Collected Data
RIP Seijun Suzuki 1923 - 2017
David Hudson for Fandor Keyframe;
Seijun Suzuki passed away in a Tokyo hospital on February 13. He was 93. In the Hollywood Reporter, Gavin J. Blair notes that his death was announced today by Nikkatsu, “the studio that famously fired him in 1967 after 12 years and 40 films, for what is now seen as his masterpiece Branded to Kill. The film was made in black and white as a punishment for his work on Tokyo Drifter—now also considered a classic—the year before. Both films were intended by Nikkatsu to be straightforward, B-movie yakuza gangster flicks, but Suzuki’s experimental style, unconventional narrative flow and comedy touches were too much for the studio bosses. Suzuki sued for unfair dismissal and found himself shunned by the industry and unable to direct for a decade.”
SEIJUN SUZUKI, 1923 – 2017
"This is Lipsett’s truest gift. The ability to make us feel and see anew, and in doing so, illuminating and revealing the many mechanisms through which we usually choose to remind numb and blind."
Carolyne Weldon for NFB Blog;
Unusual and unsettling, Lipsett’s films are complex and tightly-wound. On the surface, or at first glimpse, all one experiences is chaos. The films appear disjointed, headache-inducing, even rambling. The visuals race from one thing to the next, and the sound doesn’t match.
But closer scrutiny reveals the depth and scope of Lipsett’s genius. Below the surface, things are moving. Things everyone stumbles upon once in a while: existential dread, unease, futility. Powerful feelings that most of us prefer to suppress and ignore.
Inside the Disturbed and Disturbing Collage Films of Avant-Garde Genius Arthur Lipsett
"A Touch of Zen will remain Hu’s official masterpiece: a repository of his unique cinematic artistry and further proof that Asian action cinema is one of the glories of world film culture."
Most famously, Hu is a daring cutter. The smoothness of his dialogue scenes gives way to the majestic disjunctions of the fights; sometimes the editing stretches time, sometimes it pinches it. Some shots are only six frames long—a quarter of a second on the screen. The effect is to make these warriors’ prowess all the more astonishing: the camera can’t keep up with them. In the bamboo-forest sequence, Shi and Yang pop in and out from every side, scampering, hopping, swooping, dive-bombing. After a flurry of close-ups, a sudden long shot forces us to hunt for the characters in crannies of the frame. Xu’s sudden attack on the abbot is rendered in a jump cut with the force of a fist blow: leaping from far back in the shot, Xu suddenly drops into the foreground, nearly in our faces. Here, cinematic technique amplifies the staccato force of disciplined, near miraculous physical action.
A Touch of Zen: Prowling, Scheming, Flying
"This is simply perfect artistry. With Dimitri Tiomkin’s symbolic score, perpetuating the omnipresent theme of duality, and William H. Ziegler’s masterful editing, Strangers on a Train is easily one of the top exhibits in the genre’s history."
Cinephilia and Beyond;
Even though a lot of film scholars over the years considered the movie at least to a degree inferior to Hitchcock’s landmark films such as Vertigo or Rear Window, this captivating story of two people meeting on a train and conversing about the execution of a perfect murder has forever remained a much desired topic of analysis and debate among film enthusiasts all over the world. What distinguishes Strangers on a Train from similar films, even within Hitchcock’s own canon, is the fascinating idea at the center of it–the motif of doubles, the inner battle of good and evil in all human beings–as well as impressive technical virtuosity we grew accustomed to when talking about the works of the British highly commercial artist. The suspense is so powerful it can be felt though the screen, the acting is great, mostly thanks to Hitchcock’s old friend from Rope Farley Granger and his antagonistic counterpart Robert Walker, the script… oh, the script. If acquiring the rights to Highsmith’s novel was a walk in the park—by purposely leaving out his name from the negotiation process, Hitchcock managed to get the rights for a meagre 7,500 dollars–the process of finding the right screenwriter and producing a satisfactory script was nothing less than a hike over the Himalayas.
'STRANGERS ON A TRAIN': A TECHNICALLY PERFECT PSYCHOLOGICAL CAROUSEL AS ONE OF HITCHCOCK'S BEST
"And then, as mysteriously as it had appeared, it vanished, leaving only memories of its audacious visual imagery in its wake."
