"BLACK BREAKFAST" - Dir. Jia Zhang Ke (2008)

Jia Zhang Ke's short for an omnibus compilation, STORIES ON HUMAN RIGHTS (2008).

"Tango" - Dir. Zbig Rybczynski (1980)

"Thirty-six characters from different stages of life - representations of different times - interact in one room, moving in loops, observed by a static camera. I had to draw and paint about 16.000 cell-mattes, and make several hundred thousand exposures on an optical printer. It took a full seven months, sixteen hours per day, to make the piece. The miracle is that the negative got through the process with only minor damage, and I made less than one hundred mathematical mistakes out of several hundred thousand possibilities. In the final result, there are plenty of flaws; black lines are visible around humans, jitters caused by the instability of film material resulting from film perforation and elasticity of celluloid, changes of colour caused by the fluctuation in colour temperature of the projector bulb and, inevitably, dirt, grain and scratches.”

- Zbig Rybczynski –"Looking to the Future - Imagining the Truth,” in FranÐois Penz, Maureen Thomas, Cinema & Architecture. Mþliús, Mallet-Stevens, Multimedia, BFI, London, 1997.

More Info: http://www.zbigvision.com/Tango.html

"Fiasco" - Albert Serra (2008)

"Chaplin es un putrefacto sentimental" - Albert Serra

Cuatro interpretaciones muy diferentes del cine de Chaplin. ¿Por qué este homenaje?

En mi caso, por amistad con los programadores del ciclo. Nada más. No me interesa Chaplin y mi trabajo es una burla de su cine.

¿Qué queda del cine de Chaplin en las nuevas generaciones?

Curiosamente lo peor de su cine, su narrativa y sus moralejas populistas.

¿Cuál es el hilo conductor de las cuatro historias, además del homenaje al genial cineasta?

No he visto las otras. En mi caso, ya he dicho que yo sigo la vieja divisa surrealista de considerar a Chaplin un putrefacto sentimental. Como un viejo boxeador yo siempre estaré con Keaton, Harry Langdon y Animal Crackers y contra Chaplin. Además, hay algo de sospechoso en provenir del slapstick puro y adaptarse tan bien al cine sonoro.

Usted dirige Fiasco, estructurado en un único capítulo: Los grandes dictadores: Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini y Mao Tse-tung. Cuatro personajes ataviados con pelucas y con una pancarta en la que se lee "Fiasco", parodian a los cuatro mandatarios. Simulan palizas, violaciones y masturbaciones, todo ello para dejar claro que ellos son los que ostentan el poder. Hábleme más de este trabajo.

Era una forma de mostrar mi protesta contra el sentimentalismo barato de este gran mistificador y talentoso cómico que sólo supo abrazar las causas más lamentables, entre ellas las de hacer mucho dinero y guardarlo muy bien. Es un filme pesimista que habla del fiasco de la especie humana contra el humanismo rídiculo de Chaplin. Y, al mismo tiempo, es un homenaje a los grandes dictadores y contra El gran dictador, de Chaplin.

Sharunas Bartas- "Children Lose Nothing"

Sharunas Bartas short for the "Visions of Europe" (2004) omnibus.
This made my day.

"Right Place" dir. Kosai Sekine. 2006.

don't panic.

Je vous salue, Sarajevo. Dir. GODARD. 1993.

In a sense, fear is the daughter of God, redeemed on Good Friday night. She's not beautiful; mocked, cursed and disowned by all. But don't get it wrong: she watches over all mortal agony, she intercedes for mankind. For there's a rule and an exception. Culture is the rule, and art is the exception. Everybody speaks the rule: cigarette, computer, t-shirt, television, tourism, war. Nobody speaks the exception. It isn't spoken, it's written: Flaubert, Dostojevskij. It's composed: Gershwin, Mozart. It's painted: Cézanne, Vermeer. It's filmed: Antonioni, Vigo. Or it's lived, and then it's the art of living: Srebenica, Mostar, Sarajevo. The rule is to want the death of the exception. So the rule for Cultural Europe is to organize the death of the art of living, which still flourishes.

