Edinburgh International Film Festival has kind of snuck up on me and BEGUN, so for the next week or so I’ll be mooching around, seeing films (including the first feature by occasional Shadowplayer Matt Hulse) and talking to the greats, near-greats and ingrates of the film biz. In the first category, Kirby Dick, whose OUTRAGE I’ll be seeing tomorrow and whom I hope to see in person shortly thereafter. Joe Dante is being interviewed on stage — I’m going to try and interview him offstage but have no clue if I’ll get within twenty feet of him — and veteran exploitation supremo Roger Corman is being retrospected. Edinburgh staged the first Corman tribute back in the ’70s, when Linda “Movie Brats” Myles was running the fest.
Also screening is Lars “Von” Trier’s ANTICHRIST. I kind of want to see it, but it’s a hot ticket and I’d feel a little guilty occupying a seat that could be taken by someone who didn’t hate most of LVT’s films (apart from THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS) since The Kingdom…
Looked at only superficially – which seems to be how many, many people view the world – it’s little more than a lazy arse fooling around, wasting film ,wasting (my!) time and then having the bloody cheek to call it ‘art’, and worse, a ‘film’! The response on YouTube from a member called kupazmaslemutube sums it up – their comment is ‘WTF suck’. I’m assuming WTF doesn’t stand for ‘wonderful time-based film’. ‘Hand Catching Lead’ drives people to distraction and I love it simply for that reason alone. But get over the panic and the prejudice, spend a little time watching this movie and really, it has everything you could possibly want in a film!
It has:
great pace
a form of narrative ‘arc’ during which the hand tires out and turns from white to dirty grey (as if Serra is somehow being sullied by the silver halide of film stock itself)
comedy – look out for the gag about half way through (I suppose THIS gag, specifically, is my ‘moment’)
an actor – in this case just a hand – who reveals a great range of emotions and even slips into ‘hammy’ performance at times
great beauty (always in the eye of the beholder)
a great ending, hand diving out of frame, like film spooling out of the projector
This work is reminiscent of another favorite of mine – The Chimney Sweep and the Miller (AM&B, 1902):
Conceptually, the two films are closely related, in that over time black and white merge to form grey – classic conceptual / structural film making in action. Plus they are both essentially comedies. I plan to make a spoof of / homage to Serra’s film. Mine will be called ‘Hand Catching Bread’, in which a dark, sooty hand tries to catch slices of white bread. Naturally it will mimic as close as possible the movements and nuanced performance of Serra’s own hand. The project is in development I am currently looking for funding, although Mother’s Pride’s Scottish Plain have expressed an interest in ‘product placement’.
Who says art and commerce can’t go hand in (dirty) hand?
I’d add one more thing which the Serra/Schumm film has — suspense! Will he catch this next piece of lead? If he does, will he drop it like the others? Will he try to catch a piece of lead that doesn’t come, and look silly? Where will this all end?
Matt’s nomination/s and the reasoning behind it are so great you will probably now all RISE UP against me and enthrone Mr. Hulse (an ever-present fear of mine since we both teach at Edinburgh College of Art) but STAY YOUR HANDS awhile and I will tell you more of Fritz Lang’s DIE NIBELUNGEN.
(I’m thinking of making it NIBELUNGEN WEEK here at Shadowplay.)
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