In the era we live in, ecstasy is in short supply. Escape from reality is one thing, and it’s in high demand right now, packaged and sold in a seemingly endless series of comic book and blockbuster franchise films that bludgeon audiences into submission, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. Rather, I’m examining a group of films made in the early to mid 1960s that openly celebrated life, and our connection to it, through a strategy of sensory overload that sought to make the viewer almost a participant in the film’s content, to convey, without restraint, the sheer joy of existence in world of seemingly endless possibility. Perhaps it’s impossible to make such films today; perhaps we have lost our connection to the real world to such a degree that only CGI effects and amped-up soundtracks reach mass audiences.
Ecstatic Cinema: Romantic Experimental Filmmaking in the 1960s
"Mr. Baillie creates a film that represents less the world as it seems to exist than one that’s been refracted through his being."
Manhole Dargis for the NYT;
In many respects, the image is perfectly ordinary, the kind that you chance on if you’re driving along, say, a California road, as Mr. Baillie was when he popped out of a car, seized by inspiration. Yet, as the camera continues to float left and Fitzgerald begins singing (“All my life/I’ve been waiting for you”), something magical — call it cinema — happens in the middle of the first verse. As the words “My wonderful one/I’ve begun” warm the soundtrack, a splash of red flowers on the fence suddenly appears, as if the film itself were offering you a garland.
Bruce Baillie, a Film-Poet Collapsing Inner and Outer Space
"I want to beg filmmakers (young ones especially) to try something else."
Watch: "Cutting the Edge: Freedom in Framing"
A few thoughts;
While the author acknowledges that mixing aspect ratio’s predates digital, they under play how old of an idea it is. Cinematographer Robert Richardson was experimenting with this in the early 90’s. Long before even digital editing was the norm.
How many films today mix aspect ratios as a reality of having limited access to the IMAX format? IMAX is very expensive. Most American films that shoot IMAX only do so for select scenes.
"Top 10: Errol Morris"
Errol Morris, the reverred documentary filmmaker, has revealed his top 10 programme for this year’s International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (Nov 18-29).
Each year, the festival invites an important figure in the world of documentary to compile a list of ten important works of factual film, all of which will be screened as part of the programme.
Top 10: Errol Morris
Here’s Errol Morris’ list;
• Bright Leaves (USA, 2002) dir. Ross McElwee
• Fata Morgana (Germany, 1971) dir. Werner Herzog
• It Felt Like a Kiss (UK, 2009) dir. Adam Curtis
• Land Without Bread (Spain, 1932) dir. Luis Buñuel
• Let There Be Light (USA, 1946) dir. John Huston
• Man With A Movie Camera (USSR, 1929) dir. Dziga Vertov
• One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevitch (France, 1999) dir. Chris Marker
• Tales of the Grim Sleeper (USA/UK, 2014) by Nick Broomfield
• The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On (Japan, 1987) dir. Kazuo Hara
• Welfare (USA, 1975) dir. Frederick Wiseman
They are also screening a retrospective of his work, including one of my all time favourite films, Fast, Cheap and Out of Control.
An animal trainer, a gardener specialised in converting yew hedges into animal figures, an expert in the field of mole rats and a robot technician are the protagonists of Errol Morris’ playful philosophical exercise about the relationship between man and animal, culture and nature.
"It certainly seems to be keeping their makers (“architects” feels like a more accurate term than “creators”) from any sense of joy"
When, in the space of three months, all three movies in a genre arrive with very public news that they are not the movies they could have been, something has gone wrong. There is, I think, an increasing sense that every mark the comic-book genre is forced to hit — origin stories, Easter eggs, big-picture continuity, action beats, fan service, world-stakes battles, potential sequels, post-credit sequences — is obstructing them from being movies.
The ‘Fantastic Four’ Fallout: The Future of Comic-Book Franchises
Watch: "Chaos Cinema Parts 1 - 3" by Matthias Stork
The video essay Chaos Cinema, administered by Indiewire's journalistic blog PRESS PLAY, examines the extreme aesthetic principles of 21st century action films. These films operate on techniques that, while derived from classical cinema, threaten to shatter the established continuity formula. Chaos reigns in image and sound.
