Once upon a time wacky..

One thing i actually like after joining the club is i suddenly have an access to movies i haven't known before, hell! i didn't know it existed. I know a few common genre of films such as: romantic comedy, adventure, science fiction, biographical, chick-flick, horror (slasher, eerie, thriller, suspense, supernatural), action, documentary, erotic, comedy, crime, drama, fantasy, and animated. While in fact, there are films which are also classified by what current movement / generation was occurred at that time (for example: Hong Kong new/ second wave, Beat generation and so on), the way they produced and probably many more. 

Chantal Akerman films were picked as August movie screening as it's related to group's current topic of discussion as well, feminism!. We shared articles and list of movies related to the Belgian film maker. The term of feminism always excites me to talk about it more further. Why?, because like other social movements / ideologies, every people has different concepts and opinions of it and the way they understand their own notions is reflected through their way of living. 

I decided to watch some Chantal's movies myself for the sake of research and fulfilling my sense of curiosity. The first movie i saw was Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. It's an art-house type of film which has 201 minutes of duration. At first i was shocked, because i watched many independent - Cannes version of movies but i honestly never had an experience watching any movies such as Jeanne Dielman. There's only a few dialogue between the characters and the movie was very slow. The film basically shows you Jeanne Dielman, the main character who's also a woman and how she do her daily routine. How Jeanne was having conflicts with herself and gradually slipped from day one to day three is what the movie tries to portray. 

Long story short, i pushed myself to watch 2 more films and i ended up being disappointed. Because they have the same pattern, less dialogue, the movie was very slow, and somehow the characters always has the same problem: they tend to struggle with themselves, a melancholy and seems to enjoy their solitude. Witnessing frustrated people in some way will make you kinda feel the same. I frankly don't know what the director was trying to say through her movies, but after i watched Jeanne Dielman, my mind suddenly flies to my mom. I was wondering did she ponder about things at the kitchen like Jeanne did?, does she love being a mother?, does juggle between her job at the office and being a mom trouble her?, and other strange questions popped into my head. 

As the correlation to feminism, i never consider myself as a feminist or any specific principles which are fabricated by human if i may say so. I believe people are too complex to be classified into one distinctive category or understanding only one philosophy. Why don't you let yourself to absorb as many as possible ideas you can get, meeting new people as many as possible you can find, sharing thoughts with any class of society, do anything to keep yourself from being dull and narrow minded, to make a progress and move further.

I saw Jeanne as a regular human being who's facing difficulties and have her own way to manage her emotions, but sometimes she probably just had enough and had a break down. How she raise from her falls and move on is everything that mattered.  

Feminism for me is simply about being yourself and how you act according to your part and appreciating other people. Equitable does not mean equal, but how you place everything appropriately regarding every single feasible aspect. 

Still confused?

Don't worry, you'll master it through time :).


Footnote :
Images were taken from many sources, which are:
criterionconfession, pinterest and delcampe

What does a connection mean?. I’ve read a blog post which talked about the differentiation between connections and relationships (I’ll link the blog on the footnotes below). The author brilliantly describing how connections are simply just dots within the quite long ‘line’ of a relationship. It also opened up my mind and tickled me to write this blog post.  

Now we’ll do a (silly) quick Q&A for ourselves. Ask yourself these questions and answer them all in 15 seconds (don’t cheat!, even though I know you want to!). 

Done?, then I want you to analyze the result. How the number decreased continuously as you answer more questions. Why?. This is what has been bugging me, because I realized that I didn’t actually make it to number 4!.

I have many people know where I lived/ where I work, they knew my favorite movies and music, they congratulated my birthday through social media, they liked my photos on instagram and commented about my status on Facebook, hell! I even hang out with them regularly. I’m surrounded by some nice chatty people but dunno why I somehow felt the rigorous pain of loneliness when I was among them. 

When you answered question number 1 until number 3, that’s how you reached connections, you were making 100% contacts (in my superficial opinion, a contact has different levels of achievement). A phone call, a pat in the back, a smile, or a handshake could be a basic definition of a contact. You could measure any of those form of contacts until it reached 100%, until you’ve got people in your surrounded environment but only in a productive and safe way. You feel the necessity to interact with other autonomous entities without merging with them, just because each entities still have boundaries which define who and what we are. 

Relationships talk in a higher level. The point when you keep the repeated connections between people over the extended amount of time, that’s when you gain relationships. That’s when you scored for number 4. But unfortunately to build relationships you have to obtain mutual handshakes. 

Yes darling, mutual!. Because to attain relationships, each parties has to have the will to connect + build and maintain the connection in a certain time continuously. And you know what?, not all connections lead to relationships. Connections can be dead-end and fail to blossom into relationships for a number of reasons. One of the main flame retardants to kindling a relationship happens early on when connections are still transactional and one party simply isn’t providing much value in the exchange. 

I am very aware that one of basic human needs is socializing, making friends, meeting people with the same background/ hobby/ obsession, being heard, talking to other people with various opinions, brainstorming, being inspired, etc. These things lead to interactions with other human beings, which could form a connection and if you’re open up enough for other people to open up to you then the relationships are only a matter of time, to be built, to be cherished. 

Footnote: Some statements were quoted from the vital edge .

Feel free to visit the blog for your reference!.