention to. Um, and so I I don't really do super cuts. Um, there are people who are so good at them. uh Coconatada Allison Defren um wrote writes about that and also does them incredibly virtuosically. Um I've never done that really. Um I have another project that I am working on which is a video a long long format videographic work. It's a book length. It's for Jason Mattel's Lever Press book series of all video books. Um and there are a couple only a couple of these that have been that have come out so far. Um, and that one does have so much material that I thought I'm going to have to super cut this, but it's not I don't know. It's not it's it's not in my nature somehow. Um, I I prefer, you know, kind of weaving things together, I think, more than um than blasting them out. Um, so I see the I see the place of them. I appreciate them. I love them when they're done well. Um, but it's it's not exactly my thing. >> Great. Should we open it up a little bit? Is there time? Yeah, there's time. >> Okay, great. Any uh questions for Steve? >> What was the second part? >> What did you think of it? >> And were you pleased? Um, that's not what you said. You said you said said it a different way. Um, so it was I taught a class at UCLA um for the incoming MFA directors called Reality Fictions and showed a bunch of the films that were here. Uh, and then at some point typing a file name, there was a typo and I inserted an R where there hadn't been one before and I was like, "Oh, that's a much better title." I'm I'm sorry. That's the answer. And it went quite well with uh what's going on in you know in the world today. I think the from fictions to frictions u yeah any uh >> one more >> another question. >> Yeah. >> Hello. Um, congratulations for the film. I felt very much inspired. I have two questions and I would give a film recommendation, but you just said you don't like movies that much. But, um, so I saw Video Heaven by Alex Ross Perry a couple months ago, and it's a like a three-hour video essay about the the portray of the video stores uh in the movies. And I read that the film was not uh available to distribute uh commercially because of the copyright. So, I was wondering how would that work with your film? Um, second question is I was trying to take some screenshots of U Jane Campion Swedie yesterday and it was blocked on Criteria channel and then I found a a plugin that only did photos and I I was wondering if do you think would be a difference of static if you just shot a TV playing that instead of the digital file like uh because you said about the material aspect of the DVD. And the film recommendations uh I'm from Brazil. So there's a movie called Gabriel and the Mountain which uh is about uh a real person that went to Africa and all the like he died in the mountain and then they the movie uh hired an actor to play him but all the side characters were real people that he met. So it's a very interesting movie because they act as themselves but then they also u they give like a type of testimony about the the events. Uh it was showed in Khan in 2017. It's a very interesting movie. So thank you. >> Yeah. Um so I'm not I'm going to try to remember all the pieces of that. Uh one is yeah the first dozen or so screens of this that I did was bombarded by what about this? What about that? It's like guys it's 68 minutes already. like it's a lot to ask of anybody to watch this film for that long. So I had to put some arbitrary boundaries around it. Um the visible evidence a lot of the examples that I got many were from Latin America and there's like this is a tradition this you know you're missing whole uh really interesting bodies of work here. Um and I had to say like okay yes you know maybe for part two but for now I'm going to really focus on a Hollywood context partly that's that's what I know that's what I have access to. Um, but there's a lot of things out there that could have been part of this that just that just couldn't make it in. It's it's already already too much. Um, the question I the one thing I told Diego before we started is like let's not spend too much time talking about copyright because that is a bottomless pit for me and I do I can and could talk about that way more than is interesting. Um so um oh oh one thing is oh so about like uh how does that affect though uh distribution as an example um when Red Hollywood came out they had a real hard time in '95 getting that film shown and getting it you know just on on screens on in festivals it was a problem 2013 was it Los Angeles plays itself so 20ome years later um it played everywhere um and it just was that the idea of fair use and um it's not that it's been solved um but the idea of transformation has really sunk in and there are best practices that have been issued um look at the American university um uh best practices and fair use guides for for the US context um really really effective at telling you what you need to do in order for those things to strengthen your fair use claim. can always be sued. But um but these days you have a much firmer um stance for that um than you used to. As you saw um I do all my stuff no copyright, no rights reserved. And I just don't want any