MODERNISM, MADNESS AND THE AMERICAN DREAM
Throughout my work on this project the past has had an uncanny way of becoming suddenly and unexpectedly manifest in the present. This happened recently when I was recording character voice-overs for the film. I needed someone with a Hungarian accent, who was also a fluent English speaker, to read the parts of two people […]
Translation has been essential to the writing of the Restless Hungarian book, and also for filmed interviews conducted in Hungarian and Spanish; but the process of translation is far from precise. Computers can do it but this misses tone and nuance even with languages that are structurally similar. When you tell a machine to translate […]
We will arrive at the universal not by abandoning our particularity but by turning it into a way of reaching others, by virtue of that mysterious affinity which makes situations mutually understandable. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty A wonderful thing happened recently. On October 4th and on October 11th thirteen filmmakers, writers, curators and editors met on […]
I remember the moment, eight years and five months ago, when I had the idea to make a film about my father. I was laying in the bottom of a canoe, drifting in Higgins Pond, near the ruin of what had been our summer home. I had come […]
THE MYSTERIOUS UNFOLDING OF REALITY All my life I have made lists. When I got my first computer in 1989, a Kaypro word-processor the size of a suitcase, my list making became more sophisticated. It was easy to cut and paste things I had to do in order of priority. I recently came across a […]
January 22nd was my mother’s birthday. Born in 1912, she would have been 109-years old. Also, at 9:00 AM it started to rain in Calaveras County on the western slope of the Sierra Mountains. It was a welcome event in what, so far, is turning out to be a pretty dry winter. At 9:05 AM […]
I have been struggling to write you a seasonally and COVID-appropriate letter for several weeks and not coming up the words to express how I feel, and how we are experiencing life in this time. Last night I was listening to an audio book of Viktor Frankel’s lectures, just published in English for the […]
In support of Black Lives Matter, I am making available for free the FACING RACISM documentary. I made the film in 1996, but it remains astonishingly relevant in light of recent events. The John D. and Katherine T. MacArthur Foundation supported the wide dissemination of videotapes and a facilitators guides to schools, health departments, community […]
Imagine a rope suspended from the sky. It is a thick rope of hemp or sisal, and It has knots tied into it at regular intervals. For the past eight months I have been climbing down that rope very slowly, pausing for long intervals at every knot. Each one represents a scene in the script […]
I am happy to report that The Restless Hungarian has been awarded a Gold Medal for Biography at the 2020 Independent Publisher Book Awards. “IPPY” awards, launched twenty-four years ago, are the longest running book award for books published by university and independent presses. If you’ve been reading and enjoying my blog and have not […]