'Japanese cinematic and artistic experiments gained an international recognization during the 1950s. The excitement and attention was noticed in Europe and especially in France through articles and critics published in “les Cahiers du cinema”. The future characters of the “Nouvelle Vague” were already praising the potentials of the content and the form of those Japanese images. As a consequence, the number of films produced, and the cinema audience reached a peak in the 1960s and emerged as long as the Japanese new wave movement, major avant garde filmmakers and fine artist such as Takahiko iimura: and Toshio Matsumoto moving from documentary into fiction film, to experimental videos.
'Japanese psychedelic film developed out of the drug experiences of the early sixties, exploding the familiar categories of thought and questioning the constants of perception. Emerging in the mid-sixties, structural film stood in the same tradition and treated intensively cinematic perception, the confrontation of object and image, and reproductions of reality. It was predominantly concerned with formal problems rather than with narrative content; in order to focus on the medium of film as such, it was necessary to reduce the narrative element as far as possible. The methods of structural film include cut frequencies of one frame, films consisting of only a single camera movement, 50-fold print-outs of an original image and other formal experiments.
'In the sixties and seventies a diverse group of artists from Japan formed round the term “Fluxus”, coined by the Lithuanian-born American artist George Macunias. Like the Dadaism of the twenties and Marcel Duchamp, who attacked (and thereby extended) the bourgeois concept of art with ready-mades, mixed media and conceptual art, the Fluxus artists wanted to point to the imbalance in social structures with radically conceived and humorous concerts, happenings, exhibitions and films.
'While the feature film, within its own specific dramaturgy, follows a psychologically motivated linear plot, the experimental film seeks to tap dimensions beyond the usual narrative structures. It strives to render both social and cinematic conventions visible by changing their rules and patterns – for example, by cutting away, adding, distancing, reversing or re-shuffling. This method of working with foreign, found material is called “found footage film”. Japanese video artists in particular found, and still find, an inexhaustible fund of material in television. By waiving narrative structures, making the medium itself the subject and using techniques of distancing, this method makes the viewer aware of the illusory effect of narrative film. The film material itself becomes the subject of the film, or is used to reveal inner states.' -- collaged
___
Stills
_
5
____________
Takahiko Iimura
'Takahiko Iimura is an international artist and experimental filmmaker, who has been working with time-based media since the 1960. Throughout his career his work has investigated the structures of language and the differences and relationships between Eastern and Western ideas about time and space. At the same time he has been fascinated by the semiotics of film and video: their narrative stuctures and the way we 'read' both individual still images and moving audio-visual sequences.
'Iimura came to New York in 1966, and became involved in the of avant garde movement there, which included artists Yoko Ono and Nam June Paik. Much of his work seeks to disrupt the ways we view film and video, often by paring it down to its essential, frame by frame elements in order that the audience become aware of its construction as much as its content. In this way he is also attempting to understand why we view moving images the way we do, whether that is projected on a cinema screen, through a TV monitor, or now on computers.' -- iniva.org
_______
Kuzu (Junks), 1962
'Iimura films the cadavers of daily objects (junk) and animals without heads, cats, dogs or birds. While boats float calmly in the distance and children run along the beach, all kinds of larvae and insects move from old tatamis to old bottles under a “rain” of scratches caused by the numerous projections that the original film underwent. The object is thus rediscovered thanks to the images. It is not a question of showing “mono” (things), but rather “jibun no karada” (your own body) (Iimura) and the way in which you position yourself in relation to these things. Takehisa Kosugi: Music'-- collaged
_______
Ai (Love), 1963
'LOVE, an Iimura film, 8mm and 16mm B/W 10minutes, using lenses of extremely short focal length and with magnifying lenses so that pubic hair and genitalia take on new and often unrecognizable aspects. Music is by Yoko Ono. Cast is anonymous. I have seen a number of Japanese avantgarde films at the Brussels international Experimental Film Festival, at Cannes, and at other places. Of all those films, Iimura's LOVE stands out in its beauty and originality, a film poem, with no usual pseudo-surrealist imagery. Closest comparison would be Brakhage's LOVING or Jack Smith's FLAMING CREATURES. LOVE is a poetic and sensuous exploration of the body ... fluid, direct, beautiful'.-- Jonas Mekas
___________
Tetsuji Takechi
'Tetsuji Takechi was a Japanese theatrical and film director, critic and author. First coming to prominence for his theatrical criticism, in the 1940s and 1950s he produced influential and popular experimental kabuki plays. Beginning in the mid-1950s, he continued his innovative theatrical work in noh, kyōgen and modern theater. In late 1956 and early 1957 he hosted a popular TV program, The Tetsuji Takechi Hour, which featured his reinterpretations of Japanese stage classics.
