And staying with my last blog Germans, if you’re in Berlin, this year’s film festival has Gegenschuss – Aufbruch der Filmemacher (Reverse Angle – Rebellion of the Filmmakers) dealing with the origins, development and crises of the legendary film publisher, Filmverlag der Autoren, from the early 1970’s and directors such as Werner Herzog, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders.
Martin Scorsese's Rolling Stones concert film Shine A Light will open the 58th Berlin International Film Festival February 7.
And the latest in new young German cinema.
“I'm a drifter and an outsider. There's not one single environment I can totally belong to. My cultural roots are something illusive,” says Ang Lee.
A Kurdish Iranian ‘road movie’ is Half Moon (Nîwe Mang/Nîvê Heyvê)
from writer/director Bahman Ghobadi (his third feature) and one of the New Crowned Hope films commissioned to celebrate Mozart’s 250th birthday. Mamo (Ishmail Ghaffari) is the Mick Jagger of trad. Kurdish music and has been given special permission to perform a concert in Iraqi Kurdistan, so off they all bus-trundle along the dusty roads with the essential but forbidden female element Hesho (Hedye Tehrani) hidden away. And that’s basically it. But I much preferred this to much lauded The Kite Runner. Not that the latter doesn’t deserve its praise or the wider audience that it’s Hollywood distribution will attract. It’s just that Half Moon is the delightful ramshackle cabin you laughingly stumble upon on your journey compared to The Kite Runner’s (director Marc Forster is helming the latest Bond movie) beautifully maintained Bed and Breakfast. And what’s also interesting is that Half Moon is photographed, as in The Kite Runner, in wide-screen (I guess as most visual stimuli these days are wide-screen we should say wide-wide-screen without getting too technical) whilst never wallowing in exotic ‘art-house’ beauty.
Adapting The Kite Runner
Terror whistleblower walks free
And a plug for the enterprising, adventurous Arcola Theatre in Dalston who present the Brit premiere of Ariel Dorfman's (Death and the Maiden)Purgatorio designed by a couple of my now jet-setting opera designer chums Charles Edwards and Jon Morrell. They did a great job of making one of my 'handkerchief' stagings look as if it were a Christo event :) Be interesting to see what they concoct in the Arcola space on another low budget.
A similar cinematic effect to Half Moon is achieved in 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days (4 luni, 3 săptămâni şi 2 zile) the much heralded Cannes Festival Palme d’Or winner this year showing us the grim process of an illegal abortion in Romania. What prevents this film from being simply a worthy experience and makes it a transcendent one (aside from the tragically beautiful performances) is the way writer/director Cristian Mungiu and his cinematographer Oleg Mutu make every location a silent character moving within the same emotional time frame as the actors. As if, as in a horror movie, the walls, rooms and corridors resonate almost imperceptibly with the beating heart of the foetus. Quite an achievement.
In this context, it’s worth taking a look at American Louise Lawyer’s new photographic exhibition at Sprüth Magers Lee. She photographs art through the mundane eyes of what surrounds it, whether it be a polished wooden floor, a lampshade or just the gallery wall itself.
And if you’re in the Netherlands, Hal Foster of the 'postmodernism of resistance' reviews Eindhoven 's Forms of Resistance for the latest Artforum. He gave a wonderfully typically alternative series of lectures recently at the Courtauld Institute that perhaps could be summarised with his quotation of Kafka, "There is hope but not for us." Foster challenges the presumptions of continuity and discontinuity in art theory.
What next for the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square?
Hitchcock’s 1938 The Lady Vanishes is re-released the end of the week as part of the BFI’s Margaret Lockwood season.
Criterion US DVD
"When Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol wrote their pioneering study of the director, they concluded that the film "requires little commentary" ... Watching the film again, in a bright new print struck by the British Film Institute, that seems to me to be an unsupportable position. The Lady Vanishes is the most political film that Hitchcock ever made, " argues Mathew Sweet’s (who scripted the BBC's recent 'I love Brit film series' British Film Forever) article for The Guardian. And having just seen it again today after many, many moons I totally agree. Eminent film scholar wrote that it was his "least substantial" but Sweet takes up Durgnat's political observations. John Russell Taylor in his book Hitch described it as "the lightest and purist of diversions". The comedic tone Hitchcock creates in this sly thriller is superlative and much has been made of Hitch’s use of sound in his Hitchcock, The Early Years (Optimum DVD). And watch the sly camera moves and close-ups too and the Launder/Gilliat script: “Why climb a fence when you can sit on it, as the old Foreign Office proverb goes [sic]”
Margaret Lockwood is also in the DVD release of Trent's Last Case.
An oddity is the DVD of Woody Allen’s 1966 debut What’s Up Tiger Lily? (budget price, no extras) a re-dubbed version of a Japanese spy film by Senkichi Taniguchi. Loads of ‘Austin Powers’ sexual innuendo but it hasn’t really stood the test of time. Allen’s early stand-up (I used to have them on vinyl!) from the same period is far superior.
Anyone for some very cheesy soundtrack music from the 'Mozart of porn' Klaus Harmony evoking a Germanic Benny Hill chasing after his lust object through the churchyard? But if anyone suddenly looks over your ear quickly switch to this website with great links to speech radio progs or someone who collects the detritus of audiotape fragments. Or far preferable, seek out the soundtracks of Fassbinder's composer Peer Raban.
Violinist Tamsin Little will be following Radiohead’s lead by giving her next album away called The Naked Violin as a free download from January 14th.
And hidden away in the Westminster Reference Library (1st floor) is an ingenious use of ‘Tom Thumb’ space for an "over-sized pop-up book" with 42 artists exhibiting in a few meters art inspired by the writings of Hans Christian Andersen.
I have longed to move away
-Dylan Thomas
I have longed to move away
From the hissing of the spent lie
And the old terrors´ continual cry
Growing more terrible as the day
Goes over the hill into the deep sea;
I have longed to move away
From the repetition of salutes,
For there are ghosts in the air
And ghostly echoes on paper,
And the thunder of calls and notes.
I have longed to move away but am afraid;
Some life, yet unspent, might explode
Out of the old lie burning on the ground,
And, crackling into the air, leave me half blind.
Neither by night´s ancient fear,
The parting of hat from hair,
Pursed lips at the receiver,
Shall I fall to death´s feather.
By these I would not care to die,
Half convention and half lie.
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