‘Holly Fisher has been active since the mid-sixties as an independent filmmaker, teacher, and editor of documentaries, including the 1989 Academy Award Nominee Who Killed Vincent Chin? Her personal works (director, camera, editor) have been screened in museums and film festivals worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art, two Whitney Museum Biennials, and Centre Pompidou. Her first documentary Watermen, co-made with filmmaker Romas V Slezas in 1968, recently resurfaced to great acclaim when recently screened on Maryland Public TV and at The Environmental Film Festival in Washington, DC. Fisher’s first solo feature Bullets for Breakfast, made via JK optical printing of layers of S8:16mm, received “Best Experimental Film” at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, 1992. Two of her works have had world-premiers at The Berlin International Film Festival, including Bullets for Breakfast and her first poetic documentary concerning Burma, Kalama Sutta: Seeing is Believing, in 2001.
‘With an on-going interest in human rights, perception, and media, Fisher followed with a second Burma project –– Deafening Silence (118 minutes, 2012), in which she travels to The Goldenland’s eastern frontier, on foot and under-cover with guerrilla soldiers, to document life in a village of internally displaced ethnic Karen people. A Question of Sunlight, links 9/11 with the holocaust via ‘the telling of memories’ by NYC artist José Urbach, who was witness to both.
‘Holly Fisher was invited by the influential contemporary photographer Peter Lindbergh to collaborate on the film Everywhere at Once (final cut 2010). The film incorporates Lindbergh’s photographs with clips from Tony Richardson’s film Mademoiselle (1966), starring Jeanne Moreau. It premiered in the Avant-première program at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007.
‘Currently Fisher is expanding into video installation and large-format digital prints, in preparation for her first gallery exhibition, fall 2014. Rejecting strategies of agit-prop, Fisher’s films are open-ended essays, both long-form and short, in which she fuses linear narrative with non-linear and increasingly layered and cyclic structures, as a way to position the viewer at the subject/center of the work as it unfolds –– in pursuit of presence, or ’empowerment,’ for want of a better word.’ — Folkstreams
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Stills
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Further
Holly Fisher Website
Holly Fisher @ instagram
Holly Fisher @ IMDb
Holly Fisher @ Filmmakers Cooperative
Holly Fisher @ Experimental Cinema
Holly Fisher @ RE:VOIR
Deafening Silence with Holly Fisher
Thickening the Plot : ‘Bullets for Breakfast’
Fisher’s Rushlight and Gaine’s #3, Great Neck and Edge
Holly Fisher: Kalama Sutta: Seeing is believing
Holly Fisher @ MUBI
Essays and reviews of Holly Fisher’s films
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Extras
Holly Fisher, Everywhere At Once , Tribeca Film Festival
Conversation w/ Holly Fisher, Maung Zarni, Pip Chodorov
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Interview
On March 23rd independent filmmaker Holly Fisher visited UnionDocs to show Deafening Silence, her poetic documentary about life under Burma’s brutal military dictatorship. Following the screening, she spoke with filmmaker John Gianvito (Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (2006) and Far from Vietnam (2012)) about the complexity of the present situation in Burma.
Holly Fisher: Burmese leaders had launched a big campaign for tourism and I understood that if I was to go to there, any image that I brought back was essentially for the junta if I didn’t work behind my own image. They had sanitized all the tourist spots and were controlling where you could and couldn’t go.
I didn’t have any tour guide. My idea was just to go and come back with a bed of images that I would then work through. I spent five years trying to understand what was going on.
During the last trip, in 2003, I took two cameras and trained one of the Karen guys who came and hiked with us.
I was interested in what I saw as a sort of sadomasochistic situation between the junta and the population, which is some kind of diabolical marriage. I wanted to see if I could break it apart and work it towards something more ambiguous, more subtle, less white and black.
John Gianvito: Part of what you have done here is to respect that complexity of the Burmese situation, and it is reflected in the form of the film. It doesn’t seem to provide all the answers. It gives a prismatic way of journeying through some measure of what one sees as an outsider travelling. I heard you got a false ID and pretended to be a tour guide making little movies to develop tourism.
HF: When I got out of college I made a film with a partner that attempted to take over the army corps of engineers who were destroying a wild river in Florida. After making that film I got interested in issues such as: can you change minds with films and how? I got interested in the relationship of image to audience and how to put images together in a way that would make you implicit to the situation, not a consumer of it. I worked with a lot of layerings, very abstract or silent multiple projections.
My first Burma work was made at a period where I was going in and out of my own work, working as an editor for others.
One thing I’ve learned is you can either manipulate the audience to think what you want them to think or you can work to invite them to think. I spent years embarrassed by my own work. I knew what I wasn’t doing, but I didn’t know what I was trying to do. I’m only now beginning to see.
I’m interested in complexity. There is a pleasure in ambiguity, in not knowing. I’ve been finding an organic way of structuring, without a beginning, a middle, or an end. So you could see it as a film about Burma or you can see it as a sort of tapestry… even if I don’t like that word.
