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(some writing about) writing about film So after I saw Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon (Film Club XXVII), I went and got a book of her writing out of the library (Essential Deren: Collected Writing on Film). It's pretty interesting, and it sheds some light on exactly what it is that she's attempting to do in her films. I tend to read with a package of book darts nearby, and eventually (because I'm a huge geek) I take the passages of a text that I marked with the darts and transcribe them into the computer so that I can easily access, search, or share them later. It occurred to me that people reading this blog might be interested in the notes on the Deren book, so I whipped them up into a webpage, viewable here. I'm still reading the book, so the notes aren't quite complete, but there's more than enough there for interested parties to sink their teeth into. (The page will dynamically update with new notes once I return to reading the book, which might not be for a few weeks: I'm travelling.) Just in case Deren isn't your thing, here are a few other exports of notes on film books I've read in the recent past: Virginia Wright Wexman's A History of Film Carol Clover's Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film Stan Brakhage's Brakhage Scrapbook: Collected Writings 1964-1980 Martha Nochimson's The Passion of David Lynch Eric Lichtenfeld's Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie Jonathan Rosenbaum's Movies as Politics Hopefully you can find something in there to enjoy. Oh, btw, these exports aren't hand-coded; they're all made possible by Dabble DB, a great (but not free) service used to generate online databases: that's the same service I use to maintain the 20 Most Recent Films and Favorite Films pages. Last but not least is a reminder that the Production Design Blog-A-Thon begins Monday... Labels: book_commentary, indexing, media commentary

Saturday, May 17, 2008 11:09 AM   Comments: Post a Comment