Wednesday 30 December 2009

Nicole Brenez and the avant-garde, vol. II

Here is the second part of that list I started a post earlier. My first impression is that though more of the titles are familiar, less of them seem readily available on youtube or such easy sources. Maybe I'll get around to posting links for those I can find, but no guarantees.

1970-1980:
Cuadecuc-Vampir de Pere Portabella, Esp., 1970, 75'
Sochaux 11 juin 68 du Collectif de cinéastes et travailleurs de Sochaux, 1970, 20'
No Pincha de Tobias Engel, Guinée-Bisseau, 1970, 80'
Jean Genet parle d'Angela Davis de Carole Roussopoulos, Fr, 1970, 8'
Brésil: rapport sur la torture de Saul Landau et Haskell Wexler, USA, 1971, 60'
Punishment Park de Peter Watkins, USA, 1971, 88'
Numéro Zéro de Jean Eustache, Fr, 1971, 120'
Main Line de Michel Bulteau, Fr, 1971, 102'
Two-Lane Blacktop de Monte Hellman, USA, 1971, 102'
Island Fuse de Arthur et Corinne Cantrill, Australia, 1971, 11'
L'Extase des anges de Koji Wakamatsu, Jap., 1972, 89'
Letter to Jane de Jean-Luc Godard et Jean-Pierre Gorin, Fr, 1972, 60'
Sous les drapeaux, l'Enfer de Kinji Fukasaku, Jap., 1972, 96'
Winter Soldier de Winterfilm Collective, USA, 1972, 96'
Sex Garage de Fred Halsted, USA, 1972, 35'
La dialectique peut-elle casser des briques? de René Viénet, Fr, 1972, 90'
Silver Surfer de Mike Dunford, GB, 1972, 15'
L'Autre Scène de Dominique Avron, Claudine Eizykman, Guy Fihman et Jean-François Lyotard, 1972, 6'
Mourir pour des images de René Vautier, Fr, 1973, 45'
La Société du spectacle de Guy Debord, Fr, 1973, 88'
Images of Asian Music (A Diary from Life) de Peter Hutton, USA, 1973-74, 29'
L'heure de la libération a sonné de Heiny Srour, Liban/Yemen, 1974, 52'
Honky Tonk de Tav Falco, 1974, USA, 26'
Avec le sang des autres de Bruno Muel, Fr, 1974, 49'
Edvard Munch de Peter Watkins, Sweden-Norway, 1974, 210'
Quand on aime la vie on va au cinéma du Groupe Cinéthique, Fr, 1975, 90'
Ali au pays des merveilles de Djouhra Abouda et Alain Bonnamy, Fr, 1975, 49'
Les Saisons de Artavazd Pelechian, USSR, 1975, 29'
Leave Me Alone de Gerard Theuring, RFA, 1975, 120'
Underground de Emile De Antonio, USA, 1976, 88'
Sodom and Gomorrha, New York 10036 de Rudy Burckhardt, USA, 1976, 6'15
S.C.U.M. Manifesto de Carole Roussopoulos et Delphine Seyrig, Fr, 1976, 20'
Allée des signes de Gisèle et Luc Meichler, Fr, 1976, 21'
Salomé de Téo Hernandez, Fr, 1976, 65'
Guacamole de Chick Strand, USA, 1976, 10'
New York Portrait: Chapter One de Peter Hutton, USA, 1978-79, 16'
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome de Kenneth Anger, USA, 1978, 39'
Cinématons de Gérard Courant, in process since 1978
Roulement, rouerie, aubage, de Rose Lowder, Fr, 1978, 15'
Bon pied bon oeil et toute sa tête du Groupe Cinéthique, Fr, 1978, 80'
Soma de Maria Klonaris et Katerina Thomadaki, Fr, 1978, 50'
Retour d'un repère de Rose Lowder, Fr, 1979, 19'

1980-1990:
Au bon peuple portugais de Rui Simoès, Portugal, 1980, 110'
Stridura de Ange Leccia, Fr, 1980, 13'
3rd Degree de Paul Sharits, USA, 1982, 24'
Selva de Maria Klonaris, Fr, 1982, 75'
Les Tournesols de Rose Lowder, Fr, 1982, 6'
Nuestra Senora de Paris de Teo Hernandez, Fr, 1982, 6'
Beach Umbrella de Raphael Montanez
Ortiz, USA, 1985, 8'
L'Affaire des Divisions Morituri de F.J. Ossang, Fr, 1985, 81'
You Can Drive the Big Rigs de Leighton Pierce, USA, 1986, 15'
The Inspector d'Arthur Omar, Brésil, 1988, 12'
Le troisième oeil d'André Almuro, Fr, 1988, 35'
Impressions en haute atmosphère de José Antonio Sistiaga, Esp, 1989, 75'
Images du monde et inscription de la guerre de Harun Farocki, RFA, 1989, 75'
Cruises de Cécile Fontaine, Fr, 1989, 10'
Test d'ouverture pyrotechnique sur conteneur (CP1) Optomat "R" d'Alexis Martinet, Fr, 1989, 13'

