Above: 1973 New York Film Festival poster designed by Niki de Saint Phalle.The 61st edition of the New York Film Festival, which opens tonight, has 32 films in its Main Slate, fifteen films in its Spotlight section, ten films and seven collections of shorts in the Currents sidebar, and eleven revivals. That's over 60 feature films. Fifty years ago, in 1973, the 11th edition of the festival had just eighteen feature films and nineteen shorts. Just like this year’s opener—Todd Haynes’s May December—1973’s opening night film, François Truffaut’s Day for Night, had premiered four months earlier at the Cannes Film Festival. And as with this year’s festival, the 1973 edition opened, fifty years and one day ago exactly, in the shadow of an artists' strike. Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians had been picketing the New York Philharmonic outside Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall, where the festival was taking place,...
- 9/29/2023
- MUBI
Alice Rohrwacher’s La Chimera opens on Arthur (Josh O’Connor) on a train, returning from places unknown, as it winds its way through the Italian country, the sun-dappled cinematography inducing a sleepy or meditative state. This idyllic tone makes an immediate, ironic contrast with our protagonist, a British man whose disheveled appearance and miserly attitude constitute a black hole in the center of the film’s bright frames.
Like David Thewlis’s lanky emotional vampire in Naked, Arthur radiates a “don’t talk to me” vibe that initially fails to put off the friendly rural Italians in his midst. They attempt to make conversation with Arthur, who says so little that you’d scarcely know that he speaks fluent Italian, until scaring them off after he belligerently accosts an overly ingratiating peddler. Even when he arrives at his destination and is met by locals who know him and consider him a friend,...
Like David Thewlis’s lanky emotional vampire in Naked, Arthur radiates a “don’t talk to me” vibe that initially fails to put off the friendly rural Italians in his midst. They attempt to make conversation with Arthur, who says so little that you’d scarcely know that he speaks fluent Italian, until scaring them off after he belligerently accosts an overly ingratiating peddler. Even when he arrives at his destination and is met by locals who know him and consider him a friend,...
- 9/8/2023
- by Jake Cole
- Slant Magazine
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter by clicking here.NEWSWe’re excited to share the cover for Issue 3 of Notebook, which features a photograph of pioneering Indian actor-producer Devika Rani. Last week we sneak-previewed what will be the subscribers-only gift: a weatherproof sleeve. Subscriptions for the magazine are always open, but in order to receive Issue 3, you’ll need to subscribe by June 1. So if you haven’t yet, don’t hesitate! Some news from the Golden Apricot International Film Festival in Yerevan, Armenia. Notebook contributor Leonardo Goi will be organizing their Critics Campus, a four-day workshop for emerging film critics, in early July. Applications are now open: submit yours today. Recommended VIEWINGHow To With John Wilson is returning for its third, and final, season, which will premiere July 28 on "Max," the...
- 5/31/2023
- MUBI
After commissioning short films by some of the world’s greatest directors––Tsai Ming-liang, Bertrand Bonello, Jean-Marie Straub, Richard Linklater, Christian Petzold, Jafar Panahi––Paris’ Centre Pompidou continues their self-portrait series Où en êtes-vous? (more or less Where Are You?) with Joanna Hogg, marking her first work since last year’s The Eternal Daughter.
Pace that film (and their Souvenir counterparts) it emotionally orients around Hogg’s feelings towards her mother, the dissociation of traveling in faraway Los Angeles, and even bears intimations of Daughter‘s ghost story––all shot in a form suggesting (or outright adopting) first-person Pov while edited at a far faster clip than her typically stately style. This is a nice little corner of her filmography to see filled out, with any luck the prelude to a new feature.
Watch by clicking the below image:
The post Watch Joanna Hogg’s New Short Où en êtes-vous,...
Pace that film (and their Souvenir counterparts) it emotionally orients around Hogg’s feelings towards her mother, the dissociation of traveling in faraway Los Angeles, and even bears intimations of Daughter‘s ghost story––all shot in a form suggesting (or outright adopting) first-person Pov while edited at a far faster clip than her typically stately style. This is a nice little corner of her filmography to see filled out, with any luck the prelude to a new feature.
Watch by clicking the below image:
The post Watch Joanna Hogg’s New Short Où en êtes-vous,...
- 4/5/2023
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter by clicking here.NEWSShadow of the Vampire.Willem Dafoe will join Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu film, news that comes 23 years after he played a fictitious version of Murnau's lead actor, Max Schreck, in Shadow of the Vampire. Dafoe’s supporting role is currently “unknown,” according to Deadline, though Eggers's vampire will be Bill Skarsgard.Sight & Sound continues their rollout of the Greatest Films of All Time, now unveiling the critics’ top 250.The great cinematographer Caroline Champetier will be honored with the Berlinale Camera award at this year’s festival, marking a career of beautifully lensed films for Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet, Jean-Luc Godard, Margarethe von Trotta, Claude Lanzmann, and Leos Carax, among many others.Following Sundance’s closing awards ceremony, we’ve compiled the full list of winners here on Notebook.
- 2/1/2023
- MUBI
“Love to Love You, Donna Summer,” a docu biopic of the iconic disco singer, has been added to the lineup of Berlinale Special.
Directed by Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Roger Ross Williams (“Music by Prudence”) and Brooklyn Sudano, the film weaves rich archive of unpublished extracts, home video, photographs, artwork, writings, personal audio and other recordings spanning Summer’s life.
Also joining the Berlinale Special roster is “100 Years of Disney Animation – a Shorts Celebration,” which sees Clark Spencer, the Oscar-winning Walt Disney Animation Studios president, sharing his favorite shorts. Among them are rare gems from the earliest days of animation, from the introduction of sound to Mickey Mouse.
The 73rd edition of the Berlin Film Festival will also pay tribute to renowned cinematographer Caroline Champetier who will receive the Berlinale Camera Award. The prize was created in 1986 to honor personalities and institutions who have made a special contribution to filmmaking.
“With her extraordinary body of work,...
Directed by Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker Roger Ross Williams (“Music by Prudence”) and Brooklyn Sudano, the film weaves rich archive of unpublished extracts, home video, photographs, artwork, writings, personal audio and other recordings spanning Summer’s life.
