‘In the name of the popular, delighting in reduction and obviousness, a boring assertion: the common ground of every film movement christened a “new wave” over the last 70 years has tended toward revision, a self-conscious desire to provide a true image of the people in opposition to the distorted picture given by whatever relevant iterations of official culture. The banality of this claim can be measured by the volume of cant and platitude produced in support of it, often by the artists themselves. There is, I hope, little need to rehearse these arguments regarding realism, myth, and so on. Who today can help but squirm when faced with the phrase “true image of the people?” Still, that more slippery thing called film culture continues apace in discovering fresh waves or producing them, an inevitable response to a century—the 20th, which, despite all number of alterations in social and geopolitical alignment, refuses to end—in which control of images appears to comprise a substantial part of what it means to be in power.
‘Following a string of acclaimed shorts, Jude made his feature debut in 2009 with The Happiest Girl in the World, a minor comedy of deadpan repetition which staked out the concern with image production sustained across the first decade of his career. Unfolding from late morning through to sundown, it charts the excruciating attempt to film a promotional spot with the titular girl, Delia Cristina Fratina, the unhappy winner of a Dacia Logan through a beverage company’s mail-in-the-label contest. Her unhappiness derives from papa’s insistence on selling the station wagon to fund a family-run boarding house, his desire to enter into the financial comfort of rent collection at odds with the teenage freedom a car affords.
‘Sullen and unable to convincingly deliver the line that she’s “the luckiest, happiest girl in the world”—she reliably forgets the former adjective—poor Delia is run through take after take, forced to gulp down ludicrous quantities of cola-spiked artificial juice (added to improve its colour), while drawing the ire and annoyance of both the spot’s director and the on-set beverage executives as adequate light slowly slips away. If Jude risks tidiness in contrasting the new corporate Romania’s insistence on producing the image of an idiotically giddy consumerist subject with the subsistence-level reality of the individuals lucky enough to be picked to fill this role, his willingness to root comedy in the exhaustion and tedium of even a single afternoon’s effort in this failed process of low-grade social engineering makes clear that, from the first, he possessed a fine sense of the relationship between style and meaning.
‘Working across a dozen years marked by the widening demand that every artist maintain a consistent and coherent style-as-brand, Jude has instead progressed by sharp zigs and zags. Leaving aside a pair of still-image essays on Romania’s anti-Semitic pogroms, The Dead Nation (2017) and The Exit of the Trains (2020), his other seven features each take up a form all but entirely distinct from the rest. Following the repetitive naturalism of Happiest Girl, an approach plainly inflected by Lazarescu (though Jude’s repetition is more severe and his flat, fading daylight is far from Puiu’s sickly artificial interiors), he returned three years later with Everybody in Our Family, a domestic drama that spirals from bickering to manic derangement.
‘Having produced portraits of a Modern Man (brutal) and a Modern Girl (pitiable)—I wonder whether these both need be named as specifically Romanian instances—Jude turned in his next two features toward the past, continuing to leverage moments of masculinity in crisis as opportunities for historical revision on a national scale. Both Aferim! (2015) and Scarred Hearts (2016) pivot away from the allegorical possibilities of Happiest Girl and Everybody, presenting instead object lessons in social dynamics. The former—which marks a significant expansion of Jude’s visual scale into widescreen monochrome, full of broad horizons and light dense enough to grasp—is a kind of revisionist Eastern in the manner of Peckinpah or Hellman, following a father-son pair as they roam Wallachia circa 1835 in search of a runaway Romani slave on the lam after fucking the wife of his owner, the local Boyar. The latter, loosely adapted from the Romanian surrealist Max Blecher’s sanatorium-set autobiographical novel of the same name, details the blithe detachment of the country’s upper class on the eve of its Nazi alliance, told with appropriate preciousness in the recent International Style: 35mm in an Academy frame (complete with rounded corners), master-shot compositions full of hues as saturated as they are muted, and a general air of wistful irony at the fact of living through history.
‘For Jude, the audience, the crowd, the people, attain coherence through fiction. Nationalism, for example, is not a fiction, but it is built of them; such points are as close as art and politics come to one another. Of course, they never touch: the notion that art itself can “do politics” through mere reflection and representation is among the more pernicious of current liberal myths. And as “I Do Not Care” shows, while political forces may aim to censor or shape art to their preferences (in extremes, they may destroy it), art’s capacity for dissembling, its complicated and enervating relationship to truth, will lead it over, under, and around restraints.
