Episode 6. Adrian Martin - The Video Essay Podcast

Welcome back. Hello, my name is Will DeGravio, and you are listening to The Video Essay Podcast, a show featuring conversations with leading critics, scholars, filmmakers, and other practitioners of The Videographic Essay. It's been a while, I think about a month since our last episode was released. As many of you know, if you follow me on Twitter

or just follow the podcast, I recently moved to the United Kingdom to begin graduate school, so taken that time to pack up my life and then fly over and overcome jet lag and start classes and things like that. So that is the reason for the delay. Thank you so much for your patience, and I'm very thrilled to be resuming the podcast and getting back to hopefully the every other week schedule that

we've been on. Of course, we'll see how graduate school progresses, and it may get more intense, and there may be not that every other week pattern, it may come out on different days, but I'll do my very best to keep everyone updated on that. Now, the first thing I want to say for this episode is that we

that. Now, the first thing I want to say for this episode is that we will not be announcing the homework for the next episode on this podcast. The reason

for that is there was some conflicts, and the guests that we had originally lined up, they are actually unable to be our next guest. So, you know, which is totally fine. I figured that given the nature of the show and assigning homework, that

totally fine. I figured that given the nature of the show and assigning homework, that that would happen eventually. So no worries at all, but this is a good opportunity for me to remind you that you should definitely be following us on Twitter at Video Essay Pod, or liking us on Facebook, The Video Essay Podcast, or just following our website, TheVideoEssay .com, because within the next few days, we will announce a new

guest, and the homework will be posted there. It's also just good because, you know, as the show goes on, and I get more busy with graduate school, that will be the source of finding out when the next episode will be released, if it's not every other Thursday like it has been in the past. My guest on today's show is, of course, Adrian Martin, who is a legendary and prolific film critic. I

mean, Adrian is currently working on a project curating all of his film reviews written over the decades on his own website, and we will link to that on our website. But he is also a prolific video essayist, and his video essays are made

website. But he is also a prolific video essayist, and his video essays are made in partnership with Cristina Alvarez -Lopez. Now, I just want to preface our conversation by saying that Adrian and Cristina decided that Adrian would be their sole representative on the show to talk about their work. And so that's just important context for the conversation that Adrian and I are going to have in just a few minutes. But before

we get to our conversation with Adrian, I just want to talk quickly about a fantastic event that I attended at Birkbeck in London. Now, this was an event that was plugged on past episodes of the show. It was put together by, of course, the one and only Catherine Grant, who was our first guest on the podcast. And

it featured some really fantastic presentations by four video essayists, including Katie. They were

Kathleen Locke, Patrick Keating, and Chiara Grisafi. And their work was just so stunning. It was so great to see it projected up onto the big screen. And I was lucky enough to be able to live tweet basically the entire

screen. And I was lucky enough to be able to live tweet basically the entire event. Now, not all of the videos that were screened were on Vimeo, but the

event. Now, not all of the videos that were screened were on Vimeo, but the ones that were, I included links in my tweets. And if they're not yet on Vimeo, you should definitely be on the lookout for them. So I will link to that Twitter thread on our website, or again, you can find it at videoessaypod on Twitter. That's all I have for you today. Now, please enjoy our conversation with Adrian

Twitter. That's all I have for you today. Now, please enjoy our conversation with Adrian Martin.

And now we come to the interview portion of the show, where I'm sitting down here with Adrian Martin. Adrian, thank you so much for coming on. How are you doing today? I'm doing fine. My first question is, for decades, you've been a

doing today? I'm doing fine. My first question is, for decades, you've been a prolific film critic as a writer. And as operating primarily as a freelance film critic, if I'm correct, there are basically only so many hours in the day, right, for you to operate. And so at some point, you made the judgment that you would take time away from your written criticism to focus on videographic criticism. And I'm wondering

if you could talk a little bit about what got you interested in making videographic criticism. Well, I think in my case, you know, I was like very early on

criticism. Well, I think in my case, you know, I was like very early on in my early 20s. I had a lot of sort of dreams like fantasies in a way because I didn't have all the technology. But I did think of of trying to combine writing with other things, maybe maybe graphic design, maybe thinking

about sort of like live performance with slides or clips. But you know, I'm talking about the 1980s here where it wasn't so easy to sort of get this stuff together. You know, you either had to know people who really were on top of

together. You know, you either had to know people who really were on top of all this technology, or you tried to do a very, very low -fi version of it, which I did a little bit when I was in my 20s with just with slides and tape music on a tape recorder and reading a text and stuff like that. So, you know, now we sort of cut forward to, in my

like that. So, you know, now we sort of cut forward to, in my case, basically, when I get together with my partner, Christina Alvarez Lopez. And

that's at the end of 2011. And she's already been involved with making audiovisual essays, and she's already, you know, exploring the technology, and she knows how to do this stuff. And so it was through her, really, that I suddenly found a way to return to my initial dreams of trying to do a more

multimedia form of film criticism. Another, and then we're going to jump back to your partnership with Christina Alvarez Lopez, because I want to get into the collaborative process.

But I want to talk, just kind of get into your background a little bit before we jump to the partnership, and that is that you also have a lot of experience doing DVD Blu -ray commentaries for films. You did the one for one of my favorite films, Viva Savi, on the Criterion Collection. And so those also, I think, could be arguably precursors to video essays, or there are elements of DVD

commentaries that are definitely borrowed in video graphic work. And so I'm wondering, when did you start doing those types of commentaries, movies? And how has doing that influenced your work as a video essayist? I started doing audio commentaries for DVD and later Blu -ray in 2006, and I started with an Australian company. I was living in Australia

at the time, and there was an Australian company, Madman. And they put out a special line of DVDs called The Director's Suite. And that's where, basically, they put all their European art film classics, Nisibuchi, Buñuel, all of that stuff.

