From the long list of journals, blogs and magazines (obviously lengthened by the current strength and growth of internet publications) Film Comment was the publication that was something that I most wanted to have another look at. I had haphazardly picked it up years ago and remember being impressed by the respectfully prestigious and academically intelligent work. I hadn't expected, perhaps naively, to find such obscure film references coupled with evocate choices in photos and modern film pieces. Despite the initial pleasure I received from finding the publication, I haven't looked at it since. Now going back to it I was again surprised. It was better, more engaging, and more independence inspiring than I remembered!
The publication seems to be a well rounded work featuring articles from around the world. (In this particular issue Sept/Oct. 2008 main pieces were on the Japanese, French and British supplemented by smaller articles and reviews also mentioning world issues with and in film.) It also seems to spend an equalish amount of time on films of the mainstream, art house, and more obscure rarely seen works. Two pieces in this publication caught my attention, were the first that I read, and seem indicative to what the magazine wants to represent. These two articles are not, outright, about media making currently. But they are about a film and art culture and ideas of resistance that I believe are just as important and applicable when thinking about making film in 2008.

A Samurai Among Farmers: Rejecting the orthodoxies of postwar Japanese society, Nagisa Oshima created a radical and uniquely protean body of work/By Tony Rayns
The first thing to remark on this (as with the next) article is the remarkably drawing title. Halfway into the first paragraph Rayns states that had Nagisa Oshima been born French “he'd be as well known as Godard--and probably more influential”.(p53) This a bold statement to begin an article with. Luckily the article takes a thorough look through Oshima's filmography with reasons and inspirations for his work. It left me to feel his work does contain this potential (without ever seeing one of his films!)
. Oshima left his contract at Shochiku Ofuna Studio and pursued his own work. Oshima worked without the constraints of any particular allegiance and felt himself free to criticize any thing that moved/angered/inspired him. Throughout his career funding was not easy to come by as he refused to standardize and censor his work. He would work doing TV spots and receive small art house and foreign funds to complete his films. Now most of his films are, unfortunately, hard to come by but some are currently on a touring retrospective organized by James Quant. (This tour will be in Minneapolis Nov. 5th through the 23rd and in Chicago Jan-Feb).
While many of his Japanese contemporaries were content simply adding their touch to genre films, Oshima continued to make films of different structures, techniques, and ideologies. This article brings one of world cinema's greatest yet nearly forgotten artists the attention he deserves. I think that is a main point of what this publication tries to do, investigate and discuss work and people that deserve to be acknowledged from a thorough, entertaining and critical standpoint.
*Ideally, I hope to attend some of the viewings.

Invocation of my Demon Brother: Actor, filmmaker, and mystic nomad Pierre Clementi-the French undergrounds missing link/By Michael Chaiken
I think I may have fallen in love sitting at the counter of a downtown George Webbs. Not with the random man starring at me as he sipped his cola from a tall styrofoam cup, but with a small thumbnail picture towards the back of the magazine. Pierre Clementi, as the article's title suggests, was a French actor and director. He, similar to Oshima, didn't work within any industry boundaries. He would take projects that would coincide with inner quests. He would take projects where he collaborated with friends. He also took work for and in big name projects such as Bertolucci's The Conformist and Buñuel's Belle Du Jour. Essentially he did whatever he wanted, however he felt inspired. Pierre allowed the work to transform him, for his body to become an avatar for roles. Life and film work became blended. He was a beautiful genius (as the article suggests) that sacrificed himself for art. The works that he directed himself were shot with a Beaulieu 16 mm camera. Clementi's approach to creating was a very, to apply a modern term, diy approach to film.

*It is also important to look at this, in our age of media, where many artists justify creating and lending their works to commercials or major motions pictures with the reasoning that it is the only way that they can make money and produce more work. There are other ways to go about it as in Clementi's case, and ways of actually staying true to that reasoning, taking that money and putting it towards passionate independent productions as in Oshima's case.