1990-2000:
See You Later/Au revoir de Michael Snow, Canada, 1990, 18'
Sanctus de Barbara Hammer, USA, 1990, 19'
La Plage de Patrick Bokanowski, Fr, 1991, 14'
A Child Garden & the Serious Sea de Stan Brakhage, USA, 1991, 73'
Red Shovel de Leighton Pierce, USA, 1992, 8'
VRFilm de Joost Rekveld, Netherlands, 1994, 2'
Meni de Karel Doing, Netherlands, 1994, 6'
The Color of Love de Peggy Ahwesh, USA, 1994, 10'
50 Feets of String de Leighton Pierce, USA, 1995, 51'
Prigioneri della guerra de Yervant Gianikian et Angela Ricci Lucchi, It, 1996, 62'
Vertical Air de Robert Fenz, USA, 1996, 28'
Ile de Beauté de Ange Leccia & Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Fr, 1996, 70'
Tribologie de Yves Berthier et Jean-François Dalle, Fr, 1996, 11'
En une poignée de mains amies de Jean Rouch et Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal, 1997, 35'
Docteur Chance de F.J. Ossang, Fr-Chili, 1997, 97'
Ma 6-T va crack-er de Jean-François Richet, Fr, 1997, 95'
Starship Troopers de Paul Verhoeven, USA, 1997, 129'
Retrospectroscope de Kerry Laitala, USA, 1997, 4'
L'Envers de Patrice Kirchhofer, Fr, 1998-2000, 20'
Va te faire enculer de Yves-Marie Mahé, Fr, 1998, 10'
Sombre de Philippe Grandrieux, Fr, 1998, 110'
Il n'y a rien de plus inutile qu'un organe d'Augustin Gimmel, Fr, 1999, 9'

2000-(the book is dates september 2006)
Battle Royale de Kinji Fukasaku, Jap, 2000, 114'
Le profit et rien d'autre ou (réflexions abusives sur la lutte des classes) de Raoul Pevk, Fr, 2000
Cargo de Laura Waddington, Netherlands, 2001, 30'
Où gît votre sourire enfoui? de Pedro Costa, Fr/Portugal, 2001, 104'
Pulsar de Maria Klonaris, Fr, 2001, 15'
Exposed de Siegried A. Fruhauf, Austria, 2001, 9'
Les Soviets + l'électricité de Nicolas Rey, Fr, 2001, 175'
Meditations on Revolution, Part IV: Greenville, MS de Robert Fenz, USA, 2001, 29'30
Escape d'Alain Declerq, Fr, 2001, 11'30
Aldebaran de Hugo Verlinde, Fr, 2001, 9'
Marocaine à deux dimensions de Brahim Bachiri, Fr, 2002, 10'
La Vie nouvelle de Philippe Grandrieux, Fr, 2002, 102'
Untitled part 3b: (as if) beauty never ends... de Jayce Salloum, Liban-Canada, 2002, 11'22
Manifeste de Hélène Deschamps et Hugo Verlinde, Fr, 2002, 12'
Samouraï de Johanna Vaude, Fr, 2002, 12'
Nu lacté de Lionel Soukaz et Othello Vilgard, Fr, 2002, 5'
Charlemagne 2 - Piltzer de Pip Chodorov, Fr, 2002, 22'
Nouba de Katia Kameli, Algérie, 2003, 5'
Azé de Ange Leccia, Fr, 2003, 72'
A l'Ouest des rails de Wang Bing, China, 2004, 540'
11000 km Far from New York de Orzu Sharipov, Tajikistan, 2004, 17'
Man. Road. River de Marcellvs L., Brésil, 2004, 10'
Night for Day de HC Gilje, Norway, 2004, 28'
Une Visite au Louvre de Jean-Marie Straub et Danièle Huillet, Fr, 2004, 49'
Terrae de Othello Vilgard, Fr, 2004, 7'
Border de Laura Waddington, Bel., 2004, 30'
Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine de Peter Tscherkassky,Aust., 2005, 17'
Degradation #1, X-Ray: Shroud of Security de James Schneider, International, 2006, 3'30.

Monday 21 December 2009

A Nicole Brenez, les spectateurs reconnaissants...