And so I was one of the people that they used. They used, in fact, a whole small army of people to do commentaries. And they had a good vision as a company about the importance of this as a way of sort of adding value to films and creating a new kind of market for DVD,

particularly amongst people who were cinephiles, or aspiring cinephiles, or people just getting into movies of this kind, and so on. So I did around 35 DVDs with that company until 2010. And then there was actually a five -year gap. And some of those were reused by other companies, such as Criterion

-year gap. And some of those were reused by other companies, such as Criterion and Masters of Cinema in UK, some of those ones I'd already done. And

then finally, it all sort of kicked up for me just four years ago, thanks to the British Film Institute, and then a series of other companies, including Arrow and Indicator, mainly in the United Kingdom, but a few other jobs here and there too. So, and that's, once again, I've done

a fairly prolific work, and this time, being able to get a bit beyond the classic art house cinema thing to also do Hollywood classics, film noirs, romantic comedy, you know, getting a bit closer to what is actually the full range of my interest in cinema. Now, now to come to your question more about what is

the relation between that and doing audio visual essays, in some ways doing audio commentaries for me was a continuation of something before that, and that was radio. And I did, I did radio, a radio film review, 15 minutes

radio. And I did, I did radio, a radio film review, 15 minutes scripted for three years between 1995 and 1997. That was an incredibly important experience for me, and also taught me a lot because I had a wonderful producer.

And she taught me how to speak, how to write for the ear, right, how to write so that when I read it, people hear it. And that's

totally different to the conventions of written on the page language. So it taught me a whole other way of speaking, which in fact, was more lyrical, more poetic, more evocative, because really, I was trying to evoke these films on the radio, you know, for, for people who might see them, people who may never see them. You

know, I would get letters from people in the, in the distant sort of country rural areas of Australia saying, saying, oh, it's great to listen to you. I mean,

we'll never see any of these films, but we feel like we've seen them through listening to you. It's one of the best compliments I ever got, you know. And,

uh, so I, I got a sense there of, of, of what one kind of criticism can be, which is evocative and lyrical and so on. And, and also for me, it was a way of what I'm calling sort of performative film criticism, like to perform it, to read it. This was part of the early dream I had when I was in my early twenties, how to make it a more, almost a

theatrical thing to be, involved in film criticism, to somehow perform it, present it, uh, in a way that the, the seeing, the hearing excites people. So

definitely I've taken some aspects of that into the work I do with Christina on, on audiovisual essays. In audiovisual essays though, I think, see, it's no longer me, you know, for instance, speaking for 90 minutes out straight on, on the, on a DVD, which I used to do for Mad Men. They would turn on the microphone and I would speak for 90 minutes, two hours without a break while the film was

playing, right? So it's a completely different thing. It's a little bit more like radio

playing, right? So it's a completely different thing. It's a little bit more like radio in that it's, you know, there are scripted phrases. We, record them. This is for the audiovisual essays, but then we play with the placement, the editing, everything's much more condensed in an audiovisual essay. And we don't even really think of it as a, as a flowing text from the first word to the last. We think of it

as a bunch of phrases, of spoken phrases that we, we edit, re -edit, we throw some out, we re -record some. I mean, I'm in one room, Christina's in another, Christina will say, go back and re -record that paragraph or that sentence, or let's redo that. So I'll go into the other room and record it and come back. And, you know, so, so that's part of how, how we're doing that

come back. And, you know, so, so that's part of how, how we're doing that in, in real time, as it were, is, is constantly redoing these little fragments of, of voice. But I think, you know, if I have any skill as, as a, as a performer, as an orator, a lot of it has to do with the radio experience I had. That makes a lot of sense. I think you gave

us a perfect segue to talking about more in more detail, your collaboration with Christina.

And so I'm wondering, what was, you, you mentioned that she was the one who introduced you to this type of work. And so was your first video essay, I assume, a collaboration as well, between the two of you? Um, and could you talk a little bit about kind of how that essay came, came into being? I, I

would just be interested to hear the backstory. Well, the, you know, love has a lot to do with it. Uh, you know, like to, to, to fall in love with Christina, to, you know, come to Spain, like to leave Australia, to come to Spain, to, to live with her. And we spent two years in Germany, sort of in the meantime. And, you know, we have a very close rapport and a lot

of that involves that, that, you know, whenever we can, we try to do collaborations.

That could be a collaborative written text. Uh, it could be a lecture or sort of live performance. Um, and particularly it's the audio visual essays.

Uh, and the very first things we did were, sort of tentative attempts where it was more like I had to give a talk in Barcelona. And so she and I, and another friend of ours, Covadonga La Ere, we, we kind of did up compilations of clips that would sort of punctuate this, this speech I was giving at a conference. So this is not yet an audio visual essay. It's, it's still more

a conference. So this is not yet an audio visual essay. It's, it's still more like a, you know, a traditional classroom lecture, but edited up a little bit better.

