Vitro NasuIconoclastic Incubator
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(Eugene Louis Vidal, October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012)
Gore Vidal would have been 91. Prolific, Elegant, Acerbic Writer – we miss you.
Anais Nin 
and Gore
Photos via Previous post (Goodbye Gore Vidal)
The Best of Beasties by – David Ehrenstein
NY Magazine (Best of Enemies)
Life in Feuds: How Gore Vidal gripped a nation..
“None of this, however, was what the Olympic Organizing Board wanted,” continues Richie. “Not only had Ichikawa refused to monumentalize the games, he had humanized them. In the uncut version (never publicly screened), the camera turns time and again from the major events to capture details: the spectators; athletes at rest; those who came in, not first, but third – or last. Japanese victories are not favored. At the end, the celebrations over, the stadium is empty. A man with a ladder crosses the field, from far away comes the sound of children at play. The games were, after all, only games. They are over and life goes on. Much of this footage has never been publicly screened, and among examples of film vandalism, the case of Tokyo Olympiad must rank as especially regrettable.”
I remember Ernest Hemingway telling me once that the unnoticed things in the hands of a good writer had an effect, and a powerful one, of making readers conscious of what they had been aware of only subconsciously. A parallel adage suggests that a great photographer can take a picture of a familiar street and tell you something about it you never knew before. After watching the 1964 Tokyo Olympiad, one can surely say that Ichikawa is of that tradition. (Geoorge Plimpton)
(Via)
Update: Big Congrats ..Jimmy Hendrickx just announced…”We have just won the Best Foreign Documentary Award at the Firenze Film Festival 🎥🤘 with A Punk Daydream ”
(On FB Oct 1, 2020)
This is my favorite photo taken for the documentary, at Kota Harbor, Edo playing music on his ukelele to the kids. The metal round thing in the bottom left corner is a soup-bike in the making. It is recycled metal with a hole in it to fit a soup or porridge pot. It is then attached to a bike. That is how the poor make money. They ride around in the city selling street food. And it is actually delicious. The trashed floor… is actually layers of trashed on top of the OCEAN. Yes, there water underneath, not ground. not safe.
(Jimmy Henrickx)
Jimmy Hendrickx (director) in the center and Kristian Van der Hayden (producer) on the right
A punk Daydream or “Lamunan Oi!” is a portrait of the largest growing punk community in the world despite Indonesia’s extreme social, political, and environmental conditions, as seen through the eyes of punk youth. – by director Jimmy Hendrickx.
Jim Jarmusch and Sam Fuller
Tigero a film that was never made
Meet the Fullers: Sam by Samantha and Christa
A Fuller Life is a movie memoir of Sam Fuller made by his daughter Samantha. She and her mother Christa recall their lives with the maestro of tabloid cinema.
A FULLER LIFE celebrates the independent spirit of a true American maverick whose unique output broke new ground in journalism, filmmaking, storytelling and even service to his country. The story takes us through highlights of Samuel Fuller’s unconventional and adventurous life spanning a century of American history, a great man’s great yarn, a love song to democracy, and an hymn to independence, originality, and endurance.
(via)
In his memoir A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting, and Filmmaking, Samuel Fuller wrote, “Heroes? No such damned thing! You moved your ass one way. And you didn’t get hit. You moved it another way, you were blown to bits.” That same thought must have crossed his mind on D-Day as he and “doggies” of the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry disembarked the USS Henrico, down its port-side netting and into bobbing LCVPs.
(Francois Truffaut and Sam Fuller – via)
(Shirley Yamaguch directed by Sam Fuller in The House of Bamboo)
Shirley Yamaguchi and Isamu Noguchi – see previous post here
From Here to There. Varda travels across the globe meeting with a variety of artists working in diverse media to discuss their inspirations, processes, and lives.
Among others, she visits with fellow filmmakers Carlos Reygadas in Mexico and Manoel de Oliveira in Portugal. She visits experimental director Chris Marker who declines to be on camera but Varda is given access to his workspace shedding as much light on his life and work than an interview might. She visits artists Miguel Barcelo and Annette Messager, sculptor Christian Boltanski, and designer Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Agnes Varda: From Here to There is a fascinating series not only because of the access she has to other artists but also because of her genuine curiosity about them and her clearly apparent and infectious joy in discovering new works of art. Part travelogue, part treatise on art and part Varda biography, Agnes Varda: From Here to There is an essential documentary for any art or film collection.
Agnes Varda paints a portrait of a woman (Jane Birkin), this time in a marvelously Expressionistic way. JANE B. abandons the bio-pic format, favoring instead a freewheeling mix of gorgeous fantasy sequences. (Youtube)
Agnes Varda 
Happy birthday Agnes Varda!
Portrait of James Broughton (via)
Bunuel has Catholic zen. Dryer has Protestant zen.
Stravinsky has Russian zen. Eisenstein almost lost his.
Precise spontaneity is the only way of hitting the target.
When you know how to be where you are and to do what you do, you can take any risk.
