The Method
My method of work is one of perpetual re-writing, re-shooting, and re-editing: an ongoing process of Scheerbartian proportion, of perpetual motion, or in other words how to create closure predicated on a fragmentary approach (one, however, that does not fetishize the fragment). I never cease to redefine the ways in which I write and shoot cinema. At present, I begin from detailed shot lists and preliminary scripts, a kind of scaffolding so that the definitive script emerges after I have amassed a sufficient body of raw material (typically 10% of footage). For me, this is the only viable approach to the authentic document film: speculative, imaginative works built on concrete historical documents or archival writings that engage with the urgencies of the present. In this way, the specter of the here and now that haunts every (historical) film is acknowledged.
Upcoming Projects
I currently have 3 films entering post-production. Special previews and/or scripts, press kits, and look books available upon request.
The first is a speculative film set in and around World War II, focusing on figures who, amid some of the era’s worst atrocities, prospered like never before, only to retreat quietly into obscurity once the chaos subsided, forming the obscured backbone of subsequent regimes. On the level of production, the film underlines why independent cinema is so invigorating (while also signaling the limits of animation and desktop-based filmmaking, the cul-de-sac where low-budget cinema appears to be heading). For this project, we filmed on tanks and horses, in UNESCO-protected castles and cathedrals, across three countries, all on a small budget.
The second is a short film inspired by the erudite eye of Danilo Kiš, exploring how quasi-ordinary people are remembered, and how their memories and experiences become archived. Kiš was writing at a time when infinite storage was merely a seed of an idea; today, the most effective form of control seems to be the opposite of prohibition-- not withholding, but recording everything, until the sheer exhaustion of abundance ensures that no one will review, critique, or erase (or, put differently, valorize).
And the third film is an experimental documentary using only security camera footage to explore the entwined realities of modern surveillance and the struggles of caring for loved ones with Alzheimer’s.
Cine-Texts
My films, or cine-texts, are exhaustively researched and cannot move into production until a critical mass of material has been assembled.
The filmmaker, no less than the scrivener or academic, must constantly negotiate the tension between the real and the fabricated, and must do so in real time, on set. I am under no illusion of the existence of the “real” ... that is self-evident. אֱלֹהִים קַיָּם דַּוְקָא מִפְּנֵי שֶׁאֵינוֹ קַיָּם (Elohim exists precisely because he does not). And so what concerns me, rather, is the intensity of my relation to the raw material, and the means by which this relation is treated and presented to the spectator. This cannot be avoid, or, as is occurring in contemporary cinema, suppressed, tacitly alluded to, or minimized. It is here where the filmmaker’s responsibility lies; it is to elevate and interrogate this relation, or in other words to acknowledge one's distance to and from the form and content relationship.
Further information about my ongoing projects can be found below. I warmly invite correspondence and am always eager to engage in discussions or collaborations, whether on specific projects or on art in general.
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