DOCSLIB.ORG

Press Information April | May 2016 Christian Petzold Complete Works

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Press Information April | May 2016 Christian Petzold Complete Works Press Information April | May 2016 The Austrian Film Museum is pleased to welcome two outstanding figures of contemporary cinema to Vienna – Kelly Reichardt and Christian Petzold . Petzold will be present for five days of Q&A sessions, holding a seminar and a masterclass, and launching a full retrospective of his work and a substantial Carte Blanche program (April 7 – May 4). Kelly Reichardt will discuss her early features with the Vienna audience on May 5. A further program will focus on Kevin B. Lee , a chief protagonist of the exceedingly virulent video essay genre (April 18-20). Inspired by Christian Petzold’s The State I Am In and Phoenix , the Film Museum also presents the thematic series Unreconciled (April 22 – May 4), relating to filmmaker and RAF member Holger Meins (1941–1974), the German Film and Television Academy ( dffb ) of the 1960s and the early work of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet . Straub-Huillet are at the center of a new English-language volume in the Film Museum’s book series , to be published in April and coinciding with a major touring retrospective of their films . The tour will start on May 6 at MoMA, New York, to be followed by many presentations in North America and Europe, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Christian Petzold Complete Works and Carte Blanche When the Austrian Film Museum first dedicated a retrospective to Christian Petzold (b. 1960), his film Die innere Sicherheit (The State I Am In, 2000) had just “launched him from an insiders’ tip to one of German cinema’s most important protagonists” – an assessment that has since been confirmed several times over. As he perfected his unmistakable style (in fruitful collaboration with his co-writer Harun Farocki), award-winning films such as Gespenster, Yella and Jerichow pushed him ever further into the international spotlight. Petzold works on phantom images of contemporary Germany, fed by a strong cinephiliac passion. He often invokes Claude Chabrol as a reference point, especially when it comes to the role of découpage . For both directors, film narration relies less on writing than on precise decisions about perspective, framing, and camera movement in a succession of shots. This choice of “cinematic terms” creates a terrain where subject, characters, and photographic realism can truly intertwine. Avoiding both the faux-documentary styling and the message-mongering which characterize large swaths of current art cinema, Petzold aims for a pared-down idea of artificiality – representing in concrete pictorial form what is latently present in his subject matter and in society: “Cinema is incredibly well-versed in the area of dreams and suppression. It doesn’t discover these things, of course, but the collective unconscious finds images and sounds in cinema. It deals with people who break under the circumstances and put up a fight.” In recent years, Petzold has extended his explorations of the unconscious to historical subjects: the 1980s GDR story Barbara and the post-war psychological thriller Phoenix became his biggest international successes with audiences and critics alike. The only community to find fault with Phoenix was the German film scene – bearing evidence of the unique position Petzold has achieved. As his cinema moves further and further away from the conventional modes of the German film industry and its dreary consensus about debate-worthy topics, the subtle richness of his films appears to be more and more “foreign” to his compatriots. Ever since his graduation feature, the road movie Pilotinnen (1995), Petzold’s work has been marked by a cool and meticulous fusion of German reality and mythical blueprints , especially when it comes to his beloved genre of crime fiction (e.g. rewriting The Postman Always Rings Twice against the backdrop of the Afghanistan War in Jerichow ). He is no stranger to ghost stories either: The State I Am In is haunted by the RAF past, Yella by the economic “annexation” of Eastern Germany, while Phoenix summons the phantoms of the Holocaust – putting on an upscale zombie version of Orpheus and Eurydice with highlights of Fassbinderian melodrama, Franjuian horror and an