“I came across [Harun] Farocki’s work after having discovered Chris Marker, Fernando Solanas, and of course the films of Godard’s Djiga Vertov Group, but in a way I found Farocki’s approach much more of an eye-opener for me,” writes Bani Khoshnoudi. “Precisely as I was becoming more and more involved with political questions around me, and while forming my own analysis of colonial pasts and how these persist within contemporary forms (whether it be in art or cinema), as well as how filmmaking methods can also be reflected within the form and content of a film, this event, discovering Harun Farocki’s work, was very important for me in my own development as a filmmaker.”
This personal remembrance appears in the new 21st issue of La Furia Umana online (the sixth issue in print is now available, too). The multi-lingual journal’s offering quite a lot in English this time around: Toni D’Angela announces the journal’s commitment to the new Fronteira International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival in Goiana, Brazil, and to CAMIRA (cinema and moving image research assembly), “a new international alliance of scholars, film critics and curators.”
There’s a dossier on Monte Hellman that includes Victor Erice‘s 2011 postcard to the director, another from D’Angela, Steven Gaydos on “ten of the key ‘lessons’ or guiding principles that I believe are core to Monte’s art and life,” Brad Stevens on Stanley’s Girlfriend (2006), Hellman’s segment of the portmanteau Trapped Ashes, and three contributions from Hellman himself: two photographs and a few notes on his filmography.
From Criterion, Todd Haynes on Fassbinder‘s Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
Also: Joao Tabarra on Yasujiro Ozu, Enrico Camporesi on Peter Hutton, Christine Dériaz on Locarno 2014 and Fabio Scandura on cinematic experimentation in Turin. Interviews: Michael Guarneri with Lav Diaz, Sophia Satchell-Baeza with Anthony Stern and Pamela Cohn with Naeem Mohaiemen.
MORE READING
“Don Bachardy started sketching film stars from movie magazines long before he met [Christopher] Isherwood,” writes Christopher Harrity, introducing his interview with the artist for the Advocate (via the Notebook). The occasion is Hollywood, a new book out on November 1 which “includes over 300 works, from his subtle pencil on paper explorations to his bold-stroked, fauvist color paintings. Included is a galaxy of stars and cultural icons from the last century as well as some new millennium personalities.”
Amelie Hastie in Film Quarterly: “Films like Maleficent perform the necessary work of imagining literal and figural systems of possibility: of old and new, of changing structures of representation, of transformations of knowledge, of revised systems of beliefs. That work is ideology laid bare—the ideology embedded in movies, in narratives and representational systems.”
“Strictly avant-garde before it merged with the Visions section in 2012, Wavelengths gives little or no priority to premiere status, and for many Torontonians, as well as North American critics without the budget to travel to major European festivals, it’s the biggest bastion of hard art cinema that exists on these shores.” Nick Pinkerton surveys the highlights for Reverse Shot.
“Adultery, abortion, threesomes, lesbians, transgenders, interracial hook-ups, Holocaust insensitivity—there’s something for everyone in Transparent, the fall’s most promising—and most empathetic—new drama.” Inkoo Kang talks with director Jill Soloway for the Voice.
Trailer for Christoph Hochhäusler’s The Lies of the Victors
For the L, Mark Asch talks with Michael M. Bilandic, who tells the story behind Hellaware at Noisey.
IN OTHER NEWS
“With the deadline looming for Tehran to reach a nuclear agreement with world powers, six top Iranian film directors have launched an Internet campaign with the tagline ‘there is no deal that is worse than no deal,’ marking the strongest public statement on the subject to come from the country’s creative community,” reports Variety‘s Nick Vivarelli. The directors behind the new #No2NoDeal site are Asghar Fahradi, Abbas Kiarostami, Rakhshan Bani-Etemad (winner of the best screenplay award in Venice for Tales), Majid Majidi (Children of Heaven), Mohammad Mehdi Asgarpour (head of Iran’s House of Cinema) and Reza Mirkarimi.
GOINGS ON
New York. “The ‘strong woman’ label patronizingly foisted on modern Hollywood actresses would’ve been spat at by such formidable 1940s Warner Bros. stars as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and Ida Lupino,” writes Graham Fuller in the Voice. “Their hard-boiled but restrained studio-mate Ann Sheridan (1915-67) is less celebrated today, but her cool aplomb has aged better than Davis’s hectoring, Crawford’s emotionalism, even Lupino’s unstable toughness.” MoMA’s Acteurism: The Emergence of Ann Sheridan, 1937–1943 opens today and runs through November 21.
For the L, Ashley Clark surveys BAMcinématek’s Retro Metro series, on through Sunday.
Los Angeles. Doug Cummings for the Weekly: “Expressionism may be the film style most closely related to painting, so LACMA‘s new major film exhibit (through April 26) devoted to German expressionism of the 1920s is an especially fascinating survey of the production art, sketches and set designs behind such classic films as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), The Last Laugh (1924) and Metropolis (1927). Though the era’s directors, including F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang, have been justly lauded, their crucial art directors and illustrators—such as Hermann Warm (who also worked notably with Carl Theodor Dreyer), Walter Röhrig and Walter Reimann—are less well known. This exhibition, largely imported from the Cinémathèque Française and having its U.S. debut at LACMA, casts a rare light on their work.”
UK. Sci-Fi: Days of Fear and Wonder is a season of over a thousand screenings at over 200 locations across the UK and it’s on through December.
ENDNOTE
Listening (40’46”). From Karina Longworth, You Must Remember This #16: Marlon Brando, 1971 – 1973.
More listening (66’15”). Mike Plante talks with Jem Cohen “about his latest feature Museum Hours, new projects, his friendship with Chris Marker, motivations behind filmmaking and how American audiences are still surprising and strong.”
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