Also joining the Berlinale Special roster is “100 Years of Disney Animation – a Shorts Celebration,” which sees Clark Spencer, the Oscar-winning Walt Disney Animation Studios president, sharing his favorite shorts. Among them are rare gems from the earliest days of animation, from the introduction of sound to Mickey Mouse.
The 73rd edition of the Berlin Film Festival will also pay tribute to renowned cinematographer Caroline Champetier who will receive the Berlinale Camera Award. The prize was created in 1986 to honor personalities and institutions who have made a special contribution to filmmaking.
“With her extraordinary body of work,...
- 1/30/2023
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter by clicking here.NEWSGush.The lineup for the 2023 Sundance Film Festival has been announced. Before the festival begins in Park City on January 19, peruse the selection on Notebook—including new films from Ira Sachs, Deborah Stratman (The Illinois Parables), Mary Helena Clark (Figure Minus Fact), and Fox Maxy (F1ght1ng Looks Different 2 Me Now).Victor Erice has just wrapped production on a new film, Cerrar los Ojos, in Granada, Spain, ahead of a 2023 release. This will be his fourth feature, arriving 31 years after 1992’s Dream of Light.The legendary composer Angelo Badalamenti—one of David Lynch’s most important collaborators, and the architect of all of his atmospheres—has died at age 85. In addition to his music with Lynch, Badalamenti worked with artists like Nina Simone,...
- 12/14/2022
- MUBI
In one of the year’s major feats of increased accessibility for world cinema, Projectr has announced the launch of Projectr Edu, a new online streaming service presenting a curated and extensive collection of acclaimed movies, archival restorations, and award-winning documentaries from around the world, at no charge through partnerships with public libraries, universities, and other educational institutions across North America.
Kicking off this educational initiative is a partnership with The New York Public Library, making Projectr Edu’s entire collection available to New Yorkers with a Nypl card. Projectr Edu is the only film streaming platform currently available and partnered with the Nypl.
“With Projectr Edu, we’re delighted to be able to build on the success of Projectr, and open up this incredible and expanded collection of films – many not available anywhere else – to viewers at no charge. We are deeply grateful to The New York Public Library...
Kicking off this educational initiative is a partnership with The New York Public Library, making Projectr Edu’s entire collection available to New Yorkers with a Nypl card. Projectr Edu is the only film streaming platform currently available and partnered with the Nypl.
“With Projectr Edu, we’re delighted to be able to build on the success of Projectr, and open up this incredible and expanded collection of films – many not available anywhere else – to viewers at no charge. We are deeply grateful to The New York Public Library...
- 12/14/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our email newsletter by clicking here.NEWSJeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles.At last, Sight & Sound have released the results of the 2022 Greatest Films of All Time critics’ poll. 1,639 ballots later, Chantal Akerman’s Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) has risen to the number-one spot, accompanied by a new piece from Laura Mulvey. The New York Times offers a useful interactive feature to unpack how the rankings have evolved over time.The American documentarian Julia Reichert—best known for Growing Up Female (1971), Union Maids (1976), and the Oscar-winning American Factory (2019)—died last week of cancer at age 76. Eric Hynes wrote an elegant appreciation of her work in a 2020 piece for Crosscuts, published by the Walker Art Center: Consistently through half a century of filmmaking, Reichert spends time with people.
- 12/6/2022
- MUBI
Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.
This week’s New to Streaming column is sponsored by Alex Pritz’s The Territory, now streaming on Disney+, courtesy of National Geographic Documentary Films.
The Territory (Alex Pritz)
There are about 180 Uru-eu-wau-wau people left in the Brazilian Amazon. This community lives off the land, protecting the Amazon from deforestation, constant threats of violence, and an expanding base of anti-Indigenous sentiment, streaming from the far-right emboldened by President Jair Bolsonaro. Over three years, filmmaker Alex Pritz spent time with these native Brazilians for The Territory, a collaborative, vérité documentary that’s both engaging and terrifying. Pritz even hands over the camera to the Uru-eu-wau-wau at one point, as the group closes their borders and prepares for an ongoing fight to preserve their land.
This week’s New to Streaming column is sponsored by Alex Pritz’s The Territory, now streaming on Disney+, courtesy of National Geographic Documentary Films.
The Territory (Alex Pritz)
There are about 180 Uru-eu-wau-wau people left in the Brazilian Amazon. This community lives off the land, protecting the Amazon from deforestation, constant threats of violence, and an expanding base of anti-Indigenous sentiment, streaming from the far-right emboldened by President Jair Bolsonaro. Over three years, filmmaker Alex Pritz spent time with these native Brazilians for The Territory, a collaborative, vérité documentary that’s both engaging and terrifying. Pritz even hands over the camera to the Uru-eu-wau-wau at one point, as the group closes their borders and prepares for an ongoing fight to preserve their land.
- 12/2/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our weekly email newsletter by clicking here.NEWSMuch-loved genre filmmaker Albert Pyun (above) has died. Working mostly with low-budgets, and often making films for the direct-to-video market, Pyun’s career spanned five decades and included films such as The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982), Cyborg (1989), and the popular cyberpunk film series Nemesis. Cynthia Curnan, Pyun's wife and producer, had recently requested messages from fans to pass onto the filmmaker, who had been ill for a number of years prior to his passing.It seems that Paul Thomas Anderson is planning to start shooting his next feature in July 2023. Little is yet known about the new project, but a casting call has been listed for a “15-to-16-year-old female of mixed ethnicity who is physically athletic and excels at Martial Arts.” Previous...
- 11/30/2022
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI, and sign up for our email newsletter by clicking here.NEWSThis week, we’re remembering the iconoclastic, anti-capitalist filmmaker Jean-Marie Straub, who has died at the age of 89. In the course of revisiting Christopher Small’s Straub-Huillet Companion column, we were moved by this quotation from Straub, from a 1974 edition of Jump Cut:The revolution is like God’s grace, it has to be made anew each day, it becomes new every day, a revolution is not made once and for all. And it’s exactly like that in daily life. There is no division between politics and life, art and politics. I think one has no other choice, if one is making films that can stand on their own feet, they must become documentary, or in any case they must have documentary roots. Everything must be correct,...
- 11/23/2022
- MUBI
Mickey Kuhn, the last surviving credited cast member of the 1939 film classic Gone With The Wind, died Sunday at a hospice facility in Naples, Fl. He was 90.
His death was announced in a Facebook post by friend George Terrell.