all-embracing noir ambivalence. Last but not least, Phoenix strongly reinforces the point that Petzold has always made films about love: another myth at the core of cinema. The 21 films he has selected for his Carte Blanche program take us further into Christian Petzold’s notion of his chosen discipline. For him, cinema is a “Proustian medium”, anchored in processes of recollection: “Some think that reflection ruins the vigour and freshness of one’s approach, but I believe it leads to another kind of authenticity.” These are the films he watches together with the crew and the actors in preparation for making a film. “Cinema is a collective, we have to be well-aligned, just as if we were preparing a bank robbery.” New perspectives are gained along the way: “The film becomes another film if one sees it in the company of two different actors.” The relation between Petzold’s Carte Blanche titles and his own films is only partly thematic. For instance, István Szabó’s Bizalom corresponds with Phoenix through its world war topic, but above all in its portrait of a couple whose relationship begins as a game and grows into love. Robert Siodmak’s Phantom Lady engrosses Petzold by virtue of its “weak men” and the absurdity of its plot complications. A strong woman such as Petzold’s Beischlafdiebin echoes back to a supporting character in Don Siegel’s gangster film Charley Varrick . Points of contact may also be provided by certain patterns of cinematic movement – filming a long walk ( Gespenster and La Fille seule ) or depicting “motorized phantoms“ ( The State I Am In and Near Dark ) – or via characters who make similar choices under different historical conditions ( Yella and American Gigolo/Pretty Woman ). That is how a Proustian medium can remind itself (and its viewers) of its (and their) places and times. Christian Petzold works toward maintaining this strength in the 21st century flood of images. His films tell us a true story of Germany and of the cinema, and what it means to dwell there. At the Film Museum, Christian Petzold will hold several Q&As, a masterclass in collaboration with the Vienna Screenwriters Forum , and, together with Ralph Eue and Linda Söffker, a seminar for students of the University of Vienna. April 7 to May 4, 2016 The Aesthetics of Analysis Kevin B. Lee – In Person The short films of Kevin B. Lee (b. 1975) can be interpreted as a contemporary response to Raymond Bellour’s “dispossession of the object” of film by its transfer into language or writing. Crowned the “King of Video Essays” by the New York Times, Lee has been producing critical- analytical works on cinema since 2007 – at first via his blog shootingdownpictures , and now also as contributions to New York’s MoMI and, on a weekly basis, to Fandor. His body of work has 2 come to include more than 250 pieces, encompassing analyses of individual films, artists’ portraits and essayistic reflections on the relations of cinema, technology and society. Alongside Lee’s precise examinations of films (invariably guided by personal preferences), a specific aesthetic of analysis comes to light in his work. By means of moving images and sounds, Lee scrutinizes these very forms of expression – giving rise to works that also represent a poetic form, creating their very own island in cinema. Lee’s remarkable Transformers: The Premake , for instance, was screened in the avant-garde section of the Rotterdam Film Festival while being celebrated as one of the best “documentaries” of 2014 by Sight & Sound. The program organized by the Film Museum is the first comprehensive tribute in recognition of Lee’s work. It invites audiences to join the author’s balancing act on the fine line between theory and art, and to plumb the potential depths of his critical method. In line with the permanent progression of his work(s), Kevin B. Lee will hold “live-performances” along with some of his pieces, also slipping in selected video essays by other authors into the screenings. April 18 to 20, 2016 Unreconciled Films by, with and about Holger Meins – and by Roberto Rossellini, Peter Lorre, Straub- Huillet, Walter Krüttner, Harun Farocki, Johannes Beringer, Helke Sander, Gerd Conradt, Thomas Giefer, Günter Peter Straschek, Renate Sami, Gerhard Friedl, Jean-Gabriel Périot The works selected for this program yield a constellation of stars. The galaxy in question may seem light years away, but it