13 September — Friday

 

Scenes from Istanbul—Drama
3-9 September, 2024

 
 
 

26 August — Monday

I spent an afternoon with Jui-Che Wu , on the day he left his new book “A Grasshopper Hops” at Tenderbooks. As the name suggests it’s a book about a grasshopper that hops — it’s simply beautiful.

Photography and paintings by me

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Jui-Che Wu is a Taiwanese artist and designer whose practice explores poetry, storytelling and collage. His book, “A Grasshopper Hops” recently won the Golden Tripod Award, and is now available in Tenderbooks, near Covent Garden.

 

2 August — Friday

Céline on a Cloudy Day will be screening as part of the international competition, at the 47th Drama International Film Festival.

 
 

30 July — Wednesday

I made this short video as well as the music for Yu-Mei Huang Studio. It’s now being exhibited alongside Mei’s piece at the Textielmuseum, Netherlands until June 2025!

Assistant, Paul Maziere

19 May — Sunday

Watched Gleaners and I. Such a beautiful film.
Agnès first plays with herself, and then with you.

12 March—Tuesday

My last night in Highbury & Islington.
I’ve been suffering from leg pain due to a hernia and a cyst in my spine.
I can walk for kilometres but can’t sit for two minutes.
It’s been a week since I started sleeping on the sofa bed. I figured it’s less painful to wake up there.

I was a bit stressed about my last meal in this house. Almost everything is gone now. In a way, the leg pain helps me to dramatize the move less.

I went out for a walk to ease my pain and saw someone with a McDonald’s bag.

I fell asleep watching Dune.

 
 

5 March—Tuesday

Hoşçakal Highbury & Islington Overground’u (Goodbye H&I Overground) is a series of stills made of a continuous video I made a week before moving out of my flat in Highbury & Islington where I have lived since I moved to the UK in 2017. These windows are from the stairs in Highbury & Islington Overground Station, that lead to Platform 1, which I used hundreds of times. I’ve been one of these faces for almost seven years, and it is very likely that someone else has a similar image of me.

28 February—Wednesday

 
 

Very excited to have received the test copy of NAZARÉ, a zine I’m publishing in the next couple of weeks. In 2019, I photographed three landscapes from the same spot on a hill in Nazaré, Portugal: (1) some rocks, (2) the sand, and (3) the sea. I then found many more images by cropping, resizing, and recomposing these photos. This zine features twelve of them.

1 February—Thursday

Here is a video sketch from last summer about a man who appears out of nowhere

Lisbon, June

26 August — Friday

 
 

The past two years haven’t been easy for many of us, and I took my share as well.
After a lot of ups and downs, and a good amount of in-betweens, today I’ve locked it and sent to mix and grade. Can’t wait to share some clips from it soon.

 

7 December—Thursday

I was late for my train
and missed my meeting
But my train was late too,
so I managed to catch it.
When I sat down on the train,
finally catching my breath,
I recieved a message
"Sorry, I’m going to be late”

21 November—Tuesday

Some stills from L’Atalante (1934) by Jean Vigo.
One of the most beautiful films I’ve seen.

 
 

19 November—Sunday

I had a great lunch today with a friend, which made me think how much I like having lunch.

It’s by far the best meal compared to its rivals; breakfast is fun but way too rushed, and dinner can be warm and cozy at times, but they’re a bit too moody and almost always sad when it’s done, pointing towards the end.

Let’s be very honest and objective here, except for Turkish breakfast, which, to be fair, is more of a holiday fantasy than a daily routine; morning food is just not exciting or nuanced. It’s just some extra calories in the form of “chocolate bread” or “just bread” that don’t serve almost anything. If you eat meat, one can argue that bacon and eggs are actually pretty good. But are they really? Are either really good? Or is it just a bit better in comparison to those mostly dry pastries that we are grateful to have for breakfast? The standard is pretty low. And dinner… The expectation for good food is way too high. Can you imagine the repercussions of having an unsatisfying evening feast? There is no coming back from that. Can you imagine Jesus having a bad or OK last meal? How sad is that? Had it been a bad lunch, you can just have a laugh and say, “Listen, let’s just leave this place and move on with our day; we still have a lot of time!”

