Whenever something extraordinary or just plain ordinary happens that I find really interesting/beautiful/magical, I write it down in a little notebook called ‘Magic Moments’. I categorize these moments into real/imagined/second hand:
- Real moments are moments that I witness, or that I experience.
- Imagined moments come to me in daydreams, or when friends and I create scenarios and scenes in our collective imagination.
- Second hand moments are the memories and stories of others that they tell me, or that I read somewhere, or that I remember from film or tv.
The most recent entry in my notebook is entitled ‘Peter Tscherkassky’
Thursday 6 Aug, 2015
Last night I visited my friends house for tea, and he showed me an experimental short film on youtube made by Peter Tscherkassky, an Austrian experimental and avant-garde filmmaker.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yASwqIWjaVI
I really loved it, and it set the mood of my visit to his house perfectly. We watched it on his single bed in his small room which is filled with things he has found in hard rubbish and a really large and beautiful sweater collection. After watching it, we played mario on his hard rubbish tube tv that he had to hit to get the picture to stop moving. We ate cheese and chocolate while his parents watched a Bruce Lee film downstairs. It was hushed giggles and stilted conversation and dressing up. I felt very young again. I went home and thought a lot about the film and the night and the strange quiet that hovers over our developing friendship.
Then tonight I had a shift volunteering at the Melbourne International Film Festival at the cinemas in ACMI. After the volunteer briefing, I walked into cinema 1 to catch the end of the session. It was the ‘Experimental Shorts’ screening, and on screen was a short that was very similar to the one I had watched last night; manipulated old film footage that created new meaning through image layering, sound, and dynamics. I was sort of thrown, that I would see such similar films one night after the other, completely by chance. I was watching the film from the aisle, and there was a slender white man in glasses watching it next to me. When the film ended, I saw that it was directed by Peter Tscherkassky.
After I walked out of the cinema, with synapses of synchronicity sparking off in the universe, I looked at the program and saw that there was a guest who introduced the Experimental Shorts, and his name was Peter Tscherkassky. Now I am full blow freaking out, and I google his name to see what he looks like, and it’s him: the slender white man I was standing next to when I watched it from the aisles.
I run back to the cinema to see if he is there, but he has left, so I run out of ACMI into Federation Square, but I can’t find him in the crowd and the rain. I get reprimanded by my supervisor for disappearing and not doing my job, so I go back to my post and I text my friend from last night about my experience. He agrees that it’s pretty freaky.
