William Horberg

The Art of Choice

Remember the fate of Sixto Rodriguez in "Searching For Sugar Man"?

How he discovered a distant land, an alternate universe almost, where his work was understood and appreciated and celebrated as meaningful?

Such was the sublime fate of "Disconnect" recently, as I discovered to my amazement on a recent trip to the Camerimage Festival, a prestigious annual mecca for the world's best cinematographers, in Bydgoszcz, Poland.

"Disconnect" never even received a theatrical release as a film in Poland, but it was discovered by the programmers at Camerimage and recommended to two extraordinary policemen in Bydgoszcz as the perfect film for the third annual edition of a program that they invented and administer called The Art of Choice. 

What is life but a series of choices (unless you belong to that group of people who think the play has already been written and we are but actors in it)?

The Art of Choice picks a film whose theme is socially relevant to youth today, and through a series of seminars and workshops, encourages teenagers to make their own short films and tell their own stories around that same theme, in the case of Disconnect the socially disruptive power of technology and the internet, and how we communicate with each other today.

The film were judged in a competition and the winners presented at a Gala ceremony at the Multikino in association with the Camerimage Festival. I was grateful to be invited to attend and hand out the prizes to the winners, and blown away by the very idea that our film was the instrument and inspiration for this conversation and burst of creativity.

There was also a competition among student graphic artists for poster design. I have always been in love with the striking graphic art of classic and contemporary Polish film posters, so it shouldn't have been a surprise to me how deep and creative and subversive were the images that these artists drew for the assignment.

I loved their work and wish they had been around when we were struggling to find a campaign that would cut through the clutter and effectively market the film over here in the USA!

The whole trip was a slightly surreal and unforgettable experience.

And an inspiring idea, as the program seemed wildly successful in its multiple goals of getting teenagers to open up and engage in a conversation about things that matter to them, and in positioning the police not as a force of oppression and control but of listeners and facilitators of a conversation around the idea of making good choices.

Technology is neither good nor bad, it is a just a tool, as is the internet, with its amazing power to connect us and hide us, spy on us, amplify our voices and our anxieties, isolate us, reinvent us, expose us, inform us and on and on and on.

It's all a matter of choice as to how we use the tool. The Art of Choice.

Thanks to Alicja Szalska of the Tumult Foundation for inviting me, and to Lieutenant Colonel Maciej Wolczek of Voivodeship Police Headquarters for his hospitality and inspiring program!

Enjoy!

william

 

Vintage Travel

 

I found this old travel brochure of a State Park near Ithaca, N.Y. at a vintage store in Woodstock.

I loved the black and white photographs of nature inside.

It reminded me of my own childhood exploration of the Starved Rock State Park on the Illinois River outside of Peru, Illinois.

Every state park seems to have places named after the Devil, and this is a picture of Lucifer Falls in Enfield. 

I vaguely recall that Starved Rock had a Devil's Playground, or something like that. It always felt very Nathaniel Hawthorne to me in regards to this view of the satanic nature of the nature surrounding us (and within us)! 

This is a place called The Old Mill, like the famous Disney short cartoon of the same name.

 

 

 

Here is a bridge over "The Narrows". Beautiful.

I hope we get to visit there one day and compare then to now. Hopefully not much has changed. In the meantime we can enjoy the place vicariously through these vernacular images.

william

I ❤️ Paris

Looking back on 2013, among many adventures and highlights, this will always be a year defined by the special privilege I had to be able to take my ten year old daughter on her first trip to Paris!

With a bit of spare time over the winter break I was finally able to pen and ink my droll comic tribute to that memorable adventure.

Enjoy!

william

Yugoslavia 1964

My third and final "find" from the Belgrade flea market was a promotional photo album collecting the work of various Yugo photographers circa 1964.

These three felt particularly cinematic, like lost stills from the unit photogaphy of some classic unnamed Eastern European art film. Antonioni on the Danube.

The high rises of Novi Beograd or new Belgrade felt so modern and promising then, especially in black and white.

Enjoy!

william

In Old Serbia

In the green market nearby my Belgrade apartment, tucked amongst the tables of red radishes and bulbous mushrooms, there was sometimes a cantankerous dealer in books and other old paper ephemera.

He seemed to greatly resent any effort I made to non-verbally negotiate with him through gesture and proffered Serbian dinars, so I think I paid dearly for these few old vernacular photographs of everyday life in old Serbia.

But it was worth it to bring them home and share them with you here, and preserve these images of a land and time and people far away from most of our modern experience, but eternally human in their joys and social activities.

Enjoy!

william

Serb Noir

Here is a wonderful piece of Serbiana - a vintage paperback edition of Raymond Chandler's "The High Window" found on the sidewalks of Belgrade.

The publisher Dzepna Knjiga was based in Sarajevo and this edition came out in 1964.

Even in the former Yugoslavia, "R Cendler" was entertaining readers with his tales of fallen angels, crooked cops and errant knights.

Enjoy!

william

This Serbian Life

And finally, here is the cover of my comic memoir of my days in Serbia filming "Therese Raquin".

Logically, I would have posted this first but it was the drawing that I finished last, after I got home, so here you have it in reverse order.

With a grateful acknowledgement of assistance from Elsita for the wonderful water coloring of the ink drawing.

Gundulicev venac was the wonderful name of the street I was living on with my roommate, the world class stills photographer Phil Bray. With his ear for language he picked up a smattering of passable Serb much better than I, but neither of us could ever remember or pronounce the name of our street!

Enjoy!

william

Serbia (pt. 5)

Happy Independence Day!

Here is the last page of my comic memoir of the last few months in Serbia:

Pancevo is the town about 45 minutes outside of Belgrade where we filmed several different sets in one building that was an old museum.

Ivanovo was a frozen wasteland when we first scouted there in January, but became the lush green river banks of both the Raquin family's country home in Vernon and the lake outside Paris where the lovers murder their victim.

Kalemegdan is the old fortress park right in the city center of Belgrade where we built a metal gazebo to house a bear in our version of a proto-zoo.

And Simanovci is hardly a tourist destination, but a sign on the highway giving the name of the town closest to the acres of land in the countryside where the PFI soundstages were built.

From such disparate and incongruous elements were built the illusion of 19th Century Paris for our play.

Enjoy!

william

Serbia (pt. 4)

Back from Belgrade today!

A few more installments of the Serbia comic book to share with you.

And with scanner access at home now making desktop publishing a bit easier, lots of other Balkan goodies and rarities to post in the weeks ahead.

Enjoy!

william

Serbia (pt. 3)

Enjoy!

william