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!