Last night I went to the closing party for Vertigo, the outstanding film magazine which has held a unique place in film writing over the last 16 years. I found myself heartbroken that the magazine should cease…come to an end…no longer be…all the ways of describing its closure felt like euphemisms for the demise of a beloved friend. Disbelief, grief, even a light dusting of baffled anger.
Vertigo, and, more specifically those notable individuals who have nurtured it, produced, edited and distributed it - and of course written for it (unpaid) - was somehow more than itself. As a publication it flagged up the possibility of a wider view, a longer view. Politics, metaphysics, the impossibly human and the aesthetically bold; all boundary pushing was seen as a laudable and even necessary adventure. How we see and what we look at: the conscious and unconscious choices we make in the production of the moving image and how we consume it; articulated so beautifully.
It is important to mark this moment of loss, even if Vertigo, in time, transforms into something new, and to give thanks to the brave and darling spirits who gave it to us.
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