Elizabeth_Jane
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Outline Screenplay
Star this Commitment
Week 7 of 7
Elizabeth Jane commits to:
Write an outline for the feature film screenplay "Consent"
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No more reports due
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My Commitment Journal
 Elizabeth_Jane
December 3, 2017, 12:12 AM
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My goal was an outline by this date. I didn’t complete an outline in this seven week period. I’ve written up all the things I did do. This week I saw another Tarkovsky film, Solaris – and its opening shots give me ideas for Consent. I also saw the killing of a Sacred Deer. Yorgos Lanthimos. A deeply strange movie, a modern or post-modern tragedy which makes its debt to the Greeks blatant. But I digress. I reached out to Suz this week and she responded. So we will meet before Christmas. Plot next steps. My goal for next week is to reach out to Michelle Latimer in the hopes of getting some leads on Indigenous writers. But I’m getting ahead of myself. My immediate goal is to return to writing – a couple of hours a day? - playing around with some of the ideas that are currently half-baked. Who is Katie Wolf? Is she Indigenous? What is her interest in the Mississaugas? What is the truth of Katie? The settler truth of her? I need to spend some time with that. It may be only one session. It may be more. I know how to do that. And I’ll do it on Monday morning. I’ve been able to talk about Consent with ease – to Susan Shipton when she asked. And to a total stranger at a DGC screening 7 social event last week. Onwards. I’ll set a new Stick goal once I’ve met with Suz in a couple of weeks. |
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Elizabeth_Jane
November 25, 2017, 12:26 AM
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November 24, 2017 I completely missed reporting last week. How did I miss filing my report? What was I up to that created such business or distraction that I did not file my report? I’ll have a look now. November 10 to 17: Barbara Hannigan concert, - Takes me far off course with music from the late 19th / early 20th century. With its German Christianity, romantic view of nature and love. Hannigan herself is wondrous as is her her long-time collaborator Reinbert de Leeuw Tarkovsky’s The Mirror - A retrospective and I go for it. I’ve enjoyed reading Tarkovsky’s book sculting in time but I’d not seen much (if any) of his work. Catching up with a master. Demanding, poetic film that I scarcely grasp. ROM with family (for Anishnaabeg art), - I was confused by the way the show was presented and perhaps by my companions. I realized later I’d have to return. Note to self: family is family; my work is my work - Ben told a story in the way of a Cree story teller about a runner who collapsed with exhaustion at the end of the race and appeared to shit himself. He was telling me something. Tarkovsky’s STALKER, - See above. I lean into these films. Tarkovsky observes the landscape of the human face I read somewhere. a VR event supposedly about the impact of VR on humanity, - I was glad to be at this event, likely the oldest person there. Now I’ve experienced VR. I’ve seen Danis Goulet’s The Hunt. No need to rush out for more VR. - 3 plays/reading at Weesageechak, - This is work. Alanis King, the playwright in whom I was interest – well I can’t say she disappointed me but I didn’t hear a voice that spoke to me. I did see a fabulous actor in another work, Weekend, whom I’d never seen before – and she is not young: see program notes for name. Tarkovsky’s NOSTALGHIA, - See above. This one set in Italy. Long tracking shots. Elements of earth, water, fire – I wonder if this was part of Deepa’s inspiration for her series of feature thus titled? brunch with Florence – but wait. I get ahead of myself. I was reading Lee Maracle’s My Conversations with Canadians, And for hours every daily, Victoria Freeman’s thesis, “Toronto Has No History”. I am shaken by reading Lee Maracle’s powerful, challenging voice. I am exhausted reading Freeman’s thesis. And the paint ladies came. And Chloe’s drawings and list of jobs for the house refresh/repair arrived required a few quiet minutes to review. And I kept looking at events and schedules and making choices about what to see in coming weeks. But what about Consent? in that week, did I make progress on my goal of an outline for Consent? Yes. I did. Deepening my knowledge of the early history of Toronto, the city in which I am embedded - the city that exists as it does today because of the Toronto Purchase, because of the colonial relationship of Britain to the indigenous people of this land, the relationship between settlers and indigenous people – takes me closer to being in a position to write the outline. And now to November 18 though today: Again, I consciously stepped back from Consent. Why? Because: exhaustion from working with this material. Because: life needs to be lived – leaves raked, home repaired and painted, preparations made for refreshing the kitchen, namely “editing” and rearranging what we keep. Because: bookkeeping has to be done. (My latest idea: look up transactions from earlier years to see if I can decipher how to enter similar transactions.) Because: I need to take care of my health. (Which reminds me I have to book next week’s Inhabit class.) And yet I continue with Consent. I’ve joined a reading group about the Truth and Reconciliation Report. The first meeting took place this week and it was a revelation. I begin to understand the implications of colonialism. That I am part of the dominant culture. How – in what way – I am a settler: and that is simply because even though as a fifth generation Canadian, I identify as a Canadian, there’s another way of looking at this. And that is: I am not Indigenous; therefore, I am a settler. I’ve been working with these concepts for a year now. I am beginning, just, to grasp them. And that understanding is essential for Consent. This week, I had breakfast with Florence. Why is that so difficult? I collapsed afterwards. Curled on the red couch, I read Maria Campbell’s Half-Breed, an account of growing up Metis in Saskatchewan in the 1940s. I was shaken by it. By the prejudice she and her family experienced. By her anger. By her fight for justice, or fairness. Is it a fair society that “we” should aspire to? “We” – Canadians. A society that lifts everyone. She’s a commanding presence today. A large woman in a brown shawl when I saw her in October. She fully occupies her space. She doesn’t look 78 years old. She looks ageless. Timeless. I returned to the Anishnaabe exhibition. Hung out with those magnificent artifacts – soft moccasins, coats, bags all exquisitely beaded. With the paintings of the Woodland School. Lived with them for a bit. Came to some understanding of those paintings which I’ve never quite grasped. They are full of spirit life. Underwater life. The imagery is comparable to Inuit art that portrays life inside the outline of a physical body. Indigenous episteme. Ways of knowing. Another Tarkovsky film, The Sacrifice. I haven’t read very much about Tarkovsky’s films yet. That awaits an evening at home. And, with Marian, I saw Ruben Ostlund’s The Square. I struggle with his work, as much as I admire aspects of it. I need to more fully work out my response to the film. It’s important that I do that. I worked at bookkeeping, making incredibly slow progress but yes, making progress. And here we are. |
