Exclusive: Nicolas Cage, FKA twigs, Noah Jupe and Souheila Yacoub are set to star in Egyptian-American director Lotfy Nathan’s The Carpenter’s Son exploring the rarely told story of the childhood of Jesus with a horror take.
Paris-based Cinenovo and L.A.-based Spacemaker are producing. Goodfellas is overseeing international sales apart from in North America, which it will co-rep with Anonymous Content and WME.
Nathan has taken inspiration from the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas for the screenplay. Dating back to the 2nd Century Ad, the text recounts the childhood of Jesus.
Per the official synopsis, “The Carpenter’s Son tells the dark story of a family hiding out in Roman Egypt. The son, known only as ‘the Boy’, is driven to doubt by another mysterious child and rebels against his guardian, the Carpenter, revealing inherent powers and a fate beyond his comprehension. As he exercises his own power,...
Paris-based Cinenovo and L.A.-based Spacemaker are producing. Goodfellas is overseeing international sales apart from in North America, which it will co-rep with Anonymous Content and WME.
Nathan has taken inspiration from the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas for the screenplay. Dating back to the 2nd Century Ad, the text recounts the childhood of Jesus.
Per the official synopsis, “The Carpenter’s Son tells the dark story of a family hiding out in Roman Egypt. The son, known only as ‘the Boy’, is driven to doubt by another mysterious child and rebels against his guardian, the Carpenter, revealing inherent powers and a fate beyond his comprehension. As he exercises his own power,...
- 5/6/2024
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
Filmmaker Jim Jarmusch and his music partner Carter Logan’s SQÜRL want to induce a “psilocybin-inspired” experience for their latest project, a drone rock score written for four Man Ray films. The project debuted at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, comprising Dadaist pioneer Man Ray’s “Return to Reason,” “Emak-Bakia,” “The Starfish,” and “The Mysteries of the Chateau of Dice,” with new music by SQÜRL. Now, the 4K-restored shorts, along with the score, are coming to theaters as one presentation this coming May. IndieWire shares the exclusive trailer for “Man Ray: Return to Reason,” as the series of four films has been dubbed, below.
The quartet of shorts holds up a distorted mirror to human sexuality as Jarmusch and Logan’s eerie music envelops the Freudian dreamscape — and while you might be tempted to take psychedelic drugs for the viewing, Jarmusch says that’s not necessary, as the fusion of sound...
The quartet of shorts holds up a distorted mirror to human sexuality as Jarmusch and Logan’s eerie music envelops the Freudian dreamscape — and while you might be tempted to take psychedelic drugs for the viewing, Jarmusch says that’s not necessary, as the fusion of sound...
- 4/24/2024
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Anthology Film Archives
“Essential Cinema” brings films by Mekas’ Walden and Journey to Lithuania, Man Ray, Duchamp, René Clair and more; a Quebec cinema retrospective is underway.
Museum of the Moving Image
Hal Hartley’s masterpiece Henry Fool plays on 35mm this Sunday; a Jim Henson program shows on Saturday and Sunday; a Warner Bros. cartoon collection screens Friday and Sunday.
Metrograph
A complete retrospective of Lee Chang-dong has begun.
Film Forum
Le Samouraï and the Belmondo-led Classe tous risques continue playing in new 4K restorations; It Came from Outer Space plays in 3D this Sunday.
Paris Theater
A dual retrospective of Steven Zaillian and Patricia Highsmith brings films by Hitchcock, Fincher, Scorsese, Haynes, Wenders, and more.
IFC Center
The End of Evangelion continues its run, while Paprika, Female Trouble, Desperate Living, and Repo! The Genetic Opera show late.
The...
Anthology Film Archives
“Essential Cinema” brings films by Mekas’ Walden and Journey to Lithuania, Man Ray, Duchamp, René Clair and more; a Quebec cinema retrospective is underway.
Museum of the Moving Image
Hal Hartley’s masterpiece Henry Fool plays on 35mm this Sunday; a Jim Henson program shows on Saturday and Sunday; a Warner Bros. cartoon collection screens Friday and Sunday.
Metrograph
A complete retrospective of Lee Chang-dong has begun.
Film Forum
Le Samouraï and the Belmondo-led Classe tous risques continue playing in new 4K restorations; It Came from Outer Space plays in 3D this Sunday.
Paris Theater
A dual retrospective of Steven Zaillian and Patricia Highsmith brings films by Hitchcock, Fincher, Scorsese, Haynes, Wenders, and more.
IFC Center
The End of Evangelion continues its run, while Paprika, Female Trouble, Desperate Living, and Repo! The Genetic Opera show late.
The...
- 4/5/2024
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Launching an ambitious program of compelling global and Czech work, the 27th edition of the Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival opened on Tuesday, kicking off six days of more than 350 film screenings by veteran and new filmmakers.
Fest head and founder Marek Hovorka, who launched the event in his hometown in 1997, introduced what is now Central and Eastern Europe’s main event for docs, defining the fest mission as “a celebration of films, image, sound, gestures and diversity.”
The films selected this year are “all very original,” he told the opening gala audience, and show filmmakers “perceive the world very differently.”
The fest, raising its curtain in the location that remains its home, the communist-era Dko “house of culture,” as the pre-1989 regime dubbed such multi-purpose spaces, attracts for its launch hundreds of guests seated at white-decked tables, sipping local wine.
Opening night moderators embraced an ironic take on AI,...
Fest head and founder Marek Hovorka, who launched the event in his hometown in 1997, introduced what is now Central and Eastern Europe’s main event for docs, defining the fest mission as “a celebration of films, image, sound, gestures and diversity.”
The films selected this year are “all very original,” he told the opening gala audience, and show filmmakers “perceive the world very differently.”
The fest, raising its curtain in the location that remains its home, the communist-era Dko “house of culture,” as the pre-1989 regime dubbed such multi-purpose spaces, attracts for its launch hundreds of guests seated at white-decked tables, sipping local wine.
Opening night moderators embraced an ironic take on AI,...
- 10/25/2023
- by Will Tizard
- Variety Film + TV
NYC Weekend Watch is our weekly round-up of repertory offerings.
Lincoln Center
NYFF Revivals continues with Abraham’s Valley, The Dupes, Household Saints, Un rêve plus long que la nuit, and shorts by Man Ray.
Museum of the Moving Image
Reverse Shot celebrates its 20th anniversary with a months-long programming run, continuing Friday and Sunday with Terence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea on 35mm.
Roxy Cinema
The Double Life of Veronique, I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, The Hills Have Eyes, and The Devil’s Rejects show on 35mm.
IFC Center
Frankenstein, The Holy Mountain, and Gregg Araki’s Nowhere play while Oldboy screens in a new restoration.
The post NYC Weekend Watch: NYFF Revivals, The Deep Blue Sea, The Double Life of Veronique & More first appeared on The Film Stage.
Lincoln Center
NYFF Revivals continues with Abraham’s Valley, The Dupes, Household Saints, Un rêve plus long que la nuit, and shorts by Man Ray.
Museum of the Moving Image
Reverse Shot celebrates its 20th anniversary with a months-long programming run, continuing Friday and Sunday with Terence Davies’ The Deep Blue Sea on 35mm.
Roxy Cinema
The Double Life of Veronique, I’m Gonna Git You Sucka, The Hills Have Eyes, and The Devil’s Rejects show on 35mm.
IFC Center
Frankenstein, The Holy Mountain, and Gregg Araki’s Nowhere play while Oldboy screens in a new restoration.
The post NYC Weekend Watch: NYFF Revivals, The Deep Blue Sea, The Double Life of Veronique & More first appeared on The Film Stage.
- 10/5/2023
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
Kate Winslet has learned to be proud of her body when it comes to stripping off on screen.
The “Titanic” actress is Vogue’s October 2023 cover star, with her talking to the mag about not shying away from nudity in movies and TV shows.
She shared, “I always have to act everything out! I know better than to waste precious energy on criticizing my physical self. I think any woman is better off just saying: I believe in myself. It doesn’t matter what other people think; this is who I am — let’s get on with it.”
Read More: 25 Years Of ‘Titanic’: Kate Winslet Decodes The ‘Magical Formula’ That Made The Film ‘Glorious And Amazing’
Kate Winslet poses for “Vogue”. Credit: Annie Leibovitz/Vogue
During the chat, Winslet spoke about her upcoming movie “Lee”; about photographer Elizabeth “Lee” Miller, a fashion model who became an acclaimed war correspondent...
The “Titanic” actress is Vogue’s October 2023 cover star, with her talking to the mag about not shying away from nudity in movies and TV shows.
She shared, “I always have to act everything out! I know better than to waste precious energy on criticizing my physical self. I think any woman is better off just saying: I believe in myself. It doesn’t matter what other people think; this is who I am — let’s get on with it.”
Read More: 25 Years Of ‘Titanic’: Kate Winslet Decodes The ‘Magical Formula’ That Made The Film ‘Glorious And Amazing’
Kate Winslet poses for “Vogue”. Credit: Annie Leibovitz/Vogue
During the chat, Winslet spoke about her upcoming movie “Lee”; about photographer Elizabeth “Lee” Miller, a fashion model who became an acclaimed war correspondent...
- 9/11/2023
- by Becca Longmire
- ET Canada
Ellen Kuras is having a full-circle moment.
The celebrated cinematographer, who has worked for directors including Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee and Michel Gondry, wanted to be a politically minded filmmaker like Costa-Gavras when she was starting out, but found herself primarily working behind the camera for many years. With “Lee,” a Toronto premiere starring Kate Winslet as famed World War II photographer Lee Miller, she is finally making her debut as a feature film director.
“It’s actually been a pretty smooth glide from the dolly to the director’s chair,” says Kuras, who directed the Oscar-nominated doc “The Betrayal,” commercials and episodes of “Ozark” and “Catch-22” before tackling “Lee.”
Her work on the project is an outgrowth of a connection she made with Winslet as cinematographer on “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” At a bookstore, Kuras spotted a tome about Miller, and, taken by Winslet’s likeness to her,...
The celebrated cinematographer, who has worked for directors including Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee and Michel Gondry, wanted to be a politically minded filmmaker like Costa-Gavras when she was starting out, but found herself primarily working behind the camera for many years. With “Lee,” a Toronto premiere starring Kate Winslet as famed World War II photographer Lee Miller, she is finally making her debut as a feature film director.
“It’s actually been a pretty smooth glide from the dolly to the director’s chair,” says Kuras, who directed the Oscar-nominated doc “The Betrayal,” commercials and episodes of “Ozark” and “Catch-22” before tackling “Lee.”
Her work on the project is an outgrowth of a connection she made with Winslet as cinematographer on “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.” At a bookstore, Kuras spotted a tome about Miller, and, taken by Winslet’s likeness to her,...
- 9/9/2023
- by Diane Garrett
- Variety Film + TV
Origins is a recurring series that gives artists a space to break down everything that went into their latest release. Today, Gavin Rossdale takes us through his “1000 Years” duet with Amy Lee from Bush’s deluxe edition of The Art of Survival.
Bush are set to unveil a deluxe edition of their 2022 album The Art of Survival this Friday (June 9th). In advance of the release, Gavin Rossdale is sharing the origins of a new version of the song “1000 Years” featuring a duet with Evanescence singer Amy Lee.
Rossdale and Lee performed the song together during a Bush show at the famed Ryman Auditorium in Nashville in February of this year. Prior to joining the band onstage, Lee sent Rossdale a demo of her vocals on the track, bringing the Bush frontman to tears.
“She sent me the song back with her vocal on it,” he told Audacy Music in an interview following the performance.
Bush are set to unveil a deluxe edition of their 2022 album The Art of Survival this Friday (June 9th). In advance of the release, Gavin Rossdale is sharing the origins of a new version of the song “1000 Years” featuring a duet with Evanescence singer Amy Lee.
Rossdale and Lee performed the song together during a Bush show at the famed Ryman Auditorium in Nashville in February of this year. Prior to joining the band onstage, Lee sent Rossdale a demo of her vocals on the track, bringing the Bush frontman to tears.
“She sent me the song back with her vocal on it,” he told Audacy Music in an interview following the performance.
- 6/6/2023
- by Spencer Kaufman
- Consequence - Music
Room 999, one of the films premiering in the Cannes Classics section of the Cannes Film Festival, poses the question of whether cinema is dying, a casualty of the digital age, streaming platforms and other factors.
The answer will only become clear down the line, but in the meantime Cannes Classics itself is playing a substantive role in preserving and celebrating cinema, an artform now over 125 years old. Each year, the festival section headed by Gérald Duchaussoy screens a curated selection of newly-restored classics, a lineup in 2023 that includes Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), the Armenian romantic drama Hello, It’s Me (1965), Bertrand Tavernier and Robert Parrish’s documentary Mississippi Blues (1983), the German drama Es (1966), and the 1934 French comedy Ces messieurs de la Santé.