'In the 1960s, Takechi entered the film industry by producing controversial soft-core theatrical pornography. His 1964 film Daydream was the first big-budget, mainstream pink film released in Japan. After the release of his 1965 film Black Snow, the government arrested him on indecency charges. The trial became a public battle over censorship between Japan's intellectuals and the government. Takechi won the lawsuit, enabling the wave of softcore pink films which dominated Japan's domestic cinema during the 1960s and 1970s. In the later 1960s, Takechi produced three more pink films.' -- collaged
____________________
Dream of the Red Chamber, 1964
'A great piece of surrealist and erotic filmmaking, Takechi's third film, The Dream of the Red Chamber or Crimson Dream (Kokeimu, 1964), was released less than two months after Daydream. The film depicts the lurid and violently erotic dreams of a writer, his wife and his sister, after having spent a night out drinking and visiting sex shows. The Dream of the Red Chamber underwent extensive censorship before the government would allow it to be released. About 20% of the film's original content was cut by Eirin, rendering the film virtually incoherent, and this footage is now considered lost.'-- collaged
Trailer
__________
Day-Dream, 1964
'Takechi produced his first significant work, Daydream (Hakujitsumu, 1964), an almost structureless succession of sexy set pieces revolving around a series of fantasies in a dentist's waiting room, loosely based on a short story by Junichiro Tanizaki that had appeared in the September 1926 issue of the magazine Chuo Koron. It was when this independently produced work was picked up for distribution by Shochiku along with a number of similarly salacious titles that nudity began to become a legitimate subject for onscreen portrayal in its own right. A commercial success in Japan, it was released in the US the same year and later reissued there in 1966 with additional footage shot by its distributor Joseph Green, director of the 1962 cult bad film The Brain That Wouldn't Die.'-- Midnight Eye
_______________
Toshio Matsumoto
'One of the great pioneers of Sixties counter-cinema, Japanese director, video artist and critic Toshio Matsumoto (b. 1932) rose to prominence as a daring stylist and fearless provocateur whose radically experimental films shattered social and aesthetic taboos with inspired precision and energy. Matsumoto began as a documentary filmmaker, directing a series of abstract and subtly political shorts that applied a mode of poetic anthropology to postwar society and culture. Among Matsumoto's earliest works were two important collaborations with fellow member of the Jikken-Kobo artist collective, the legendary composer Toru Takemitsu who contributed some of his earliest scores to Matsumoto's lyrical documentaries Ginrin and Song of the Stone.
'An influential critic and theorist, Matsumoto increasingly embraced formal experimentation, culminating in his dazzling three projector film, For My Crushed Right Eye and his incendiary feature film debut, Funeral Parade of Roses, one of the most important films produced by the remarkable independent distribution and production company Art Theater Guild. Making prominent use of music and mandala-like formal structures, Matsumoto's deeply immersive and frequently psychedelic avant-garde films are trance inducing and quietly intense adventures in perception.' -- Harvard Film Archive
_______________
Funeral Parade of Roses, 1969
'Trying to explain the pleasures of such a scrambled impressionistic piece as Funeral Parade of Roses in plot terms is a pretty fruitless exercise, although the disjointed narrative does reach fever pitch in the latter moments, with developments inspired by the ancient legend of Oedipus Rex. The story really remains only a ruse for a work that is best seen as a fascinating reflection of a long-vanished place and time, caught in a cross-current of international pop-cultural styles and influences and not dissimilar to what was going on in similar circles in other far-flung parts of the world. The colourful underground milieu, populated by a rag-tag collection of cross-dressers, bohemians, druggies and drop-outs, bares easy comparisons with the environment fostered by Andy Warhol and his disciples at his Factory studio in New York. Although its focus on experimental filmmaking technique is very much in keeping many of the other films produced by the Art Theatre Guild - typically those of Nagisa Oshima, Shohei Imamura, Masahiro Shinoda, Susumu Hani and Kiju Yoshida - Matsumoto's film never quite seems like the dry meta-textual exercise in formalism of some of his contemporaries.'-- Midnight Eye
_________
Metastasis, 1971
'Writes Matsumoto, "I used the Erekutoro Karapurosesu (Electro Color Processor), which is mainly used in the field of medicine and engineering, to create moving image textures Metastasis, I was interested in layering images of a simple object and its electronically processed abstraction. The electronic abstract image is manipulated in a certain rhythm, depicting an organic process."'-- Electronic Arts Intermix
___________
Masao Adachi
'Born in 1939 in Kita Kyushu, Adachi emerged from the Nihon University Film Study Club, better known as Nichidai Eiken, alongside filmmakers like Motoharu Jonouchi and Isao Okishima, to become one of the leading figures in the underground experimental scene of the 60s, with films like Sain (1963) and Galaxy (1967). However, it is for his later associations with Nagisa Oshima, in whose Death by Hanging (1968) he appears in the role of the security officer, and more famously with Koji Wakamatsu, scripting dozens of his most famous titles including The Embryo Hunts in Secret, Go Go Second Time Virgin, Sex Jack, and Ecstasy of Angels, that he is best known.