Related Story Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2022: Photo Gallery Related Story James Winburn Dies: Prolific 'Halloween' Stuntman Was 85 Related Story Jean-Marie Straub Dies: Radical French Filmmaker Of Straub-Huillet Duo Was 89
A prolific child actor of the 1930s and ’40s, Kuhn is best remembered for his role as Gone with the Wind‘s Beau Wilkes, the son of Ashley and Melanie Wilkes. In his most memorable scene, Kuhn tearfully reacts to Melanie’s death by asking his father: “Where is my mother going away to? And why can’t I go along, please?”
De Havilland’s death in 2020 left Kuhn as the film’s last surviving credited cast member.
His death was announced in a Facebook post by friend George Terrell.
Related Story Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2022: Photo Gallery Related Story James Winburn Dies: Prolific 'Halloween' Stuntman Was 85 Related Story Jean-Marie Straub Dies: Radical French Filmmaker Of Straub-Huillet Duo Was 89
A prolific child actor of the 1930s and ’40s, Kuhn is best remembered for his role as Gone with the Wind‘s Beau Wilkes, the son of Ashley and Melanie Wilkes. In his most memorable scene, Kuhn tearfully reacts to Melanie’s death by asking his father: “Where is my mother going away to? And why can’t I go along, please?”
De Havilland’s death in 2020 left Kuhn as the film’s last surviving credited cast member.
- 11/22/2022
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
James Winburn, a prolific stuntman who doubled as the Michael Myers character – also known as “The Shape” – in iconic scenes of John Carpenter’s original Halloween, died Nov. 19 at a hospital in Los Angeles following a brief illness. He was 85.
His death was announced by his manager Peter DeLorme. A specific cause of death has not been disclosed.
Related Story Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2022: Photo Gallery Related Story Jean-Marie Straub Dies: Radical French Filmmaker Of Straub-Huillet Duo Was 89 Related Story Jason David Frank Dies: 'Mighty Morphin Power Rangers' Star Was 49
With hundreds of stunt credits dating back to classic 1970s and ’80s TV action series including McLoud, The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, and films like The Poseidon Adventure, The Fog, The Stunt Man, Escape From New York and Tron, Winburn was perhaps best known in the horror fan community for his work in 1978’s Halloween.
His death was announced by his manager Peter DeLorme. A specific cause of death has not been disclosed.
Related Story Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2022: Photo Gallery Related Story Jean-Marie Straub Dies: Radical French Filmmaker Of Straub-Huillet Duo Was 89 Related Story Jason David Frank Dies: 'Mighty Morphin Power Rangers' Star Was 49
With hundreds of stunt credits dating back to classic 1970s and ’80s TV action series including McLoud, The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, and films like The Poseidon Adventure, The Fog, The Stunt Man, Escape From New York and Tron, Winburn was perhaps best known in the horror fan community for his work in 1978’s Halloween.
- 11/21/2022
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
French filmmaker Jean-Marie Straub, who was one half of the radical, arthouse filmmaking duo Straub-Huillet with his late wife Danièle Huillet, has died at the age of 89 in Switzerland.
Straub, who hailed from the industrial northeastern French city of Metz, moved to Paris as a student in the 1950s, where he first met Huillet.
Related Story Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2022: Photo Gallery Related Story Future Of TF1, M6 & France Télévisions' Joint Streaming Platform Salto Hangs In The Balance Related Story Jason David Frank Dies: 'Mighty Morphin Power Rangers' Star Was 49
The pair were involved in the city’s legendary film scene of the time with Straub contributing to the Cahiers du Cinema and becoming friends with then-co-editor Francois Truffaut.
Like many of the film journal’s contributors, Straub moved into filmmaking, working as an assistant to the likes of Jacques Rivette, Abel Gance, Jean Renoir and Robert Bresson.
The...
Straub, who hailed from the industrial northeastern French city of Metz, moved to Paris as a student in the 1950s, where he first met Huillet.
Related Story Hollywood & Media Deaths In 2022: Photo Gallery Related Story Future Of TF1, M6 & France Télévisions' Joint Streaming Platform Salto Hangs In The Balance Related Story Jason David Frank Dies: 'Mighty Morphin Power Rangers' Star Was 49
The pair were involved in the city’s legendary film scene of the time with Straub contributing to the Cahiers du Cinema and becoming friends with then-co-editor Francois Truffaut.
Like many of the film journal’s contributors, Straub moved into filmmaking, working as an assistant to the likes of Jacques Rivette, Abel Gance, Jean Renoir and Robert Bresson.
The...
- 11/21/2022
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
French film-maker who challenged the primacy of narration and orthodox notions of realism
Jean-Marie Straub, who has died aged 89, and his wife, Danièle Huillet, worked together as film-makers for more than 30 years. Straub-Huillet, as they were often called by French critics, broke away from accepted notions of realism, disengaged from bourgeois values and questioned the primacy of narration.
Their films were almost exclusively taken from pre-existing texts, whether from literature, theatre or music. The principal stylistic devices were a usually static camera, sometimes with a pan or tracking shot lasting up to several minutes, the use of non-professionals as actors and direct sound, to the extent that background noises and even wind rustling on a microphone were retained. The pair’s intention, they stated, was to teach people “how to think, see and hear”. Straub was notoriously critical of “lazy” viewers unwilling or unable to engage with his films.
Continue reading.
Jean-Marie Straub, who has died aged 89, and his wife, Danièle Huillet, worked together as film-makers for more than 30 years. Straub-Huillet, as they were often called by French critics, broke away from accepted notions of realism, disengaged from bourgeois values and questioned the primacy of narration.
Their films were almost exclusively taken from pre-existing texts, whether from literature, theatre or music. The principal stylistic devices were a usually static camera, sometimes with a pan or tracking shot lasting up to several minutes, the use of non-professionals as actors and direct sound, to the extent that background noises and even wind rustling on a microphone were retained. The pair’s intention, they stated, was to teach people “how to think, see and hear”. Straub was notoriously critical of “lazy” viewers unwilling or unable to engage with his films.
Continue reading.
- 11/21/2022
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Together with his wife Daniele Huillet, Straub was responsible for a string of challenging political films
Anti-conformist French film-maker Jean-Marie Straub died peacefully at his home in Switzerland on Sunday, the Swiss National Film Archive announced. He was 89.
