So, have you ever felt a sudden thrust into a story being told? The need to keep on reading or just feeling empathetic towards a character, villain or even the narrator keeps calling upon you, not knowing how or why, so you open the story to where you left it and…you notice there’s no more after having finished it.
Indeed it was! That’s just something I used to feel whilst reading La Sombra del Viento by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. I wanted to find out more about the characters, Barcelona in a time in which everything used to seem gray and I wanted to find out more about the Cemetery were the forgotten books live in.
Stories tend to have this sort of effect on people, once they’ve hooked you up, there’s no way you can leave them unattended, but there are way more mediums now than just written stories.
A story may be presented in a movie, tv series, games, etc…, the point is that there are plenty of mediums you can choose from. Movies tend to be the most dominating ways to enjoy new stories, to be able to see what new technology, such as the one being used in the Avatar film series, does to this medium is impressive, but you don’t need a multimillion budget just to get to the story you want to present.
Before films came photography, I know, these are just static images, but they still tell stories. How many of you have seen pictures from a night out with friends? Pictures in which you see the happiness around you or even pictures that capture scenes from brutal events, such as the ones that are currently taking place over in Ukraine. Pictures capture everything, you just may need context on what’s being captured. In my opinion, there are two ways to tell stories that are way more personal, taking pictures and writing.
Writing may encompass a lot of areas, my personal favorite involves writing fictions or reading them, but I’m getting more immersed into nonfiction books, and that’s because of two main series: México Bizarro and La Ciudad Oculta.
Alright! So let me explain myself real quick, as you’ve been able to notice, I wrote a couple of the books’ titles I’ve read, or that are currently in my backlog (I think I should talk about those in a later post) in Spanish. This is because I want to try to spark a bit of curiosity.
Curiosity in the sense that, if you’re a Spanish speaker (like me) or an English speaker, you’ll be able to search for the book’s official premise. I will talk about them later, I promise. I enjoy recommending books, and I know that authors such as Carlos Ruiz Zafón were published in other languages (I own a couple of his books in English and Spanish), but there are books that are meant for a specific demographic that I don’t think they’ll be published in another language anytime soon.
If you’re interested in these books, let me know so I can write about them on a later post. Honestly, getting to know more about the ridiculousness of a country’s history may be hilarious, particularly if you think that what you’ve learned is the whole story about a place, I’m talking about México Bizarro. In any case, I still want to talk more about these two series of books, and for La Ciudad Oculta, I want to explore a couple of the old streets in Mexico City so I can try to pin better the places that the book mentions, but just wait for an update on that post.
Now! Where was I…
Right! I’m one of those readers that poetry may really capture me, or just want me to finish reading it because I already started it, but that’s just it.
Poetry is a very intimate form of expression, wether it’s a poem talking about a hero, someone’s beloved partner, or the person that makes their heart beat constantly, or even just talk about the weather, poetry can cover a lot.
I used to be one of those corny guys that wrote poems particularly dedicated to someone, but I changed my style a lot and I discovered that I can talk about someone in a story, but it’s not the same. Poetry may be very beautiful, in the sense that you can attempt to feel whatever the author’s feeling at that moment. Words that are meant to make you feel an author’s melancholy, their glee, anger, love, etc…, are truly those of someone that wants to express themself, and they’ve found the medium to do so.
You can find it here!
Like I said, I don’t tend to dabble into poetry as I used to a long time ago, but if you are interested in seeing small-scaled poems, you can check out this profile in Instagram, the poems are short and the photography truly pulls you into the feeling of the moment.
So, why mention artistic movies? If you have reached this part, you might remember how I talked about how pictures came before movies. Well one of the things that have caught my attention recently have been more “artistic” films, films that may seem slow, but they play with the camera and lightning so well that you may feel as if you were staring into a photograph, just that these images do have movement (not like a .GIF).
One of my favorite films, The Double Life of Véronique, appeared in my top ten list thanks to a class I took in university. The premise may be confusing, and I admit, it’s not a movie for everyone, but after seeing it again after a long time of haven’t seen it, I still enjoy it. The characters, the settings, the premise, everything that englobes this film is the thing that makes it one of my favorites, but the photography is outstanding! Seeing the usage of colors and the illumination, playing along with the story and the characters, makes it truly one of the movies that have caught my attention the most.
Movies don’t have to be artistic for them to have great photography, just look at some brand new ones. Avatar the Way of Water and Interstellar are just some of the movies that use CGI to push storytelling in brand new ways.
Poster for The Double Life of Véronique, obtained from Letterboxed.com.