‘So here we squirm: What to do with a true image of the people? Has Jude, across these seven films, produced one? (The eighth, last year’s Uppercase Print, is to my mind his only outright failure, an overly loose arrangement of case files presented in the deadpan public-address tones of Straub-Huillet against garish and minimal pop sets interspersed with disjunctive passages of found footage; though in showing the limits of certain kinds of self-conscious artifice, it contributes something to this constellation all the same.) I must, for now, leave this question open, though I’ll offer related questions in place of an answer. What is the standard by which we might judge this truth? What is the value in reflecting on the process of such image production? How do we conceive the audience for such work, and what does this desire betray?
‘This last question leads on, somewhat perversely, to Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, which carries a clarifying subtitle: sketch for a popular film. As I’ve shown, the first phase of Jude’s career orbits the production of images, whether directly (Happiest Girl, Aferim!, “I Do Not Care,” Uppercase Print, the still-image essays) or obliquely (Everybody, Scarred Hearts). If Bad Luck Banging—which, given its subject matter and its Berlin win, will surely become the director’s most visible title in North America—signals a new chapter in his career even as it sums up much of what came before, it is so to the extent that it shifts his focus from the production of images to their circulation and distribution.’ — Phil Coldiron
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Stills
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Further
Radu Jude @ IMDb
Radu Jude’s favorite films
The History of Cinema. Radu Jude
Radu Jude @ RogerEbert.com
Radu Jude Wows Locarno
Radu Jude @ Letterboxd
“Rules Stop Me from Daring”: Radu Jude
Guilty Pleasures: Radu Jude
Radu Jude and the joys of making a cinema masterpiece
An interview with Radu Jude
Radu Jude: “I’ve become more and more interested in the aesthetics of an unfinished product”
NOTES AND OBSERVATIONS BY GEOFF ANDREW: Radu Jude
“I don’t want to make cute things”: an interview with director Radu Jude.
A Study for a Popular Film: Radu Jude Interviewed by Joseph Pomp
“I’m Not Fond of Nostalgia.”
ATROCITY INHIBITION: THE (NEW) FILMS OF RADU JUDE
The Exquisite Corpse of History. Radu Jude and the Intermedial Collage
Signs of Life: A letter from Radu Jude
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Extras
A Message to Viewers of Radu Jude: Forget About These Films!
Filmmaker in Focus: Radu JUDE
Radu Jude Knows He’s Divisive, But He Loves It
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Interview
from jugend ohne film
You made quite a few short films and you still make them. Can you tell us a bit about how you treat the short form in comparison to a feature film? Is there any difference between the two for you? Did you make some films as part of a film education program or was it never like that for you?
Radu Jude: I am not making many short films now, I recently made one using some archive footage, it is called The Marshal’s Two Executions and it is just a simple comparison of images – images from the documentary of the execution of wartime fascist leader Ion Antonescu juxtaposed with the images of the same event as it was staged in a feature film which glorifies the Marshal. One can find a lot to think about after seeing this comparison, I hope. Otherwise, I don’t plan on making short films for the moment, not because I don’t consider them a serious form of filmmaking, but because my subjects (or how I think of them) need a little bit more screen time. Otherwise, for me, there’s no difference between the two forms and I consider a film like, let’s say, Un chien andalou as good as Out 1.
How was the creative process behind the scripts you co-wrote with Florin Lăzărescu different from when you wrote alone – and what did you learn from him as a collaborator?
Florin is not only a gifted writer (and speaking about short forms, I must say I consider his short stories to be the best in contemporary Romanian literature), but a good friend as well, despite the fact that he lives far, far away from me. As to what I learned from him, I am not sure I can put that into words, but it has to do with a special way of looking at things – he can notice a small event and see something much deeper in it. And he is a humanist, for sure, while I am a bit colder than he is. For the moment I write alone, I need to explore cinema in directions that don’t say much to him or I use other texts as a starting point (as was the case with Scarred Hearts, based on M. Blecher, or the way it is now with a film I am preparing, which is based on the play Tipografic majuscul by Gianina Cărbunariu).
Are there any “rules“ or principles that you believe one should take into account when filming history or putting history on film?
No, of course not, everyone can do this in his or her own way. The beauty of films is that there are no rules, apart from the ones imposed by others or self-imposed. As for me, I believe that this illusionist reconstruction of the past is not only impossible, but also questionable (after all, why would you want to give the viewers the illusion that “this is exactly how things were 200 years ago”), so I tried to at least find ways of representing the past in a manner that also shows the limits of this representation.
