scenes from America

On Feb. 9, a man scrawled a message on the roof of his house in a suburb of Los Angeles: "I Want 2 Be Heard." Then he barricaded himself inside when deputies showed up to evict him, surrendering after a few hours. In October, a woman in San Diego chained herself to her front porch after the bank that held her mortgage refused to renegotiate the terms. She remains in her home, but has received a second eviction notice.

[...]

"This is a cold place in the winter and I will not give people a death sentence for not paying their debts," Sheriff Jones said in an interview. "These are human beings, responsible middle-class people who fell on hard times, and I just can't toss them out onto the streets."

[...]

"I may lose my home, but I'm only leaving in handcuffs," Ms. Millington said.

[...]

In an interview, Ms. Kaptur said, "I'm thrilled that the American people are rising up and exercising the power that Wall Street has taken away from them."

um modo de filmar muito correcto

"There is a Portuguese director that I like very much, Pedro Costa, who has a very appropriate way of filming. One time, he told me that I film the rich, and he films the poor. I told him that I film souls - and there are souls as much in the rich as in the poor."
- Manoel de Oliveira

[«Há um realizador português de que gosto muito, o Pedro Costa, que tem um modo de filmar muito correcto. Uma vez, ele disse-me que eu filmava os ricos, ele filmava os pobres. Respondi-lhe que eu filmo as almas – e as almas tanto há nos ricos como nos pobres.»]

Many thanks to André for this.

Overton window

never thought I’d live to see the day « ads without products

Swanberg promises

For those of you thinking that I might have a response to Glenn's thoughts on the work of Joe Swanberg (and Filmbo's followup, plus other assorted defenses and critiques in the works)... well, watch this space.

Update: Craig weighs in. And I can't wait to join the fray.

Kluge Marx Joyce Eisenstein etc

Alexander Kluge's 570-minute adaptation of Karl Marx's Das Kapital, News from Ideological Antiquity. Marx – Eisenstein – Das Kapital, has been released and is now available only on DVD for under 30 Euros.

I don't see any evidence that there are English subtitles on the disc, but even so -- this is a truly monumental release from one of the most impressively skilled and radical filmmakers.

You can read more about it here.

to reflect concretely on a limited amount of work

"It’s not important to know then all, but just to know a few well. You don't need to know all the museum when you go to a museum, but only a few paintings. In my case, in fact, for example, I know three paintings by Cezanne very well. It didn't do me any good at all to the museum all the time, but to reflect concretely on a limited amount of work. That’s culture, as they say. It does not consist of having it all, but in having reflected concretely on a few things."
- Jean-Marie Straub

"The fault I find with our journalism is that it forces us to take an interest in some fresh triviality or other every day, whereas only three or four books in a lifetime give us anything that is of real importance."
- Swann’s Way, Marcel Proust

"Comme l’on serait savant si l’on connaissait bien seulement cinq á six livres!"
("How wise one might be if one knew only some half-dozen books well!")
- Gustave Flaubert, in a letter to his mistress Louise Colet, 17 February 1853

(the full paragraph: "Tantôt j’ai fait un peu de grec et de latin, mais pas raide. Je vais reprendre, pour mes lectures du soir, les Morales de Plutarque. C’est une mine d’érudition et de pensées intarissable. Comme l’on serait savant, si l’on connaissait bien seulement cinq á six livres!")

inspired by a debate with Miguel Marías (here).
(some information gleaned/confirmed here)

Distribution is War

read this, think of the weakening nation-state as the studio distribution model.

Power, Moral Values, and the Developing Mind: Frederick Wiseman's High School, 1968)

My post on Frederick Wiseman's 1968 film High School is up at The Auteurs' Notebook. I'm really very proud of this piece, which ties together the Athens riots of 2008, Foucault's thoughts on the relationship between power and force, Wiseman's documentary stylistic choices, the changing denotation of the word 'tyranny' in ancient Greece, the psychology of moral development, and the student revolts and social changes of 1968.

Please do read it.


IN MEMORY OF ALEXANDROS GRIGOROPOULOS.

Fair Use (1)

Folsom v. Marsh 9 F.Cas. 342 (C.C.D. Mass. 1841) (pdf):

"...no one can doubt that a reviewer may fairly cite largely from the original work, if his design be really and truly to use the passages for the purposes of fair and reasonable criticism."

Copyright Act of 1976, 17 U.S.C. § 107:

"Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include—
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors."

Mastery without apparent mastery

Ben: So, WENDY AND LUCY...
I need a hug.

Dave: yeah. totally.
but soooo good

Ben: I could feel myself being very critical about it on cinematic terms while watching it...oddly so. I didn't think it was poorly made, but I could hear my inner voice saying a lot of, "well, that could have been set up and/or executed more interestingly/thoughtfully." But regardless, I was also aware that I was engaged the whole time.

Then, only after getting out of the movie did I realize that it had affected me more than any other movie this year. And furthermore, in human terms that I can realistically relate to. That never happens. I can watch ROBOCOP and be impressed by the filmmaking and in turn affected metaphorically by the extremity of its melodrama. But WENDY AND LUCY made me contemplate money, privilege, and general shit luck-of-the-draw for a solid hour and a half and then beyond...

Dave: YOU'VE NAILED IT. seriously. that's it - and why it was my #1 film this year; though it wasn't the most 'masterful,' it was the most masterful.

Ben: That's kind of the perfect way of putting it. Mastery without apparent mastery.

Aryan Papers

Pictures of Dutch actress Johanna Ter Steege trying on dresses of the early forties, for Stanley Kubrick's Aryan Papers.

