The Screenwriter's Blues
My name is Amy, and this is my cinematic life.
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St. Tula, Our Lady of Cinema
For many years very little was known of St. Tula. Some said that she was merely a figment of the imagination of Adolfas Mekas. Others seemed to confuse her with Maya Deren, thinking that the famous image of Maya Deren looking out of a window was a picture of St. Tula. However, the true and accepted image of St. Tula is the one discovered by Adolfas Mekas in Porto Stefano, Italy. Still others insist that Maya Deren was one of many incarnations of the Patron Saint of Film. The impending canonization of Maya Deren may soon clear up this matter. In the meantime, thanks to the efforts of Lulubelle Shelley that we are now able to arrive at an appreciation of St. Tula the film theorist.
The writings of St. Tula were thought to have been forever lost, being that they were among the collection of documents kept by Pope Joan at the time of her disappearance from history. It has turned out that through a simply marvelous method of detection Ms. Shelley was able to recover these writings.
The “Miracle of the Edge Code” has some thinking that the Vatican may soon accept St. Tula as an official Saint. It would seem that, although several centuries dead, Tula of Verona has been able to reach beyond time and leave her mark upon filmstock by making technicians at Eastman Kodak subconsciously choose letters from her writings as the emulsion batch codes on their products. With a little research, Lulubelle Shelley was able to recover St. Tula’s writings through the transcription of these edge code letters.
This present volume marks the first publication of The Sayings of St. Tula. As film continues to be produced, it is hoped that more of her work will soon come to light.— Joel Schlemowitz
New York, 1998