JG : I think this film is what I could call a utilitarian film, a film that re-sensitizes us to things we may already know, but where we need constant reminders. This movie is about Burma but not only. When I think about the question of the representation, it makes me think about Harun Farocki’s Inextinguishable Fire (1969), a 20-minute film about the manufacture of napalm made in the late 60s. There was a moving sequence where he talks directly at the camera about the fact that if he actually showed these images, what would happen is that it would hurt our feelings, and you would close your eyes, and eventually you would close your heart. This is not what he want to have happened—“when we show you pictures of napalm victims, you’ll shut your eyes. Then you’ll close them to the memory. And then you’ll close your eyes to the facts.” Then he takes a cigarette and burns his arm.
The testimony you hear in Deafening Silence and the shifting into the most lush, seemingly tranquil [scenery], invites tourists to the landscape underneath what you know. I find it a very potent approach on how to bring this knowledge.
HF: The image of the dead woman I used—that I didn’t use in my first film—makes me want to raise the question of using images like this. I did it by naming the cameraman who shot it: “to Rambo’s sister.”
I was pretty sure you would start to wonder what happened to her, when you saw that title, so you would weave that into the rest of the film. You are waiting for what’s going to happen. I wanted to conflate her with Aung San Suu Kyi. I wanted to set up a kind of complex hovering where these two women aren’t really in the film, but are in your mind. What you think you know about them, what you imagine, what could happen.
JG: When you talk about war, you have to talk about men. I’m referring to Susan Sontag’s book. It is always men who make the war, always men who like to go to war. I recently showed my class a documentary, The Invisible War (2012), about sexual violence in the military, and it lead to a discussion about how legal systems are. It doesn’t direct its anger towards men, but all of these rapes are always by men.
That was going through my head as I was journeying through the film again and thinking about the opening to this innocent young girl. If she sees this film later, what is it going to mean to her?
HF: In many advocacy films, we say the viewer is a consumer, that there is a narrative.
In what I’m doing, there is no story you can give yourself over to. I don’t allow you to identify with some character who is going to lead you through the film. You are more on your own and you have to piece together what it means and doesn’t mean.
JG: When we talk about a form such as this, that doesn’t have the archetypical beginning, middle, and end, you have to find your way. There is something that I say in relationship to my own movies, and I’m curious if you feel similarly. I often quote the filmmakers Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet: “we make our films so that people can walk out of them.”
For him there is a fascism about traditional, orthodox narrative forms that are all about keeping you in your seats, all about your eyes. He speaks about the desire to create a more democratic open form—take a look, but I’m not going to force you to stay.
HF: I made up the entire project to force me to use video. I learned on film, celluloid, so I designed this project to learn how to use new types of media and the internet. I’m always interested in multiple points of view, and where films are coming from. I’m also intrigued about how the existence of the internet changes how we live on the planet.
JG: What makes it personal is that you are always sensitive to your camera work and how you are exploring the situation, whether it’s at home or elsewhere. You could have set it up on a tripod, you could have downloaded the youtube clips neatly. People who see it quickly must think it’s amateurish, but in fact it is one of the values of how you’ve approached something.
HF: The thing that interests me in all the types of archival videos is how they are shot, how they are framed, and the person who narrates. They make themselves the center of their stories. I like to contrast that with my own funky way of doing things. The film is really made up of many little films.
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17 of Holly Fisher’s 33 films
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softshoe for bartok (2021)
‘This project is a film/video re-imaging of my 16mm film s o f t s h o e from 1987, made via optical printer from S8 film imagery shot ten years earlier on an east-west trip across Europe; using home-movies as the original source, this work is a cross/weave, or perhaps more a chance-encounter, with images from rural Romania, traces from the contemporary art exhibit documenta 6, Kassel, Germany, and a ride on the iconic escalator of the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Three decades later and with the advent of multi-track video I revisited this film, using it now as template.’ — HF
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b e d e v i l e d (aka simoom) (2019)
‘Dragon bones and snakes embracing; skeletons in underwear, flying shoes and bug-eyed aliens are among the characters that comprise the annual NYC Halloween Parade — filmed and transformed into a subjective extra-terrestrial dreamscape. Fragmented, cyclic, and in continual flux, b e d e v i l e d is a collage in motion, grounded within a visible construct of open and ever-shifting frames. From early furtive sketches I’ve reworked my original Hi-8 video into a layered weave of images cut to phase between the imaginary and ‘reality’ — from Day of the Dead spectacle to clocks at play with light bulbs. The haunting music of avant-garde composer Lois V Vierk is performed by cellist Theodore Mook.’ — HK
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thin/ice (2019)
‘“Snow & Reeds” – 1st sketch, edited from a single day of filming with iPhone, Feb 2014. Note child’s wooden bed frame half-submerged in ice, at 4:29 min.