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Elizabeth_Jane
November 10, 2017, 8:59 PM
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A very different week: I took a step back as I found myself in a tizzy. A trail of too many bits and pieces in the wake of my week of intense work. Scheduling. Decisions to make about plays, movies. Or imagined decisions. Maybe overwhelmed by the house refresh project. So a step back. In that step back, I got the Cabiria bookkeeping on track – sort of. Several days required yet but first some training/support. I visited Another Story Books (a follow up to the Indigenous Writers Gathering and last week with Cherie Dimaline) and bought Lee Maracle’s Letter to Canadians and a book of poetry by Laurie (?) Graham. Then I began to read Maracle’s book. And I saw Backbone, a magnificent Indigenous dance performance. Or a magnificent dance performance. Startlingly embodied, powerful, kinetic physicality. What is coming to me is that: Katie may be an indigenous woman. And I need an Indigenous writer as a collaborator. As Resnais had a writer collaborator for Hiroshima mon Amour and for Night and Fog. And that I would do well to find someone who would suggest a writer and make an introduction. Coming up, not yet booked: Weesageechak – a playwright I’m interested in. Almost time to meet Victoria Freeman. Read her thesis! Next week, re-engage more fully: some days of work sprints. That’s what the thesis will require. |
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Elizabeth_Jane
November 3, 2017, 5:17 PM
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This week, I bore down into preparation. I’ve read everything I can get my hands on in the way of reviews/critiques of Hiroshima mon amour. So that’s become a project within the project. Next steps with that: 1) view the film again. 2) create a review of what I read under these headings: 1. what techniques do Resnais & Duras use to make the film? 2. What is the theme of the film? 3. Why is it so appealing to me? 4. What, if any, are the weaknesses of the film? I’ve begun to look at video essays. So far: - A Diary for Timothy – Humphrey Jennings, 1945 - Night and fog – Alain Resnais (writer Jean Cayrol), 1955 – o How Resnais chooses writers with whom to collaborate and how essential their poetic voices are to how both this film and Hiroshima mon amour work on the viewer. o From “Thoughts/notes for Consent – how to get it to work”: Phillip Lopate on the Criterion disc: “…neither Resnais nor Cayrol presumed to offer a comprehensive guide to the concentration camp universe. Quite the contrary: the voiceover is filled with skepticism and doubt, and a sympathetic awareness of the viewer’s resistance, conscious or unconscious, to grasping the unthinkable. “Useless to describe what went on in these cells,” and “Words are insufficient,” we are told again and again in the voiceover narration. “No description, no picture can reveal their true dimension.” And: “Is it in vain that we try to remember?” Meanwhile, the viewer is calmly given information about the Nazis’ extermination procedures. Thus the dialectic is set up between the necessity of remembering, and the impossibility of doing so.” “…What can we do, then? Resnais’ and Cayrol’s answer is: we can reflect, ask questions, examine the record, and interrogate our own responses. In short, offer up an essay. … by choosing to compress such enormous subject matter into only a half-hour (think, by contrast, of Claude Lanzmann’s over-nine-hour Shoah, 1985), the filmmakers force themselves into the epigrammatic concision and synthesis of essayistic reflection.” o “This effort at analysis and reflection is one of the ways the filmmakers work to evade pious sentimentality: indeed, the voiceover narration (masterfully spoken by Michel Bouquet) is delivered in a harsh, dry, astringent tone, filled with ironic shadings (though, according to the filmmaker himself, he asked Bouquet to deliver his lines in a “neutral tone”). - Letter to Jane – Jean-Luc Godard & Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1972 o Before I screened this I looked at their film Tout va bien, 1972 in which Jane Fonda “starred”. It in turn led me to Bertollt Brecht’s Preface to Mahagonny, a kind of manifesto about entertaining an audience v. engaging an audience). Letter to Jane critically examines /deconstructs what/how a particular image of Jane Fonda on an anti-war visit to Vietnam communicated by means of framing, privileging the star over the Vietnamese in the frame. They also talk about how the North Vietnamese used the frame to reposition the argument from “What can we Americans do for you?” to “Vietnamese have to find peace on their own.” I will continue this viewing. I attended a talk: Embedding survival in indigenous narratives with Métis writer Cherie Dimaline (who, the following day, won the GG for The Marrow Thieves). By the next day, I was thinking that maybe I should be approaching an Indigenous writer with whom to collaborate on this film. I also went on a walk in and around U of T campus guided by two indigenous scholars. And last night attended a talk about indigenous knowledge and the stars. Samples from my notes: “The celestial as a means of survival” and “How can we find the warm air current to lift us?” and “possibilities for creative intimacies – how does dark matter pull our bodies together?” “What is loveable within rupture?” Being in the presence of these indigenous people is re-shaping my thought. It is adventurous thought. It is responsive to what is, not lamenting what is not. It acknowledges deep damage done to indigenous people. Always. It recognizes that reality of the past. It functions in the present. And it envisions a future. |
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