My Reading Traces: San Juan de la Cruz - ... aunque es de noche

 

Frederick Wiseman is dead

Frederick Wiseman. Photo: Antoine Yar/Wikimedia Commons.

* 1. Januar 1930 in Boston, Massachusetts

 † 16. Februar 2026 in Cambridge, Massachusetts

One of my most admired directors passed way. I believe that I have watched at least 70 percent of his films. And I am still afraid to watch his "Near Death"(1989). It is darkly funny that this title coincides with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the near death of global socialism. In any case my favorites are "Missile"(1987) which is also in a certain way a film about near death. And "The Store" (1984) and "Meat" (1976) about the cruelty and the violence of global capitalism.

He will remain together with maybe Robert Kramer the most important cartographer of the modern post Shoah world. So much sadness and mourning in his world. He already saw America dying -- decades before it happens right now before our own eyes.

David Wellington: The Carpenter (1988)

 

Bizarrely unconnected story lines, in parts dreamlike.

A female and male psycho meet.

The undead male is ludicrously connected to a house.

The abused female comes directly out of a mental institution.

In a part also love story with a feminist twist. 

Maybe a film about editing living bodies with tools. 

Or it simply adds another reason why anyone hates to have craftsman in the house.

First feature film with a masterly and almost idiotically overachieving camerawork by the now famous David Franco.

Worthy of watching it mainly for this reason. 

Giacomo Abbruzzese: Disco Boy (2023)

When dreams melt into the world, and vice versa.

And one meets one's Doppelgänger in the jungle.

When death becomes life, and vice versa in a series of transgressions.

If any comparison would even be possible it would be:

Weerasethakul.

A deeply original work. Don't miss it!

Joel Potrykus: Vulcanizadora (2024)

A self destructive Buddy Movie, if there ever was one.

Deeply sad and moving.

I give you an allusion to the mood of this film:

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;—

Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day.

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

(and yes, it's Wordsworth)

Roger Laporte: Moriendo (1995)

"Quelle est donc cette douceur, 

cette terrible douceur?"

Roger Laporte, Moriendo(1995)