Far South, by David Enrique Spellman is available at http://amzn.to/qBCleS 5 star review here: http://bit.ly/qLA5wl
Check through the Far South archive for more films and stories.
The search for Gerardo Fischer goes on. Updates from the Far South Collective. Join us with video and text responses.
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Spellman was invited by poet Peter Finch to go on a psychogeographical walk that is part of the new Wales Coast Pathway. Spellman took along a video camera. This section of the pathway runs from the mouth of the River Rhymney, at Pengam, to Cardiff Bay across the post-industrial wastes of the vanished East Moor Steel Works. Not the rural beauty of Dylan Thomas’s Laugharne but the volcanic sculptures of chance when fire meets metal ore: the fascinating detritus of iron slag creates bizarre shapes and convoluted caves. Paying attention to what’s cast away is repaid by mesmerizing discoveries. Thanks to mobygratis.com for licensing the music, Live Forever. Finch made the voice over. Spellman made the images.
The first and probably the sweetest movie made by the Far South Project.
Far South, by David Enrique Spellman is available at http://amzn.to/qBCleS 5 star review here: http://bit.ly/qLA5wl
Check through the Far South archive for more films and stories.
Video for Diario de un Retrato from Montevideo Biennale, September 2011
The original Australian colonists had arrived with the utopian socialist William Lane but had split from his leadership when they found his temperance-minded and racist authoritarianism too much to bear. Lane had left to form another colony at Cosme but neither colonial enterprise endured and both Cosme and New Australia became absorbed into mainstream Paraguayan society.
The nineteenth century adventure still captures the imagination of some Australians, and the colonies have been the subjects of learned articles, books, documentaries and at least one novel. The Far South Collective’s Cavani, likewise inspired, has been shooting a drama, based on the life of one such modern adventurer inspired by the short-lived experiment in communal life.
Dolores Santiago, a descendant of one of the original settlers, described to Cavani the visit of a man some six months previously, whom, she said, was a theatre director from Uruguay, keen on producing a play based on the original split. He’d had, she said, a German sounding surname. She had been due to meet him for a research interview but he hadn’t shown.
Another citizen of the town told Cavani that the Uruguayan had left hurriedly when two men from Asunción had shown up seeking information on ‘a theatre director who might have been passing through.’ These men left when they found no trace of the man for whom they were searching.
The local barman had warned the Uruguayan of the two men. The barman had been, he said, suspicious of them. And he liked the Uruguayan although he didn’t know his name. The Uruguayan had left almost immediately he heard about the two men. Before he left in his battered car, the Uruguayan had made a cell phone call in the parking lot of the bar. He appeared to be arranging an upriver boat journey into Brazil. We have no idea where. This much the barman overheard. Cavani asked around but failed to uncover any more information about the Uruguayan or the two men. Cavani had a very disturbing dream that night. He is convinced that Gerardo has been in the town. Cavani has had to return to Australia. This is the first possible news we have heard about Gerardo Fischer since his disappearance in 2006. We are taking the possibility of his sighting very seriously.
The Owl Chateau. What happens when a writer goes to work with two actresses who are known to have collaborated with Gerardo Fischer?
I want to tell you that your own imagination is far greater than anything that has ever been projected onto a cinema screen, played on a stage, or written in a book. This is a scientific fact.
If you go to a cinema, in front of you will be a huge screen taking up the entire wall of the building that houses it. On that screen, a filmmaker will bring to life an entire world with people, houses, cars, mountains, and cities. The filmmaker will have paid millions of dollars to recreate that story and it will go on for about two hours or so on a flat piece of wall and you will be satisfied or not with the result. Your imagination has far greater power than any film director or producer. This is why.
Neurologists measure rapid eye movements during sleep that occur during the process of dreaming. These happen a number of times every night. Each time they happen you are dreaming. Every night you go to sleep and you dream. You may not remember what you dream but you cannot deny that you dream.
And each time you dream, you create a whole world with people, houses, cars, mountains, and cities: places you have been, and places to which you have never been. Places you may never go to: even other planets and other dimensions. And you never dream these places on a flat two-dimensional screen.
You experience these worlds through in 360 degrees, in three dimensions, or four if you include time. The characters your mind creates have life. They appear to be flesh and blood as you are flesh and blood and if you kiss them, you experience the softness, warmth and wetness of their lips; if they hit you, you feel pain; as you relate with them you experience love, hate, terror and bliss. These dream people may be your parents, your sons, your daughters, sisters or brothers; your friends or your enemies – often your enemies because we work out our tensions in dreams. In dreams, you are desperately distressed if your lover leaves you. You dream without limits. You dream people, or alien beings, or gods or demons, whom you have never met, and whom you are never likely to meet.
You accept that you can step out of one dimension and into another: that it’s just a short bicycle ride from Buenos Aires to Moscow. Distance has no limit. And you are beyond time. You can dream a whole day, or a whole week, and experience these days and nights as if you were living them totally even if you are only asleep for a few hours or a few minutes.
Our work as writers, theater makers, filmmakers, or painters is to let our limitless imaginations merge with the limitless imagination of our audience. What an amazing act of trust. Here we all are, dreaming together, inhabiting the same stories for hours or days together.
In these dreams, we believe in the worlds that we are creating and we believe in their inhabitants and their landscapes and cityscapes totally, while the dream is going on. We only realize that this imaginary world is a dream world when we close the book, or the curtain comes down, or the credits roll: or, after sleep, when we open our eyes and wake up into this bigger dream we are all dreaming together.
I wonder what will happen when we wake up from this dream that we share, when our eyes no longer open in these physical bodies of ours? What will our limitless imaginations dream up for us then?
In depth interview of David Enrique Spellman by Cathi Unsworth is now up: http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/vanishing-point/
Buy the book, Far South, at http://amzn.to/qBCleS
This week’s posts:
Book People is the third of Paul Morgan’s responses to the disappearance of Gerardo Fischer. This also has a link on the www.far-south.org message wall. You can post your own responses to the Far South Project on that message wall.
We present the first panel of the graphic novella that appears in the novel. Just click to enlarge. Next week, we’ll feature the story of how this section came to be made.
Part 3 of Magdalena by Jamie Morriston – the story continues – is this going to be a novel?
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