Swinging The Lambeth Walk by Len Lye (1939).
In 1939, as Britain waged war with Germany, filmmaker Len Lye stayed in London to work; and visited his pregnant wife Jane and their son Bix, who had evacuated the city to stay at a friend’s farm in Scotland, on the weekends. According to Len Lye: A Biography by Roger Horrocks, Lye was too old (38) and recovering from an appendectomy to fight in the war. Struggling for money, Lye found a financial respite when the British Council for the Travel and Industrial Development Association agreed to sponsor a new film.
“The Lambeth Walk” was a dance that had become popular in England in 1937; and Lye’s visualization of the song links “the drums with bouncing circles, the piano with a sprinkling of coloured dots and rectangles, and the string instruments with vibrating lines,” as noted by Horrocks. The two thumbs-up images that bookend...
In 1939, as Britain waged war with Germany, filmmaker Len Lye stayed in London to work; and visited his pregnant wife Jane and their son Bix, who had evacuated the city to stay at a friend’s farm in Scotland, on the weekends. According to Len Lye: A Biography by Roger Horrocks, Lye was too old (38) and recovering from an appendectomy to fight in the war. Struggling for money, Lye found a financial respite when the British Council for the Travel and Industrial Development Association agreed to sponsor a new film.
“The Lambeth Walk” was a dance that had become popular in England in 1937; and Lye’s visualization of the song links “the drums with bouncing circles, the piano with a sprinkling of coloured dots and rectangles, and the string instruments with vibrating lines,” as noted by Horrocks. The two thumbs-up images that bookend...
- 4/14/2019
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
The American Skyscraper and Louis Sullivan. Courtesy of the filmmaker.It’s rare to come across such a humble yet cogent body of work as that of Manfred Kirchheimer. His career stretches across six decades but it would be a mistake to reduce his films to mere historical records, for they can enclose enthralling stories of ordinary New Yorkers or celebrate the beauty of urban structures all while confronting head-on layered questions on class, race and identity. Throughout the years, his subjects have fluctuated from workers pushing carts through New York’s Garment District, the docking of a transatlantic ocean liner or a community of Jewish émigrés in the Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights. As modest as his filmography might seem, one shouldn’t oversee its substantial contribution to American documentary and independent cinema.During a recent conversation, Kirchheimer told me he had recently retired as a teacher at the...
- 2/9/2017
- MUBI
Watch an exclusive clip from this week’s pivotal Berlin Station below — as CIA fugitive Steven Frost (Richard Jenkins) is arrested at the train station. In this exclusive clip, Frost meets wife Kelly (Caroline Goodall) as he tries to escape to Paris, but Hans Richter (Bernard Schutz), head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, has caught up with him. Frost is on the run and trying to get away. He instructs Kelly to buy two one-way tickets and then meet him on the platform. Kelly is in the dark as to why they are furtively trying to escape. Hiding in plain sight,...read more...
- 12/11/2016
- by April Neale
- Monsters and Critics
Berlin Station is getting downright steamy this week. Our exclusive clip sees Steven Frost (Richard Jenkins), the hardened veteran of the Cold War who serves as the CIA’s Chief of the Berlin Station, have a Turkish Bath meeting to make a deal with Hans Richter (Bernhard Schütz). As the clip starts, Hans is already in his sweaty groove, sitting at the edge of the bath as Frost approaches. Having come closer to proving that Hector is in fact “Thomas Shaw”, Frost makes a deal to give up Shaw and hand him over to Hans in exchange for protection. The deal...read more...
- 12/4/2016
- by April Neale
- Monsters and Critics
Festival’s soundtrack awards will have a TV focus this year, including performances of the Fargo and House Of Cards [picturted] soundtracks.
Film Festival Ghent’s World Soundtrack Awards will this year focus on music for television.
At this year’s Cannes, festival director Patrick Duynslaegher has confirmed that attendees at the festival, which runs Ocr 11-21, will include David Arnold, Hans Richter, Jeff Russo and Jeff Beal.
The festival has also introduced a new prize, which is the Best Original Score for a Television Series and Mini-Series.
