05/05/24 - Review of World Without End 2 - Orkney by
M.S. Mason, formery of the Christian Science Monitor
World Without End
By M.S. Mason
Bruce Cooper’s new film “World Without End 2 - Orkney” is a visual poem that draws its imagery from
a breathtaking Romanesque church built in the 12th Century. Cooper celebrates the red and yellow sandstone bricks of the Saint Magnus cathedral in Orkney, Scotland and its surroundings low hills covered in green and purple. Nearby the water of the ocean laps against the rocks, while most impressively the ancient tall stone monuments of the Ring of Brodgar reach heavenward, stately yet mysterious.
Inside the stone church we see only the windows, light pouring through stained glass gorgeously decorated with saints and holy allegories meant to teach as well as to entertain the faithful (and the rest of us) with their stories and their symbols. In the dark we must look upward to these paragons of holiness. Meanwhile, medieval choral music followed by bagpipe music calms and underscores the stony architecture and landscape with its everlasting meaning. The film struck me as a kind of prayer, fixing my thought on the title…words that end a well-known liturgical prayer.
Because the imagery flies by quickly and while outside imagery also moves in and out of negative space like an echo from the past, the viewer is called upon to reassemble those images in the mind as we later reflect on it. The film works in consciousness exactly the way the mind works in revery. Perhaps we watch Cooper’s own thinking about his experience of Scotland and this haunting cathedral as we watch his film. But films like his are also surprising in their innate capacity to awaken longing in the viewer’s own thought. The longing for meaning, I think. Perhaps Cooper has found his in time present and time past.
04/11/2023 - Upcoming Class: Cinema of Childhood at School of Living Arts - Taught by Bruce Cooper
Syllabus for Film Studies block Starting on November 27th – Cinema of Childhood. This block is a thematic study of the depiction of childhood and growing up in narrative and experimental cinema. Rather than the
genre of “children’s film” these are instead six films about the subject of childhood. Each screening will be preceded by an introduction of the director and his work, and will be followed by a discussion. Each
student will write a research paper/report on a seventh film of their own choosing.
Class One: 400 Blows, dir. by Francoise Truffaut, France 1959
Class Two: Night of the Hunter, dir. by Charles Laughton, USA 1995
Class Three: Walkabout, by Nicholas Roeg, Australia 1971
Class Four: My Life as a Dog, dir. By Lasse Hallstrom, Sweden 1995
Class Five: Kinder Rose I, III, V, VI by Bruce Cooper, USA 2010-2022
Class Six: Days of Heaven dir. Terrence Malick, USA, 1978
The grade for the class will be based on
25% Attendance (and make-up viewings if necessary)
25% Class participation in discussions
50% Research paper -Bruce Cooper