Re: Frampton [Was: criterion]

From: Mark Toscano (email suppressed)
Date: Sat Feb 13 2010 - 22:00:39 PST


I've seen all of Hapax in one go, and though I think it's a great collective work, I think the first three parts are easily much stronger and even somewhat out of balance with the remaining four, making it a very top-heavy work for me... I do love Ordinary Matter, though.

Especially since NFPF released (nostalgia) on its Treasures IV DVD, I would love to see Poetic Justice, Critical Mass, and then a boatload of other titles collected into a large Criterion set a la the Brakhage releases.

But regardless, I'm certainly not going to complain about Criterion putting a further foot forward into experimental territory, so hooray for them even(/especially?) if it's Hapax alone.

And the one time I met with them in the early stages of discussing the second Brakhage DVD, there was very serious mention of a possible Kuchar set, so I hope that's still on their brains.

mark t

--- On Sat, 2/13/10, Fred Camper <email suppressed> wrote:

> From: Fred Camper <email suppressed>
> Subject: [FRAMEWORKS] Frampton [Was: criterion]
> To: email suppressed
> Date: Saturday, February 13, 2010, 7:17 PM
> Quoting David Tetzlaff <email suppressed>:
>
> > .... p.s. but if the Frampton set includes, say
> "Special Effects" and leaves
> > out, say, "Critical Mass" I will kill myself, so do
> the right thing...
>
> I consider myself something of an expert on interesting and
> arguably even valid justifications for suicide, and David,
> this one does not make the grade at all!
>
> Fortunately, debating it is not necessary, as the current
> plan is to include all of "Hapax Legomena." I've made the
> case to Criterion that this is a case where the whole film
> is a lot greater than its individual parts, and I believe
> the parts also get new meaning from the whole. Once the set
> is released, my advice would be to watch the whole of
> "Hapax" without a break, and see if you don't agree.
>
> Criterion's seriousness about this release is further
> evidenced by the fact that the staff member who is working
> on it attended the recent three-day Frampton conference at
> the University of Chicago, which gathered together scholars
> working on Frampton with many others, including Michael
> Snow.
>
> Fred Camper
> Chicago
>
>
> __________________________________________________________________
> For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.
>

      

__________________________________________________________________
For info on FrameWorks, contact Pip Chodorov at <email suppressed>.