‘El Esqueleto de la Señora Morales’
“We want to represent as many cinématographies as possible,” Duchaussoy tells Deadline, employing a French term that refers to the whole of a film and its techniques.
The answer will only become clear down the line, but in the meantime Cannes Classics itself is playing a substantive role in preserving and celebrating cinema, an artform now over 125 years old. Each year, the festival section headed by Gérald Duchaussoy screens a curated selection of newly-restored classics, a lineup in 2023 that includes Hitchcock’s Spellbound (1945), the Armenian romantic drama Hello, It’s Me (1965), Bertrand Tavernier and Robert Parrish’s documentary Mississippi Blues (1983), the German drama Es (1966), and the 1934 French comedy Ces messieurs de la Santé.
‘El Esqueleto de la Señora Morales’
“We want to represent as many cinématographies as possible,” Duchaussoy tells Deadline, employing a French term that refers to the whole of a film and its techniques.
- 5/26/2023
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
The first time Jim Jarmusch came to Cannes was with his sophomore film Stranger Than Paradise, which played the Quinzaine in 1984. “We all shared one apartment that had no hot water, that was up the hill,” he recalls. “One day I had to be on TV and there was no water, so I had to shave with leftover tea.” Those days are long gone; Jarmusch is a fixture on the Croisette these days, and even had the dubious pleasure of opening it in 2019 with his Bill Murray-starring zombie comedy The Dead Don’t Die.
This year he arrived at the festival with a piece for Cannes Classics called The Return to Reason, a work-in-progress restoration of four films by American artist Man Ray shot in Paris during the early 1920s. Featuring a live soundtrack by SQÜRL, the band Jarmusch formed with Carter Logan in 2009, it is essentially a concert movie...
This year he arrived at the festival with a piece for Cannes Classics called The Return to Reason, a work-in-progress restoration of four films by American artist Man Ray shot in Paris during the early 1920s. Featuring a live soundtrack by SQÜRL, the band Jarmusch formed with Carter Logan in 2009, it is essentially a concert movie...
- 5/24/2023
- by Damon Wise
- Deadline Film + TV
Jim Jarmusch hopes his latest project — a soundtrack composed with his SQÜRL bandmate Carter Logan for a new restoration of Man Ray silent films — induces in viewers a “psilocybin-inspired” experience.
The “Only Lovers Left Alive” and “Stranger Than Paradise” filmmaker and musician, along with Logan, spoke exclusively with IndieWire about the screening of four early-1900s black-and-white shorts from Dadaist pioneer Man Ray hitting Cannes Classics tonight: “Return to Reason,” “Emak-Bakia,” “The Starfish,” and “The Mysteries of the Chateau of Dice.”
Together, Jarmusch and Logan improvised an original score, a tripped-out sonic soup of distorted guitars and loopy feedback, now recorded to accompany the films. The quartet of shorts holds up a distorted mirror to human sexuality as Jarmusch and Logan’s eerie music envelops the Freudian dreamscape — and while you might be tempted to drop a tab of acid or mushroom cap or two for the viewing, Jarmusch says that’s not necessary,...
The “Only Lovers Left Alive” and “Stranger Than Paradise” filmmaker and musician, along with Logan, spoke exclusively with IndieWire about the screening of four early-1900s black-and-white shorts from Dadaist pioneer Man Ray hitting Cannes Classics tonight: “Return to Reason,” “Emak-Bakia,” “The Starfish,” and “The Mysteries of the Chateau of Dice.”
Together, Jarmusch and Logan improvised an original score, a tripped-out sonic soup of distorted guitars and loopy feedback, now recorded to accompany the films. The quartet of shorts holds up a distorted mirror to human sexuality as Jarmusch and Logan’s eerie music envelops the Freudian dreamscape — and while you might be tempted to drop a tab of acid or mushroom cap or two for the viewing, Jarmusch says that’s not necessary,...
- 5/23/2023
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
It is the first 4K restoration of Man Ray’s four surrealist short films, paired with an original soundtrack by Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan’s New York band Sqürl.
London and Paris-based Film Constellation has set a slew of deals on Man Ray’s Return To Reason, ahead of the film’s debut in Cannes Classics.
The newly restored 4k version is an assembly of Man Ray’s four cult classic silent films, paired with an original soundtrack by Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan’s New York band Sqürl.
It has sold to Potemkine in France, Plaion in Germany,...
London and Paris-based Film Constellation has set a slew of deals on Man Ray’s Return To Reason, ahead of the film’s debut in Cannes Classics.
The newly restored 4k version is an assembly of Man Ray’s four cult classic silent films, paired with an original soundtrack by Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan’s New York band Sqürl.
It has sold to Potemkine in France, Plaion in Germany,...
- 5/21/2023
- by Mona Tabbara
- ScreenDaily
The titles include Zarrar Kahn’s Directors’ Fortnight selection In Flames.
Scandinavian and Baltic distributor NonStop Entertainment has been on a buying spree for 20 titles since Sundance.
The titles include Zarrar Kahn’s Directors’ Fortnight selection In Flames for which NonStop has acquired Scandinavian and Icelandic rights from XYZ Films, and Return To Reason, the restored 4K version of the four improvisational films that Man Ray made from 1923-1929.
It has a Cannes Classics screening with a new soundtrack composed by Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan’s band Sqürl. NonStop acquired Scandinavian, Icelandic and Baltics rights from Film Constellation.
From the Berlinale,...
Scandinavian and Baltic distributor NonStop Entertainment has been on a buying spree for 20 titles since Sundance.
The titles include Zarrar Kahn’s Directors’ Fortnight selection In Flames for which NonStop has acquired Scandinavian and Icelandic rights from XYZ Films, and Return To Reason, the restored 4K version of the four improvisational films that Man Ray made from 1923-1929.
It has a Cannes Classics screening with a new soundtrack composed by Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan’s band Sqürl. NonStop acquired Scandinavian, Icelandic and Baltics rights from Film Constellation.
From the Berlinale,...
- 5/20/2023
- by Wendy Mitchell
- ScreenDaily
London- and Paris-based production, finance and sales company Film Constellation is launching sales on “Return to Reason,” the newly restored 4K version of an assembly of Man Ray’s four cult classic silent films, paired with an original soundtrack by Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan’s SQÜRL.
The film, which is produced by Marieke Tricoire at Womanray and Julie Viez at Cinenovo, will premiere in Cannes’ Official Selection as part of the Cannes Classics sidebar.
Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Man Ray’s first film in 1923, “Return to Reason” is the first 4K restoration of Man Ray’s four surrealist and dreamlike short films, known as the first surrealist films, now accompanied by an exclusive soundtrack composed and performed by filmmaker Jim Jarmusch and musician Carter Logan’s band SQÜRL.
“Le retour à la raison”
Featuring “Le retour à la raison” (Return to Reason) (1923), “Emak Bakia” (1926), “L’étoile de mer...
The film, which is produced by Marieke Tricoire at Womanray and Julie Viez at Cinenovo, will premiere in Cannes’ Official Selection as part of the Cannes Classics sidebar.
Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Man Ray’s first film in 1923, “Return to Reason” is the first 4K restoration of Man Ray’s four surrealist and dreamlike short films, known as the first surrealist films, now accompanied by an exclusive soundtrack composed and performed by filmmaker Jim Jarmusch and musician Carter Logan’s band SQÜRL.
“Le retour à la raison”
Featuring “Le retour à la raison” (Return to Reason) (1923), “Emak Bakia” (1926), “L’étoile de mer...
- 5/8/2023
- by Leo Barraclough
- Variety Film + TV
The 2023 Cannes Film Festival will pay tribute to late auteur Jean-Luc Godard with a special screening of “Drôles de Guerres (Phoney Wars)” as a highlight of the program.
Godard died at age 91 in September 2022, and this year’s Cannes will screen “Contempt” and documentary “Godard by Godard” to commemorate the filmmaker as part of the Cannes Classics lineup. Godard’s final project is a 20-minute trailer for “Drôles de Guerres (Phoney Wars),” a film he never finished.
“Jean-Luc Godard often transformed his synopses into aesthetic programs,” an official Cannes statement read. “‘Phoney Wars’ follows in this tradition and will remain as the ultimate gesture of cinema.”
The description of “Phoney Wars” reads: “To no longer trust the billions of diktats of the alphabet to give back freedom to the incessant metamorphoses and metaphors of a true language by returning to the places of past shoots while taking into account the present stories.
Godard died at age 91 in September 2022, and this year’s Cannes will screen “Contempt” and documentary “Godard by Godard” to commemorate the filmmaker as part of the Cannes Classics lineup. Godard’s final project is a 20-minute trailer for “Drôles de Guerres (Phoney Wars),” a film he never finished.
“Jean-Luc Godard often transformed his synopses into aesthetic programs,” an official Cannes statement read. “‘Phoney Wars’ follows in this tradition and will remain as the ultimate gesture of cinema.”
The description of “Phoney Wars” reads: “To no longer trust the billions of diktats of the alphabet to give back freedom to the incessant metamorphoses and metaphors of a true language by returning to the places of past shoots while taking into account the present stories.
- 5/5/2023
- by Samantha Bergeson
- Indiewire
Tinto Brass, director of cult classic Caligula screening 40 years on as part of Cannes Classics Photo: Film Italia One of the last sections to be revealed for the 76th edition of the Cannes Film Festival - the Cannes Classics - will include appearances from Liv Ullmann, Jim Jarmusch, Carole Bouquet, and Helen Mirren as well as special focus on the late Jean-Luc Godard including a world premiere of his last work Phony Wars.
Ullmann talks about her career as an actor and director as well as her activism in a new documentary Liv Ullmann - A Road Less Travelled, director Dheeraj Akolkar who will also be present for the screening.
Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan (both founder members of the group Sqürl) have composed the soundtrack to a restored version of Return to Reason, Man Ray’s experimental first film made in 1923.
A youthful Jean-Luc Godard Photo: © Philippe R. Doumic...
Ullmann talks about her career as an actor and director as well as her activism in a new documentary Liv Ullmann - A Road Less Travelled, director Dheeraj Akolkar who will also be present for the screening.
Jim Jarmusch and Carter Logan (both founder members of the group Sqürl) have composed the soundtrack to a restored version of Return to Reason, Man Ray’s experimental first film made in 1923.
A youthful Jean-Luc Godard Photo: © Philippe R. Doumic...
- 5/5/2023
- by Richard Mowe
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
In keeping with tradition, the 2023 edition of Cannes Classics promises to be a feast for cineastes with tributes to global masters and restored versions of all-time classics.
Cannes Classics’ Memories of Jean-Luc Godard strand pays homage to the master who died in 2022 by screening a restored version of “Contempt” (1963); “Godard by Godard,” a self-portrait of the auteur; and the world premiere of “Phony Wars,” a trailer for a film that will never get made, described by the festival as a venture where the filmmaker “transformed his synopses into aesthetic programs.”
Liv Ullman will be present at the strand with “Liv Ullmann – A Road Less Travelled,” a documentary directed by Dheeraj Akolkar.
Japanese master Ozu Yasujiro will be paid tribute to with screenings of “Record of a Tenement Gentleman” (1947) and “The Munekata Sisters” (1950) off restored prints. “Return to Reason” – where four films of painter, photographer and director Man Ray have been...
Cannes Classics’ Memories of Jean-Luc Godard strand pays homage to the master who died in 2022 by screening a restored version of “Contempt” (1963); “Godard by Godard,” a self-portrait of the auteur; and the world premiere of “Phony Wars,” a trailer for a film that will never get made, described by the festival as a venture where the filmmaker “transformed his synopses into aesthetic programs.”
Liv Ullman will be present at the strand with “Liv Ullmann – A Road Less Travelled,” a documentary directed by Dheeraj Akolkar.
Japanese master Ozu Yasujiro will be paid tribute to with screenings of “Record of a Tenement Gentleman” (1947) and “The Munekata Sisters” (1950) off restored prints. “Return to Reason” – where four films of painter, photographer and director Man Ray have been...
- 5/5/2023
- by Naman Ramachandran
- Variety Film + TV
The Cannes Film Festival will pay tribute to iconic late director Jean-Luc Godard, following his death last September, with a trio of works in its Cannes Classic cinema heritage line-up.
A highlight of the homage to Godard, who died last year at 91, will be the world premiere of the 20-minute trailer he created for a film that will never get made: ‘Drôles de Guerres (Phoney Wars).
The 20-minute work is billed as A Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello and Vixens production, in coproduction with L’Atelier.
“Jean-Luc Godard often transformed his synopses into aesthetic programs. Phoney Wars follows in this tradition and will remain as the ultimate gesture of cinema,” said the festival.
It quoted the text that accompanies the short work to give an indication of the director’s intention. It reads: “To no longer trust the billions of diktats of the alphabet to give back freedom to the incessant...
A highlight of the homage to Godard, who died last year at 91, will be the world premiere of the 20-minute trailer he created for a film that will never get made: ‘Drôles de Guerres (Phoney Wars).