Do you feel that Romania’s treatment of its problematic past(s) has changed in recent times, and if so, in what way?
I think some progress has been made, but it is very fragile. For instance, when I was in high school at the beginning of the 90’s, nobody mentioned the Romanian participation in the mass murders of WW2, but there is some information on this now. On the other hand, in the last few years one can notice a revival of nationalism, put to use in many different ways. For instance, we just had a shameful referendum organized by the state hand in hand with the Romanian Orthodox Church. The referendum was about “the definition of the family,” but in fact it was just a hate referendum to prevent the possibility of equal rights for LGBTQ people. But not only that, the whole campaign in favour of that stupid referendum was filled with nationalism and conservatism in its most dubious forms (“let’s get back to our old Christian traditions,” “let’s not accept the fake values of Europe,” etc.) and all that in a frightening quantity. The fact that many people boycotted the referendum, which in the end was not successful, shows there’s some hope left.
When did you first become strongly aware of the extent of Romania’s historical antisemitism?
It was also while I was in high school, but not because of the school, but because of some books that appeared at that time. There was also a short documentary film, which now seems to be lost, so at least I can mention its name: The Last Jew by Florin Iepan. I still remember how impressed I was when I saw this film on TV.
You have noted in an interview that you don’t believe in the saying that history repeats itself. What do you mean by that?
I was referring to an idea that became some kind of a thinking cliché, the idea that “history repeats itself.” Because I think there are forms of thinking and behaviour that create similar events, but they also have different forms. I don’t think the Holocaust will happen again, but there are other horrible things, it is enough to see one image from Yemen to understand it is happening all the time.
Your films in some way escape typical “auteurist“ attributes. Here you employ intertitles, there you make a documentary with photographs, then you have male and female leads, filming in black and white as well as in colour, different aspect ratios, films about movement, films about being unable to move and so on. Maybe this is a silly question to ask, but how do you find the form for your films? How do you keep free from what already worked before?
Oh, this is (actually, was) one of my big frustrations, that I am not an auteur. I mean, I got over it, but I am still nostalgic for a personal style, a personal vision. I know I will never have it, I got used to this idea. I just make the films in a manner which I discover for each project at a time. That’s all.
Is it hard to get money for your films?
Well, my films are not very expensive and it was a little bit easier for my last project, but it is still very complicated. It helps that today one can make films without so much money. As Godard used to say, if I have only one dollar, I will make a one-dollar film.
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17 of Radu Jude’s 28 films
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Dimineata (2007)
‘Two characters, one taxi, a crisis and a compromise.’ — MUBI
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The Happiest Girl in the World (2009)
‘Delia, an unworldly teenager from a small town in rural Romania, strikes it lucky in a competition run by a soft drink company—and wins a car. But when her family bring her to Bucharest to appear in a commercial for the company in question, luck becomes something of a relative term.’ — cinemascope
Excerpt
Excerpt
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A Film for Friends (2011)
‘A disillusioned man is filming a farewell letter for his loved ones before committing suicide. From his sometimes furious, sometime tear-jerking confession, we get to know that he lost everything, but somehow one’s still never sure whether to cry, pity, laugh or cheer him up. This is a hell of a performance for actor Gabriel Spahiu (Everybody in Our Family and last year’s Adalbert’s Dream), who’s pretty much alone on the screen in what it seems to be one long, continuous take. The camera never moves, but director Radu Jude cruelly pushes the viewer along the thin line between comedy and horror, until we no longer know what to expect. There’s no cheating here: the guy shoots himself, the frame stays still and… well, we’d rather not tell you what happens in the last 20 minutes. Fasten your seatbelts, it’s gonna be a bumpy, noisy and twisted ride.’ — Film at Lincoln Center
the entire film
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Everybody in Our Family (2012)
‘”Everybody in Our Family,” a new film by Romanian director Radu Jude, is a violent, funny and disconcerting vision of a familial argument turned into actual slugfest. What makes the movie compelling is that even though the characters act in extreme ways, the whole thing doesn’t seem exaggerated in the least.’ — Michał Oleszczyk
Trailer
Excerpt
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Shadow of a Cloud (2013)