concerns anyone who believes that art making can still be an oppositional practice – and that it has an existential dimension. A quote by Holger Meins could serve as an alternative headline for the program: “Everyone dies; what matters is how, and how you lived.” Meins, who went underground as a young filmmaker and joined the RAF, was born 75 years ago. 50 years ago, in September 1966, Berlin mayor Willy Brandt inaugurated the German Film and Television Academy (dffb), whose first generation of students was to include Meins, alongside Harun Farocki, Hartmut Bitomsky, Helke Sander, Johannes Beringer, Gerd Conradt and others. “The atmosphere at the school was politically charged from the very beginning. In the aftermath of June 2, 1967, when Benno Ohnesorg was shot by the police, many students became radicalized. Several were temporarily expelled after occupying the dean’s office and symbolically renaming the institution the ‘Dziga Vertov Academy’. A number of films from this period saw themselves as direct instruction manuals for the ‘revolutionary struggle’ or raised the question of the need for violent resistance. ” (Claudia Lenssen) Austrian-born Günter Peter Straschek (1942–2009) was also part of the first dffb generation.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Paradoxes of the Nouvelle Vague
    ARTICLES · Cinema Comparat/ive Cinema · Vol. I · No. 2. · 2013 · 77-82 Paradoxes of the Nouvelle Vague Marcos Uzal ABSTRACT This essay begins at the start of the magazine Cahiers du cinéma and with the film-making debut of five of its main members: François Truffaut, Claude Chabrol, Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette and Jean-Luc Godard. At the start they have shared approaches, tastes, passions and dislikes (above all, about a group of related film-makers from so-called ‘classical cinema’). Over the course of time, their aesthetic and political positions begin to divide them, both as people and in terms of their work, until they reach a point where reconciliation is not posible between the ‘midfield’ film-makers (Truffaut and Chabrol) and the others, who choose to control their conditions or methods of production: Rohmer, Rivette and Godard. The essay also proposes a new view of work by Rivette and Godard, exploring a relationship between their interest in film shoots and montage processes, and their affinities with various avant-gardes: early Russian avant-garde in Godard’s case and in Rivette’s, 1970s American avant-gardes and their European translation. KEYWORDS Nouvelle Vague, Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette, Eric Rohmer, Claude Chabrol, François Truffaut, radical, politics, aesthetics, montage. 77 PARADOXES OF THE NOUVELLE VAGUE In this essay the term ‘Nouvelle Vague’ refers that had emerged from it: they considered that specifically to the five film-makers in this group cinematic form should be explored as a kind who emerged from the magazine Cahiers du of contraband, using the classic art of mise-en- cinéma: Eric Rohmer, Jacques Rivette, Jean-Luc scène rather than a revolutionary or modernist Godard, Claude Chabrol and François Truffaut.
    [Show full text]
  • The Altering Eye Contemporary International Cinema to Access Digital Resources Including: Blog Posts Videos Online Appendices
    Robert Phillip Kolker The Altering Eye Contemporary International Cinema To access digital resources including: blog posts videos online appendices and to purchase copies of this book in: hardback paperback ebook editions Go to: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/8 Open Book Publishers is a non-profit independent initiative. We rely on sales and donations to continue publishing high-quality academic works. Robert Kolker is Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Maryland and Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of Virginia. His works include A Cinema of Loneliness: Penn, Stone, Kubrick, Scorsese, Spielberg Altman; Bernardo Bertolucci; Wim Wenders (with Peter Beicken); Film, Form and Culture; Media Studies: An Introduction; editor of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho: A Casebook; Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey: New Essays and The Oxford Handbook of Film and Media Studies. http://www.virginia.edu/mediastudies/people/adjunct.html Robert Phillip Kolker THE ALTERING EYE Contemporary International Cinema Revised edition with a new preface and an updated bibliography Cambridge 2009 Published by 40 Devonshire Road, Cambridge, CB1 2BL, United Kingdom http://www.openbookpublishers.com First edition published in 1983 by Oxford University Press. © 2009 Robert Phillip Kolker Some rights are reserved. This book is made available under the Cre- ative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales Licence. This licence allows for copying any part of the work for personal and non-commercial use, providing author