The 20-minute work is billed as A Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello and Vixens production, in coproduction with L’Atelier.
“Jean-Luc Godard often transformed his synopses into aesthetic programs. Phoney Wars follows in this tradition and will remain as the ultimate gesture of cinema,” said the festival.
It quoted the text that accompanies the short work to give an indication of the director’s intention. It reads: “To no longer trust the billions of diktats of the alphabet to give back freedom to the incessant...
- 5/5/2023
- by Melanie Goodfellow
- Deadline Film + TV
Since the creation of the camera and the dawn of cinema, film has been one long experiment. Experimental film has often been defined through its rejection of traditional storytelling and structure, its defiance of logic or reason while creating mesmerizing scenes through dreamlike abstraction and subjective narrative.
A key figure in the early history of experimental film was the French filmmaker Georges Méliès. In the late 1890s and early 1900s, Méliès was one of the first filmmakers to use special effects and trick photography to create fantastical and surreal images on the screen. His films, such as A Trip to the Moon and The Impossible Voyage, were some of the first examples of what would later be called experimental film. Another important trailblazer during the silent era was female director Lois Weber who is credited in creating an estimated 200 to 400 films. She was credited with pioneering the use of the...
A key figure in the early history of experimental film was the French filmmaker Georges Méliès. In the late 1890s and early 1900s, Méliès was one of the first filmmakers to use special effects and trick photography to create fantastical and surreal images on the screen. His films, such as A Trip to the Moon and The Impossible Voyage, were some of the first examples of what would later be called experimental film. Another important trailblazer during the silent era was female director Lois Weber who is credited in creating an estimated 200 to 400 films. She was credited with pioneering the use of the...
- 1/19/2023
- by Robert Lang
- Deadline Film + TV
“A lot of this really happened,” teases the opening card of David O. Russell’s unruly ensemble comedy “Amsterdam,” a loony early-’30s social satire that goes cartwheeling through a little-remembered episode in American history when fascists tried to overthrow the U.S. government. Russell clearly sees parallels between this alarming chapter of the nation’s past and our present, as national divisions threaten to overwhelm American democracy, but the writer-director has complicated the plot — the movie’s plot, that is, not the greater conspiracy on which it turns — to such a degree that audiences are bound to be bewildered. Instead of wondering which parts are true and which ones invented, they’re likely to find themselves asking, “What the hell is happening?” for the better part of 134 minutes.
A certain amount of confusion is neither unusual nor unwelcome in comedic capers and whodunits, where the fun so often stems from...
A certain amount of confusion is neither unusual nor unwelcome in comedic capers and whodunits, where the fun so often stems from...
- 9/28/2022
- by Peter Debruge
- Variety Film + TV
Click here to read the full article.
David O. Russell’s Amsterdam is a lot of movies inelegantly squidged into one — a zany screwball comedy, a crime thriller, an earnest salute to pacts of love and friendship, an antifascist history lesson with fictional flourishes. Those competing strands all have their merits, bolstered by entertaining character work from an uncommonly high-wattage ensemble. But can any film be called satisfying when the storytelling is so convoluted it takes an hour or more to settle on the kind of story it wants to tell, let alone a cohesive tone in which to tell it? Only once Robert De Niro shows up as a distinguished war veteran drawn into a nefarious political conspiracy does momentum kick in.
De Niro has been a regular collaborator of the director since his Oscar-nominated turn in 2013’s Silver Linings Playbook, and it’s great to see the actor...
David O. Russell’s Amsterdam is a lot of movies inelegantly squidged into one — a zany screwball comedy, a crime thriller, an earnest salute to pacts of love and friendship, an antifascist history lesson with fictional flourishes. Those competing strands all have their merits, bolstered by entertaining character work from an uncommonly high-wattage ensemble. But can any film be called satisfying when the storytelling is so convoluted it takes an hour or more to settle on the kind of story it wants to tell, let alone a cohesive tone in which to tell it? Only once Robert De Niro shows up as a distinguished war veteran drawn into a nefarious political conspiracy does momentum kick in.
De Niro has been a regular collaborator of the director since his Oscar-nominated turn in 2013’s Silver Linings Playbook, and it’s great to see the actor...
- 9/28/2022
- by David Rooney
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Click here to read the full article.
Each week, The Hollywood Reporter will offer up the best new (and newly relevant) books that everyone will be talking about — whether it’s a tome that’s ripe for adaptation, a new Hollywood-centric tell-all or the source material for a hot new TV show.
Rights Available
40 by Alan Heathcock (WME)
In a thriller that imagines an apocalyptic, if eerily familiar, future America that has been ravaged by climate change and pandemics, a fundamentalist group (whose HQ is set up among the ruins of Hollywood studios) goes to war with the government.
Room & Board by Miriam Parker (Trellis)
For lighter fare, this frothy beach read follows a onetime bigwig Hollywood publicist whose fall from grace sends her back to her alma mater: She moves into her old boarding school to serve as a dorm mother. Think The Chair meets The House Bunny.
Kiki...
Each week, The Hollywood Reporter will offer up the best new (and newly relevant) books that everyone will be talking about — whether it’s a tome that’s ripe for adaptation, a new Hollywood-centric tell-all or the source material for a hot new TV show.
Rights Available
40 by Alan Heathcock (WME)
In a thriller that imagines an apocalyptic, if eerily familiar, future America that has been ravaged by climate change and pandemics, a fundamentalist group (whose HQ is set up among the ruins of Hollywood studios) goes to war with the government.
Room & Board by Miriam Parker (Trellis)
For lighter fare, this frothy beach read follows a onetime bigwig Hollywood publicist whose fall from grace sends her back to her alma mater: She moves into her old boarding school to serve as a dorm mother. Think The Chair meets The House Bunny.
Kiki...
- 8/22/2022
- by Seija Rankin
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Exclusive: In a development that makes for as hot a package as you’ll find at the Virtual American Film Market, Marion Cotillard, Jude Law, Andrea Riseborough and Josh O’Connor will join Kate Winslet in Lee, the Ellen Kuras-directed film about the wartime experiences of Lee Miller. Miller traded a glamorous career as a Vogue cover model and muse to artists like Man Ray for a dangerous career as a WWII photographer who chronicled the fighting on the allied front lines and exposed the atrocities that Hitler’s Nazi Germany perpetrated on Jews in concentration camps.
Rocket Science, CAA Media Finance and UTA Independent Film Group will broker deals at the market.
Winslet and Kuras — the cinematographer-turned-helmer whose docu The Betrayal was Oscar nominated and who is making her narrative directing debut — took time out to lay out for Deadline the beats of a sprawling film that touches on the power of feminism,...
Rocket Science, CAA Media Finance and UTA Independent Film Group will broker deals at the market.
Winslet and Kuras — the cinematographer-turned-helmer whose docu The Betrayal was Oscar nominated and who is making her narrative directing debut — took time out to lay out for Deadline the beats of a sprawling film that touches on the power of feminism,...
- 10/21/2021
- by Mike Fleming Jr
- Deadline Film + TV
Produced by Paris-based outfit Mother Productions and sold internationally by eOne, the six-part limited series “La Garçonne” offers a playful, gender-bending spin on the period potboiler. Set during the roar of the early 1920s, the show follows a one-time war medic forced to take on not one, but two new identities after she witnesses a murder performed by a pair of government officials.
The series, which world premiered in Series Mania’s French Competition, begins with a rush of activity. Within 15 minutes, protagonist Louise Kerlac loses the hard-won freedoms she gained during the First World War, witnesses two government goons murdering a family friend, and for her trouble, gets framed for the murder.
When her shell-shocked brother Antoine (Tom Hygreck) chooses to change his name and reinvent himself as an artist, Louise cuts her hair, binds her chest, and assumes his identity – as well as the spot reserved for him on the Paris police force.
The series, which world premiered in Series Mania’s French Competition, begins with a rush of activity. Within 15 minutes, protagonist Louise Kerlac loses the hard-won freedoms she gained during the First World War, witnesses two government goons murdering a family friend, and for her trouble, gets framed for the murder.
When her shell-shocked brother Antoine (Tom Hygreck) chooses to change his name and reinvent himself as an artist, Louise cuts her hair, binds her chest, and assumes his identity – as well as the spot reserved for him on the Paris police force.
- 4/1/2020
- by Ben Croll
- Variety Film + TV
A remarkable trove of cinematic riches from Ukraine, much of it rarely seen outside the country, is headlining several sections of the Ji.hlava docu fest this year, with especially strong showings in the Fascinations section, dedicated to experimental work.
That genre has long been a signature element of Ji.hlava, which invariably screens experimental, essay and convention-breaking films many audiences would hardly expect to encounter at an event nominally dedicated to documentaries.
But, as programmer Andrea Slovakova points out, Ji.hlava has for years taken up the challenge of bringing to audiences all manner of fringe and underground film from throughout Central and Eastern Europe.
What she calls “radically poetic and lyrical films” are just one strain of the work from Ukraine being celebrated at Ji.hlava this year, Slovakova says, most made by successors or students of Sergei Parajanov or Feliks Sobolev, whose work is feted in a tribute section.
That genre has long been a signature element of Ji.hlava, which invariably screens experimental, essay and convention-breaking films many audiences would hardly expect to encounter at an event nominally dedicated to documentaries.
But, as programmer Andrea Slovakova points out, Ji.hlava has for years taken up the challenge of bringing to audiences all manner of fringe and underground film from throughout Central and Eastern Europe.
What she calls “radically poetic and lyrical films” are just one strain of the work from Ukraine being celebrated at Ji.hlava this year, Slovakova says, most made by successors or students of Sergei Parajanov or Feliks Sobolev, whose work is feted in a tribute section.
- 10/24/2019
- by Will Tizard
- Variety Film + TV
The largest Cee documentary film festival, unspooling from 24-29 October, will screen 277 creative documentaries. The Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival is bracing for its 23rd edition (24-29 October). The festival’s programmers have created this year’s line-up, consisting of 277 films, from a total number of 3,700 submitted movies. “Unlike last year, when we presented a broad retrospective of direct cinema and cinéma vérité, combining the filmmaking production of the USA, Canada and France, this year, we have decided to pay substantial attention to Eastern European filmmakers,” festival director Marek Hovorka explains. The gathering will introduce comprehensive retrospectives of Kazakh director Sergei Dvorstevoy and Ukrainian filmmaker Feliks Sobolev, accompanied by a unique showcase of Ukrainian experimental films from the 1960s and 1990s. The retrospective section will be complemented by a showcase of movies by avant-garde artist Man Ray as well as Slovak documentary films from the 1960s. The competition section.
- 10/11/2019
- Cineuropa - The Best of European Cinema
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
Throughout the history of popular music, mysticism has been an enduring muse for many a hit songwriter. Stevie Nicks famously sang of a Welsh witch that enthralled millions; David Bowie’s cosmic tales inspired many an astronaut; rock en español legend Gustavo Cerati of Soda Stereo evoked fervid devotion among fans with tales of immortality and spiraling stars. And every once in a blue moon, a younger act will emerge to write their own mythologies anew.
Enter Fémina: the Argentine folk-fusion trio whose plush harmonies, paired with bare-bones percussions, channel the otherworldly essence of Patagonia.
Enter Fémina: the Argentine folk-fusion trio whose plush harmonies, paired with bare-bones percussions, channel the otherworldly essence of Patagonia.
- 2/26/2019
- by Isabela Raygoza
- Rollingstone.com
The most daring stylistic flourish in Esther Rots’ forensically first-person, raw-nerve drama seems at first like a mistake. Over crisp images of a happy Dutch family — bearded Dad, his pregnant, laughing wife and their blond, tousle-haired daughter driving around in a well-kitted-out camper van — a baritone sings a comic operetta, in English, about bathrobes, kitchen counters and home juicers. “In this neat and tidy little liiiife … she is a neat and tidy little wiiiife,” he booms to jaunty, parping tubas and pompous, martial percussion. The absurd, baroque stylings of Dan Geesin’s compositions are so incongruous with the pictures, it seems possible it’s the sound leaking in from the screen next door.
But while we never quite get over this dislocating effect — nor are we ever sure how closely we should be parsing the lyrics for clues to our protagonist’s state of mind — we’re not supposed to:...
But while we never quite get over this dislocating effect — nor are we ever sure how closely we should be parsing the lyrics for clues to our protagonist’s state of mind — we’re not supposed to:...
- 2/13/2019
- by Jessica Kiang
- Variety Film + TV
Tony Sokol Feb 4, 2019
I Am the Night's Jefferson Mays gives his impression of a surrealistic killer.
TNT's limited series I Am the Night follows real life characters surrounding one of Hollywood's most famous infamous, and still unsolved, crimes: the January 15, 1947 murder of 22 years old actress Elizabeth Short. Dubbed the Black Dahlia, Short's body was found cut in half and mutilated in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. Authorities focused on about 25 suspects. No one was convicted.
