girl with a movie camera

Almost two weeks ago; I was sifting through my old bookmarks, updating my blog links in firefox... creating 'live-bookmarks' for any sites with atom or rss feeds, and deleting links to blogs that no longer existed... I checked in on a lot of sites I hadn't come across in a long time. One of these was 'Dove Sei Tu', a "diary of the making of a feature-length film, in production in Italy in the summer of 2004".

To explain: On Jan 08th, 'girl with a movie camera' wrote [after posting the last eight months on a fairly regular basis] a post simply saying: "Pause || Be back soon". I checked in every week to read more, but there were no updates. Then a month or two would pass and I would remember to drop by - still nothing.

Seven months later [but still two weeks ago] the production-diary is still 'paused'. No update... no word from 'girl with a movie camera'. I write myself a 'to-do' note: "dove sei tu - missing in action". I plan on sitting down and writing a post [much like the one I'm finally getting to tonight] about her film, about her site, about how much her production-diary helped inspire my own.

Before I know it; a week has flown by and I've still yet to write that / this post. Then, for what ever reason, I drop by 'Dove Sei Tu'... and find a single post titled: "news - the return!!!", with a handwritten note reading: "as the editing for "Dove Sei Tu" has been completed (as of June 2005), this blog is moving to a new location: girlwithamoviecamera...".


[a still-frame from her film 'Dove Sei Tu'... I know it's not much to go off of, but it looks very beautifully shot]

I quickly follow the link and find two post, the first; a quote from Dziga Vertov's 'Man with a Movie Camera' [which I immediately added to the top of my netflix queue], and the second; a long "catching up" on the last several months of post-production for 'Dove Sei Tu'. I decided to send an email reading:

'Girl with a movie camera', I'm so glad to see you've returned - you don't have any comments on your site, so I thought I'd send you an email letting you know that I'm very excited to start reading about your project again. For months I wondered what was happening with your film... and it's a very strange coincidence, well it would have been, but a few days ago I was about to sit down and write a post about your site and how you've been M.I.A. for a long time now... for what ever reason I didn't find the time and now look.

Anyway - I just wanted you to know 'the above' - as well as, you were a huge inspiration for starting my own film-related blog. And yeah, that's it - I hope one day I'll be able to see your finished film. Keep writing and best of luck...

Tonight I got a response, and I don’t usually cut & paste my email conversations… I hope she doesn't mind my sharing - but she gave a much needed pat-on-the-back and I felt it was worth sharing:

Michael, thanks a lot for your kind words - it has been really encouraging to receive emails like yours, from people who used to read the blog and were wondering what happened to the film. hopefully in the upcoming weeks i will post dove sei tu's trailer as well as other screenshots :) i also checked out your site and i must say that i'm really impressed by your project - congrats! and the blog is fantastic! :) my browser is currently throwing a tantrum, meaning that i tried to watch your trailer and ran into problems, but i'm sure it looks fabulous. i will check back soon :)
best of luck with everything, especially logging & capturing (from someone who knows how terribly enjoyable it is ;)

Okay, this post has ended up much longer than I originally intended... and now it’s very late in the morning – mostly because I stopped half way through this to eat diner and watch a movie… plus when I came back I found that my wonderfully reliable laptop had died while I was away and I had to start again from scratch… another friendly reminder of why I should never post on anything but my mac.

Anyway, the several other topics I was hoping to mention tonight will have to wait until next time. Goodnight.