'Through Wakamatsu Productions, Adachi also contributed the pink genre's most energetic and revolutionary titles, films such as Sex Play and High School Guerrilla. He furthermore became known as one of the country's most progressive film theorists and critics due to his instrumental involvement with the journal Eiga Hihyo during its second phase from 1969 to 1973. And then he disappeared from Japan, apparently disillusioned with the direction along which the country's commercial cinema was heading, leaving for Beirut where in 1974 he joined the Japanese Red Army in lending its assistance to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and their quest to fight for the liberation of the Israeli-occupied territories.' -- Midnight Eye
_______________
A.K.A. Serial Killer, 1969
'The Japanese director, screenwriter and activist Masao Adachi is one. Active both in Japan’s avant-garde film scene of the 1960s and in the student-led protests against Tokyo’s controversial security treaty with Washington, Mr. Adachi wrote screenplays; directed movies like Female Student Guerrillas (1969), which infused the sexploitation genre with revolutionary politics; and developed a “theory of landscape,” which hypothesized that systems of power could best be revealed through filming not people but places. He put that theory into practice in the collectively directed AKA Serial Killer (1969), which recounts the killing spree of a 19-year-old man through images of the anonymous landscapes he traversed.'-- NYT
____________
Tokyo / Lebanon, 1971
'Masao Adachi & Kôji Wakamatsu, both having ties to the Japanese Red Army, stopped in Lebanon on their way home from the Cannes festival. There they caught up with notorious JRA ex-pats Fusako Shigenobu and Mieko Toyama in training camps to create a newsreel-style agit-prop film based off of the "landscape theory" (fûkeiron) that Adachi and Wakamatsu had developed. Few artists have shifted from revolutionary imagination to revolutionary action like Masao Adachi.'-- collaged
_______
Takashi Ito
'The films of Takashi Ito straddle the genres of animation and experimental film. Most of Ito's films are animation in its fundamental sense of creating the illusion of movement through the rapid display of a sequence of images. Ito's best works strip cinema down to its bare bones of being a series of photographs projected on a screen in rapid succession. In an article published in the Holland Animation Film Festival 2002 programme, Takashi Ito explains how his fascination with making his own films began when he was given an 8mm camera at university to shoot with. Watching the images he had shot, over and over again, Ito was struck by the power of cinema to bring inanimate things to life.
