Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSHong Sang-soo's The Novelist's Film (2022)The competition slate has been announced for this year's Berlinale, featuring the latest by Hong Sang-soo, Claire Denis, Rithy Panh, Phyllis Nagy, Ulrich Seidl, and more. Find the rest of the lineup here. In an interview with Variety, executive Mariette Rissenbeek and artistic director Carlo Chatrian discuss their plans for the festival to be an in-person event. Actor Michel Subor has died at the age of 86. Subor captivated audiences with his performances in films like Jean-Luc Godard's Le petit soldat (1960)—he also was the narrator for François Truffaut's Jules and Jim (1962)—and a number of films by Claire Denis, from Beau travail (1999) and L'intrus (2004) to White Material (2009) and Bastards (2013). We recommend reading Yasmina Price's excellent essay on L'intrus and Subor's distinct historiography as an actor. Recommended VIEWINGThe...
- 1/19/2022
- MUBI
When they dig it up, what will they find? Fans will want to see this forgotten Deutsch-noir masterpiece. Helmut Käutner’s tale of trouble on an American air base in West Germany is a swirl of romantic, political and criminal complications — all down & dirty. A tiny burg that serves as a brothel for U.S. airmen attracts displaced women and dispirited men willing to do what’s necessary to survive. We’ve seem nothing quite like this riveting drama — its sixty-year absence carries a taint of political ‘inconvenience.’ If you like challenging fare like Ace in the Hole and Try and Get Me! you’re going to love it. Both censored and uncensored versions have been restored in excellent quality.
Black Gravel
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1961 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 114, 113 min. / Street Date September 1, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Helmut Wildt, Ingmar Zeisberg, Hans Cossy, Wolfgang Büttner, Anita Höfer, Heinrich Trimbur,...
Black Gravel
Blu-ray
Kl Studio Classics
1961 / B&w / 1:66 widescreen / 114, 113 min. / Street Date September 1, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95
Starring: Helmut Wildt, Ingmar Zeisberg, Hans Cossy, Wolfgang Büttner, Anita Höfer, Heinrich Trimbur,...
- 9/5/2020
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
IIf some of the most consequential filmmakers of contemporary German cinema, such as Christian Petzold, Angela Schanelec, and Thomas Arslan, to cite but a few names that are inevitably lumped together under the loosely defined term “Berlin School,” work primarily in fiction to probe in very different ways the realities of post-unification Germany, then undoubtedly one of the most significant voices working in documentary to do the same is Thomas Heise. However, unlike, for example, Petzold and Schanelec, both of whom recently enjoyed full retrospectives at Film at Lincoln Center in New York, Heise, who has been steadily making films for over three decades, has until now not enjoyed the kind of wider exposure to North American audiences that he rightly deserves. Therefore, the theatrical release of his latest film, Heimat is a Space in Time (2019), a brilliant, expansive essay that uncovers the ineradicable linkages between personal biography and national...
- 3/12/2020
- MUBI
A Straub-Huillet Companion is a series of short essays on the films of Jean-Marie traub and Danièle Huillet, subject of a Mubi retrospective. Straub-Huillet's Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968) is showing on Mubi from April 15 – May 14, 2019.When he met an eighteen-year-old Danièle Huillet in 1954, Jean-Marie Straub, also a mere twenty-one years of age, already had the project that would become Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968) in mind, drawing inspiration from a fictional biography of Frau Bach by Esther Meynell; he immediately asked Huillet to collaborate with him on the script. Which is to say that the pair intended what ultimately became their third film—after the short Machorka-Muff (1963) and the mid-length Not Reconciled (1965)—to serve as a true introduction to their practice. All that is Straub-Huillet is there in Bach: The curious vitality of technically unaffected performers. The reverence for a text’s essence. The unpredictable, stop-start rhythm of the montage,...
- 4/24/2019
- MUBI
“Inside the theater he breathed freely.” –Peter Handke, The Anxiety of the Goalie at the Penalty KickARRIVALBefore I attended the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen for the first time in early May, the place-name had already been linked to a handful of geographical-cultural associations in my mind: the site of the legendary declaration of the 1962 Oberhausen Manifesto by a new generation of German filmmakers that announced the official break from Germany’s post-war cinema (‘The old is dead. We believe in the new’ was their dictum); the place where Wim Wenders grew up and shot a portion of his film Alice in the Cities (remember Alice and Philip Winter driving around town and its environs searching for her grandmother?); the city where Peter Handke premiered his earliest play ‘Self-Accusation’ in 1966; and, most importantly, its centrality in the Ruhr Region—the industrial rust belt of Germany. Some of these things were...
