On Susan Sontag and how she changed my education

I've gone from reading only fiction to reading some non-fiction and being obsessed by it. In short, I've discovered Susan Sontag. For the last few weeks I've been reading her books on photography, and finding that they are actually very easy to apply to films and TV too. And as I am a student of those two mediums, I now feel like I have a better or different understanding of what the media does in the world.


Sontag mostly talks about war photography, and how making an image is a contradictory thing to do. It is both trying to attract attention to what is happening and at the same time the person trying to get our attention on it (i.e. the photographer) is not doing anything. Sometimes this is due to inability but sometimes it also has to do with the need to capture the image and that need taking precedence over the lives of others.

Now, all this being said, the only reason this is something that I've been able to apply in the first few weeks of my studies is due to the classes I'm taking. We have been asked to make several short documentaries and we have been looking at detective TV shows. As I will be making my own documentaries, I've come to realise that ethics is something I will have to think deeper about and something I will have to consider in everything I film. As for detective shows, The fact that we are privy to a murder or other crime should bring us to question our own morals and ethics, even if the crime is fictional.

The deep thoughts of Susan Sontag are still going through the world in her books, but also in the classes that are thought in Art schools. At least, just looking at the books my flatmate reads (she studies photography), Sontag is still extremely influential. However, in my course, we mostly talk about Bazin and Dryer, which means star and author theory. As much as I understand their importance, I feel like looking at what is actually on my screen might give me more. So Sontag gives me the tools to think about what I am seeing, even though the war is not real, and why I am seeing it. She talks about the reluctance of showing death when it looks like something we know, but our readiness to show it when it looks foreign. So we go back in time, or to a place we don't know or have a story that is almost impossible to create the distance we need to comfortably look at what is going on. But none of this is being said in my classes. None of this is learn from my lecturers. Instead Susan Sontag is saving me.

On European animation

Despite the general consensus that animated movies are for kids, there are many examples that prove that it is not the case. Never let a child watch Waltz with Bashir or Persepolis. Both these animated movies show the devastation that war can bring to a life and are in no way suitable for a child to watch.

That being said, the landscape that is European animation does mostly contain movies that can be watched by younger viewers. One of the most beautiful recent examples is Song of the Sea.

Click on picture for IMDb page

The story of Song of the Sea is a great fairytale without becoming predictable. It deals with how family can work or fail and how missing someone can influence your views on other people. If you ever have the chance to see it on the big screen, do. (I personally still can't believe it lost out on the Oscar to Big Hero 6.)

Click on picture for IMDb page

You could of course also talk about a classic that has finally gotten an adaption. Now, I have to confess that I've never read the book. I have no idea how true the movie is to the book (I'm guessing not very), but I can say that it is once again a great movie with a very distinctive animation style. 

Click on picture for IMDb page

Or how about the wonderful story of Ernest & Celestine, the unlikely friendship between a bear and a mouse. The French are one of the bigger countries when it comes to the European animated film and this is a great example of what they add to the slate.

Click on picture for IMDb page

Another miracle of French animated movie bliss, a Cat in Paris once again deals with family. What makes a family and how to deal with the loss of a parent? Apparently you deal with it by following your pet cat who is helping a (literal) cat-burglar. To each their own way of grieving, but this one is at least beautiful and fun to watch.

Click on picture for IMDb page

Continuing the love for French movies is Eleanor's Secret (the last movie I watched). Another story dealing with loss, only this time it's a great-aunt that has passed and left a library to a boy who has trouble reading. The fairytale characters he only knows from being read the stories by his great-aunt come alive. They tell him he is the one who needs to save them. (This movie is especially wonderful for me, due to sequences that remind me of my all time favourite movie MirrorMask and my dyslexia and thus my inability to read out loud like the main character.)

And now ending on a movie that is most definitely not made for kids: The Congress.

Click on picture for IMDb page

Written by Ari Folman (who also made Waltz with Bashir), The Congress is a difficult movie to place, being half live-action and half animated. It's a haunting story of giving up your dreams for others and a world in which everyone is addicted to not actually existing but to merely being entertained. It is heartbreak in two hours, with Disneyesque animated sequences.

By just looking at all the posters of these movies it becomes clear that European animation is nothing like the American equivalent. The warm, fuzzy fairytales make place for original stories. The use of 3D animation is more rare, as hand drawn still makes up the greater part of the European animated feature (or at least the ones I watch). These are stories about family, about girls and women who are trying to find their place. These movies deal with the realities of life, mostly from a female perspective, without it being turned into a princess movie. There are no princesses here.

On graphic design and my love/hate relationship with it

Once upon a time, there was a girl who studied industrial design. She had looked at al the creative things she could study and decided to do something with technology that was also art. She failed to finish her degree.

However, before she decided to go to university to study the art of design, she looked at graphic design with wariness and interest. She knew herself well enough to know it was not in her blood to make something for flat paper. So after a day she shoved the idea aside and went on with life. 

And now here I am. Making posters and flyers, some for a society, some for fun.

This is what I do with too much time on my hands. I started making stuff for flat paper. This particular design is a pick me up to get me off my ass and to be a good person. I'm currently waiting for it to be printed so I can hang it on my wall.

Or this amazing work of Photoshop beauty:

which will be plastered all over the back of a Fresher's Fayre stall. I may now know some more ways to use photoshop, but my sense of composition is not there yet, it seems.

I love beautiful designs and the wonder that can shine of a well designed page, but I'm self aware enough to know I should not be the person doing it, unless I'm the only one seeing the results...

On the expected and what actually happens

The stress that is to come is already on my mind. There are still two days to go until it really will start. The meetings and the deliveries, the moving in and the new arrangements. I expect the uncomfortable next few weeks. Who knows now what will actually happen.

But I've learned over time, that my expectations rarely work out as planned.
I expected to study in the Netherlands, yet here I am, in the UK.

I expected to study something creative, like Design or Fashion, yet here I am, watching movies to write about them.

I expected hard work, yet here I am, with more time on my hands than I know what to do with and thus writing a blog post on a blog I've just started. 

I did not expect to have such strong reactions to one of my videos, that I'm still getting comments on it even though it's three years old.

I didn't expect to be making videos to start with. And here I am with a credit on IMDb because I helped a friend make a movie. 

I should have learned by now not to expect anything, but to just let life lead me on. Yet here I am, worried about next week, expecting...