Responses: Tacita Dean’s Berlin And The Artist (2012)

Chance played a huge role in the writing of Robert Walser. I can picture his slow meanderings around towns and valleys, spotting something that fired his brief need to write before getting distracted by something else entirely. I can see him getting excited by the way sunlight reflects off a lake’s water, by the fustiness of a suited man coming out of a bank, by … Continue reading Responses: Tacita Dean’s Berlin And The Artist (2012)

Fragments: Herr Lehmann’s Pond In Baden-Baden

Herr Lehmann resembled Kafka. He looked less like Kafka at first but more like Kafka as I came to know him. He was Kafka-esque though not in that sense, the sense of being horrifyingly bureaucratic – which he was, though this is not the reason – but in the sense that his face seemed, for always, like Kafka yet imagined with slight errors. Herr Lehmann … Continue reading Fragments: Herr Lehmann’s Pond In Baden-Baden

Fragments: On A Hillside Near Château Haut-Barr

And then we had lost each other within the trees. The moment slipped away as quickly as her shadow, passing onwards through the breeze. I craved the warmth of the Château Haut-Barr once more, leaves falling through the cracks in its walls, our souls simply kindling for the hungry fire to burn. But I was alone in the murk of trees, all of whom leaned … Continue reading Fragments: On A Hillside Near Château Haut-Barr

2017 Review

Like last year, I have tried to keep up with enough new releases to eventually have something say at the end of the year.  And exactly like last year, I have virtually failed to see ten new releases that I’ve actually enjoyed.  I quietly accepted once again that, with some notable exceptions, new digital films are not especially for me and require a huge crossover … Continue reading 2017 Review

Chasing The Ghost – Excavating Sebald’s Portraits

So much has been written about W.G. Sebald and the use of photographs in his novels that it seems almost fruitless to write further around the subject.  With it being one of the defining features of his work, and with a rapidly increasing library of volumes and handbooks exploring the writer’s legacy, I struggled to initially frame the subject I want to write about here: … Continue reading Chasing The Ghost – Excavating Sebald’s Portraits