The Austin Film Society presents a screening of the new restoration of DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST with special guest Lisa B. Thompson, Ph.D., Associate Professor of African & African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas, on Tuesday, December 13 at the Spirit of Texas Theater. Tickets and more information here.
25 years ago, Julie Dash made the film for which she is still best known for today, a remarkable portrait of a place and time long past. DAUGHTERS OF THE DUST (1991), which was the first theatrically distributed film directed by an African-American woman, has only grown in critical esteem in the intervening quarter-century.
There is no living actor with a career as as long and as full of great movies as Kirk Douglas. From his his first film (made when he was already 30!), THE STRANGE LOVE OF MARTHA IVERS (1946) through most of the next six decades, he stayed busy. Douglas starred in, and occasionally also produced some of the finest films of his, or any, era.
Consider this list of highlights:
OUT OF THE PAST (1947 d. Jacques Tourneur) Playing second-dimple to Robert Mitchum
CHAMPION (1949 d. Mark Robson) Douglas’ breakthrough role as a boxer rising in the ranks, Oscar nomination for Best Actor
YOUNG MAN WITH A HORN (1950, d. Michael Curtiz)
ACE IN THE HOLE (1951, d. Billy Wilder)
DETECTIVE STORY (1951, d. William Wyler) Golden Globe for Best Actor
THE BIG SKY (1952, d. Howard Hawks)
THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL (1952, d. Vincente Minnelli), Oscar nomination for Best Actor
20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1954, d. Fleischer) An enormous commercial hit
THE INDIAN FIGHTER (1955, d. Andre de Toth)
LUST FOR LIFE (1956, d. Minnelli) Oscar nomination, Golden Globe & New York Critics Circle Award for Best Actor
PATHS OF GLORY (1957, d. Stanley Kubrick)
THE VIKINGS (1958, d. Richard Fleischer)
SPARTACUS (1960, d. Kubrick)
LONELY ARE THE BRAVE (1962, d. David Miller)
TWO WEEKS IN ANOTHER TOWN (1962, d. Minnelli)
THE LIST OF ADRIAN MESSANGER (1963, d. John Huston) Douglas plays 4 roles
SEVEN DAYS IN MAY (1964, d. John Frankenheimer) Bold and brave political thriller about a military coup attempt in the U.S.
IN HARM’S WAY (1965, d. Otto Preminger)
THE HEROES OF TELEMARK (1965, d. Anthony Mann)
THE ARRANGEMENT (1969, d. Elia Kazan)
THERE WAS A CROOKED MAN (1970, d. Joseph Mankiewicz)
THE FURY (1978, d. Brian De Palma)
THE VILLAIN (1979, d. Hal Needham)
HOME MOVIES (1979, d. De Palma)
THE MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER (1982, d. George Miller)
TOUGH GUYS (1986, d. Jeff Kanew)
OSCAR (1991, d. John Landis)
Here is an interview with the bearded (for a role, probably my personal favorite THE LIGHT AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD) Kirk Douglas on the always-excellent Dick Cavett Show. Of special note is his own commentary over a range of film clips.
Sincere happy birthday wishes on Douglas’ 100th birthday. There will never be another like him.
Doug Benson, Clay Liford, Missi Pyle and Michael Ian Black at Doug Loves Movies taping
The AFS Grant supported film SLASH has really been getting around recently. It seems like everyone is talking about the film, whose writer/director Clay Liford is one of Austin’s busiest and talented filmmakers.
The film is about a pair of teenagers (Hannah Marks of DIRK GENTLY’S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY and Michael Johnston of the TEEN WOLF series) whose love of erotic fan fiction brings them together. In a scenario that could be the launching point for cheap jokes, Liford creates something searchingly human and full of truth. The film also showcases Michael Ian Black, Robert Longstreet, Missi Pyle and many others in its dead-on cast.
On Monday, December 12, AFS will proudly co-present the film, with AFS Lead Programmer Lars Nilsen hosting the film alongside director Clay Liford. As always at the Drafthouse, AFS members can show their cards at the ticketing counter to receive a discount. We encourage you to enjoy SLASH and support local film. See you there!