Music from series like Fargo, Homeland, House Of Cards, Madmen and Sherlock will be performed at a special concert by the Brussels Philharmonic and the Flemish Radio Choir.
Japanese composer and musician Ryuichi Sakamoto (The Revenant) will be in town to receive the festival’s main prize, the World Soundtrack Lifetime Achievement Award.
There will be concerts both of contemporary TV music and also one of old TV classics such as...
Film Festival Ghent’s World Soundtrack Awards will this year focus on music for television.
At this year’s Cannes, festival director Patrick Duynslaegher has confirmed that attendees at the festival, which runs Ocr 11-21, will include David Arnold, Hans Richter, Jeff Russo and Jeff Beal.
The festival has also introduced a new prize, which is the Best Original Score for a Television Series and Mini-Series.
Music from series like Fargo, Homeland, House Of Cards, Madmen and Sherlock will be performed at a special concert by the Brussels Philharmonic and the Flemish Radio Choir.
Japanese composer and musician Ryuichi Sakamoto (The Revenant) will be in town to receive the festival’s main prize, the World Soundtrack Lifetime Achievement Award.
There will be concerts both of contemporary TV music and also one of old TV classics such as...
- 5/18/2016
- by geoffrey@macnab.demon.co.uk (Geoffrey Macnab)
- ScreenDaily
Shirley Clarke grew up wealthy, the daughter of a manufacturing magnate and a family fortune. She had an extensive education between four universities, and married to escape her father’s tyrannical control of her adult life. At first Clarke pursued modern dance in New York City but, failing to secure a future for herself in one art form, she began making experimental, avant-garde and documentary films in her mid-thirties. Over the next several decades, Clarke produced fiction films that looked like documentaries, documentaries that flirted with the boundaries of fiction, some of the first video art projects, and movies that possess an incredible energy to them that few filmmakers have mastered, then or now. She studied under Hans Richter, inspired other New York filmmakers like John Cassavetes, helped co-found the Filmmakers’ Co-Op with Jonas Mekas, yet the important role that she played in the New American Cinema scene has risked becoming stuck between the pages of cinema...
- 7/30/2014
- by Landon Palmer
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
For years the essay film has been a neglected form, but now its unorthodox approach to constructing reality is winning over a younger, tech-savvy crowd
For a brief, almost unreal couple of hours last July, in amid the kittens and One Direction-mania trending on Twitter, there appeared a very surprising name – that of semi-reclusive French film-maker Chris Marker, whose innovative short feature La Jetée (1962) was remade in 1995 as Twelve Monkeys by Terry Gilliam. A few months earlier, art journal e-flux staged The Desperate Edge of Now, a retrospective of Adam Curtis's TV films, to large audiences on New York's Lower East Side. The previous summer, Handsworth Songs (1986), an experimental feature by the Black Audio Film Collective Salman Rushdie had once attacked as obscurantist and politically irrelevant, attracted a huge crowd at Tate Modern when it was screened shortly after the London riots.
Marker, Curtis, Black Audio: all have...
For a brief, almost unreal couple of hours last July, in amid the kittens and One Direction-mania trending on Twitter, there appeared a very surprising name – that of semi-reclusive French film-maker Chris Marker, whose innovative short feature La Jetée (1962) was remade in 1995 as Twelve Monkeys by Terry Gilliam. A few months earlier, art journal e-flux staged The Desperate Edge of Now, a retrospective of Adam Curtis's TV films, to large audiences on New York's Lower East Side. The previous summer, Handsworth Songs (1986), an experimental feature by the Black Audio Film Collective Salman Rushdie had once attacked as obscurantist and politically irrelevant, attracted a huge crowd at Tate Modern when it was screened shortly after the London riots.
Marker, Curtis, Black Audio: all have...
