The third and last week of in-house classes started with intense editing of our failed project in the Transcultural Film Workshop. We made a seven minute movie where we reflected on the process. We named the movie FAIL – and it was a success, being much discussed after the viewing Wednesday night. I really enjoyed working so intensely in a group again, something I haven’t done for many years. I was reminded of the most intense days of magazine making in Stockholm. I always prefer to work alone, so it was good to be forced to do some teamwork.
On Thursday we had the first class in the course Poetic Framing in the morning and a guest lecture, Queering the Gaze, in the afternoon.
Thursday night was the grand finale of this semester’s in-house: Barbecue and the screening of our final projects in Digital Anthropology. Great closure! I got many positive comments from my classmates about my film on Japanese shota. The comment that made me most happy came from M, who said that it was very scientific.
Finished Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida. What I take with me is the sound of the shutter, rather than the photographer’s eye, as the key to the Photograph, and the idea that the Photograph equals death. I commented on page 14:
It is the death of the captured situation, the captured time, which will never ever exist again, but which has been captured in the Photograph.
This lends sadness to the practice but also a mutual understanding between object and photographer: We die together. We share a moment of micro-death.
I picked up a book from an Amazon haul almost ten years ago: Gay Shame. I had miscalculated my interest back then and also had the wrong approach to academic anthologies (I was still reading cover to cover), so I put it away unread. Now it was a better fit. I began with Kulick’s and Klein’s article on Brazilian travesti sex workers. Loosely connected to my essay for Theory & History. But mainly I read it out of personal interest. And I really like Kulick’s style of writing.
S attended a film festival in Cannes where his film was screened. Unfortunately I couldn’t come, since my own film was screened in Berlin!
Study
Theory & History essay
- Cervulle, Maxime and Nick Rees-Roberts (2008): Queering the Orientalist porn package: Arab men in French gay pornography. In New Cinemas: Journal of Contemporary Film, Volume 6, Number 3, pp. 197–208.
Extra
- Kulick, Don and Charles Klein (2009): Scandalous Acts: The Politics of Shame Among Brazilian Travesti Prostitutes. In Gay Shame, pp. 312-338.
Other
Book
- Barthes, Roland (1980): Camera Lucida. 119 p.
Articles
- The Economist:
- Why Julian Assange should be extradited
- Julian Assange’s fate may lie with Sajid Javid
- Notre Dame
- Japan’s Self-Defence Forces are beginning to focus on China
- Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, is determined to raise sales taxes
- Chaguan: Hope remains for Western solidarity. Look at embassies in Beijing
- Chinese money is behind some of the Arab world’s biggest projects
- Raya al-Hassan takes on Lebanon’s warlords—and the patriarchy
- The right-wing Finns Party does well in Finland’s election
- Charlemagne: The problem with EU foreign policy
- In “Machines Like Me”, Ian McEwan asks an age-old question
- Business this week
- Is insectageddon imminent?
- Jason S. Farr, Travis Chi Wing Lau: Twitter Helps Us Build a More Inclusive Academy
- David Bryant Copeland: Guidelines for Brutalist Web Design
Podcast
- The Intelligence:
- Babbage: How AI powers Amazon (24 min)
- Actual Fluency Podcast: AFP 151 – Andrew Feinberg: Learning Japanese and Japanese Culture (83 min)
Film
- Glengarry Glen Ross (James Foley, 1992, 100 min)
- Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017, 104 min)
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