Nicole Brenez writes like nobody else at the moment. What gets me every time is the sharpness of her pen: she's able to express an idea with more clarity and less words than most people I know, yet she can make it incisive, tough and biting (yet always generous) in a way very few people can match without sounding fanatical.
Her small pamphlet on the Avant-garde for Les Petits Cahiers is no exception. While it's probably more of a warm-up for her Jeune, Dure et Pure than a full-fledged detailed discussion of avant-garde cinema, it's still one of the most refreshing reads in a while (though I'm currently in the middle of The Material Ghost which isn't bad either...). She ends with some documents from the history of the avant-garde, and a reading list and a viewing list. I might get around to posting the reading list as well, though I doubt it, but for the moment here's the first part of the viewing list:



1900-19210:
The Big Swallow de James A. Williamson, USA, 1901, 2'
L'Homme-Mouche de Georges Méliès, Fr, 1902, 3'
Série 1 (vols d'insectes) de Lucien Bull, Fr, 1904, 4'
Les lunettes féeriques de Emile Cohl, Fr, 1909, 5'

1910-1920:
Onénisme Horloger de Jean Durance, Fr, 1912, 5'
Les tourbillons cellulaires de Henri Bernard et C. Dauzère, Fr, 1912, 9'
La Folie du docteur Tube d'Abel Gance, Fr, 1915, 10'

1920-1930:
Symphonie Diagonale de Viking Eggeling, All, 1921, 9'
Rythmus de Hans Richter, All, 1921, 4'
Entr'acte de René Clair, Fr, 1924, 22'
Strike de S.M. Eisenstein, URSS, 1924, 95'
Ballet Mécanique, Fernand Léger, Fr, 1924, 18'
Anemic Cinema de Marcel Duchamp, Fr, 1925, 7'
Ménilmontant de Dimitri Kirsanoff, Fr, 1926, 35'
Combat de Boxe de Charles Dekeukelaire, Bel, 1927, 8'
Inflation de Hans Richter, All, 1927, 3'
La P'tite Lilie de Alberto Cavalcanti, Fr, 1927, 20'
Sur un air de Charleston de Jean Renoir, Fr, 1927, 21'
The Fall of the House of Usher de Hames S. Watson et Melville Webber, USA, 1928, 12'
Un Chien Andalou de Luis Bunuel, Fr, 1928, 16'
Disque 957 de Germaine Dulac, Fr, 1928, 6'
L'Etoile de mer de Man Ray, Fr, 1928, 17'
La Marche des machines d'Eugène Deslaw, Fr, 1928, 9'
Etudes sur Paris d'André Sauvage, Fr, 1928, 76'
La Petite marchande d'allumettes de Jean Renoir, Fr, 1928, 29'
Les Nuits électriques d'Eugène Deslaw, Fr, 1929, 10'
Marseille Vieux-Port de Laszlo Moholy Nagy, Fr, 1929, 9'

1930-1940:
A Propos de Nice de Jean Vigo, Fr, 1930, 31'
Lot in Sodom de J.S. Watson et M. Webber, USA, 1930, 25'
Lichtspiel Schwarz-Weiss-Grau de Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, All, 1930, 5'30
Le Fleuve Sumida de Zen Amaya, Jap, 1931, 20'
Limite de Mario Peixoto, Brésil, 1931, 120'
Taris ou la natation de Jean Vigo, 1931, 10'
Les Berceaux de Jean Epstein, Fr, 1931, 5'
Les Berceaux de Dimitri Kirsanoff, Fr, 1931, 7'
Que Viva Mexico de S.M. Eisenstein, Mexique, 1931-32, unfinished
Le Bonheur d'Alexandre Medvedkine, URSS, 1932, 95'
Rapt de Dimitri Kirsanoff, Suisse, 1934, 88'
Rainbow Dance de Len Lye, GB, 1936, 5'
Early Abstractions de Harry Smith, USA, 1939-1956, 22'
Meshes of the Afternoon de Maya Deren et Alexander Hammid, USA, 1943, 13'

1940-1950:
Jammin' the Blues de Gjon Mili, USA, 1943, 12'
Le Tempestaire de Jean Epstein, Fr, 1947, 15'
Fireworks de Kenneth Anger, USA, 1947, 15'
Le Sang des bêtes de Georges Franju, Fr, 1949, 22'
Lost, Lost, Lost de Jonas Mekas, USA, 1949-63-1976, 178'

1950-1960:
Le Film est déjà commencé? de Maurice Lemaître, Fr, 1951, 62'
L'Anti-concept de Gil J. Wolman, Fr, 1952, 70'
In the Street de Helen Levitt, Janice Loeb, James Agee, USA, 1952, 16'
Under Brooklyn Bridge de Rudy Burckhardt, USA, 1954, 20'
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome de Kenneth Anger, USA, 1954, 38'
Weegee's New York de Arthur "Weegee" Felling, USA, 1954, 20'
Les Maîtres fous de Jean Rouch, Fr, 1954, 36'
Visages dans l'ombre de Peter Weiss, Suède, 1956, 6'
Free Radicals de Len Lye, NZ, 1957-1979, 5'
Flesh of Morning de Stan Brakhage, USA, 1956-86, 21'
Une simple histoire de Marcel Hanoun, Fr, 1958, 68'

