Missing more than pages

When I was in Beijing last year, a little lost a wandering th streets in search of a coffee shop I found Contigo. I met the manager and the new shop assistant who made me feel not only that I found good coffee, but a home in Beijing where none existed before.

I recieved an email tonight from my friend and manager, Dong hong who told me that after a month or so of intermittent miscommunication between her and Qiu yue (the shop assistant), she had to let her go and today, she is moving south to Schenzen. I will spare the details. They both have their reasons. Dong hong had plans and was relying on Que yue to stay for another month which she said she would. But things haven't worked out.

I feel a deep sorrow for them both that she is leaving on such bad terms. I feel odd because Qiu yue doesn't even live in the same country as me yet I feel she is moving far away where I will never see her again. I am terribly fond of her. I hope, wherever she is movng to, she will be happy.

When I was there I chose to spend a great deal of time in the shop instead of sight seeing. Because I knew good times with good people are unlikely to sustain and especially when you don't live in their vicinity. And at this time, I am glad I did have the oppotunity to spend time with them both as it will never be the same again. 'Change', as my friend Megnna said to me once and spoken so clearly, 'is the only constant'.

They are both partly the reason I feel I can move to Beijing for a while. They are more than friends, they are more like family. My plans remain.

On and off I am working on a homepage after years of wanting so. So timely that I recount memories, this, is another page turned, another chapter that is coming to pass. Pages that remain empty that may remain as such. Such is life.

Another friend, Jovie, once said, 'As one door closes another door opens... but we looks so often at the closed...'.

- J

Another Life

Sometimes, I feel as though I am sitting on my hands and have gaffer taped my mouth.

Despite getting back into the mileau of London life, I have been feeling there is a different one calling. I have been feeling this for quite some time. Having ideas is not enough. Having opinions is not enough. We can be all talk and no action and it is mostly action that counts. It is not simply what I think, it is part of me. making films or art is a part of me, it is simply what I do and to make a living doing it is good. Dipping my feet working with NGO's isn't enough and I want to do more. It is a part of me that will never go away and it is something that is in the belly. I do not want a life where all I did was shoot music videos and commercais and maybe some feature films. There is more to life than this and I have only felt it when working on projects with people in poverty and who live under different and difficult circumstances. There is a global context for this and a calling for people to help each other. As Arundhati Roy said, 'live while you are alive and die only when you are dead'.

I no longer want to be sitting on my hands, my mouth gaffer tapped and, I do not want to feel dead before I am .

- J

On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing

As the work subsides to a grinding halt and am working from home now concentrating on various projects and plans. Last friday at the BSC show I bumped into the focus puller from Little Terrorist (I did the making on in early 2004 out in India). He is setting up a website that is a content based platform for developing communities to air their video work, giving them a voice in the media.

I have been briefly involved with Participatory Video with my friend Warren who is travelling the world working with various NGO's. Recently working in Romania where I met up with him (and most recently in London). He taught and facilitated video work with teenagers with HIV and with a marginalized group from a rural place (please see previous blog entries).

I had talk to them both about each others work and it seems a direct and very feasble strand to make
A) the work and
B) the platform to show it

Meeting them both recently again reminds me that there is a world that doesn't care about films or music videos. People who are concerned about basic education and healthcare for their families. It reminds me of the notion not far from my constant thoughts that this is the work I want to do. For now I will do what I can and continue with the fiction. I am debasing fiction not at all. In the words of Arundhati Roy:

"Writers cull stories from the world, stories reveal themselves to us, the public narrative, the private narrative, they colonize us... they comission us... they insist on being told. Fiction and non fiction are only different techniques of story telling, for reasons I don't fully understand, fiction dances out of me and non fiction is wrenched out b the aching, broken world that I wake up to every morning. The theme of much of what I write, fiction as well as non fiction is the relationship between power and powerlessnes and the endless circular conflict they're engaged in. John Berger that most wonderful writer once wrote, 'Never again will a single story be told as though it's the only one, there can never be a single story, there are only ways of seeing'."

Further in this speech, 'Come September', she eloquently expresses our global age about 'the war on terror' revolving around the true and encompassing belief of 'power'. Providing historical context and humour, she speaks out an awesome and noble non fiction opera.


It is a reminder that we should in responsibility to the human race and for ourselves, the world we and our children live in should not be run in the manner in which our covert governments pass policy. We pay our taxes and in turn, they use our money to kill civillians in other countries (currently your money is being used to kill men, women and children in Afghanistan and Iraq), countries Britain or the United States have no reason to be in, to invade. Colonization is dressed up as spreading 'democracy' and the 'war on terror' (a title which was stolen from an 1980's campaign from the Reagan Administration).