‘Between 2013 and 2016, I filmed around this pond daily whenever possible–with iPhone and/or HD camera, being sure to always include this rotting wood bed frame, regardless of time, light, or weather. Footage is material for a full-scale immersive installation project, for completion in 2019.’ — HF
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ruffled feathers (2016)
‘Made as a variation of Trio en Rose (S.8 video original material filmed with a consumer camera in Brittany, 2006), Ruffled Feathers is a playful, intricate, and multi-layered dance piece—in which the dancers are seagulls, walking about on the pink granite rocks of the Côte d’Amour. As inTrio en Rose, my focus is on their skinny legs, knobby knees, and wide flat feet, coupled with a cheeky fearlessness.
‘The music piece IO by contemporary composer Lois V Vierk is the same used in Trio en Rose (also excerpted in A Question of Sunlight). Seagulls, layered glissandi, and cross/cut editing between frames interplay once more in counterpoint. But with additional tempo variations, more video layers and a muted palette of shifting colors, Ruffled Feathers has a different and decidedly darker feel even within the ironic formality that characterizes both works.’ — HF
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a question of sunlight (2015)
‘Recorded in the shadow of the Trade Towers only months after their collapse, A Question of Sunlight links 9/11 with the Holocaust, via “the telling of memories” by visual artist José Urbach, witness to both. José speaks almost magically, from childhood to the present, and anywhere in between. He was a Polish child born into the Holocaust, and as he watched the first plane smash into The World Trade Center from his kitchen window in lower Manhattan, he had a radical flashback to his earliest childhood memories. From a child’s-eye view he recalls former times, other windows … like the bombing of the Polish airport that triggered the start of World War II. (An uncanny irony is that he was in his mother’s belly that day.)
‘Unique to José’s telling is his desire to “actualize” his memories, to make them present and timely. He tells his stories vividly as if they were movies, in a continuous search for insight within the veils of memory, which still haunt him. This unsettling vacuum between past and future is magnified as I lace my personal and found imagery within Urbach’s narrative–curtains flying out Paris windows, “Shock & Awe” on airport TV, rare footage by Joris Ivens from the seminal East German film Die Windrose–for resonance, or “just to lend a breath of air …”’ — HF
Watch an excerpt here
Watch the film VOD here
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deafening silence (2012)
‘Deafening Silence is a fusion of beauty and terror, observation and anger, roving visuals and intimate stories that are funny, contemplative, or horrific–a subjective, layered depiction of Burma under brutal military dictatorship. My first trip was legal, shooting video as a fake tour guide doing research. The next was on foot, under-cover with ethnic Karen guerrillas, to film internal exiles surviving in a free-fire jungle war zone.
‘Colonial archival imagery and clips from YouTube are woven within this tapestry of fragments, often in ironic counterpoint, and always to pierce the chokehold of censorship. This is a living history of a country arrested in time, a hybrid documentary focusing on ethnic genocide but with constant poetic resonance and a rich multiplicity of references to history and popular culture.’ — Hank Heifetz and Holly Fisher
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w/ Peter Lindbergh Everywhere at Once (2010)
‘In Everywhere at Once renowned photographer Peter Lindbergh and experimental filmmaker Holly Fisher collaborate to weave together a tapestry of images, incorporating Lindbergh’s still pictures with clips from the Tony Richardson film Mademoiselle (1966), starring Jeanne Moreau. The photographs are animated through a re-filming process to create a flow of moving images that are intercut with passages from the movie. Iconic actress Jeanne Moreau, using a text by American poet Kimiko Hahn, narrates the diary-like fragments of memories and recollections in the first person. The haunting music by Lois V Vierk accentuates the fleeting quality of these fragments of dreams and memories. As with Fisher’s other experimental feature films, Everywhere at Once exists on the dividing line between fiction and documentary. Rather than offering a linear narrative, threads of the story move forward and are interrupted, bending back upon themselves in space and time, resolving into a series of subjective associations. The film might be read as a biography of Moreau’s own life, as a fictional discourse on the protagonist’s emerging sense of selfhood, or as a humanist meditation about childhood, youth, and old age. Whatever the viewer’s interpretation may be, the film functions most deeply on the level of an intensely subjective rumination on perception. This positions Everywhere at Once squarely in the tradition of such avant-garde French New Wave classics as Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959), Last Year at Marienbad (1961), and La Jetée (1962).’ — Jon Gartenberg
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kalama sutta: seeing is believing (2002)