And, uh, uh, but from there I started to get this idea. I actually, what, what prompted it was that, and this is now we're talking about the start of 2013. And, uh, and I, I had for a long time this

2013. And, uh, and I, I had for a long time this dream in my mind and I wanted to do this like super theatrical spectacular of film criticism. And I had this particular topic in my mind, which was the cinema of real estate. So films about people buying and selling apartments and homes

and, all the strange encounters that go on and all the dramas and the comedies of, of real estate, which is everything from, you know, Eric Romare films to Simon Leung's films. I mean, it covers an incredible span of cinema once you start getting into the cinema of real estate. And, um, so I had this, and I had

all these quotations from different people. I had all these clips in my head and I, and I had different, as it were, families of clips. And I sort of knew they were all going to come together somehow, poetically. I had this like grand dream. And in my mind, this was going to be like a three hour performance,

dream. And in my mind, this was going to be like a three hour performance, right? And, uh, and so I started talking about it with Pristina and I think

right? And, uh, and so I started talking about it with Pristina and I think maybe that's where we started was let's start assembling the pieces of what might be this super lecture that I'll give one day. And she said, well, let's start gathering the clips. And, and I'm thinking, yes, this one, we might have to put that

the clips. And, and I'm thinking, yes, this one, we might have to put that on a loop and have that playing for 10 minutes. And she's going, well, okay, hang on, let's just, let's just gather the clips. And, and, and then I had all these quotes from the writer Italo Calvino, his book, Invisible Cities, marvelous book.

And, uh, and then she said, look, let's just try to edit these together. And

we'll kind of put, you know, quote at the start on the screen from Calvino and think of a title. And then suddenly I saw, but it was a beautiful feeling. I saw my three hour super lecture come right down to a, like

beautiful feeling. I saw my three hour super lecture come right down to a, like a three minute video, but all the pieces were there, right? They were there. And

they, they linked together. Like suddenly I did see the poetic connection between these different films and, and these different themes that were playing on my mind. They were sort of like haunting my unconscious. And when I, when she put them together in that way, and then we started moving them around and, you know, trying to put different quotes from Calvino on it and stuff like that, you know, the, the more, the

more pure it got, the more sort of minimalistic and, but tighter, more coherent. And,

and really that's what sold me on, on the format of the audio visual essay.

I thought, wow, this is really sometimes a breathtakingly concise form. You know, you can have a dream about, I want to write a book about, uh, the films of Pedro Almodovar, right? But when you actually do it this way audio visually, you can see that maybe you can do a 10 minute video that really expresses

the core of what you want to say or propose or suggest about that topic or that director or that genre or whatever it is. So for me, it was like this really fascinating form of, sort of electric condensation, where you're dealing with these very energetic fragments, because they're fragments of the films themselves. And you're

sort of trying to keep the electricity of, of the connections between your ideas and these fragments of film. So, so that's sort of, that's kind of where it all starts to keep you going on that. Did writing change for you? Um,

I've, I've talked to people who make video essays who now say, yeah, now I have no interest in writing. And it's not a knock on writing or that we shouldn't have writing, but it's, I've written for so long. Now this, this is completely changing the way that I think and, and the way that I want to interact with my object of study. Is, is that true for you? Well, it didn't, it

didn't disrupt the writer in me, uh, because I still write a lot. I mean,

I write, I write basically every day of my life as, as, you know, as far as it's possible, I try to work on some piece of writing, uh, every day in my life. And for instance, I have a website that's, that's going through the, the archive of my 40 years of writing so far, and also adding new things all the time. So, you know, if I see a movie on DVD, I

just quickly scratch out a review of it and, and I stick it on my website. So I'm very involved with writing still, but it is absolutely true what you're

website. So I'm very involved with writing still, but it is absolutely true what you're saying that I, I did feel a, a personal liberation. And I guess it was a more creative or artistic side of myself, which had never quite found the way to, to express a lot of it, because as I say of technology, you know,

like back in the 1980s, back in the 1990s, before the internet, before laptop computers, really, to think about re -editing films. This was all like a pipe dream, you know, how were you going to get your hands on films in order to, you know, I mean, I know some experimental avant garde filmmakers literally were, you know, going

through rubbish bins outside of film studios and film laboratories to find precious pieces of film and old reels, and they'd go off and work with them. But that's not, not the kind of thing I've ever been able to do, right? And, and if I wanted to do a, an audio visual work of, about Ernst Lubitsch, I didn't know which bin to go to outside of which studio to find an Ernst Lubitsch

film, right? And so, but, but then all of that became possible

film, right? And so, but, but then all of that became possible in really an unprecedented way, you know, with, with the availability of films kind of digitally, suddenly a huge percentage, not all of course, but a huge percentage of cinema became sort of available, and depending on how you do it, freely

available. So, you know, that was amazing, because, I mean, I'd like to stress in

available. So, you know, that was amazing, because, I mean, I'd like to stress in passing, because it sometimes pops into my head as an incredibly important facet of all this, is that, you know, the audio visual essays that Christina and I make cost nothing, like we spend nothing. I mean, of course, we had to buy our computers and whatever, and you know, a few, a bit of software and stuff. But, but

basically, the production of every audio visual essay is zero cents, you know, and, and, and so it really is within the tradition of the DIY, do it yourself sort of ultra low budget world of, of, of creativity, like some forms of music have been, like, you know, some forms of art have been. It really is what,

you know, they call arte povera, poor art. It comes from, from, from poverty, from precarity. And, and, you know, that's another thing that's important for us, that if we

precarity. And, and, you know, that's another thing that's important for us, that if we watch a film at home, and we say, hey, we have a great idea for an audio visual essay here, we can just start doing it instantly. We don't have to raise a budget. We don't have to go on Kickstarter to, you know, to get the money to do it. You know, it's, it's immediately in our grasp to

do it. Right. And I think that is also bolstered by the fact that video

do it. Right. And I think that is also bolstered by the fact that video graphic work, 99 .9 % of it is completely self -published on Vimeo and YouTube. And even when it's, you know, on a, even when you're, you're paid

and YouTube. And even when it's, you know, on a, even when you're, you're paid to do it, like, like you and Christina are, for example, they're still using those free open access platforms. And I think that that's so essential to kind of the ethos of the whole, the whole thing. When you and Christina collaborate, what is the brainstorming process like? Well, you know, there's no, there's no

set model or way that we collaborate. It's, it's often very different each time. Uh, and really where it often starts is, is from watching a

each time. Uh, and really where it often starts is, is from watching a film like Christina and I basically watch a film or several episodes of a TV series every day. And, uh, and so we're always watching a lot of stuff. And

sometimes we just, you know, we watch a film and one, either of us or both of us at once, sometimes rather spookily have exactly the same idea, which is that maybe an image in this film we just watched reminded us of another film or another image, or this actor in this film looked really weirdly like

the actor in another film 50 years ago, or, or wouldn't it be interesting to take the car chase from this movie and juxtapose it with the car chase of something else we saw last week. And so that's, that's often where the ideas come.

