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Friday, February 5, 2010

What's behind the door?

Behind the Door #1 (15 sec.)




Behind the Door #2 (16 sec.)



bink provided the old key and locks in her place, and her help, for these micromovies.

They were inspired partly by my childish love
of opening the little windows in the annual Advent calendar,

and partly by the opening scene of
Love Is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon (1998),
a gorgeous film about an ugliness.
Derek Jacobi plays the self-absorbed painter,
and Daniel Craig plays his self-doubting lover George Dyer, who commits suicide. *

It's a painful movie, but it starts with a beautiful close-up of a key turning in a door,
and I wanted to copy that simple shot.
Of course I got nowhere near the brilliance of John Mathieson's cinematography.

_______________________

* Bacon's studio is a work of art in itself: Francis Bacon's Messy Studio; video of interview with the artist here too.

8 comments:

  1. Those poor feet. Locked up in a room by themselves. Not even a pair of legs of a torso to keep them company. :)

    Refreshing movies, as always.

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  2. Wow, I could watch quite a few of these. Now I'm going to email a certain poet of the keyhole....

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  3. poor puppy trapped behind the door! I can tell he suffers so!

    And those feet! I noticed the left toes look more crumpled and bent than the right toes... hmm... perhaps they need a massage. (hint to M?)

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  4. MARGARET: It is kind of you to feel compassion for the feet---I'd thought they were rather ominous. (Maybe too much Francis Bacon.)

    ARTS: Thanks, I thought this could be a series--like an Advent calendar.
    But, in fact, I only put them together in the editing process, not during the filming, so I didn't think of it in time to film more surprises.

    BINK: Uh huh. That poor doggie gets no love at all. (Heh.)
    BUt those feet probably DO need more love. Doctor's orders!

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  5. Keyhole + right key = freedom, & then joy, I thought...

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  6. Lovely way to put it, aleph!
    What we hope for, anyway.

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  7. I think Joop is very much a natural for films. Such freshness and energy. :) And seriously, there really is something in the way he nudges open the door and contemplates his options just a moment before trotting off...

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  8. JENNIFER: Joop is my favorite actor. (Alas, he also barks in the background inappropriately. But such is the price of working with a genius actor--Sean Penn et al. surely do the same.)

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