Straub was a peer of many greats from the French New Wave and received the Locarno film festival’s lifetime achievement award in 2017.
Anti-conformist French film-maker Jean-Marie Straub died peacefully at his home in Switzerland on Sunday, the Swiss National Film Archive announced. He was 89.
Straub was a peer of many greats from the French New Wave and received the Locarno film festival’s lifetime achievement award in 2017.
- 11/21/2022
- by Agence France Presse
- The Guardian - Film News
Jean-Marie Straub, the French director who created an influential body of rigorous political films with his late partner Danièle Huillet, died Saturday evening in Rolle, Switzerland. He was 89.
Straub’s death was confirmed by the French publication Le Monde.
In 1954, Straub met Huillet in Paris when she was a member of Cahiers du Cinema alongside Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette and François Truffaut. The two emigrated to Germany so Straub could avoid military service during the Algerian War.
The directing duo drew from literature and musical works by figures such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Bertolt Brecht, Franz Kafka and Elio Vittorini to hone an uncompromising form across a diverse body of work that committed to exploring historical fragmentation and Marxist analysis of class struggle. The pair formed a sentimental, fiercely creative partnership that has made its mark on global political filmmaking, with directors such as Pedro Costa and Thom Andersen citing the two as major influences.
Straub’s death was confirmed by the French publication Le Monde.
In 1954, Straub met Huillet in Paris when she was a member of Cahiers du Cinema alongside Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette and François Truffaut. The two emigrated to Germany so Straub could avoid military service during the Algerian War.
The directing duo drew from literature and musical works by figures such as Johann Sebastian Bach, Bertolt Brecht, Franz Kafka and Elio Vittorini to hone an uncompromising form across a diverse body of work that committed to exploring historical fragmentation and Marxist analysis of class struggle. The pair formed a sentimental, fiercely creative partnership that has made its mark on global political filmmaking, with directors such as Pedro Costa and Thom Andersen citing the two as major influences.
- 11/21/2022
- by J. Kim Murphy
- Variety Film + TV
Click here to read the full article.
It’s hard to think of a better title than the one writer-director Cyril Schäublin came up with for his second feature, which chronicles the political fervor swelling beneath the surface of a quiet, picturesque industrial town in late-19th century Switzerland.
That town, nestled cozily beside the Jura Mountains, is home to a factory where workers meticulously assemble watches by hand, setting the tiny balance wheel, known as an unrueh (unrest), with the type of scientific precision that the Swiss are famous for. But the real unrest is happening all around them, as the burgeoning anarchist movement takes hold of the factory as well as the community, pitting the workers — almost all of them women — against the powers-that-be who run everything like clockwork, reducing humans to mere cogs in the wheel of the capitalist machine.
The film occasionally shifts its focus onto...
It’s hard to think of a better title than the one writer-director Cyril Schäublin came up with for his second feature, which chronicles the political fervor swelling beneath the surface of a quiet, picturesque industrial town in late-19th century Switzerland.
That town, nestled cozily beside the Jura Mountains, is home to a factory where workers meticulously assemble watches by hand, setting the tiny balance wheel, known as an unrueh (unrest), with the type of scientific precision that the Swiss are famous for. But the real unrest is happening all around them, as the burgeoning anarchist movement takes hold of the factory as well as the community, pitting the workers — almost all of them women — against the powers-that-be who run everything like clockwork, reducing humans to mere cogs in the wheel of the capitalist machine.
The film occasionally shifts its focus onto...
- 10/10/2022
- by Jordan Mintzer
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSJafar Panahi.Having been detained last week for protesting the arrest of fellow Iranian filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Aleahmad, Jafar Panahi has now been ordered to serve six years in prison. Ahead of this development Eric Kohn reported on the broader situation in Indiewire. “Maybe they will come for all of us one by one,” says one anonymous filmmaker who is quoted in the article.Martine Marignac, a producer of vital films by Jacques Rivette, Chantal Akerman, Leos Carax, Jeanne Balibar, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, and others, has died aged 75.The juries have been announced for the 79th edition of the Venice Film Festival. Julianne Moore will head up the main jury, supported by filmmakers Audrey Diwan, Leonardo di Costanzo, Rodrigo Sorogoyen, and Mariano Cohn, plus actor Leila Hatami and author Kazuo Ishiguro.
- 7/20/2022
- MUBI
Martine Marignac, the French producer who worked with a myriad of iconic directors including Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc Godard and Leos Carax, has died in France at the age of 75.
Born in 1946, Marignac broke into cinema in the 1970s as a press attaché, working for seven years alongside Simon Mizrahi, the cinephile and publicist who witnessed the birth of the New Wave and then helped put its directors on the map.
Marignac moved into production in the early 1980s with the creation of the film collective La Cecilia. She took inspiration for the collective’s name from the Cecilia Colony in Brazil founded by a group of Italian anarchists in the late 19th Century.
Under this banner, she began her long-time working relationship with Rivette, taking credits on his 1981 film Pont De Nord. Other credits during this period included Godard’s Passion, Jean-Louis Comolli’s Balles Perdues and Chantal Akerman’s Golden Eighties.
Born in 1946, Marignac broke into cinema in the 1970s as a press attaché, working for seven years alongside Simon Mizrahi, the cinephile and publicist who witnessed the birth of the New Wave and then helped put its directors on the map.
Marignac moved into production in the early 1980s with the creation of the film collective La Cecilia. She took inspiration for the collective’s name from the Cecilia Colony in Brazil founded by a group of Italian anarchists in the late 19th Century.
Under this banner, she began her long-time working relationship with Rivette, taking credits on his 1981 film Pont De Nord. Other credits during this period included Godard’s Passion, Jean-Louis Comolli’s Balles Perdues and Chantal Akerman’s Golden Eighties.
- 7/18/2022
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
A Flower in the Mouth.There is a common thread between two otherwise disparate premieres in the Forum section of this year’s Berlin International Film Festival—Eric Baudelaire’s A Flower in the Mouth, shot in France and the Netherlands, and Dane Komljen’s Afterwater, shot in Germany. Both films benefited from the direct involvement of the Jeonju Cinema Project: an extraordinary funding and development initiative undertaken in partnership with the South Korean city’s local government and the programming team of its annual film festival. Together, these two works mark out something like a gesture of intention for the project. Baudelaire’s film is a rich, single-setting response to the demands of microbudget filmmaking and pandemic strictures both, particularly in its second half, which transposes a 1922 Luigi Pirandello play to an all-night café in Paris. Meanwhile, Komjlen’s film is a more ephemeral vision overall, composed largely...
