REFLECTIONS ON FILM CULTURE

DAILY | Godard, Sebald, Fassbinder

Fabien Lemercier set off a gleeful round of Chinese whispers yesterday, mine among them, when he reported that French distributor Wild Bunch would be launching pre-sales for four titles at the Film Market in Cannes next week, one of those titles being Jean-Luc Godard‘s Goodbye to Language 3D (Adieu au langage), “for which filming has already started with Héloise Godet, Zoe Bruneau, Kamel Abdelli, Richard Chevalier, Jessica Erickson in the cast.” This assumption was understandably based on the fact that Wild Bunch had a page for the film up on their site, artwork and all. Now that page is gone. So I called Wild Bunch this afternoon and a representative told me that Godard has in fact not begun shooting, that she could not confirm that he actually plans to shoot in 3D and that Wild Bunch would not be taking the title anywhere until next year at the earliest. “So it would be fair to say that he’s still in the very early stages of preproduction?” I asked. “Yes.”

New York. Which brings us to Patience (After Sebald), opening today for a week-long run at Film Forum. The New York Times’ A.O. Scott finds Grant Gee’s “admiring” documentary “appropriately Sebaldian. Following in the literal and metaphorical footsteps of The Rings of Saturn, a 1998 chronicle of an English walking tour that is sometimes read as an invitation to a pilgrimage, Patience combines a number of genres into a compact, digressive 82 minutes. It is a landscape film, an essay film, a celebrity biography full of testimony from friends and colleagues and also a hauntingly original piece of literary criticism.” More from Kenji Fujushima (Slant, 3.5/4), Michelle Orange (Voice) and Michael Wood (Artforum), who reads “after Sebald” in “an interesting triple sense: later than him, according to him, and pursuing him.” Update, 5/11: More from Tynan Kogane (Cinespect), Benjamin Mercer (Reverse Shot), Charles Mudede (Stranger), Noel Murray (AV Club, B+), Elise Nakhnikian (L) and Jordan M. Smith (Ioncinema). And Damon Smith interviews Gee for Filmmaker.

Rooftop Films will be all over New York all summer long, starting on Friday, with screenings, live music, parties, “and special additions that range from social justice activism to fun with paint and toys.” For the latest Cinemad podcast, Mike Plante talks with Founder and Artistic Director Mark Elijah Rosenberg and Program Director Dan Nuxoll (40’39”).

Berlin. Revolver, one of the most important film publications in Germany, and the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin are launching a project on Friday that’ll run even longer, through November 17. Hands on Fassbinder is, they insist, not a retrospective. “Rather, the person and his work will be considered as a point of departure for political and cultural visions.” I’ll have a hand in one of the events in June, but for now, here‘s the schedule for May. On a related note, Critic.de is also marking the 30th anniversary of Fassbinder’s death (June 10) with a series of essays they’ll be rolling out over the next several weeks.

Tonight at the American Academy: “On the occasion of film scholar, theorist, and Academy alumna Miriam Bratu Hansen‘s posthumously published book Cinema and Experience: Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, and Theodor W. Adorno (University of California Press, 2012), edited by Academy alumnus Edward Dimendberg, the American Academy devotes an evening to reflecting on her scholarly impact on the field of Cinema Studies.”

Vienna. In conjunction with the exhibition Morgan Fisher. The Frame and Beyond, on view at the Generali Foundation through July 29, Fischer will be at the Austrian Film Museum this and tomorrow evening for a set of screenings and Q&As.

Obit. Andrea Crisanti, set designer for Michelangelo Antonioni, Francesco Rosi, Sergio Leone, Marco Bellocchio, Andrei Tarkovsky, Theo Angelopoulos and more, has died at the age of 75, reports Camillo De Marco at Cineuropa.

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