I Am the Night is based on the book One Day She'll Darken: The Mysterious Beginnings of Fauna Hodel, written by the granddaughter of one of the prime suspects, Fauna Hodel, played by India Eisley in the series. Her biological mother Tamar Hodel was one of eleven children the real life Dr. George Hodel fathered by five women. Fauna and Tamar weren't the only family members to accuse the Beverly Hills gynecologist of the murder.
I Am the Night's Jefferson Mays gives his impression of a surrealistic killer.
TNT's limited series I Am the Night follows real life characters surrounding one of Hollywood's most famous infamous, and still unsolved, crimes: the January 15, 1947 murder of 22 years old actress Elizabeth Short. Dubbed the Black Dahlia, Short's body was found cut in half and mutilated in a vacant lot in Los Angeles. Authorities focused on about 25 suspects. No one was convicted.
I Am the Night is based on the book One Day She'll Darken: The Mysterious Beginnings of Fauna Hodel, written by the granddaughter of one of the prime suspects, Fauna Hodel, played by India Eisley in the series. Her biological mother Tamar Hodel was one of eleven children the real life Dr. George Hodel fathered by five women. Fauna and Tamar weren't the only family members to accuse the Beverly Hills gynecologist of the murder.
- 2/4/2019
- Den of Geek
Flight by Greta Snider (1997)
San Francisco-based filmmaker Greta Snider is primarily known for her unique spin on documentaries. At first glance, Flight may seem like a straight-up experimental film, but reading its official description by Snider shows the work’s documentary essence:
My father’s photographic legacy, compiled and transformed into light. His family photographs, his hobbyist pictures of trains and roses, his airplanes and his obsession with birds circling…these images are imprinted onto the film, like a fingerprint or trace. The film is hand-processed and hand-exposed without a camera (as with Ray-o-Grams).
In the book The Garden in the Machine, Scott MacDonald describes the “rayogram” technique, which was pioneered in the 1920’s by Man Ray with his film Retour a la raison (1923). A “rayogram” is when a filmmaker places objects onto film stock and exposes the film to light. The end result, as you can see in Flight,...
San Francisco-based filmmaker Greta Snider is primarily known for her unique spin on documentaries. At first glance, Flight may seem like a straight-up experimental film, but reading its official description by Snider shows the work’s documentary essence:
My father’s photographic legacy, compiled and transformed into light. His family photographs, his hobbyist pictures of trains and roses, his airplanes and his obsession with birds circling…these images are imprinted onto the film, like a fingerprint or trace. The film is hand-processed and hand-exposed without a camera (as with Ray-o-Grams).
In the book The Garden in the Machine, Scott MacDonald describes the “rayogram” technique, which was pioneered in the 1920’s by Man Ray with his film Retour a la raison (1923). A “rayogram” is when a filmmaker places objects onto film stock and exposes the film to light. The end result, as you can see in Flight,...
- 6/30/2018
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
I wanted to let all of you know about an interesting last minute event The Goethe Institute will be hosting on Thursday, April 13th at 7.00pm in L.A. at the Goethe-Institut.Man Ray’s Glass Tears
Did you know that the cinema is one of the foremost places of shedding tears in Western cultures, and movies are regularly listed among the strongest triggers of tears?
As the German philosopher Walter Benjamin once claimed, in the cinema people who are no longer moved or touched by anything in everyday life learn to cry again.
Weeping Warm Tears — On Having a Good Cry in the Cinema
In this multimedia presentation and lecture, Julian Hanich will talk about how we, as film spectators, experience our tears in the movie theater: What is it actually like to cry when other viewers are sitting next to us? Hanich focuses on five crucial features that characterize cinematic weeping,...
Did you know that the cinema is one of the foremost places of shedding tears in Western cultures, and movies are regularly listed among the strongest triggers of tears?
As the German philosopher Walter Benjamin once claimed, in the cinema people who are no longer moved or touched by anything in everyday life learn to cry again.
Weeping Warm Tears — On Having a Good Cry in the Cinema
In this multimedia presentation and lecture, Julian Hanich will talk about how we, as film spectators, experience our tears in the movie theater: What is it actually like to cry when other viewers are sitting next to us? Hanich focuses on five crucial features that characterize cinematic weeping,...
- 3/30/2017
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel died in 1983, but his films continue to inspire many filmmakers today, including Woody Allen and David O. Russell. New York’s Metrograph theater is presenting a series of the surrealist filmmaker’s work from March 30 to April 6 entitled “Buñuel in France” that will feature five of his films. Buñuel directed 35 movies between 1929 and 1977.
Read More: Watch: Was Luis Buñuel a Fetishist? A Video Essay
Here are seven filmmakers who have listed a Buñuel film in their top 10 movies of all time.
Woody Allen
Allen’s favorite Buñuel film is 1972’s “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” the famous comedy about six middle-class people attempting to have a meal together. Allen wore his inspiration on his shirt sleeve in his 2011 fantasty-comedy “Midnight in Paris,” casting the actor Adrien De Van to play Buñuel in a scene also featuring the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí (Adrien Brody) and visual...
Read More: Watch: Was Luis Buñuel a Fetishist? A Video Essay
Here are seven filmmakers who have listed a Buñuel film in their top 10 movies of all time.
Woody Allen
Allen’s favorite Buñuel film is 1972’s “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,” the famous comedy about six middle-class people attempting to have a meal together. Allen wore his inspiration on his shirt sleeve in his 2011 fantasty-comedy “Midnight in Paris,” casting the actor Adrien De Van to play Buñuel in a scene also featuring the surrealist painter Salvador Dalí (Adrien Brody) and visual...
- 3/24/2017
- by Graham Winfrey
- Indiewire
Cécile de France stars in Étienne Comar's Django Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
On the opening night of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in New York, Cécile de France who stars with Reda Kateb (as Django Reinhardt) in Étienne Comar's Django, spoke with me about costume designer Pascaline Chavanne, Man Ray's muse Lee Miller as the inspiration for her character, Lauren Bacall, Edward Hopper and Claude Miller's Un Secret.
Reda Kateb plays Django Reinhardt Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Django, based on the novel by Alexis Salatko, chronicles a crucial time period in world-famous jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt's life and simultaneously sheds light on the hypocrisy and contradictions at the core of Nazi policies. Admired for his musical genius, Reinhard, because of his Romani background, also was a target of the regime. In 1943, Django was a star in Paris and received an invitation by Goebbels to come play in Berlin.
On the opening night of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema in New York, Cécile de France who stars with Reda Kateb (as Django Reinhardt) in Étienne Comar's Django, spoke with me about costume designer Pascaline Chavanne, Man Ray's muse Lee Miller as the inspiration for her character, Lauren Bacall, Edward Hopper and Claude Miller's Un Secret.
Reda Kateb plays Django Reinhardt Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze
Django, based on the novel by Alexis Salatko, chronicles a crucial time period in world-famous jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt's life and simultaneously sheds light on the hypocrisy and contradictions at the core of Nazi policies. Admired for his musical genius, Reinhard, because of his Romani background, also was a target of the regime. In 1943, Django was a star in Paris and received an invitation by Goebbels to come play in Berlin.
- 3/3/2017
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
It's that time of year again: the Frigid NY Festival is taking over the Kraine Theater and Under St. Marks for 19 days, with 30 plays ranging from personal narratives to parodies to science comedy to the avant-garde. We will be discussing a mere four of the productions in our two dispatches from the festival, but information and tickets for all of this year's shows can be found at www.FRIGIDnewyork.info. As every year, all proceeds from tickets sales go directly to the artists.
The Idaho Jackson Action Playset Written by Brad Lawrence Directed by Cyndi Freeman Presented by Nefarious Laboratory at Under St Marks, NYC February 16-March 5, 2017
After last year's excellent The Gospel of Sherilyn Fenn, storyteller (and burlesque performer) Brad Lawrence returns to the Frigid Festival with another masterfully entertaining plunge into the turbulent waters of childhood. Clad in jeans and a Wilma-from-Buck Rogers t-shirt and accompanied onstage by...
The Idaho Jackson Action Playset Written by Brad Lawrence Directed by Cyndi Freeman Presented by Nefarious Laboratory at Under St Marks, NYC February 16-March 5, 2017
After last year's excellent The Gospel of Sherilyn Fenn, storyteller (and burlesque performer) Brad Lawrence returns to the Frigid Festival with another masterfully entertaining plunge into the turbulent waters of childhood. Clad in jeans and a Wilma-from-Buck Rogers t-shirt and accompanied onstage by...
- 2/22/2017
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Here's something for hardcore cineastes: an incredible restoration of Marcel L'Herbier's avant-garde silent feature, which looks unlike any other movie of its time. The weird story is about a Swedish engineer who wins the hand of famous singer by demonstrating a machine that can revive the dead. The film's designs are by score of famous architects and art notables of the Paris art scene circa 1924. L'Inhumaine Blu-ray Flicker Alley 1924 / Color tints / 1:33 Silent Aperture / min. / Street Date March 1, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Georgette Leblanc, Jacque Catelain, Léonid Walter de Malte, Philippe Hériat, Fred Kellerman, Robert Mallet-Stevens. Cinematography Roche, Georges Specht Art Direction, design, costumes, Claude Autant-Lara, Alberto Cavalcanti, Fernand Léger, Paul Poiret, Original Music Darius Milhaud (originally), Aidje Tafial / Alloy Orchestra Written by Pierre MacOrlan, Marcel L'Herbier, Georgette Leblanc Produced and Directed by Marcel L'Herbier
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Followers of art, architecture, literature and French art movies of the early 1920s...
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Followers of art, architecture, literature and French art movies of the early 1920s...
- 2/21/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Bitch Planet #6 Written by Kelly Sue DeConnick Art by Taki Soma Cover by Valentine De Landro Colors by Kelly Fitzpatrick Letters by Clayton Cowles Published by Image Comics on January 6, 2016
It’s been four months wait since we last got a Bitch Planet fix. Despite that length of time, issue #6 does not disappoint. In fact, it amplifies the sound and fury of issue #5, offering ironic contrast to the characters of the present narrative by flashing back to the time of their innocence before the Protectorate squashed their dreams of building a better world. Guest artist Taki Soma brings a delicacy of line to the story, emphasizing that hope is a thing with feathers, but also hollow, fragile bones.
Issue #6 relates Meiko Maki’s backstory and kicks off with a stark content warning for sexual assault. I revisit it here since I will be talking about the events of the issue,...
It’s been four months wait since we last got a Bitch Planet fix. Despite that length of time, issue #6 does not disappoint. In fact, it amplifies the sound and fury of issue #5, offering ironic contrast to the characters of the present narrative by flashing back to the time of their innocence before the Protectorate squashed their dreams of building a better world. Guest artist Taki Soma brings a delicacy of line to the story, emphasizing that hope is a thing with feathers, but also hollow, fragile bones.
Issue #6 relates Meiko Maki’s backstory and kicks off with a stark content warning for sexual assault. I revisit it here since I will be talking about the events of the issue,...
- 1/6/2016
- by Erin Perry
- SoundOnSight
Totally and tragically unconventional, Peggy Guggenheim moved through the cultural upheaval of the 20th century collecting not only not only art, but artists. Her sexual life was -- and still today is -- more discussed than the art itself which she collected, not for her own consumption but for the world to enjoy.
Her colorful personal history included such figures as Samuel Beckett, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp and countless others. Guggenheim helped introduce the world to Pollock, Motherwell, Rothko and scores of others now recognized as key masters of modernism.
In 1921 she moved to Paris and mingled with Picasso, Dali, Joyce, Pound, Stein, Leger, Kandinsky. In 1938 she opened a gallery in London and began showing Cocteau, Tanguy, Magritte, Miro, Brancusi, etc., and then back to Paris and New York after the Nazi invasion, followed by the opening of her NYC gallery Art of This Century, which became one of the premiere avant-garde spaces in the U.S. While fighting through personal tragedy, she maintained her vision to build one of the most important collections of modern art, now enshrined in her Venetian palazzo where she moved in 1947. Since 1951, her collection has become one of the world’s most visited art spaces.
Featuring: Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Arshile Gorky, Vasil Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning, Fernand Leger, Rene Magritte, Man Ray, Jean Miro, Piet Mondrian, Henry Moore, Robert Motherwell, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Kurt Schwitters, Gino Severini, Clyfford Still and Yves Tanguy.
Lisa Immordino Vreeland (Director and Producer)
Lisa Immordino Vreeland has been immersed in the world of fashion and art for the past 25 years. She started her career in fashion as the Director of Public Relations for Polo Ralph Lauren in Italy and quickly moved on to launch two fashion companies, Pratico, a sportswear line for women, and Mago, a cashmere knitwear collection of her own design. Her first book was accompanied by her directorial debut of the documentary of the same name, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012). The film about the editor of Harper's Bazaar had its European premiere at the Venice Film Festival and its North American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, going on to win the Silver Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival and the fashion category for the Design of the Year awards, otherwise known as “The Oscars” of design—at the Design Museum in London.
"Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict" is Lisa Immordino Vreeland's followup to her acclaimed debut, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel". She is now working on her third doc on Cecil Beaton who Lisa says, "has been circling around all these stories. What's great about him is the creativity: fashion photography, war photography, "My Fair Lady" winning an Oscar."
Sydney Levine: I have read numerous accounts and interviews with you about this film and rather than repeat all that has been said, I refer my readers to Indiewire's Women and Hollywood interview at Tribeca this year, and your Indiewire interview with Aubrey Page, November 6, 2015 .
Let's try to cover new territory here.
First of all, what about you? What is your relationship to Diana Vreeland?
Liv: I am married to her grandson, Alexander Vreeland. (I'm also proud of my name Immordino) I never met Diana but hearing so many family stories about her made me start to wonder about all the talk about her. I worked in fashion and lived in New York like she did.
Sl: In one of your interviews you said that Peggy was not only ahead of her time but she helped to define it. Can you tell me how?
Liv: Peggy grew up in a very traditional family of German Bavarian Jews who had moved to New York City in the 19th century. Already at a young age Peggy felt like there were too many rules around her and she wanted to break out. That alone was something attractive to me — the notion that she knew that she didn't fit in to her family or her times. She lived on her own terms, a very modern approach to life. She decided to abandon her family in New York. Though she always stayed connected to them, she rarely visited New York. Instead she lived in a world without borders. She did not live by "the rules". She believed in creating art and created herself, living on her own terms and not on those of her family.
Sl: Is there a link between her and your previous doc on Diana Vreeland?
Liv: The link between Vreeland and Guggenheim is their mutual sense of reinvention and transformation. That made something click inside of me as I too reinvented myself when I began writing the book on Diana Vreeland .
Can you talk about the process of putting this one together and how it differed from its predecessor?
Liv: The most challenging thing about this one was the vast amount of material we had at our disposal. We had a lot of media to go through — instead of fashion spreads, which informed The Eye Has To Travel, we had art, which was fantastic. I was spoiled by the access we had to these incredible archives and footage. I'm still new to this, but it's the storytelling aspect that I loved in both projects. One thing about Peggy that Mrs. Vreeland didn't have was a very tragic personal life. There was so much that happened in Peggy's life before you even got to what she actually accomplished. And so we had to tell a very dense story about her childhood, her father dying on the Titanic, her beloved sister dying — the tragic events that fundamentally shaped her in a way. It was about making sure we had enough of the personal story to go along with her later accomplishments.
World War II alone was such a huge part of her story, opening an important art gallery in London, where she showed Kandinsky and other important artists for the first time. The amount of material to distill was a tremendous challenge and I hope we made the right choices.
Sl: How did you learn make a documentary?
Liv: I learned how to make a documentary by having a good team around me. My editors (and co-writers)Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt and Frédéric Tcheng were very helpful.
Research is fundamental; finding as much as you can and never giving up. I love the research. It is my "precise time". Not just for interviews but of footage, photographs never seen before. It is a painstaking process that satisfies me. The research never ends. I was still researching while I was promoting the Diana Vreeland book. I love reading books and going to original sources.
The archives in film museums in the last ten years has changed and given museums a new role. I found unique footage at Moma with the Elizabeth Chapman Films. Chapman went to Paris in the 30s and 40s with a handheld camera and took moving pictures of Brancusi and Duchamps joking around in a studio, Gertrude Stein, Leger walking down the street. This footage is owned by Robert Storr, Dean of Yale School of Art. In fact he is taking a sabbatical this year to go through the boxes and boxes of Chapman's films. We also used " Entre'acte" by René Clair cowritten with Dadaist Francis Picabia, "Le Sang du poet" of Cocteau, Hans Richter "8x8","Gagascope" and " Dreams That Money Can Buy" produced by Peggy Guggenheim, written by Man Ray in 1947.
Sl: How long did it take to research and make the film?
Liv: It took three years for both the Vreeland and the Guggenheim documentary.
It was more difficult with the Guggenheim story because there was so much material and so much to tell of her life. And she was not so giving of her own self. Diana could inspire you about a bandaid; she was so giving. But Peggy didn't talk much about why she loved an artist or a painting. She acted more. And using historical material could become "over-teaching" though it was fascinating.
So much had to be eliminated. It was hard to eliminate the Degenerate Art Show, a subject which is newly discussed. Stephanie Barron of Lacma is an expert on Degenerate Art and was so generous.
Once we decided upon which aspects to focus on, then we could give focus to the interviews.
There were so many of her important shows we could not include. For instance there was a show on collages featuring William Baziotes , Jackson Pollack and Robert Motherwell which started a more modern collage trend in art. The 31 Women Art Show which we did include pushed forward another message which I think is important.
And so many different things have been written about Peggy — there were hundreds of articles written about her during her lifetime. She also kept beautiful scrapbooks of articles written about her, which are now in the archives of the Guggenheim Museum.
The Guggenheim foundation did not commission this documentary but they were very supportive and the film premiered there in New York in a wonderful celebration. They wanted to represent Peggy and her paintings properly. The paintings were secondary characters and all were carefully placed historically in a correct fashion.
Sl: You said in one interview Guggenheim became a central figure in the modern art movement?
Liv: Yes and she did it without ego. Sharing was always her purpose in collecting art. She was not out for herself. Before Peggy, the art world was very different. And today it is part of wealth management.
Other collectors had a different way with art. Isabelle Stewart Gardner bought art for her own personal consumption. The Gardner Museum came later. Gertrude Stein was sharing the vision of her brother when she began collecting art. The Coen sisters were not sharing.
Her benevolence ranged from giving Berenice Abbott the money to buy her first camera to keeping Pollock afloat during lean times.
Djuana Barnes, who had a 'Love Love Love Hate Hate Hate' relationship with Peggy wrote Nightwood in Peggy's country house in England.
She was in Paris to the last minute. She planned how to safeguard artwork from the Nazis during World War II. She was storing gasoline so she could escape. She lived on the Ile St. Louis with her art and moved the paintings out first to a children's boarding school and then to Marseilles where it was shipped out to New York City.
Her role in art was not taken seriously because of her very public love life which was described in very derogatory terms. There was more talk about her love life than about her collection of art.
Her autobiography, Out of This Century: Confessions of an Art Addict (1960) , was scandalous when it came out — and she didn't even use real names, she used pseudonyms for her numerous partners. Only after publication did she reveal the names of the men she slept with.
The fact that she spoke about her sexual life at all was the most outrageous aspect. She was opening herself up to ridicule, but she didn't care. Peggy was her own person and she felt good in her own skin. But it was definitely unconventional behavior. I think her sexual appetites revealed a lot about finding her own identity.
A lot of it was tied to the loss of her father, I think, in addition to her wanting to feel accepted. She was also very adventurous — look at the men she slept with. I mean, come on, they are amazing! Samuel Beckett, Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp, and she married Max Ernst. I think it was really ballsy of her to have been so open about her sexuality; this was not something people did back then. So many people are bound by conventional rules but Peggy said no. She grabbed hold of life and she lived it on her own terms.
Sl: You also give Peggy credit for changing the way art was exhibited. Can you explain that?
Liv: One of her greatest achievements was her gallery space in New York City, Art of This Century, which was unlike anything the art world has seen before or since in the way that it shattered the boundaries of the gallery space that we've come to know today — the sterile white cube. She came to be a genius at displaying her collections...
She was smart with Art of the Century because she hired Frederick Kiesler as a designer of the gallery and once again surrounded herself with the right people, including Howard Putzler, who was already involved with her at Guggenheim Jeune in London. And she was hanging out with all the exiled Surrealists who were living in New York at the time, including her future husband, Max Ernst, who was the real star of that group of artists. With the help of these people, she started showing art in a completely different way that was both informal and approachable. In conventional museums and galleries, art was untouchable on the wall and inside frames. In Peggy's gallery, art stuck out from the walls; works weren't confined to frames. Kiesler designed special chairs you could sit in and browse canvases as you would texts in a library. Nothing like this had ever existed in New York before — even today there is nothing like it.
She made the gallery into an exciting place where the whole concept of space was transformed. In Venice, the gallery space was also her home. Today, for a variety of reasons, the home aspect of the collection is less emphasized, though you still get a strong sense of Peggy's home life there. She was bringing art to the public in a bold new way, which I think is a great idea. It's art for everybody, which is very much a part of today's dialogue except that fewer people can afford the outlandish museum entry fees.
Sl: What do you think made her so prescient and attuned ?
Liv: She was smart enough to ask Marcel Duchamp to be her advisor — so she was in tune, and very well connected. She was on the cutting edge of what was going on and I think a lot of this had to do with Peggy being open to the idea of what was new and outrageous. You have to have a certain personality for this; what her childhood had dictated was totally opposite from what she became in life, and being in the right place at the right time helped her maintain a cutting edge throughout her life.
Sl: The movie is framed around a lost interview with Peggy conducted late in her life. How did you acquire these tapes?
Liv: We optioned Jacqueline Bogard Weld’s book, Peggy : The Wayward Guggenheim, the only authorized biography of Peggy, which was published after she died. Jackie had spent two summers interviewing Peggy but at a certain point lost the tapes somewhere in her Park Avenue apartment. Jackie had so much access to Peggy, which was incredible, but it was also the access that she had to other people who had known Peggy — she interviewed over 200 people for her book. Jackie was incredibly generous, letting me go through all her original research except for the lost tapes.
We'd walk into different rooms in her apartment and I'd suggestively open a closet door and ask “Where do you think those tapes might be?" Then one day I asked if she had a basement, and she did. So I went through all these boxes down there, organizing her affairs. Then bingo, the tapes showed up in this shoebox.
It was the longest interview Peggy had ever done and it became the framework for our movie. There's nothing more powerful than when you have someone's real voice telling the story, and Jackie was especially good at asking provoking questions. You can tell it was hard for Peggy to answer a lot of them, because she wasn't someone who was especially expressive; she didn't have a lot of emotion. And this comes across in the movie, in the tone of her voice.
Sl: Larry Gagosian has one of the best descriptions of Peggy in the movie — "she was her own creation." Would you agree, and if so why?
Liv: She was very much her own creation. When he said that in the interview I had a huge smile on my face. In Peggy's case it stemmed from a real need to identify and understand herself. I'm not sure she achieved it but she completely recreated herself — she knew that she did not want to be what she was brought up to be. She tried being a mother, but that was not one of her strengths, so art became that place where she could find herself, and then transform herself.
Nobody believed in the artists she cultivated and supported — they were outsiders and she was an outsider in the world she was brought up in. So it's in this way that she became her own great invention. I hope that her humor comes across in the film because she was extremely amusing — this aspect really comes across in her autobiography.
Sl: Finally, what do you think is Peggy Guggenheim's most lasting legacy, beyond her incredible art collection?
Liv: Her courage, and the way she used it to find herself. She had this ballsiness that not many people had, especially women. In her own way she was a feminist and it's good for women and young girls today to see women who stepped outside the confines of a very traditional family and made something of her life. Peggy's life did not seem that dreamy until she attached herself to these artists. It was her ability to redefine herself in the end that truly summed her up.
About the Filmmakers
Stanley Buchtal is a producer and entrepreneur. His movies credits include "Hairspray", "Spanking the Monkey", "Up at the Villa", "Lou Reed Berlin", "Love Marilyn", "LennoNYC", "Bobby Fischer Against the World", "Herb & Dorothy", "Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child", "Sketches of Frank Gehry", "Black White + Gray: a Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe", among numerous others.
David Koh is an independent producer, distributor, sales agent, programmer and curator. He has been involved in the distribution, sale, production, and financing of over 200 films. He is currently a partner in the boutique label Submarine Entertainment with Josh and Dan Braun and is also partners with Stanley Buchthal and his Dakota Group Ltd where he co-manages a portfolio of over 50 projects a year (75% docs and 25% fiction). Previously he was a partner and founder of Arthouse Films a boutique distribution imprint and ran Chris Blackwell's (founder of Island Records & Island Pictures) film label, Palm Pictures. He has worked as a Producer for artist Nam June Paik and worked in the curatorial departments of Anthology Film Archives, MoMA, Mfa Boston, and the Guggenheim Museum. David has recently served as a Curator for Microsoft and has curated an ongoing film series and salon with Andre Balazs Properties and serves as a Curator for the exclusive Core Club in NYC.
David recently launched with his partners Submarine Deluxe, a distribution imprint; Torpedo Pictures, a low budget high concept label; and Nfp Submarine Doks, a German distribution imprint with Nfp Films. Recently and upcoming projects include "Yayoi Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots", "Burden: a Portrait of Artist Chris Burden", "Dior and I", "20 Feet From Stardom", "Muscle Shoals", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Rats NYC", "Nas: Time Is Illmatic", "Blackfish", "Love Marilyn", "Chasing Ice", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Cutie and the Boxer"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: the Radiant Child", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Wolfpack, "Meru", and "Station to Station".