- 7/6/2022
- MUBI
Michelangelo Frammartino’s new feature, Il buco, is his first that can be rightfully labelled a period piece. Set in the early sixties, it reenacts a legendary caving expedition that saw a handful of young speleologists travel from Turin to Calabria and descend down the Bifurto Abyss—a 700 meters deep cave then thought to be the third largest on Earth. But the Italian director’s filmography (a protean body of work spanning shorts and three features) has always hailed from its own anachronistic planet, one where time seems to work differently—if it does work at all. His first two features were ostensibly set in the present, but the rural Calabria they immortalized looked like a universe telegraphed from the past. Ancestral rituals, slow-paced routines, and pastoral landscapes where humans are almost camouflaged against plants and animals; to be walking into Frammartino’s films is to experience a kind of temporal dissonance,...
- 5/12/2022
- MUBI
L’amour a la mer (1964). Courtesy of Lobster Films.There is a strange paradox in the popular consciousness of the French New Wave. On the one hand, the nouvelle vague is renowned as an explosion of new filmmaking talent in France. From the late 1950s to the mid-1960s, as so many histories of cinema tell us, masses of young directors debuted their work on the screens of France and then the world. After a decade and a half of sclerosis in the film industry, with rigid hierarchies and guild rules that prevented the emergence of directors who had not slowly made their way through the career rungs of the studios, a new generation burst onto the scene, upending the rules of filmmaking and forming a template for so many future new waves in the rest of the world. In many accounts, it is presented as something of a mass movement.
- 5/5/2022
- MUBI
Ivana Miloš, History Lessons Bloom (2022), monotype and nature print with hydrangeas on paper, 33 x 24 cm.The Beauty Of Nascent REVOLUTIONThe wind blowing here will break their chains—Robert Desnos, Night of Loveless NightsA couple of years ago I almost visited the Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati near Rome. One of those unfortunate impulses sparked by unexpected pleasures had left me wanting for more after visiting the impressive Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli. To get there, I jumped on an old bus which took me to the 16th century countryside residence of the once powerful Aldobrandini family, who still own the villa and have only recently opened it to the public. It was quite common for rich citizens and especially clergymen to escape from the summer heat of Rome and build their decadent dream gardens in love with antiquity. Sitting on the bus, I noted down a recurring thought that had occupied my...
- 4/25/2022
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSDore O.'s Alaska (1968)The German avant-garde artist Dore O., whose poetic films were at once vast and intimate explorations of dreams, has died at 75. O. was a founder of the Hamburg Filmmakers Co-op (1968-1974), a participant in the famous German exhibit documenta 5 in 1972, and a prolific painter. The DVD label Re:voir Video had recently released a collection of six restored films by O. In 1988, the critic Dietrich Kuhlbrodt wrote: "Dore O. has become classic, and suddenly it turns out that her work has passed the various currents of time unharmed: the time of the cooperative union, the women's film, the structuralists and grammarians, the teachers of new ways of seeing."Subscriptions are now open for Notebook magazine, our print-only publication devoted to the art and culture of cinema. Subscribe now and you’ll...
- 3/9/2022
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSChameleon StreetThe New York Film Festival has announced an excellent selection for its Revivals section. The roster includes restorations of Mira Nair's Mississippi Masala, John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13, Sarah Maldoror's Sambizanga, Wendell B. Harris Jr.'s Chameleon Street, and Michael Powell's Bluebeard's Castle. The 2021 Locarno Film Festival has come to an end, with Indonesian filmmaker Edwin's Vengeance Is Mine, All Others Pay Cash winning the Golden Leopard. For a full list of this year's award winners, read here. Recommended VIEWINGAhead of premiere, a trailer for the latest Spike Lee joint: the four-part documentary series NYC Epicenters: 9/11 → 2021 ½. The series, which captures twenty years of New York City history from the perspective of its citizens, will premiere on HBO Max August 22. Cinema Guild has released a trailer for Matías Piñeiro's Isabella.
- 8/18/2021
- MUBI
This mix is a focus on moments of Johann Sebastian Bach’s neverending filmography that have stuck to memory. The opener belongs in my mind to Kinji Fukasaku’s Battle Royale (2000). “Air on D String” has over 30,000 titles featured on an IMDb search and I find myself thinking of Scorsese's After Hours (1985). Bach’s sound is sacred, a fact that two of cinema’s beloved philosophers, Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky responded to throughout their careers. This mix includes Bach in Persona (1966) and The Sacrifice (1986). The earliest use in horror, in Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) with the “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, Bwv 565” is now synonymous with the macabre. A piece which fans of Fantasia (1940) and Sunset Boulevard (1950) will recognize too. And an audience may feel differently about “The Goldberg Variations” upon watching Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of The Lambs (1991). The sounds of Bach...
- 7/1/2021
- MUBI
Marta Mateus's Barbs, Wastelands is exclusively showing December 8 - January 6, 2021 on Mubi in the Brief Encounters series.Jonathan Rosenbaum: What were the personal (or autobiographical) aspects of your film Farpões Baldios, and what were the less personal aspects?Marta Mateus: In any art, everything’s autobiographical, isn't it? This film is based, first, on the experience and history of the people I grew up with, on the stories they shared with me since my childhood. These stories are in their hands, their gazes, in what binds us together, perhaps also in our blood and in our dreams. Landscapes also participate in it: it’s the source, the roots, a matter of fertility, hope, grief, shadow, solitude, birth, rebirth, joy, struggle. Therefore, there is also collective experience, historical memory and the landscape has its marked wounds, just like us. Thousands of years of exploitation, of nature and of man by man.
- 12/7/2020
- MUBI
John Gianvito's Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (2007) is showing November 3 - December 2, 2020 on Mubi in the Rediscovered series.Let’s start with the title—a shotgun marriage between two omnipresent yet far from equally featured players in these unremarked, meditative spaces: an abstract impulse that supposedly keeps our American republic healthy and vital (while producing a lot of junk along with more helpful items) and a concrete force that softly caresses everything in its path, keeping us alive and alert. More specifically, an encounter between the cause of many of the deaths that are being commemorated in John Gianvito’s film—especially those relating to the genocide of Native Americans and many of the massacres occasioned by slave revolts and labor protests—and what D.W. Griffith lamented he found missing from modern cinema, the wind in the trees, found in the vicinity of most of the dozens of gravesites visited.
