[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md-LwM0s9fY]
Daisies (1966) – Věra Chytilová
It was against my rules to include films in this series that I had not seen. However, on the basis of this superb excerpt and some very warm recommendations of fellow bloggers, here is Daisies, a 1966 Czech film by director Věra Chytilová. It’s included in Film as a Subversive Art.
If everything’s going bad … so … we’re going … bad … as … well!
Previous “World Cinema Classics” and in the Wiki format here.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eqXWUie-Og]
Blood of the Beasts (1949) – Georges Franju (If embedded play does not work click here.)
My series “world cinema classics” is usually dedicated to fictional feature films. This film is short, and documentary, but nevertheless, the poetic qualities of the French language original give an air of uncanny fictionality which made me consider it for the series. An excellent film if hard on the stomach.
Previous “World Cinema Classics“
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asXcgiF_66s]
Eyes Without a Face (1960) – Georges Franju
And happy 70th birthday Édith Scob. (via Video Watchblog)
Previous “World Cinema Classics“
[Youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=A_jXxHeVpMQ]
If… (1969) – Lindsay Anderson
Go on. Look at me. Look at my eyes. I’ll kill you. Sometimes I stand in front of the mirror and my eyes get bigger and bigger. And I’m like a tiger. I like tigers. Rrrrah!
Previous “World Cinema Classics“
Diario di un vizio (1993)
Fiction is consumed by the hours or days. People cocoon entire weekends to watch six seasons of Sex and the City. With an average length of 22 minutes per episode and a total of 94 episodes this comes to about 34 hours for the whole series. Talk about killing time.
I ask of the current media outlets to publish box sets of anthologies or series I want to watch. On demand. WYWWYWI, which is analogous to WYSIWYG, and stands for “What You Want, When You Want It.”
In my current mood, I’d like to order the box set of the complete oeuvre of Marco Ferreri. I’ve only seen two of his films: La Grande Bouffe and Tales of Ordinary Madness. I sadly missed a retrospective [1] of his work last December in London. Marco Ferreri has made about 27 films, with an average running time of 90 minutes each this gives a total viewing time of 40 hours. Slightly higher than the total time of Sex and the City. But a lot more satisfying.
About the photograph at the top of this post. It’s a screen cap from the 1993 Ferreri film Diario di un vizio starring Sabrina Ferilli. The nude female/dressed male motif is explored in it.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwUuEN2NTts]
Bamboozled (2000) by Spike Lee
It has been a while since we featured an American film. Although almost all of Spike Lee’s films are better than 97% of American cinema, I chose Bamboozled, a 2000 satirical film about a modern televised minstrel show featuring black actors donning blackface makeup and the violent fall-out from the show’s success. A hilarious film.
Did you know that whiteface is also a comic trope?
Previous “World Cinema Classics“
Today is Jacques Tati day. He was born 100 years ago.
Instead of watching his films, treat yourself to his music:
Extraits Des Bandes Originales Des Films De Jacques Tati [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Extraits Des Bandes Originales Des Films De Jacques Tati is an anthology of tracks from several Jacques Tati films: Jour de fête (1949), Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953), Mon Oncle and Play Time (1967). With music by Jean Yatove, Alain Romans, Franck Barcellini, Francis Lemarque and James Campbell.
Morning (1813) Karl Friedrich Schinkel
The Last Laugh (1924) – Murnau
The link between these two pictures is The Haunted Screen, 1952 a film history book by Lotte H. Eisner, which I acquired over the weekend, and which holds that “it is reasonable to argue that the German cinema is a development of German Romanticism, and that modern technique [cinematography] merely lends visible form to Romantic fancies.”
A revelation to me were Eisner’s reflections on cinematic effects in pre-cinema literature in such romantic novels as Lucinde, Flegeljahre and Heinrich Von Ofterdingen.
[Youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGNvAsImwn8]
The Laura Gemser interview from the Alex Cox documentary “A Hard Look”
What a pleasure to hear Alex “Repo Man” Cox’s voice again. Alex was responsible for a substantial part of my 1980s and 1990s film education with his show Moviedrome. Laura turns 67 today, let’s hear it for Laura. “A Hard Look” is a documentary tv film about the Emmanuelle movies, looking at their making as well as their social and cultural impact. The Emanuelle films‘ primary interest is paratextual: its poster art, the scenery, the OSTs, the odd characters.
Looking for Alfred (2007) by Johan Grimonprez
On the cover: Delfine Bafort
Today I went into the city, looking for books on Freddy de Vree. I spotted a book on Hitchcock which accompanies the short subject film Looking for Alfred by Johan Grimonprez and ‘The Wrong House‘, an expo on Hitchcock and architecture at DeSingel. Then I found Nagelaten Bekentenis by Emants. I paid a visit to Demian book store in search of – again – de Vree. René sold me a book by Baj with text by de Vree and told me about the expo he will be holding from October 27 until December 1 dedicated to de Vree, in collaboration with Christophe Vekeman. The exposition is subtitled Freddy de Vree, Antiquaire du surréalisme.