    [Show full text]
  • Smoothing the Wrinkles Hollywood, “Successful Aging” and the New Visibility of Older Female Stars Josephine Dolan
    Template: Royal A, Font: , Date: 07/09/2013; 3B2 version: 9.1.406/W Unicode (May 24 2007) (APS_OT) Dir: //integrafs1/kcg/2-Pagination/TandF/GEN_RAPS/ApplicationFiles/9780415527699.3d 31 Smoothing the wrinkles Hollywood, “successful aging” and the new visibility of older female stars Josephine Dolan For decades, feminist scholarship has consistently critiqued the patriarchal underpinnings of Hollywood’s relationship with women, in terms of both its industrial practices and its representational systems. During its pioneering era, Hollywood was dominated by women who occupied every aspect of the filmmaking process, both off and on screen; but the consolidation of the studio system in the 1920s and 1930s served to reduce the scope of opportunities for women working in off-screen roles. Off screen, a pattern of gendered employment was effectively established, one that continues to confine women to so-called “feminine” crafts such as scriptwriting and costume. Celebrated exceptions like Ida Lupino, Dorothy Arzner, Norah Ephron, Nancy Meyers, and Katherine Bigelow have found various ways to succeed as producers and directors in Hollywood’s continuing male-dominated culture. More typically, as recently as 2011, “women comprised only 18% of directors, executive producers, cinematographers and editors working on the top 250 domestic grossing films” (Lauzen 2012: 1). At the same time, on-screen representations came to be increasingly predicated on a gendered star system that privileges hetero-masculine desires, and are dominated by historically specific discourses of idealized and fetishized feminine beauty that, in turn, severely limit the number and types of roles available to women. As far back as 1973 Molly Haskell observed that the elision of beauty and youth that underpins Hollywood casting impacted upon the professional longevity of female stars, who, at the first visible signs of aging, were deemed “too old or over-ripe for a part,” except as a marginalized mother or older sister.
    [Show full text]
  • 1,000 Films to See Before You Die Published in the Guardian, June 2007
    1,000 Films to See Before You Die Published in The Guardian, June 2007 http://film.guardian.co.uk/1000films/0,,2108487,00.html Ace in the Hole (Billy Wilder, 1951) Prescient satire on news manipulation, with Kirk Douglas as a washed-up hack making the most of a story that falls into his lap. One of Wilder's nastiest, most cynical efforts, who can say he wasn't actually soft-pedalling? He certainly thought it was the best film he'd ever made. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (Tom Shadyac, 1994) A goofy detective turns town upside-down in search of a missing dolphin - any old plot would have done for oven-ready megastar Jim Carrey. A ski-jump hairdo, a zillion impersonations, making his bum "talk" - Ace Ventura showcases Jim Carrey's near-rapturous gifts for physical comedy long before he became encumbered by notions of serious acting. An Actor's Revenge (Kon Ichikawa, 1963) Prolific Japanese director Ichikawa scored a bulls-eye with this beautifully stylized potboiler that took its cues from traditional Kabuki theatre. It's all ballasted by a terrific double performance from Kazuo Hasegawa both as the female-impersonator who has sworn vengeance for the death of his parents, and the raucous thief who helps him. The Addiction (Abel Ferrara, 1995) Ferrara's comic-horror vision of modern urban vampires is an underrated masterpiece, full- throatedly bizarre and offensive. The vampire takes blood from the innocent mortal and creates another vampire, condemned to an eternity of addiction and despair. Ferrara's mob movie The Funeral, released at the same time, had a similar vision of violence and humiliation.