- 11/13/2020
- MUBI
The crowning achievement of a once-in-a-lifetime career, Manoel de Oliveira’s Francisca has been restored in 4K by the Portuguese Cinematheque and will (virtually) hit U.S. shores this November 13 from Grasshopper Film. In advance of that release comes a new trailer that displays this film’s sumptuous beauty—its compositional integrity, its close attention to color and shape, its stirring soundtrack.
One need not intimately know Oliveira’s filmography to experience Francisca, which often plays like a lavish Visconti epic honed to its most essential dramatic and formal pieces—or as Dave Kehr said, “as if Jean-Marie Straub has collaborated with Max Ophüls.” If that’s even slightly to your liking, prepare to bliss out.
Find the trailer and poster (designed by Midnight Marauder) below:
The post Francisca Trailer: Manoel de Oliveira's Masterpiece is Restored in 4K first appeared on The Film Stage.
One need not intimately know Oliveira’s filmography to experience Francisca, which often plays like a lavish Visconti epic honed to its most essential dramatic and formal pieces—or as Dave Kehr said, “as if Jean-Marie Straub has collaborated with Max Ophüls.” If that’s even slightly to your liking, prepare to bliss out.
Find the trailer and poster (designed by Midnight Marauder) below:
The post Francisca Trailer: Manoel de Oliveira's Masterpiece is Restored in 4K first appeared on The Film Stage.
- 11/3/2020
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
Grasshopper Film has picked up North American distribution rights to Paul Felten and Joe DeNardo’s “Slow Machine,” ahead of the film’s premiere at the 58th annual New York Film Festival this week.
Set to release theatrically next year, the film is billed as a “miniature epic” of paranoia, espionage, subterfuge, music and performance on 16mm. It first bowed at January’s International Film Festival Rotterdam, one of the few physical film fests to take place ahead of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Slow Machine” follows Stephanie, a restless and vibrant actor, who meets a troubled counter-terrorism specialist who’s also an aficionado of experimental theater. Their relationship ends disastrously, and forces Stephanie to the ramshackle home of musician Eleanor Friedberger, where she’s haunted by violent memories of her past life.
“As moviegoers, we’ve seen the ‘Grasshopper Film’ logo in front of some of our favorite new and restored...
Set to release theatrically next year, the film is billed as a “miniature epic” of paranoia, espionage, subterfuge, music and performance on 16mm. It first bowed at January’s International Film Festival Rotterdam, one of the few physical film fests to take place ahead of the coronavirus pandemic.
“Slow Machine” follows Stephanie, a restless and vibrant actor, who meets a troubled counter-terrorism specialist who’s also an aficionado of experimental theater. Their relationship ends disastrously, and forces Stephanie to the ramshackle home of musician Eleanor Friedberger, where she’s haunted by violent memories of her past life.
“As moviegoers, we’ve seen the ‘Grasshopper Film’ logo in front of some of our favorite new and restored...
- 10/8/2020
- by Manori Ravindran
- Variety Film + TV
Filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, attending the Venice Film Festival with “Salvatore: Shoemaker of Dreams,” a documentary about Ferragamo, and documentary short “Fiori, Fiori, Fiori!” (pictured), popped by the festival and Mastercard’s “Life Through a Different Lens: Contactless Connections” talk earlier this week. But he didn’t want to talk about lenses at all. “That’s a very specific question, almost obtrusive and indelicate. It’s as if you were opening the door to my bathroom! ‘Call Me By Your Name’ was shot with one 35mm lens – as per Fassbinder, the lens that is closest to the scope of the human eye. For me, the process of creation starts from there.”
Always an avid cineaste, Guadagnino opened up about titles that influenced him. “I saw ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ when I was five. With Peter O’Toole’s blue eyes, Omar Sharif and the desert, that bigger-than-life David Lean scope, it hit me very hard.
Always an avid cineaste, Guadagnino opened up about titles that influenced him. “I saw ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ when I was five. With Peter O’Toole’s blue eyes, Omar Sharif and the desert, that bigger-than-life David Lean scope, it hit me very hard.
- 9/10/2020
- by Marta Balaga
- Variety Film + TV
Each FIDMarseille 2020 movie came with a video introduction from the filmmakers, who were given seemingly complete freedom in deciding how, and at what length, to approach this; eschewing the standard-issue speech-to-webcam, Zaho Zay’s had to be the best one. In a living room, a woman (presumably co-director Maéva Ranaïvojaona) paces along to an audio clip from Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? of Jean-Marie Straub ranting about the indissolubility of form and ideology. “Form, form, your infamous form,” he snarls, the woman roughly lip-syncing to a rant she seems to have heard and contemplated many times before. This intro is […]...
- 8/21/2020
- by Vadim Rizov
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Each FIDMarseille 2020 movie came with a video introduction from the filmmakers, who were given seemingly complete freedom in deciding how, and at what length, to approach this; eschewing the standard-issue speech-to-webcam, Zaho Zay’s had to be the best one. In a living room, a woman (presumably co-director Maéva Ranaïvojaona) paces along to an audio clip from Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? of Jean-Marie Straub ranting about the indissolubility of form and ideology. “Form, form, your infamous form,” he snarls, the woman roughly lip-syncing to a rant she seems to have heard and contemplated many times before. This intro is […]...
- 8/21/2020
- by Vadim Rizov
- Filmmaker Magazine-Director Interviews
A Straub-Huillet Companion is a series of short essays on the films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, subject of a Mubi retrospective. Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub's Sicilia! (1999) is showing on Mubi through September 20, 2020.*pour le ouistiti et en souvenir de Barnabé, le chat(for the marmoset and in memory of Barnabé the cat) J.-M.S.— Opening title card of Sicilia! (1999)Straub-Huillet’s adaptation of Elio Vittorini’s Conversations in Sicily (1938-39) has, like this companion, become subtly entwined with my life. Seeing it at age 16, understanding nothing, but tasting the films of Danièle Huillet and her husband for the first time; clearly, that first hint of obsession would turn out to be an abiding one. Another time, excitedly showing it to friends at university and getting my first taste of the frequently lonely, loveless existence of a Straubian, something that puts me in mind of the Raúl...
