Kute Korrespondences or "see you in september"

[LOT64 at aol.com]

Tim et. al. (though you might be the only one out there)

Yes, it finally dawned on me too, that the reason for the sudden silence was
the end of the academic year.  As someone who is no longer involved in the
academy in any way, I have really enjoyed the highly abstract level of
discourse I have found here.  Of course, this type of discourse is what drove
me from the groves twenty years ago.  If it is all one hears, it can drive
you nuts.  However, never being able to discuss the hidden meanings of
things, literature and its concomittants,  and weird theories is just as bad
as only discussing them.  The list is great in this way.  I can indulge just
as much as I can take.

Anyway, here's the KK.  Peter Kubelka is one of the greatest avant-garde
filmmakers.  His most famous film is called UNSERE AFRIKAREISE made around
1966.  Its a film that runs about thirteen minutes and took him thirteen
years to make.  He was hired to make a home movie of a group of rich
Austrians' African hunting safari.  He accepted the commission because he was
broke and it was the only way he could get to see Africa.  He took hours of
footage of the hunters, killing beautiful animals, ordering the Africans
about, drinking in bars, and generally coming off like the descendants of
General Von Trotha.  Upon returning to Europe, he disappeared with all the
footage and went into hiding.  He eluded the private detectives and police
sent after him and years later showed up with the finished film.  OUR TRIP TO
AFRICA (as it translates) is an incredible document of the European in
Africa.  It exposes the underbelly of colonialism, the cruelty of trophy
hunting, the beauty of Africa and its people, and the sick humor of the whole
mess.  The film style is totally elliptical, making use of very strange
non-literal juxtapositions and as well as being beautiful and horrifying, is
incredibly funny.  In fact, it is almost a cinematic equivalent of some of
GR's most mindbending writing.  Definitely worth seeing or seeking out.  It
usually plays at places like Anthology Film Archives in NY or Canyon Cinema
in SF.  Perhaps on college campus film courses.

Now to the KK.  Kubelka's film's primary strategy is what he calls the "sync
event".  When two unconnected sounds or images collide and create a new
meaning not inherent in either seperately.  He talks of a sync event he
witnessed in Africa.  A tribe that lived on the west coast of Africa would
gather on the beach each evening before sundown.  They all brought drums.
 They waited patiently till the bottom of the sun's shape appeared to hit the
horizon formed by the ocean.  At that precise instant the leader struck the
tribe's largest drum a mighty blow.  The sun hitting the horizon synchronized
with the drum beat and signalled the start of a night of drumming and
dancing.  A way of asserting a little control over the universe, or a way of
entering into harmony with the universe, perhaps.  I always loved the image
created  by that story, apocryphal or not.

Upon rereading V. , I was delighted by this passage:
<Profane was balefully drunk.  He got out of the car, wandered off behind a
tree and pointed west, with some intention of pissing on the sun to put it
our for good and all, this being somehow important for him.(Inanimate objects
could do what they wanted.  Not what they wanted because things do not want;
only men.  But things do what they do, and this is why Profane was pissing at
the sun.)
<     It went down; as if he'd extinguished it after all and continued on
immortal, god of a darkened world.>

Two related sync events.  Just enjoyed this and thought you might find it
interesting.


                                                    Ron Churgin