I was naive when younger to think that the world was good and that the world was as it is and we need to accept it. But it isn't. And we do have to accept that, but we shouldn't accept the way it is. The world is not as it is and we should leave how it is, the world, is what we make it.

It is difficult to really understand what kind of world other people live in if one hasn't been. I did, for a very brief period in Palestine last year. I met people who lived in Gaza who have F16's fly by in the middle of the night every week scaring the shit out of families. I met a child who was shot twice in both legs. I was stuck at a checkpoint for an hour with a baby who needed heart surgery. These times are very real, we just don't inhabit the same world. Like children we are just as good at being 'out of sight, out of mind'.

We perhaps cannot do much but we have to do something no matter how seemingly small and insignificant to do our part to make a better planet to live on. Or we make wake one day to realize all our freedoms were simply illusions from our heavy reliance on the media and our modern society of manufactured consent.

I would like to end with a further extract from the same speech Arundhati Roy gave for the Lannan Foundation Lectures:

"In follow up to the 1917 Balfour declaration which imperial Britain issued with it's army massed outside the gates of Gaza. The Balfour declaration promised Europeon Zionist a national home for Jewish people. At the time the Empire on which the sun never set was free to snatch and bequeath national homes like a school bully distributes marbles. How carelessly imperial power vivisected ancient civilizations. Palestine and Kashmir are imperial britain's festering, blood drenched gifts to the modern world. Both are fault lines in the raging international conflicts of today. In 1937 Winston Churchill said of the Palestinians, I quote, 'I do not agree that the dog in the manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lay there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance that the great wrong has been done to the red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race, a more wordly wise race to put it that way has come in and taken their place'. That set the trend for the Isreali's state's attitude towards Palestinians."

For the whole speech and the best 45mins you will spend today:



- J

ps. Churchill said and did some aspiring and great things in his time, though this, was not one of them.

three daze

Went to the BSC Show (British Society of Cinematograper's). Then shot some pick ups for the Concretes music video on my Kransnagorsk (wind up Russian 16mm camera) which was the first time i used it. We shot in David's kitchen, going all DIY again as we do and have done on his student work of years gone. Projecting on a record, a suitcase and a screen, the video we already shot. Next day went to Norwich for a rehearsal of Jean's short film. Then met with friend Craig and missed my train. Stayed over on couch after watching Living in Oblivion at 3.30am. got up at 9am and got a cab to station. no ticket. But The conductor let me go with my yesterdays ticket. Talk about good fortune. Wouda cost £40 otherwise. That's £5 per 15minutes of travel. Trains really are expensive in this country. Got to Liverpool Street and got a bunch of roses for me mum (mothers day). Picked up some Papa Beard's and went to dim sum lunch with sis and parents. went home. went out to meet Warren (who is in London for a few days before going back to Jerusalem for PCRF). We met in Jerusalem, then in London, then in Romania and now back in London. I may go to Jerusalem in a few months as Warren is going for the next three and then possibly back to Romania to continue more participatory video. May catch up with the work going on and with how the youth are doing then. Just talking about these trips and the future of the video work with people in Jerusalem and Romania is exciting, more than any drama or music video. Nonetheless, work continues here. Currently, collating stills for an exhibition for PCRF.

the sunlight diffused through the roof of kings cross, beautiful. check the blue light in the brickwork.

...and just a bit of soy sauce.

new lighting perspex lighting panels. uber cool.

mahoganycam

DIY

silly at heart

Japanese company. First seen in Hong Kong. But there is one in Oxford St. Amazingly.

Mmmmm... Cream puff... yes... oh yes.. Yah Hoo!
(smoking a pipe is optional)

Warren and me in crouch end.

- J

ranting about the red light district

A director friend of mine Robb who I shot the Aylesbury doc with also works part time at a community college. He said I could use the darkroom when he goes in. So today a sauntered (well, more or less) on in there with my beginners box of 8x10 RC (resin coated for you novices out there.. hehe), my gloves, my can of air, my (digital) neg carriers, my blower brush and my folder of negs. I have been in the digital darkroom for nearly 7 years since graduating and haven't gone back since (not through lack of trying, just lack of funds). Ironically, I didn't even know how to use photoshop when i was at university. I didn't even know how to scan a picture. Frankly, I don't know what i did there. Well, actually, I spent a majority of my time in darkrooms printing, 10 hours a day. Black and white printing is a different ball game to colour. Not just in terms of the printing but the practice. You can take your unexposed paper out in the red light within a BW darkroom. In a colour darkroom, although you have a red light, you have to take your paper out in COMPLETE blackness. Therefore one gets used to being somewhat blind and printing. Also, colour darkrooms are separate from each other with one enlarger per room. BW's are combined (get the logic?). At university we used to cut roll paper which was 30 inches wide on the floor in complete darkness. Small dar rooms with red lights have more than one use. Life was fun.