"In-house Troma films are by definition low budget. In a world where almost $1 million is the going rate for indie film production, Kaufman is generating films for half of that."
Watch: "Sitting Down with the Director of 'Mad Max: Fury Road'"
Mad Max Fury Road is amazing.
Read: "Nitrate days and nights"
There was also an argument for keeping nitrate around on artistic grounds. As Roger put it: “It’s pretty.” Everyone I know agrees. In the late 1970s Kristin and I saw at MoMA a double bill of two nitrate prints, Gance’s La Roue and Ford’s How Green Was My Valley. They glistened. Later, attending the Pordenone Giornate del Cinema Muto and Bologna’s Cinema Ritrovato, we saw lots of nitrate prints and were always overwhelmed. The images, especially from very early films, seemed at once sharp in contour and soft in textures.
So nitrate images look great. But why? Some say that nitrate prints have more silver in the emulsion than acetate ones. In This Film Is Dangerous, John Reed suggests that the increased “silver load” yields solidity in shadow areas and vitality in white ones. He also speculates that nitrate-based copies may benefit from projector lenses, screen surfaces, and carbon-arc projection (this last a topic I’ve touched on briefly with respect to Technicolor). If all these factors are in play, the beauty of the copy may be only contingently related to nitrate as such.
Nitrate days and nights
"Lipsett’s filmmaking opened new directions and possibilities"
A Trip Down Memory Lane by Arthur Lipsett, National Film Board of Canada
Brett Kashmere;
When Lipsett, fresh out of Montreal art school, was hired to work in the Unit B’s animation department in 1958, an independent avant-garde cinema did not exist in Canada. In the absence of tradition, Lipsett blazed a new trail. His pioneering collage films imparted exciting possibilities for handcrafted, personal, cameraless, and found footage filmmaking, both in his time and in the present day.
Inventing a Tradition: Arthur Lipsett and the NFB’s “Studio X”
Arthur Lipsett was a genius.
"Agnès Varda Will Be Awarded Honorary Palme d’Or: Cannes"
Gleaners and I (2000. Dir. Agnes Varda)
Kinsey Lowe for Deadline;
Agnès Varda will be honored for the body of her work at the closing ceremony of this year’s Cannes Film Festival. She’s the first woman selected for this distinction. Only three other directors — Woody Allen, Clint Eastwood and Bernardo Bertolucci — have been recognized in this way for the global impact of their body of work.
From her first film, La Pointe Courte in 1954, Varda’s style reflected elements of what would become the French New Wave although because she preceded that movement her work is more Left Bank in style. Her next feature, Cleo From 5 To 7, was a documentary style look at a singer awaiting results of a biopsy, which foreshadowed Varda’s fascination with human mortality.
Agnès Varda Will Be Awarded Honorary Palme d’Or: Cannes
"Happy Together is less a film with a subject than a film about not being able to find one."
Wong has stressed that Happy Together was inspired by contemporary Latin American fiction, Manuel Puig’s The Buenos Aires Affair in particular: “I was besotted with the title and always wanted to use it for one of my pictures. Then, after the shooting in Buenos Aires, I finally realized the film is really not about the city, so my long cherished title went out of the window and I needed to come up with something new.”
Cult Confusion (HAPPY TOGETHER)
"It’s worth keeping in mind the fact that lists such as these can be as misleading as they are illuminating."
For all the telling changes on this year’s list, there was still a stable core of familiar favourites, films which seem to have established a more or less permanent place in our national cinematic consciousness. Atom Egoyan’s masterful adaptation of Russell Banks’ The Sweet Hereafter placed third for the second year in a row, while Denys Arcand’s beloved Jesus of Montreal and David Cronenberg’s most disturbing, yet most austere work (at least for him), Dead Ringers, returned as well.
Top 10 Canadian films of all time
All of the films are good (I have seen 8 of the 11) but it’s a very safe, very boring, very ‘Canadian’ list.
Two films I would add - 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould and Project Grizzly.
"You can’t rely on an industry that serves Hollywood. You need to be a technician and a filmmaker."