As everyone who reads this must surely know by now, the AFS Cinema is closed for expansion and renovations through the end of 2016 and into the first few months of 2017. During this time there will be a number of off-site events, open to both AFS members and non-members. You can sign up for these events and find out more at austinfilm.org.
Sunday, January 8:AFS and AGLIFF present DON’T CALL ME SON at the Texas Spirit Theater (located in the Bullock Texas State History Museum. This is the new one from Brazilian writer/director Anna Muylaert, whose film THE SECOND MOTHER thrilled Austin Audiences last year. It’s a family drama about a gender-adventurous young man, still in his teens, who finds out that his family is not what it seems, and must adjust to a radical change in fortunes.
Monday, January 9:SAVAGE GOLD will return to the screening room at Austin Studios. This celebration of hysterical video oddities, introduced and selected by AFS Lead Programmer Lars Nilsen and his fellow collector Maximillian Meehan, is always a wild, fun festival of discovery, complete with a junk-food potluck.
Sunday, January 15: Robert Greene, one of the most interesting voices in film today, joins us for a screening of his new “non-fiction thriller” KATE PLAYS CHRISTINE, in which actress Kate Lyn Sheil prepares to play the role of newscaster Christine Chubbock, who committed suicide on-air in 1974. The previous day, the International Documentary Association and AFS welcome Greene to the Screening Room at Austin Studios for a Master Class.
Thursday, January 19: AFS Presents a 50th Anniversary Screening of DON’T LOOK BACK at the Paramount Theater guest hosted by Austin Chronicle Music Editor Raoul Hernandez. D.A. Pennebaker’s doc follows the volcanically creative and playful young Bob Dylan on his first tour of England. Dylan, who represents the razor edge of an all-new kind of consciousness, seems to be a time-traveller, a modern explorer in a long-ago world of booking agents, reporters and other assorted Mr. Joneses.
Monday, January 30:AQUARIUS, the astonishing new film from NEIGHBORING SOUNDS writer/director Kleber Mendonça Filho, plays at the Texas Spirit Theater. Boasting a phenomenal performance by Sonia Braga as the last tenant of an apartment building that is scheduled to be razed, this is a film that will be remembered for many years.
Thursday, February 2: AFS Artistic Director Richard Linklater presents Bernardo Bertolucci’s THE LAST EMPEROR at the Paramount Theater. Winner of an astonishing nine Academy Awards, as well as a clean sweep of the Golden Globes, this is an Epic in the truest sense of the word. Linklater, a big fan of the film, will give one of his highly-informative and perceptive introductions before the film.
Sunday, February 5:Science On Screen returns to the Spirit Of Texas Theater with the documentary film DINOSAUR 13, about a Tyrannosaurus fossil discovery in South Dakota that must surely qualify as one of the most fraught and complicated such maneuver in paleontological history. We will be joined for a discussion period about the finer points of paleontology and excavation by one of UT’s key dinosaur researchers, Julia Clarke, Ph.D.
Monday, February 6: Writer/director David Zellner, who, with his brother and collaborator Nathan Zellner, makes such extraordinary films as KUMIKO, THE TREASURE HUNTER and KID-THING, harbors a dark secret. He loves the ’80s Canadian show THE LITTLEST HOBO, in which a German Shepherd dog wanders from town to town like Michael Landon in HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN, solving problems and showing people the true way. He will join us to introduce a pair of episodes of the show and talk about their narrative construction. This show takes place at Austin Public and is free to the public.
Wednesday, February 8: The new doc from Raoul Peck, I AM NOT YOUR NEGRO, screens at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz. Using the words of James Baldwin, from his unfinished manuscript No Name On The Street, Peck constructs a history of the Civil Rights era, through the eyes of one of its most active soldiers and intellectuals. Magnificently detailed and meticulously structured, this is a testament to Baldwin and his generation.
Monday, February 13: AFS presents the new restoration of Gillo Pontecorvo’s astonishing and impactful 1966 film THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS at the Alamo Ritz. The film depicts, in cinema-verite style, the uprising of the Algerian people against their French colonial occupiers. Not only a great work of cinema, but a document of real historical importance, used by both the Black Panther Party and military academies as a training tool.