Anyway. This evening, I had 3 hours to print. I had to re aquaint myself with my ol' China, 'The Enlarger'. Putting in filters, basically varying degrees of red acetate into your enlarger to increase/decrease contrast seems rather arcane now since having done it for years by using a colour enlarger magenta dials or on photoshop using histogram levels/curves. It is- a craft. now, that, with the printing time (even if it is machine) and the dodging and burning, I found it quite laborious. I used to love it. Not that I don't anymore, but I have become accustomed to doing ALL of that before I print ONE bit of paper. In the darkroom, you have to do it, then print, then assess, then make adjustments for your next print, then assess, them print again... until you get The Print. On Photoshop, you pretty much can do it all before you print because you see what you're doing when you do it. This way, it's all a bit organic and tactile. This isn't the fun bit. The fun bit is when you get a bit more practice (ie, in about next week), when I go to Fiber based and do tray printing. That is even more laborious but if you end up (and typically can) with a great black and white print, it makes the hours seems worth the cathartic ride worth it ( a little like cake baking).

Printing black and white is my first love. Colour came second. Printing colour is child's play in comparison. Good BW printing done properly is serious art form. From what film you shoot, to what developer you use, the ratio you mix it in, the time you develop it for- and thats before you get to the darkroom.

I never got really anal with it. I never get anal with anything really. But if tinal value is mostly what you are working with, there is a finite art to just that one thing and one can become concerned with the nuances the longer one does it.

So after 3 hours I managed to print 5 contact sheets and this 6x8 print of a photo I took in Hong Kong last autumn.

Camera: Leica III, 35mm summar lens (it's not great but it's okay)
Film: Ilford Delta Pro 100
Dev: Ilford Rodinal 1:50 for 20 mins ( i think )
I processed at home.

Print: 25 secs with dodging in the dark areas (right- background stalls) to bring out detail and face (as it was getting too dark in the overall exposure) extra seconds on exposure to the poly box centre and to the veg to the left of frame. Printed with 'filed' neg carrier.

Scanned at home on an Epson 4990. Click to enlarge.


This next thing is the composite shot I did of one infamous blocks of Aylesbury estate, 'Wendover' and sticthed it manually together in Photoshop (later manipulated in After Effects and tracked day to night). It comprises of over 100 digital stills. Please click to take a closer look.


The alumni students didn't have the foggiest who I was. But I am sure, that will change with time. Just like printing skills.

- J

The Hidden Poet

For those of you who don’t live in the UK, it has been quite sunny and nice these last few days. Spring, has evidently, sprung. So with that fresh smell in the air (you know- that smell in the air that comes with the change of seasons) I felt like making a vat of Minestrone soup at lunchtime today. And while I was making this vat I heard a noise, a faint noise of a person talking. Then just as I was beginning to question it’s source, it was gone. I figured it was coming from my dad’s computer in the next room although it strangely sounded like it was muffled within the walls of this small kitchen. My mum came in and was doing things. Then it came again. Both me and mum froze and were perplexed as to where this noise was coming from. She asked dad if it was coming from his computer and he flatly ruled out any such thing. ‘Where the fuck is that coming from’, I said to myself. My mum said it was my phone but I don’t have any ringtones. But just in case, I took it out of my pocket and placed it on the table top watching it with suspicions on the covert uses of today's everyday technology.

A few minutes later there it was again. Me and mum stopped as I peaked my ear about trying to find the source of this muffled talking. After a short paused I sussed out who was talking. ‘It’s Homer … It’s Homer Simpson...’, I declared. But what was he doing in the kitchen and where the hell was he?? Curiouser and curiouser… By then, me and mum were beguiled and laughing about it.




