REFRAME describes itself as “an open access academic digital platform for the online practice, publication and curation of internationally produced research and scholarship,” and today they’ve rolled out a series of announcements. For starters, there’s a new site, Musical Materialities in the Digital Age, co-edited by Richard Elliott, Lecturer in Popular Music at the University of Sussex, and Elodie Roy, of the Music Department, Newcastle University. Then, on May 8, Sussex Centre for Cultural Studies will present a screening of John Akomfrah’s The Stuart Hall Project, followed by a panel discussion of Hall’s work and legacy. There’s also a call for papers on “Researching Uniqueness” and a note on the upcoming symposium on translation.
But for many, the top item of the day will be Sequence‘s publication of Rupert Read‘s response to Steven Shaviro‘s essay, “Melancholia or, The Romantic Anti-Sublime.” Read’s piece, divided into 33 philosophical sections, with 33 endnotes and 33 sidenotes, is both a philosophical and deeply personal account of watching Lars von Trier’s 2011 film.
Speaking of Lars von Trier. As it happens, frieze has just posted Jacob Lillemose‘s piece on Psychomobile #1: The World Clock, “realized by the Copenhagen exhibition space Kunstforeningen in 1996. The installation remains a little-known, one-off experiment in Von Trier’s artistic oeuvre. But nearly two decades after it attracted huge audiences to Kunstforeningen, its ‘psychosocial aesthetics’ still offer a challenge to contemporary art’s understanding of and engagement with the politics of human interaction.”
MORE READING
Lumière‘s 462-page Allan Dwan dossier is now complete and may be downloaded or read online for free.
Via Criterion: “Jean-Pierre Léaud defines the word precocious in this charming 16 mm footage of the confident teenager’s audition for François Truffaut’s The 400 Blows. As we know, the rest is history.”
Dennis Cooper presents a primer on Luchino Visconti‘s “German Trilogy”—The Damned (1969), Death in Venice (1971) and Ludwig (1973)—while Fernando F. Croce takes on Ossessione (1943) and “the hardboiled appetites of The Postman Always Rings Twice brushing against European anguish. Tay Garnett has the official version in 1946, but it’s Antonioni who assumes the fatalistic mantle in Cronaca di un Amore.”
John McElwee looks back on the troubled production of Jean Renoir’s Woman on the Beach (1947).
“‘Let’s face it: Ward Bond is a shit but he’s our favorite shit,’ explained John Ford, who gave him terrific role in the sublime Wagon Master (1950) and another in The Searchers (1956)—the Reverend Captain Sam Clayton—that demonstrated, again, that whatever their limits as actors, both Bond and Wayne were capable of supreme nuance within them.” At HiLoBrow, Brian Berger salutes Bond on what would have been his 111th birthday.
IN OTHER NEWS
The Tribeca Film Festival (April 16 through 27) has announced the members of its seven juries, 33 in all, including Toni Collette, Lake Bell, Whoopi Goldberg, Heather Graham, Jeff Goldblum, Anton Yelchin and more.
Lisa Cholodenko will be the guest director at this year’s Los Angeles Film Festival (June 11 through 19).
Bergman Week will be taking place on the island of Fårö from June 23 through 29 and among the guests will be Bille August, Catherine Breillat and Richard Ayoade. Jorn Rossing Jensen reports for Cineuropa.
“Sicily’s Taormina Film Festival [June 14 through 21] will celebrate its 60th edition with an homage celebrating the nearly 60-year career of acclaimed actress and celebrated former pin-up girl Claudia Cardinale.” Eric J. Lyman has details in the Hollywood Reporter.
GOINGS ON
New York. “A euphoric swirl of sherbet colors, Jacques Demy’s Hollywood-musical homage The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967) elevates even the most mundane actions to the spectacular,” writes Melissa Anderson in the Voice. “Simply crossing the street occasions an ecstatic choreography of cartwheeling and front-flipping passersby.” Adds Time Out‘s Keith Uhlich: “Freshly restored to eye-popping vibrancy for a weeklong run at BAM, it’s perhaps the finest of the great French director’s paeans to heedless romanticism.” Starts Friday.