They just sort of come in a certain way from, from the unconscious or from the, the pre -conscious. Like I, I firmly believe in the power of the unconscious.

And I've even, you know, taken ideas literally from my dreams sometimes. Like sometimes we'll watch a film, we watched a Robert Mitchum film called Thunder Road, and I was pretty tired as I was watching it. And I was, it was like an almost surreal experience. I really wasn't following the plot, but I was really aware of the

surreal experience. I really wasn't following the plot, but I was really aware of the way that Robert Mitchum breathed. You know, he had this very sighing breath that he used all the time. And I thought it was hallucinating, but, but I held this thought and then I went to bed, went to sleep and I dreamed the film that it was all edited to the rhythm of Robert Mitchum's sighing, right? Crazy. But

we used that. That's what we used as the basis for part of our, our audio visual essay on Robert Mitchum, his acting style in the film Thunder Road. And

so, you know, we're, we're open to all these kinds of ideas. Now to, to get more into the, how the process works from there. One thing that's important that we always say is that we, we do not start with an ironclad script. Personally,

it's, it's not our way to pre -script. I know some people do and some people think it's a good thing to do. It's not a good thing for us, partly because it's very important. It's very important for Christina, especially because Christina is like the master technician. Like she's the one at the computer doing, you know, pressing 600 buttons a second and, uh, you know, and she's playing with, let's put this

in front of this. Let's put this behind this. Let's put this sound with this image. Let's try that all the other way around. So she's always looking for these,

image. Let's try that all the other way around. So she's always looking for these, like what I call those electric connections between fragments and also between image and sound.

And, uh, and so she wants to discover those things while editing in montage, you know, she doesn't want to be handed a script by me or anybody else saying, uh, you know, shot one of this scene cut to shot three of another scene. And with then another column with a voice saying shot one can be

another scene. And with then another column with a voice saying shot one can be understood in relation to shot three. Right. That's the bores the hell out of her.

Bores the hell out of me too. Um, and so what we do is that either she or I sort of might start by just writing phrases or just sentences or a few paragraphs, but it's not like a written essay in a sense that it's like, this essay is about X and Y, and I will prove that

because X therefore Y, which leads us to Z. Right. So it's not, it's not in a logical form of an argument. Uh, it's more like just phrases. There'll be,

we'll have something about the color in the film. We'll have something about the gesture in the film. We might have a quotation from somebody. So, so we, we have these fragments of, uh, of speech when we use a voiceover, which we don't always do, but if we have a voiceover track and, uh, and so this is where, as I was saying before, I'll then go into the other room and I'll start

recording these bits of speech, uh, which I will then, you know, hand on a USB sort of recorded to Christina. She feeds those into, you know, into her editing program and that starts getting moved around as well, you know, as well as everything else that, that we're moving around. And so at every point, she'll put

something together. We'll look at it together. There'll be a discussion that's working

something together. We'll look at it together. There'll be a discussion that's working well. Maybe this part has to go before this. Maybe this is too slow. Maybe

well. Maybe this part has to go before this. Maybe this is too slow. Maybe

this is too fast. I mean, a lot of, a lot of these things are, they sort of intuitive, but sort of deeply felt and, finally deeply considered sort of aesthetic intuitions about what's, what's clicking, you know, what's, what's really working together. And, uh, and we always aim for what we call a,

a through line so that there's, you know, there's something that is uniting the different fragments and kind of, and, and pulling the work forward. You know, there's some, there's some idea or there's some mood or there's something, a rhythm that is kind of pulling you as a viewer ahead with, with the work. And so that's what we're always trying to find. And so, you know, often we'll make a works within a

number of days, within a week, and we'll, we'll do part of it. We'll look

at it. We'll go to bed and we'll go watch another film. We'll, we'll let it rest, come back to it the next day, consider it, reconsider it, rework it.

So that, that, that's sort of how it goes. But in terms of who feeds in what, it's a completely open situation. It's not like me writing old fashioned texts and handing them to Christina, who says, now I turned this into an audiovisual essay. No, it's, it's not that at all. Uh, you know, it's us both kind

essay. No, it's, it's not that at all. Uh, you know, it's us both kind of working towards an audiovisual montage. I think that's a good segue to talking about your video essay only for gestures, which if you haven't watched it yet, go to the video essay .com and please watch there because we're not going to waste time summarizing the video essay or anything like that. I want to, dive right into it.

And my first question is this relationship relates to this, you know, the relationship between writing and videographic work, because this essay functions sort of as an, a videographic adaptation of Raymond Beller essay to a degree. And

I guess my first question is, do you, do you think of it that way and talk a little bit about why you decided to make this essay? Well, the

origin of this piece was that in a course that, uh, Christina had, had taught herself at the, at a film school here in Spain, in San Sebastian, the EQZE school, which is a very progressive, very, very creative, uh, sort of film theory and practice school. And, uh, and in that, uh, class that Christina had taught, she used

practice school. And, uh, and in that, uh, class that Christina had taught, she used the text, uh, from 1984 analysis in flames by Raymond Beller. And, uh,

and we don't need to summarize the whole article here, but basically it's Beller himself sort of looking back on his life as a, you know, one of the main proponents of sort of very rigorous semiotic, you know, formal textual analysis of films. And then at a certain point he felt this liberation that, you know, one

could start to let this whole scientific kind of, you know, fantasy go.

