Most Hustle & Desire

 

Werner Herzog recommends in his MasterClass not submitting to film festivals -- unless of course you are Werner Herzog and the festival is Sundance or TIFF. The same advice might be applied to volunteering for film festivals, but yet again, it depends upon the experience of the individual. In 2020, I was able to help out and document the one installment of the BonDance International Film Festival, held at a ninja village park in a resort town near Nagasaki. The theater in which the films were shown was unique and cozy with its lanterns, tatami floor and sofa seating; however, the park goers, mainly parents and their children, had planned a day of amusement outside, not sitting indoors watching films. In 2021, I was asked to be a judge for the newly formed Golden Harvest Film Festival , Tokyo. Eager to put my film knowledge to work, I agreed. Some of the documentaries that I voted up were Le Film Intiatique and The DS King . Some fictional films I liked were False Teeth , nominated fo...

Self-portrait It is not quite clear if my feet are taking me through life or the world is just moving past. Running is not the proprietary activity of the fleet-footed featured in running magazines or even of the harried bipedal human. A student of mine who snapped his spine in a surfing accident off the Boso Peninsula, Japan, still goes running, rolling along in his wheelchair as he trains for rugby. And when Dad called to say his mother, who sat much of the time in her chair by the TV, had died at the age of 91, I replied, “She had a good run,” considering his father’s heart had failed at 59. It was a couple of years after Grandpa’s death I took up long-distance running, when a girl I secretly liked joined the cross country team. Our coach was a 6-foot 200-pound man in a blue polo, gray polyester coach shorts, knee-length tube socks and the latest pair of New Balance running shoes. He drove alongside us in his minivan while we ran the backroads in and out of town. I learned stretch...