Dan Braun is a producer, writer, art director and musician/composer based in NYC. He is the Co-President of and Co-Founder of Submarine, a NYC film sales and production company specializing in independent feature and documentary films. Titles include "Blackfish", "Finding Vivian Maier", "Muscle Shoals", "The Case Against 8", "Keep On Keepin’ On", "Winter’s Bone", "Nas: Time is Illmatic", "Dior and I" and Oscar winning docs "Man on Wire", "Searching for Sugarman", "20 Ft From Stardom" and "Citizenfour". He was Executive Producer on documentaries "Kill Your Idols", (which won Best NY Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival 2004), "Blank City", "Sunshine Superman", the upcoming feature adaptations of "Batkid Begins" and "The Battered Bastards of Baseball" and the upcoming horror TV anthology "Creepy" to be directed by Chris Columbus.
He is a producer of the free jazz documentary "Fire Music", and the upcoming documentaries, "Burden" on artist Chris Burden and "Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots" on artist Yayoi Kusama. He is also a writer and consulting editor on Dark Horse Comic’s "Creepy" and "Eerie 9" comic book and archival series for which he won an Eisner Award for best archival comic book series in 2009.
He is a musician/composer whose compositions were featured in the films "I Melt With You" and "Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Radiant Child and is an award winning art director/creative director when he worked at Tbwa/Chiat/Day on the famous Absolut Vodka campaign.
John Northrup (Co-Producer) began his career in documentaries as a French translator for National Geographic: Explorer. He quickly moved into editing and producing, serving as the Associate Producer on "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012), and editing and co-producing "Wilson In Situ" (2014), which tells the story of theatre legend Robert Wilson and his Watermill Center. Most recently, he oversaw the post-production of Jim Chambers’ "Onward Christian Soldier", a documentary about Olympic Bomber Eric Rudolph, and is shooting on Susanne Rostock’s "Another Night in the Free World", the follow-up to her award-winning "Sing Your Song" (2011).
Submarine Entertainment (Production Company) Submarine Entertainment is a hybrid sales, production, and distribution company based in N.Y. Recent and upcoming titles include "Citizenfour", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Dog", "Visitors", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Muscle Shoals", "Blackfish", "Cutie and the Boxer", "The Summit", "The Unknown Known", "Love Marilyn", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Chasing Ice", "Downtown 81 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Wild Style 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Good Ol Freda", "Some Velvet Morning", among numerous others. Submarine principals also represent Creepy and Eerie comic book library and are developing properties across film & TV platforms.
Submarine has also recently launched a domestic distribution imprint and label called Submarine Deluxe; a genre label called Torpedo Pictures; and a German imprint and label called Nfp Submarine Doks.
Bernadine Colish has edited a number of award-winning documentaries. "Herb and Dorothy" (2008), won Audience Awards at Silverdocs, Philadelphia and Hamptons Film Festivals, and "Body of War" (2007), was named Best Documentary by the National Board of Review. "A Touch of Greatness" (2004) aired on PBS Independent Lens and was nominated for an Emmy Award. Her career began at Maysles Films, where she worked with Charlotte Zwerin on such projects as "Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser", "Toru Takemitsu: Music for the Movies" and the PBS American Masters documentary, "Ella Fitzgerald: Something To Live For". Additional credits include "Bringing Tibet Home", "Band of Sisters", "Rise and Dream", "The Tiger Next Door", "The Buffalo War" and "Absolute Wilson".
Jed Parker (Editor) Jed Parker began his career in feature films before moving into documentaries through his work with the award-winning American Masters series. Credits include "Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart", "Annie Liebovitz: Life Through a Lens", and most recently "Jeff Bridges: The Dude Abides".
Other work includes two episodes of the PBS series "Make ‘Em Laugh", hosted by Billy Crystal, as well as a documentary on Met Curator Henry Geldzahler entitled "Who Gets to Call it Art"?
Credits
Director, Writer, Producer: Lisa Immordino Vreeland
Produced by Stanley Buchthal, David Koh and Dan Braun Stanley Buchthal (producer)
Maja Hoffmann (executive producer)
Josh Braun (executive producer)
Bob Benton (executive producer)
John Northrup (co-producer)
Bernadine Colish (editor)
Jed Parker (editor)
Peter Trilling (director of photography)
Bonnie Greenberg (executive music producer)
Music by J. Ralph
Original Song "Once Again" Written and Performed By J. Ralph
Interviews Featuring Artist Marina Abramović Jean Arp Dore Ashton Samuel Beckett Stephanie Barron Constantin Brâncuși Diego Cortez Alexander Calder Susan Davidson Joseph Cornell Robert De Niro Salvador Dalí Simon de Pury Willem de Kooning Jeffrey Deitch Marcel Duchamp Polly Devlin Max Ernst Larry Gagosian Alberto Giacometti Arne Glimcher Vasily Kandinsky Michael Govan Fernand Léger Nicky Haslam Joan Miró Pepe Karmel Piet Mondrian Donald Kuspit Robert Motherwell Dominique Lévy Jackson Pollock Carlo McCormick Mark Rothko Hans Ulrich Obrist Yves Tanguy Lisa Phillips Lindsay Pollock Francine Prose John Richardson Sandy Rower Mercedes Ruehl Jane Rylands Philip Rylands Calvin Tomkins Karole Vail Jacqueline Bograd Weld Edmund White
Running time: 97 minutes
U.S. distribution by Submarine Deluxe
International sales by Hanway...
Her colorful personal history included such figures as Samuel Beckett, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp and countless others. Guggenheim helped introduce the world to Pollock, Motherwell, Rothko and scores of others now recognized as key masters of modernism.
In 1921 she moved to Paris and mingled with Picasso, Dali, Joyce, Pound, Stein, Leger, Kandinsky. In 1938 she opened a gallery in London and began showing Cocteau, Tanguy, Magritte, Miro, Brancusi, etc., and then back to Paris and New York after the Nazi invasion, followed by the opening of her NYC gallery Art of This Century, which became one of the premiere avant-garde spaces in the U.S. While fighting through personal tragedy, she maintained her vision to build one of the most important collections of modern art, now enshrined in her Venetian palazzo where she moved in 1947. Since 1951, her collection has become one of the world’s most visited art spaces.
Featuring: Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Arshile Gorky, Vasil Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning, Fernand Leger, Rene Magritte, Man Ray, Jean Miro, Piet Mondrian, Henry Moore, Robert Motherwell, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Kurt Schwitters, Gino Severini, Clyfford Still and Yves Tanguy.
Lisa Immordino Vreeland (Director and Producer)
Lisa Immordino Vreeland has been immersed in the world of fashion and art for the past 25 years. She started her career in fashion as the Director of Public Relations for Polo Ralph Lauren in Italy and quickly moved on to launch two fashion companies, Pratico, a sportswear line for women, and Mago, a cashmere knitwear collection of her own design. Her first book was accompanied by her directorial debut of the documentary of the same name, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012). The film about the editor of Harper's Bazaar had its European premiere at the Venice Film Festival and its North American premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, going on to win the Silver Hugo at the Chicago Film Festival and the fashion category for the Design of the Year awards, otherwise known as “The Oscars” of design—at the Design Museum in London.
"Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict" is Lisa Immordino Vreeland's followup to her acclaimed debut, "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel". She is now working on her third doc on Cecil Beaton who Lisa says, "has been circling around all these stories. What's great about him is the creativity: fashion photography, war photography, "My Fair Lady" winning an Oscar."
Sydney Levine: I have read numerous accounts and interviews with you about this film and rather than repeat all that has been said, I refer my readers to Indiewire's Women and Hollywood interview at Tribeca this year, and your Indiewire interview with Aubrey Page, November 6, 2015 .
Let's try to cover new territory here.
First of all, what about you? What is your relationship to Diana Vreeland?
Liv: I am married to her grandson, Alexander Vreeland. (I'm also proud of my name Immordino) I never met Diana but hearing so many family stories about her made me start to wonder about all the talk about her. I worked in fashion and lived in New York like she did.
Sl: In one of your interviews you said that Peggy was not only ahead of her time but she helped to define it. Can you tell me how?
Liv: Peggy grew up in a very traditional family of German Bavarian Jews who had moved to New York City in the 19th century. Already at a young age Peggy felt like there were too many rules around her and she wanted to break out. That alone was something attractive to me — the notion that she knew that she didn't fit in to her family or her times. She lived on her own terms, a very modern approach to life. She decided to abandon her family in New York. Though she always stayed connected to them, she rarely visited New York. Instead she lived in a world without borders. She did not live by "the rules". She believed in creating art and created herself, living on her own terms and not on those of her family.
Sl: Is there a link between her and your previous doc on Diana Vreeland?
Liv: The link between Vreeland and Guggenheim is their mutual sense of reinvention and transformation. That made something click inside of me as I too reinvented myself when I began writing the book on Diana Vreeland .
Can you talk about the process of putting this one together and how it differed from its predecessor?
Liv: The most challenging thing about this one was the vast amount of material we had at our disposal. We had a lot of media to go through — instead of fashion spreads, which informed The Eye Has To Travel, we had art, which was fantastic. I was spoiled by the access we had to these incredible archives and footage. I'm still new to this, but it's the storytelling aspect that I loved in both projects. One thing about Peggy that Mrs. Vreeland didn't have was a very tragic personal life. There was so much that happened in Peggy's life before you even got to what she actually accomplished. And so we had to tell a very dense story about her childhood, her father dying on the Titanic, her beloved sister dying — the tragic events that fundamentally shaped her in a way. It was about making sure we had enough of the personal story to go along with her later accomplishments.
World War II alone was such a huge part of her story, opening an important art gallery in London, where she showed Kandinsky and other important artists for the first time. The amount of material to distill was a tremendous challenge and I hope we made the right choices.
Sl: How did you learn make a documentary?
Liv: I learned how to make a documentary by having a good team around me. My editors (and co-writers)Bent-Jorgen Perlmutt and Frédéric Tcheng were very helpful.
Research is fundamental; finding as much as you can and never giving up. I love the research. It is my "precise time". Not just for interviews but of footage, photographs never seen before. It is a painstaking process that satisfies me. The research never ends. I was still researching while I was promoting the Diana Vreeland book. I love reading books and going to original sources.
The archives in film museums in the last ten years has changed and given museums a new role. I found unique footage at Moma with the Elizabeth Chapman Films. Chapman went to Paris in the 30s and 40s with a handheld camera and took moving pictures of Brancusi and Duchamps joking around in a studio, Gertrude Stein, Leger walking down the street. This footage is owned by Robert Storr, Dean of Yale School of Art. In fact he is taking a sabbatical this year to go through the boxes and boxes of Chapman's films. We also used " Entre'acte" by René Clair cowritten with Dadaist Francis Picabia, "Le Sang du poet" of Cocteau, Hans Richter "8x8","Gagascope" and " Dreams That Money Can Buy" produced by Peggy Guggenheim, written by Man Ray in 1947.
Sl: How long did it take to research and make the film?
Liv: It took three years for both the Vreeland and the Guggenheim documentary.
It was more difficult with the Guggenheim story because there was so much material and so much to tell of her life. And she was not so giving of her own self. Diana could inspire you about a bandaid; she was so giving. But Peggy didn't talk much about why she loved an artist or a painting. She acted more. And using historical material could become "over-teaching" though it was fascinating.
So much had to be eliminated. It was hard to eliminate the Degenerate Art Show, a subject which is newly discussed. Stephanie Barron of Lacma is an expert on Degenerate Art and was so generous.
Once we decided upon which aspects to focus on, then we could give focus to the interviews.
There were so many of her important shows we could not include. For instance there was a show on collages featuring William Baziotes , Jackson Pollack and Robert Motherwell which started a more modern collage trend in art. The 31 Women Art Show which we did include pushed forward another message which I think is important.
And so many different things have been written about Peggy — there were hundreds of articles written about her during her lifetime. She also kept beautiful scrapbooks of articles written about her, which are now in the archives of the Guggenheim Museum.
The Guggenheim foundation did not commission this documentary but they were very supportive and the film premiered there in New York in a wonderful celebration. They wanted to represent Peggy and her paintings properly. The paintings were secondary characters and all were carefully placed historically in a correct fashion.
Sl: You said in one interview Guggenheim became a central figure in the modern art movement?
Liv: Yes and she did it without ego. Sharing was always her purpose in collecting art. She was not out for herself. Before Peggy, the art world was very different. And today it is part of wealth management.
Other collectors had a different way with art. Isabelle Stewart Gardner bought art for her own personal consumption. The Gardner Museum came later. Gertrude Stein was sharing the vision of her brother when she began collecting art. The Coen sisters were not sharing.
Her benevolence ranged from giving Berenice Abbott the money to buy her first camera to keeping Pollock afloat during lean times.
Djuana Barnes, who had a 'Love Love Love Hate Hate Hate' relationship with Peggy wrote Nightwood in Peggy's country house in England.