- 8/3/2013
- by Sukhdev Sandhu
- The Guardian - Film News
The Spirit Of '45 & Ken Loach | A Grammar Of Subversion | Flatpack | Reel Iraq
The Spirit of '45 & Ken Loach, Nationwide
Remembering the days when national solidarity meant more than just buying a Keep Calm And Carry On tea towel, Ken Loach's timely new documentary recalls that rose-tinted moment at the end of the second world war when the country was ready to pull together and rebuild bombed-out Britain. Those were the days: universal healthcare, decent public housing, Clement Attlee and the greater good. Couldn't we do with some of that spirit now? No one is better qualified than Loach – something of a national institution himself – to ask. After a special screening this Sunday afternoon at the Ritzy in south London he'll be joined by the comedian Jeremy Hardy and the author of Chavs, Owen Jones, plus interviewees from the film, for a satellite Q&A that will go out...
The Spirit of '45 & Ken Loach, Nationwide
Remembering the days when national solidarity meant more than just buying a Keep Calm And Carry On tea towel, Ken Loach's timely new documentary recalls that rose-tinted moment at the end of the second world war when the country was ready to pull together and rebuild bombed-out Britain. Those were the days: universal healthcare, decent public housing, Clement Attlee and the greater good. Couldn't we do with some of that spirit now? No one is better qualified than Loach – something of a national institution himself – to ask. After a special screening this Sunday afternoon at the Ritzy in south London he'll be joined by the comedian Jeremy Hardy and the author of Chavs, Owen Jones, plus interviewees from the film, for a satellite Q&A that will go out...
- 3/16/2013
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
On the occasion of Anthology Film Archive's retrospective on Jean Epstein and the publishing of a new anthology on the filmmaker edited by Sarah Keller and Jason N. Paul, Jean Epstein: Critical Essays and New Translations, we are here reprinting the essay by Nicole Brenez, "Ultra-Modern: Jean Epstein, or Cinema 'Serving the Forces of Transgression and Revolt.'" The anthology is published by Amsterdam University Press and available in the Us and Canada from the University of Chicago Press. Many thanks to Amsterdam University Press, University of Chicago Press, Magdalena Hernas, Sarah Keller and Nicole Brenez.
Jean Epstein disappeared over half a century ago, in 1953. Yet, few filmmakers are still as alive today. At the time, a radio broadcast announced the following obituary: “Jean Epstein has just died. This name may not mean much to many of those who turn to the screens to provide them with the weekly dose of emotion they need.
Jean Epstein disappeared over half a century ago, in 1953. Yet, few filmmakers are still as alive today. At the time, a radio broadcast announced the following obituary: “Jean Epstein has just died. This name may not mean much to many of those who turn to the screens to provide them with the weekly dose of emotion they need.
- 5/30/2012
- MUBI
iD Fest, Derby
"Exploring identity through cinema" is about as broad a remit as you can get away with, but any event featuring Brian Blessed, Mike Hodges and Paddy Considine is always welcome. They'll be talking about their careers and looking back on old favourites. There are new films, including a Kent fruit-picking mystery (Strawberry Fields) and a Korean supernatural thriller (Haunters). But the main draw is an eclectic mix of films such as Oss 117: Cairo Nest Of Spies, Rupert Everett zombie movie Dellamorte Dellamore and Bogart noir classic In A Lonely Place.
Quad, Thu to 27 May
Bauhaus Film Season, London
They did everything from pottery to architecture, so it was inevitable the Bauhaus would stray into film-making somewhere along the way. Complementing the Barbican's current exhibition on the German design movement (to 12 Aug), this season brings together Bauhaus-related documentaries and rare abstract, animated and projected experiments by Bauhaus students,...
"Exploring identity through cinema" is about as broad a remit as you can get away with, but any event featuring Brian Blessed, Mike Hodges and Paddy Considine is always welcome. They'll be talking about their careers and looking back on old favourites. There are new films, including a Kent fruit-picking mystery (Strawberry Fields) and a Korean supernatural thriller (Haunters). But the main draw is an eclectic mix of films such as Oss 117: Cairo Nest Of Spies, Rupert Everett zombie movie Dellamorte Dellamore and Bogart noir classic In A Lonely Place.
Quad, Thu to 27 May
Bauhaus Film Season, London
They did everything from pottery to architecture, so it was inevitable the Bauhaus would stray into film-making somewhere along the way. Complementing the Barbican's current exhibition on the German design movement (to 12 Aug), this season brings together Bauhaus-related documentaries and rare abstract, animated and projected experiments by Bauhaus students,...
