John Smith. Images from the video series Hotel Diaries (2001-7).
Inseparable from the self
this camera when filming
the world at its most extreme...
diary films have an X that keeps
in place the tension between:
Joke ⇔ World Events
Self ⇔ World Events
In realization of itself
as a performance, diary film
turns everything into STORY
every story into FABLE
so we have this awareness
it gives all our speech
a comic timing it looks
everywhere for the ironic
juxtaposition we cannot
be more than a prosumer
now it is October
The performance promises
significance the performance
guarantees irrelevance
So, try something else:
A Diary film free of the self
A Diary of the world
to do this we will have to
look at looking at what
we do not look at:
An Impossible Diary
the self and world events
past and present
all X, the film
attempts to make a future
for itself and for
the film maker but
camera won't focus
it is far too busy
making history and
our own past into other
peoples pasts its
alchemy destroys us with
connection catharsis
when all that matters:
to watch the film and
to be embarrassed to
watch the film not
recognizing myself
____
Throughout October the Curzon Soho has organized Notes on the Image: A Season of Diary Films. It began this weekend with a screening, followed by a Q&A, of John Smith's Hotel Diaries, and an evening session juxtaposing the diary informed work of Tracey Emin and Ian Breakwell. It was after these screenings that the above notes were written.
The season progresses toward screenings of Terence Davies' Of Time And The City and - another! - evening of Jonas Mekas In Conversation. Mekas' concept-manifesto of a CINEMA NATION is also the theme of a new strand of programming at the cinema, which invites both the submission of short films and proposals for future events at Cinemanation@curzoncinemas.com