- 5/25/2018
- MUBI
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.Recommended VIEWINGWe found Kiyoshi Kurosawa's semi-serious, semi-tongue-in-cheek sci-fi film Before We Vanish one of the best premieres of last year. The trailer for the American release plays it straight, but captures the wry verve of the film. Highly recommended.We adore the output of Poverty Row studio Republic (Driftwood, The Inside Story, I've Always Loved You), but rarely have had the chance to see the movies on celluloid and looking good. So we'll be front row, center for the Museum of Modern Art's "Republic Rediscovered" series, curated by Martin Scorsese. But just as good as any of those 1940s classics is the trailer for the retrospective, cut by filmmaker Gina Telaroli.The first look at Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far on Foot, Gus Van Sant's new film, set to premiere at Sundance.
- 1/17/2018
- MUBI
Mubi's retrospective on filmmaker Peter Nestler, A Vision of Resistance, presented as part of a collaboration with the Film Society of Lincoln Center, is showing in from July 18 - September 1, 2017 in most countries around the world.By the Dike SluiceWhen German documentarian Peter Nestler sees a glass, he doesn't just see a glass. He sees factories, he sees furnaces that melt the glass and he sees hands that toil and mold it. When he sees a city, he sees the hills, the roads and the sluice, and then looks more intently at the children running on the road, the women carrying their babies to work and the men playing cards in a bar. He sees layers within the unidimensional cinema space and reads the politics, the geography and the history through the people he sees, especially the children. His Marxist lens sifts through footage as his eyes try to represent...
- 8/8/2017
- MUBI
Foreplays is a column that explores under-known short films by renowned directors. Peter Nestler's Death and Devil (2009) is available to watch on Mubi from August 2 - September 1, 2017 in most countries around the world as part of the retrospective A Vision of Resistance.Death and Devil (2009) holds a special place in the filmography of Peter Nestler, marking an intriguing crossroads. Nestler’s work is strongly associated with filmmakers including Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet, Alexander Kluge, and Harun Farocki. Like them, he is primarily concerned with history and politics, intent on unveiling the traces of fascism, documenting the processes of the industrialization of cities, and narrating the conditions and struggles of laborers. But here, Nestler turns his gaze to something more immediately personal: his grandfather, Count Eric von Rosen (1879-1948), a celebrated explorer, ethnographer, and archaeologist. The film seemingly presents itself as a linear biography, giving special importance to an African...
- 8/5/2017
- MUBI
Mubi's retrospective on filmmaker Peter Nestler, A Vision of Resistance, presented as part of a collaboration with the Film Society of Lincoln Center, is showing in from July 18 - September 1, 2017 in most countries around the world.EssaysIt’s difficult to talk about Peter Nestler without talking about historical materialism and the dialectic, which is an interesting problem for a filmmaker to have—interesting, at least, now that his Marxism is in part the reason for his recent recovery in the United States rather than, as it was in 1966, the reason for a self-imposed exile from his home country. Born in 1937 in Freiburg im Breisgau—later incorporated into France’s West German partition—at 18 Nestler traveled abroad (in his words, “I went to sea”), returning for school in Munich. He made his first film, By the Dike Sluice [Am Siel], in 1962, and over the next several years fell in with a crowd of...
- 8/2/2017
- MUBI
PachamamaBeginning Saturday, the Film Society of Lincoln Center is bringing to American shores the work of one of Germany’s finest filmmakers, Peter Nestler. Arranged in nine-parts, the extensive series is a major effort to make Nestler’s work better-known in the United States, where it has rarely shown. Nestler is a singular filmmaker, one for whom I have great affection, but also one who came to making films in a time and place singular in and of itself. The movies Germany produced for roughly the fifteen years after the reformation of the country after World War II is a period often misunderstood by cinephiles and, at least until recently, underrepresented in retrospective programming outside of the country itself. In the 1950s and 1960s, German leftists were outraged by the continuing presence of Nazis in the government of the young Federal Republic, and by the way that polite society did...
- 7/2/2017
- MUBI
Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.
Metrograph
The best of Ozu in one series.
Films by members of Magnum Photos will screen, as does Alan Clarke’s Rita, Sue and Bob Too.
Museum of the Moving Image
The Spielberg series screens three underseen, rediscovery-ready titles this weekend.
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Largely unseen, the films of Peter Nestler, a key figure in post-war German cinema, are being given their due in a new series.
Nitehawk Cinema
Midnight brings the restored Monterey Pop, Street Trash, and The Holy Mountain.
The Blues Brothers (with pre-show performance) and The Lost World screen before noon.
Quad Cinema
The films made and loved by Bertrand Tavernier are screening.
Funeral Parade of Roses continues its run.
Museum of Modern Art
The Philippine series continues running, including two films by Lav Diaz.
IFC Center
Midnight brings To Live and Die in L.A., The Thing, The Italian Job, and Taxi Driver.