‘In a torrid summer day in Bucharest, the priest Florin Florescu is called to a dying woman’s side for saying a prayer.’ — Letterboxd
Trailer
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It Can Pass Through the Wall (2014)
‘Radu Jude manages to capture in this short film a child’s innocent perception on death. A short but very intense story about death-awareness, a moment everybody is to face at some point in life.’ — cinepub
the entire film
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w/ Andrei Cretulescu, Luiza Pârvu, Iulia Rugina Scurt/4: Istorii de inimã neagrã (2014)
‘Directed by four different filmmakers and produced by different production companies, these four short films share a common theme – life and death – and a common origin – all four are independent productions made with a little help from all our friends.’ — Letterboxd
Trailer
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Aferim! (2015)
‘If I were to tell you that the new film “Aferim!” was set in the mid-1800s and followed a couple of bounty hunters as they roamed the countryside in pursuit of an escaped slave, there’s a pretty good chance you might assume it took place in America in those grim years before the Emancipation Proclamation and that this movie served as another expose of one of the most shameful aspects of our nation’s past. In fact, this smart and occasionally quite powerful drama is set in Romania. But while the location may seem remote, the horrors that arise from the decision of one group of people to treat another as little more than property—not to mention the twisted ways in which they attempt to justify these actions to themselves and those under their thumbs—remain depressingly universal and even more depressingly contemporary more than two centuries down the line.’ — Peter Sobczynski
Trailer
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Scarred Hearts (2016)
‘Set in 1937, Scarred Hearts, inspired by Romanian author Max Blecher’s novel, centers on Emanuel, a young intellectual with a penchant for poetry who spends his days at a sanatorium on the Black Sea coast, suffering from bone tuberculosis. Despite his physical condition, Emanuel falls in love, quotes literature, and encourages his fellow patients to live life fully, which includes listening to jazz and throwing the occasional drunken party. Meanwhile, outside the sanatorium walls, fascism is on the rise. Director Radu Jude’s richly detailed camerawork—shot on 35mm film in the full-screen, square Academy ratio—provides a master class in mise-en-scène.’ — Film at Lincoln Center
Trailer
Excerpt
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The Dead Nation (2017)
‘The Dead Nation is a documentary-essay, which shows a stunning collection of photographs from a Romanian small town in the 1930’s and 1940’s. The soundtrack, composed mostly from excerpts taken from the diary of a Jewish doctor from the same era, shows us what the photographs do not: the rising of the anti-Semitism and eventually a harrowing depiction of the Romanian Holocaust, a topic which is not very talked about in the contemporary Romanian society.’ — Tavskovski Films
Trailer
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I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (2018)
‘Jude’s self-reflexive, agonized attempt to evoke history—while musing on the dangers of uncritical historical reconstruction—reminds me in some ways of Atom Egoyan’s flawed but bracingly complex Ararat, which focused on the much-denied realities of the Armenian genocide and on the contradictions inherent in trying to make a realist movie about the subject. “I Don’t Care…” is at once more playful and more intense, denying us the lush imagistic pleasures of Egoyan’s film, instead offering a caustic, sometimes farcical humor that channels its maker’s rage. The general tone, however, is closer to early ’80s Godard films such as Sauve Qui Peut (La Vie) (“Every Man for Himself, ” 1980) or Passion (1980), another film about the problem of making images that may be realistic, as opposed to true. Ioana Iacob, with her punchy, boomy voice and general don’t-give-a-fuck demeanor, makes a genially arresting center to the chaos as the beleaguered intellectual heroine who’s also a natural clown. There’s a lovely comic moment when Marin and a gaggle of helmeted mock-militia huddle under a table to shelter from a rain shower. It might just be a goofy sight gag, yet it reminds us that you can hide from the weather but you can’t hide from history.’ — Jonathan Romney
Trailer
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Uppercase Print (2020)
‘The anger and despair in this Romanian filmed theatre work are kept in check by its ice-cold manner: it is spoken throughout in the kind of deadened official style that Ceaușescu-era apparatchiks might have used for reports on wrongdoers and dissidents, and the style that these same people might have used to defend themselves, and convince their political masters that they had internalised the right kind of torpid, soulless submission.’ — Peter Bradshaw
Trailer
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The Exit of the Trains (2020)
