Back and more likely to catch truffles than ever:

First, let’s pause and marvel at the absolutely remarkable transformation in Norway’s car sales: from virtually 0 EVs 13 years ago to almost 100% of recent sales.

And thankfully this includes barely any hybrids: a bridge to nowhere if ever there was one. No “Paris, Texas” cowboy nonsense trying to fool viewers into sustaining the fossil fuel system in Norway. (Addendum: Yes, of course, Norway sells a huge amount of fossil fuels, but the car shift is unambiguously good news.)

Continuing with France: A week back, I screened the film DIRECT ACTION (2024) for students in my Environmental Studies class, and we were lucky to have co-director Ben Russell zoom in to offer an introduction. With absolutely 0 exaggeration, I think DIRECT ACTION is essential viewing, even a defining “environmental” film of the 21st century. For one reason: it is a rare film about the success of an environmental protest movement in the face of overwhelming state force and seemingly insurmountable odds. Does it confirm a general American sense that the French know how to strike and protest to a degree Americans can’t typically muster? Perhaps. Who could forget the protest grill-on-rails?

DIRECT ACTION also pairs well with Andreas Malm’s How to Blow Up a Pipeline (or so my syllabus suggested), especially Malm’s argument that many international environmental protest movements have forgotten the lessons of the “radical flank” effect to their detriment, embracing a fairytale vision of non-violence that has failed to get the goods.

DIRECT ACTION takes the form of (simplifying somewhat) a series of extended, long-shot portraits of the community that now resides at the proposed site of an airport near Nantes in rural France. The airport was defeated by a concert union of local residents, farmers, and environmental activists, who created ZAD de Notre-Dame-des-Landes, a semi-autonomous community and the most prominent ZAD (zone à défendre) in France.

The portraits, as Russell noted in his introduction, cover not only human occupants but also the infrastructure, the buildings, and the nonhuman animals living in Notre-Dame-des-Landes. (For those interested in multispecies non-fiction filmmaking, there are delightful echoes of some of my favorite sensory ethnographic films like Sweetgrass or Leviathan.)

DIRECT ACTION is long. (My students found the idea of a 3 hour film formidable, so I did not tell them about watching Bela Tarr’s 8-hour Satantango) It is also slow, but twists the traditional cinematic meaning of that term: the move proceeds carefully, with long takes and minimal camera movement, but is never boring. What viewers are asked to do is concentrate their attention on the work of sustaining life in this community, especially the skillful, repetitive labor of human hands. It’s not hard to see how the slowness of the film both reflects and makes an argument in favor of a slower, ecologically sustainable form of life. This introductory shot of the watch tower allows you to attune yourself to the shifting movement of the clouds, and then to the unexpectedly beautiful symmetry of the construction, and then back to the sky. I found myself, without even fully intending, taking deep, relaxed breaths.

But, hands: many of the film’s longer takes focus in on the work that hands can do, inviting an attention to repetitive acts that reveals them to be quite a bit more beautiful than one might initially imagine. I found myself entirely captivated, on two separate viewings, but the slow process of converting a table of flour and water into loaves of bread: the small additions of flower, the scraping of the hands, the careful working of the dough.

There’s also a lot in the film that I just find kind of hilarious and don’t want to give away. So find yourself a copy if you can! It’s a work of patience and requires patience to get through, but it’s an utter delight and opens up new layers on repeat viewings.

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A few additional musical notes:

This Friday is Bandcamp Friday, a deceptively infrequent period when the website waives its customary cut of purchases and sends everything directly to the artists. I emphasize this, in particular, because a number of labels (including Constellation; see last email) are sending a portion of their profits over the weekend to relief efforts in Lebanon.

I doubt my readers need any convincing, but what Israel’s military has done and continues to do in Lebanon is a tragedy and a multiplication of preexisting crimes against humanity. That includes continuing ecocide through the use of phosphorous munitions and chemical sprays and the full-scale elimination of entire villages and towns that was already demoed in Gaza. Music won’t stop the war, but it’s a small way to contribute to relief.

MAQUINA are three Portuguese guys who make some seriously thumping clubby grunge music. Like Depeche Mode, but angrier, or Nine Inch Nails but more likely to consume some tinto? Their new album BODY TRANSMISSION (all caps, I imagine, to emphasize that bodies will be doing some serious transmitting) is coming out in a few months and the early release tracks liked “agony” (lowercase, capitalization is over) would be perfect music to sweat through a black moisture-wicking t-shirt or watch Keanu Reaves mercilessly defeat a squad of would-be PMC hitmen in John Wick 6.

On the lighter(?) side: My New Band Believe (a name that would fit well with Hello Kitty universe character My Sweet Piano) has a new album called My New Band Believe. The result of a literal fever dream by former black midi member Cameron Picton, it is absolutely nothing like a black midi record and instead a lot more like Grizzly Bear recording their own take on Queen II.

Is all music I like being made by Europeans? Frequently yes, BUT! not more than a few miles away from me in New Orleans came one of the best punk(?) albums of the year: Twisted Teens’ (or twisted teens’; unclear if they’re sticking to lowercase or not, capitalization complexities across the board for modern musical acts) blame the clown is really, really, really excellent. Steel guitar and lo-fi makes for an improbably delightful combo. In one sense, blame the clown is music that captures the sun-drenched, blissful moments of living in the incredibly complicated place that is New Orleans. Spanning the full spectrum of possibility in song titles—“is it real?” or “not real”—you get it all here.

There’s a new sports betting commercial that has aired during the NBA playoffs where a bunch of men find themselves at a social event with nothing to say to each other in our deeply solitary, alienated modern world. And then they remember: men may not be able to talk about their feelings or sustain meaningful adult friendships, but they can communicate in the universal language of the parlays. A preposterous, depressing premise and yet: at a wedding recently, I saw an attendee placing sports bets throughout the family speeches section. Alas, he was talking to no one: the promised socialization did not follow. Here we are.

they’re all worried about stupid shit
making model trains from a kit
and placing online bets from an application

twisted teens get it.

Adieu, adieu, adieu!