1960-1970
Actions de rue de Ben, Fr, 1960-1972, 25'
The House is Black de Forough Farrokhzad, Iran, 1962, 20'
Saïn de Masao Adachi, Jap, 1962, 56'
Prison de Robret Lapoujade, Fr, 1962, 13'
Cosmic Ray de Bruce Conner, USA, 1962, 4'
Ai (Love) de Takahiko Iimura, USA, 1962, 10'
Towers Open Fire de W.S. Burroughs et Anthony Balch, USA, 1963, 10'
Lapis de James Whitney, USA, 1963-1966, 10'
A Caça de Manoel de Oliveira, Portugal, 1964, 21'
Film de Samuel Beckett, GB, 1964, 22'
Quixote de Bruce Baillie, USA, 1964-65, 40'
Walden (Diaries, Notes and Sketches) de Jonas Mekas, USA, 1964-69, 180'
Now de Santiago Alvarez, Cuba, 1965, 6'
Pestilent City de Peter Emanuel Goldman, USA, 1965, 16'
Oskar Langenfeld, 12 fois de Holger Meins, RFA, 1966, 13'
Méditerranée de Jean-Daniel Pollet, Fr, 1966, 40'
The Chelsea Girls de Andy Warhol, USA, 1966, 195'
Meet Marlon Brando de Albert et David Maysles, USA, 1966, 28'
Breakaway de Bruce Conner, USA, 1966, 8'
Films Fluxus, USA, 1966sq (George Maciunas, Albert Finne, Yoko Ono, John Cale...)
Off the Pig - Black Panthers de Newsreel, USA, 1967, 15'
Chronique d'Anna Magdalena Bach de Jean-Marie Straub et Danièle Huillet, All, 1967, 94'
Fuses de Carolee Schneeman, USA, 1967, 25'
The Hour of the furnaces de Fernando Solanas et Octavio Getino, Argentine, 1968, 260'
Préparation d'un Cocktail Molotov, anonyme (Holger Meins), RFA, 1968, 3'
Mickey Mouse au Vietnam de Lee Savage, USA, 1968, 1'
T,O,U,C,H,I,N,G de Paul Sharits, Usa, 1968, 12'
Ciné-Tracts, collectif, Fr, 1968, length unknown
Film-Tract no 1968 de Gérard Fromanger (avec Jean-Luc Godard), Fr, 1968, 3'
Le Révélateur de Philippe Garrel, Fr, 1968, 60'
El Chacal de Nahueltoro de Miguel Littin, Chili-Mexique, 1969, 95'
La premièrecharge à la machette de Manuel Octavio Gomez, Cuba, 1969, 80'
Grève et occupation d'Apollon de Ugo Gregoretti, It, 1969, 76'
The Gladiators de Peter Watkins, GB, 1969, 80'
Comment pouvons-nous le supporter de Christian Boltanski, Fr, 1969, 0'30''
Vite de Daniel Pommereulle, Fr, 1969, 35'
Deux Fois de Jackie Raynal, Fr, 1969, 72'
Le Rouge de Gérard Fromanger, Fr, 1969, 3'
Nouvelle société no 5, 6 et 7 du Groupe Medvedkine de Besançon, Fr, 1969, 30'
British Sounds de Jean-Luc Godard et Jean-Henri Roger, GB, 1969, 52'
Graphyty de Jean-Pierre Bouyxou, Fr, 1969, 20'
HWY: An American Pastoral de Paul Ferrara, USA, 1969, 50'
Necrology de Standish Lawder, USA, 1969, 1970, 12'


I'll post the other half at some point soon... Some of the short ones are available on internet, so I'll make it a pleasure of watching many over the next few days!

Saturday 5 December 2009

Films of a man who should have been free

Boris Barnet makes films that defy viewing, for the simple reason that he's almost completely uninterested in narration. For both Okraina and By the Blues of Seas, the first reaction has been one of admiration and curiosity, with little emotion, whereas the second viewing in both cases has been a major event. I suspect that his narrative (non-) technique might be the source of that initial confusion, as well as the source of the subsequent endearment.

What is striking when seeing Okraina again is how little he cares about classical narrative structure. He doesn't even rebel against it (à la L'Avventura), he just works as if every scene were the next's equal, as if every moment deserved to make as much sense as the previous (and of course, in his hands, they do) without necessarily leading to the next, except maybe following a logic that lies in small details as much as in narrative events per se. That might make his films slightly harder to get a grip on (simply put, they don't fit any other model of narrative), but it also makes every moment a quasi-epiphany.