Sunday, February 19 and Sunday, February 26: AFS presents a pair of programs of so-called “race films” at the Spirit Of Texas Theater. For several decades, between the twenties and the fifties, a “shadow” film industry existed to provide all-black cast films for segregated theaters in America. The films, which were made with the lowest of budgets, are fascinating to see today, and give us an idea, when we read between the lines, of what popular black culture was like at the time. On February 19, the program includes the western THE BRONZE BUCKAROO and on February 26, the film BLOOD OF JESUS, wildly surreal in its unconventional effects, screens with selected shorts.
This 1982 British short film created by Mike Wallington has long been a favorite. The other day I tried to explain what it was to someone and could not quite convey all its charms. Here it is, a film that is part doc, part pure fantasy, a hybrid film that manages to fit in actual interviews with gaming enthusiasts, staged scenes of a pinball-obsessed teddy boy’s journey, and animated sequences depicting the epochal clash between the “Silverball Heroes” and “Video Invaders.” Not for the weak.
Last month, at the New York Film Festival, Martin Scorsese introduced a screening of the new restoration, which he supervised, of Marlon Brando’s sole directorial credit ONE-EYED JACKS.
Scorsese begins with a somewhat technical explanation of the super-widescreen VistaVision film format, of which ONE-EYED JACKS is the last example. He continues with the provenance of the script, and Stanley Kubrick’s aborted participation in the project.
He goes on:
“This is the only film directed by Marlon Brando. The cineastes and the entire theater culture, cinema culture around the world… all waiting for Marlon Brando to direct a film. I remember, even in Film Culture at one point, they suggested that Brando direct The Book Of Job… but he did this, a Western.
“What’s remarkable about this picture, it’s unlike any other western because of the intensity and the power of the actors and the way they’re directed, the way they’re framed, against the landscape and within these houses, these sets. The intensity and the energy of the actors just bursts out the edges of the screen.”
Here at the Austin Film Society, we have the benefit of a large and active member base, and a surrounding community that appreciates and supports film. What we do – and by that I mean what we all do together, from enjoying gems from film’s rich and diverse history to helping today’s and tomorrow’s filmmakers do their important work – has not gone unnoticed by the movers of international film culture.
By now you have probably heard about Filmstruck, a new streaming service that brings together the programming team from Turner Classic Movies with an extensive and growing library of streaming film titles, including the Criterion Collection. They do much more than just present a gigantic library of films though. Much in the AFS manner, they also offer contextual material to help you understand and appreciate their films, including introductions, commentaries, newly commissioned docs, etc.
Martin Scorsese, born on this date in 1942, is, of course, one of the most important filmmakers in the world. There’s very little we can add to his well deserved esteem as a director and technical innovator of the first order.
In addition to all of this, he has become well known as an advocate for great film, for exhibition, education and restoration. Through his work as Founder and Chair of the non-profit Film Foundation he endeavors to raise the profile of films through preservation and exhibition programs.
This side of Scorsese, the tireless advocate, the champion of great movies and filmmakers, is not new. Below is an interview conducted in 1970 with the then-27 year old Scorsese who, at the time, had only one feature directorial credit under his belt, 1967’s WHO’S THAT KNOCKING AT MY DOOR. At the time of this WNYC interview he was curating the Movies In The Park series in Manhattan. He talks a bit about the program, about the way film became a democratic art as soon as the means of production became cheap, easy and quick enough for the average person, and there are interesting detours into the contemporaneous state of film education.
It’s only a 22 minute interview, but as is customary with Scorsese, he fits at least an hour worth of words in with his machine-gun delivery. Enjoy.
Actor Yaphet Kotto (born on this day in 1939) is perhaps best known to today’s audiences from his role in ALIEN (1979), or perhaps from THE RUNNING MAN (1987), or the long-running ’90s show HOMICIDE, LIFE ON THE STREET. He also has unforgettable turns in Paul Schrader’s BLUE COLLAR (1978), Johathan Kaplan’s TRUCK TURNER (1974), the Bond film LIVE AND LET DIE (1973) and far more than I can, or should name here. He’s a great actor, and a great presence.
