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Do you hear a giant sucking sound, dearest readers? That\u2019s the audible sensation of time passing by overhead with a vengeance. It\u2019s pretty amplified in your humble editor\u2019s ear holes as of late, given how his situation has entered a no-win phase that simply must play out to its end before he can ever regain control of what comes next in his life. This period also reinforces a truism that has long dogged Ye Ed<\/strong> once he acknowledged it in his late twenties, for better or worse: Pankoke<\/strong> family doings will run parallel with the Champaign-Urbana<\/strong> experience, and rarely are they fated to cross paths.<\/p>\n Confirmation of this continues in 2022, as it apparently is an internal struggle for me to make the effort to reconnect with my peoples in the flesh. I don\u2019t know why I can\u2019t simply get in the car parked out front at the house on the edge of an American small town and drive downstate with purpose or just on a whim. I do have theories on what\u2019s acting as a block, some of it not necessarily of my own doing, but what’s more important to this post on this day is how I\u2019m also slowly losing an attachment to all that is Confidential.<\/p>\n C-U Blogfidential<\/span><\/strong> hasn\u2019t run an article since August, and I\u2019m seemingly not able to engineer a head of steam to research, write, code, or promote new posts. C-U Confidential<\/span><\/strong> hasn\u2019t published since 2019 and, while there is plenty jotted down as guides for potential issues, I have little incentive to return to the press. Also, tonight is the third anniversary of when the former Art Theater<\/strong> in downtown Champaign should<\/em> have hosted the tenth New Art Film Festival<\/strong>. Ergo, it\u2019s been more than four years since the NAFF actually presented a program of locally-made movies in our Twin Cities. What a fucking bummer. All of it.<\/p>\n ~~~~~<\/p>\n ~~~~~<\/p>\n Of course, I see the film culture surging forward in the C-U via social media, news outlets, random celebrity connections, and invites to events I don\u2019t attend. I may be one part green with envy (if not necessarily horny) over what\u2019s going on in the present, yet it hasn\u2019t led to renewed involvement or presence in the scene. I could also be feeling green as I witness creation and togetherness almost exclusively through a computer screen. I do believe the signs are mounting, though, and change is imminent. One part of that may have to result in \u2026 walking away. From our cinema, if not more.<\/p>\n I have nothing specific to announce. I\u2019ve been transparent this entire run about what and whom the weblog, digest, and festival are for. But, as I finally begin serious work in fits and starts to clean up Momkoke Manor<\/strong> after what has been a sobering five-plus years removed from hands-on Champaign County<\/strong> living, the mind wanders about, and chews through, and clamps down, and makes decisions, and reconsiders with depth, and makes new decisions, and repeats, and never lets up. Fun, right?<\/p>\n I am always your Mr. JaPan<\/strong>, just not quite the one who set out to corral the film culture du C-U in 2006 for all to see who care to look. In order to clear this hurdle compromising my being and laying well outside the peripheral vision of practically all my friends and previous neighbors, I may have to respect a newer truism to get me through the roughage with very little support at my disposal from day to day: \u201cIt is a new era at MFHQ Deux<\/strong>, and this is how I\u2019ll do things in the country to work with it.\u201d Keep tabs. Be well.<\/p>\n ~ Jason Pankoke<\/p>\n Top: <\/em>Julia Megan Sullivan<\/strong> and <\/em>Bill Kephart<\/strong> ooze with entomological zest in <\/em>GREEN AND HORNY<\/strong><\/a><\/span>, the last film shown at the last New Art Film Festival in October 2018. <\/em>(Screen image: courtesy Joe Taylor\/Studio Extra\u00f1o)<\/p>\n Above: <\/em>Andy Due<\/strong> trips the green fantastic and doesn\u2019t know why in <\/em>THE GRASS IS ALWAYS GREENER<\/strong><\/a><\/span>, shown at the seventh New Art Film Festival in October 2016. <\/em>(Screen image: courtesy Andy Due\/Rubber Chicken Films)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n