- 5/18/2012
- by Steve Rose
- The Guardian - Film News
Influential Czech film director with a talent for self-preservation
The Czech film director Otakar Vávra, who has died aged 100, was born in Bohemia when it was part of the Austro- Hungarian empire, and was seven years old when Czechoslovakia became an independent nation in 1918. He lived through the German occupation, communism and the Velvet Revolution, and saw his country become the Czech Republic in 1993, while never ceasing to make films. In each epoch, Vávra changed his skin in order to save it.
Among his lasting achievements was the film faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (Famu) in Prague, which he helped establish after the second world war and where he taught for five decades. Among his students were Vera Chytilová, Milos Forman, Ivan Passer and Jiri Menzel, all directors of the 60s Czech new wave, and more recently Emir Kusturica, all of whom had high praise for his teaching.
The Czech film director Otakar Vávra, who has died aged 100, was born in Bohemia when it was part of the Austro- Hungarian empire, and was seven years old when Czechoslovakia became an independent nation in 1918. He lived through the German occupation, communism and the Velvet Revolution, and saw his country become the Czech Republic in 1993, while never ceasing to make films. In each epoch, Vávra changed his skin in order to save it.
Among his lasting achievements was the film faculty of the Academy of Performing Arts (Famu) in Prague, which he helped establish after the second world war and where he taught for five decades. Among his students were Vera Chytilová, Milos Forman, Ivan Passer and Jiri Menzel, all directors of the 60s Czech new wave, and more recently Emir Kusturica, all of whom had high praise for his teaching.
- 11/7/2011
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Texas is known for some great film festivals. apart from SXSW and Fantastic Fest, both held in Austin – Houston also hosts some wonderful events. Among them is the Cinema Arts Festival. This year’s line-up is extremely strong, with titles that include Pina, David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, The Artist and the World Premiere of Art Car: The Movie. Sadly we do not have any contributors over in Houston, but I did feel the need to quickly promote the festival. Here is the press release.
Houston – Now in its third year, Cinema Arts Festival Houston, which runs from November 9 to 13, 2011 will bring an ambitious program of films by and about artists to the vibrant Texas city known internationally for its dynamic art scene. From painting and dance to classical music and multimedia work, this edition will also include appearances by directors, actors, musicians, and special tributes to Ethan Hawke and documentary master Patricio Guzman.
Houston – Now in its third year, Cinema Arts Festival Houston, which runs from November 9 to 13, 2011 will bring an ambitious program of films by and about artists to the vibrant Texas city known internationally for its dynamic art scene. From painting and dance to classical music and multimedia work, this edition will also include appearances by directors, actors, musicians, and special tributes to Ethan Hawke and documentary master Patricio Guzman.
- 10/31/2011
- by Ricky
- SoundOnSight
"Now in its 15th year," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times, Views from the Avant-Garde, opening today and running through Monday, "has undergone a growth spurt since 2010 and has added a fourth day and enough titles to make your eyes tear from the ecstasy of excess or just exhaustion…. The titular monarch of [Ken] Jacobs's contribution, Seeking the Monkey King, appears to be the American greed and corruption that have sent the director into an agony of despair, if happily not a paralyzing one. Set to the music of Jg Thirlwell, this digital video largely consists of valleys and hills of what look like crumpled foil that Mr Jacobs, through his manipulations, has turned into landscapes that shift, undulate and seem to pop off the screen as if in 3D. Often tinted golden yellow and blue (colors used in the silent era usually to denote day and night), the...
- 10/9/2011
- MUBI
As has been noted many times before, by me and others, the Wavelengths series of the Toronto International Film Festival is like a festival unto itself. So far removed from the red carpet nonsense, the deal-making, and the me-firstism of web journalists hoping to hit the Web with their initial impressions of some new Bryce Dallas Howard vehicle, Wavelengths affords breathing room to cinema and video at its most formally adventurous and, yes, uncommercial. We come here to look and listen, not to look “at” or listen “to,” and if that sounds hopelessly pretentious, come on down to the Jackman Hall and see for yourself. It’s actually quite cleansing, often funny, and a guaranteed good time, at least in part. (Short films are like the weather in my hometown of Houston, Texas. Don’t like it? Wait a moment. It’ll change.)
