A Film By Sabi

Sabi is a word of Japanese origin.

In his book, Sculpting in Time, Andrei Tarkovsky observed:

“It is considered that time per se, helps to make known the essence of things. The Japanese therefore see a particular charm in the evidence of old age. They are attracted to the darkened tone of an old tree, the ruggedness of a stone, or even the scruffy look of a picture whose edges have been handled by a great many people. To all these signs of age, they give the name sabi, which literally means ‘rust’. Sabi, then, is a natural rustiness, the charm of olden days, the stamp of time. Sabi, as an element of beauty, embodies the link between art and nature.”

         Consider for a moment that perhaps Sabi can also be a cinematic aesthetic. Not a fixed set of principles or a rigid system of rules governing the creation of a story, but rather a creative flow via an interdependent artistic collaborative working in harmony to realize a film.  Sabi is a constant search for the natural form of sound, images and emotion to be expressed during and throughout the creative process until the picture is locked. 

          Sabi changes with time, and is a whole-view approach to nurturing, catalyzing, and capturing moments that are truthful in their own beauty, simplicity, structure and emotion.  Sabi as an evolving cinematic art seeks to create, foster and uncover transcendence through momentary glimpses into something Greater: those unplanned, life-altering experiences that reshape our perceptions, and our experience of this world. 

          The experience of sabi as a cinematic aesthetic is timeless and universal –and can also be powerfully realized in music, art, emotion & life itself.  If one might consider all of this a new approach to interdependently making and collaboratively experiencing cinema, then you would perhaps be encountering a film by Sabi.