While watching Antonioni's L'avventura with my good friend Jenny and getting increasingly aggravated by it, we both started making absurd interpretations of the film. The funny thing is, all the interpretations we made ended up being interpretations in scholarly articles I (Stephany) had to read for my Italian cinema class. I like to rant and rave and find ranting on blogs to be rather relaxing, thus I thought, "How about a blog where a bunch of people can say whatever they want related to film?" I wanted to create a place for myself where I can happily criticize a film every film critic likes and be silly. I was getting sick of stuffy blogs, thus I wanted to create a blog where anything goes. I don't take film criticism seriously (or art and films for that matter) because I wonder just WHO has the right to be, well, right. Who has the final word? My friend and I interpreted L'avventura just the way a film scholar did, but would we have been taken seriously? Probably not. Anyway, I rounded up some online friends who have interest in films and I wanted to use this blog as a place where we can write about whatever we want related to films, but also have this site as a place where people can come to get "film recommendations" (as in maybe a blog entry will pique the reader's curiosity). I want people to take whatever they want from these entries whether it is pure entertainment, recommendations, or food for thought.
As for the website's name, I stole it from one of my favourite art movements, Neue Sachlichkeit, and thought that Sachlichkeit (objectivity in German) would be an ironic title for a film website, so it was just a silly joke on my part because I find film interpretation to be subjective. I would have said otherwise in the past, but a certain someone who has had a large impact on my life (intellectual-wise) made me realize that there really is no ONE truth.
Version 2: I was getting annoyed with the old layout and was sick of continuously making black and white layouts. I wanted to get out of my monochrome loop and looked through film stills. I noticed that every film I enjoyed and screencapped was a black and white film, so I thought, "Which film in colour did I enjoy?" and I was completely stumped. If I could go back and choose a film, I would have probably chose Münchhausen, but I didn't and the first colour film that popped into my head was Godard's Pierrot le fou. I didn't like the film much, but loved the use of the primary colours and the cinematography, thus this layout was made. I wanted something simple, but I'm also someone who can't stand purely minimal layouts, thus I added a little decoration. And anyone who knows me knows that I'm obsessed with Anna Karina.
The layout is of Emil Jannings and Marlene Dietrich from Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel). It was originally intended for the blog, but then I realized the set-up I had for it made everything look cramped, thus I made it the "information" layout instead. This layout also contributed to the colour layout (version 2) since I was getting sick of black and white layouts and this was one of them. I wanted to use an image from Der blaue Engel because Marlene Dietrich is absolutely gorgeous and wonderful in the film and I didn't want to use the famous picture of her sitting on the barrel. I thought Emil Jannings needed some "luvin'", thus I chose this still because both look so happy. Of course, this still is highly misleading about what happens at the end of the film. I had the idea for the layout while just doodling on Photoshop, when I thought it would be fun to use swirls as a backdrop for the title of the website.
Version 1