She was in Paris to the last minute. She planned how to safeguard artwork from the Nazis during World War II. She was storing gasoline so she could escape. She lived on the Ile St. Louis with her art and moved the paintings out first to a children's boarding school and then to Marseilles where it was shipped out to New York City.
Her role in art was not taken seriously because of her very public love life which was described in very derogatory terms. There was more talk about her love life than about her collection of art.
Her autobiography, Out of This Century: Confessions of an Art Addict (1960) , was scandalous when it came out — and she didn't even use real names, she used pseudonyms for her numerous partners. Only after publication did she reveal the names of the men she slept with.
The fact that she spoke about her sexual life at all was the most outrageous aspect. She was opening herself up to ridicule, but she didn't care. Peggy was her own person and she felt good in her own skin. But it was definitely unconventional behavior. I think her sexual appetites revealed a lot about finding her own identity.
A lot of it was tied to the loss of her father, I think, in addition to her wanting to feel accepted. She was also very adventurous — look at the men she slept with. I mean, come on, they are amazing! Samuel Beckett, Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp, and she married Max Ernst. I think it was really ballsy of her to have been so open about her sexuality; this was not something people did back then. So many people are bound by conventional rules but Peggy said no. She grabbed hold of life and she lived it on her own terms.
Sl: You also give Peggy credit for changing the way art was exhibited. Can you explain that?
Liv: One of her greatest achievements was her gallery space in New York City, Art of This Century, which was unlike anything the art world has seen before or since in the way that it shattered the boundaries of the gallery space that we've come to know today — the sterile white cube. She came to be a genius at displaying her collections...
She was smart with Art of the Century because she hired Frederick Kiesler as a designer of the gallery and once again surrounded herself with the right people, including Howard Putzler, who was already involved with her at Guggenheim Jeune in London. And she was hanging out with all the exiled Surrealists who were living in New York at the time, including her future husband, Max Ernst, who was the real star of that group of artists. With the help of these people, she started showing art in a completely different way that was both informal and approachable. In conventional museums and galleries, art was untouchable on the wall and inside frames. In Peggy's gallery, art stuck out from the walls; works weren't confined to frames. Kiesler designed special chairs you could sit in and browse canvases as you would texts in a library. Nothing like this had ever existed in New York before — even today there is nothing like it.
She made the gallery into an exciting place where the whole concept of space was transformed. In Venice, the gallery space was also her home. Today, for a variety of reasons, the home aspect of the collection is less emphasized, though you still get a strong sense of Peggy's home life there. She was bringing art to the public in a bold new way, which I think is a great idea. It's art for everybody, which is very much a part of today's dialogue except that fewer people can afford the outlandish museum entry fees.
Sl: What do you think made her so prescient and attuned ?
Liv: She was smart enough to ask Marcel Duchamp to be her advisor — so she was in tune, and very well connected. She was on the cutting edge of what was going on and I think a lot of this had to do with Peggy being open to the idea of what was new and outrageous. You have to have a certain personality for this; what her childhood had dictated was totally opposite from what she became in life, and being in the right place at the right time helped her maintain a cutting edge throughout her life.
Sl: The movie is framed around a lost interview with Peggy conducted late in her life. How did you acquire these tapes?
Liv: We optioned Jacqueline Bogard Weld’s book, Peggy : The Wayward Guggenheim, the only authorized biography of Peggy, which was published after she died. Jackie had spent two summers interviewing Peggy but at a certain point lost the tapes somewhere in her Park Avenue apartment. Jackie had so much access to Peggy, which was incredible, but it was also the access that she had to other people who had known Peggy — she interviewed over 200 people for her book. Jackie was incredibly generous, letting me go through all her original research except for the lost tapes.
We'd walk into different rooms in her apartment and I'd suggestively open a closet door and ask “Where do you think those tapes might be?" Then one day I asked if she had a basement, and she did. So I went through all these boxes down there, organizing her affairs. Then bingo, the tapes showed up in this shoebox.
It was the longest interview Peggy had ever done and it became the framework for our movie. There's nothing more powerful than when you have someone's real voice telling the story, and Jackie was especially good at asking provoking questions. You can tell it was hard for Peggy to answer a lot of them, because she wasn't someone who was especially expressive; she didn't have a lot of emotion. And this comes across in the movie, in the tone of her voice.
Sl: Larry Gagosian has one of the best descriptions of Peggy in the movie — "she was her own creation." Would you agree, and if so why?
Liv: She was very much her own creation. When he said that in the interview I had a huge smile on my face. In Peggy's case it stemmed from a real need to identify and understand herself. I'm not sure she achieved it but she completely recreated herself — she knew that she did not want to be what she was brought up to be. She tried being a mother, but that was not one of her strengths, so art became that place where she could find herself, and then transform herself.
Nobody believed in the artists she cultivated and supported — they were outsiders and she was an outsider in the world she was brought up in. So it's in this way that she became her own great invention. I hope that her humor comes across in the film because she was extremely amusing — this aspect really comes across in her autobiography.
Sl: Finally, what do you think is Peggy Guggenheim's most lasting legacy, beyond her incredible art collection?
Liv: Her courage, and the way she used it to find herself. She had this ballsiness that not many people had, especially women. In her own way she was a feminist and it's good for women and young girls today to see women who stepped outside the confines of a very traditional family and made something of her life. Peggy's life did not seem that dreamy until she attached herself to these artists. It was her ability to redefine herself in the end that truly summed her up.
About the Filmmakers
Stanley Buchtal is a producer and entrepreneur. His movies credits include "Hairspray", "Spanking the Monkey", "Up at the Villa", "Lou Reed Berlin", "Love Marilyn", "LennoNYC", "Bobby Fischer Against the World", "Herb & Dorothy", "Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child", "Sketches of Frank Gehry", "Black White + Gray: a Portrait of Sam Wagstaff and Robert Mapplethorpe", among numerous others.
David Koh is an independent producer, distributor, sales agent, programmer and curator. He has been involved in the distribution, sale, production, and financing of over 200 films. He is currently a partner in the boutique label Submarine Entertainment with Josh and Dan Braun and is also partners with Stanley Buchthal and his Dakota Group Ltd where he co-manages a portfolio of over 50 projects a year (75% docs and 25% fiction). Previously he was a partner and founder of Arthouse Films a boutique distribution imprint and ran Chris Blackwell's (founder of Island Records & Island Pictures) film label, Palm Pictures. He has worked as a Producer for artist Nam June Paik and worked in the curatorial departments of Anthology Film Archives, MoMA, Mfa Boston, and the Guggenheim Museum. David has recently served as a Curator for Microsoft and has curated an ongoing film series and salon with Andre Balazs Properties and serves as a Curator for the exclusive Core Club in NYC.
David recently launched with his partners Submarine Deluxe, a distribution imprint; Torpedo Pictures, a low budget high concept label; and Nfp Submarine Doks, a German distribution imprint with Nfp Films. Recently and upcoming projects include "Yayoi Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots", "Burden: a Portrait of Artist Chris Burden", "Dior and I", "20 Feet From Stardom", "Muscle Shoals", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Rats NYC", "Nas: Time Is Illmatic", "Blackfish", "Love Marilyn", "Chasing Ice", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Cutie and the Boxer"," Jean-Michel Basquiat: the Radiant Child", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Wolfpack, "Meru", and "Station to Station".
Dan Braun is a producer, writer, art director and musician/composer based in NYC. He is the Co-President of and Co-Founder of Submarine, a NYC film sales and production company specializing in independent feature and documentary films. Titles include "Blackfish", "Finding Vivian Maier", "Muscle Shoals", "The Case Against 8", "Keep On Keepin’ On", "Winter’s Bone", "Nas: Time is Illmatic", "Dior and I" and Oscar winning docs "Man on Wire", "Searching for Sugarman", "20 Ft From Stardom" and "Citizenfour". He was Executive Producer on documentaries "Kill Your Idols", (which won Best NY Documentary at the Tribeca Film Festival 2004), "Blank City", "Sunshine Superman", the upcoming feature adaptations of "Batkid Begins" and "The Battered Bastards of Baseball" and the upcoming horror TV anthology "Creepy" to be directed by Chris Columbus.
He is a producer of the free jazz documentary "Fire Music", and the upcoming documentaries, "Burden" on artist Chris Burden and "Kusama: a Life in Polka Dots" on artist Yayoi Kusama. He is also a writer and consulting editor on Dark Horse Comic’s "Creepy" and "Eerie 9" comic book and archival series for which he won an Eisner Award for best archival comic book series in 2009.
He is a musician/composer whose compositions were featured in the films "I Melt With You" and "Jean-Michel Basquiat, The Radiant Child and is an award winning art director/creative director when he worked at Tbwa/Chiat/Day on the famous Absolut Vodka campaign.
John Northrup (Co-Producer) began his career in documentaries as a French translator for National Geographic: Explorer. He quickly moved into editing and producing, serving as the Associate Producer on "Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has To Travel" (2012), and editing and co-producing "Wilson In Situ" (2014), which tells the story of theatre legend Robert Wilson and his Watermill Center. Most recently, he oversaw the post-production of Jim Chambers’ "Onward Christian Soldier", a documentary about Olympic Bomber Eric Rudolph, and is shooting on Susanne Rostock’s "Another Night in the Free World", the follow-up to her award-winning "Sing Your Song" (2011).
Submarine Entertainment (Production Company) Submarine Entertainment is a hybrid sales, production, and distribution company based in N.Y. Recent and upcoming titles include "Citizenfour", "Finding Vivian Maier", "The Dog", "Visitors", "20 Feet from Stardom", "Searching for Sugar Man", "Muscle Shoals", "Blackfish", "Cutie and the Boxer", "The Summit", "The Unknown Known", "Love Marilyn", "Marina Abramovic the Artist is Present", "Chasing Ice", "Downtown 81 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Wild Style 30th Anniversary Remastered", "Good Ol Freda", "Some Velvet Morning", among numerous others. Submarine principals also represent Creepy and Eerie comic book library and are developing properties across film & TV platforms.
Submarine has also recently launched a domestic distribution imprint and label called Submarine Deluxe; a genre label called Torpedo Pictures; and a German imprint and label called Nfp Submarine Doks.
Bernadine Colish has edited a number of award-winning documentaries. "Herb and Dorothy" (2008), won Audience Awards at Silverdocs, Philadelphia and Hamptons Film Festivals, and "Body of War" (2007), was named Best Documentary by the National Board of Review. "A Touch of Greatness" (2004) aired on PBS Independent Lens and was nominated for an Emmy Award. Her career began at Maysles Films, where she worked with Charlotte Zwerin on such projects as "Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser", "Toru Takemitsu: Music for the Movies" and the PBS American Masters documentary, "Ella Fitzgerald: Something To Live For". Additional credits include "Bringing Tibet Home", "Band of Sisters", "Rise and Dream", "The Tiger Next Door", "The Buffalo War" and "Absolute Wilson".
Jed Parker (Editor) Jed Parker began his career in feature films before moving into documentaries through his work with the award-winning American Masters series. Credits include "Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart", "Annie Liebovitz: Life Through a Lens", and most recently "Jeff Bridges: The Dude Abides".
Other work includes two episodes of the PBS series "Make ‘Em Laugh", hosted by Billy Crystal, as well as a documentary on Met Curator Henry Geldzahler entitled "Who Gets to Call it Art"?
Credits
Director, Writer, Producer: Lisa Immordino Vreeland
Produced by Stanley Buchthal, David Koh and Dan Braun Stanley Buchthal (producer)
Maja Hoffmann (executive producer)
Josh Braun (executive producer)
Bob Benton (executive producer)
John Northrup (co-producer)
Bernadine Colish (editor)
Jed Parker (editor)
Peter Trilling (director of photography)
Bonnie Greenberg (executive music producer)
Music by J. Ralph
Original Song "Once Again" Written and Performed By J. Ralph
Interviews Featuring Artist Marina Abramović Jean Arp Dore Ashton Samuel Beckett Stephanie Barron Constantin Brâncuși Diego Cortez Alexander Calder Susan Davidson Joseph Cornell Robert De Niro Salvador Dalí Simon de Pury Willem de Kooning Jeffrey Deitch Marcel Duchamp Polly Devlin Max Ernst Larry Gagosian Alberto Giacometti Arne Glimcher Vasily Kandinsky Michael Govan Fernand Léger Nicky Haslam Joan Miró Pepe Karmel Piet Mondrian Donald Kuspit Robert Motherwell Dominique Lévy Jackson Pollock Carlo McCormick Mark Rothko Hans Ulrich Obrist Yves Tanguy Lisa Phillips Lindsay Pollock Francine Prose John Richardson Sandy Rower Mercedes Ruehl Jane Rylands Philip Rylands Calvin Tomkins Karole Vail Jacqueline Bograd Weld Edmund White
Running time: 97 minutes
U.S. distribution by Submarine Deluxe
International sales by Hanway...
