HNY Reader! 🐬
Happy New Year! Manifestations and inspirations!
MANIFESTATION: 2026 will be the year we (including myself) put art-making back into our own hands! The year we create no matter what the mergers and billionaires are doing. We look the truth in the face, slash through the mythology meant to keep us reliant, and grab cinema with our own dirty, sweaty, human hands. Sink into the quiet joy of making things with people we love.
The happiness comes from the doing, not the validation from corporations!!!
Nouvelle Vague directed by Richard Linklater was a fabulous call-to-arms in this regard. It follows the making of Breathless by Godard, and his attitude towards capturing the imperfections of real life and the beauty of the moment, was truly invigorating. The looseness, the playfulness, the ability to follow inspiration when it hits— it makes me want to take part in a new New Wave. He also is constantly under pressure to do things the “normal way,” and fights against that at all turns. So yes, the subject matter is wonderful but the filmmaking of Nouvelle Vague is also tremendous. Gorgeously shot and composed, it embodies the edit with the same feeling of playfulness and spontaneity of Godard making Breathless — which I would imagine actually takes some seriously exacting preparation!!
Ryan and I watched Folktales last night, a documentary directed by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing, about an alternative gap-year high school in Norway that teaches kids skills how to survive in the arctic wilderness. They camp overnight in the snow, drive sled dogs, knit, and learn how to rely on themselves. It was a lovely, sweet, beautiful documentary that was a reminder of the beauty in simplicity, in slowness, in quietude.
As someone who now lives in the woods — while my industry and things I consumes typically happen in big cities — it felt nice to celebrate this life experiment that I am on. When I walk back into the woods behind my house, there is so much to be found and experienced — it’s exciting and invigorating in ways that are not always celebrated in culture. Folktales was a wonderful reminder of this.
A few nights ago we went to see BLKNWS: Terms & Conditions at the nearby art cinema (one I have been going to since I was in high school! Where I saw my first Almodóvar film!). I, perhaps like many of you, have been a fan of the film’s director Kahlil Joseph since his groundbreaking work on the short film/music video for Flying Lotus’s Until the Quiet Comes. BLKNWS is an experimental documentary about the past and future of Black life and the African diaspora, using the Encyclopedia Africana as a grounding point for it’s “narrative” structure.
The film opens with a title card, prepping the audience for the film’s untraditional format, imploring us to sink into the film and expect it to feel more like an album. I thought this was a fabulous touch…it guides us into the experience…hopefully opening up the audience to experience this new form of cinema (could this be a way to get audiences to try other challenging forms of cinema as well??). I was surprised how much the film really clips along, the edit was great — at times in frantic collage-like bursts, and sometimes smooth and contemplative. Joseph uses all different types of media and cinematic forms to paint his story — it’s incredible creative, playful, somber, funny and daring. A powerful example of CINEMA CAN BE ANYTHING.
Have a happy New Year’s Eve and restful start to 2026! Thank you so much for reading Hortonioni I love you!
Completely agree on Folk Tales, such a lovely film!
Yess to the art making no matter what!