‘New York-based experimental filmmaker Holly Fisher, known for a series of conceptually complex and visually elegant films, studies Burma in her latest project, Kalama Sutta, moving beyond picturesque travel images to examine the country’s political upheaval and oppression. … Fisher creates a dense patchwork of information that eschews a single perspective. Tales of torture and political struggle against the military dictatorship contrast with garish Web visuals and shots of the country’s beautiful landscape. Indeed, Fisher structures the film around this dichotomy, playing off the invitation to foreign tourists to visit Burma. Seeing is Believing is the hypocritical entreaty, as assertion deftly undermined by Fisher’s collection of personal testimony from exiled activists. The film’s title comes from the Buddhist Charter on Free Inquiry, which says we should doubt appearances. Fisher does just that with her poetic essay, refuting the propaganda of a government bent on attracting tourists while brutalizing its people.’ — Holly Willis, LA Weekly
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bullets for breakfast (1992)
‘Images from My Darling Clementine form the basis for thought-provoking interpretation in Fisher’s Bullets for Breakfast. Combining stunning optical printing with a dense weaving of poetry, storytelling, and visual narrative, Fisher’s film explores the violent underside of another frontier—gender relations. Juxtaposing a pulp-western writer with a feminist poet, or women working at a herring smokehouse with those depicted in paintings by European Masters, Fisher reorders stories and images like musical motifs. A captivating hybrid of experimental and documentary technique, Bullets for Breakfast mines the depths of subjectivity, blurring the lines between myth and reality, fact and fiction.’ — Jon Stout
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s o f t s h o e (1987)
‘Optical printing links East with West within a mosaic of looped, layered and shifting images filmed originally on Super 8 while on a (train/car/thumb) trip across Europe in 1978. Swinging cow udders, woman sweeping, farm woman walking, nuns chanting, Nude Descending, voices in a bread shop, Dachau and other artworks from Documenta 7, riding the escalator of the Centre Pompidou, etc. are layered in overlapping, shifting, and repetitive frame-clusters pulled from Super 8 footage filmed on a trip that began in Bucharest and ended in Paris. Disparate elements are combined and manipulated to construct a lyrical work about walking, history, and memory.’ — HF
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rushlight (aka here today gone tomorrow) (1984)
‘Rushlight (aka Here Today Gone Tomorrow) was made from a single, three minute roll of Super 8 footage shot over one day of stop/start driving through the Maramures folk district of Romania. I reworked this footage via JK Optical Printer using a larger than normal film gate designed (by myself) to allow the re-filming and hence layering of frame clusters as well as single frames.
‘This project explores an intersection between transition and memory (passing time, times past, arrested in time, what lies ahead) through looping, stretching, and layering of images filmed originally while driving through this unique preserve of Romanian culture. A silent, visual sketchbook of sorts, this work explores the repetitive, cyclical structuring of this Super 8 footage developed over several years of working with a JK Printer. The result is an open and meditative work around the subject of “passage.”’ — HF
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this is montage (1978)
‘Inspired by a passage from Sergei Eisenstein’s Film Form, this film explores relationships between film and language while playfully challenging the Russian filmmaker’s theory of film montage … and thus lies between a wink and a nod to the master. Also a bit of tongue-in-cheek to myself as aspiring film studies student: had I been a good typist I very likely would never have become a filmmaker.’ — HF
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chickenstew (1978)
‘Re-enactment of a mellow evening with friends, in which a static camera, synchronous sound, a shiny cook pot, and an old wood stove conspire in a game of hide-and-seek with the viewer—involving film illusion and point-of-view. A single strand of 16mm and/or a watched pot. …’ — HF
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from the ladies (1977)
‘Filmed in the multiple-mirrored women’s powder room of the NYC Holiday Inn: A space designed exclusively for me (being a woman), which seemed simultaneously seductive and vulgar, and in which the most visible object was myself looking at myself with Bolex-in-hand. Looking at From the Ladies is an orchestration of tensions from this play between myself as filmmaker subject, object, and woman. Filmmaker at play with the gaze, so to speak.
‘Shooting begins with slow pans in wide sweeping arcs that capture anyone walking through. Gradually the shooting tightens, culminating in a passage of single-frame bursts reflected in the many mirrors. Space is transformed into an abstract swirl of motion and emotion. Tempo is the result of shot duration, as I flirt with real and reflected images, active and passive moments, making seamless shifts between subjectivity and abstraction. The sound track layers random bathroom sounds with looped voices of hotel cleaning women plus intermittent fragments from conversations occurring in the ladies room.’ — HF
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apple summer (1974)
‘Camping in Down East, Maine with artist friends evolved into a spurt-framed portrait of artist Donn Moulton. Footage of Moulton in Maine, his studio in Cambridge, and installation of his fiberglass apple paintings at Kornblee Gallery, NYC, is intercut with edited-in-camera expressionistic sequences from our camping trip.