Lunch is rarely about the food itself — although good food tastes even better at noon — but about what comes before and after. That coffee after lunch might take you anywhere.

I’ve been thinking of my two perfect lunch scenarios, and here they are.

 
 
 
 

In case you can’t read my handwriting:

1
A nice town* near the ocean
bigger than a village
smaller than a city
in a crowded restaurant
that ideally does not have a view of the ocean
waiters aren’t rude but are too busy to be nice
it's mid-summer —
not too emotional like August
not too anxious as June
We’re sitting in the small garden of the restaurant
that’s a bit secluded
and people aren’t smoking.
There is always a full jug of water at the table.
It’s bright, warm
without direct sunlight

with friends
Sardines
Tomato Salad
Fresh Bread
Olive Oil
Half a pint of beer
a coffee afterwards

*I realize that all towns are bigger than a village and smaller than a city anyway
but what I mean is the feeling in the restaurant.

2
After a very stressful morning
with family
very casual restaurant in Istanbul
Lentil soup
and then rice with chicken

We have tickets for the cinema in the evening. The film doesn’t matter as long as I’m with my family
— but still have five or six hours for that
We order coffee, but we need to drink fast
because we have a nice plan for the afternoon.

 

18 November—Saturday

Photograph from the set of Pickpocket, 1959

I went to Close Up to see Pickpocket* by Bresson.

There was a guy behind me who didn’t stop snoring, who made everyone laugh for the first few minutes. He had a Cannes Film Festival hat.

After the film I saw that John Smith the filmmaker was there too.
I sent him two emails over the past 5 months, asking his thoughts about two shorts film I made. He never replied.

I thought of going and confronting him, but he seemed like he was enjoying his Saturday night and had company.
He is 71 years old by the way.

I went out, read a little bit about Bresson, but kept going back and forth between going back inside to talk to John Smith.
" Ah! I can ask him if he enjoyed the snoring”, I thought. Could be an ice-breaker. Not that funny though. Does it matter?

I finally made up my mind to go back in to talk to him, but he wasn’t there anymore. It was only a few people drinking beer, and the guy with the Cannes Film Festival hat was there too, who now seemed full of energy.

*NOTES ON PICKPOCKET
I find it difficult to talk about films that are so important for cinema history.
So much has been said and written about Pickpocket.

But the things I loved were:

  1. The script. One of the most unique structures I’ve seen. I hadn’t felt I had seen anything this fresh since watching Kiarostami or Rohmer for the first time.

  2. The idea of the character, who was somewhere in between Hitchcock and Camus.

  3. The editing and the pace - I now realize the influence of this film on Haneke’s 7th Continent.

  4. How simple but layered the cinematography was

  5. The very subtle humor

The things that I wasn’t a big fan of:

  1. Some of the acting, not the parts that were reserved and almost dead / or awkward, but the parts where Michel was actually more reactive. I almost wanted it to be a bit less expressive when it came to Michel’s frustration. I also like the experiment about the “modeling” idea of Bresson, but I think my whole excitement still comes from the lack of control we have over actors.

  2. The excessive fade-in fade-out transitions. They bothered me a lot for some reason. I know it was maybe used to emphasize the simplicity of the narrative, playing with how the time moves, but except for one or two occasions, I was a bit bored of these. One can say that it’s because of the period it was shot in, but the film isn’t that old (1959), which is the same year as 400 Blows.

Things that I’m not sure of:

  1. The voiceover. I really wonder how it would be if I weren’t given the voiceover that constantly explained Michel’s thought process. I don’t think Bresson decided to go with that for “exposition” but more for the clarity of how subjective the whole film is. I want to see it again to come to a conclusion about this.

 

14 November—Monday

Today I applied for yet another Schengen Visa.