The new episode of the (very irregular) AFS Viewfinders Podcast is here. Alamo Drafthouse Programmer Tommy Swenson joins us to talk about the art of film programming as well as upcoming series, the social responsibility of programmers, and the mysterious but compelling “pulp imagination” embodied in both pulp fiction and other forms of expression. It’s a long, discursive podcast with some very provocative ideas.
This month’s doc night presentation is HERE COME THE VIDEOFREEX, screening on June 22, a new film by Jon Nealon and Jenny Raskin that tells the fascinating story of a collective of early video users who helped to pave the way for a more democratic approach to media. There are interviews with the surviving Videofreex and their cohorts and, most importantly, footage of astonishing historical import, such as a passionate and inspirational interview with Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, who was assassinated by police soon after. It’s a really interesting film, particularly for those who are concerned with the history of the era, and the history of ideas.
Founded in 1969 by a group of friends who met at Woodstock, the Videofreex used the new Sony Portapak video camera to document their times. They applied for a grant from the New York State Council of the Arts and added a high-tech bus to their arsenal. At this point they were basically a standalone television network. After a brief flirtation with CBS news, who wanted a youth-appeal program but couldn’t abide the group’s leftist politics, they went on the road, making programs of their work along the way, and, eventually, founded the first pirate television station in 1972.
It’s intriguing stuff. Below are a few samples of the Videofreex work. Hopefully much more of it will be made available in the years to come. Currently the digitized files reside with the Video Data Bank, where they can be licensed.
And here is a chaotic hour of Lanesville TV, the first pirate television station.
The AFS Surrealist Love Goddesses Essential Cinema series begins this Thursday, June 9. Here are some quotes about, and photos of, the woman writer Angela Carter called ““greatest of all the surrealist love goddesses.
“Louise Brooks is the only woman who had the ability to transfigure no matter what film into a masterpiece. . . . Louise is the perfect apparition, the dream woman, the being without whom the cinema would be a poor thing. She is much more than a myth, she is a magical presence, a real phantom, the magnetism of the cinema.” – Ado Kyrou, “Amour-Eroticisme et Cinema”
“One morning (in 1929), I went to watch G. W. Pabst making DIARY OF A LOST GIRL in a studio on the outskirts of Berlin. I arrived at a moment when they were adjusting the lights, and, with evident pride, Pabst introduced me to the actress playing the heroine of his film, a young American woman of fascinating beauty who was sitting there reading. Incredibly, what this beautiful young woman was reading was a translation of Schopenhauer’s Essays. Of course, I assumed that this was a publicity stunt of Pabst’s; he knew perfectly well that I was a university graduate. However, I grew increasingly aware of an almost magical power emanating from this strange young woman, who spoke very little, even though I addressed myself to her in English. It was Louise Brooks. I stayed on, to watch Pabst work. And this Louise Brooks, whom I scarcely heard speak, fascinated me constantly through a curious mixture of passivity and presence which she projected throughout the shooting.” – Lotte Eisner, Afterword, “A Witness Speaks”
Alain Resnais (born on this date in 1922) was one of the world’s most important and influential filmmakers. Among his other great works, he made the short film TOUTE LA MÉMOIRE DU MONDE (ALL THE MEMORY IN THE WORLD) in 1956.
It is a beautiful document of Paris’ Bibliothèque nationale de France, taking the viewer through the hallowed halls of this truly remarkable repository of French, and world, culture. We see the day-to-day workings of the library, some of its greatest treasures, and learn some of the history of the place. The awe we feel at the scale and beauty of the place is given a somewhat subversive coloring by the wry narration and Resnais deliberately distant perspective, as if he were making a film about the underground caverns of another planet.
The film is also a testament to the importance of memories and our preservation of them, in fact our duty to memories and our antecedents. In this era, when our memories may be limited to the shelf life of our data formats, and when our national affairs seem to play out in an amnesiac haze, this duty is as great as ever.
“Among these collections, Rimbaud’s first writings were found, published in an obscure journal in the Ardennes. Who knows what other illuminating works these pages may hold? Who knows what will testify most cogently to our civilization tomorrow?”
And when the camera finally reaches the top of the huge pile we see that it is a stack of comic books.
Our next Essential Cinema series, Surrealist Love Goddesses, begins June 9. Over the course of four weeks we will examine the bold, daring lives and careers of four of the most magnetic personalities ever to grace the screen. All screenings are 35mm. Watch the trailer!
