WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.710 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.710 --> 00:00:04.710 align:middle line:84% I'm going to read one more piece from The Bay of Angels, 00:00:04.710 --> 00:00:07.530 align:middle line:84% and then I'm going to read from the book that's just out, 00:00:07.530 --> 00:00:11.670 align:middle line:84% The Little Freedom Book, I call it. 00:00:11.670 --> 00:00:19.110 align:middle line:90% 00:00:19.110 --> 00:00:23.790 align:middle line:84% This piece was just published in a magazine 00:00:23.790 --> 00:00:24.780 align:middle line:90% called "Film Comment." 00:00:24.780 --> 00:00:29.090 align:middle line:90% 00:00:29.090 --> 00:00:29.960 align:middle line:90% I don't know why. 00:00:29.960 --> 00:00:33.350 align:middle line:90% I mean, I do know why. 00:00:33.350 --> 00:00:35.590 align:middle line:90% Now what page am I on? 00:00:35.590 --> 00:00:37.474 align:middle line:90% Oh dear. 00:00:37.474 --> 00:00:39.630 align:middle line:90% This should be the easy part. 00:00:39.630 --> 00:00:43.780 align:middle line:90% 00:00:43.780 --> 00:00:46.370 align:middle line:84% Come on, okay, I can look it up-- 00:00:46.370 --> 00:00:48.985 align:middle line:90% 00:00:48.985 --> 00:00:49.485 align:middle line:90% 20. 00:00:49.485 --> 00:00:55.850 align:middle line:90% 00:00:55.850 --> 00:00:58.760 align:middle line:90% It's called "Theatre Optique." 00:00:58.760 --> 00:01:03.110 align:middle line:84% "My mother is 30 feet high and made of light tonight. 00:01:03.110 --> 00:01:09.560 align:middle line:84% How beautiful she is, synced up, costumed, in motion. 00:01:09.560 --> 00:01:12.950 align:middle line:84% She is speaking in German, a language I have never 00:01:12.950 --> 00:01:16.850 align:middle line:84% heard her utter a word in, but it seems so natural 00:01:16.850 --> 00:01:20.600 align:middle line:84% that I say "mutter" back to her, hoping 00:01:20.600 --> 00:01:23.330 align:middle line:90% she might respond this time. 00:01:23.330 --> 00:01:28.370 align:middle line:84% I surrender to the image before me, dying into it a little. 00:01:28.370 --> 00:01:30.770 align:middle line:90% How to describe this feeling? 00:01:30.770 --> 00:01:34.820 align:middle line:84% The one I have had my whole life, that thrilling 00:01:34.820 --> 00:01:39.950 align:middle line:84% combination of dream, dread, hope, and wish 00:01:39.950 --> 00:01:43.310 align:middle line:90% every time the theater dimmed. 00:01:43.310 --> 00:01:45.890 align:middle line:90% How happy I am to see her again. 00:01:45.890 --> 00:01:49.640 align:middle line:84% Even like this, with the angles exaggerated, 00:01:49.640 --> 00:01:52.250 align:middle line:90% the color saturated. 00:01:52.250 --> 00:01:56.780 align:middle line:84% How is it my mother, glowing, has ended up here rejected, 00:01:56.780 --> 00:01:58.370 align:middle line:90% before me? 00:01:58.370 --> 00:02:03.950 align:middle line:84% How much more intimate she seems this way, sad as that may seem. 00:02:03.950 --> 00:02:06.710 align:middle line:90% How much more approachable? 00:02:06.710 --> 00:02:10.490 align:middle line:84% I'm not sure I would have chosen to put her into a Fassbinder 00:02:10.490 --> 00:02:13.970 align:middle line:84% film, but there she is nevertheless, 00:02:13.970 --> 00:02:18.260 align:middle line:84% a sort of Hannah Schygulla figure, a creature of infinite 00:02:18.260 --> 00:02:21.350 align:middle line:90% limitless allure and mystery. 00:02:21.350 --> 00:02:24.920 align:middle line:84% Even veiled, lipsticked, disguised, 00:02:24.920 --> 00:02:27.920 align:middle line:84% I can recognize her as my mother. 00:02:27.920 --> 00:02:34.130 align:middle line:84% And I wave to her as I try to keep up with the subtitles. 00:02:34.130 --> 00:02:39.170 align:middle line:84% I am watching her do things I have only somehow guessed. 00:02:39.170 --> 00:02:42.560 align:middle line:84% She is entertaining the Germans against her will, 00:02:42.560 --> 00:02:45.470 align:middle line:84% giving the performance of a lifetime. 00:02:45.470 --> 00:02:47.330 align:middle line:90% How sad she looks-- 00:02:47.330 --> 00:02:50.510 align:middle line:90% compromised, and how resolute. 