- 8/20/2020
- MUBI
Lucrecia Martel and Marí Alessandrini, two directors whose gazes wander from Switzerland to Argentina, have won the two Leopard awards in the main section The Films After Tomorrow. The 2020 edition of the Locarno Film Festival concluded at the GranRex, with a screening of La France contre les robots from established French director Jean-Marie Straub followed by Lockdown Collection, a series of Swiss short films emblematic of today. This decidedly (and inevitably) atypical edition had to replace the Piazza Grande with the web. 320,000 virtual visitors from all over the world enjoyed 80,000 views of original content and films offered during this edition, which took place from 5 to 15 August. Meanwhile, 103 live projections on the three main screens of Locarno attracted a total of 6,000 spectators. The main section of this unique edition was The Films After Tomorrow, in which competed ten international and ten Swiss films, all...
Cineworld will begin reopening its cinemas in England with a lineup featuring a special 4Dx screening program that includes four films projected for the first time in the chain’s exclusive multi-sensory 4Dx extreme cinema format.
Christopher Nolan’s “Inception,” Chris Columbus’ “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” Alfonso Cuarón’s “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” and Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” will get Cineworld’s 4Dx treatment in 24 cinemas across England. They will be joined in cinemas this weekend by “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” previously screened in 4Dx by Cineworld.
4Dx screenings use in-room practical effects such as motion, water, wind, scent and lighting, timed to what’s happening on the screen. Utilizing high-tech motion programming, audience members’ seats also move in synch with the film’s action.
During the Covid downtime, Cineworld executed full scale refurbishments and special format installations in Wolverhampton, Swindon,...
Christopher Nolan’s “Inception,” Chris Columbus’ “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” Alfonso Cuarón’s “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” and Steven Spielberg’s “Jurassic Park” will get Cineworld’s 4Dx treatment in 24 cinemas across England. They will be joined in cinemas this weekend by “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” previously screened in 4Dx by Cineworld.
4Dx screenings use in-room practical effects such as motion, water, wind, scent and lighting, timed to what’s happening on the screen. Utilizing high-tech motion programming, audience members’ seats also move in synch with the film’s action.
During the Covid downtime, Cineworld executed full scale refurbishments and special format installations in Wolverhampton, Swindon,...
- 7/29/2020
- by Jamie Lang
- Variety Film + TV
Jean-Marie Straub’s short film La France Contre Les Robots to close festival; juries unveiled.
Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow will open this year’s Locarno Film Festival, which will run as a hybrid edition from August 5-15.
First Cow premiered at Telluride in 2019 and was also in competition at the Berlinale. Starring John Magaro, Orion Lee, Toby Jones and Ewen Bremner, it was released by A24 in the US in March, before switching to VoD. The film will be screened at Locarno’s GranRex theater with the director attending live online.
The festival will close with Jean-Marie Straub’s...
Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow will open this year’s Locarno Film Festival, which will run as a hybrid edition from August 5-15.
First Cow premiered at Telluride in 2019 and was also in competition at the Berlinale. Starring John Magaro, Orion Lee, Toby Jones and Ewen Bremner, it was released by A24 in the US in March, before switching to VoD. The film will be screened at Locarno’s GranRex theater with the director attending live online.
The festival will close with Jean-Marie Straub’s...
- 7/29/2020
- by 1101184¦Orlando Parfitt¦38¦
- ScreenDaily
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.Newshbo Max has announced plans to release the "Snyder Cut," a highly demanded director's cut of Zack Snyder's Justice League. Hollywood Reporter delves into the development of the project and the fan-based movement behind bringing Snyder's vision to life. Venice's governor has announced that the film festival will proceed as planned this September. Meanwhile, Cannes is unveiling plans for its unprecedented "virtual film market," which will have to mediate different time zones and a lack of premiere buzz. Recommended VIEWINGDavid Lynch has released his 2015 short film Fire (Pozar) for free online. The animated film, a collaboration with Polish musician Marek Zebrowski, is a nightmarish vision of formless beings and houses on fire. For Deadline's new series The Film That Lit My Fuse, Francis Ford Coppola discusses Sergei Eisenstein's October (Ten Days That Shook...
- 5/27/2020
- MUBI
The memory of humanity for sufferings borne is astonishingly short. Its gift of imagination for coming sufferings is almost even less. It is this callousness that we must combat. For humanity is threatened by wars compared to which those past are like poor attempts and they will come, without any doubt, if the hands of those who prepare them in all openness are not broken. —Bertolt Brecht, 19521There is a story of violence hiding behind every player that leaves the frame. The stories around Antigone, Othon, and Empedokles are part of the same History of Violence as those around Karl Rossmann, Machorka-Muff, and Valino.Here, violence is confronted by leaving; quitting the frame, which does not mean giving up. Whether by anger, boredom, or disappointment, the players confidently depart. Like partisans they actively set out, taking up exile from the frame, leaving it devoid of their presence. Following the call...
- 5/20/2020
- MUBI
A Straub-Huillet Companion is a series of short essays on the films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, subject of a Mubi retrospective. Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub's Antigone (1992) is showing on Mubi from May 5– June 4, 2020."What seems interesting to me is that the Lumière approach, though it seeks to simply reproduce reality, nevertheless leaves the door open to the wildest imagination. I find that there is more fantasy in certain images [of theirs] than in certain paintings that claim to be works of fantasy. I find that Lumière's images somehow remind me of what Le Douanier Rousseau represents in painting. That is, each man shares a sincere desire to copy reality, without adding or removing anything, but in fact the end result is the creation of a world. It is a world that exists in reality, but which also exists, with perhaps even greater power, in the imagination of Le Douanier...
- 5/5/2020
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSChanges continue to ripple throughout the film industry: Following the cancellation of this year's SXSW, the festival has paired up with Amazon Prime and invited filmmakers of their lineup to take part in a 10-day "online festival," streaming on Prime for users in the U.S. Both Cannes and the Venice Film Festival have announced that neither will be moving forward with a digital festival, committing to plans for physical events for later this year. Recommended Viewingnhk World is offering its four part documentary, 10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki, on its website for free. The series offers an exclusive look at the animation auteur's production of Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea.A new short film by Jean-Marie Straub, France Against Robots, has premiered on the Kino Slang blog. The film's title is...