And one could be more creative, uh, in, in, in different ways of doing film analysis. And, Raymond was one of the first people who, who, you know, was looking

analysis. And, Raymond was one of the first people who, who, you know, was looking at the way, for instance, people on television were using clips from films and talking over them and how there was a creative relation, talking about cinema by using the images and sounds of cinema. And, uh, and so, and what that piece

that he wrote in 1984 analysis in flames, which is a very poetic piece. It's,

based on the famous, uh, dramatic paradox that, that some of us know very well, particularly from the days of old fashioned movie projectors with celluloid in them that of course, you watch a film in motion and the films going through the projector and the illusion of movement is beautiful. But if the film gets caught in the

projector, if one frame gets caught, it burns because of the, heat of the, uh, of the light, the arc in the projector. And if you've ever been in a cinema where that has happened in the middle of a screening, I mean, you have this horrifying feeling that the entire film is burning as well as the cinema theater and everything else. And, and, and you as a person, you know, it's like,

it's, it's really a horrifying thing to see. Uh, there's a marvelous, uh, novel called something like scenes from daily unreality, which is exactly about, it has this surrealistic scene where the film catches and burns and all the spectators go into flames as well, right? The spectators burn up in the cinema and wow, you know, not even a

right? The spectators burn up in the cinema and wow, you know, not even a Tarantino got that far in, in his, vision of this. And so Balua takes this, this idea that you can analyze film. And he says, analysis is all about stopping a film and studying the still frames. But it's like, he's saying, if you do that too long, too much, the film will burn. You know, it's, it's like a

poetic metaphoric way of saying a certain kind of analysis was reaching its end. And,

uh, and basically Christina had been using this text in her class and she was thinking about, she was actually thinking first about a great American film, two lane blacktop made by Monty Hellman in the early seventies, which ends with a shot of James Taylor and his car and the, the cameras in the car and it's sort of moving. And at a certain point, the image freezes and the, and the frame burns.

moving. And at a certain point, the image freezes and the, and the frame burns.

Like it's a, it's an animated sort of frame burning. And that's the end of the film, right? Incredible, ending in a two lane blacktop. And so she thought of, well, let's use this clip, you know, from two lane blacktop as, you know, and try to mix this in with some, some quote, some fragment of, of Balloua's article, the sort of poetic center of, of Balloua's article. And, uh, and then through discussing

it and thinking about Balloua quotes his friend, Serge Dene, who said that the, the freeze frame at the end of the 400 blows by François Truffaut was like a historic freeze frame. You know, it was, it projected a sort of a freeze frame into the mind of the spectator. Um, and, and so, so we got that, we

got the 400 blows and then we had two lane blacktop still in play. And

then I, I had the idea and I was, I actually remember being a bit even scared to suggest it because I thought, is this too obvious or who knows?

And the idea was is that there is another film in which the film is made to burn in the, in the final frames. And that's a film called Le Depart, like the, the, the set off, the kickoff by, uh, Yezi Skolomovski. Absolutely

incredible, wonderful film. It's all about fast cars and you know, I mean, it's, it's amazing. And, um, and it's all about dreams and obsessions of a young man who

amazing. And, um, and it's all about dreams and obsessions of a young man who wants to drive fast cars and win a, win a car tournament and all this stuff. And that film ends with the actor who is Jean -Pierre Leo. Jean -Pierre

stuff. And that film ends with the actor who is Jean -Pierre Leo. Jean -Pierre

Leo, the same guy who was a kid in the 400 blows, except of course now he's, he's eight years older or something, but he's already gone from a, a young adolescent to a, to a young adult in, in Le Depart. And we thought, oh, well, let's, let's see, let's go have a look at Le Depart again and let's see what the final shot is. And when we saw the final shot of

400 blows and then we went to the final shot of Le Depart, it's like, that's it. Like we don't need any more shots. We don't need two lane blacktop.

that's it. Like we don't need any more shots. We don't need two lane blacktop.

We don't need anything else from the history of the cinema. All we need is Jean -Pierre Leo kind of growing older in this superimposition, you know, this crossover between two clips and the film burning, you know, and, uh, and then the way we used the, the Balua text is that we weren't trying to sort of summarize or adapt in that sense, the whole text that he wrote. It

was more like, I remember Christina, uh, tweeted about it. She says it was, our piece was inspired by extending on and acting upon a quote from Raymond Ballour's analysis in flames. And so acting upon, it's like an audio visual essay has to enact something. It has to enact a gesture, right? And this is what

Ballour was talking about that after the time of film analysis has passed, of course, it hasn't ever really passed, but he was imagining that if we stopped analyzing films, in a way we would, we would only make artistic gestures with films and, uh, and they, they themselves would be films. These artistic gestures, they would be

videos, they would be films and so on. And, uh, and so we, we tried to embody that, to enact that in, uh, in this video. We're proud of this one because it only uses the two shots and that's the least we've ever used.