First, on June 9, is G.W. Pabst’s bizarre, silent melodrama DIARY OF A LOST GIRL (1929), starring the luminous, non-conformist expat American actress Louise Brooks as a young woman who rejects the hypocritical double standards of the middle class.
The next week, June 16, Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong seizes the screen as a nightclub dishwasher who becomes the toast of London’s Soho district when she becomes a headlining entertainer in PICCADILLY (1929). This silent screening features live vinyl accompaniment by DJ Ms. 45s.
Then, on June 23, the iconic Greta Garbo stars as MATA HARI (1931), one of her most popular roles, and one that showcases her glamorous languor and idiosyncratic acting style to excellent effect.
Finally on June 30 there is Marlene Dietrich in Josef Von Sternberg’s high-kitsch masterpiece THE SCARLET EMPRESS (1934), perhaps the most decadent film ever made, and one that would deserve an ‘R’ rating even today.
Heads up for a really special event this weekend, Friday, June 3 through Sunday, June 5.
8:00 pm Screening: TWO BIRDS, ONE STONE with filmmaker Fejria Deliba in attendance. Note: this is also a Free Member Friday – all AFS members attend free.
4:30 pm Screening: THE GOOD LIFE (LA BELLE VIE), with filmmaker Jean Denizot in attendance.
7:00 pm Screening: NEXT YEAR (L’ANNEE PROCHAINE) with filmmaker Vania Leturcq in attendance.
Robert Greene is one of the most exciting filmmakers working today. His work frequently mines the area of life where “performance” and “real life” intersect. His 2011 doc FAKE IT SO REAL takes us into the real/fake world of backyard wrestlers as they live through their personas. More recently, his film ACTRESS shows us how the “real” life of his subject is inextricably tied into her life as a performer. His newest film KATE PLAYS CHRISTINE takes us into the process as actress Kate Lyn Sheil prepares to play a tragic real life figure.
It should therefore come as no surprise that his main interest in Donald Trump, candidate, is in the performance aspect. Trump’s spokespeople have admitted that much of his bluster is a theatrical gambit, and in a new article for the British Film Institute’s website, Greene goes much more deeply into the nature of Trump’s persona. He opines that Trump may be an example of “a kind of documentary performance run amok.”
Here’s an excerpt:
“The idea that where there’s a camera, there’s a performance might be second nature to filmmakers, critics and media professionals, but ask any documentarian who’s been challenged on the authenticity of his or her material just how stubbornly this lack of awareness persists. As a filmmaker and editor I’d say the dialectical relationship between the authentic and the manufactured in a documentary goes to the heart of the art form itself, that documentary performance – the process by which everyday performances of identity are captured and magnified by the camera and in editing – is a key part of the deeply contradictory tension at the heart of all reality-based media. Yet general audiences understandably cling to the idea that when we tell them something is ‘real’, that means it’s real.
“Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that in the similarly contradictory world of politics, a instinctual documentary performer like Trump could manipulate his way to the top. The fact that his polls seem to rise with every awful utterance surely epitomises some of the most racist, sexist, machismo-fetishising, Islamophobic aspects of the Republican Party, but it also might represent a grotesque inflation – and perhaps collapse – of the idea of political performance that have long dominated presidential politics. Trump might essentially be ‘Trump-proof’ with his supporters because they recognise, at some level, that he’s just playing a part, putting on a show, doing what every presidential candidate has done since JFK learned to manipulate television images – just to a louder and trashier/less snobby degree (more Real Housewives than Primary). There are issues that Trump really believes in, one must assume, but you’d be hard-pressed to make any coherent assessment of his platform based on his public persona. He barely talks about political issues at all, preferring instead to lob jabs in a manner he likely learned in the rough and tumble of New York real estate, and perfected while working with Vince McMahon in the WWE.”
It’s a funny thing. The camera just loves some people more than others. Sometimes it’s a matter of bone structure and light. Often it’s in the eyes. In many cases, it’s just a person’s authenticity coming across – we just like that person. Actress Pam Grier, who, it should be noted, also has a fantastic voice, scores off the charts in all these categories. She’s a star, and, like the great stars of the ’30s and ’40s, she was chosen by the public as their own.
