上帝啊

我应该怎么做？
option 1：应该继续和他们进行所谓的合作？
option 2：可以选择把这个计划卖给他们？
option 3: 完全对他们不搭理？
你们太容易欺负人了！

城市•爱情

朋友说这样的题目很cliche。我完全不否认这种的可能性，但同时告诉他们，我是绝对不写cliche的，不仅是自我不允许，更重要的是cliche不在我的词典中。关于“老套” “俗气”的定义，本来就是老套俗气的。

我打算告诉他们内容，结果让自己十分纠结于如何简明扼要出一个“中心思想”...最后还是挑了一个最不典型的情节说：在相遇n小时候后，他企图用做爱的方式去了解她，而她却孩子游戏般的躲闪掉。她让他明白复制后便失去了aura。

接着朋友问那城市呢？我答，不知道，没有城市，抑或更恰当地说city invisible。

其实，严格意义上，这首先不是一个典型的爱情故事。没有你浓我浓，主人公甚至没有心跳加速，只有平淡的交谈，甚至是一种不平衡对话。知道的永远比被知道的少，而渴求永远不能被满足。在这也正算是某种人与城市的关系，以为自己身临其境，却往往不得要领，却往往犹抱琵琶半遮面。企图居高临下，试图洞穿心腹，殊不知曾看到的所捕捉到的早已失去。唯一存在的，便是那一刻无法复制的切肤之感。

够了，这就是故事，没有中心思想，不是爱情，无关城市。
生活，城市中，爱情仍是爱情。

Unexpected calm

Sophia on her way to fundraising!
Damn it...
Have fun!

On

The theme of this upcoming week: waiting...

before the project kicks off!

A film I hope to screen for CITY EYE, should the project be funded.
fingers crossed!

Art and Loss Register

听老板说他们有NY的office。于是我要好好干，套套近乎，让我去NY。

走路去也可以的。

When nonsense is making its way to meaningful discourse...

Chapter 2

2.1 Bodily Measurement

- streetwalking

- repetition / absence

- confrontation

2.2 From Inhabitation to Intimacy

I'm not making sense, am I?

Deadline is calling...

Sophia it's fine, and you will be fine.

I suddenly found myself so bad at doing critical summary, maybe it's just because I couldn't even understand what the hell these people are talking about. The flatness two-dimensinal haptic (Antonia Lant), and the Touch of Memory through body (Luara Marks)...OMG, give me a break...I think comparatively speaking, I would prefer Bruno. At least, she is (neo-)realism, and cinematic, and three-dimensional and emotional.

The Power of Suggestion

期待已久的见面是终于见了，然后整个人像是失去中心一般就点着头，然后在不是很适当的时候说出了自己的意见，然后慢慢反悔说还是同志们说的对，小的我“头一遭”。最后，在大家都能量脑力怠尽的时候，我们终于说出了“再见”和“保持联系”的字眼。尽管我从来喜欢看到事情的阴暗面，但是不得不说我们已经起步了，并且前途光明，如果我们坚持努力奋勇前进，并且我能不断自我鼓励。

M.P.: We are doing good.

S: Don't worry, Sophia, you are getting there.

Ball is rolling, for God's sake.

On my way to the First Chapter

For the sake of my own insanity, I decide to give the reduced partial outline as to save my life:

Chapter One: HC in DB

1.1 HV and B

- His.

- HV in DB

1.2 HV and Spa

- From B to S

- B in C

Then, please fill in the rest of the chapter...with your incredible imagination

感

1. 给有关人士email一般要3天以后才能期待得到回复，并且回复的内容不是说肯定或者否定，而是说最近太忙还没有来得及过目；
2. 当有关人士终于扫视了一边之后，十分诚恳地答应与你面谈，于是时间为某一天上午某一个小时某个角落+only；
3. 后来得知，其实花几个星期才回email的有关人士才正常，我已经是备受礼遇了!
4. 于是，我才知道感恩与‘不知廉耻’,‘随时随地', '竭尽夸张’地甩卖自己的idea!

