Tony Drazan will explore his experience as a filmmaker and filmgoer, and how those converge with his work as an analyst in training and an analysand. As an NYU graduate film student, he was first introduced to the post-war cinema of the Italian neorealists and that of the genre-bending cinema of the French New Wave. Classical Hollywood narratives were “increasingly subordinated to time.” Encouraging the viewer to imbue images with associations, memories, interpretations, and tapping into other, less readily apparent aspects of themselves, introspective cinema offered them experiences “in the how, not the what.”
His first encounter with “the transcendental style” of film was seeing Yasujiro Ozu’s Late Spring. He was genuinely moved by the story’s simplicity, and the way it was told. It was “my experience watching, my encounter with the film itself that had the most profound and lasting impact. It was meditative cinema, the vase in the film’s final movement.”
As a Study Group, we will consider Drazan’s questions: What makes this style of film, the time-image, transcendental, spiritual, slow cinema so compelling? What is the nature of its alchemy, how does it manifest in psychoanalytic work, why are we so moved?
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Tony Drazan received his MFA in Filmmaking from NYU in 1986. He has worked for over 35 years writing, directing, and producing movies, tv, and original content. His many credits include award-winning movies Zebrahead and Hurlyburly. He is a second year candidate in the Licensure Qualifying Program in Psychoanalysis at the William Alanson White Institute.
Join us for this informal, moving and reflective conversation!
Frances V. Dillon, MSW and Eric Dammann, Ph.D Co Directors, Artist Study Group