Like sometimes we, you know, we're doing hundreds and hundreds of cuts of both images and sounds. And we've done ones with 12, you know, 15 films of, of a

and sounds. And we've done ones with 12, you know, 15 films of, of a director in one piece. That'll, give you a headache. You don't get over quickly. And,

um, but this one was like a very pure minimalist thing. And, and, you know, we were interested in this idea of just trying to take a, very poetic quotation and, and, and to keep its poetry, you know, to keep its, its poetic power and to extend it, uh, audio visually. And I think that minimalist component is so

key because the quote itself is, well, just a selection of that essay is very dense. And I think that's why the essay functions so beautifully and it, and it

dense. And I think that's why the essay functions so beautifully and it, and it benefits from multiple viewings. One of the questions I had for you, your video essays, I, I think you and Christina make very unique video essays in that they really sit in between kind of the, the, the two camps of video essayists in that you are, you are, you have a PhD and you have an academic background and

you teach, but you're making them for an online pub publication. That's not a, a scholarly journal. And so you're sort of, and I imagine that that your, audience is

scholarly journal. And so you're sort of, and I imagine that that your, audience is academics and just probably you're the online cinephile community who is consuming this type of work. And so when you're in the creative process for a piece like this, and you're narrowing down an essay into just a few sentences, if that, how do you make sure that the meaning is, is not

lost? Hmm. Well, I don't think we, we do check it in any

lost? Hmm. Well, I don't think we, we do check it in any particularly rational way. I mean, part of the, way I want to respond to what you're asking me here is that, you know, Christina and I actually do not think of ourselves as academics. I mean, Christina has never been an academic and I've only been an academic as in the sense of someone who works

at a university and is paid for it, you know, with a salary. I've only

been an academic at very specific and fairly short periods of my life. I have

been much more for most of my life, the majority of my life, a freelance writer and, and a film critic. I mean, I think of myself as a film critic above all, and that's also true of Christina. And we think of our audio visual essays as, as actors, gestures of film criticism. Now, what that means in terms of everything you're saying about, uh, the audience and the different audiences,

I mean, we're not thinking of pitching to different audiences. And we certainly, you know, don't think about pitching to an academic audience, but nor do we think about pitching down to the ordinary viewer. I mean, my personally, the way I've always thought about this, and this comes back to what we're saying about audio commentaries. So I had

a strong sense when I started doing audio commentaries that really my, my, I, there were many possible listeners for a DVD audio commentary, people who already know the film, people who know the director, you know, people who've never seen the film before, but were intrigued enough to listen to the, to the commentary track afterwards. But I also had in my head the person that I was when I was young, like a

14, 15 year old kid who had through whatever means gets attracted to cinema and, but is hungry for ideas. It doesn't, doesn't just want to consume a million films, that's important, but, also wants just some grasp of some ideas, some, something to think about, some, some tool to help him or, him or

her through this great jungle of cinema and audio vision and television and computers now and everything else. Right. So when I did the, the audio commentaries for DVD, I imagined, you know, being a 15 year old kid, you know, picking up a DVD from the shop or from their parents pile or something at home and watching some

crazy film, you know, The Blue Angel by Joseph von Sternberg. And then thinking, well, there was something intriguing about that. Maybe I should, I'll listen for five minutes to this guy talking about it. And that's where I come in. And if I can engage that person, as well as all the other people who are listening to it, I feel I've done something good. Right. But in many ways, it, it, it's a

sort of a, the pitch that Christina and I take in, in our audio visual essays and also in our writings. I mean, it's very natural to us in that we are film critics, you know, who happen to also read books and, you know, we're thinking about things all the time. And it's natural for us to want to bring in ideas, some theories, some philosophies, you know, some pieces of all these things

that we're living. It's natural for us to want to sort of funnel that. It

would be unnatural for us to take it all out, you know, and all we can't have a quote from Bertolt Brecht in this because the average viewer of, you know, whatever movie or Fandor or something won't get it. You know, I mean, we've never thought like that in a million years. It's better to put, you know, I, I, when I wrote for a newspaper, as I did in Australia for years, I

always worked on this thing that, you know, if I put in enough references across the years to Ho Xiaoxian, finally somebody's, some reader, exasperated reader is going to say, who the hell is Ho Xiaoxian? I better go watch a film by Ho Xiaoxian.

You know, it might actually lead them to watch a film by this person they've never heard of. And what the hell is this name doing here? Or in this film review of a film not by Ho Xiaoxian, right? This was always my idea that you, that you drop these, these things in. One of my personal role models in life is a great Australian film critic named John Flaus. And the first time

I heard John Flaus, I was literally 15, and he was speaking at a science fiction convention, believe it or not. And, and he was talking about how basically when he's, I mean, he's a, he's, he's a very inspiring figure that belongs to no school, no university, no nothing. It's, it's, it's him. And he's very anarchistic

person. And basically he had this, lesson that he wanted to give us, which on

person. And basically he had this, lesson that he wanted to give us, which on that day, which was that when he speaks at a university, if he's asked to speak at a university about films, he'll throw in some obscenities. He'll swear a bit.

He'll shake up the room as he's doing a very high level analysis, but he'll put it in some real dirty words there and shake up the scene. He says,

but then at the same time, he also had a job teaching film in prisons, in prison. So he was teaching a film course in prison. And he said with

in prison. So he was teaching a film course in prison. And he said with the prisoners, the opposite thing was the important thing. When you're talking to people in jail, you should mention Hegel, Freud, Marx, Heidegger.

And they might ask you, who's that? Who's that? And then you tell them, right?