It has become commonplace to call movies like FOXY BROWN and COFFY bad movies. They’re not. They are cheap movies, but it’s not the same thing. No movie starring Pam Grier can be a bad movie. It’s just not possible. If she’s in it, that movie shines for that time. We love her and we love hearing her talk about her life and career. If you haven’t read her book “Foxy: A Life In Three Acts,” you should. You’ll gain a lot of insight about her seriousness and her approach to the craft of acting as well.
Today, wish her a happy birthday and enjoy these interview clips of Pam in conversation at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Warning: there is some strong language.
One of the big, exciting cultural events of the year is happening in a city a few hours to our east, the city is called Houston and the event is an exhibition of Yayoi Kusama’s dazzling, colorful “infinity rooms.” You can read the description here on MFAH’s page. You need a damn good reason to visit Houston in the summer and this is it. The exhibition begins on June 12 and runs through September 18.
In the meantime, watch this 1967 film by New York Avant-gardist Jud Yalkut which documents, in a frenetic way, Kusama’s early art techniques. It’s a happening thing, as they used to say.
Get ready, and go:
Nora Ephron (born on this date in 1941) wrote a piece shortly before she died about her favorite romantic comedies. The novelist, journalist and filmmaker knew quite a lot about the subject, having herself written and produced WHEN HARRY MET SALLY(1989) and having written and directed SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE (1993).
Here is the article, and for convenience’s sake, here is the list:
Jean Gabin, born Jean-Alexis Moncorgé on this date in 1904, was a great actor. That much is clear from his screen work for Jean Renoir, Marcel Carné, Julien Duvivier, Max Ophuls and many other masters. He was also the kind of actor whom audiences take to heart for reasons we can’t necessarily explain but that we understand.
A big, gruff, broad-shouldered man with a face that seems to be constructed of boulders, Gabin exemplified attitudes and aptitudes that were peculiarly French. Just as we Americans see something of our own idealized masculinity in John Wayne’s mix of sardonic swagger and moral forthrightness, the French see Gabin as the strong, silent centurion of French values. And like John Wayne , who nearly became a society-wide joke after the youth quake of the ’60s, Gabin briefly seemed to be an icon of the Gaullist silent majority in France, but like Wayne, he overcame it.
In 1974, Gabin, seventy years old and as beloved as ever, a symbol of the France that overcame the wars and never lost its essential qualities as a nation, recorded “Maintenant Je Sais.” In his off-hand way he talk-croons his way through the sentimental song, as lugubrious strings saw away in the background. There’s a lot of vulgarity to overcome here, but Gabin, as he always seemed to do, made it look effortless. The song was a major, iconic hit in the French speaking world, and now generations who may never see a Jean Gabin film know his name because of this song.
When I was a child, knee high to a grasshopper
I used to speak very loudly to be a man
I used to say, I KNOW, I KNOW, I KNOW, I KNOW
It was the beginning, it was spring
But when I turned 18
I said, I KNOW, here I go – this time I KNOW
And now, every time I turn around
I look at the earth, a place I paced up and down though
And I still don’t know how it turns
When I was about 25, I knew everything
Love, roses, life, money
Oh yeah, love! I knew it thoroughly!
And luckily, like my mates
I hadn’t eaten up all my bread
Halfway through my life, I learned new things again
What I’ve learned takes up only four, five words:
On the day when someone loves you, the weather is very fine
I can’t say it better – the weather is very fine
That’s the last thing to amaze me about life
I who am in the autumn of my life
You can forget so many evenings of sadness
But never a morning of tenderness
All the time when I was young, I wanted to say I KNOW
However, the more I searched, the less I knew then
The clock has stricken 60
I’m still standing at my window, looking out and wondering
Now I KNOW, I KNOW THAT YOU NEVER KNOW!
Life, love, money, friends and roses
You never know the noise nor the color of things
That’s all I know! But I KNOW that..
“She was the most seductive, sensual image of woman ever committed to celluloid. When Hollywood bored her she walked out on Hollywood. When men bored her she walked out on them. She’s the only unrepentant hedonist, the only pure pleasure seeker I think I’ve ever known.” – Kenneth Tynan
Here is a very interesting documentary from British TV about actress & author Louise Brooks. She was truly a figure of her times, and one continually ahead of them. The historical material is very interesting, but by far the most gripping parts of the doc are the long interviews with Brooks herself.
This June, AFS presents Surrealist Love Goddesses, an Essential Cinema series spotlighting Louise Brooks, Anna May Wong, Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich.