00:02:50.510 --> 00:02:56.540 align:middle line:84% In the close up she is lurid, ruined, drenched in red light. 00:02:56.540 --> 00:03:01.100 align:middle line:84% Such strange sorrow and absurdity and doom 00:03:01.100 --> 00:03:03.350 align:middle line:90% penetrate the scene. 00:03:03.350 --> 00:03:07.490 align:middle line:84% The camera pulls back and kneels before her in adoration, 00:03:07.490 --> 00:03:10.460 align:middle line:84% and I, too, grovel at her feet, trying 00:03:10.460 --> 00:03:14.660 align:middle line:84% to make her understand, at last, how grateful I am 00:03:14.660 --> 00:03:17.960 align:middle line:90% that she found the way to live. 00:03:17.960 --> 00:03:23.180 align:middle line:84% An unbearable idea to her, never to be uttered. 00:03:23.180 --> 00:03:28.160 align:middle line:84% "Mutter," I say to her, speaking her despised mother tongue 00:03:28.160 --> 00:03:30.050 align:middle line:90% and reaching out to her. 00:03:30.050 --> 00:03:35.540 align:middle line:84% But she is lost in one of those delirious, 360-degree pans, 00:03:35.540 --> 00:03:39.440 align:middle line:84% and when the camera returns, she is different, 00:03:39.440 --> 00:03:43.190 align:middle line:84% changed a little by all we have just witnessed. 00:03:43.190 --> 00:03:45.740 align:middle line:84% She turns away and steps serenely 00:03:45.740 --> 00:03:48.440 align:middle line:84% into the night's available light. 00:03:48.440 --> 00:03:53.480 align:middle line:84% It is evening, a cafe, Paris, and she begins to talk. 00:03:53.480 --> 00:03:57.290 align:middle line:84% And it is not until hours later that she stops, 00:03:57.290 --> 00:03:59.060 align:middle line:90% or the credits stop her. 00:03:59.060 --> 00:04:03.170 align:middle line:84% And I think I must finally understand something. 00:04:03.170 --> 00:04:06.380 align:middle line:84% I don't think I've heard you just chat like that ever 00:04:06.380 --> 00:04:07.820 align:middle line:90% with a copine. 00:04:07.820 --> 00:04:11.390 align:middle line:84% It must have been a Roemer film, don't you think? 00:04:11.390 --> 00:04:14.000 align:middle line:84% Forgive me, mother, for putting you up there 00:04:14.000 --> 00:04:16.850 align:middle line:90% like that, forcing you to talk. 00:04:16.850 --> 00:04:19.410 align:middle line:90% What did I hope to achieve? 00:04:19.410 --> 00:04:23.990 align:middle line:84% I see now as the film begins again, that the more you speak, 00:04:23.990 --> 00:04:26.000 align:middle line:90% the more you escape me. 00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:28.700 align:middle line:84% It is part of Roemer's brilliance. 00:04:28.700 --> 00:04:31.070 align:middle line:84% Until what I have understood in the end, 00:04:31.070 --> 00:04:33.050 align:middle line:90% is how elusive you are. 00:04:33.050 --> 00:04:36.500 align:middle line:84% Until what I have understood, is what cannot be pinned down 00:04:36.500 --> 00:04:37.820 align:middle line:90% finally. 00:04:37.820 --> 00:04:41.790 align:middle line:90% Not by the Germans, not by me. 00:04:41.790 --> 00:04:44.960 align:middle line:84% What I come away with from this intricate moral tale, 00:04:44.960 --> 00:04:48.230 align:middle line:84% is that it is the ephemeral that is beautiful, 00:04:48.230 --> 00:04:54.500 align:middle line:84% as you slip away alternately over and under exposed, 00:04:54.500 --> 00:04:56.720 align:middle line:90% and then dissolve. 00:04:56.720 --> 00:04:58.850 align:middle line:84% And as the screen fills with darkness, 00:04:58.850 --> 00:05:01.520 align:middle line:84% I feel, suddenly, for the very first time, 00:05:01.520 --> 00:05:05.900 align:middle line:84% my mother's utter solitude and her bewilderment. 00:05:05.900 --> 00:05:09.950 align:middle line:84% She hovers, ghost image behind my eyes. 00:05:09.950 --> 00:05:13.610 align:middle line:84% And she is saying, in drifting French, 00:05:13.610 --> 00:05:19.640 align:middle line:84% "comme j'te est petite fille" in what light that's left. 00:05:19.640 --> 00:05:22.040 align:middle line:90% "Mother, what is it?" 00:05:22.040 --> 00:05:24.950 align:middle line:90% The night nurses swoop and dive. 00:05:24.950 --> 00:05:28.670 align:middle line:84% "How are you feeling, Ava Klein?" 