Whither Cinema?

Well, it's happened, and much faster than I would have imagined: NasTim has erased all trace of Cinematheque Films and its many, many contributions to the art of the YouTube video. Sometime in the last couple of days, he seems to have once again opted to deprive the world of his brave young circle's hard work - not only the main Cinematheque YouTube page, but what seems like virtually all of the dozens of separate Blogspot pages he's been keeping of late have just disappeared.

What brought on this digital debacle? Only a couple of days ago he was still posting merrily - well, not especially merrily, I suppose - on some of his regular haunts, such as the New York Times's "Screens" blog, with his all usual calm sagacity - and now, apparently, it was all for dust, gone to join the other previous incarnations, from Year of the Hyena to Immolation, from Killing Castro to My Derelict Hotel. Gone, gone, gone - the visual splendour of "Toilet Flag," the tributes to Virginia Heffernan, the footage of the dog, even the very special strangeness that was "Le Bookie Nookie," our fearless artiste declaiming, more or less au naturel, in some North Carolina hot-tub.

If one follows the comments on the previous post, below, it seems some viewer had the tenacity to point out that perhaps - just perhaps - not every second of the tens of videos that Cinematheque posted were the work, alone, of that happy band - that perhaps there was a certain amount of what some artists call "appropriation" and what others think of more often as - such an ugly word - stealing going on. It also appears that in doing so, this critic had the temerity himself to take on a false identity - the nerve! - and not just any false identity: that of NasTim's very special friend, Bane Bianchi.

Let the record show: just as Nasdijjfan is not Lars Eighner, Nasdijjfan is very much not Bane Bianchi. But, as I've observed to the anonymous commenter who may very well be: for someone who's bread-and-butter was the supposed worldwide controversy his work was able to stir up, poor NasTim would seem to have a very thin skin if this is all that has made him once again withdraw from the cybersphere.

So what's next? Right now, hard to say. But if previous experience gives any indication, it's just a matter of time - days, even - until we know. Cinematheque Films est mort; Vivre NasTim!

News Flash

Nasdijjfan is not, in fact, Lars Eighner.

More on NasTim's latest, manic ouevre, at some point when I get the energy. In the meantime, I'm really bummed I won't be able to participate in this year's Cinematheque Desert Video Workshop.

But how much desert is there in Hendersonville, North Carolina, anyway?

Accept No Substitutes?

At this point, I suppose nothing should surprise me.

NasTim has been busily working away these past weeks as the presiding spirit of Cinematheque Films, working YouTube and other outlets for his, I must admit, increasingly proficient little films. Proficient, at least, by contrast with his first efforts; even now, though I don't find his own self-presentation - becapped, bespectacled, deadpan and always close close close to the camera - anything but off-putting.

However, of late, the work of the mysterious "we" that is Cinematheque has been being channeled ever more narrowly into a single project: My Derelict Hotel, a combination of poetry and video on increasingly familiar themes of poverty, neglect, and alienation. As I said in a comment to a previous post, I didn't really see much point in following along this path too much; NasTim seemed to be getting a kind of satisfaction out of the chance to chant his little poems over stock footage, and really what's the harm of that?

Now, however, we have a new presence on the net, and I don't, truth to tell, know quite what to think. I half-believe that we have here is a Nasdijj impersonator. It's as if the past year never happened, and our happy warrior is back out on the road, saving a tragic HIV-positive prodigy (and gently, paternally discouraging the tot's inevitable advances), railing at publishing, singing the glories of his selfless work with Refuge House, and generally hitting all the notes that made him so very, well, so darn Nasdijjy in the first place. Could it be real? It's authentic-sounding, right down to the pleas for PayPal donations, but somehow just too perfect. What could be the possible motive for dredging all that up again?

Viva Voce

Yikes... who would have known - absent this video, that is - that NasTim would sound so much like an only slightly butcher Truman Capote? Well, like TC in a Che Guevara T-shirt and sun-goggles, I suppose. So much for his prole street-cred - he has the careful, crystal Midwestern enunciation of a male Joan Crawford impersonator, the sibilant esses of the kind of sensitive child that David Sedaris writes about. As for Nancy Sinatra as a framing device; well, that doesn't go far to dispell the fey impression...

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Why would a failed writer pretend to be a filmmaker living in France?

Yup - NasTim's back at it. Still hating the Internets, still can't keep away. Now he's running a film collective of some sort putatively headquartered in the City of Light.* He appears to have dumped his old Greek friends, and now he's taking credit for a number of indie/punk videos on YouTube, but other than that, much seems the same as usual. Of the stuff that's up that he himself may actually have done, what I mostly take away is just how much he likes the "old timey" filter on whatever software he's using; it seems like he can't get enough of that scratchy/jerky effect that's meant to call to mind the era of Griffith and Murnau. In NasTim's hands, however, the impression is far more Ed Wood.

So: Banished Films is dead; long live Cinematheque Films. At the risk of repeating myself (and secure in the knowledge of the subject's repeated declarations that he never reads blogs) ... yawn...

*The poor man's obsession with not being in Hendersonville, North Carolina, combined with his awkward Gallophilia, somehow always calls to my mind, of all people, Lorelei Lee, with her plaintive cry "Is this the way to France, Europe?" It doesn't help that he so transparently depends on Babelfish for his, let's be charitable, rough and ready French texts...