Look with your eyes, not with your hands.


Such a minute fraction of this life do we live: so much is sleep, tooth-brushing, waiting for mail, for metamorphosis, for those sudden moments of incandescence: unexpected, but once one knows them, one can live life in the light of their past and the hope of their future.



A grad student muses on her life, film, friends, politics, reality televizzle, and music.

 
The Upside of Being a Film Student

I am fighting a bit of an uphill battle today - just feeling tired and run down and spiting myself a little for going out and pissing away last night. Granted, my brain was a little mushy after watching a night of avant-garde films from the 1980s and 1990s (I will however take this chance to soapbox for Paul Solomon, a brilliant, innovative, and technical-master of a filmmaker), but anyway, today, I pay the price for avant-garde film and after-class beer, but a much needed bitching session also under my belt about crappy living situations, sexual frustration, and general malcontent with some the day-to-day realities of being a graduate student here in this program.

With that behind me, and even another assignment crossed-off my to-do list (another unexpected, kindful, Act of God cancellation) I am staring down a sparcer finals schedule than I ever imagined possible. I basically have my Mekas paper for avant-garde and a fairly hefty final for documentary, but taken together, these are palpable, and exceptionally light for a grad student. Anyway, one of my film school connections came through and dumped a bunch of Mekas diary-films on my desk. That, and two older Errol Morris documentaries (he is coming to screen his newest film, The Fog of War, on Thursday night), that I wanted to see more of his early work before his upcoming visit (this is the equivalent of a much-admired celebrity in the documentary world). Now I have 10 videocassettes (yep, count 'em - double digits) to lug home and enjoy the more contemplative and time-consuming part of being a film student - casting the books down in favor of the remote control. Yesterday, the bootleg copy of Ross McElwee's student films (Charleen and Backyard) arrived, courtesy of Jack. I am feeling all too run-down to schedule much viewing for tonight, but what a treat (presumably) I am in for, once I am wide-awake enough to hearken down for some serious voyeurism.

I have Bordwell's seminar in an hour... and I already feel like I've been hit by a truck... it is going to be a challenge to make it until 9pm.
posted by lmjasinski at 4:56 PM