A few hours later, after I came back from cycling to Holloway and back there was a bottle opener on the living room table. But not just any bottle opener. My sister brought it for me for Christmas one year and I have never used it. This is largely due to the fact I don't buy bottles and it was stashed away somewhere (evidently). It has Homer Simpson on the front. I place a key mimicing the top of a bottle cap so the metal rims would connect. Homer then spoke with immense enthusiasm... ’Mmmmmmm… Beeeerr….. hehehehe… yes! Oh yes! YAH HOOOO!!’.




- J

the truth is...

I don't watch a lot of television. But sometimes, it's ok. I planned to tape/watch tonights programme on Channel 4 called The Great Global Warming Swindle. I somewhat expected a mild distraction, a dramatically driven piece of story telling that is modern documentary and the latter, it is. What I didn't expect to learn was that there is a very strong and convincing school of thought that maintains that global warming is a natural cycle of the planet more to do with the sun and less, if anything to do with CO2 emissions. This premise of 'fact' also maintains that the misinformation in the media is pure propaganda. Other information presented is also the 'whys' (political) and the effects to 'third world' countries, ie. insisting they use solar and wind energy which they cannot afford (ie. supressing their industrial development).

I'm the first to support and act regarding climate change (which is why i don't have a driving licensce) but the arguement presented is as strong as the one for global warming/CO2 emission cause. If anyone wants a copy of tonights programme, please email me:
j.sea@blueyonder.co.uk

more info on the programme and further:
http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/G/great_global_warming_swindle/index.html

I'm not sure what to trust really. The arguement was actually extremely convincing and makes more sense, more convincing than the arguement for CO2 cause/effect. I am firstly concerned with the scientific truth and secondary, the reasons for such possible propaganda. What is clear is that global warming is real and a cause for serious concern, but what is more important is finding out what is causing it because this will have global effects of how we and governments decide to do deal with it. If we are basing our decisions on misinformation about global warming, our decisions could be doing more harm than good (environmentally, socially and economically). Saying that, there may be nothing we can do about it at all. For now, I will keep an open mind and will be reading more about this global concern of our generation while i am driven past in a 4X4...

I am funnily reminded of that film, A Few Good Men (written by Aaron Sorkin of West Wing fame) where Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise are in the showdown courtroom...

Jack: You want answers?
Tom: I think I'm entitled to them.
Jack: You want answers?
Tom: I want the truth!
Jack: You can't handle the truth!
JC: He might not but Jack, but I think I can... (omitted from final cut)

- J

Kids

Started and finished The Concretes music video yesterday (Kids). We began at 7am and finshed at 1.30am, an 18 and a half hr day. I woke up at 5am and slept at 3am (a total of being up 22 hrs). It didn't seem like a long day even though by the end i wanted it to end. It was a good shoot with 'my crew', the usual suspects. I had basically the same crew as the on I had on the short film Thoughts of Yesterday a few weeks ago. It's a great and fun crew who work hard and joke even more. And we're on the same wavelength and it's so very cool to be working with everyone so soon AND all together agan. Camera kit wise, we even got the exact same Arri SR3 from JDC...

At the last minute we found a location which was a sixties store basement. It was clutered which retro radios, lamps, records and the like. The space was about the same as our other location but with lower ceilings. What it did have was nearly all the props we needed for the shoot which was a godsend. It was a difficult space to light but i think i did okay.

The band was nice but didn't get to talk to them much. It's funny meeting the band after seeing their previous videos and listening to their music and talking about the video we were to make for them weeks before. They came for a day from Stockholm for the shoot. All except Lisa flew back the next day as she lives in London.

Tomorrow am going in to do the best light grade and transfer. But we have to figure out how David can online from home as he doesn't have a digibeta deck. We wonder if we can get a transfer to hardrive instead. Hmm.

Today Azahara talked of how the band were a little older than most of the crew (despite how professional, hard working and great we all are at our jobs and that they appreciated it) it might feel like a bunch of kids creating their music video...

Preproduction. Anton and Azahara try to clean out the tiny, cluttered shop the night before.

Believe it or not, it is difficult to 'buy' rolls of grass. Something that grows everywhere...

Rolling out and adjustments to the grass.

Creating a sunny day in the park proved difficult. Duncan adjusting a dingle.

Lisa and Maria in the first verse in the 'park'.

Exact same place but changed to the 'bedroom' set.

Proud of our set. Anton, Azahara and me.

Thomas, Hu and me in front of the 'window' (where rain would fall in the foreground) and camera (high).

Lisa and Maria choose records, kinda like what they describe in the song.

http://www.theconcretes.com/ (though under construction)

http://www.lickingfingers.com/

http://www.myspace.com/theconcretes

- J