Non-place -- Everywhere/Nowhere

Today, I was talking to my supervisor about Marc Ague's non-places. She said that this concept according to him is a 'site' which is physically lack of identity, neither one nor another. However, what I would like to do is to extend this objective 'non-place' to a subjective 'non-place' feeling, which refers to a sentimental carried by any individual within him/herself that motivate him/her to interpret this 'place' as 'non-place'. One problem I found here is what is the source of the subjective 'non-place' feeling? If like I will basically argue in my screening nation paper, is the temporary financial contractual relationship undermines the 'places' which makes them a 'non-place' for the users of the space. Despite that, what else? My supervisor suggested me not too much focus on the bigger picture, say the 'post-s'. Well, I'm still afraid I will lack the social background if it hangs too much in the air. We talked a lot about the undefinable places with its openness. Suddenly, a name jumped out of my mouth 'DOREEN MASSEY'. Then, the turning of the talk came. After this name, we went on the endless philosophical, anthropological, psychological talks. After I spoke of my worry of whether my dissertation would not too much cinematic but too cultural or anthropological, I definitely don't know how we came to talk about psychology, and definitely have no clue how I should mention 'LACAN'. Then, later came the enunciation, the utterance, the unconsciousness, the temporal and spatial lag in-between, (yes, 'in-between' is another term dominating our talk) that initiates the desire for the subject of enunciation to look back and generate the latter utterance. Though somehow I haven't quite yet establish this between what I am trying to say, the subjective non-place feelings, but what I am 100% sure is WHY AM I SETTING MYSELF SUCH A MISSION IMPOSSIBLE!

I have to say this was a really nice talk cause when both of us expressed the feeling of being an immigrant, or to be precise and safe, a frequent traveler, this feeling of hardly belonging to a certain place, possibility to be easily affected by the new milieu, the readiness and willing to change accompanying with the resistance to change. This is the new life of flowing populations. This is the globalization for us, or at least for me.

After all, I don't want to read Lacan, Doreen Massey, Michel de Certeau, but now it seems I have to in order to graduate... My life in the next 6 months is doomed....

Three sentences - One dialogue

The other day during my space/place class, the lady asked us think of a place which I visited a long time ago, and try to describe by the smell, colors, and some decor. Immediately I thought of that place which I have in my heart somehow unconsciously as the place I would definitely long for but never will go back. Interestingly enough, now I noticed it is a 'non-place' as Marc Auge would term it, a place we share the same but temporary identity as we are in transit from a departure to an immediate future. As I was writing down the words, definitely before which I picture myself again in the place, but this time with a deliberate sense to discern or to recollect the details of the place and the hypnotic experience given out by them. And suddenly, I almost burst into tears, and I found myself invaded by the most clear and vivid memory, or rather de javu ever, as if I have leaped out my body from 'here' and 'now' back to 'there' and 'then', and relive that static historical moment in a fleeting moment. Than I was called back to the task.

She then asked us to think of one person from now who we do not have particular feelings, neither love nor disgust, and to place the one in the place we thought of before, and picture him some action, say what he is wearing, and what he is doing. I thought of you, but no, I realized it would be against the rule. So, I picture the one who looks like you, but in the same cloth you were wearing that day, the same travel bag on back, and the same gesture standing in front of the window, looking into the distance.

Then, as the instruction goes, two years passed and I return to this place. Quite unlike what the lady told us that the place has changed significantly, I confidently and firmly insisted in my description that this place doesn't change in its milieu, other than the absence of the Other. She asked us to think of a sound, belonging to the place, or better indigenous to this place, and describe its quality. Somehow, I found my description is rather tampered with my complex feelings toward this place, and confused myself with its authentic quality.

Finally, she asked us to represent this person in the place in the two years after, but rather a gesture of the one approaching me. And then a conversation takes place between us. This person asked my a question; my response to his question; and last his response to my response.
I found myself writing three lines as follow:

TOM: Are you still that crazy?
ME: Why don't you find it out yourself?
TOM: ...

Time hasn't healed me over, has it?

Time flies forward 1hour

同学，请按计划行事,，完成任务，一定的！
明日早起，必须的！
essay outline, emailS, ticket print, UoB cup, etc.

忙不完的事儿，居然时间进步一小时，25变成了23的感觉，这个世界啊...

In This World

It is a docudrama by Michael Winterbottom. I primarily watched it for the inspiration for my other essay on THE SILENCE OF LORNA. This film turns out to be really impressive and powerful in the way it draws spectators intensely on the character's fate as their bodies move through the landscape.