‘The project became a playful exploration of my own way of working, via voice-over conversations between Moulton and myself on the subject of art, film, and commitment. The rough-edged, cross-cut, free-wheeling form reflects ways in which my early, highly intuitive notions of art-making differed from Moulton’s. It’s in making this film that I learned to exploit my mistakes and think with my hands.’ — HF
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subway (1968)
‘Subway is a subterranean passage that lies somewhere between fiction and diary, with literal and psychological overtones from the late ’60s. Framed within a ride on the Harvard/Ashmont Subway Line at rush hour–as the train fills and then empties, moving further from downtown Boston while I direct my 7-year-old nephew, Ben, to stand and look around, sit, get off, watch himself depart, get back on, and walk away–intercut with various scenes from my on-going (Bolex) film diary; seagulls circling, anti-war street demonstration past Playboy Club in downtown Boston, large dogs leaping into saltwater, crowd on escalator, Ben’s image in surveillance camera, twilight through half-built, backlit Coop City under construction…
‘The impulse for multiple layering, juxtaposition and other interplay of disparate imagery seemed to come naturally, even after having spent some years co-making documentary films. At the same time this film comes closer to a narrative structure than anything I’ve made before or since, with the exception of PSSSHT!‘ — HF
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psssht! (1968)
‘The dangers of aerosol sprays to the ozone layer were all over the news in the late ’60s, right up there with fierce anti-Vietnam War sentiment, identity politics, and a burgeoning environmental movement launched by Rachel Carlson’s Silent Spring. Within this context, an advert for a “feminine crotch spray” inspired the making of PSSSHT!‘ — HF
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p.s. Hey. ** Jack Skelley, Hey, J. Sweet! Let me … Everyone, Valuable alert from Mr. Jack Skelley. Hence, ‘ A new anthology just published, edited by Blake Butler (author of ‘Molly’) & Ken Bauman. Title is YOU MAY NOW FAIL TO DESTROY ME. it includes new prose by me, plus peeps and perps such as Jim Ruland, Megan Boyle, Logan Berry, Charlene Elsby, Gabriel Hart. Subtitle is AMERICAN WRITERS ON THEIR MOST DANGEROUS BELIEFS, and the whole – as I read thru it – is subversively apt for our times. My piece is DAS NEUROKAPITAL. There’s a link to order PDF or paperback.’ I can’t believe I’ve never been to El Cid even though it’s legendary and I could walk there from my LA pad if I was feeling sprightly. Soon assuming there is a soon. Dennisync Cooperink ** Dominik, Hi!!! Silco is scary looking. But I couldn’t find his younger incarnation. Be careful. I wanted to slice open one of love’s arteries and drink until he was a deflated white balloon, but that’s where he finally drew the line, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Congrats on getting that under your belt or I guess ears. Maybe I’ll sample it. Pynchon going viral is only a good thing, especially in the midst of the endless bullshit spouting better known as now. ** Malik, Oh, thanks! Everyone, Malik hooks us up with a great seeming lit zine called God’s Cruel Joke that I at least didn’t know about before. And if you hit this link, you’ll go straight to three poems by Malik, which is an obvious big bonus. Great, I look forward to it (seeing you). I was in Baltimore once before, or, wait, twice, to do bookstore readings, but it’s been decades, and I don’t remember the place at all, so it’s going to be an adventure. ** julian, I’ve come across a few unexpected people I know in my escort and/or slave searching, but in those cases I’ve left them there in peace. Huh, well, I only have one email address, so that must be it. I’m pretty sure Chris would let us release the ‘Andre’ version of the song. Maybe as a single. Huh. I guess I would need to ask Charlie/’Andre’. ** Eric C., Hey. Okay, August/September. It might be kind of hot here then, but then Paris has had two mild summers in a row, so maybe that’ll stick. Anyway, Paris is great whenever. I’ll probably be here. Everyone else in Paris tends to leave for the provinces in August, but not me. ** Misanthrope, Is Baltimore notorious for its lack of parking? Dude, if you guys can and want to, sweet, and otherwise we’ll converge in the Apple before hopefully too long. ** Carsten, Howdy. I’m not sure what to expect with the Hof festival. I have no idea who’s around there, and the festival is showing the film without German subtitles, which seems odd. It’s kind of a crapshoot. I can’t sleep on planes even when I’m desperate to sleep. I don’t know why. I just can’t relax sufficiently on planes. So I just drink as much of the horrible plane coffee as I can. I don’t know the people who do BlazeVox, no. I have friends who’ve published with them, and I’ll try to remember what their experiences were like. Very lengthy response times is sadly de rigour, as I’m sure you’re finding out. ** Steve, Daddies are massive amongst that crowd. Interesting that such self-styled sex objects have such a sentimental streak. True, it’s getting cold here, and I’m guessing the mice will be back any minute. Good luck with the bank arrangements. Good to get that done at least, I guess. ** HaRpEr //, I remember when the world was a more fair place and Queer Neo-Nazis were so novel that they could be mindlessly fetishised. Rock does still pony up with fresh, exciting stuff occasionally, it’s true. When I interviewed Steve Malkmus once, I