FILM FOUR OFFICES CHANNEL 4 HEADQUARTERS 2008

Felicity is sitting in a see through cubicle she can hear voices

‘I came up with that idea over coffee!’

‘It’s a sure thing, we just need six more.’

VIDEO CLIP IT MIGHT EVEN BE KIND OF A RELIEF TO BE FINISHED MARILYN MONROE 2023

Enter Peter. She feels nervous since their last meeting he’s seen more of the award winning short films read treatments drafts..

Peter said he had watched and read and then he says

I could give you the money for a first draft now….

but the sadist in me says no.

She thinks did I hear right? 1

Twin Peaks Fire Walk With Me David Lynch 1992

Channel 4 and close by the Collegiate Church of St Peter

Months later Felicity has been told to write a feature script on spec and she has a meeting with another producer he is focusing on one sentence, this is quite zen she thinks, maybe he thinks if we get this sentence right then the whole script will fall into place. She muses about the family constellation therapist Bert Hellinger who also believes in the sentence: in the beauty and lovely order of the simple sentence, ‘Soul work’ as he calls what he is doing, is the expression or revelation of something monumental. In the gesture, the sentence, the image, the seepage – whether beautiful or ugly – there is the reflection of a monumental force. Sometimes a single stroke on the canvas is what we can tolerate of the artist’s vision. The vision, of course, doesn’t belong to the artist; he or she is a kind of channeler for the soul in all of its madness and grace… these thoughts took her somewhere, it’s as if she had momentarily left, but then she was drawn back  and as she looked at the page they were working on, thinking yes it’s all process. but will this mean anything when we make this film, she felt a tightening around her heart and when she looked up at him he was looking at her breasts.

But then maybe this was the breakthrough she needed.

Instead of unbuttoning her top like Catherine Willows in CSI when hoping to get information from a lifer in prison, she ignores it and deletes a comma, there it’s done. Someone inside was screaming stop touching my breasts on all those occasions over the years.

Screengrab CSI Untitled (structural affinities)

And again she reflects ..What was he trying to say what was he wanting to make? The sadist in me..

So later, months later

The first thing to go was coherent language. They were all sitting around the table smoking and drinking when Felicity’s friend Dorothy suddenly started slurring her words she was staring at Felicity’s mother’s breasts, before she knew it her friend had fallen to the floor as if she had tripped on Miss Havisham’s bridal veil, her mouth looking for an escape from the confusion of her tongue while her fingers appeared to trace the intricacies of the pattern of an invisible veil until her arms held herself down in an embrace wrapping her from head to toe, inviolate thought Felicity, lying alone she murmured as if through the veil and Felicity thought she deciphered the words, I did it all with smudged lipstick. ….. 2

And then as she turned to help her friend,                       On a clear day I can see beyond my mother..it was as if the sentence, that sentence hung in the air like a cartoon cloud suggesting a rainfall to cleanse the spirit, (the sadist in me).

After Felicity put her friend to bed she had got up, trailing the veil leaving tiny jewel like smouldering crimson embers in her wake. Finding her friend in the narrow corridor reaching towards language through the water and the burning amid the losses the murderous intent they gave way together in the rain and the cinders, did they go through it and resurface amid a serein?

So later, months later after another project had been buried alive choking on earth, she wantonly picked out the book of Anne Sexton’s poetry that Dorothy had given her.

And she lay in the park

And this is what Anne Sexton wrote and this is what she read

The Breast

This is the key to it

This is the key to everything

Preciously.

Let me go down on your carpet

Your straw mattress because the child in me is dying

Do you love me?

Later I measured my size against movie stars

I burn the way money burns

Somebody who should have been born is gone

I changed my shoes and left the house.

Last Seen PARIS 2009

Yosano, Akiko.  Midaregami, Tangled Hair (1901)

    Haru mijikashi nanni fumetsuno inochizoto chikaraaru chiwo tenisagurasenu

    (Spring is short, what’s the use of immortality? I let (my man?) touch my breasts of power)

Press my breasts, Part the veil of mystery, A flower blooms there,
Crimson and fragrant.

Apsara Anghor Wat 2007 Lisa Yuskavage Tit Heaven #8 1992 St Agathe

George Condo 2015 Piracy 2023 Francisco de Zurbarán, Saint Agatha, 1630-33

Mineke Schipper quote

look at  how the image of the breast has changed becoming less about function

and more about desire you can’t live in a female body and not notice the myriad ways it’s exalted objectified feared and reviled

Feminist theory critiques the film industry’s paternalistic structure as one that inherently supports and perpetuates gender inequality and abuse. By exposing the ways in which power dynamics, objectification, and marginalization operate within the industry, feminist theorists argue for structural changes that promote equality, safety, and the fair representation of women both on and off the screen.

And another Peter says of filmmaking in terms of cultural usage I would say narrative essentially is in the end a fascist mode of work.

THE SADIST IN ME SAYS NO FILM FOUR 2010

CINEMAMA 2023

1. oh yeah when a woman expresses desire she is dismissed.
2. the bridal veil dates back to ancient Rome when they would wrap the brides from head to toe in a veil to hide her away from “spirits that might want to thwart her happiness.” People also saw that delivering a bride in a veil represented her being a “modest and untouched maiden.”  
3. Rags petrol matches let it blaze let it blaze Three Guineas Virginia Woolf
4. It’s an old joke. A masochist and a sadist are walking down the street together. The masochist says ‘hit me,’ and the sadist says, no.
5. “Coldness and Cruelty” systematically refutes the idea that sadism and masochism are intertwined, or even that they are two sides of the same coin. Deleuze is here consistent with the anti-Hegelian position he takes in many of his other works
6. How do you tell a great story? According to Craig Mazin, you have to be a sadist. ‘As a writer, you are not the New Testament God who turns water into wine,’ Mazin chuckles on his long-running podcast Scriptnotes. ‘You are the Old Testament God who tortures Job because, I don’t know, it seems like fun.
7. “Everyone is an auteur now. Film is over.” JLG
8. In any professional context, it’s crucial to maintain respectful and clear communication. If the statement raises concerns, the woman involved may want to seek clarification on the specific reasons behind the decision or express how the comment made her feel. If the language used is genuinely inappropriate, it may be worth addressing the issue with higher-ups or within the organization’s structure. Chatgp
9. It’s an old joke Knock Knock / Who’s there/ Half a pencil/ Half a pencil who? oh it doesn’t matter it’s pointless
10. Why I never became a dancer Tracey Emin
11. Paul Celan speech on receiving the literary prize of the free Hanseatic City of Bremen The sheep meadow press

My meadow 2021