Sadly, Wavelengths 2011 will be the final year for series curator Andréa Picard.
Sadly, Wavelengths 2011 will be the final year for series curator Andréa Picard.
- 9/8/2011
- MUBI
Experimental film-maker and artist whose creations had a playful, unpredictable quality
The experimental animator Robert Breer, who has died aged 84, made more than 40 highly inventive films in a career spanning some 50 years. His oeuvre combined abstraction, subversive collage, figurative work and simple mark-making, and took in a broad range of influences and reference points, including painting, kinetic art, early cinema and cartoons.
Breer was considered by some to be an anti-animator, as he often worked against the processes with which the craft is ordinarily associated. He explored movement between frames and within, and teased apart the lines between motion and stasis, working skilfully, sensitively and humorously, with variations in speed and repetition. In films such as Swiss Army Knife With Rats and Pigeons (1980), he combined many different styles of animation, as well as live action. Breer took a considered yet light-of-touch approach to his films, infusing them with life and spontaneity.
The experimental animator Robert Breer, who has died aged 84, made more than 40 highly inventive films in a career spanning some 50 years. His oeuvre combined abstraction, subversive collage, figurative work and simple mark-making, and took in a broad range of influences and reference points, including painting, kinetic art, early cinema and cartoons.
Breer was considered by some to be an anti-animator, as he often worked against the processes with which the craft is ordinarily associated. He explored movement between frames and within, and teased apart the lines between motion and stasis, working skilfully, sensitively and humorously, with variations in speed and repetition. In films such as Swiss Army Knife With Rats and Pigeons (1980), he combined many different styles of animation, as well as live action. Breer took a considered yet light-of-touch approach to his films, infusing them with life and spontaneity.
- 9/2/2011
- by William Fowler
- The Guardian - Film News
Experimental animator Robert Breer, once referred to by the Harvard Film Archive as the "Kinetic Poet of the Avant-Garde," passed away on Friday. Pip Chodorov broke the news via the Frameworks list, calling him "a good friend, a very funny man, and a great artist."
Breer's father, an automobile designer, rigged a Bolex so that he could shoot home movies in 3D. In the early 50s, Breer lived in Paris, where he made large abstract paintings, and in the 60s, he made "float" sculptures that wander the gallery. An exhibition of several of these paintings and sculptures is currently on view at Baltic's Level 4 Gallery in Gateshead through September 25.
Yoel Meranda, who, a few years ago, worked at the Film-makers' Cooperative in New York, which Breer co-founded in the 70s, has a moving remembrance. Here's how it begins: "When I first saw on Fred Camper's Senses of Cinema top tens...
Breer's father, an automobile designer, rigged a Bolex so that he could shoot home movies in 3D. In the early 50s, Breer lived in Paris, where he made large abstract paintings, and in the 60s, he made "float" sculptures that wander the gallery. An exhibition of several of these paintings and sculptures is currently on view at Baltic's Level 4 Gallery in Gateshead through September 25.
Yoel Meranda, who, a few years ago, worked at the Film-makers' Cooperative in New York, which Breer co-founded in the 70s, has a moving remembrance. Here's how it begins: "When I first saw on Fred Camper's Senses of Cinema top tens...
- 8/14/2011
- MUBI
At indieWIRE, Eric Kohn has reported that underground filmmaker Adolfas Mekas has passed away at the age of 85. The news was confirmed by his niece Oona. The cause of death is heart failure.
Mekas was born on Sept. 30, 1925 in Lithuania. He was the younger brother of Jonas Mekas. Both siblings had to flee their native country in 1944, but they were caught and forced into a labor camp from which they eventually escaped.
After spending some time in two displaced persons camps in Europe, the Mekas brothers made their way to New York City and settled in Brooklyn. In their newly adopted home city, they studied film with Hans Richter, founded the journal Film Culture and began making movies.