‘On June 29, 1941, the Jewish residents of Iași, Romania—13,000 in total—were rounded up, shot, stuffed into trains, and asphyxiated in one of the first large-scale massacres of the Holocaust. This haunting cinematic memorial adopts a powerfully minimalistic approach—presenting archival photos of the victims, one by one, A to Z, along with voiceover testimonials from survivors and witnesses—to convey the unimaginable scale of the atrocity.’ — The Criterion Channel
Trailer
Excerpt
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Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021)
‘Radu Jude’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn is such a punch in the face. Trust me when I tell you that you’ve never seen a movie like it, and there’s a good chance you’ll not only hate Jude for making it, you’ll hate me, too, even though I’m telling you — no, ordering you — not to watch it. Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn isn’t a movie so much as it is a Rorschach test. Not everyone has the intestinal fortitude to go spelunking inside their own psyches to find the creepy crawlies. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t there, or that every woman on the planet hasn’t felt those crawlies creeping all over her at one point or another.’ — Stacey K Eskelin
Trailer
Radu Jude discusses Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn with Dennis Lim
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Plastic Semiotic (2021)
‘Plastic Semiotic proposes an analysis of the innocent universe of toys made with the tools of cinema – camera, editing, mis-en-scene.’ — MUBI
Trailer
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Potemkinistii (2022)
‘Romanian director Radu Jude’s beautifully filmed political comedy short, in which a persuasive sculptor (Alexandru Dabija) tries to get funding from a cultural bureaucrat (Cristina Draghici) to restore a monument to the sailors from the Battleship Potemkin on the banks of the Danube-Black Sea canal. He explains how the ending to Eisenstein’s film was propaganda, and that the sailors had actually had to seek asylum in Romania. During the discussion he realises he’ll have to spin the story to fit modern ideology and geopolitical thinking, to have any chance of getting the project funded. Featuring numerous clips from Eisenstein’s classic to illustrate his pitch, “the sharp and sardonic discussion touches on Romania’s sufferings under Soviet rule, Russia’s latter-day aggression, and the contentious politics of official commemoration”.’ — williamfaeleith
Trailer
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Do Not Expect Too Much of the End of the World (2023)
‘It’s another skittery, jittery movie, an experimental adventure in which narrative is of merely incidental importance, compulsively testing the limits and textures of contemporary experience, always digressing and interrupting itself and intrigued by the world as filtered by the movie screen, the Zoom screen, 4K, 8K, livestream and TikTok and raising a continuous white noise of complaint about modern Romania: the degradation of its public space, the misery of its continuing infatuation with strong leaders, its racism and its incompetent embrace of capitalism and the free market. It’s also a movie about the production of the image: one of the characters dully ponders the fact of Jean-Luc Godard’s assisted death – though perhaps Godard’s spirit lives on here in Radu Jude.’ — Peter Bradshaw
Trailer
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p.s. Hey. ** Kettering, Hi. Thank you. Crowd funding would be a last ditch option. It takes an enormous amount of work and time to do that successfully, and Zac and I are already overly busy working on the film’s technical needs, not to mention that neither of us have real self-promotional skills. Also, I looked into it, and it’s actually not a very promising way to raise the amount of money we need. We’re also working on a tight deadline, and crowdfunding is not the quick solution we need. So, we’ll only go that route if it’s absolutely necessary. But thank you a lot for suggesting it. ** Roo, Wait, Roo, is that you? I’m guessing so. Dude, welcome to the fold. First impressions? Huh, mm, that he was very talented and amusingly deadpan. And that he was a really good writer, and the poet gang and I were very encouraging on that front because he was more geared to making art at that point as I recall. And, you know, he was nice. I can’t remember so well. It’s been too many ages. There’s another grant we’ve applied for, but it’s a much longer shot that the one we didn’t get, so no real hopes there. Thanks! ** Misanthrope, Thanks, pal. We’ll get there because we have to. Last I remember jonnism was living in Portland, I think. I should track him down. ** Kyler, Hi, Kyler. I’ll definitely check out Village Works Bookshop next time I’m in NYC. Look forward to the interview. Everyone, the author, magickal practitioner, and d.l. Kyler James is interviewed at Perseus Academy about what looks like all sorts of interesting things, and you can partake if you merely click this. Take care. ** Tosh Berman, Yep on all those fronts. It was fun to rewatch your talk with Benjamin and Amy when I was setting the post up. Well, we can’t legally forget about the producer, it’s far too late in the process for that, but a French producer who produced ‘Permanent Green Light’ has generously stepped into the void and is helping us tremendously, so we’re concentrating on working with him as fully as we can. We don’t need a massive amount of money relatively speaking, no, but we maxed out almost all the funding possibilities when raising the funds to shoot the film. As dire as it is, I’m confident we’ll find a way to get there. We’re in heavy thinking mode this week, and we’ll get there somehow, just hopefully not with too many more huge problem being created for ourselves. Thanks, Tosh, I really appreciate it. ** Jack Skelley, Yep, yep, yep. I explained why crowdfunding is a last ditch to Kettering up above, but thank you, man. Oh, I watched that Brian Jones/Stones doc. It’s not a brilliant doc or anything, but, if you’re still interested in Brian Jones, it’s well worth watching. xo. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Thank you, big D. That Weissman book is total fun and joy if you ever feel jones-y for it. Yeah, no one seems very impressed with that Fincher thing. I feel like he kind of shot his wad as director about five films back in time. Money and cold sesame noodle?! I’m saved on every level. Love, you rule. Love giving you a skeleton key that opens every lock of every type in Vienna, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, I think you’d quite like Benjamin’s writing. Thanks about the non-grant. What does Cicciolina do on that record? Sing, I assume. I didn’t know she sung. Or maybe she recites? Or raps? Anyway, I’ll go track down a track and see/hear for myself. Enjoy. ** Steve Erickson, Thanks, Steve. Yeah, it’s hard. Even here in France. We all think of France as a font of wild, adventurous filmmaking, but in fact that’s mostly (not entirely, obviously) a thing of the past, and the people on the grant committees are pretty conventional in their tastes, or at least that’s what we’ve found. Easier here than there if you want/need to fund your films through the traditional methods. nonetheless. The rub with France is that there are all these rules and regulations for how much money you must have to shoot a feature and exactly how long it will take and exactly what everyone will be paid, so you can’t really make renegade or underground films here, or, if you do, you can’t release them officially. People do what we did with ‘Permanent Green Light’, which is get funding for a short film and then shoot the whole feature in the requisite short time frame that the short film funding allows and then enlarge it afterwards. You can’t make a feature film here for less than 1 million euros. It’s not legal to do that. It’s good in the sense that it assures that everyone working on the film is paid what they consider fairly, but it’s not an easy system to work in if you want to make low budget features. No, as I said above, it’s too late to jettison the problem causer. We just have to survive him, basically. We’re seeing what our funding options are right now and figuring out what we’ll do. Thanks, Steve. ** wolf, Wolf!!! Holy shit! It’s weird, or not weird actually, but I was thinking and talking about you with Zac yesterday, wishing you would come visit or vice versa or something and wondering how you are, etc. Yay! So not fair, indeed. We are post-fairness over here. Well, I don’t think the UK has been spared either. Dude, what’s going on? Let’s Zoom or Skype or whatever. What do you say? Miss you bigly, my friend. Love, me. ** tomk, Thanks, man. We’ll get there, hopefully not via wheelchairs. Yeah, ‘Fall of the heartless horse’ is so good. Amy Gerstler is in some kind of touch with Martha Kinney, and I think she just totally gave up writing entirely, which is sad because I really thought she was going to be major. I’m ok, and I trust you are. ** Dom Lyne, Thank you, pal and sir. Yes, my email is still the outlook one. Cool, thanks a lot in advance! Hug plus a back scrunch from me. ** Charlie, Hello, Charlie. We’re just meeting right this very moment, correct? Welcome, if I’m not wrong. And I certainly ‘pray’ you win the lottery, definitely for both of our sakes. How’s you and stuff? ** ellie, Hi, e! Thanks a lot. Yeah, you know, what can one do. We’re just figuring out how to go forward now and trying to shrug that loss off. Best possible wishes and lit imaginary votive candles and all of that kind of upwardly mobile vibes-type activity towards your boyfriend’s health and you. ‘Wittgenstein’, cool. I should rewatch that. Yeah, I hope the stress is heavily dissipating and that you have the most wonderful day. xo, me. ** Dr. Kosten Koper, Hi, Kosten. It’s a great and an honor to see you in this abode, sir. Gosh, sure, thank you, I’d love to do the interview. Thank you for wanting to. I should be here. My email is denniscooper72@outlook.com. Let me know what’s best for you. It’ll be lovely to see you! ** Okay. I only recently discovered the excellent films of Radu Jude thanks to a hot tip from one of the great people commenting here. Maybe you know his stuff, or maybe you’re a newbie like me. In any case, enjoy the investigation, See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
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“You can’t make a feature film here for less than 1 million euros. It’s not legal to do that.”
Fascinating. Had no idea. Like you said, the point is fairness, but oy. That’s a difficult limitation to work around.