The decline in commercial film production, however, has been countered by a rebirth in the phenomenon of artist-run film laboratories. What in the early Nineties was limited to a handful of cooperatively owned, independent labs, mostly in France, has grown into an international network of over 30, many of them formed within the last several years. The decline of film processing created a surplus of cheap, unwanted equipment that, in the right hands, could be repurposed for the smaller-scale operation of an artist-run lab. Saved from the scrap heap, many discarded contact printers and lomo processing tanks have begun a second life as artists’ tools.
Kitchen Sink Cinema: Artist-Run Film Laboratories
Read: "1932: MGM invents the future (Part 1)" by David Bordwell
This is what we have come to expect in mainstream cinema. Not only inner monologues but all channels of subjectively tinted information are usually slanted toward one character per scene. So a film might have several point-of-view characters in its overall running time (e.g., Psycho), but any given scene is likely to be anchored around one.
1932: MGM invents the future (Part 1)
"Watching a movie, whether in the cinema, or on a monitor is really quite different to normal sight."
John Clark;
We still tend to assume that the camera somehow mimics the eye and brain, while a projector is basically a camera in reverse, which was indeed sometimes the case in early cinema and for amateur film-makers who could adapt their cameras to project their film after processing. However, for Digital Cinema the Digital Light Projector ticks along at 144fps, whatever the official frame rate of the movie, with individual frames described as being 'flashed' more than once to fill the available time (though the very concept of 'frame rate' and 'flashing' shouldn't really be applied to 3-chip DLP's, whose 'micro-mirrors' oscillate 50,000 times a second with information up-dated in a modulated form to change each mirrors' pitch). This remarkable technical achievement is quite different to the traditional 'maltese cross' light/dark approach to match the stop/start motion of a print as it moves through the projector, or the scanned lines of a monitor. The notion of 'persistence of vision' building a perceptual bridge between one frame, or half-frame and the next need no longer apply.
What is the "cinema feel"?
R.I.P. Albert Maysles 1926-2015
In 1960, Maysles co-directed the iconic vérité entry Primary, about the Democratic primary election campaigns of Kennedy and Humphrey, and later the documentary Salesman (1968), a portrait of four Boston door-to-door Bible salesmen. Maysles was made a Guggenheim Fellow in 1965 and went on to make such films as Rolling Stones doc Gimme Shelter (1970) and Grey Gardens (1976), a portrait of a mother and daughter living in a dilapidated East Hampton mansion. Maysles Films – the director’s production company – has produced many films on art and artists, with Grey Gardens cited by many doc-makers as a huge influence.
Master documentarian Albert Maysles passes away
"Remember when you were a kid and you would joke about “opposite day”? Apparently that happened in this video."
If we lived in a world where Frozen was the only movie that had ever been released, the CEO of Concerned Women for America might have a point. But we don’t live in that world. We literally live in the opposite world that’s being described in that above video. Disney itself releases about 15 movies a year where a man is the hero.
Fox News Says Movies Don’t Have Enough Male Heroes; Cites ‘Frozen’ As Main Culprit
Click through and watch the video.
Watch: "Sätta Ljus - On the lighting of The Sacrifice/Offret"
via Cinephilia and Beyond.
Sven Nykvist;
A personal motto of mine is “It is never too late.” Many, as they reach the age of sixty start to feel as if they are at the end of themselves, the official retirement age is fast approaching. Thanks and goodbye. But, those of us who are freelance and rather independent often do not think along those lines. Creativity surely doesn’t cease at a certain age. Many artists, composers, authors, and filmmakers are still active will into their eighties—not to mention actors and actresses. The fact is that I received some of my most exciting assignments, and did some of my best movies, at an age usually associated with retirement. It began with Andrej Tarkovski’s The Sacrifice
"We realize that color is violent and for that reason we restrained it."
In the beginning, only brief sequences—sometimes just five minutes long—would be colorized in otherwise black-and-white films. Technicolor was a proprietary process, and it was expensive. "Very often, fashion shows [would be] in color," Layton said. "It was also kind of common to have, if the lovers in the film got married, the wedding would be in color. Really splashy things. If you were paying for color, you wanted to see color. It wasn't always subtle or artistic use."
