The Clockwork Penguin

Daniel Binns is a media theorist and filmmaker tinkering with the weird edges of technology, storytelling, and screen culture. He is the author of Material Media-Making in the Digital Age and currently writes about posthuman poetics, glitchy machines, and speculative media worlds.

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  • The snake charmer

    Film theory via camera operators, this is amazing stuff from Anthony Bourdain’s man behind the lens.

    Transfixed on this future-past, the operator’s mind is split between now and later. The Present is displaced by near-present. The operator filmed the event, but is left with a peculiar feeling of not fully being there. Something has been lost. What? The act of recording blocks an operator’s access to adirectly-experienced present. Life experienced through the lens is not the same as life without it. They are not fully here. The situation appears dangerous.

    Some connections to a book I reviewed for Cinej Cinema Journal last year. Really, really interesting ways to start thinking through cinema in the age of the digital.

  • This weekend’s planned viewing

    An ambitious list, but here goes…

    1. The American (2010), d. Anton Corbijn, the last hour or so.
    2. Don Jon (2013), d. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the last 40 minutes or so.
    3. Chasing Ice (2012), d. Jeff Orlowski.
    4. Suspiria (1977), d. Dario Argento.
    5. The Great Beauty (2013), d. Paolo Sorrentino.
    6. The Zero Theorem (2013), d. Terry Gilliam.
    7. The Beautiful Person (2008), d. Christophe Honoré.

    Wish me luck. Keep track of my progress (and probably thoughts) here.

Her language contains elements from Aeolic vernacular and poetic tradition, with traces of epic vocabulary familiar to readers of Homer. She has the ability to judge critically her own ecstasies and grief, and her emotions lose nothing of their force by being recollected in tranquillity.

Marble statue of Sappho on side profile.

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