This refusal to priviledge any event can make for the most free inventions/surprises in thirties cinema. The scene when the soldiers leave is already remarkable for its refusal to dwell in any length on the father's sorrow, showing him only as often as trains departing or crowds rushing by, but when Barnet cuts back to him for the last time, it is to show him leaving the frame, only to reveal Manka standing beside him, still looking in the direction the soldiers left to. Manka, until now not part of the scene, and yet, as the constant beacon of pre-politicized humanist tenderness, always at the heart of the film...

Monday 26 October 2009

Misfits

"I have, besides, always been drawn to stubborn autodidacts, to various sorts of intellectual misfit. In part it was the heedlessness of their own peculiar angle of vision that attracted me to writers and artists like Conrad, Vico, Adorno, Swift, Adonis, Hopkins, Auerbach, Glenn Gould, whose style, or way of thinking, was highly individualistic and impossible to imitate, for whom the medium of expression, whether music or words, was eccentrically charged, very worked-over, self-conscious in the highest degree. What impressed me about them was not the mere fact of their self-invention but that the enterprise was deliberately and fastidiously located within a general history which they had excavated ab origine."

Edward Said, Between Worlds, London Review of Books, 7 May 1988.

Thursday 1 October 2009

Le Cri

Two "gridi": the only possible answer to metaphysical terror and economic violence.

Tuesday 29 September 2009

La Vie nouvelle



La Vie nouvelle is the nightmare of western civilization faced with the catastrophe of its own existence.



I'm still too puzzled and overwhelmed to write anything more coherent than that, but I'll try. I haven't seen Sombre yet, but so far I prefer Grandrieux working with negatives rather than positives (Un Lac), even though admittedly negative effects are easier to reach than quieter ones (the soudtrack goes a long way in L.V.n.); the reason for this may be that in Un Lac, as pointed out in Spectres du Cinema, the fable form which insists on a-historicity, even when the intruder shows up, only partially convinces me, for the very reasons that are sketched out in the opening sequence of La Vie nouvelle: those faces, staring at the catastrophe, know that there is no Eden possible anymore. Maybe Un Lac was the tale of its loss, I'd have to watch it a second time (I'll have to watch it a second time anyway, I can't even pretend that I got a firm grasp on it the first time, let alone understood it), but the violence of La Vie nouvelle resonates more with me than the attempts to reclaim its preceding innocence.

The dance scene may be one of the single most thrilling (and blood-chilling) film moments of the last decade, akin to very few others I can think of. Its dialectic of control and freedom, of alienation within a crowd (the pimp and his creation first dance alone, bring their bodies to a climax, then go on dancing to the same music, in the same space, that is now filled with people), of possession/independence of the human body, make it the key moment of the film for me. Boyan is the greatest incarnation of the devil on screen that I can think of right now, and nowhere is this more evident than in this sequence, where the seduction of the primary pulsions that Grandrieux is so interested in, and that cause the disaster we are continually witnessing, is laid bare in a giddy swirl of Dionysiac liberation/enslavement (the only other scene that matches this plays exactly like a trip to hell: the thermic scene).




Probably more on this soon...

Tuesday 15 September 2009

Springtime in Berlin

Kino Arsenal's Room 2, in Berlin, seems to hold a treat that I never thought I would actually encounter ready for every time I come to Berlin: last time, a pristine copy of Paul Fejos's Lonesome, this time, a raesonably good copy of Fei Mu's Springtime in a Small Town. Both masterworks, though radically different ones. But seriously, has that spot been chosen by angels?
Fei Mu knows how to frame two characters and their interactions better than 99% of directors I can think of right now: though the whole film is superb and the group scenes are marvellous, the film's defining moments are its intimate scenes between two characters, where he sometimes inserts a fade and a change of camera position between a question and its answer (oh, and the agreeable little irony of seeing a film in which a wall plays such a prominent role in Berlin of all places). His mastery of the long take reminds me of Ophuls more than anybody else, but their worlds are completely different: Fei Mu is almost completely indifferent to decorum.

Saturday 29 August 2009

Inglorious...




-Does anyone agree with me that Tarantino makes the same film as Joseph Goebbels?

-The only good image of the film is that of Shosanna's face being projected on the smoke of the burning theater, the screen having already been destroyed by the flames.