disparaged Oasis, and he said he kind of liked them because they were such lunkheads. I too want to see ‘One Battle After Another’ despite it being 3 or something hours long and so enthusiastically received. Let’s compare notes. ** Nicholas., I liked it. I like rambling and shifty. Shifty’s always good. I’ll milk the rest of them maybe as soon as maybe today if I can get my other shit together. Bravo! I generally have the blog posts set up for about a week or a week and a half in advance, and I do pretty carefully try to arrange them so each day there’s some kind of refreshing effect going on. I co-made a film about a kind of magician, ‘Permanent Green Light’, but that turf is pretty rich, so … Get your sleep. ** Minet, Hi, pal. Oh, wow, very cool about the interview’s effect. I am beholden to you. The 20s are interesting, yeah. Kind of an in-between phase or something. More than the teenage years, I think. When I was 25? Uh, so that would be 1978. I was mostly writing poetry and going to punk gigs very frequently and I had acid reflux for a while and I’d just started doing my Little Caesar Magazine and stuff like that. It was messy and I guess hard too, but I was forging ahead like I always seem to do. You’re going to be just fine, my brilliant friend. No worries. I know of ‘Shenmue’, but I never played it. I do like Wiseman’s films a lot, yes. I think my favorite of his is ‘Monrovia, Indiana’. I’m fine, just in-between trips, trying to wrap stuff up before I head back to the dreaded USA briefly on Friday. I hope all the good is working its magic fully on you. xoxo. ** Stil, Hi! It’s a beautiful way to work, I think, letting performers have their powers. They get excited, and it’s awesome to feel like everyone is revved up and making something they care about and that it’s not just Zac and me. I’ve never watched the ‘Before’ trilogy, which is weird. I really need to do that post-haste. I think I’m getting everything that needs to get done done pre-Baltimore. We’ll see. What are you doing and working on du jour? ** Right. Today you have the chance to investigate the work of the unfairly underknown filmmaker Holly Fisher if you so choose. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
Wow, some really beautiful stills up there. Thanks for the intro, I haven’t even heard of Holly Fisher before. I’ll make sure to dig into her work. “Deafening Silence” especially sounds fascinating. And “Bullets for Breakfast” is one hell of an title.
I’ve never been to Hof, so I can’t really give you pointers on what to expect. A girl I dated told me her parents lived there, & that it’s a boring, unremarkable little town for the most part. Re. the lack of subtitles, my guess is that the festival organizers are banking on Germans’ supposedly good grasp of English. Or at least the kind of Germans that would attend such a festival: in their eyes surely nothing but college-educated A-students. Germans may not admit this up front, but they constantly have these class categories in the back of their minds. I’m certainly looking forward to your report from that screening.
OK yeah on planes I don’t really sleep in the proper sense either. I doze off, come to with my long neck in a painful twist, doze off again. And back & forth like that. For your next outing this weekend I’m certainly hoping the government shutdown won’t cause you any extra grief.
Yeah I’m very much used to the extremely long response times from publishers. The chapbook submissions especially are taking forever. Single poem submissions to journals are bad enough, but at least a few of them now have expedited responses & the like. With BlazeVox I just sent in my chapbook unprompted—no submission call or window. So I’m just curious whether they dismiss unprompted submissions right off the bat, or whether it’s just the regular amount of time it takes them to respond.
Hi!!
Happy official start of Halloween season!
Young Silco: https://hu.pinterest.com/pin/47569339809970203/
I almost sent you this same love yesterday! “A deflated white balloon” sounds very enticing, haha. I’ll have to go back for another one then. Poppers on white napkin cloth make love go absolutely crazy, Od.
Denifornia — Oooh, let’s view a Holly Fisher. Saw some music last week: The Raveonettes (Teragram Ballroom) were dark yet uplifting . Pulp opened for LCD Soundsystem (Hollwyood Bowl, nosebleed but just being at the Bowl is everything) — Pulp / Jarvis Cocker were charismatic/dramatic, w Mott the Hoople vibes (does that make sense?), and LCD have long semi annoyed me and yet I danced to the VERY Remain-in-Light-style epic grooves. Next week back at Teragram (it’s an ideal venue… small, cheap admission, drinks, and you can get right up to the stage!) for Ty Segal. What thinkest thou? — xo Jackifornnia
Dennis, I’ve been having acid reflux issues for the last few months, and I’m under doctor care, but how did you deal with your acid reflux problems? And Jack Skelley, I was at the Pulp show at the Bowl as well. And yes, the Mott reference you made makes sense to me.
Dennis, Yeah, my early research is telling me the parking in that area isnt great, but I found some lots on SpotHero, and those will work.
Is there any sort of Q&A or anything going on with the premiere?
Dennis, Yeah, my early research is telling me the parking in that area isnt great, but I found some lots on SpotHero, and those will work.
Is there any sort of Q&A or anything going on with the premiere?
Dennis, Yeah, my early research is telling me the parking in that area isnt great, but I found some lots on SpotHero, and those will work.
Is there any sort of Q&A or anything going on with the premiere?
