Founded in 2013, Wild Moose Pictures is a cinematic cosmos dreamt up by artists whose works deal with memory, sound, vision, and death.The word “cosmos” most commonly refers to the universe as a harmonious, well-ordered whole. But it can also mean a system of thought that in itself is cohesive and self-inclusive.The WMP cosmos aims to bring order to an infinite and immeasurable spectrum of ideas, thoughts, emotions, and dreams.But where do these dreams start?
The WMP cosmos begins with an obsession with death. It is the single thorn gnawing at the consciousness behind all our works.As Pynchon writes, “When we speak of ‘seriousness’ in fiction, ultimately we are talking about an attitude towards death.”
At the core, there is a deep sadness, a melancholy, that all things must end.There is also han (한), a sense of suffering and injustice, that it is as much a curse as it is a blessing to have been conscious for such fractions of the cosmic timescale.A profound desire towards resolution and meaning gives rise to questions: How do things end? Why must they end? Must they end?
In this attempt to grapple with the unknowable and impossible, the spirit of Memory endures. As long as we remember, we survive. This is why art exists, as testament and testimony that we were here, once.“Remember,” the artist cries out from the past, “for we know nothing but the memory of those who have come before us.”
Memory defines and informs the Present, or rather, the present self within which the individual capacity to reconcile with the inevitability of dying, to combat the titanic terror that is Death, is constantly being negotiated.Within this self, the core engine must always run on the spirit of Love.This Love – others may refer to it as Beauty or Truth or Virtue – describes an aspirational attitude, for not just the artist but the world at large, one that inspires kindness, respect, humility, grace, and awe, in spite of pain, horror, grief, and loss.
Love defines and informs Memory which, in turn, defines and informs the Present.As such, to live fully with love in the here and now, and to remember this love, is to counter death, even if only for a brief moment.
This dialectic between Past, Present, and Future – the journey of Time, and the viewer’s experience of and relationship to it — is of utmost concern to the WMP cosmos.But audiences are conditioned to care about destinations rather than journeys, like those of a self-contained story, digestible emotions, and exposition. They’re encouraged – even expected – to escape from their jobs, their families, and the grind of daily life, and into the equally busy grind of plot points, emotive music, and overbearing cinematography.In other words, to shut out the journey of Time.
Things are always too busy outside of this journey, and audiences are deterred from honing in on the fact that our lives – and all the time within it – are headed towards only one destination.Rather, there must be an acceptance of Time. It must become material. The world must slow down.
What such asceticism permits is a withering of escapism and a burgeoning of introspection, the objective of all great art.Introspection is constantly in flux. From one angle, time may seem to slow down, but from another, the senses become more present, the world more alive.Suddenly, everything becomes possible.
So it is that the expression of these anxieties, thoughts, hopes, and dreams comes fully formed, in the WMP cosmos, via sound and vision.
Vision is unlike image, which is literal and superficial in that only what is captured is what we see. This deadness reveals itself in once-foundational concepts as shot-reverse shot, master shot, and 180-degree rule, which today are deliberate shorthands that amount to a laziness in the conception and production of moving images.
We must express a vision.We must see differently, and we must also articulate how and why we see.We must consider the full weight of each scene, each shot, each moment – and express its very soul.
Every soul and every vision has a different rhythm. In cinema, as in so many other art forms, this rhythm is dictated by sound.
Bresson’s footsteps, Lynch’s rumbles, Weerasethakul’s jungles, Tarkovsky’s voiceovers…These rhythms breathe life into their images and plunge the viewer into an environment. They are often mesmeric experiences that build into a drone and burrow and dig into your consciousness.Through the very act of listening to the film, there is a palpable notion of the senses sharpening and expanding because we are invited to more diligently, intentionally, and mindfully observe not just the films, but the world around us, as well.
These are the energies vibrating inside the WMP cosmos and fueling this interplay between memory, sound, vision, and death.Influences, masters, and friends of this cosmos include: Terence Davies, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Andrei Tarkovsky, Robert Bresson, David Lynch, Abbas Kiarostami, Jean-Luc Godard, Chantal Akerman, Stanley Kubrick, Terrence Malick… but also Carl Theodor Dreyer, Béla Tarr, Alain Resnais, Luis Buñuel, Orson Welles, John Cassavetes, Yasujirō Ozu, Lee Chang-dong, Jim Jarmusch, Radu Jude, Pedro Costa, Leos Carax, Michelangelo Antonioni, David Cronenberg, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Ricky d’Ambrose, and Richard Linklater.
The sad, ultimate truth is that love fades, memories fade, and time defeats all…But as Bagel says, “What a blessing it is to have been alive, truly alive!”Thank you for being on this journey with us.
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