Conversations in the Book Trade

Saturday, January 07, 2017

경기도의 공사/ La développement en Kyongii-do, Corée du Sud/ Development in Kyonggi-do

Quand les humains détruisent la natur/ The Destruction of Natural Spaces: Documentary on Over-development in South Korea

This is a movie I made a while ago with my wife and a university colleague, Yves Millet. It's a bit of a hybrid, as documentaries go, because instead of simply using the standard documentarian tone of omniscient knowledge, I wanted the movie to have a meditative quality. In this regard, it's intended as a form of counter-cinema.

C'est un film que j'ai fait il y a quelques années avec ma femme et un collègue universitaire, Yves Millet. C'est un peu un hybride, au comparaison aux documentaires typiques, parce que au lieu d'utiliser simplement le ton documentaire standard de la connaissance omniscient, je voulais que le film ait une qualité méditative. À cet égard, il s'agit d'une forme de contre-cinéma.

Noteworthy

Alex Good on Lynn Coady's "Who Needs Books?"

Marc Eliot Stein on US politics now

Zviane sur les événements marquants du 2016

Stan Persky on the mania of the news cycle

내 동생이랑/ Avec mon frère/ With my brother

Friday, January 06, 2017

Factories 1

NIGHT SHIFT

Regarding the authorial movie below: when I was working at The Picture Factory, I also spent several months working part-time at a bookstore run by a charismatic alcoholic named Larry. The Picture Factory was on Front Street, the bookstore on Queen; I'd work 9 to 5 at the first, have a quick dinner, then run the cash at the bookstore. The second job was obviously way easier than the first --but one day I got fired by Larry. He'd told me to look out for shoplifters, and so one night I confronted a customer who was acting suspiciously. I insisted the customer come back to the bookstore and open his briefcase. I was polite but insistent. The customer, it turned out, hadn't stolen anything, but he was an urban professional and his pride was stung. He phoned Larry the next day, Larry took his side, and things turned sour. A few days later I told Larry I'd had enough of two jobs. Larry said, "So that's it, then?" He put down on my release papers that I'd been fired.