    [Show full text]
  • Inmedia, 3 | 2013, « Cinema and Marketing » [Online], Online Since 22 April 2013, Connection on 22 September 2020
    InMedia The French Journal of Media Studies 3 | 2013 Cinema and Marketing Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/inmedia/524 DOI: 10.4000/inmedia.524 ISSN: 2259-4728 Publisher Center for Research on the English-Speaking World (CREW) Electronic reference InMedia, 3 | 2013, « Cinema and Marketing » [Online], Online since 22 April 2013, connection on 22 September 2020. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/inmedia/524 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ inmedia.524 This text was automatically generated on 22 September 2020. © InMedia 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Cinema and Marketing When Cultural Demands Meet Industrial Practices Cinema and Marketing: When Cultural Demands Meet Industrial Practices Nathalie Dupont and Joël Augros Jerry Pickman: “The Picture Worked.” Reminiscences of a Hollywood publicist Sheldon Hall “To prevent the present heat from dissipating”: Stanley Kubrick and the Marketing of Dr. Strangelove (1964) Peter Krämer Targeting American Women: Movie Marketing, Genre History, and the Hollywood Women- in-Danger Film Richard Nowell Marketing Films to the American Conservative Christians: The Case of The Chronicles of Narnia Nathalie Dupont “Paris . As You’ve Never Seen It Before!!!”: The Promotion of Hollywood Foreign Productions in the Postwar Era Daniel Steinhart The Multiple Facets of Enter the Dragon (Robert Clouse, 1973) Pierre-François Peirano Woody Allen’s French Marketing: Everyone Says Je l’aime, Or Do They? Frédérique Brisset Varia Images of the Protestants in Northern Ireland: A Cinematic Deficit or an Exclusive
    [Show full text]
  • Review of Elevator to the Gallows
    City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Publications and Research CUNY Graduate Center 2006 Review of Elevator to the Gallows Michael Adams City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_pubs/135 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Elevator to the Gallows (Criterion Collection, 4.25.2006) Louis Malle’s 1958 film is notable for introducing many of the elements that would soon become familiar in the work of the French New Wave directors. Elevator to the Gallows conveys the sense of an artist trying to present a reality not previously seen in film, but a reality constantly touched by artifice. The film is also notable for introducing Jeanne Moreau to the international film audience. Although she had been in movies for ten years, she had not yet shown the distinctive Moreau persona. Florence Carala (Moreau) and Julien Tavernier (Maurice Ronet) are lovers plotting to kill her husband, also his boss, the slimy arms dealer Simon (Jean Wall). The narrative’s uniqueness comes from the lovers never appearing together. The film opens with a phone conversation between them, and there are incriminating photos of the once-happy couple at the end. In between, Julien pulls off what he thinks is a perfect crime. When he forgets a vital piece of evidence, however, he becomes stuck in an elevator. Then his car is stolen for a joyride by Louis (Georges Poujouly), attempting some James Dean-like rebellious swagger, and his girlfriend, Veronique (Yori Bertin).
    [Show full text]
  • Comunicato Cinema Ritrovato 2
    Il Cinema Ritrovato 33rd edition Bologna, June 22 – 30, 2019 FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA PRESENTS THE EUROPEAN PREMIERE OF APOCALYPSE NOW – FINAL CUT IN PIAZZA MAGGIORE TWO ADDITIONAL SCREENINGS OF APOCALYPSE NOW AT CINEMA JOLLY AND MEDICA CINEMA AS SEEN BY WOMEN: LA PASSIONE DI ANNA MAGNANI Tomorrow, Friday, June 28, at Il Cinema Ritrovato It’s time to celebrate Francis Ford Coppola and his masterpiece Apocalypse Now at Il Cinema Ritrovato: tomorrow, Friday, June 28, at 9.45 PM (promoted by Gruppo Hera), the director will be on the stage of Piazza Maggiore to present the European premiere of Apocalypse Now - Final Cut, the last version of his Oscar-winning movie on the Vietnam war. Running parallel to the main event in Piazza Maggiore, still at 9.45 PM, the Cineteca di Bologna organized two unscheduled screenings of Apocalypse Now at Cinema Jolly (for pass owners only) and Medica (free admission and open to everyone). At the end of the screenings, the two theaters will be showing a video of the presentation that Coppola held in Piazza Maggiore. Tomorrow, Friday, June 28, Il Cinema Ritrovato will be also about women. A wonderful portray of Anna Magnani arrives at the Cineteca di Bologna’s festival after its premiere in Cannes: La passione di Anna Magnani, by Enrico Cerasuolo, will be screening at 5.30 PM, at Auditorium DAMSLab – Piazzetta Pasolini. “An intimate portray of a great Italian actress, icon of the neorealism and film history worldwide”, explains the director of the Cineteca di Bologna, Gian Luca Farinelli, who curated the section about documentaries as part of Il Cinema Ritrovato.
