Nico Vassilakis’ Concrete: Movies: 2nd Response

If you know Nico Vassilakis’ work, you’re aware of the voluminous thought behind each phrase he puts on the page, behind the choices he makes to raise a voice in the wilderness, each phrase constructing psychological/logical bodies – language/mind made out of the mad/e… (If you don’t know his work, shame on you!) His process, the progress of his thought as revealed through the medium of writing, thought progressing on its own terms, is apparent in the media of film, in Concrete: Movies.

As I said earlier I’ve replayed/re-read “Color” again and again. I can’t get beyond its beyond. I’m trying to wrap my own thoughts around that thirteen minute poem at the same time I’m resisting such a wrap/warp. I want to give in, to give it, to give, the movie, the moving, the poem after all, all my attention. I’ve watched "Color" enough its filmic synapses have become my synaptic films. My last image won’t be of Rosebud but the black “ it ” swimming in lime green in the upper-right corner of my dying.

Vassilakis makes clear choices. One of the most interesting choices he has made in these movies is to run them without a soundtrack (our thoughts, after all, rise in silence). In 2005, how many of us watch film without a soundtrack manipulating our thoughts, plinking our heart strings? You’ve got to take the images in these movies on their own, on your own – the director’s not directing – constricting! – you. These five movies follow other film expectations – framed shots, shifts of “characters” within the frames, sequence of events, interaction/inter-intra-reference between present and previous events, duration of shots, coloring (cinematography) – while exploding them.

To highlight this work, opposition between medium and idea, idiom and media, I want to schedule a showing of “Color” projected against the Hollywood sign on Mount Lee. I’d serve a healthy helping of popcorn mixed with clippings of foam rubber to jar those who might not be capable of tasting what they are tasting, seeing what they are seeing...