- 11/18/2015
- by Sydney Levine
- Sydney's Buzz
Oscar-winner to play artist, model, war correspondent and muse to Picasso and Man Ray, in film based on biography by Miller’s son Antony Penrose
Lee Miller’s images of women in wartime – in pictures
Kate Winslet will play Lee Miller in a new biopic about the American artist, model and war correspondent based on a biography by Miller’s son Antony Penrose.
Related: Lee Miller: the model, the monster and the mother
Continue reading...
Lee Miller’s images of women in wartime – in pictures
Kate Winslet will play Lee Miller in a new biopic about the American artist, model and war correspondent based on a biography by Miller’s son Antony Penrose.
Related: Lee Miller: the model, the monster and the mother
Continue reading...
- 10/14/2015
- by Nancy Groves
- The Guardian - Film News
Kate Winslet will soon be back on our screens playing Joanna Hoffman, a woman making her way in a male-dominated milieu with Steve Jobs. And she’s now eyeing another role based in reality, signing on to play American model, artist and war correspondent Elizabeth “Lee” Miller. Production outfit Hopscotch Pictures is putting together the project, which is currently on the hunt for a director and writer. Whoever does write the script will base their work on her life and the defining moments of it, as detailed in son Antony Penrose’s biography The Lives Of Lee Miller. Known for both her glamour and her mind, Miller was a muse and collaborator to the likes of Pablo Picasso and painter/photographer Man Ray, and, thanks to her early education in the technical aspects of photography, took over from the latter when he expressed a desire to concentrate on his other art.
- 10/13/2015
- EmpireOnline
On the heels of The Dressmaker Kate Winslet has booked another Australian-produced film: a biography of Us fashion model, artist and war correspondent Elizabeth .Lee. Miller.
Hopscotch Features. Troy Lum and Andrew Mason will produce the film, as yet untitled, after optioning her son Antony Penrose.s biography The Lives of Lee Miller.. No director or writer is yet attached.
The Us-born Miller found herself at the centre of some of the great events of the 20th Century; a muse and collaborator to famous artists such as Picasso and Man Ray, an acclaimed photojournalist documenting some of the most important moments in history, a witness to wartime atrocities, and one of the most glamorous and desired women of her time.
She died in England in 1977, aged 70. She was the subject of a 1995 documentary Lee Miller: Through the Mirror.
Penrose has been conserving and promoting his mother.s work since the early 1980s.
Hopscotch Features. Troy Lum and Andrew Mason will produce the film, as yet untitled, after optioning her son Antony Penrose.s biography The Lives of Lee Miller.. No director or writer is yet attached.
The Us-born Miller found herself at the centre of some of the great events of the 20th Century; a muse and collaborator to famous artists such as Picasso and Man Ray, an acclaimed photojournalist documenting some of the most important moments in history, a witness to wartime atrocities, and one of the most glamorous and desired women of her time.
She died in England in 1977, aged 70. She was the subject of a 1995 documentary Lee Miller: Through the Mirror.
Penrose has been conserving and promoting his mother.s work since the early 1980s.
- 10/13/2015
- by Don Groves
- IF.com.au
Eager to keep the biopic train rolling along, Kate Winslet has inked a deal to topline a new film focusing on Elizabeth “Lee” Miller, a celebrated fashion model, artist and war correspondent.
Hot on the heels of her appearance as Macintosh developer Joanna Hoffman in Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs, Winslet is remaining firmly in the genre of real-life dramas with this new, as-yet-untitled project, which is to be produced by Troy Lum and Andrew Mason of Hopscotch Features.
Documenting some of the late photographer’s defining moments, Lum and Mason’s nascent feature will borrow story strands from Antony Penrose’s intimate biography, The Lives of Lee Miller. As Miller’s son, tailoring the film to fit Penrose’s mould will surely offer a personal, almost unprecedented look into her life and work.
Kate Winslet’s involvement is the only tangible sign of life at this early stage, with...
Hot on the heels of her appearance as Macintosh developer Joanna Hoffman in Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs, Winslet is remaining firmly in the genre of real-life dramas with this new, as-yet-untitled project, which is to be produced by Troy Lum and Andrew Mason of Hopscotch Features.
Documenting some of the late photographer’s defining moments, Lum and Mason’s nascent feature will borrow story strands from Antony Penrose’s intimate biography, The Lives of Lee Miller. As Miller’s son, tailoring the film to fit Penrose’s mould will surely offer a personal, almost unprecedented look into her life and work.
Kate Winslet’s involvement is the only tangible sign of life at this early stage, with...
- 10/13/2015
- by Michael Briers
- We Got This Covered
On the heels of her excellent supporting turn in “Steve Jobs,” Oscar winner Kate Winslet is attached to star in an untitled biopic of American fashion model, artist and war correspondent Elizabeth ‘Lee’ Miller, TheWrap has learned. Miller once acted as Man Ray’s muse and lover before going on to become a war photographer for Vogue. The glamorous gal was also close with Pablo Picasso. Miller’s son, Antony Penrose, wrote a book titled “The Lives of Lee Miller” that will serve as the basis of the indie drama, which will be produced by Troy Lum and Andrew Mason of Hopscotch Features.
- 10/13/2015
- by Jeff Sneider
- The Wrap
Kate Winslet will portray American fashion model, artist and war correspondent Elizabeth "Lee" Miller in an untitled screen story about the woman at Hopscotch Features.
Based on Antony Penrose's biography "The Lives of Lee Miller," it explores how Miller became a model as a teen then the muse and lover to artist Man Ray where she met the likes of Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau. She became an art photographer, but during WW2 became a pre-eminent war photographer for Vogue.
Troy Lum and Andrew Mason will produce and have obtained exclusive access to the Lee Miller Archives, but no writer or director is yet onboard. Winslet currently stars as Apple marketing whiz Joanna Hoffman in Danny Boyle's "Steve Jobs" film and will next be seen in "The Dressmaker" and "Triple 9".
Source: THR...
Based on Antony Penrose's biography "The Lives of Lee Miller," it explores how Miller became a model as a teen then the muse and lover to artist Man Ray where she met the likes of Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau. She became an art photographer, but during WW2 became a pre-eminent war photographer for Vogue.
Troy Lum and Andrew Mason will produce and have obtained exclusive access to the Lee Miller Archives, but no writer or director is yet onboard. Winslet currently stars as Apple marketing whiz Joanna Hoffman in Danny Boyle's "Steve Jobs" film and will next be seen in "The Dressmaker" and "Triple 9".
Source: THR...
- 10/13/2015
- by Garth Franklin
- Dark Horizons
Get your beret and warm up the espresso! Some of the most famous deep-dish art film is here -- in HD -- starting with attempts to translate various art 'isms' to the screen, to graphics-oriented abstractions, to 'city symphonies' to the dream visions of Maya Deren and beyond. The careful remasters reproduce proper projection speeds and original music. Masterworks of American Avant-Garde Experimental Film 1920-1970 Blu-ray + DVD Flicker Alley 1920-1970 / B&W and Color / 1:33 full frame / 418 min. / Street Date October 6, 2015 / 59.95 With films by James Agee, Kenneth Anger, Bruce Baillie, Stan Brakhage, James Broughton, Rudolph Burckhardt, Mary Ellen Bute, Joseph Cornell, Jim Davis, Maya Deren, Marcel Duchamp, Emien Etting, Oksar Fischinger, Robert Florey, Amy Greenfield, A. Hackenschmied, Alexander Hammid, Hillary Harris, Hy Hirsh, Ian Hugo, Lawrence Janiac, Lawrence Jordan, Owen Land, Francis Lee, Fernand Léger, Helen Levitt, Jan Leyda, Janice Loeb, Jonas Mekas, Marie Menken, Dudley Murphy, Ted Nemeth, Bernard O'Brien,...
- 10/6/2015
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
The New STYLEThis is the second year that the New York Film Festival has presented Projections, its extensive showcase of experimental film and video that for years had been called Views From the Avant-Garde. The name change (or "rebranding," in the parlance of our ugly times) corresponded, of course, to the departure of longtime programmer Mark McElhatten. Under his stewardship, Views became one of the premiere experimental film festivals in the world, a long weekend of high caliber dispatches from established masters, alongside bracing discoveries by up-and-coming makers whose work somehow caught Mark's eye. His programming partner, Film Comment's Gavin Smith, often brought along selections that complemented Mark's, even as they were out of his usual bailiwick.The Views era was not without its dissenters. Some complained that McElhatten rounded up the usual suspects year after year, sometimes without regard to the relative quality of their latest offerings. Others, most prominently Su Friedrich,...
- 10/2/2015
- by Michael Sicinski
- MUBI
This is what I’m talking about right here. Couple this with how much I enjoyed Image’s Island and I’m having a damn good comics week.
I Loved Valiant’s Legends of the Geomancer #1 and to a lesser extent enjoyed Book of Death #1 but I wasn’t all in on the execution and presentation for the latter as I was the concept for an event level comic, and The Fall of Bloodshot offers up more of everything what I liked and was just more clean of a book overall and stands as my favorite issue of Bloodshot, which oddly is something I’ve had quite the opposite reaction to in that I’ve thought the execution of his series, Bloodshot Reborn, has been terrific but in premise it wasn’t really my personal preference.
I’m a big fan of Jeff Lemire though so I know he has...
I Loved Valiant’s Legends of the Geomancer #1 and to a lesser extent enjoyed Book of Death #1 but I wasn’t all in on the execution and presentation for the latter as I was the concept for an event level comic, and The Fall of Bloodshot offers up more of everything what I liked and was just more clean of a book overall and stands as my favorite issue of Bloodshot, which oddly is something I’ve had quite the opposite reaction to in that I’ve thought the execution of his series, Bloodshot Reborn, has been terrific but in premise it wasn’t really my personal preference.
I’m a big fan of Jeff Lemire though so I know he has...
- 7/20/2015
- by Jay Tomio
- Boomtron
Cinema’s Hidden Pearls – Part I
By Alex Simon
One of nature’s rarest items, a pearl is produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle) of a living shelled mollusk. Just like the shell of a clam, a pearl is composed of calcium carbonate in minute crystalline form, which has been deposited in concentric layers. Truly flawless pearls are infrequently produced in nature, and as a result, the pearl has become a metaphor for something rare, fine, admirable and valuable. Hidden pearls exist in the world of movies, as well: films that, in spite of being brilliantly crafted and executed, never got the audience they deserved beyond a cult following.
Here are a few of our favorite hidden pearls in the world of film:
1. Night Moves (1975)
Director Arthur Penn hit three home runs in a row with the trifecta of Bonnie & Clyde, Alice’s Restaurant and Little Big Man,...
By Alex Simon
One of nature’s rarest items, a pearl is produced within the soft tissue (specifically the mantle) of a living shelled mollusk. Just like the shell of a clam, a pearl is composed of calcium carbonate in minute crystalline form, which has been deposited in concentric layers. Truly flawless pearls are infrequently produced in nature, and as a result, the pearl has become a metaphor for something rare, fine, admirable and valuable. Hidden pearls exist in the world of movies, as well: films that, in spite of being brilliantly crafted and executed, never got the audience they deserved beyond a cult following.
Here are a few of our favorite hidden pearls in the world of film:
1. Night Moves (1975)
Director Arthur Penn hit three home runs in a row with the trifecta of Bonnie & Clyde, Alice’s Restaurant and Little Big Man,...
- 6/28/2015
- by The Hollywood Interview.com
- The Hollywood Interview
African-American film 'Bert Williams: Lime Kiln Club Field Day.' With Williams and Odessa Warren Grey.* Rare, early 20th-century African-American film among San Francisco Silent Film Festival highlights Directed by Edwin Middleton and T. Hayes Hunter, the Biograph Company's Lime Kiln Club Field Day (1913) was the film I most looked forward to at the 2015 edition of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. One hundred years old, unfinished, and destined to be scrapped and tossed into the dust bin, it rose from the ashes. Starring entertainer Bert Williams – whose film appearances have virtually disappeared, but whose legacy lives on – Lime Kiln Club Field Day has become a rare example of African-American life in the first years of the 20th century. In the introduction to the film, the audience was treated to a treasure trove of Black memorabilia: sheet music, stills, promotional material, and newspaper clippings that survive. Details of the...
- 6/16/2015
- by Danny Fortune
- Alt Film Guide
I haven’t traveled all I have to Buenos Aires and back to tell you about how this festival, alongside Mar del Plata and Valdivia (this last one in Chile), form the triad of the most important festivals of Latin America, because if you know about it, you know about it. People that have travelled to Argentina for the past 17 years in April have felt the presence of cinema in the streets—and Buenos Aires is a big city. The importance of a festival that brings over 300 titles, some of them for the first time crossing an ocean, is fundamental for the Latino viewer, as well for those who want to make the effort and come to see the movies that play here. On a closer look, what plays here may seem to be eclectic at times, it is purely due to what seems to be the motto of the festival: discovery.
- 6/8/2015
- by Jaime Grijalba Gómez
- MUBI
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