Podcast 38 - Aesthetic Bliss - Student Work

Apologies for the low frequency of posts. I am trying to schedule interviews with new guests to cover a wider range of topics going forward. For now, I am sharing the recording of week 11 of my directing course. The topic is aesthetic bliss, a principle strangely neglected in a lot of the work of beginning filmmakers. Too many animated shorts, both in festival or student screenings are a chore to sit through, usually because the director has staked everything on making some political statement or exploring themes such as loneliness, alienation or oppression.

I usually ask students to pick pieces from their portfolio of past projects and to share them with the class. It's a chance to let them show off their unique skills and to get feedback from their peers. As the students in my online course are usually professional artists, their submissions are often commissioned works which I am happy to have the chance to showcase here.

Assignment 10 - Aesthetic Bliss. Draw an image that represents your own aesthetic bliss. An event or place that makes the viewer wish to enter or take part.

"There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction... For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm." Vladimir Nabokov

In the end, if nothing else fits, remind yourself that the reason why people seek out and cherish exposure to art is the yearning for aesthetic bliss. Offer your audience a blast of sheer sensory ecstasy, a kinetic adrenaline rush. Sweep them off their feet, transport them to a place of euphoria. Consider your own best film viewing experiences and try to give the same to your audience. To produce work of serious intent does not mean to withhold pleasure. Equating the denial of pleasure with high moral principle is, in my view, contrary to any artistic enterprise worth pursuing.