The Aryan Papers is as much about a film that never happened as it is a portrait of the chosen lead actress Johanna ter Steege. It begins with images of Johanna taken in 1993 by Stanley Kubrick - they are of the wardrobe shoot for the film Aryan Papers. Johanna was to play the lead role of Tania, a compelling character. Tania is central to the film: she is a Polish Jew trying to save herself and her family from the Nazis.

When we visited the Kubrick Archive, we were intrigued to look at the detailed research for a film that never made it into production. The amount of research is overwhelming and it seems to have overwhelmed Kubrick himself. The research left him very depressed and he abandoned the project.

The work takes its title from Kubrick's film and, intercut between stills of Johanna, are images from the archive of specific scenes Kubrick wanted to recreate and images from the Ealing Studios Archive of interiors, shot in 1939/40. The film moves into live action with footage of Johanna filmed now, fifteen years later, where she appears to come to life, recreating stills from the original wardrobe shoot.

Jane and Louise Wilson

• Jane and Louise Wilson's installation will be at the BFI Southbank, London, from 13 February to 19 April.

2008: A Year in movies

The best films I saw for the first time in 2008, in rough order of preference.
[My official list of the Top 10 new releases of 2008, with accompanying commentary, is now up at The Auteurs]


Portrait d'une jeune fille de la fin des années 60 à Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, 1994)
Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1945)
Je vous salue Sarajevo (Jean-Luc Godard, 1993)
City Lights (Charles Chaplin, 1931)
Le Fond de l'Air est Rouge (Chris Marker, 1977/1993)
Céline and Julie Go Boating (Jacques Rivette, 1974)
Andrei Rubylev (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1969)
Sarabande (Nathaniel Dorsky, 2008)
The Return to Work at the Wonder Factory (Jacques Willemont, 1968)
Wendy and Lucy (Kelly Reichardt, 2008)
Cocksucker Blues (Robert Frank, 1972)
In the City of Sylvia (José Luis Guerin, 2007)
Let the Right One In (Tomas Alfredson, 2008)
Monsieur Verdoux (Charles Chaplin, 1947)
Mes Petites amoureuses (Jean Eustache, 1974)
Ne Touchez pas la hache (Don’t Touch the Axe, Jacques Rivette, 2007)
Éloge de l'amour (Jean-Luc Godard, 2001)
The Passionate Friends (David Lean, 1949)
French Can Can (Jean Renoir, 1954)
WALL-E (Andrew Stanton, 2008)
Sans Soleil (Chris Marker, 1983)
Big Trouble in Little China (John Carpenter, 1986)
Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) / Dancing (Matt Harding, 2008)
U.S. Go Home (Claire Denis, 1994)
Profit Motive and the Whispering Wind (John Gianvito, 2007)
Bush's War (Michael Kirk, 2008)
The Great Dictator (Charles Chaplin, 1940)
J'entends plus la guitare (Philippe Garrel, 1991)
The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Julian Schnabel, 2007)
Still Life (Jia Zhang-Ke, 2006)
Une catastrophe (Jean-Luc Godard, 2008)
Woman on the Beach (Hong Sang-soo, 2006)
Day of Wrath (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1943)
Far From Vietnam (Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, William Klein, Claude Lelouch, Chris Marker, Alain Resnais and Agnes Varda, 1967)
Le Gai Savoir (Jean-Luc Godard, 1969)
The House is Black (Forough Farrokhzad, 1963)
Knocked Up (Judd Apatow, 2007)
The Avenging Conscience: or 'Thou Shalt Not Kill' (D. W. Griffith, 1914)
How Merrily I Shall Laugh. Daniele Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub and Their Film "Class Relations" (Manfred Blank, 1984)
Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg, 2007)
Not Reconciled or Only Violence Helps Where Violence Rules (Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, 1965)
Charlie Wilson's War (Mike Nichols, 2007)
Synechdoche, New York (Charlie Kaufman, 2008)
Ryan's Daughter (David Lean, 1970)
Music video for "Bright Tomorrow" by Fuck Buttons. (Andrew Hung, 2007)
Chrisopher Columbus, The Enigma (Manoel de Oliveira, 2007)
Too Early, Too Late (Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, 1981)
Class Relations (Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, 1984)
Un film comme les autres (Jean-Luc Godard, 1968)
Picnic on the Grass (Jean Renoir, 1960)
Ms. 45 (Abel Ferrara, 1981)
Report (Bruce Connor, 1967)
High School (Frederick Wiseman, 1968)
Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck, 2007)
A Movie (Bruce Connor, 1958)
"Aliens in a Spaceship" episode of television show Bones (2006)
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (Steven Spielberg, 2008)
The Bridegroom, the Comedienne and the Pimp (Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, 1968)
RR (James Benning, 2008)
Mary (Abel Ferrara, 2005)
Vagabond (Agnes Varda, 1985)
Great Expectations (David Lean, 1946)
Le Premier venu (Just Anybody, Jacques Doillon, 2008)
Breakaway (Bruce Connor, 1966)
Winter (Nathaniel Dorsky, 2008)
Stella Dallas (King Vidor, 1937)
The Dark Room (Marie-Christine Questerbert, 2000)
Hatari! (Howard Hawks, 1962)
A Politician's Love Story (D. W. Griffith, 1909)
The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008)
Le petit theatre de Jean Renoir (Jean Renoir, 1970)
Mother of Tears (Dario Argento, 2008)
Red Line 7000 (Howard Hawks, 1965)
Zidane, a 21st Century Portrait (Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, 2006)