How Technicolor Changed Storytelling
Read: "The Getting of rhythm: Room at the bottom"
Filmmakers solve the problem of rhythm in practice, often brilliantly. Those of us who want to understand how films work, and work upon us, want to get specific and explicit. What is this thing called cinematic rhythm? What contributes to it? Can we analyze it and explain its grip? Very few scholars have tackled these questions; they’re hard. In her new book, Film Rhythm after Sound: Technology, Music, and Performance, our friend and colleague Lea Jacobs takes us quite a ways toward some answers.
The Getting of rhythm: Room at the bottom
Watch: "The Bad Sleep Well (1960) - The Geometry of a Scene" by Tony Zhou
Read: "Filling the box: The Never-Ending Pan & Scan Story"
It’s been years since I clicked my cable remote to the Sundance Channel and the Independent Film Channel, now known as IFC. Seeing them a couple of weeks ago was a mild shock. Now each boasted a bug in the lower right corner, and swarming over the image were lots of texts plugging other programs. Worse, there were commercials for weight-loss scams, Burger King, and Portlandia. More to the point here, these services give us a new version of pan-and-scan.
Filling the box: The Never-Ending Pan & Scan Story
"A problem/solution way of thinking can clarify some problems in the history of filmmaking"
Asking why? about something in an artwork actually veils two different questions.The first is: How did it get there? The answer is a causal story about how the element came to be included.The second sense of why is: What’s it doing there? That’s not a question of causes but of functions. How does the element contribute to the other parts and the artwork as a whole?
Problems, problems: Wyler’s workaround
A new Bordwell blog entry is a great way to start the New Year.
"The registry will help ensure that these films will be preserved for all time."
Watch: "The Beast of Turin" Trailer
"Although the sample size is small, these results indicate that not everything in Hollywood is immune to change"
10. The Studios Might Just Learn to Innovate. Warners and Turner have had their incubators for some time now, helping to give rise to platforms like Reelhouse. Now Disney is also in the soup. Incubators and accelerators might teach a few folks some new tricks, although it has also been said that such ploys are just attempts at employee retention as some of the big BizDev guns would flee the ship if they didn’t have sparkly new toys to play with.
Ten Really Good Things in Film Biz 2014
"The audience is disappearing—and it won’t be coming back."
Hollywood is a “hedgehog,” good now at only one thing (making tentpoles), and no longer a “fox,” fluid and adept at many things. We have reached a point where we should accept the death of the Hollywood film for adults. Hollywood is a one-horse town.
Ten Really Bad Things in Film Biz 2014
UPDATE: Mr Hope decided 10 Bad Things wasn’t enough…
30 Really Bad Things In FilmBiz 2014
“Unlike some of the others we still think the reason people go to the movies is to see movies.”
But what really has the exhibition industry unnerved are two statistics released in the spring by the Motion Picture Association of America. Last year, despite a glut of extravagant action movies, the number of frequent moviegoers ages 18 to 24 dropped 17 percent, compared to a year earlier; the 12-to-17 age bracket dropped 13 percent.
To Lure Young, Movie Theaters Shake, Smell and Spritz
Read: "Intensified Continuity: Visual Style in Contemporary American Film" by David Borwell
Today, most films are cut more rapidly than at any other time in U.S. studio filmmaking. Indeed, editing rates may soon hit a wall; it's hard to imagine a feature- length narrative movie averaging less than 1.5 seconds per shot.
(PDF) Intensified Continuity: Visual Style in Contemporary American Film
"But that’s the point: Godard likes his audience to work hard"
A loner of French cinema; he is an onlooker, at one with his thoughts and with an inner commentary that spills onto the movie screen with vigour and passion. At 83 he is still very much into his craft, and his skill as an editor, though very much of the old school, still has the capacity to impress
IN CONVERSATION WITH JEAN-LUC GODARD. FILMMAKER EXTRAORDINAIRE
My last Godard link for the day. I promise.
Read: "ADIEU AU LANGAGE: 2 + 2 x 3D” by David Bordwell
The brute fact is that these movies are, moment by moment, awfully opaque. Not only do characters act mysteriously, implausibly, farcically, irrationally. It’s hard to assign them particular wants, needs, and personalities. They come into conflict, but we’re not always sure why. In addition, we aren’t often told, at least explicitly, how the characters connect with one another. The plots are highly elliptical, leaving out big chunks of action and merely suggesting them, often by a single close-up or an offscreen sound. Godard’s narratives pose not only problems of interpretation but problems of comprehension—building a coherent story world and the actions and agents in it.
