Miranda July is Learning to Love Me More

This week in my classes I took inspiration from artist and filmmaker Miranda July's learning to love you more project and had each student in my AP Art class create an inspirational banner and post them around school. Here's the example I did for class in our courtyard's outdoor classroom.

Here's the class assignment from my school blog: Artroom161

Miranda July @ Symphony Space 11.16.2011

Wednesday night Miranda July was in town at Symphony Space to perform a few scenes from her new book It Chooses You which was just released by McSweeney's this week. The book details her real-life interviews with people she met through the Pennysaver while trying to complete the fictional script for her most recent film The Future. A host of veteran Broadway actors joined her on stage standing in for her subjects as photographs of the actual interviews were projected and Miranda occasionally interjected to give context to the situations.

I have to say that the performance was one of the most entertaining and informative of all the many Selected Shorts performances that I've seen so the two hours felt more like 10 minutes. The dialogues themselves were both funny and moving sometimes in a truly meaningful way as she managed to really engage the people she met. The people, who as July pointed out mostly don't use computers otherwise they'd be using Craigslist, had encounters that revealed some inner truths about themselves and in doing the interviews Miranda in a sense does the same. The final interview ended up helping her complete her screenplay for the film as she hoped the process would and the subject and his interview appear in the film with the main character stepping in as July. By the end of the evening I felt like July was a kindred spirit and her honesty about her artistic process was enlightening.

If you haven't seen the film, here's a recent review I wrote - The Future

FILM REVIEW: The Future

When you hand an artist a crayon they will draw you their world and in Miranda July’s case, her world teeters between the desire to be animalistically wild and domesticatedly digital as illustrated in her new film, The Future. The plot focuses on a thirty-something couple Jason (Hamish Linklater) and Sophie (Miranda July) as they deal with a very relatable mid-life dilemma and its consequences, but its framed through several very surrealistic elements such as the film’s narrator, the couple’s adopted cat Paw Paw who is awaiting the couple’s return at the veterinarian clinic.

Much like July’s first film, the wonderful Me And You And Everyone We Know, the film is infused with her special sense of creativity, humor, and whimsy as the characters deal with their own loneliness, sexuality, and commitment issues in their attempts to find themselves. July wrote and directed the film in addition to starring in the leading role and manages to succeed in producing a very idiosyncratic and original film which prevails even amid its utter strangeness at times. The film was originally born out of one of July’s recent performance pieces and puts July in a class with filmmakers like Spike Jonze and Todd Solondz who manage to marry the avant-garde with the everyday in a signature way. The Future is a film which represents the time we are living in with all its glory and bemusement yet centers on a classic narrative and while your parents may still think it’s too strange your friends are likely to love it.

From: Short&SweetNYC