'Ito decided to try to use the medium to create "films like fascinating nightmares" and began experimenting with photographing and manipulating images of clouds. His experimentation with film was bolstered by his coming into contact with Fukuoka's independent screening organization FMF (Film-Makers' Field) where a wide range of experimental and personal films are screened. As Ito himself described: "Film is capable of presenting unrealistic world as a vivid reality and creating a strange space peculiar to the media. My major intention is to change the ordinary everyday life scenes and draw the audience (myself) into a vortex of supernatural illusion by exercising the magic of films."' -- collaged
______
Ghost, 1984
'In Ghost, as in many of his films, Ito explores some of the most basic dimensions of cinematic illusion, such as space depth, lightning and movement, to create a visual feast that seems to touch on the horror genre. But it's not quite so, for the Ghost we are allowed to see is not designed to frighten but to mesmerize the spectators. Bulb shutters, long exposures and time-lapse are used to dazzle perception and insinuate the presence of floating life-forms in a closed space. Inagaki's soundtrack kicks off with a steady electronic ambiance but soon descends into a hellish world of rhythmical distortion and mutli-dimensional lo-fi mayhem. I don't think your children will be scared with this extraordinary piece, but if you do have them, please make them watch this in a closed dark room and report the results.'-- The Sound of Eye
_________
The Moon, 1994
'A long time ago, I would often dream of the uncanny and mystical landscape that appears in moonlight. Irrational landscapes and spaces filled with unspeakable pleasures like a black object that revolves slowly while flying over the scattered clouds that float in the night sky, their lumps illuminated by the light of the moon.'-- TI
Excerpt
_________
Bonus track
_______________
Nobuhiko Obayashi's House (1977)
'Delirious, deranged, gonzo or just gone, baby, gone — no single adjective or even a pileup does justice to House, a 1977 Japanese haunted-house freakout. It’s easy to track the plot points in House and rather more difficult to grasp why Mr. Obayashi tells the story the way he does, to gauge the significance of the gaudy colors, the old-fashioned techniques (he periodically irises up and down), the superimpositions and flurries of jump cuts. The exterior backdrops tend to be overtly artificial, the skies so streaked with orange that you half expect to see Scarlett O’Hara shaking her fist at the heavens. A scene with Gorgeous, her father and his new squeeze, meanwhile, is shot through a multipaned window that separates the camera (and us) from the characters, one of several such distancing strategies. There are close-ups, but many are so glossy and stylized that they look like advertisements.'-- NYT
Excerpt
Excerpt
Excerpt
Excerpt
*
p.s. Hey. ** Jax, Hi, Jack. Oh, okay, long scenes = better mind pictures. That makes total sense, I guess, yeah. Such an interesting and specific form. A Beckett's radio work Day would be purely amazing, obviously, so, if that idea holds, and if you have the time/energy, great, and thank you in any case. I can see you as Ratty, yes. Me too even. Thanks about the dark place. If I find my way back there, you and everybody else here will be the first to know, for better or worse. ** Tomkendall, Hi, Tom! Welcome back to connectivity. Yeah, clunk has no clear expiration date. You get rid of clunk, and then you can see the other clunk more clearly. Ideally, the clunk just gets more slivery eventually and then whatever clunk is left is so well-hidden that even you can't see it, and then you're done! You'll get there. Your tumblr link didn't work, for me at least. Oh, wait, the second address worked. Awesome. Everyone, the masterful writer and d.l. and dude Tomkendall has put up a be tumblr with some of his writing on it, and I strongly suggest you click this and then click bookmark. Look forward to scouring it, man. Three chapters left ... nice. Onwards. ** Grant Scicluna, Hi, Grant. Oh, thanks, man, about the stack. 'Trash Humpers' is an amazing lesson in all kinds of things, I think. I think I saw one of the 'REC' films. I can't remember much. I think I thought it was only okay at best? 'Blair Witch' might be my favorite horror movie, actually. It's the only horror movie I've seen in my adult life that actually scared the shit out of me and turned off my distancing, analytical side. Anyway, best of the best of luck on the research and rewrite. I'm super interested in hearing anything about how that is going if you feel like sharing anything at all. Very nice about you and David White. I'm happy to hear that. ** Scunnard, Hey. Three for three, eh? Not bad. Crazy but true. I was sick when I made this weekend's post, but I don't think it shows necessarily unless I'm missing some interesting impairment therein. It's good stuff, though. Four for four? ** Slatted Light, Hi, David. Thanks for the further thoughts and explanation. I think I understand where you're coming from better now. Now you know how I feel when perfectly intelligent people enjoy and appreciate von Trier for doing the precise things