Hey, Dennis! It’s been a while, how are you doing? Loved the post today. Some photos reminded me of two exploitations I’ve watched recently, you must have heard of ‘Let Me Die a Woman’ by Doris Wishman. I think that’s an amazing title, btw. And ‘Mondo Magic’, which I liked more than ‘Mondo Cane’… ‘Mondo Cane’ is too… Christian, idk. I’ve been talking with another fan of yours these days, Pedro Minet, he interviewed you recently. Thought that was a nice coincidence. I even said to him that I’ve been messaging you since I was 17, he thought it was cool. Anyways, I actually need help. I’ve been getting more professional recently, so I came up with a portfolio and I really wanted to send it to some publishers, so they could contract me as an illustrator for their books and covers. But I don’t really know any, so I wanted to know if you know anyplace I could be useful, or at least take a chance. I hope that doesn’t sound like social climbing lol. It’s just that you are familiar with this.
Here’s my portfolio, if you want to see. My friend made it for me, I think it’s looking nice.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qg6vM0VCR-K7tl9HQp0Xhusmmp_2t8jA/view?usp=drivesdk
Hope this finds you well!
Heeeeeey Dennis!
Those are some beautiful looking stills! And I loved the excerpt from ’ b e d e v i l e d ’ !
Life’s pretty mundane right now personally, but this week Cinema Queer (a gay filmfestival) is on in Stockholm, and it’s looking pretty fun. Saw some Popo Fan shorts yesterday, and he was there too and read some poems. I liked the poems, although the films weren’t all that great, but he seemed like a really cute guy. I also watched some Argentinian film there called ‘Perro Perro’, which was pretty uninteresting. What’s fun is that most of the screenings aren’t in actual theaters, but really weird locations, like slakthuset for example (a strange building that looks like some sort of rundown and fucked up factory which usually is used for parties and stuff like that). They are also gonna be showing ‘If it were love’ that Giselle Vienne wrote, which I’m really sad I’m gonna be missing. Going to some sort of battle of the bands thing that my friend is gonna be competing in, we’ll wish him the best of luck!
Also!!! Very fun and random fact (at least I thought it was fun)! There’s this pretty famous podcast in Sweden called ’Hör Här’ (means ”Listen Here”) where one of the hosts is this famous Swedish influencer/youtuber called Lakidoris (stage name) who’s been around since I was very little. What’s fun is that in a recent episode, Lakidoris brought up your book ’The Sluts’! I didn’t listen to the whole episode, only that part since my friend sent it to me, but she basically said that she recently discovered it and was so excited to start it. She said she doesn’t really like reading, but that if she’s going to read something it HAS to be those kinds of books, with lots of blood and guts and mutilation. Thought it was fun that your work is being brought to the Swedish mainstream, maybe you’ll see a rise of interest from the Swedish audience, hahaha!
Also, have you messaged the Stockholm film people about a screening? I’m sorry if I’m coming across as annoying by asking this but I’m just REEEEAAALLY excited about the opportunity, it would be so unbearably cool!!!!
Love love love
Kisses kisses kisses
Måns <3
Hey Dennis. Most of the images didn’t load today (might just be my computer) but that’s ok because the text was titillating enough. I’ve been unwell and strongly delirious for the past few days but that’s led to semi-interesting writing; very rarely do I overcome my big problem—the lack of overlap between my madness and my fecund periods. NYC reading in December. Exciting! I’m employing my limited resources towards meeting you/attending one of your events before I graduate and that might just be the ticket. The film club has been going on for a while. I started with OK stuff like Y Tu Mama Tambien and Bound to draw people in, moved on to things like Flash Gordon and some Cronenberg that can function as objects of analysis, and am hoping to slowly easy my friends into really good cinema. This week is John Waters’ Polyester, which is still accessible but begins to introduce some of the stuff I’m interested in exploring through the series. I considered doing Serial Mom instead (love that movie; used audio from it for a drag performance a while back), but ultimately decided on Polyester because it’s ever so slightly further out there. Exciting that The-Has-Beens is now a movie instead of another project. Have you read Sébastien Roch? It’s kinda just fine.
Hey Dennis,
How she described the Burmese government trying to push tourism and the lengths she went to to showcase something that was not a propaganda piece for or against the country is really interesting. Most would try and treat it as some sort of exposé narrative, basically shock porn for an audience abroad to gawk at. Though most would treat the whole process and experience as news, not something of art… It’s going on my list to watch!
Haven’t remembered my dreams today, though I can remember bits of the feelings and the temperature, if that makes sense. A lot of warmth in contrast with cold, like a group of people in a precarious situation. A very primal dream!
Went back to my place to take some clothes and even just stepping into the room made me assured in my decision to leave; it’s so dark and cavernous, and i found a pair of pants in my laundry with mold. It makes me want to just burn all my things which is absurd but I just am overwhelmed with the thoughts of moving things and having to check if they’re moldy or carrying some sickness. I feel crazy and I probably am haha. I did send a pitch to this zin about American folklore, it was about the topic of cults in the 70s and how we seem to be in a similar state, albeit digital now.