During the day, Stalker, No Country for Old Men, and Monterey Pop are offered.
Metrograph
The best of Ozu in one series.
Films by members of Magnum Photos will screen, as does Alan Clarke’s Rita, Sue and Bob Too.
Museum of the Moving Image
The Spielberg series screens three underseen, rediscovery-ready titles this weekend.
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Largely unseen, the films of Peter Nestler, a key figure in post-war German cinema, are being given their due in a new series.
Nitehawk Cinema
Midnight brings the restored Monterey Pop, Street Trash, and The Holy Mountain.
The Blues Brothers (with pre-show performance) and The Lost World screen before noon.
Quad Cinema
The films made and loved by Bertrand Tavernier are screening.
Funeral Parade of Roses continues its run.
Museum of Modern Art
The Philippine series continues running, including two films by Lav Diaz.
IFC Center
Midnight brings To Live and Die in L.A., The Thing, The Italian Job, and Taxi Driver.
During the day, Stalker, No Country for Old Men, and Monterey Pop are offered.
- 6/22/2017
- by Nick Newman
- The Film Stage
I attended the Viennale for the first time this year, both because I was already in Vienna and had been there since the summer with the purpose of improving my German and because the festival was presenting my own film, Short Stay. Below are some fading impressions written in the days following the festival of films I was happiest to have seen.In Memory of Zsóka Nestler (Metrokino, 16mm & Dcp)Up the DanubeThe only other Nestler film with which I am familiar is Ödenwaldstetten (1964), a documentary shot in Bayern in static, black and white images profiling people who live and work in the German countryside, speaking in a variety of dialects. In a tribute to Nestler’s recently deceased collaborator and wife, Zsóka, the festival screened a program of three films the two had directed together: I Budapest (In Budapest,1969), Uppför Donau (Up the Danube, 1969) and Zeit (Time, 1992). When I Budapest began with a brief,...
- 11/29/2016
- MUBI
Above: From Greece (1965)
In London in November 2012 a retrospective of the films of German filmmaker Peter Nestler appeared for the first time in the English speaking world, where Nestler was and is still largely unknown, despite having a few vocal fans, including Jean-Marie Straub, Hartmut Bitomsky, and Harun Farocki. The clarity of Nestler’s films reveals the paucity of the contemporary documentarian’s work; in his films every image and sound counts, every idea is expressed precisely and with purpose, whether it is a history of manual glass making techniques in Sweden, or a look at Hungarian proletariat artists who worked in factories or as farmers all their lives, and now make art for themselves and for their families. Yet, like Straub, Nestler works only with what already exists, his cinema preconditioned on attentiveness to the environment in which he films: his compositions, voice-over, editing, etc, all come after the...
In London in November 2012 a retrospective of the films of German filmmaker Peter Nestler appeared for the first time in the English speaking world, where Nestler was and is still largely unknown, despite having a few vocal fans, including Jean-Marie Straub, Hartmut Bitomsky, and Harun Farocki. The clarity of Nestler’s films reveals the paucity of the contemporary documentarian’s work; in his films every image and sound counts, every idea is expressed precisely and with purpose, whether it is a history of manual glass making techniques in Sweden, or a look at Hungarian proletariat artists who worked in factories or as farmers all their lives, and now make art for themselves and for their families. Yet, like Straub, Nestler works only with what already exists, his cinema preconditioned on attentiveness to the environment in which he films: his compositions, voice-over, editing, etc, all come after the...
- 11/26/2013
- by Christopher Small
- MUBI
News.
The latest issue from Bright Lights Film Journal has arrived, featuring pieces on Godard, Polanski, a feature article on film editing, and much more. The first of two Kickstarter projects to bring to your attention: Mason Cardiff, son of the great cinematographer Jack Cardiff who worked with Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell and John Huston among others, is trying to raise money in order to restore his father's film Steel:
"During World War 2 he was assigned films to photograph about the war effort. One of these films was called Steel.
Steel was made in 1945 as World War 2 was approaching its end. Shot in several locations around England, this beautiful film shows the process of making steel chronicling the journey from the iron fields to the steelworks.
This 30-minute film uses the American process of Technicolor to spotlight some of the highly skilled craftsmen who for generations devoted their working lives to steel.
The latest issue from Bright Lights Film Journal has arrived, featuring pieces on Godard, Polanski, a feature article on film editing, and much more. The first of two Kickstarter projects to bring to your attention: Mason Cardiff, son of the great cinematographer Jack Cardiff who worked with Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Powell and John Huston among others, is trying to raise money in order to restore his father's film Steel:
"During World War 2 he was assigned films to photograph about the war effort. One of these films was called Steel.