But you don't speak down to them, you know, just as you don't speak up to the university, you try to speak in a way that you're broadening the context of whatever the context is. And with audiovisual essays, I feel the context is, in fact, very wide. You know, we don't feel that they're

sort of narrow cast at all in terms of what audience they hit. So, you

know, in a way, we just try to naturally do the thing that we respond to and the kind of gesture we come up with. And then we just kind of throw it out there like, you know, a message in a bottle basically on the ocean. And different kinds of people will pick that up. Some will ignore it,

the ocean. And different kinds of people will pick that up. Some will ignore it, some will, you know, forget it instantly, but others may be intrigued by it. And

it's that moment of intrigue, that aha moment when somebody, suddenly some spark goes off in somebody's head, in their heart. That's what you're aiming for always. Absolutely. And I think that's why the two of you operate in such

for always. Absolutely. And I think that's why the two of you operate in such a unique place in the video essay ecosystem. Because as you say, as you don't have a lot of the, like, I've interviewed a couple of folks who have, who worked at Fandor, for example, they had an MO that they had to produce video essays in a certain way. And so you already mentioned this earlier, but I think

I get that from your work that, that you're operating and what interests you and having a sense of freedom that I think really translates into the work itself. So

I think that's a good segue to talking about the video essay that you selected for us to talk about, which is Trespassos by Raphael Guillaume. First pretty basic question is, why did you select this video essay? Why do you find it so compelling?

I picked this one because I like it. And because it was not from the usual American, England, French axis that, you know, so often film culture for so many of us is defined by this kind of America and Europe kind of thing. And this one is from Mexico. And it's from a magazine,

an online magazine, Correspondencias. And Raphael is one of the editors, one of the workers and writers on that magazine. So it comes from another part of the world, but a part of the world where there's a lot going on in film culture and including in audiovisual essays, right? Mexico. And also, the actual

materials of the piece itself are not the usual things that get quoted or used or appropriated in audiovisual essays. There's some things that are familiar, Gus Van Sant's Elephant's in there, Alan Clark's Elephant is in there. But there are also films by directors that I personally haven't yet to see their films. Eduardo Williams, who's an

Argentinian filmmaker, for instance. Pablo Chavarria, who's Mexican. Now, these are new names to me, right? When we see the clips from their films in Trespassos, in a way, they are immediately part of this sort of world's, current world cinema language of, you know, what's called slow cinema, minimalist cinema. And, for instance,

David Boardwell has made the great point that an important aspect of art cinema, going right back to the start of the 60s, Antonioni and stuff, is what David calls the walk and talk technique, right? Long takes of characters walking and sometimes talking or not. Sometimes there's music, sometimes there's just ordinary sound. And now, of course,

in more contemporary cinema, 21st century cinema, the characters walking have taken on, you know, epic dimensions. And I thought it was a simple but beautiful poetic idea that Rafael

epic dimensions. And I thought it was a simple but beautiful poetic idea that Rafael had in this video is to just simply combine a number of walks in a very flowing way so that it all seems like the one walk. But it makes you think about the the poetics of walking in these contemporary films. And we should

explain that the the Spanish language title, Trespassos, means both sort of following the steps, following in the steps of someone, you know, tracing the steps. But it also has that sense as an English trespass, you know, of of going into a space that's perhaps not yours, or you don't own that space, or it's an unusual or foreign

space. So there's both walking as following as tracing a path, and there's walking as

space. So there's both walking as following as tracing a path, and there's walking as trespass. And and watching the way Rafael edited those clips together, I feel that you

trespass. And and watching the way Rafael edited those clips together, I feel that you get that intuitively, you get it kind of as it were in your body physically, you get this sense of what all of this walking in contemporary cinema is all about in terms of the people who are doing it, the class of the people who are doing it, the kinds of worlds they're walking between, you know, and, and

by sort of covering so many countries, so many paths, the literal different kinds of paths, and making it all like one walk, you know, so we have the the almost comic device of the, you know, the number of meters kind of written on the screen as as if it is literally one walk that is happening. But in

fact, of course, it's combined of many walks. So I thought there was, you know, a poetic concentration, a poetic distillation of something that is incredibly important in contemporary cinema here. The poetics of the essay, there's an immersive quality to it that I think is really compelling. I feel like there are kind of two schools of video essays. One is where it's really trying to, break

the film and analyze it. And in that sense, you don't really get sucked into the essay. I mean, it's still compelling and captivated by, and there's this one where

the essay. I mean, it's still compelling and captivated by, and there's this one where it's, it's, it's, it's borrowing film style, film language, making you really just think. And, and I think the meters aspect really teaches you how to think about the essay as you're watching it. As the first ones were coming up, I was kind of like, okay, are the, is he counting the meters like

in each individual shot? And then you realize like, oh, wait, we're counting the, the, the collective number of meters, which is sort of a great revelation that may have been obvious to most people, but it wasn't to me originally. And I was like, oh, wow, this is really great. And I'm, you, you mentioned something about the, the video essay using films by directors who are not Hitchcock or Paul Thomas Anderson, or,

or, or the directors that, seem to dominate the video essay world. And I'm wondering as a, as a film critic yourself, part of the point of being a film critic is to be on the lookout for, for new films and to write about them in newspapers and generate interest. Do you think that's one of the unique advantages of video graphic criticism is this ability to broaden the conversation? And is that something

that you think about in your own work? I mean, it's definitely something that it's one factor that, that when we're, you know, tossing up ideas, uh, Christina and I, you know, are often, I mean, it's always based on our own viewing, but our own viewing is, is, is also based on, you know, what, haven't we seen yet?