-Coincidentally, one of the most beautiful images of Assayas's Demonlover is Connie Nielsen being shown the proof, on a mini-DV camera, that she did indeed kill another woman. A true foray into the means of projection (cringe) in the modern world. Assayas seems to believe, and kudos to him, that digital cinema can still testify, that digital images are still worth something as images, though they are in ever greater danger of being hijacked for disembodied exploitation of suffering. Tarantino doesn't even need digital: what he did to nitrate we are now doing to Poland.

Tuesday 11 August 2009

Novels and Film




Spurred by an interview in which Chris Marker recommended reading Bioy Casares's The Invention of Morel to understand cinema, I'd done that and tremendously enjoyed it at the beginning of this year. The theme of the exteriorisation of memory was of course straight up Marker's street, but of course he had a point, and the book can be a useful tool in thinking about cinema, especially (I find) it's documentary aspects: what it keeps for posterity, as a whole set of gestures, attitudes, practices that are not only filmic but historical as well (to use an obvious example, why Feuillade has become so important again recently).
I'm wondering if Italo Calvino's If on a Winter's Night a Traveller might not end up having the same effect. The way it playfully approaches readership, authorship, the construction of narrative as something the audiences does, I think deserves to be extended to film. It might make some very good cross-reading with the Rosenbaum-Durgnat-Ehrenstein roundtable, for example.

Sunday 2 August 2009

Un monde qui s'organise en récit...




Few films I know make theirs the famous Mitry quote to as much of an extent as Miguel Gomes's Our Beloved Month of August. For the first half, only snapshots of a world, with its local heroes (who jump off bridges for money), its pop tunes, and only the faintest hints of montage devices (a song about childhood dreams playing to a firemen's truck driving by, just after a close-up of a child drawing said fireman's truck). The act of filming is acknowledged but, as will soon become obvious, not with any intention of deconstructing anything... Rather with the always patient expectancy of a narrative being born, an event described, in a scene about a third of the way through, as an almost religious miracle in the hands of the sound man (who, as the hilarious ending establishes, is symbolically to be thanked for the beauty and coherence of the integration of songs as thematic and emotional counterpoints to the narrative).
And when the film that Gomes was supposed to be filming in the first half of the narrative comes on, it is indeed a miracle: all the disparate elements that composed the first half as documentary are reconfigured as fiction, given a place that brings new meaning to the new scene and puts the initial appearance in a new light. I hope I get a chance to see this again soon. This is probably one of those films that unfolds endlessly to give you, in a modest and non-ostentatious way, humanity.

Things to look into:
Links between this and key films about narrative construction: The Wind Will Carry Us, Celine and Julie...
The use of pop songs is the best since Distant Voices, Still Lives.
And I can't remember a more beautiful first time scene in any film.

Thursday 16 July 2009

Antichrist



My first Von Trier film, and if I'm dedicated enough not my last, but let's say certainly not an auspicious beginning. Mark Peranson's article is, as far as this film is concerned, completely justified. Slow-motion winds in ferns does not Tarkovsky make.
It's a distant cousin of Dreyer's Day of Wrath, with a similar line of argument: it is the internalization of the male view of female evil that forces women to become evil (references to middle age torture practices ground the reference to Dreyer). In Dreyer, it is religious dogmatism that drives women towards witchcraft, in Antichrist it is male psychoanalysis of female sexuality. But whereas, in Day of Wrath, the witches seize on the only tool left available to them for emancipation (which is also sexual, and takes place in an ambiguously luxurious natural setting, cf. Gilberto Perez), in Antichrist Charlotte Gainsbourg's liberty is never even hinted at: she exists merely as a symptom. Her husband's control over her psyche (harmful dramatically as well as thematically: even if one accepts the dubious premise, seeing him getting everything about his wife right untoil the final gore-filled twenty minutes is somewhat tedious), however sincerely helpful, may make her into a beast. But where is the streak of resistance in her acts that makes Dreyer's witches so morally compelling?

Sunday 5 July 2009

Let me not to the marriage of true minds...

One aspect of Zabriskie point that strikes me as truly optimistic, especially in Antonioni's overall body of work, is its utopian union, however temporary, of the two main strands of counter-culture and political protest in late 60s early 70s US: the pacifist hippies and the more violent protesters, such as the Weathermen and the Black Panthers. Though it is never completely certain that Mark has indeed shot the policeman, it seems certain, especially when another policeman shows up in the desert, that he would be ready to do so. Daria refuses such tactics. But despite such divergences, the two can choose to unite.


Maybe, therefore, the final explosion corresponds to Daria's taking upon herself the violent methods of Mark, since he now cannot?

And maybe it's significant that her explosion is directed not against the police but against big business.

Monday 22 June 2009

The last utopia

Saw Godwin's Law mentioned somewhere today, and it made me realize, blogs which avowedly exist as a launchpad to discussion (for films, which is what I know, the two obvious examples are Girish and Dave Kehr) consistently prove this wrong. It probably helps having something specific to talk about, but still, there's something beautiful about it.

