...from the editor

A shaft of light – thin wisp of smoke and dust – the rapid click of the film projector – the forms that move, that speak, that, at least for a time, swallow our lives.

Welcome to the special film issue – an issue to return to. Many times.

I leave you with these thoughts of filmmakers and poets:

A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet.

        – Orson Welles


I don’t know what to make of the sister. She’s the one who knows the
       world is brutal
and goes on, scattering seed for the hogs, the one who says nothing,
      the one who survives.

        – from “Virgin Spring,” Kim Addonizio


A story should have a beginning, a middle, and an end... but not necessarily in that order.

        – Jean-Luc Godard


What I have learned from my work up to now, is to try to be open, but also protect myself by not letting the good and the evil get too much importance.

        – Jane Campion


Art is not a pastime but a priesthood.

        – Jean Cocteau


When the swordsman fell in Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai
in the gray rain,
in Cinemascope and the Tokugawa dynasty,
he fell straight as a pine, he fell
as Ajax fell in Homer
in chanted dactyls and the tree was so huge
the woodsman returned for two days
to that lucky place before he was done with the sawing
and on the third day he brought his uncle.

        – from “Heroic Simile,” Robert Hass


Poetry is very beautiful, but the space on the page can be as affecting as where the text is. Like when Miles Davis doesn’t play, it has a poignancy to it.

        – Jim Jarmusch

Sam Rasnake

Current Issue - Winter 2007

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