that make me despise his work so much. It's interesting to be on the other side. I guess we all get our nutrients where we get them, and God love us? Ha ha, thank you about the blog post. Well, I did go back to LA in November, not specifically to be where George had been, but that happened anyway, and it was good and even useful, but it didn't help the writing ultimately, or it hasn't yet. No, nostalgia is not an issue or an enemy in this case, really. Nostalgia just isn't in my nature, I don't think, and it's far from my concern. If I were more nostalgic, writing this book would be a whole lot easier, but it would be an awful, conventional lie of a book. I'm absolutely refusing to go that route of fond lyricism and touching, manipulative melancholic tone and of prioritizing the self/writer's mourning over the clarity of the person being mourned and all that. It needs to be as confusing and brutally painful and as personal as it feels to me, and finding that quality in words is very difficult. Thus far, I've been literally channeling my love for him and the overwhelming pain I feel about his suicide in the writing in a very raw, straightforwardly linear way that will require a ton of objectivity and editing, etc., but, now that I've slipped out of that very pained state, finding my way back there is very hard. I don't know. I really appreciate your thoughts, my friend. ** Allesfliesst, I was just thinking it was a bit warm for an early January day yesterday, so, ... shit. So, dumb question/thought, I'm sure, but should you concentrate on finding a place in non-German, less discipline-obsessed academia? Which is something you've no doubt pondered and considered endlessly already. Oh, Kai, I'm trying to make a post about Bill Dietz's work. It's going okay, but do you know of any writing about his 'Tutorial Diversions' work/project? I literally have not found a single useful essay or review or anything about that work online. Strange. I don't need that add make the post, but it would help the post seem a little less enigmatic. ** David Ehrenstein, I'm going to avoid that MUBI link, but best of luck with that, good sir. I did meet Michael Pitt. I hung out with Gus, Danny Elfman, and him once, and I didn't find him to be a sweetie at all, but that was quite a while ago. 'Finding Forrester' era. ** Randomwater, Hi! So good to see you! I've been ... all right, I guess, all in all. Just got through an awful flu, but so many people have. Kindness does go a long way, yes, I think so. That's kind of my motto or something. Oh, yes, LA! I'm so glad you had fun, and, yeah, The Museum of Jurassic Technology is a wonder of the world, I totally agree. Anyway, I'm happy that it was inspiring. My trip there a while back was too. Yes, I would really love to see the comic, absolutely, if you don't mind. Please. Yeah, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the last thing we all see at the end of the world is that scarily serene dog gif at the top of that post. I think if I was a reader of this blog, I would have shut my computer down for days in horror the minute I laid eyes on it. My readers like you are very brave. I hope your day at work treated as well as a day at work could treat anyone. ** Sypha, I thought a delayed Dec. 22nd hangover post would be more effective maybe. I don't remember 'Nightwood' being that difficult, but, then again, you know the kind of stuff I like to read. ** 5STRINGS, Hey. I have no movie channels. Well, on my TV. Seems like a tolerable if wildly imperfect situation, I guess. Except near Halloween. Thanks re: stack. I think Tarantino partly proved his relevance via this blog's T-centric comments section yesterday maybe. He's the fiscal cliff of moviedom or something. ** Alan, Hey. Excited to see it. Turns out it doesn't open here for a week, so there's a week to go. ** Steevee, Hi. I'll check that discussion you linked to later, thanks. Big congrats on the 'Gatekeepers' gig. I'll be very interested to read that, of course. ** MANCY, Hi, man. Well, apart from the so-so group discussions, it sounds like the school is being exactly what a school should be for an artist who happens to be enrolled. So, great, or so mostly great! And your work has never been more amazing, so there's the proof right there. Thanks about the stack. Have a really great weekend if at all possible. ** Ken Baumann, Ken! Oh, gosh, thanks. Maybe the flu and I are soul mates. That would be kind of unfortunate for me, although I guess it would awesome for the virus. A real test for my powers of deference. You've gotten me a little obsessed with cleaning my place, but it would mean getting rid of a lot of stuff since we literally do not have closets here at the Recollets, but, hm, I'm on it, mentally at least. Yes, absolutely, on holding off relaying on the structure stuff until a draft of it is pulled off. I hear and feel you, bro, loud and clear. Have a swell weekend, and may the book bloom like it's motherfucking spring outside, which, in LA, it almost always is, I guess, so yes! ** Toniok, Hi, man! Thank you! My stack was stacked! That's a pretty sweet stack you just kindly invited me too. Ha ha, awesome, thank you for that too. Everyone, before we leave the apocalypse as stack concept entirely, go look at the one recommended by the very fine Toniok, yes? It's here. Take care, T., and great to see you! ** Rewritedept, I heard a track by your other band, and I really dug it. More this weekend. Less sick, some Beach Sloth in your mailbox, ... not bad at all. 