    [Show full text]
  • Roberto Rossellinips Rome Open City
    P1: JPJ/FFX P2: FCH/FFX QC: FCH/FFX T1: FCH CB673-FM CB673-Gottlieb-v1 February 10, 2004 18:6 Roberto Rossellini’s Rome Open City Edited by SIDNEY GOTTLIEB Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, Connecticut v P1: JPJ/FFX P2: FCH/FFX QC: FCH/FFX T1: FCH CB673-FM CB673-Gottlieb-v1 February 10, 2004 18:6 PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon´ 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org C Cambridge University Press 2004 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2004 Printed in the United States of America Typefaces Stone Serif 9.5/13.5 pt. and Gill Sans System LATEX2ε [TB] A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Roberto Rossellini’s Rome, open city / edited by Sidney Gottlieb. p. cm. – (Cambridge film handbooks) Filmography: Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-521-83664-6 (hard) – ISBN 0-521-54519-6 (pbk.) 1. Roma, citta´ aperta (Motion picture) I. Gottlieb, Sidney. II. Cambridge film handbooks series. PN1997.R657R63
    [Show full text]
  • Spring 2019 Film Calendar
    National Gallery of Art Film Spring 19 I Am Cuba p27 Special Events 11 A Cuba Compendium 25 Janie Geiser 29 Walt Whitman Bicentennial 31 The Arboretum Cycle of Nathaniel Dorsky 33 Roberto Rossellini: The War Trilogy 37 Reinventing Realism: New Cinema from Romania 41 Spring 2019 offers digital restorations of classic titles, special events including a live performance by Alloy Orchestra, and several series of archival and contem- porary films from around the world. In conjunction with the exhibition The Life of Animals in Japanese Art, the Gallery presents Japanese documentaries on animals, including several screenings of the city symphony Tokyo Waka. Film series include A Cuba Compendium, surveying how Cuba has been and continues to be portrayed and examined through film, including an in-person discussion with Cuban directors Rodrigo and Sebastián Barriuso; a celebra- tion of Walt Whitman on the occasion of his bicen- tennial; recent restorations of Roberto Rossellini’s classic War Trilogy; and New Cinema from Romania, a series showcasing seven feature length films made since 2017. Other events include an artist’s talk by Los Angeles-based artist Janie Geiser, followed by a program of her recent short films; a presentation of Nathaniel Dorsky’s 16mm silent The Arboretum Cycle; the Washington premieres of Gray House and The Image Book; a program of films on and about motherhood to celebrate Mother’s Day; the recently re-released Mystery of Picasso; and more. 2Tokyo Waka p17 3 April 6 Sat 2:00 La Religieuse p11 7 Sun 4:00 Rosenwald p12 13 Sat 12:30 A Cuba Compendium: Tania Libre p25 2:30 A Cuba Compendium: Coco Fusco: Recent Videos p26 14 Sun 4:00 Gray House p12 20 Sat 2:00 A Cuba Compendium: Cuba: Battle of the 10,000,000 p26 4:00 A Cuba Compendium: I Am Cuba p27 21 Sun 2:00 The Mystery of Picasso p13 4:30 The Mystery of Picasso p13 27 Sat 2:30 A Cuba Compendium: The Translator p27 Films are shown in the East Building Auditorium, in original formats whenever possible.
