Good morning 🐣

I’m the first to admit that sometimes I can get a little “out there” when it comes to “exploring the bounds of cinema,” but since cinema is a medium that shapes time and light, I can see something a little cinematic about Anna Chojnicka’s art, which involves drawing images on banana peels simply through the natural chemical process of bruising. She explains:

No ink is used, the banana is bruised.

I bruise the peel by pressing into it lightly with a blunt point. Speeding up and controlling the bruising process conjures light and shade in the image.

Over a few hours, the mark gradually goes darker until black. I start with the darkest parts of the image first, and then work my way backwards, finishing with the lightest parts last.

By managing the timing, it’s possible to make intricate images with graduating shades. There’s a short window of time when the image looks its best; I photograph the banana, and then eat it.

Remember, these are all bananas. Only bananas. Absolutely bananas.

Sorry.

You can browse more of her work on her site and on Instagram.

A brief intermission 🍿

Just like bananas, all things fade, even the mightiest of empires. And though the city-state of Babylon is long gone, fragments of its language and stories persist. Assyriology students at the University of Cambridge have brought the 2,700-year-old folktale “The Poor Man of Nippur” back to life in what’s hailed as the first film shot in the ancient language of Babylonia. It’s obviously an amateur production, but a fascinating look into the past with a story that still resonates to this day.

Now watch this 👀

“The walking really freaks people out,” says Michael J. Fox as he makes his way down the sidewalk. A woman says hello and he stumbles over his feet, hitting the ground hard. He reassures her that he’s OK and jokes, “You knocked me off my feet.”

In the new documentary “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie,” director Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth” and married to Elisabeth Shue, Fox’s costar in the “Back to the Future” series) chronicles Fox’s life from childhood in Canada to Hollywood star to being diagnosed with Parkinson’s in his twenties. And over the course of the movie, Fox continues to fall and break bone after bone, brushing it off and going on with the show.

Fox talks to the camera in interview and interacts with his family and physical therapist, but what Guggenheim does best is cut together clips from Fox’s movies to act out what was going on in Fox’s own personal life at the time. We see him fall in love with his future wife, Tracy Pollan, while acting beside her in “Family Ties” and “Bright Lights, Big City.” Various scenes of him running personify his relation with fame or the need to keep moving.

The footage also reveals his illness in retrospect. As his symptoms escalate but before he reveals his diagnosis to the world, Fox becomes more reliant on holding objects in his left hand to hide his tremors. Once he no longer feels like he has to hide his illness though, you can see a weight lift off him. He rejects his alcoholism and embraces the disease, incorporating Parkinson’s into his roles. He even pokes fun at it, handing Larry David a soda that his tremors shake a little too much in an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

The documentary is never overly fawning, but it shows his humor, charm, and stardom were no fluke and are all still right there. At one point Guggenheim asks him, “Before Parkinson’s, what would it mean to be still?” Fox admits, “I wouldn’t know.” When asked about his Parkinson’s, Fox says, “If I’m here 20 years from now, I’ll either be cured or like a pickle.”

Until next time! 👋