Wednesday 17 June 2009

Road Movie

One of the most interesting things about Christian Petzold's Yella is the way it reconfigures the car not as a living space or as a space of self-realization, but as a working place. In the US, the car is freedom and social status, or somehow dialectically linked to these ideas. No such approach here: the car is not limited to its social function of wealth indicator (though it is also that), it is mainly a place where economic relations (therefore power relations, since power is with he who wields balance sheets best) are determined, through deceit or its acknowledgement.
What makes the film intelligent is that it does all of this after having set up the car as an instrument of persecution (in the shot of Yella being followed from inside the car), and then violence (in the car crash). No wonder then that the only moment when the car is used for a journey (of sorts), and then driven off course (to Yella's home town), as opposed to the commuting seen until then, should lead to conflict: relationships are not defined anymore if the car is taken off its predetermined course...

Saturday 13 June 2009

Coraline

Coraline on Saturday, and one of the most pleasurable trips at the cinema I've had this term (not that I've had many). The film is great, but it has many flaws, and one of the most interesting is that which badly harms the last third of the film: the narration plays out like a video game.
Coraline is set a task, to find three eyes, hidden in three places visited previously in the film; she sets about doing exactly that, and finds them one after the other, with only marginal excitement thrown in; after that, she confronts the villain. It has the same feel as the tasks in Pan's Labyrinth: the episodic structure weakens the dramatic impact completely; one could take away any one of the three "eye" scenes without it affecting the way Coraline sets about doing the other two in the slightest.
That the same fault should appear in two films that happen on the frontier between reality and a little girl's imagination is quite interesting, I'm at a loss to explain it. Considering Del Toro's film's success (I need to revisit it, was underwhelmed when I saw it), it might be a case of influence, but even then, there is definitely a case of contamination of video game structures into cinema. One day, someone will write an in-depth study of video game video sequences, but what that will leave out is the overriding way of organizing narrative progression: levels, portals. Maybe even save games (could they be the logical consequence of the cliff-hangers of TV series?)?
What is interesting is that as much as the origin in both cases seems to be video games, upon further thought the structure is also reminiscent of exactly what Pan's Labyrinth wanted to be: fairy tales. The princess is given three nuts in which she finds three dresses which... The tailor is given three nights in which to find out why the seven princesses' shoes are worn out every morning... Pan succeeds in bringing up this image better than Coraline, but it's there.

Otherwise, the film is delightful. I haven't been following animation as closely as I would like (despite thinking it shameful that it is so often neglected), but this seems to me one of the best western animated films in a long time. The reason I say western is that Amazing Life of the Fast Food Grifters, Paprika or especially Spirited Away belong to the list of the best films of the decade, not the best animated films...
And, alas, eastern European animation, not to mention middle eastern, remains criminally unknown...
Which makes me think that uncovering this bountiful treasure should be one of the possibilities offered by internet. Here's a good place to start, I think.

Sunday 7 June 2009

Afrique 50


Back after a few days without internet, and before two weeks of revision (I might still post a bit). Managed to find René Vautier's Afrique 50 on internet today, which of course had me tremendously happy. Promptly downloaded it and watched it, here are a few thoughts.

-The film seems to me inextricably linked to its production, reminding me of Assayas's comment that L'Eau Froide was more important as an experience than as a result. This is not the case here, as the film is great seen today, but appreciation of how it was made (illegally, Vautier having run off from the French police in Africa to shoot it; when he came back, most of the material was seized except that fragments that make up the film I saw, for which he recorded the voice-over commentary while in the police station) definitely enhances the experience: here is, for real this time, that old cliché: filming as a weapon, as an act instead of a gaze.

-The voice-over. The use of "tu" for both the audience and the filmmaker, alternately, puts the words of the african subject, said by the filmmaker, and the words of the french citizen (turned dissident) on the same level. The"tu" of the African (note: there is not much indication of where the images come from, which is why I'm using African as an umbrella term) to the filmmaker is worth the same as the "tu" of the filmmaker to his audience. One wonders what the film would have been like with direct sound, which would have enabled Vautier to transmit the African "tu" directly.
The voice-over also provides a violent counterpoint to what I definitely did not expect from the images: their beauty. The sequence of the opening of the dam (around the 8 min mark) actually reminded me of Vertov's Enthusiasm more than anything else in its formal attention to bodies at work. But whereas Vertov praises the bodies who engage in voluntary work, Vautier admires the bodies of the African quasi-slaves while, with the voice-over, virulently denouncing what lies behind that image. The image could be admirable, but the voice-over reminds us that what we admire, in the present conditions, is quasi-slavery. Likewise for the children playing: they play because there is no school.
The voice-over therefore almost becomes an investigation into what we have a right to admire or not. The fervor of the ending minutes, which documents the insurrection and calls for its continuation, is the one moment when euphoric commentary on beautiful images is possible. The genius of it lies in the fact that that euphoric commentary is impossible for what the original target audience (the film was commissioned by the french state for educational purposes) would have considered beautiful, whereas it is necessary for precisely what that audience would not have wanted to face. By its very structure, the film describes the moral inversion at the heart of the colonialist gaze which would view the African as subject beautiful, but the African as citizen intolerable, and restores it to its proper place.

