Silliman's Blog

Ron Silliman is a contemporary experimental poet who writes eloquent and succinct comentary about poetry in his blog. He regularly posts links to interesting documentaries, projects, and poetic movements and theories. This is an invaluable resource to anyone with an interest in contemporary poetry, how it came to be what it is and what it might become.

http://ronsilliman.blogspot.ca/

For the sake of convenience, I am also posting this on the side in my links section.

I've had a chance to look through the film section and watch some of the films and the trailers and I thought that, for the most part, the section is well set up. There is a variety in the content and all the videos are embedded within the posts. In some cases, the videos are accompanied by a synopsis and sometimes he even offers his own thoughts on the execution and the story of the films he chooses.

Some of the spoilers irk me. I think that it is not necessary to have a complete rundown of everything that happens within a movie. With blog technology and sophisticated features, it isn't difficult to figure out how to post a basic synopsis and link to an extended posts that includes in-depth commentary for those who have seen the movie and are looking for opinions about it.

I also don't like that several of the links are dead although the posts are still on the same page. I think that if a post has a video as its main point of interest, it's a sign of respect to the viewer to ensure that everything works properly. Otherwise, it may be better to just offer commentary. Nevertheless, most of the videos work and offer thought provoking material. Silliman goes out of his way to discuss both merits and weak points of the movies he is discussing.

Ron Silliman keeps to the consistent theme of art and poetry related posts in his film section. He also remains true to his focus on contemporary poets. So much of what is posted in blogs on the internet -poetry related or not- is a tangle of random information that can be difficult to process because of its lack of structure and general purpose, but I think that Ron's readers have a good idea of what they'll find while clicking through the pages of his blog.

While the film page has a clear focus, it is full of little-known work and interviews that nobody would think of looking for online.

I probably enjoyed Chris Marker's atmospheric movie the most. Such early experiments in production fascinate me because based on what I've seen in the paast, I think that in the infancy of film making, people felt more free to experiment and there were less inflexible expectations from audiences and production studios. This movie only reaffirmed my initial impression. Although directors were more technologically limited, they found ways to be innovative in their sequencing, narration styles and soundtrack choices/creation.

Of course, now we look back and see the limitations: the jagged movement, the slow and awkward transitions, all of those things that would make us ask for a refund in a modern-day movie theatre. To me, this was the painful labour of film making, of an industry which has matured immensely. There is something poetic about how the images float and I wonder if the changes in transitional rhythms are intentional or just the result of technological limitations.

Although this blog is supposed to be about cutting edge, avant garde experimental poetry of today, it's always fun to climb backwards through the tunnel of time and witness the meagre beginnings of what later evolved in million-dollar film production. I only wished Silliman had shown us more experimental and low-budget, low key experimentation that is happening all around us right now thanks to broadcasting services such as Youtube and Vimeo.