This week’s recommendations from the L: Aaron Cutler on Andy Warhol‘s Lonesome Cowboys (1968, tomorrow, Film Forum), Jordan Cronk on Thom Andersen and Noël Burch’s Red Hollywood (1996, this weekend, Film Society of Lincoln Center; more on the Art of the Real series in a forthcoming entry) and Jeremy Polacek on François Truffaut’s Small Change (1976, Tuesday, Film Forum).
Los Angeles. Tomorrow night, Andy Rector presents Godard‘s In the Black of Time (2002) and Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub’s Workers, Peasants (2001) at CalArts.
Cinefamily presents a tribute to the Mayses brothers this weekend.
Paris. From Chris Marker: Notes from the Era of Imperfect Memory: “Le Dépays, almost unfindable today, is a book of photos and texts devoted to Japan, in which—in the words of Marker—the text comments on the images as much as the images illustrate the text. In agreement with the artist, Étienne Sandrin has implemented a stage version of this book, which was presented in Japan in 2012. The piece is a reading for two voices, which he will present in Paris with Catherine Belkhodja, actress for Chris Marker notably in Level Five and Silent Movie.” Tomorrow evening.
Vienna. Starting today, the Austrian Film Museum will be celebrating the 100th anniversary of Marguerite Duras’s birth with a retrospective that runs through May 8.
IN THE WORKS
“At 105 years old, Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira is beginning the shoot for his new film, O Velho do Restelo (lit. The Old Man from the Restelo) today in Porto,” reports Vitor Pinto. “With a title evoking the pessimistic character created by Luis de Camões in his 16th-century epic poem Os Lusiadas, O Velho do Restelo is based on excerpts from the work O Penitente by Teixeira de Pascoaes, which recounts the life and work of Portuguese romantic writer Camilo de Castelo Branco. It is through these literary references, which also incorporate others such as those of Miguel de Cervantes, that the film will create a reflection on Portugal and its history.”
Also at Cineuropa, Fabien Lemercier reports that Isabelle Carré, Philippe Rebbot and Carmen Maura are set to star in Marie Belhomme’s feature debut, Les Chaises musicales, which she co-wrote with Michel Leclerc.
Sean Penn will direct Adèle Exarchopoulos and Charlize Theron in The Last Space, a story evidently set in African refugee camps. Ioncinema‘s Eric Lavallée has links.
Baltasar Kormákur is set to produce and direct Trapped, a series of ten one-hour episodes, reports Jeremy Kay for Screen Daily. It’s “about the investigation of an unidentified corpse found at the bottom of a fjord after an international ferry arrives in a small town. When a blizzard strikes, the only road in and out become impassable.”
Alejandro Jodorowsky on luring Orson Welles to his failed Dune project
Amy Poehler is “in final negotiations” to star with Tina Fey in The Nest, a comedy “about two 30-something sisters who come home to find their parents’ house has been put up for sale and then spend a last wild weekend together,” reports Variety‘s Dave McNary. Also: “Sony Pictures is nearing a movie rights deal on Michael Lewis’s real-life financial drama Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt with Scott Rudin and Eli Bush producing.”
OBIT
“Lucia Eames, the only child of Charles Eames and his first wife, Catherine Woermann, died on April 1,” writes Alexandra Lange for Design Observer. “I always think of her as she appeared in the 1976 short film The Chase, a demonstration piece for the Polavision Instant Home Movie System.” The short “harkens toward the Eameses’ far more famous Powers of Ten… How do we explain architecture, how do we explain numbers, to a wide audience and through individual experience?”
ENDNOTE
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 begins its rollout in Europe next week before opening in the States on May 2. Sam Adams has gathered a first round of reviews at Criticwire.
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