00:05:28.670 --> 00:05:30.950 align:middle line:84% "Have you seen my chatty French mother?" 00:05:30.950 --> 00:05:32.660 align:middle line:90% I ask them. 00:05:32.660 --> 00:05:35.240 align:middle line:84% Before my eyes, Dreyer's Joan of Arc 00:05:35.240 --> 00:05:39.140 align:middle line:84% appears in extreme close up for an instant, his merciless 00:05:39.140 --> 00:05:41.720 align:middle line:90% inquisition on the Saint's soul. 00:05:41.720 --> 00:05:44.450 align:middle line:90% Forgive us mother, if you can. 00:05:44.450 --> 00:05:46.190 align:middle line:90% "Have you seen my mother?" 00:05:46.190 --> 00:05:48.290 align:middle line:90% I ask the nurses again. 00:05:48.290 --> 00:05:51.020 align:middle line:84% They point to the tiny television screen 00:05:51.020 --> 00:05:55.690 align:middle line:84% up high, and sure enough, there she is, in a top hat, 00:05:55.690 --> 00:05:59.260 align:middle line:84% straddling a chair, figment on the screen-- 00:05:59.260 --> 00:06:02.050 align:middle line:84% screen-- in dreamy black and white. 00:06:02.050 --> 00:06:04.720 align:middle line:84% "Mother, what are you doing up there? 00:06:04.720 --> 00:06:10.360 align:middle line:84% How did you get so small, so high, so light, so far?" 00:06:10.360 --> 00:06:13.090 align:middle line:84% Something has been lost, something 00:06:13.090 --> 00:06:14.740 align:middle line:90% is being memorialized. 00:06:14.740 --> 00:06:17.140 align:middle line:84% And it is Chris Marker, I am quite certain, 00:06:17.140 --> 00:06:21.310 align:middle line:84% speaking in a kind of voiceover now on the PA system. 00:06:21.310 --> 00:06:24.850 align:middle line:84% We can see the shadow of a film on television, 00:06:24.850 --> 00:06:30.160 align:middle line:84% the longing for a film, the nostalgia, the echo of a film, 00:06:30.160 --> 00:06:33.130 align:middle line:90% but never a film. 00:06:33.130 --> 00:06:35.680 align:middle line:84% While it is not silent, the sound 00:06:35.680 --> 00:06:38.350 align:middle line:90% is somehow not accessible to us. 00:06:38.350 --> 00:06:40.750 align:middle line:84% Ironic, given that my mother is singing 00:06:40.750 --> 00:06:43.510 align:middle line:84% in some of the scenes, rare footage 00:06:43.510 --> 00:06:46.510 align:middle line:84% as I have never before heard my mother sing, 00:06:46.510 --> 00:06:50.590 align:middle line:84% though her voice had been legendary once, I am told. 00:06:50.590 --> 00:06:54.100 align:middle line:84% The sound seems to cut in and out now, finally pulling itself 00:06:54.100 --> 00:06:56.650 align:middle line:90% away from the image altogether. 00:06:56.650 --> 00:06:58.930 align:middle line:90% Mouth and song are separated. 00:06:58.930 --> 00:07:05.020 align:middle line:84% Sound, image, synchronization can no longer be maintained. 00:07:05.020 --> 00:07:10.690 align:middle line:84% My mother moves from sound to silence, fades to gray. 00:07:10.690 --> 00:07:15.010 align:middle line:84% If I could only convey the strangeness of this world. 00:07:15.010 --> 00:07:18.370 align:middle line:90% I watch her pixelate and blur. 00:07:18.370 --> 00:07:24.220 align:middle line:84% I try to gather her back to me, to gather us 00:07:24.220 --> 00:07:29.500 align:middle line:84% back, make us somehow cohere again, but she just smirks. 00:07:29.500 --> 00:07:32.440 align:middle line:84% Contemptuous of narrative, the story 00:07:32.440 --> 00:07:36.490 align:middle line:84% we have clung to for so long, who knows why? 00:07:36.490 --> 00:07:43.120 align:middle line:84% She shrugs it off, and I wonder what hope there is for her now. 00:07:43.120 --> 00:07:45.070 align:middle line:90% And what am I? 00:07:45.070 --> 00:07:48.910 align:middle line:84% A flickering field of unstable emotions, 00:07:48.910 --> 00:07:54.010 align:middle line:84% a confluence of sensation, and memory, and history, 00:07:54.010 --> 00:07:58.990 align:middle line:84% held in this fragile outline of self. 00:07:58.990 --> 00:08:02.470 align:middle line:84% A quintessence of yearnings trembling 00:08:02.470 --> 00:08:05.620 align:middle line:90% at 24 frames per second. 00:08:05.620 --> 00:08:09.880 align:middle line:84% How terrifying, the body breaking down, the cells 00:08:09.880 --> 00:08:14.050 align:middle line:90% dispersing as night falls. 