Some pretty significant viewing has appeared since yesterday’s briefing, but I won’t be embedding any of it here. You need to go to each of the publications hosting it and take in a little context before clicking the play arrows. First up is the second entry (after Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin‘s) in the Notebook‘s Out 1 Video Essay Project. The series has been commissioned by the Melbourne International Film Festival, which screened a 16mm copy of Jacques Rivette‘s Out 1: Noli Me Tangere (1971) in August. Out 1 Solitaire is a collaboration between Jonathan Rosenbaum and Kevin B. Lee.
As they prepared to make it, Rosenbaum sent notes to Kevin, and here’s a brief snippet: “Rivette himself was known during the 60s and 70s as a solitaire, almost always attending films alone, and most often living alone (although he’s briefly glimpsed with Marilú Parolini as her boyfriend in Rouch’s Chronicle of a Summer), so it seems somehow appropriate that he was the one who wrote—even handwrote—all of the messages intercepted by Colin; as he liked to point out in some interviews, these messages are in fact the only things in Out 1 that he wrote.”
At desistfilm, Nicole Brenez introduces an interview:
Contemporary cinematic arts continue to provide us with wonders in the intersection of art history and ethnography, this generous crossroad learnt from the most fertile plastics and speculative initiatives since late 19th century. One thinks, the day before yesterday, about Einstein and his Documents, yesterday about Jean Rouch, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Raymonde Carasco & Régis Hébraud and today about Tiane Doan na Champassak & Jean Dubrel, Ben Russell or John Skoog. Within this constellation, the work of Eric and Marc Hurtado, separately or together as Etánt Donnes, strikes us for its enchanted character in perpetual search of ecstasy, drawing on centuries of poetry sources from Hesiod to Brion Gysin to Raimbaut of Orange. Writers, musicians, performers, Eric and Marc Hurtado have worked with Alan Vega, Genesis P-Orridge, Lydia Lunch, and Philippe Grandrieux. For decades, they left us thinking that their splendid films in 8mm, pantheistic odes to the intensities of the world, were the fruits of a symbiotic partnership—until they revealed in 2008 that Marc was only the author at the times where Jajouka’s production required a great creative clarity.
Launching desistfilm‘s logikeye project, Jajouka, something good comes to you is one of eight works by Eric and Marc Hurtado now online, introduced by José Sarmiento Hinojosa.
Milena Kans‘s new audiovisual essay at Transit, Human and Animal: Jodorowsky’s Looking-Glass World, examines exactly what the title promises in Fando and Lis (1968), El Topo (1970), The Holy Mountain (1973), Santa Sangre (1989) and The Rainbow Thief (1990).
READING
Reverse Shot‘s Scorsese symposium arrives at a milestone. Michael Koresky:
Raging Bull has the oddest grandness. Of all those agreed-upon Great American Movies, Martin Scorsese’s sort-of-biopic about fighter Jake LaMotta is surely among the most conceptually strange and discomfiting to experience. It’s a sports picture blown up into tragic opera, a film about a small—and often, as depicted, small-minded—person who somehow attains mythic grandeur. And the film achieves this majesty despite what feels like constant resistance—from Paul Schrader’s grounded screenplay; from the richly pitiful performances by Robert De Niro as LaMotta, Joe Pesci as his put-upon brother, Joey, and Cathy Moriarty as his wife, Vickie; from the grainy, gritty Life-magazine aesthetic of cinematographer Michael Chapman. Despite all these forces striving for intimacy, Scorsese’s vision nevertheless explodes into a behemoth of a film, the ultimate boxing movie, which ironically has little interest in the sport of boxing.
And Leo Goldsmith revisits American Boy: A Profile of Steven Prince (1978), “an unexpectedly crucial work in Scorsese’s oeuvre.”
Tom Newth introduces his interview with Denis Côté for frieze: “With the disarming narrative of Vic + Flo ont vu un ours (2013) coming in between, Côté has returned to the practice of Bestiaire [2012] for his latest film, Que ta joie demeure (Joy of Man’s Desiring, 2014).”
Alfred Hitchcock and Tippi Hedren promote The Birds in 1963
“The history of independent cinema in India has in the past been an intermittent one, beset by a dearth of funding, insufficient distribution and disinclination by critics to take directors seriously,” writes Omar Ahmed. “One has to re-narrate the current story being written about ‘Hindie’ cinema,” which he then proceeds to do.
The Oxford University Press has a blog, and it’s there that you’ll find Sandra Shapshay and Steven Wagschal‘s introduction to their essay, “Contemporary Cinematic Tragedy and the ‘Silver-Lining’ Genre,” currently available to read for free for a limited time in the British Journal of Aesthetics.
The Atlantic‘s Christopher Orr has wrapped his series on Joel and Ethan Coen’s films with a few closing thoughts—and of course, rankings.
For BOMB, Gary M. Kramer talks with Michael Bilandic about Hellaware.
“Next Monday, October 6, TCM presents an evening of early American animation, a must-see for cartoon fans of all ages.” At Movie Morlocks, Susan Doll previews the program.