'Watermelon Twizzlers Pull 'n' Peels': I'll bet you very good money that I can't get those over here, but they sound momentous. ** Chilly Jay Chill, Thanks, Jeff. Oh, from 1971, that's very interesting. I'm far more drawn to it now, and I will find it, I think, for sure. Cool. Listening to ... hm, still the Raime album, still the Scott Walker, just got the new Burial, but I haven't listened to it yet. Bell Witch 'Longing'. Early demos for 'The Pyre' score by Stephen and Peter. The Kevin Ayers post making got me on an early Soft Machine kick. I don't remember what else. What else are you listening to? ** Cobaltfram, Thanks re: stack. I haven't done rent boys in a long time. Which isn't to say I won't, but I haven't in quite a while, no. I was mostly doing that as research for my writing projects, and I mostly learned what I was going to learn from that kind of pre-organized, distancing sex and its complicated power dynamics, I think, but you never know. Maybe I'll look at the Paris Grindr. I'll have to be in the right or wrong mood or something, but yeah. ** Postitbreakup, You totally win the best stack audience member prize, man. I don't know what the prize is. The smile currently on my face? Not much of a prize. Hm, yeah, hate and jealousy are very bad things to feel, and they're almost never based on objectively real things. Yeah, you know, you need confidence. That's always only what you need re: your writing and maybe re: everything. But I don't know how you get that, like I've said before. Lack of confidence is your problem. The difference between you and those whom you envy is that they're confident enough and you're not. You're not a poseur. I don't know, I think you're kind of really not being at all objective about yourself today. Get rid of the jealousy somehow. Jealousy and envy are lies. They're just you lying to you. Pdfs, mp3s, uploaded videos ... they're all absolutely legit forms for art, for what that's worth. A lot of the very best stuff I'm getting to read/hear/watch is in one of those formats. Anyway, I don't know. I doubt there's anything I can say to help with your bad mood about yourself, but I care, and I hope you come out of it and feel better asap. ** Billy Lloyd, Hi! Oh, yeah, sorry that was kind of cryptic of me. Uh, so the idea was that, you know, there's the water supply for a whole city or a region or whatever where everybody gets the water they drink from unless they buy bottled water, which I guess most people do nowadays. I know I do. Anyway, if you put LSD in that water supply, everybody would start tripping balls magically, so I was sort of trying to say that once your music is in the, well, air supply of the world, I guess, everyone will be tripping balls, but in the good way, you know? Their minds will be blown. That was the idea. I think your project sounds pretty cool. So, it's like one big event? It sounds like a lot of work to curate and organize, but it does sound like a really cool thing. I don't know, I think MAP is an okay name, but, if inspiration strikes, I'll let you know. Yes, I totally say you should visit your Disneyworld-proximate friend. If I had a proximate friend, I would, for sure. I used to have a bunch of friends who worked at Disneyland in LA. It was kind of the summer job that a lot of people I know used to get in high school. I think most of them liked it, but it made most of them hate Disneyland forever, I think just because they got so sick of being there, so I guess it's kind of dangerous in that sense. Maybe you could work at the Harry Potter Theme Park. Wow, that might be fun maybe. I'm basically healed, I think, yeah. Thanks. Have a most splendid weekend, please. ** _Black_Acrylic, I know, right? ** Schlix, Thanks, Uli! Good question. Not enough. There could never be enough disaster movies in the world. Never never. Bon weekend! ** E., Hi! Yeah, kind of heavy, I guess. Little sparkles of levity in there maybe, but I guess they got kind of crushed. Anyway, blah blah, thank you! Tadanori Yokoo: sweet! Being near MoMA can be a very cool thing. I hadn't seen Alina Szapocznikow's stuff before. Wow, quite odd and very interesting. Everyone, check out some work by the early 20th century Polish/French artist Alina Szapocznikow, as passed along by d.l. E. It's strange stuff, you'll be glad. It's here. Thank you! I'm hoping/ planning to read the work you sent me this weekend. Really looking forward to it! ** Misanthrope, I'm glad I was able to make up for the amphibian thing with the apocalyptic thing. 'The Tribe', hm, don't know. I'll check it further. Well, yes, aren't you the very bright fella to get that from my work since, yep, that's happening very consciously. Thanks, George. Being understood is the cure for all kinds of shit. You deserve a very excellent weekend, so please deliver on your weekend's great promise. ** Right. I've got some interesting filmmakers for you to explore and watch and think about this weekend, if you feel like it. See you on Monday.