Adolfas’ most famous film is Hallelujah the Hills, an avant-garde screwball comedy. You can watch the opening segment of this film online, the full version of which is available from the distributor re:voir.
Mekas was born on Sept. 30, 1925 in Lithuania. He was the younger brother of Jonas Mekas. Both siblings had to flee their native country in 1944, but they were caught and forced into a labor camp from which they eventually escaped.
After spending some time in two displaced persons camps in Europe, the Mekas brothers made their way to New York City and settled in Brooklyn. In their newly adopted home city, they studied film with Hans Richter, founded the journal Film Culture and began making movies.
Adolfas’ most famous film is Hallelujah the Hills, an avant-garde screwball comedy. You can watch the opening segment of this film online, the full version of which is available from the distributor re:voir.
- 5/31/2011
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Above: Mika Rottenberg’s Cheese. Photo by Galerie Laurent Godin.
This is the first of two reports on the 56th Robert Flaherty Seminar.
Since 1955 The Robert Flaherty Seminar has gathered influential filmmakers, critics, academics and programmers to hash out the aesthetic and political possibilities of the documentary. This year I joined them in packing the dorm rooms of Colgate University, subject to ominous-smelling shared bathrooms and dissipated coffee, but trusting that the curatorial acumen of guest programmer Dennis Lim, and his chosen theme of “Work,” would make it all worthwhile. The coverage of the fest is split into two parts. I’m taking the first half of the seminar, and Leo Goldsmith the second.
Started by Robert Flaherty’s indomitable wife Frances soon after the director’s death, the seminar ascribes by “The Flaherty Way,” which is repeatedly defined by the gregarious (and engagingly cult-like) staff as “non-preconception.” From the beginning,...
This is the first of two reports on the 56th Robert Flaherty Seminar.
Since 1955 The Robert Flaherty Seminar has gathered influential filmmakers, critics, academics and programmers to hash out the aesthetic and political possibilities of the documentary. This year I joined them in packing the dorm rooms of Colgate University, subject to ominous-smelling shared bathrooms and dissipated coffee, but trusting that the curatorial acumen of guest programmer Dennis Lim, and his chosen theme of “Work,” would make it all worthwhile. The coverage of the fest is split into two parts. I’m taking the first half of the seminar, and Leo Goldsmith the second.
Started by Robert Flaherty’s indomitable wife Frances soon after the director’s death, the seminar ascribes by “The Flaherty Way,” which is repeatedly defined by the gregarious (and engagingly cult-like) staff as “non-preconception.” From the beginning,...
- 7/21/2010
- MUBI
Things are looking good for the links program. Really a nice mix this week, too:
This week’s must read article is j. j. murphy’s awesome think piece Indie Film in the Cross Fire, in which he smacks down the slowly creeping idea that filmmakers had better adjust the conception of their films in order to be more “market friendly” in order to survive. And, yes, I’ve written several pieces on Bad Lit about filmmakers doing better online marketing — but Don’T Put Your Marketing Before Your Films! Devour murphy’s piece, then click through to the “Straight Talk” article he links to. In that vein, No-Fi filmmaker Bob Moricz explains exactly why he makes No-Fi films. I’d also really like to thank Jacob W. for picking up and extending the conversation around the Anthology Film Archive’s Essential Cinema collection that was curated in the ’70s.
This week’s must read article is j. j. murphy’s awesome think piece Indie Film in the Cross Fire, in which he smacks down the slowly creeping idea that filmmakers had better adjust the conception of their films in order to be more “market friendly” in order to survive. And, yes, I’ve written several pieces on Bad Lit about filmmakers doing better online marketing — but Don’T Put Your Marketing Before Your Films! Devour murphy’s piece, then click through to the “Straight Talk” article he links to. In that vein, No-Fi filmmaker Bob Moricz explains exactly why he makes No-Fi films. I’d also really like to thank Jacob W. for picking up and extending the conversation around the Anthology Film Archive’s Essential Cinema collection that was curated in the ’70s.
- 5/9/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
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