Victor, one of Frequency’s most in-demand instructors, will be leading Image into Text: an all-ages and all-levels workshop about writing and film. (More information below.)

Here, Victor joins us to discuss these mediums in tandem:

We too love film and feel innately inspired by it as a writer.  How do you think cinematic image or motion emerges in your writing?

There is a real desire on my part to learn about my characters – not by imposing thoughts or characteristics on them – but by paying careful attention: observing what they do and where they go, listening to what they listen to, listening to what they say – as if their lives were simply unfolding before my eyes like a succession of images and sound, like a film.

How will this course build on previous Frequency courses you’ve taught or how do you think it will differ?

While I have occasionally asked my students to watch a movie and to do something formally analogous to what they saw in their writing, this course will mark the first time where the entire course will revolve around the doing of this kind of work: looking carefully at what certain films do with narrative and image and with sound and translating that as carefully as possible into a piece of writing.

What’s a favorite or haunting movie moment or image of yours that anyone reading this might turn to as a prompt or a goad?  

Maybe the image at the end of Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman where the eponymous heroine, after having committed a shockingly violent act, sits down before her dining room table – or rather, it is not so much this moment taken by itself, but what this moment means after having spent almost three and a half hours getting to know her by paying her the respect of our undivided attention, time spent witnessing her life, and all the pain that we can now so plainly see. It is a haunting moment that reverberates long after the movie is over. It imprints itself on us and she is still sitting down before us, even now.

Dates: Thursdays, November 8th to December 13th
Time: 6:30 pm to 9:00 pm
Place: School One
$250, scholarships available