-The music. Possibly the only option to replace the African voice that Vautier could not get? The music here expresses all it should, and everything that western (classical?) music could, but has no right to.

Monday 25 May 2009

Hypocrisy

Let The Right One In: Or How A Director Can Film Children As If They Were Emo Gangsters And Hope To Be Called Sensitive.

In one of the first scenes, we see a man in long shot knock another man unconscious, then hang him upside down from a tree, then grab a knife to slit his victim's throat, at which point he steps in front of the camera to hide the act: the director is being "sensitive" about violence...
Except he cuts from that shot to a close-up of the blood trickling down into a bottle, with sound effects to boot. Giving cheap blood thrills while pretending to be discreet about it.

I saw the film just after having read an article by Daney in La Maison Cinema et Le Monde in which he explores how the dividing line between progressive (seen in his argument as proposing a positive proleterian class heroism) and immoral cinema runs through, and not between, "industry" and "art" cinema (films d'auteurs). It was not, therefore, too much of a surprise to find that the film this vampire blood-porn fest reminded me of the most was the other film to have made me so angry recently: Watchmen. Same hypocritical attitude to violence, same superficial disdain for human emotions passing off as depth, same sickly fascination for power, which here means the power to slaughter...

Monday 18 May 2009

Day of the Dead

The french magazine Panic was a key stage for my film education, and one to which I still go back now. It was a bimonthly magazine that only ran 5 issues, all of which contain great articles. From the beginning, it was daunting but also exciting: in the 1st issue, an interview of Olivier Assayas in which he discusses the need to fundamentally rethink the established standards of film criticism (a few points which I remember vividly: there has been as much time elapsed between us and the Nouvelle Vague as between the Nouvelle Vague and silent cinema, from which the film grammar we inherit was established; his belief that the most interesting writing about cinema is that written by filmmakers).
Only recently was I able to approach, with more contextual information, the articles of one of the contributors. The articles were impassioned, rigorous, daunting, fiercely political, full of references, only 1/20th of which I understood (now, only about 1/10th). The writer was of course Nicole Brenez.
One of the articles, A Propos de Nice or the Extremely Necessary, Permanent Invention of the Cinematic Pamphet, has been reprinted at Rouge, but another one, The Treatment of the Lumpenproletariat by Avant-Garde Cinema, has as far as I know not. I will post on it more completely when I get back home (where my magazine is), but for the moment let me post one of the videos she recommended, which I've been watching often over the last few weeks: Afrika Shox.
(I don't yet know how to embed a youtube video)
It could be part of her urban pamphlet article as well, since its project corresponds almost exactly to what she describes:
It "shows how social injustice is inscribed within flesh itself, on walls, within the very fabric of urban organisation, in the concrete occupation of space [...]. It describes injustice’s physical dimension, reconstitutes its symbolic function, demonstrates its violence".
Maybe more on this videos in days to come.

Friday 15 May 2009

China Girl

Testing: Post 1.
Have just finished going through a Ferrara marathon in order to read Nicole Brenez's book (which was as superb as everyone said). Previously, I had seen only New Rose Hotel (still my favorite) and Bad Lt (with the Driller Killer and The Funeral, the one I liked least).
China Girl I was excited about. The film is obviously a pamphlet against racism. The first level of reading is introduced in the first few minutes: the two big brothers and their racist friends, the criminal organisations that meet above the characters' social levels... Everything is put in place to install a regime of equivalence.
But the film goes beyond that by insuring that this simplistic reading is installed so early and obviously: now that this point has been made, the film will be about not only proving how baseless the prejudices are, but opposing two different versions of equivalence. Brenez is right to point out that the two lovers are one of the only versions of pure good in Ferrara's cinema: to the equivalence of the criminal organizations, Ferrara contrasts the equivalence of their innocence, the equivalence of what both cultures can produce that is beautiful (they teach each other how to say "I love you" in their respective languages, for example). The hurlement de rage of the film is therefore not only to declare that the two cultures have their meeting grounds, but to affirm that those can be love as well as crime. It is also despair at the final destruction of this, the only valid utopia of relating to the other.
(Still struggling with how to integrate images)