First Person Cinema features Jean Pierre Gorin’s work
Filmmaker Jean Pierre Gorin didn’t shy away from expressing his opinions Monday night.
First Person Cinema presented Gorin’s “Poto and Cabengo” and spoke to a mixture of people. Some were middle-aged and some were college students. The presentation and subsequent Q & A were held in Atlas 100 at 7:30 p.m.
The show began and Gorin excused himself.
“I’ve seen the goddamn thing a thousand-and-one fucking times,” Gorin said.
The film documented a set of twins who spoke a language that was unintelligible to everyone beside them. Their names were Grace and Virginia Kennedy, and they grew up in a bilingual house. Their father was American and their mother was German. Gorin said it was an American film because it captures an immigrant population struggling with a native language.
“It’s kind of a complication of functioning in a language that is not yours,” Gorin said. “Everyone talks funny. I talk funny. They talk funny.”
One person in the audience asked where the girls were now.
“I love that question. I always get it” Gorin said. “That’s the question where I realize where I got you. It’s a question of an existence of a world beyond the filmmaker.”
“I don’t know. I don’t think I need to know,” Gorin said. “There’s a specificity to the gesture of the filmmaker that doesn’t necessarily imply that you get involved in another level.”
Gorin commented on past and contemporary critics.
“When I started, there were critics. There were people who knew how to write about films,” Gorin said. “They thought about the filming strategy that people were involved in. And whether you agreed with them or not, it helped you.”
“Poto and Cabengo” really changed things for him, he said.
“It was a reality that was very different from the moment when I did this film, where people were just writing from the thumbs-up, thumbs-down, thumbs-up-my-ear, thumbs-up-my-ass way to approach the reality of filmmaking,” Gorin said.
The audience gave him an applause at the end and most said they liked the film. Another presentation from First Person Cinema is scheduled for Tuesday, also at 7 p.m. in Atlas 100.