When it's time to close the book, I'll have no regrets. I've seen so many people live so badly, and so many die so well.

A mini-masterpiece! I've been searching for this for a while...
Via Chained to the Cinémathèque.

"Madame Tutli-Putli." Dir. Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski. 2007.

Madame Tutli-Putli boards the night train, weighed down with all her earthly possessions and the ghosts of her past.

She travels alone, facing both the kindness and menace of strangers. As day descends into dark, she finds herself caught up in a desperate metaphysical adventure. Adrift between real and imagined worlds, Madame Tutli-Putli confronts her demons and is drawn into an undertow of mystery and suspense.

Official Website: Link.
Youtube: Part 2

PiKAPiKA THE MOVIE ~GO! GO! PiKAPiKA!!~. Tochka. 2008.

The latest film project from Tochka, an Osaka-based duo (Nagata Takeshi and Monno Kazue) best known for their flashlight animation aka Lightning Doodle Projects... Or the inspiration for the latest Sprint commercials.

For more light doodles. http://tochka.jp/pikapika/

There Is Only One Sun. Dir. WKW. 2007.

I'm behind on my WKW and I'm scrapping for any news besides bad reviews for My Blueberry Nights when it gets released later this year. Found a commercial that was shot for Phillips in 2007. Very reminiscent of 2046... an operatic Alphaville full of saturated colors. Here's a few stills.

Checkout the full movie at the website: www.seductionbylight.com.

Or skip the advertising and download directly here (right click and save as).

Prologue (Visions of Europe). 2004. Dir. Bela Tarr.

Bela Tarr's entry for Visions of Europe.

The idea is simple:
Twenty-five countries, twenty-five visions from respected film directors from each of the respective countries that form the new European Community. Each director will give a personal vision of current or future life in this coming cultural melting pot.

The conditions are equally simple:
Absolute freedom of expression.

Tarr has a series of screenings at LACMA coming up, including his latest The Man From London and also the full eight hours of Satantango.

Reel Epics: The Films of Béla Tarr
March 7 - March 28

Hungary's Béla Tarr is one of the most acclaimed filmmakers of the last twenty years, yet he remains little known in the U.S. This series tracks Tarr from the stripped-down naturalism of his early works to the mesmerizing formalism of his recent masterpieces. With subtle, textured sound design and spellbinding camerawork, Tarr depicts the relationships among charlatans, demagogues and luckless peasants trapped in crowded city apartments or in remote towns.

March 7 7:30 PM Werckmeister Harmonies
March 8 7:30 PM Damnation
March 14 7:30 PM Family Nest
March 14 9:20 PM The Prefab People
March 15 7:30 PM The Outsider
March 21 7:30 PM Almanac of Fall
March 22 2:00 PM Sátántangó
March 28 7:30 PM The Man from London

Necrology. 1970. USA. Dir. Standish Lawder

"In NECROLOGY, a 12-minute film, in one continuous shot he films the faces of a 5:00 PM crowd descending via the Pan Am building escalators. In old-fashioned black and white, these faces stare into the empty space, in the 5:00 PM tiredness and mechanical impersonality, like faces from the grave. It's hard to believe that these faces belong to people today. The film is one of the strongest and grimmest comments upon the contemporary society that cinema has produced." - Jonas Mekas, The Village Voice

"Several short films (at the Ann Arbor Film Festival) seemed notably successful in the creation of special effects. Among these was NECROLOGY, by Standish Lawder, an eleven-minute panning of the camera down what seemed an endless stairway, upon which people stood motionless and glum. These circumstances, plus the constant idea of the title, gave a haunting suggestion of people on their eventless way to hell. I was told later that the film was made with a stationary camera trained on a down escalator, and then the film was run backwards. A long, humorous 'cast of characters' at the end ... seemed to me to destroy a desirable mood, but it certainly pleased the crowd ...." - Edgar Daniels, New Cinema Review

"Without doubt, the sickest joke I've ever seen on film." - Hollis Frampton