Steel was made in 1945 as World War 2 was approaching its end. Shot in several locations around England, this beautiful film shows the process of making steel chronicling the journey from the iron fields to the steelworks.
This 30-minute film uses the American process of Technicolor to spotlight some of the highly skilled craftsmen who for generations devoted their working lives to steel.
- 11/14/2012
- by Adam Cook
- MUBI
The retrospective dedicated to the work of Peter Nestler organized by Tate Modern and Goethe-Institut in London that runs between the 10th and the 17th of November is the first big retrospective of Nestler’s films in the Anglophone world. The program of the documentary festival Dok Leipzig also featured a collection of Nestler’s films, and absolut Medien just put out a DVD box set featuring many of Nestler’s films. This interview, conducted with Martin Grennberger, is a shorter version of the original text published at Magasinet Walden and was translated to English by myself and Kurt Walker.
Martin Grennberger: The documentary filmmaker Hartmut Bitomsky has described your thematic approaches and ideological concerns as a product of attitudes that took shape during the 1950s. Specifically, a position which tries to establish a functional critical attitude and a policy based on an anti-fascist stance; but also criticizes what you...
Martin Grennberger: The documentary filmmaker Hartmut Bitomsky has described your thematic approaches and ideological concerns as a product of attitudes that took shape during the 1950s. Specifically, a position which tries to establish a functional critical attitude and a policy based on an anti-fascist stance; but also criticizes what you...
- 11/13/2012
- by Stefan Ramstedt
- MUBI
Full of smoke, casual sexism and happy punters, a series of nostalgic films about pubs leaves Nicholas Lezard mourning our lost sense of community
The low point in Roll Out the Barrel: The British Pub on Film (BFI), a 2-disc collection of corporate and promotional films about pubs, comes about halfway through the second disc, in a 21-minute film from 1972 extolling the alleged virtues of Bass Charrington Ltd. After a dismaying montage of modern architectural horrors that apparently hoped to trade as licensed premises, and boosterism about the new popularity of lager (cue shots of endless cans of Tennent's rolling off the production lines; in one unintentionally amusing set-piece, a French cognac magnate is poured a tin of Carling Black Label by way of hospitality), the mouthpiece for the corporation confidently says that what Bass is doing is "giving the public what they want".
Usually, when one comes across something like this,...
The low point in Roll Out the Barrel: The British Pub on Film (BFI), a 2-disc collection of corporate and promotional films about pubs, comes about halfway through the second disc, in a 21-minute film from 1972 extolling the alleged virtues of Bass Charrington Ltd. After a dismaying montage of modern architectural horrors that apparently hoped to trade as licensed premises, and boosterism about the new popularity of lager (cue shots of endless cans of Tennent's rolling off the production lines; in one unintentionally amusing set-piece, a French cognac magnate is poured a tin of Carling Black Label by way of hospitality), the mouthpiece for the corporation confidently says that what Bass is doing is "giving the public what they want".
Usually, when one comes across something like this,...
- 6/29/2012
- by Nicholas Lezard
- The Guardian - Film News
I. Festivals And Ideology
"I cannot tell a lie," writes Jonathan Rosenbaum in the catalogue introduction to the retrospective on American film comedy he curated for this year's Viennale (in collaboration with the Austrian Filmmuseum), "the initial concept and impulse for this series weren’t my own." A paragraph later, he goes on to explain, "[...] both the selection of the films and the preparation of this catalogue [...] came only after I overcame a certain amount of resistance." And as if he weren't transparent enough, Rosenbaum adds, "I was tempted by [the Viennale and Filmmuseum directors' joint proposal], but various roadblocks stood in the way, most of them either logistical or ideological." One of these roadblocks, "a reluctance to restrict [himself] to 'American cinema' after living through eight years of American separatism and exceptionalism as propounded and promulgated by the administration of George W. Bush," is not much of an ideological leap for those familiar with Rosenbaum.
"I cannot tell a lie," writes Jonathan Rosenbaum in the catalogue introduction to the retrospective on American film comedy he curated for this year's Viennale (in collaboration with the Austrian Filmmuseum), "the initial concept and impulse for this series weren’t my own." A paragraph later, he goes on to explain, "[...] both the selection of the films and the preparation of this catalogue [...] came only after I overcame a certain amount of resistance." And as if he weren't transparent enough, Rosenbaum adds, "I was tempted by [the Viennale and Filmmuseum directors' joint proposal], but various roadblocks stood in the way, most of them either logistical or ideological." One of these roadblocks, "a reluctance to restrict [himself] to 'American cinema' after living through eight years of American separatism and exceptionalism as propounded and promulgated by the administration of George W. Bush," is not much of an ideological leap for those familiar with Rosenbaum.
- 11/13/2009
- MUBI
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