Out on the set, except for the fact that there is always someone to catch us if we stumble, or someone to set up folding chairs for us between scenes, we are beneficiaries of the semi that denies the passing of clock-time. There is nothing to remind us that we are old except direct comparison with all those staff and crew members who are young.
Our film is a semi-documentary. We are ourselves, up to a point; beyond this point is the “semi,” a region with boundaries that become more or less imprecise, according to our view of them. In one sense, it is semi from beginning to end, for we wouldn’t be out there in the wilds, wouldn’t have boarded the bus together. Semi has worked to put together seven old women and a young woman who would never have known of each other’s existence, with the ironic outcome that both in real life and on film, we become friends who now need to keep in touch with one another. A real documentary might not have had this effect: it might have isolated each of us in her own life and surroundings.
The folks at Mercury Press report that the mysterious graphic on the cover of their catalogue (reviewed in Geist 2) is “an Orange Griffen photograph of an arrow painted on a road. The location of the road remains a secret.” Hmm, sounds like a challenge to me.
A Gibsons, B.C. reader wrote in response to my review of Press Gang Publishers’ catalogue (Geist 1), including that it was “not stapled, so recycle worry-free.” She advises that recycling-wise, staples are much more acceptable than glue and are pulled from pulped paper with magnets.
