Tuesday, January 29, 2008

GODARD OF THE SUBURBS

Via Owen, a link to the first Ballardian Festival of Home Movies.



We’re all going to be starring in our own sit-coms, and they’ll be strange sit-coms, too, like the inside of our heads.

Stop texting and start shooting – the closing date for entries is 20 February, and the prize is Ballard’s autobiography and reissues of his doom trilogy. But sod the prize – I like the idea. Going to the cinema is usually, as I’ve said before, like going to church (or, for that matter, the art gallery) – we are expected to identify with something universally human which is nevertheless transmitted to us at several levels (literal and figurative) of remove. If there is a medium which is crying out for a DIY revolution, it is film.

My phone doesn’t have a camera, but I was bought a digital camera for Christmas. You can shoot movies on it, though of course it shakes and makes lots of noise and you have to pan round very slowly. I like it very much, because of, rather than in spite of, its limitations, and I’m thinking about making a short film with it: a non-fiction ghost story set on the Suffolk coast. I am particularly keen on shooting films in the passenger seat of the car – drives through forests, or approaches to significant places. I may post a few once I’ve worked out how to edit out the white background noise. In the meantime, here’s a non-fiction ghostly still taken in St Pancras churchyard on New Year’s Eve.

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