    [Show full text]
  • Of Gods and Men
    A Sony Pictures Classics Release Armada Films and Why Not Productions present OF GODS AND MEN A film by Xavier Beauvois Starring Lambert Wilson and Michael Lonsdale France's official selection for the 83rd Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film 2010 Official Selections: Toronto International Film Festival | Telluride Film Festival | New York Film Festival Nominee: 2010 European Film Award for Best Film Nominee: 2010 Carlo di Palma European Cinematographer, European Film Award Winner: Grand Prix; Ecumenical Jury Prize - 2010Cannes Film Festival Winner: Best Foreign Language Film, 2010 National Board of Review Winner: FIPRESCI Award for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year, 2011 Palm Springs International Film Festival www.ofgodsandmenmovie.com Release Date (NY/LA): 02/25/2011 | TRT: 120 min MPAA: Rated PG-13 | Language: French East Coast Publicist West Coast Publicist Distributor Sophie Gluck & Associates Block-Korenbrot Sony Pictures Classics Sophie Gluck Ziggy Kozlowski Carmelo Pirrone 124 West 79th St. Melody Korenbrot Lindsay Macik New York, NY 10024 110 S. Fairfax Ave., Ste 310 550 Madison Avenue Phone (212) 595-2432 Los Angeles, CA 90036 New York, NY 10022 [email protected] Phone (323) 634-7001 Phone (212) 833-8833 Fax (323) 634-7030 Fax (212) 833-8844 SYNOPSIS Eight French Christian monks live in harmony with their Muslim brothers in a monastery perched in the mountains of North Africa in the 1990s. When a crew of foreign workers is massacred by an Islamic fundamentalist group, fear sweeps though the region. The army offers them protection, but the monks refuse. Should they leave? Despite the growing menace in their midst, they slowly realize that they have no choice but to stay… come what may.
    [Show full text]
  • Kiss Me Deadly by Alain Silver
    Kiss Me Deadly By Alain Silver “A savage lyricism hurls us into a world in full decomposition, ruled by the dissolute and the cruel,” wrote Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton about “Kiss Me Deadly” in their seminal study “Panorama du Film Noir Américain.” “To these violent and corrupt intrigues, Aldrich brings the most radical of solutions: nuclear apoca- lypse.” From the beginning, “Kiss Me Deadly” is a true sensory explosion. In the pre- credit sequence writer A.I. Bezzerides and producer/director Robert Aldrich introduce Christina (Cloris Leachman), a woman in a trench coat, who stumbles out of the pitch darkness onto a two-lane blacktop. While her breathing fills the soundtrack with am- plified, staccato gasps, blurred metallic shapes flash by without stopping. She posi- tions herself in the center of the roadway until oncoming headlights blind her with the harsh glare of their high beams. Brakes grab, tires scream across the asphalt, and a Jaguar spins off the highway in a swirl of dust. A close shot reveals Mike Hammer Robert Aldrich on the set of "Attack" in 1956 poses with the first (Ralph Meeker) behind the wheel: over the edition of "Panorama of American Film Noir." Photograph sounds of her panting and jazz on the car ra- courtesy Adell Aldrich. dio. The ignition grinds repeatedly as he tries to restart the engine. Finally, he snarls at her, satisfaction of the novel into a blacker, more sardon- “You almost wrecked my car! Well? Get in!” ic disdain for the world in general, the character be- comes a cipher for all the unsavory denizens of the For pulp novelist Mickey Spillane, Hammer's very film noir underworld.
    [Show full text]
  • A Mode of Production and Distribution
    Chapter Three A Mode of Production and Distribution An Economic Concept: “The Small Budget Film,” Was it Myth or Reality? t has often been assumed that the New Wave provoked a sudden Ibreak in the production practices of French cinema, by favoring small budget films. In an industry characterized by an inflationary spiral of ever-increasing production costs, this phenomenon is sufficiently original to warrant investigation. Did most of the films considered to be part of this movement correspond to this notion of a small budget? We would first have to ask: what, in 1959, was a “small budget” movie? The average cost of a film increased from roughly $218,000 in 1955 to $300,000 in 1959. That year, at the moment of the emergence of the New Wave, 133 French films were produced; of these, 33 cost more than $400,000 and 74 cost more than $200,000. That leaves 26 films with a budget of less than $200,000, or “low budget productions;” however, that can hardly be used as an adequate criterion for movies to qualify as “New Wave.”1 Even so, this budgetary trait has often been employed to establish a genealogy for the movement. It involves, primarily, “marginal” films produced outside the dominant commercial system. Two Small Budget Films, “Outside the System” From the point of view of their mode of production, two titles are often imposed as reference points: Jean-Pierre Melville’s self-produced Silence of 49 A Mode of Production and Distribution the Sea, 1947, and Agnes Varda’s La Pointe courte (Short Point), made seven years later, in 1954.
    [Show full text]