- 4/8/2020
- MUBI
This audiovisual essay proposes an understanding of cinema as a transformative device able to affect a series of re-signifying operations, involving political and historical re-examination as well as shifts in the subjective experience of time-space. The essay is focused on the transformation that takes place in the viewer’s perception of a specific kind of cinematic entity: filmed void spaces, and how they may turn out to be read as places of memory.Cinema has the possibility of qualifying spaces, materializing information and connotations that, at first sight, seem invisible. This potentiality of cinema unveils the paradoxical complexity of filmed void spaces: something simultaneously is and is no longer there.This is a double transfiguration between each unity of image and sound and what that specific image-sound brick communicates, since they effect each other respectively and at the same time, as a result revealing what is condensed in the shot,...
- 4/5/2020
- MUBI
A Straub-Huillet Companion is a series of short essays on the films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, subject of a Mubi retrospective. Jean-Marie Straub's Communists (2014) is showing on Mubi from October 8 – November 6, 2019.The souls of all my dears have flown to the stars.Thank God there’s no one left for me to lose–so I am free to cry. This air is madefor the echoing of songs.—Excerpt from Anna Akhmatova's The Return (1944)In the final shot of Jean-Marie Straub's Communists (2014), Danièle Huillet sits alone on in the dirt, high up on Mount Etna in Sicily and all but static, as Beethoven's String Quartet No. 16—his last major work before his death from alcohol cirrhosis—swells around her. She is strikingly still, staring off ahead as if stupefied by the living world. After a long pause, she says two words: "neue Welt"—new world.This reanimation of Huillet,...
- 10/7/2019
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSSouth Korean police have finally identified a suspect for the Hwaseong murders, best known as the serial killer case at the center of Bong Joon-ho's chilling 2003 hit Memories of Murder. Actor Sid Haig, known for his parts in films like Spider Baby, Jackie Brown and Rob Zombie's House of 1000 Corpses, has died, leaving a sizable contribution to the horror genre across decades and styles.Recommended VIEWINGThe hard-to-find Street Scenes, a documentary directed by Martin Scorsese regarding NYU student strikes circa 1970, has been mysteriously uploaded to YouTube. (Via The Film Stage.)The official trailer for Uncut Gems introduces Adam Sandler as a seedy jeweler caught in a basketball betting scheme. Read editor Daniel Kasman's review of the film here. Neon's first trailer for Chinonye Chukwu's Clemency, which follows a prison...
- 9/25/2019
- MUBI
A Straub-Huillet Companion is a series of short essays on the films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, subject of a Mubi retrospective. Straub-Huillet's Workers, Peasants (2001) is showing on Mubi from September 24 – October 23, 2019.Performer: "...and of every thing came the end, and it was a whole that was living."
J.-M.S.: Thanks—I'll stop you there. It's not bad, but some things should be done a little better. Some are tired. Let's start again from the beginning. First of all, fourth line: "...it lingers among the vineyards and on the seashore." You have to stress the Italian tonic accent on "sea," seeeea. But don't omit the rest of the word. After that, you have four bars to breathe, understand? So you can do it.—Extract from "Jean-Marie Straub to Cesare Pavese" (available here)In the last years of the 20th century, after having produced films in a variety...
J.-M.S.: Thanks—I'll stop you there. It's not bad, but some things should be done a little better. Some are tired. Let's start again from the beginning. First of all, fourth line: "...it lingers among the vineyards and on the seashore." You have to stress the Italian tonic accent on "sea," seeeea. But don't omit the rest of the word. After that, you have four bars to breathe, understand? So you can do it.—Extract from "Jean-Marie Straub to Cesare Pavese" (available here)In the last years of the 20th century, after having produced films in a variety...
- 9/24/2019
- MUBI
In MemoriamEver since the late eighties French filmmaker Jean-Claude Rousseau has been a name commonly attached to the most adventurous and difficult type of filmmaking. Far from the American, well-established niches of experimental film, he has been working sparsely in Europe (and Japan) for over thirty years becoming a sort of mythological, solitary figure for this continent’s avant-garde. His oeuvre, roughly divided into two periods—the Super 8mm period going from 1983 to 1995; and the video work, still ongoing since 2003—deals constantly with the most primary elements of cinema: composition, movement, trace, and light, as if in every single shot of his films he wanted to make us reconsider what we normally take for granted about these concepts. Nevertheless, much more interested in cinema’s ends than in its mediums, Rousseau’s extremely rigorous but romantic approach to art reminds us less of structuralist filmmakers such as Ernie Gehr or...
- 9/23/2019
- MUBI
A Straub-Huillet Companion is a series of short essays on the films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, subject of a Mubi retrospective. Straub-Huillet's The Death of Empedocles (1987) is showing on Mubi from September 10 – October 9, 2019."I am torn asunder by love and hate."—Friedrich Hölderlin in a 1794 letter to a friend"Yesterday I was up on Etna. I recalled the great Sicilian of old who, when he had had enough of ticking off the hours, having become intimate with the soul of the world, in his bold lust for life plunged into the terrific flames. It was because—a mocker afterwards said of him—the frigid poet had to warm himself in the fire."—Passage from Hyperion; or, The Hermit in Greece (1797-99)The three versions of Der Tod des Empedokles (The Death of Empedocles)—the first finished, the latter two left incomplete—were the product of a bleak, tumultuous period in Friedrich Hölderlin's life.
- 9/11/2019
- MUBI
Outside of Pedro Costa and Ted Fendt, it’s been hard to detect the aesthetic influence of radical filmmaking duo Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet on contemporary cinema. But the addition of Eloy Enciso’s Endless Night to the rather small canon frankly makes sense for the moment we’re in, politically speaking. As an attempt to reckon with a lingering sense of fascist takeover in both Europe and North America today, the film takes us to Galicia, Spain during the Franco regime, as the wandering Anxo (Misha Bies Golas) returns home amidst turmoil. Taking place over chapters; we see long, talky encounters on public transit, in bars or the countryside between workers, peasants and those in the highest echelons of power. The poor are getting boots to their asses, what else is new?
While there’s no doubt that the text-driven approach is indebted to the beliefs in depicting...
While there’s no doubt that the text-driven approach is indebted to the beliefs in depicting...
- 9/5/2019
- by Ethan Vestby
- The Film Stage
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