The Chinese Movie:

Conceptually, as a working title, it is The Chinese Movie because that is what I've talked about it as.

Another working title for it is Polly Wood; the Are.na dossier with its accompanying research is titled this.

It seems like it will have some amount of funding. I'm still only able to create in accordance to conditions.

This could be an opportunity to change that, but have to see where things go.

I have settled on what I want though, which is to aspire to convert the money that funds the film into capital, ideally through a return on investment.

Conversion could be another working title. I played with this thought today; I liked the religious overtones. I am well aware of the importance of naming. It is important to me that this project and this film has a strong name.

I would like for this film to be a feature length film. It will be on the shorter end of a feature, but it's important for it to be a feature, especially as it pertains to ROI and what becomes possible with that length.

It also must have a certain visual quality to meet the standards of commerciality. I will be able to achieve this working with M and H.

It must also have a certain aural quality to meet the standardsof commerciality. There are a few people I will be able to achieve this with. Things will work out naturally.

I could also work with C on practical effects and camera movement technologies. There are plenty of people who will want to act. I can also find additional actors.

This morning I had the thought of shooting in a quarry. I would reach out and offer M and H's services in making video documentary content for the quarrying businesses at a discounted rate in exchange for permission to shoot on location. There are beautiful marble quarries in Vermont that I believe would make for strong locations.

As far as the major elements, I am thinking of location, of the actors as Bressonian(-esque) models, and of the narrative. Despite this being The Chinese Movie, I'm not sure if I want to move forward with the translation-and-subtitle approach. Although now I've seen it done via O's film, and there is something to the distancing achieved that I like, and something further I think I could add to it via my 'Identity Politics' play.

In the theater today I thought of Farocki's failed film noir. Betrogen or Betrayed; I could rework it. Similar to The Pig Trade. And then I thought of Youngboy rapping I cut off my day 1s for the win and thought of my childhood friends, my distance from them at that time, their absence from my life now. The lack of common ground.

I have been trying to ground myself. I felt grounded today and despite the use I still feel grounded now. Despite the circumstances, I feel capable and within myself. I feel myself regaining control and power.

I am starting to work towards a methodology to discover what this film will be. I am going back to how I learned how to make my first (festival) film; the importance of writing a treatment, of making a plan, even though I know that things will change.

As such, I want to begin by printing. I have a printer and I have paper. I can turn my notes into pages, physical pages, like my old collages, but also like Costa's notebooks for Casa de Lava. It seems vital, essential to generate ideas in this way, and then to adapt them into something else.

Before I wanted to write a novel to turn into this film, but now I wonder if that novel is truly necessary. Or if this collection of texts and images, collaged in relation to one another can constitute this novel, such that I adapt it into a script.

In this case, does this change the nature of the book that S wanted to publish, that I have avoided the next steps towards seeing through, as I question what such a publication would accomplish?

Accomplishment, success, failure. These words are necessarily vague. I am set on my goal for what I would like this film to do, which is the same goal as Farocki's with Betrayed. I find humor in this gambit.

In the car, K asked what kind of film it would be and I said something between a film noir and a western. It is essential to me that there is a criminal component to the film. That one of its major themes is crime and another is conspiracy.

I remember the relationship between conspiracy and my own life, my will to live, to work, to produce. The way in which I need mystery, wonder, enchantment in order to live — how conspiracy can be a means to realize these things.

Which goes back to Rivette: theater as conspiracy. The etymological move: Conspirare combines con- ("together") with spirare ("to breathe"). In ancient Rome, it originally described harmony, unison, or people acting in close, shared agreement. Words written by a machine.

The knowledge that there was a perversion of conspiracy towards evil. The idea of a harmonious conspiracy; a flicker of thought towards Berardi's Breathing.

A summary:

A film about crime and conspiracy and translation, produced by specific financial conditions, with an aspiration towards standards that would produce a positive return on investment.

Besides ROI, I want this film to achieve a level of rigor in relation to the major themes/interests I maintain in my work. The list I wrote out by hand: Archive, Addiction, The World, Cartography, Journets, The I, persisting, (il)legibility, Materials, Extraction.

It also goes back to a conversation I had with H on the roof of where O and M used to live. About when a work does something, not needing context, grounding, but when it is alive and attacks and infects its viewers. I forget the language we used. I'm sure I wrote it out somewhere.

All of this does feel possible and within myself. If anything, I feel like I am the only person who can accomplish these things.

I remember and will continue to remind myself of the importance of grounding and discipline in order to realize this project as it should be realized.

I am aware that I am about to dedicate my life to something larger than myself once again. I am preparing for this plunge; I feel ready.