This can be said to be a rather simple film about two Afghan refugees originally living at the camp at Peshawar, Pakistan decide to go to London through the trade with people smugglers. On the way, one of the guys died because of illness, and the younger boy made his way to London on his own, and found a job at their compatriot's restaurant. On the other hand, this film is extremely complicated, especially in terms of it's composition. Mostly filmed with the hand-held camera, the film delivers a sense of documentary while depicting the journey life of the two diaspor-to-be. In order to cross the border and prevent being caught by the patrols, they have to hide in various kinds of trucks, some of which are for shipping fruits, some for animals, some for other goods. People are hidden in those commodities, which are produced in those poorer countries or regions to be sold and communed in a relatively wealthier countries and regions. Behind the flow of goods and money, are the flow of population. This is the very truth of demography nowadays. Once they arrive at a new stop, they only have one contact number which they can rely on in order to move further, and they have to pay to move on. Thus, the human relationship is totally reduced to a fragile and economical one, without any guarantee. As well, in order to get away with custom investigation at the border, those fled refugees have to abandon their identity at all: they have to change the currency, change their cloth, take off their caps, which are deemed to be shit, and they also have to learn some simple language, even the English is not a safe strategy. However, there is one thing they cannot abandon: their religion. The film shows the older guy takes the advantage of a street platform, and pray to the east where their God resides.

Though a docudrama most likely without the staging and much depends on the improvisation, these authentic and natural mise-en-scene renders the film a heavy tone on the immigration issue facing the world and the core-periphery relation nowadays. (The moving landscape is another element needs to be addressed)

Perhaps, it could be one of my dissertation films.

必须的？

当我思考城市与电影的时候， 我发现: Film Festival vs. Urban Culture.
这个发现有个！！的预兆。

Ghost vs. Host

The ghost is gone, leaving a lonely host echoing with melancholic air.

Perpetually writing an essay

VD: Tout la Memoire du Monde

In the 1956 documentary Tout la Memoire du Monde, Alain Resnais somehow went against the original script, which was written by Remo Forlanis in an attempt to emphasis the function of the library as a symbol of the working of the human mind and intelligence.Instead, the great Bibliotheque becomes a prison that 'man incarcerate the books which threaten to submerge them be sheer weight of numbers.' Alain employed the long tracking shot and always framed/confined camera/audience vision in small cubes, such as the space between iron stairs, and the long narraow corridor between book shelves. In so doing, he managed to create a sense of alineation, mystery and strangeness.

There is one sequence of how one newly-released journal is processed in the library, which without being in the public circulation, is sent straightly to the library, and after a strict and mechanical procedure, is submerged into the vast store of the library. Though this process should have been more clearly present in details with close-ups, Alain mostly used medium shots, and even sometimes presented the bird view of piles of the working staff cleanning and writing and piling this journal. This sequence ends when the journal is classified, stamped with date, and finally squeezed into other books on shelf,namely the millions sleeping books which may never been touched upon by people. This Date, conveyed by the cold narration, become the date when the journal is dead. This whole process of classifying a new journal resembles the prelude of a funeral. And this sense of ceremony is further carried out when the camera goes through the corridor between book shelves.

Camera is set at a low angle in front of the moving librarian, watching him pushing the trolley with books coming forward through as if from the deep unknown dark, walking through the narrow between two fully occupied shelves, thus several layers of the two shelves on both sides actually form the doors. As well, our vision is confined and bounded with this doors of numerous books on shelves, we are simultaneously presented the upcoming fate of the books in the trolley that is ultimately to be immersed in the shelves, unknown and untouched. Thus, they become one smallest part of the world memory.

Not long after this comes one of the most ironic sequences is when it shows how the ancient manuscripts, which have already been gnawed by worms, are cleaned, patched and microfilmed. The plastic shield is used to protect the ancient treasure, in another word to separate the human touch from the text; or to microfilm these treasure, and later on men will only be able to read them on the screen, therefore "The picture will perpetuate the memory of perishable documents ...slow the battle against death." The camera dose not linger on any one particular process, giving equally the same time and keeping the same medium distance from our perspective, which put the viewers in a position to inspect. Actually, our inspection of the scene are in line with a paradox lying in the disparity of the original script which intends to speak for the function of restoring memory for later function but those function has seldom been realized as those memory seldom be retrieved, instead they are buried with dust. However, men wrest so hard in an effort to keep alive those memory, as the more men uses memory, the sooner they are going to perish. As a result, modern technology is used in this battle between books and death, more importantly, between men and their fear to lose history.

San Soleil

It takes time to really think over this film but I will buy one. Here, I just quote a few sentences from it:

"Because I know that time is always time. And place is always and only place..." (T.S Eliot, Ash-Wednesday)

"The history treated bitter for those who expected it to be sugar content."

"question whether this is my dream, or the totality of the dreams put on the city projection."

"All I have to offer is myself." (Chris Marker, 1997)

I shall watch it again, and write more, for sure.