Or which director do we need to watch? Or is there some decade in some country that we, we, we, we know nothing about? And, and so we have that sort of exploratory sense of viewing and that sort of naturally leads to our, our topics. Um, but you know, it, it is a great thing to be able to,

topics. Um, but you know, it, it is a great thing to be able to, for instance, we've done a, well, we've done several works now, not, not all of them are, are available yet in public, but we've done several works on, uh, Marco Bellocchio, the, Italian filmmaker, who's, you know, quite well known. I mean, he's not an, he's not an unknown by any means, but, you know, we showed, uh, our, uh,

our longest work on Bellocchio at a conference, uh, in Australia and almost everyone in the audience said to us, wow, you know, I'd heard of that guy. And I

saw the one film that's on Criterion, Fists in the Pocket by Bellocchio, but God, I didn't know he made 30 other movies and still making movies. And, uh, and I got to see them all, you know, so like we actually, you know, incited that desire to, to, to watch a filmmaker's work. And that's important for us because, you know, of course you also want people to go back and look at Hitchcock,

look at, you know, whatever it might be, Polanski, Sternberg, you know, um, Chantal Ackerman, you know, all, uh, Agnes Varda. You, you want people to, to go back through the canon and find new ways of sort of understanding it and bringing it alive and bringing it into the present. But you also do want to kind of broaden that, that conversation. I mean, we're not, Christina and I are not opposed to commercial

cinema or genre, cinema by any means, you know, we're, we're big fans of a lot of popular genres, but, but we do try to steer away from, yeah, some of these kind of overworked examples, unless, uh, unless we, we have a really unusual angle, uh, on something, you know, so David Lynch, we've, we've done a number of pieces on him because, you know, we're quite obsessed with David Lynch and, and so

is plenty of other people in the world. And in the audiovisual essay world, we're fully aware of that, but, but then we, we felt we had like a particular angle that we wanted to bring out with David Lynch. So we, uh, we went for that. But yeah, the, the more that these things expand in terms of the

for that. But yeah, the, the more that these things expand in terms of the reference to national cinemas, to, you know, all kinds of different filmmakers and women filmmakers, as well as men filmmakers, of course, you know, all of, all of that diversity that, that people now talk about is important. And, um, and so, yeah, we, we, we try to do our own, uh, little, little contribution to that. And I,

and I'm, I'm speaking primarily for myself, but, but you alluded to this earlier as, someone who is, who is just overflowed with, you know, Hollywood and European cinema primarily, um, in a way that I, I really want to, want to get out of, there's something very effective about this piece in that it's using films that I'm not familiar with. And I'm speaking only for me, but I, I would imagine

you mentioned this, and I imagine a lot of people would not be familiar with at least half of, half of the films. And I, I, and I wonder if, I wonder if that was, um, intentional because I think it brings on another meaning what, to the, to what this video is trying to get you to think about by the fact that it's not using long walking shots from films that we would

know because we don't have, we're not bringing our own experience or any context to it, which I think is, which I think is kind of essential to the video.

I say in a way, I'm just trying to think if there, uh, of like a famous walking shot that if it was placed in the middle of it, would almost kind of disrupt the flow of the video, I say. Uh, I, I'm, I'm wondering if you agree with that or if that's just literally my own experience. No,

I think you're absolutely right about that. I mean, I think if we had, you know, a Bellator clip in the middle that would have this effect that you're talking about, it would be like, Oh, right. Yeah. We're back to the canonical master of the long walking shot, old Bellator. And, um, you know, that, that would have wrecked it for me. You know, it's, interesting that the, the most mainstream this piece gets

is, is, um, is Gus Van Sant, you know, is Elephant. And that, that works because it's sort of its content of those shots, the, the school kids and so on seems to sort of chime in with other figures that we see from other films. But I, I, I totally agree with you that this, I mean, this is a piece that in its own sort of simple and powerful way is about giving

you an image of world cinema and, you know, and giving you some, you know, Asian cinema content, some Mexican cinema content, Argentinian cinema, you know, these things that we're not always including in the globe of, of world cinema. And so without having to, you know, wrap you over the knuckles with that, the piece is saying, you know, open your mind, open your eyes, you know, there's, there's, there's a lot of

different landscapes, a lot of different life and social experiences that can be sort of drawn into this. And I think that's what makes the essay so effective is that it doesn't apologize for that difference. If you catch my drift, like it's very clear that they're different films. It's not trying to, it's not trying to trick you in any way. The, the aesthetic of each is the lighting of each the, they're all

any way. The, the aesthetic of each is the lighting of each the, they're all different, but yet the, the editing itself is so effective primarily through, there's a lot of, there's a lot of like, like match cut type transitions, but, but, but that is, it, it, it really feels like one cohesive piece. And it's again, this kind of minimalist idea that is just so effective in its own way, but it's also

very deceptively simple, right? Like I don't, it, there, there's, there's a lot of thought and preparation and intentionality in that piece, but it seems so effortless. I completely agree with you there, Will. And, and in fact, I think you, you've shown me something there about the reason Christina and I would, would like a video like this is

because we also aim for that thing where, you know, we like to create a flow between fragments, but we never try to sort of, you know, blend them into the one thing where you can't tell the difference anymore, you know, unless there's some point to that. But generally we like it in, in the, language of film theory, we like there to be an element of heterogeneity. In other words, difference between clips

and a clear difference. So we're not trying to erase the differences between one film and another, one time period and another, one genre and another. We're, we're, we're putting the things together, but we, we also want to keep the, you know, the, the differences between them in play. And this is what Christina and I have often spoken about is that we try to find a sort of a thread or a channel

that unites things. And that means, as it were, turning up the volume or down the volume in different ways on different aspects of each clip, but also to, to respect the, the heterogeneity of the materials. And that, that's, that's an exciting thing for me personally. I, I, enjoy heterogeneity in cinema. I enjoy this sort of excessive

difference, you know, and, um, but if you can also, as Raphael Guillem has done, if you can also make that flow and, and create a line that joins those fragments, you know, that's, that is a beautiful gesture in itself. Adrian, thank you so much for agreeing to be on the show. I, I, I really, really appreciate it.

Well, it has been fun. I, I

really appreciate it. Bye -bye.

appreciate it. Bye -bye.