In 1967, when Kotto was making a living from the stage and stray screen gigs, he recorded this spoken-word single for Hugh Masakela’s Chisa Records, “Have You Dug His Scene”/”Have You Ever Seen The Blues?” It’s a weird, ahead-of-its-time record, bearing some similarities to the work done subsequently by the Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron.
By the way, if you decide to hit Discogs looking for this Yaphet Kotto record, be aware that there was also a ’90s-00’s punk band by that name.
This Sunday and next Wednesday, AFS presents the new doc, FIRE AT SEA from filmmaker Gianfranco Rosi, who spent a year documenting the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa, home of Italian fishermen and their families and, increasingly, of African refugees rescued from rafts and makeshift boats in the Mediterranean.
Again and again throughout his career, producer, director and (uncredited) writer Howard Hawks shook up the whole medium of commercial film. His hyper-violent early gangster movie SCARFACE (1932) set the tone for all future mob movies, and we can see echoes of it even today. He could plausibly said to have invented, and later perfected, the screwball comedy, first with 1934’s TWENTIETH CENTURY and later with BRINGING UP BABY (1938), HIS GIRL FRIDAY (1940) and BALL OF FIRE (1941). Later, with TO HAVE AND HAVE NOT (1944) and THE BIG SLEEP (1946) he brought a new kind of bold sexual chemistry to the screen thanks to the Bogart and Bacall tandem. When he made westerns, they were well unlike any westerns that had preceded them, as is the case with the psychological epic RED RIVER (1948) and the loose amiable hangout movie RIO BRAVO (1959). This list leaves out many of his best films, but you begin to get the picture.
A screwball comedy is, roughly, a fast-paced comedy about romantic conflict in which the romantic leads are also the comedians. Before screwball comedies, there were almost always romantic leads in comedies but they were not expected to get the laughs too. That work was left to the comics, who would interact with the leads but would not be the leads themselves. There are other contenders besides TWENTIETH CENTURY for the title of first screwball comedy. IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT is a leader, and was a pioneering, influential film in its own right, but the leads play it fairly close to the vest. No one would accuse John Barrymore and Carole Lombard, the two leads of TWENTIETH CENTURY, of that.
Hawks cast Barrymore as Oscar Jaffe, a great theatrical ham in the old tradition. The casting could not have been more appropriate. Barrymore was a very fine actor of both stage and screen, and his arsenal was fully stocked with the techniques and manners of the true stage ham. Carole Lombard plays Lily Garland, the Brooklyn girl who becomes a vaunted star of the great white way, but begins to chafe under the thumb of her “creator”, Jaffe.
Garland is a prodigy of the stage, and as such, speaks the language of the ham, and sees through Jaffe’s artifice when others cannot. Their professional romance, its dissolution, and Jaffe’s pursuit of her on a cross-country train voyage, form the story. Hawks manages the actors, and also the many skilled bit players with consummate skill and and a consistent attention to pace (fast) and energy (volcanic). Here is a scene that shows the dynamic of the Jaffe/Garland relationship as it develops. Jaffe is preparing his actors for a scene in a hokey southern plantation-set play and Garland can’t quite break through. Until… Watch these two marvelous artists at work here, and note how Hawks frames the shots to give maximum impact to their physical attitudes.
This same acting prowess and directorial discretion is displayed throughout the film, as these complicated, tightly wound artistes play out the dance of love, love lost, and, possibly, love regained.
This is a film that seems to move with modern rhythms, the dirty pre-code jokes seem like the kind that a quick witted young person of today would make. Hawks had no use for the close-up, which most movies and television shows today rely upon, but in terms of tempo and tone of gags, the material feels shockingly contemporary in approach.
Armenian master Sergei Parajanov in Gérard Courant’s 197-hour film CINÉMATON
Experimental filmmaker Gérard Courant has made one of the world’s longest films, the 197-hour CINÉMATON, which was filmed over the course of 28 years and released in 2009. It consists of nearly 3,000 silent reels, each featuring its subject or subjects doing whatever they choose.
Among the luminaries who have posed for Courant’s camera are many of the world’s great cinema figures. Each of the following is a complete reel from the finished product. Many, many more can be found at Courant’s YouTube page here.
