The Notebook Primer introduces readers to some of the most important figures, films, genres, and movements in film history.The Battle of AlgiersCommenting on the role of cinema in his native Cuba, director Tomás Gutiérrez Alea once wrote that films should not just add to people’s enjoyment of life, but also “contribute in the most effective way possible to elevating [their] revolutionary consciousness.” Gutiérrez Alea was writing in 1982 (the words are cribbed from his essay “The Viewer’s Dialectic”), over twenty years since Fidel Castro ousted Fulgencio Batista and brought an end to the US-backed dictatorship in the island. But the idea that cinema can serve a higher function that mere entertainment—the belief that films should both educate and agitate spectators—is as old as the medium itself. Lenin once called cinema “the most important of all the arts;” Trotsky “a weapon for collective education.” For Bolivian director Jorge Sanjinés,...
- 6/7/2021
- MUBI
Above: Hungarian poster for The Sleeping Car Murders. Designer: Sándor Benkő.Last summer I wrote about my discovery of Hungarian movie poster design and featured a number of posters for very well known films from The Wizard of Oz to The Elephant Man. Those posters highlighted the distinctly different graphic approaches taken by Hungarian designers compared to their country-of-origin counterparts. But while delving deeper into the world of Hungarian poster design—mostly via the auction site Bedo—I have come across many even more remarkable designs for films that are less well known. The fifteen posters that I’ve chosen to highlight here were all made in the ’60s and ’70s and there is a distinct pop art sensibility at work: a lot of bold, primary colors and almost cartoonish illustrations, but always in the service of bold, striking graphics. Distinctly upbeat, while perhaps not expressly joyful, they do give...
- 1/21/2021
- MUBI
Tuesday, DVD roundup day, is a fine day for taking a look at the new Summer 2011 issue of Cineaste, particularly since, among the online samplings this time around, DVD reviews outnumber all other types of articles combined.
To begin, Darragh O'Donoghue on Harun Farocki's Still Life (1997): "Five aphoristic essays on 17th-century Dutch still-life painting, of about three minutes each, bracket four documentary sequences of photographers creating modern still lifes for magazine advertisements. These two levels, though defined by opposites — stasis/motion, tell/show — are linked by visual motifs and rhymes, just as the modern products echo the subjects of the paintings. The documentary sequences have no commentary, mostly last ten to fifteen minutes, and take their cue from Farocki's earlier An Image (Ein bild, 1983). In that short, he recorded the shooting of a German Playboy centerfold spread, from the building of sets and the arrangement of props (including...
To begin, Darragh O'Donoghue on Harun Farocki's Still Life (1997): "Five aphoristic essays on 17th-century Dutch still-life painting, of about three minutes each, bracket four documentary sequences of photographers creating modern still lifes for magazine advertisements. These two levels, though defined by opposites — stasis/motion, tell/show — are linked by visual motifs and rhymes, just as the modern products echo the subjects of the paintings. The documentary sequences have no commentary, mostly last ten to fifteen minutes, and take their cue from Farocki's earlier An Image (Ein bild, 1983). In that short, he recorded the shooting of a German Playboy centerfold spread, from the building of sets and the arrangement of props (including...
- 6/7/2011
- MUBI
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