ADIEU AU LANGAGE: 2 + 2 x 3D
And a follow up...
Say hello to GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE
"The 83-year-old filmmaker has the attitude of a young innovator."
"For every project, he's looking for the unknown," Maraval says. "He looks for an experience. He doesn't know where he goes, and that's what motivates him. That's what I call being very young. ... He's always very ready for adventure."
At 83, Filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard Makes The Leap To 3-D
"So I learned the rules, and I saw that it’s not very interesting with the rules.”
For the deep-horizon outside images, Aragno similarly ignored the usual guidelines: “Hollywood says you shouldn’t have more than six centimeters between cameras, so I began at 12 to see what happened.”
Goodbye to 3-D Rules
"I’m not saying I’m like, ALLOWED to do this, I’m just saying this is what I do when I try to learn about staging,"
this filmmaker forgot more about staging by the time he made his first feature than I know to this day (for example, no matter how fast the cuts come, you always know exactly where you are—that's high level visual math shit).
Raiders
Raiders is a great film.
Listen: "On Narrative with David Bordwell" Podcast
Watch: "Human Highway" Trailer
Human Highway (Director's Cut) Trailer from Shakey Pictures on Vimeo.
The original version of this film is horrible, except for this...
(via exclaim!)The flick features a (...) collaborative version of "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)" with Devo (and Booji Boy).
Which is brilliant. I’ve been dreaming of soundtrack release for years.
“This word, ‘documentarian’? I am here today to declare that word dead. That word is never to be used again."
The director spent the latter half of his keynote outlining a 13-point manifesto for filmmakers:
1) Don’t make a doc, make a movie. “The art is more important than the politics,” said Moore. “Because if I make a [crappy] movie, my politics won’t get through to anybody. The art has to come first.”
2) Don’t tell me anything I already know. “Give people something new they haven’t seen before,” said Moore. “With Roger & Me I said there shouldn’t be one shot of an unemployment line. People are numb to those images.”
3) Don’t let your documentary resemble a college lecture. “We have to invent a different kind of model than the college lecture model,” said Moore.
4) Too many of your documentaries feel like medicine. “Don’t show a doc that’s going to kill [an audience's] evening,” said Moore.
5) The Left is boring. “It’s why we have a hard time convincing people to think about some of the things we’re concerned about,” said Moore. “The Left has lost its sense of humor and we need to be less worried.”
6) Why don’t we name names? “Why don’t we go after the corporations and name them by name?” asked Moore. “You will be sued. People will be mad at you. But so what?”
7) Make your films personal. “People want to hear your voice,” said Moore. “It’s what most docs stay away from, and most don’t like narration. But who’s saying this film?”
8) Point your camera at the cameras. Moore advised doc makers to challenge the mainstream media and film its coverage of various events.
9) Follow the examples of non-fiction books and television. “People love to watch [Jon] Stewart and [Stephen] Colbert,” he said. “Why don’t you try to make films that come from the same spirit? People just want the truth and they want to be entertained.”
10) Film only the people who disagree with you. The director said that while filming Roger & Me he tried to stay away from interviewing union workers to tell the story, since they were basically friends. Interviews with those who held contradictory opinions are harder to secure, but more interesting to audiences, said Moore.
11) Make sure you’re getting emotional when filming. “Are you getting mad when filming a scene? Are you crying?” asked Moore. “That’s evidence that the audience will respond that way, too… [You] are a stand-in for the audience.”
12) Less is more. “Edit, and make it shorter,” Moore advised, saying it’s okay to let audiences fill in the gaps. “People love that you trust they have a brain.”
13) Sound is more important than picture. “Sound carries the story,” said Moore. “Don’t cheat on the sound, and don’t be cheap with the sound.”
TIFF ’14: Michael Moore presents 13-point doc manifesto
I love a good Manifesto.
"This is the first year in our history that we're not actually showing a film,"
Franey explained that this will be the first year that none of the selections will be presented on celluloid—all the films are digital."That doesn't really matter though," he said, "because what we're here for is great storytelling on the big screen and most people in the audience do not know or care whether it's shot digitally or on celluloid."
