Notes, Recollections and Sequences of Things Seen: Excerpts from an Intimate Diary

Meditations on cinema and method from the acclaimed Chilean director of City of Pirates and Life Is a Dream

This volume gathers excerpts from the diary of celebrated Chilean experimental film director Raul Ruiz. A continuation of Poetics of Cinema 1 and Poetics of Cinema 2–his seminal volumes on new narrative modes–Notes, Recollections and Sequences of Things Seen follows the late stage of Ruiz’s career, from 1990 to 2011, in which he realized more ambitious productions. These new films generated significant economic and aesthetic challenges, and he observed the increasing distance between his dream of a handmade, nonindustrial, shamanic-inspired cinema–as set out in the Poetics of Cinema–and his reality. Selected by Bruno Cueno and Erik Bullot, friends of Ruiz, the writings also express the filmmaker’s pragmatic side, such as his prescriptions for implementing the theoretical concepts outlined in Poetics. A preface by Bullot and notes by Cuneo contextualize the excerpts. Raul Ruiz (1941-2011) was an experimental Chilean filmmaker, writer and teacher who directed more than 100 films, including Dark at Noon (1992) starring John Hurt, Three Lives and Only One Death (1996) starring Marcello Mastroianni, Genealogies of a Crime (1997) starring Catherine Deneuve and Time Regained (1999) starring John Malkovich.