part of it. Um and critical commons has been this space that's meant to be a kind of you know a you to the copyright industries and you know I don't want your protection uh and I don't want your restrictions. Um, so there used to be a thing that shooting off the screen used to be a thing that we had to do uh because it was called the analog exemption um before we had DMCA exemptions for cracking the encryption on DVDs. That was what the MPA told us to do. Just set up your camera, turn off the lights, it'll be fine. So they were worried about commercial reproduction, but you know, um the quality greatly suffers when you do that. Um so these are this is all ripped DVD. This is 480p and it looks pretty decent on even on a big screen like this. Um, so uh you know I'm not a cinnaphile and so a lot of those sort of like the the fetishization of the image quality is not something that I go into that deep. Um but you should be able to work with a decent image um when you're doing this kind of work. So um I think it's important that we maintain that we have the ability to work with stuff. There are tools like it sounds like you found um for ripping things off of streams. It's illegal. Um, fair fair use doesn't apply if you don't legally source the original materials. Um, so you know, anyway, I'm not a lawyer. Um, and I have to say that I'm supposed to say that whenever I go. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not trained. I don't know what I'm talking about. Um, I think I I don't know if I got all the pieces of your question, but thank you. >> I could say something about that. I mean uh I think there's a lot of trepidation uh to work with a material like the way you are and including Los Angeles plays itself Tom and Tom Tom Anderson's use of it I and Red Hollywood before that uh which I I came to later I I don't remember how that was in screenings or but the the just the there there's a um if you can say a little bit about that like I want to a bravery uh to but it maybe that's not the right word but the a lot of us I think u uh filmmakers want to use u material and we're just and there's a lot of unknowns and um if how much is it the duration and but it when I see this it's I really see like the epitome of like this is a learning uh this is for learning this is um commentary on our times that we're in like this is the stuff of art and even journalism and it's just a it seems like a great example. Uh but if you can say a little bit about that and how you approached it uh uh not fair use but the approaching of the material and how you were going to navigate that if it became an issue. >> Um yeah so there are answers to that. Uh the key is transformation. And I actually did um uh submit this to we have a terrific um documentary legal clinic at UCLA that does analyses of works like this to to let you know what level of problems you might have. Um and you need that if you're going to try to get errors and omission insurance. Um which is what you would need for real distribution for like commercial distribution where it's going to be seen broadly and you're going to make money off it. This film actually is in distribution through uh Alexander Street which is second to can nobody's heard of it. It's second to Canopy uh in the educational market but it is it's on their websites. This says no copyright, no rights or reserved. Um it's there. Anybody who downloads it, loads it can do anything they want with it. Um but uh I did I did run the film by them and they're like, "Yeah, this is um pretty good." Uh but they nailed it. Um, there are like the scene with Johnny Depp when he's looking out the window. Um, there's a music track and I stripped it out. I cheated. Uh, I took the music that was playing in the original scene. I learned this from Allison Dear friend. Uh, and I replaced it with a a a music track that didn't have his voice. You know, Johnny Depp is talking over that entire scene. I replaced his talking with my talking. And the lawyers were like, "Yeah, that's not that's you're not transforming critically that scene at all. You are using the music from outside the film uh to do this other thing." And there was one other moment that they were like, "Yeah, you might have a problem there." Um but otherwise, don't worry about it. Um the transformation is profound and necessary and we cannot at this point in time, we cannot be inhibited from doing this kind of work because we're worried about copyright. And it doesn't matter. No matter how good your transformational gesture is, Disney or whoever could still sue you. Um, and we're living through a time of crazy contradictions in terms of intellectual property law and what genai is bringing into that mix. Um, but that's way way out of scope for for this conversation. Um, so for especially academic contexts, scholarly contexts, um, context where it's understood that you're not going to be making any money, you're not going to be harming the, um, the the profitability of the original. Um, this is really not, we shouldn't even be talking about this anymore. It's really, it's okay. Go do it. But I'm not a lawyer. Thank you all for coming. >> Thank you. Thank you, Nicole. Thank you everyone.