Thanks for chronicling this stuff. I know you must be thoroughly over beating your brains out against the funding wall. Hopefully the dam breaks soon! <3
Dennis, You should! I see he has another last name added to his on FB, so maybe he got married or something? I don’t know. Would be interesting to see what he’s up to. Seems to look the same from his most recent pics on there but with a beard.
You’ll get it done. I have great confidence in that.
Radu Jude seems like a blast. The Happiest Girl in the World is available here on DVD and I’m renting that one next. Thank you for the tip!
Cicciolina has no actual talent but San Francisco Dance is here and to me, it’s quite irresistible. Her singing career never really took off.
Hi!!
Yeah, I don’t know if I’ve seen too many of his newer stuff. David Fincher, I mean. “Mindhunter” comes to mind, which wasn’t bad. I’ve never heard of Radu Jude, though. Thank you for the introduction!
Well, thank you, love! I might raid my favorite queer bookstore around here, although I’ll probably feel a bit bad about it. And I sure hope I won’t let myself into total strangers’ homes. It’s just so tempting, no? Not even to steal anything, just to look around. Love going back in time and asking me not to start watching the series “Fellow Travelers” until all of its episodes are out (which is another three and a half weeks), Od.
With respect to making films, I remember a well-known actor telling me that it is difficult to make a bad film as well as a good one. Even mainstream filmmakers of great note have difficulties in getting their works made. I just saw an interview with Ridley Scott, and what he does is make a storyboard of almost every scene in his films. One is for practical working reasons, but for him it is a technique to raise funds. Once the funder/producer/etc. sees the storyboard they can see and understand the scope of the project on hand. I just finished (co-wrote) the second draft of my (our) script based on my memoir. It will be interesting to see what will happen with it. Maybe we should do a storyboard for the entire script! Anyway, keep your nose to the grind, and something will happen on behalf of you and the film. It is just a painful process.
Dennis! Yeah, you guys need to get yer arses across the channel pronto – did you not mention that you weren’t as down on London as you use to be? 😉
Absofuckinglutely on the skype/zoom thing. I’ll email you. XX!!
Hi! Mhm, yeah of course. Same to you too obviously, and thanks for the wishes. Votive candles sound great to me, I love them, and everything else imaginary. I think he’s fine, just overworked still, like he freelances and everything and never went to college, so upwardly mobile vibes would be amazing. And he’s feeling better! Look at that, dissipation already in progress. Love.
Hi. The good vibes still apply even though you did not manage to get the grant. I feel something or things will come through I am sure you guys push through hard and people liking the film was hopeful. Is it correct that all the other entries were documentaries? It is strange for it to being the only different film, the one that stands out. So many factors play a part in these things I am sure it will be okay with other opportunities
I am reading the Barbara Pym novel The sweet dove died today. I became fan thanks to your 2019 post about A glass of blessings which was my first Barb novel I read. The one I read now has gay characters too, it is kind of different than the previous ones I read which were more funny and cheerful in tone, more carefree
I collect pictures for my next Draw over pics series so I am in the pre production stage. I want to do like 80 really good ones and hustle them around
When you see father’s scale modeling pics tell thoughts. I still think of buying a kit. And I going through issues of Fine scale modeler magazine I have collected in encyclopedia form. Hi from me and my cute dog Ireli from cold Crete
More good news I am waiting for the Rimbaud edition you did recommend and Closer new edition Both books will be here soon I can’t wait because reading Closer again means that I will read the rest of the cycle after
As if I needed excuse to read the cycle again (but it’s a good one). They say you can read in any order you want but doing chronological is good idea in my opinion
I’m sorry you’re trapped with the producer from hell. Your take on the difficulty of financing French cinema is eye-opening. I had no idea there was a law against making films for a budget below 1 million Euro. While the desire to protect workers in the industry is great, it doesn’t acknowledge the nuances of projects where the director not only making isn’t any money, they put up the whole budget from their savings or credit cards. I believe Jean-Pierre Melville shot THE SILENCE OF THE SEA completely outside the industry on a tiny budget in 1947 and its release was delayed for several years because he broke the law by doing so.
Despite all this, current French filmmaking still seems pretty strong to me. It’s hard to imagine Bertrand Bonello getting the chance to make NOCTURAMA or THE BEAST if he were American. Yesterday, I looked up several American directors who made strong independent films in the 2010s, and none of them have made a film in years or appear to have anything on the horizon.