IN OTHER NEWS
“The creative team behind film magazine Little White Lies has partnered with Faber to launch its first book: an illustrated compilation of answers to the question, ‘What do you love about movies?'” Rachael Steven for the Creative Review: “Little White Lies has been asking interviewees this question since the magazine’s first issue in 2005. The book features a collection of the most interesting and candid responses from an impressive line-up of actors and film-makers, including directors Francis Ford Coppola, Steve McQueen, the Coen Brothers, Joanna Hogg and Spike Jonze as well as actors Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Helen Mirren and the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman.”
The 9th edition of the Rome Film Festival (October 16 through 25) will “focus on Italian cinema and emerging directors.” Ariston Anderson has the “slimmed-down lineup” in the Hollywood Reporter, noting that Rome “has been looking to rebrand itself as a smaller audience festival. The festival is doing away with juries this year. All sections will now be competitive, with top prizes being voted on by the audience.” Among the world premieres are Takashi Miike‘s As the Gods Will and Christoph Hochhäusler‘s The Lies of the Victors.
“The Tokyo International Film Festival [October 23 through 31] unveiled its lineup for its 27th edition,” reports Mark Schilling for Variety. “The festival announced the inauguration of the Samurai Award, to be presented to veteran filmmakers who, as the fest said in a statement, ‘continue to create ground-breaking films that carve out a path to a new era.’ The first recipients are directors Takeshi Kitano and Tim Burton, whose Big Eyes will screen at the fest.”
Trailer for Masters of Cinema release of Kevin Brownlow and David Gill’s 2013 restoration of D.W. Griffith‘s Intolerance (1916)
Variety‘s Nick Vivarelli: “The Abu Dhabi Film Festival [October 23 through November 1] has unveiled a rich lineup comprising eight world preems from the Arab world, including Egyptian helmer Ibrahim El Batout’s organ trafficking thriller El Ott and its previously announced opener Arabic road movie A to B by Emirati helmer Ali F. Mostafa, alongside a savvy selection of the cream of this year’s festival season crop.”
Back in THR, Vladimir Kozlov reports that the producers of the comedy Gorko! (Kiss the Bride!), a box office hit in Russia, are protesting the Russian Oscar Committee’s decision to choose Andrei Zvyagintsev‘s Leviathan as Russia’s submission for the 2015 foreign-language Oscar—which has come, after all, as a surprise to many in the first place. Anne Thompson has background.
Criticwire‘s Max O’Connell notes that “the new website Iranian Film Daily is a valuable guide to the world of Iranian cinema. Started by film journalist Ali Naderzad, the publication is not a film criticism site, but rather a site dedicated to drawing attention to Iranian films playing at film festivals, vying for Academy Award attention or otherwise trying to find an audience.”
IN THE WORKS
“Annapurna Pictures is stepping to the plate for That’s What I’m Talking About, Richard Linklater’s follow-up to the time-lapse drama sensation Boyhood,” reports Deadline‘s Mike Fleming Jr. “The pic stars Blake Jenner as an incoming freshman experiencing his first weekend in college as a pitcher on the school’s nationally ranked baseball team. He finds himself among a hard-partying group of baseball players. The setting is 1980, and the guys step into the freedom and responsibility of unsupervised adulthood…. The film isn’t a baseball pic, per se; Linklater considers it a closer cousin to his 1993 film Dazed and Confused.”
The Playlist‘s Kevin Jagernauth picks up on a story buried deep in Nev Pierce‘s recent interview with David Fincher for the Guardian. Fincher will spend most of 2015 remaking the Channel 4 conspiracy series Utopia for HBO. Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn will be writing the scripts. Jagernauth: “The show (which has two seasons overseas) follows a group of people who get their hands on a cult graphic novel called The Utopia Experiments, which seems to have predicted no shortage of disasters. An organization known only as The Network hunts them down as the group tries to prevent the next disaster predicted in the pages of the manuscript from happening.”
My Funny Valentine from Bill Domonkos.
The BBC is launching a season of new adaptations of 20th century literary classics next year, among them, The Go-Between, based on L.P. Hartley’s 1953 novel. Vanessa Redgrave “will play an older version of the character Marian in the story made famous in a film starring Julie Christie and Alan Bates. Her father Michael Redgrave appeared in the movie, which was released in 1971, as an older Leo Colston. Jim Broadbent, who had a minor role in the big screen version, has been cast in the BBC One drama as Leo.”
ENDNOTE
Viewing (45’56”). Carrie Rickey chats with David Lynch. By the way, the Hollywood Reporter‘s Ariston Anderson has notes on Lynch’s recent appearance in Lucca, Italy, where he received an award. “Lynch said smiling that he was ‘filled with hope’ to make another movie” with Laura Dern, but you know. He’d also like to work with composer Angelo Badalamenti again. “Right now we don’t have a project, but hopefully soon we will.”
For news and tips throughout the day every day, follow @KeyframeDaily. Get Keyframe Daily in your inbox by signing in at fandor.com/daily.