00:08:14.050 --> 00:08:16.780 align:middle line:84% One has a little of that Godard feeling 00:08:16.780 --> 00:08:19.570 align:middle line:90% for a moment, beauty flooding. 00:08:19.570 --> 00:08:22.840 align:middle line:84% That undeniable feeling, unfinished. 00:08:22.840 --> 00:08:23.800 align:middle line:90% Not yet. 00:08:23.800 --> 00:08:28.790 align:middle line:84% That feeling of something still fluid, still taking place. 00:08:28.790 --> 00:08:32.169 align:middle line:90% Even now, still being made. 00:08:32.169 --> 00:08:37.150 align:middle line:84% A child enters the frame, whispering mutter, 00:08:37.150 --> 00:08:41.470 align:middle line:84% and I am more grateful than I can say. 00:08:41.470 --> 00:08:45.700 align:middle line:84% As the doctors come in and the nurses in bright white. 00:08:45.700 --> 00:08:48.410 align:middle line:84% If there is one chance in a million, 00:08:48.410 --> 00:08:51.730 align:middle line:84% we read from a stray title card, then 00:08:51.730 --> 00:08:57.040 align:middle line:84% it must be Ava Klein's, and the piano, pounding maniacally, 00:08:57.040 --> 00:09:00.040 align:middle line:90% the two bass notes. 00:09:00.040 --> 00:09:02.590 align:middle line:84% Someone shuts off the fluorescent light, 00:09:02.590 --> 00:09:04.630 align:middle line:90% and the theater dims. 00:09:04.630 --> 00:09:07.180 align:middle line:84% Come quickly, you won't believe your eyes. 00:09:07.180 --> 00:09:11.800 align:middle line:84% A cloth screen, 100 chairs, a projector placed on a stool, 00:09:11.800 --> 00:09:14.740 align:middle line:84% and at the entrance, a ticket taker announcing, 00:09:14.740 --> 00:09:19.990 align:middle line:84% Lumiere Cinematographe, admission one Franc. 00:09:19.990 --> 00:09:23.170 align:middle line:84% Last evening, I was in the kingdom of shadows. 00:09:23.170 --> 00:09:27.130 align:middle line:84% If I could only convey the strangeness of this world, 00:09:27.130 --> 00:09:29.620 align:middle line:90% Arshile Gorky remembers. 00:09:29.620 --> 00:09:33.430 align:middle line:84% Out of the static projection, a large locomotive 00:09:33.430 --> 00:09:35.380 align:middle line:84% fills the screen for the first time 00:09:35.380 --> 00:09:40.210 align:middle line:84% ever, entering the station at La Ciotat, 00:09:40.210 --> 00:09:42.610 align:middle line:90% and the world begins again. 00:09:42.610 --> 00:09:44.710 align:middle line:90% Mother, I whisper. 00:09:44.710 --> 00:09:48.640 align:middle line:84% How sleek, how beautiful you are. 00:09:48.640 --> 00:09:54.940 align:middle line:84% She smiles again, the enigmatic smile of the star and waves 00:09:54.940 --> 00:09:56.710 align:middle line:90% as if goodbye. 00:09:56.710 --> 00:10:01.060 align:middle line:84% Mother, the doctors say that I am dying. 00:10:01.060 --> 00:10:03.790 align:middle line:90% She points to the magic lantern. 00:10:03.790 --> 00:10:08.170 align:middle line:84% A candle light dimly illuminates the opaque color of the glass 00:10:08.170 --> 00:10:12.490 align:middle line:84% slides that are projected onto a scrim. 00:10:12.490 --> 00:10:17.620 align:middle line:84% Animated, they bring the cinema to the verge of existence, 00:10:17.620 --> 00:10:21.430 align:middle line:90% this charming Theatre Optique. 00:10:21.430 --> 00:10:25.630 align:middle line:84% From the shadow theater, a black cat. 00:10:25.630 --> 00:10:29.680 align:middle line:90% Mother, here, a bowl of milk. 00:10:29.680 --> 00:10:34.060 align:middle line:84% She drinks from it and then disappears. 00:10:34.060 --> 00:10:38.500 align:middle line:84% Some historians trace the origin of light-projected images 00:10:38.500 --> 00:10:42.580 align:middle line:84% back to Plato's cave of shadows or the shadow puppets 00:10:42.580 --> 00:10:46.780 align:middle line:90% of China, or India, or Japan. 00:10:46.780 --> 00:10:50.890 align:middle line:84% Oh, such ingenious variations of light and shade. 00:10:50.890 --> 00:10:55.240 align:middle line:84% Look, these gorgeous apparitions. 00:10:55.240 --> 00:11:02.410 align:middle line:84% From the ancient wall, a hand reaching now toward mine." 00:11:02.410 --> 00:11:05.760 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:11:05.760 --> 00:11:10.000 align:middle line:90%