I’ve mixed the first song on my new album, and it’s completely ready for release. I’ve finished and chosen the second one, but it needs much more EQ work because it’s so bass-heavy that it sounds muddy. I finally downloaded a bruxaria sample pack, so you’ll be hearing elements of that in the music I write next year. The compilation ASCEND, made up of bleak, grimy electronic interludes from ’90s black metal albums, is also a current influence.
Over the weekend, I learned that John Cassavetes’ 1966 made-for-TV movie IN PURSUIT OF EXCELLENCE is up on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUboATDn_uc&t=9s&ab_channel=sfinthecity. It’s a terrible copy, but this fllm is ultra-rare, barely screening existed since it first aired.
Dennis, this is so great, and DEEPLY appreciated!!! Please do put me in touch with Joel (the same Joel (Westendorf?! If so will be really wonderful to see him!!! Still so proud of HHU, I hope it has been has been a super important to others as it was/is for us… Truly hope to see you soon–I have some ideas for a 30th anniversary (is this even possible?!) HHU–we should discuss!!! XOXO Keith
It’s me! The one and only. Finally figured out the schedule for commenting. I commented once before—three years ago—but it was after you had already replied to everyone. Anyway, I’m really hoping you and Zac get this other grant. Got my fingers crossed. And thanks for this post. Jacqui and I are gonna watch one of Radu Jude’s films tomorrow night, probably The Happiest Girl in the World. 🙂
No big jackpot win to report, unfortunately. I’ve popped up previously, if rather infrequently. Always nice to be welcomed, though! Stuff and I are good. Life has its ups and downs, but you take the shit with the sunshine. Scored a ticket to see Tool play next year, which is bucket-list material for me, so I am very much stoked for that.
Hey
Oh. I am very sorry about the grant. Aw I really thought you’d get it. Dude I think this is an amazing movie idea, and though I haven’t seen it o just know it’s like totally going to get the recognition it deserved
I think there should totally be more movies/media etc centered around campy haunted houses etc
Sorry I’m in a rush, but I mean it!
Upward! I think that amazing, I’ve been trying to practice moving upward rather than downward, right now I think I’m both.
Im like a loose screw that’s grinding up and down incessantly and I don’t know how to hammer it back in but I think I’ll figure it out of i just try to fix things.
Our plumbing was down which sucked. Today is quite sad but more in a general way rather than an emotional.
I feel everything always sucks during the holidays. It’s like so close to the end and you begin to feel like you’ve done nothing good.
I think last December was one of my “attempts” because the holidays suck. Gaaah! Althought I think I’m going to get back to writing because my goal the beginning of the year was to finish my book and I’ve barely started the final cut and i have just failed that goal. I guess the final cut would be easier since I finished the draft.
I think I will just push through because I have time to finish. I just wish everything didn’t suck. Plus my birthday it’s just a reminder that another year passed and I’m not where I want to be.
AHHH
hey can I make you a Christmas tree ornament with those mice I was talking about?
I’m kidding. But I definitely would.
Lots of love. Or maybe just lots of pathogens because I might be getting sick.
That would be just great.
Sorry for the gloomy. Holiday gloomy. Are you a fan of bears? (The animals)
Hi! Back and what if we live forever if we just keep saying the other has too? What if that’s the secret to immortality everyone’s missing would it be a gift or a curse? Anyway I’ve dropped both of those previous boys I mentioned I’ll just take the lessons and apply them learned a lot and didn’t end up psycho or hurt this round I am getting better at this life thing. What’s up aside from editing anything fun? I’ll be back this time my sleep schedule has been whack so im
Tryna get it back to normal so wish me luck!
Hi Dennis,
It might be too late for you to see this, but I hope you do! Radu Jude day! I’m glad to see it up, and it didn’t disappoint! There’s a lot of stuff in here I haven’t read/looked at yet so I’ll have to get on it. Once again, very sorry about the grant not working out. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help raise awareness/funds. I am planning on going through Rivette’s films chronologically from now, so I’ll probably get to Celiene and Julie soon. I rewatched Crimes of the Future for the fifth time tonight. That’s one of the few films that makes me happy to have a body. I often fantasize about being cut open are tearing the skin off my face and that film translates those feelings into something more constructive. I also revisted an old message board that I visited for a long time and formed my first online relationships on before my parents took it away, which gave to some strange feelings. I was surprised to see a lot of people messaging me sad I left and wondering where I was because I left without saying a word. I don’t think I have much exciting this week, what are you up to?