Vancouver International Film Festival reveals changes for 2014
“Most people in the audience do not know or care”??? Has this guy ever been to the festival? In an attempt to gain new audience they are turning their back the audience that built the festival.
Read: "A Celestial Cinémathèque? or, Film Archives and Me: A Semi-Personal History" by David Bordwell
Fascinated by film as a teenager, I quickly absorbed the tastes that created the canon. I read books celebrating the great silent films and the major studio pictures of the 1930s and 1940s. I bought an 8mm copy of the Odessa Steps sequence and projected it on my bedroom wall.
A Celestial Cinémathèque? or, Film Archives and Me: A Semi-Personal History
"The VIFF Film and Television Forum has a new name, VIFF Industry"
This year’s forum will see more industry guests and speakers from LA., and will expand its focus from film and television to broad-based screen entertainment, in recognition of Vancouver’s growing visual effects, animation and gaming industries.VIFF Industry also wants to promote Vancouver as a production and post-production centre, by participating in trade missions, for example, and helping to facilitate international co-productions, in particular with India and China.
Vancouver film festival revamps its focus
This is unfortunate. While I’ve been very critical of VIFF’s programming for the past 10 years or so, turning into an “industry” promotional tool is not the way to make things better.
Watch: "Infinite Schwarzenegger" by Rob Beschizza
"Following Lindsay Lohan or craft brewers doesn't have the same impact as exonerating wrongly convicted murderers or probing years of alleged FBI bribery"
On the other side of the coin, the reality show — documentary's younger sibling — is thriving both financially and production-wise, with nascent cable channels scooping up endless series about pawnbrokers and extreme truckers. Channels like Oprah's OWN try to give a serious examination of celebrity, following in the footsteps of E! and Bravo, which have been “documenting” the lives of the pseudo-famous for years.
Is This the Death of the Big Screen Documentary?
Reality TV is not Documentary.
Read: 1939 Hitchcock Lecture
There has been a tendency, I feel, in the past, in this development of character, to rely upon the dialogue, only, to do it. We have lost what has been -- to me, at least -- the biggest enjoyment in motion pictures, and that is action and movement. What I am trying to aim for is a combination of these two elements, character and action.
1939 Alfred Hitchcock Lecture
"The $1,000 fee required to hire a foreign worker is perceived as "a cash grab"
speaking in Vancouver to gathered journalists, Immigration Minister Chris Alexander said the reforms should actually make the process of acquiring a work permit for foreign workers quicker."In those cases where there is a real need that Canadians can't be found to fill, the service will actually be faster than ever," said the minister."Our reforms to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program have been broadly well-received. People want us to ensure that Canadians across the country have first crack at available jobs and that wasn't happening before the reforms."
Temporary foreign worker reforms raise ire of film, TV industry
Watch: "Top 10 Most Effective Editing Moments of All Time"
Watch: "Revolution Part One"
Revolution Part One from movies4machines on Vimeo.
Watch: "Very Nice, Very Nice"
In memoriam: Wolf Koenig (1927-2014)
Filmmaker, producer, cinematographer, animator, and overall cinema pioneer Wolf Koenig passed away on June 26, 2014 at the age of 86. During a prolific career at the NFB, Koenig’s films were lauded for their sophisticated style and what was often a subtle irony in their observation of human behaviour and modern society.
In memoriam: Wolf Koenig (1927-2014)
Quote: “Every cut is a lie..."
“Every cut is a lie. It’s never that way – those two shots were never next to each other in time that way. But you’re telling a lie in order to tell the truth.” - Wolf Koenig
RIP Wolf Koenig
Documentary pioneer Wolf Koenig (pictured), who spent 47 years working at Canada’s National Film Board (NFB), has passed away at the age of 86.
Doc pioneer Wolf Koenig passes away
Mr Koenig was brilliant. He helped redefine cinema.
Lonely Boy by Wolf Koenig& by Roman Kroitor, National Film Board of Canada
Rest in peace.
Film Theory: SYNOPTIQUE - An Online Journal of Film and Moving Image Studies
Synoptique publishes articles covering a wide array of subjects related to Film and Moving Image Studies, be it aesthetic, film history, technology or theory. We also publish festival and exhibition reports, as well as book reviews.
via Film Studies For Free
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