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Filmmaker’s Journal: Trouble in Tokyo

Tokyo Sugamo

I just returned to Paris after a 10-day stay in Tokyo, Japan, where I filmed key sequences and interviews for my feature-length documentary The Illusionists.

Simply put, I had the time of my life. So much so that I miss Tokyo, Japan and the Japanese in an almost visceral way and I’m constantly daydreaming about finding a way to spend part of the year there – on a regular basis. I experienced a calm, serenity and sense of connection there that I hadn’t felt in ages and carry enormous respect and admiration for the innate elegance, dignity and utmost civility of the Japanese. That said, there were low times in Tokyo, a low time to be precise: a rather traumatizing incident involving my gear.

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Lessons from Fellini (Part Two) – On Creative Freedom, Money and the American Dream

Federico Fellini

Last night I stayed up late reading “I, Fellini” in bed. I stumbled upon another amazing passage: words of wisdom from Fellini regarding filmmakers and creative freedom, money, and “the American Dream.”

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Lessons from Fellini

Federico Fellini

I’m sitting at my desk in my family home in Northern Italy, surrounded by artifacts from my early days of filmmaking. Stacks of MiniDV tapes from a film shoot in Tokyo. A framed pictured of Sofia Coppola on the cover of The New York Times Magazine. Tomes from film school (Bordwell’s “Film Art: An Introduction,” Weston’s “Directing Actors“) as well as “Trier on Von Trier,” “Cassavetes on Cassavetes” and various books on and by Bertolt Brecht. I like to browse through these books, trying to recapture the idealism and pluck of earlier days, especially when I’m facing important decisions.

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Tarkovsky on Art

Andrei Tarkovsky

An artist never works under ideal conditions. If they existed, his work wouldn’t exist, for the artist doesn’t live in a vacuum. Some sort of pressure must exist. The artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world. This is the issue in Andrei Rublev (1966).

– Andrei Tarkovsky

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Overcoming Creative Block – with the help of The Cult of Done Manifesto & Ira Glass

Overcoming reative Block

Confession: these past two weeks, I’ve experienced many episodes of creative block – a film editor’s version of writer’s block, if you will. I would stare at my Final Cut Pro timeline, totally paralyzed by fear and overwhelmed by the task ahead, unable to do anything.

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