Jung’s Weblog

15 August 1925 – 23 December 2007

Pictures I took at the Blue Note, he sounded Schumann-esque that day…

Just watched this most light hearted film on the subject of death, Volver, a film by PEDRO ALMODÓVAR. The story is based around 6 very strong women, and of course, with Almodóvar’s signature of lots of twist and turn, secrets and scandals… The story is set in Almodóvar’s home town La Mancha (a terribly windy region where there is the highest rate of insanity in its population, related somehow to the wind…) The film is based on his own experience growing up with all the women around him, how they were actually the core of all families in small towns of Spain. It is really sincere, and delightful… well, this is as much as I am going to tell you…

Started digging into all Almodóva’s films back in 1999 when I saw “All About My Mother”. Intrigued, and went on with “Dark Habits”, “The Flower of My Secret”, “Live Flesh”, “Talk to Her”, “Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!”, “What Have I Done to Deserve This?” (still waiting for a few more of his older film to be released on DVD). For a while I felt he was a bit tided up with his very unique but aiming for shock effect formula. Volver, turned out to be much more refreshing, and I think it is far more successful than his last film “Bad Education”.

I have been obsessed with film since I saw “The Genealogies of a Crime” by Raoul Ruiz at MOMA years ago before the new construction of the museum. Ever since I’ve watched and studied many actors, film makers, to a total of almost 700 foreign/art films in the past 3 years (thanks to Netflix!) Can’t believe I never blog about it, there is just too much going on everyday…

I have tried making little documentaries since the pro-sumer high def camcorders were made possible, I think this one is so far the much better one. Endless editing with 2 camera work (having only 1 wireless mic, I had to do so much audio editing since the level of the two audio sources were so different… and did I mention the lighting at Juilliard where this was filmed was horrendeous… just to fixed the image and get the color right took f-o-r-e-v-e-r… btw, ordered a million stage lighting fixtures as an end result…) As an amateur film maker, I am quite proud of it. Take a look here:

David Dubal Interviews Wim Statius Muller

It is available for download on David’s Podcast too!