Although I haven’t actually seen A Single Man yet, I am very excited about it. I love, love, love Christopher Isherwood. Berlin Stories was for me in college one of those books I always felt I ought to read but never got around to actually picking up. When I finally got around to it, I rushed through it so quickly with excitement that I immediately went back to the beginning and re-read it without pause. And so began my love affair with Isherwood. Everyone I know who has seen A Single Man has had nothing but good things to say about it, and though I normally would allow that to build skepticism inside of me and finally deter me from seeing it, in this case, it is only making me more anxious to get into the theater to see it. Soon enough, soon enough.

I wrote about the Hollis Frampton series a bit prematurely last time, but now that it’s over and I was able to attend four of the five screenings, I can say that it was perhaps an even more important series than I anticipated. The first of the screenings was so packed that people actually had to leave because there simply wasn’t enough space for them to fit into the gallery. Subsequent screenings were all well-attended (though none quite so well as that first free one). While I can’t say that I loved all of the films, there were two that really stood out for me. Critical Mass was exhilarating to watch. In her notes Yvonne Rainer said something to the effect that she found it unbearable to watch, and a number of other people I heard claimed to find it difficult, because the subject matter is an outrageous fight between a couple. I don’t know, I found it mostly amusing, but also like… you know… extremely familiar. More than anything though it seemed to prefigure Martin Arnold’s work, and because I am a sucker for austerity, it seemed in many ways to be more eloquent than Arnold’s work, of which I am a great fan, because it managed to do everything that Arnold’s films do but with a structure that is fixed and completely transparent. It seems almost frivolous to mention Zorns Lemma, since so much has been written about it, but for me it was very exciting to finally get to see a film that I have read so much about. Similar to how when I finally saw Wavelength, after hearing and reading so much about it, Zorns Lemma managed to both fulfill all of my expectations for it while also breaking them, and providing for me an experience that, while I knew in some ways exactly what to expect, was completely novel and thrilling. Since the series presented fewer than half of Frampton’s films, one can only hope a second series will pick up some of the films not shown this time around.