Hopefully this kickstarts a new period of productivity, or at least feeling content.
Hey D. If it can be sorted, a visit when you get here? It’s been too long. In the meantime, here’s the usual, we love you. M&J
Hey Dennis.
Don’t have much to say today. I got a YouTube video in my recommendations that said you had a mansion in Georgia. You’ve probably heard of that video before, but when I saw it, all I could think was that it definitely wasn’t yours because if you owned that much land, you would turn it into a theme park. Who knows…maybe a Dennis Cooper theme park in Georgia would redeem the entire state?
Hey. Holly Fisher is new to me. The excerpt from ‘everywhere at once’ is really terrific. I’ve got to find a way to watch the whole thing.
I watched ‘Olga’s House of Shame’ this evening and it was a lot of fun. A good exploitation film to start Halloween season well.
I should really stop saying that I’m losing interest in rock at this point, that actually feels like I’m betraying my childhood or something. I listen to a lot of it, and am finding stuff from the past that I haven’t heard of before everyday basically. It’s just particularly that a lot of critics are propping up this neo post-rock stuff happening in London at the moment as being the future of rock and I really don’t care or get excited by it to be honest. To me it’s just slam poetry with musical accompaniments but I could be missing something. Maybe that’s what I meant when I said that I like stupidity, since that’s what passes for smart.
I’m feeling really inspired at the moment. Since I don’t have a lot of my books around me at the moment except for some slim pickings I’m really studying music and movies and stuff and I do think that it’s having an effect on my writing. I was thinking today about in the current landscape how people are quicker to call music and films ‘art’ than they are with writing, I’m talking strictly about what’s being released today. I think less writers view writing as an art than in other forms as far as the mainstream is concerned, anyway. When I was a student I met a lot of people who wanted to write like Sally Rooney or whoever and I was thinking that it was like we were literally interested in working in different practices, but then I met musicians who were generally more curious about things and I felt a kinship with them. Obviously, I’m talking about the mainstream vs what’s harder to find, but what I think I’m trying to get at is that interesting music is more widespread than interesting writing. A lot of this is arbitrary but I’ve been thinking about it for some reason.
Hey Dennis! Thanks for the fill-ins on Paris. I’m really looking forward to seeing it.
Random things: I’m reading Frisk right now, and it reminds me that there was a film adaptation of that Bob Mould did the score for, I thin. Did you ever get to see Hüsker Dü live? If so, what was it like? As a Twin Cities kid, one of my regrets is never being able to see them play, although I’ve seen Bob and Greg play separately.
You’ve mentioned many times that Robert Bresson had a profound impact on you. Showing my ignorance here, but I had actually never heard of him before getting into your work, and I really need to change that. Could you recommend a few of his films that you would consider essential?
Hi, again! Ugh, I’m excited for you to see those films, whenever you get around to it. I feel lucky to have seen them young, because they are movies that grow up with you. I watched the trilogy with my dad and my favorite was the first, “Before Sunrise,” when the characters are both around my age, and his was the third, “Before Midnight,” which sees them in middle age. I also like the first because it’s set in Vienna and I love that city to bits. I lived there my junior year of high school, so it’s nice to see the familiar places.
Oof, what am I working on right now… I just finished up a couple of zines for my club’s table at Pretty Good Fest in Chicago. One is the cowboy zine I gave to you, and the second is a Twin Peaks fanzine that combines collages of images from the series with Richard Siken’s poem, “Scheherazade.” It was so fun to make, but I definitely spent too much time on it. I’m also just starting the first project for my experimental film class. The prompt is “landscape as the state of mind.” I’ve no idea what I’m going to do for it yet, but now I wouldn’t be surprised if it involved some superimposition à la “bullets for breakfast”–my gosh that film looks beeyoutiful! Thank you for spotlighting Holly Fisher, I’ve not heard of her before but this work is really amazing. I’ve gotta find some of her full pieces and read some of the essays you’ve linked.
Hey Dennis, Interesting filmmaker and artist. I wonder how I can find/watch Fisher’s film on Burma/Myanmar. That complicated place fascinates; I’m a google maps fanatic when it comes to hard to visit places; check out its odd, planned capital city if you want to squint in wonder. Also like human rights documentaries that explore underground and/or smuggled media or narratives, like Fisher’s film. Last night, I watched ‘Beyond Utopia,’ about a family escaping North Korea via China, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand. Pretty incredible footage and the story, well, makes me question why I ever have a complaint. Good luck on your travels and, when you return, I’ve got some Qs for you, if you’re amenable. Take care, Don
ciao dennis!!
wow, coming back from a very busy month, i can also see that you are very busy. nice!
i have to catch up with all your posts.
are there any news of a possible showing of “room temperature” in amsterdam/the netherlands?
yeah, quick message today, i have to run to work. wishing you a beautiful day!