Order does not interfere with freedom, as Bach proved.
Bach makes all kinds of freedom live together harmoniously.James Broughton
(Seeing the Light – page 48)
Poet, Memoirist, Playwright, Film maker – James Broughton (wiki)
(November 10, 1913 – May 17, 1999) was an American poet and poetic filmmaker. He was part of the San Francisco Renaissance, a precursor to the Beat poets.
He briefly lived with the film critic Pauline Kael and they had a daughter, Gina, who was born in 1948
Silicon Valley Rebels (youtube)
These two documentaries recount the history of Silicon Valley and the creation of the digital integrated circuits without which modern digital technology would not exist. They focus on pioneer Fairchild Semiconductor founded by Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and others and their second move to start Intel (founded on this day July 18, 1968), creator of the microprocessor. Forming the backbone of a new industry, the later work of Apple and others would not have been possible. Yet these pioneers and their companies do not get the attention given to those applying their technologies. Early on, Gordon Moore saw that advances in digital integrated circuitry was so rapid that the capacity of the devices doubled every 18 months. This became known as “Moore’s Law” and still holds today. Your tiny phone with built in camera, GPS, WIFI, etc. is the result of these continuous advancements now in their fifth decade.
Steve Jobs and Robert Noyce
He became a disciple of Khyongla Rinpoche, attracted by his teachings about the importance of diminishing “self-cherishing” and negativity, and developing compassion for others. Three years later, he became a full-fledged monk and the only Westerner in a settlement of 20,000. Faced with the rigors of a devout life, he gave up photography for a while, until Martine Franck, the widow of Cartier-Bresson, visited his monastery and persuaded him to embrace it anew.
Nicholas Vreeland with a tea merchant in New Delhi, India
Vreeland insists that he is not an artist at all, just a busy monk who happens to find pleasure in taking pictures, and honor in photographing the Dalai Lama on several occasions. (It was the Dalai Lama who appointed him abbot.) Almost sheepishly, dutifully keeping pride at bay, he admits that it was only by selling his photographs to collectors that the planned expansion of the monastery (to house an enormous wave of refugee Tibetan monks) was made possible. Vreeland understands and employs the power of art without seeking any of its ego luster. When filmmakers Guido Santi and Tina Mascara asked to make him the subject of a documentary, he declined until his master told him it would benefit others.
Nicholas Vreeland (LA review of books)
Monk with a Camera Trailer (youtube)
Directed by Guido Santi and Tina Mascara
More touching and moving story of Christopher Isharwood and Don Bacardy was also directed by Santi and Tina Mascara
Chris and Don by David Hockney
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Russell Brand and Michael Winterbottom
photo via
Three of his films — Welcome to Sarajevo, Wonderland and 24 Hour Party People — have been nominated for the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festiva (via his wiki)
Winterbottom to direct Amanda Knox Murder Trial – The Face of an Angel starring Daniel Bruhl.
Michael Winterbottom has made an almost unbearably moving film that follows the lives of a prisoner’s family through the years
See In this World full film – (youtube)
Baldessaris Yellow fin and Tristram (scroll down to see the trailer – Trastram Shandy)
Has made three movies based on novels by Thomas Hardy: Jude (1996), based on “Jude the Obscure,” The Claim (2000), re-setting “The Mayor of Casterbridge” from rustic England to a California mining town, and Trishna (2011), an update of “Tess of the d’Urbervilles.”.(via Bio)
Jude (Thomas Hardy) – Full film (Kate Winslett one of her finest performances).
Genova (Colin Firth- (trailer)
“Meet Marlon Brando” is a delightful, unusually candid portrait of the world-famous movie star: A tongue-in-cheek confrontation with the press. While television journalists interview him about his most recent film, Brando counters their futile questions with wit and insight, a man unwilling to sell himself. “It’s a wonderful show,” one woman comments about the new project. “Did you see it?” he asks. “No, I haven’t seen it yet.” “Then how do you know?” Always smiling and never modest, Marlon Brando shines in one of his most revealing performances. The film premiered at the New York Film Festival in 1966, and has been telecast with much acclaim in France.
R.I.P Albert Maysles (1926-21015)
Albert Maysles NEWS
Remembering Albert Maysles (more videos from their films)
Estabish an Empatheizing Relationship (Interview – Indiewire)
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Morris was born on February 5, 1948, and raised in a Jewish family in Hewlett, New York.[2]
After being treated for strabismus in childhood, he refused to wear an eye patch. As a consequence, he has limited sight in one eye and lacks normal stereoscopic vision.[3]
In the 10th grade, Morris attended The Putney School, a boarding school in Vermont. He began playing the cello, spending a summer in France studying music under the acclaimed Nadia Boulanger, who also taught Morris’ future collaborator Philip Glass.
The Atacama Desert in northern Chile — the setting of Patricio Guzmán’s transfixing cinematic essay “Nostalgia for the Light” — is a place where heaven and earth converge. Or some might say heaven and hell.
Click to see large 
(via)
Patricio Guzmán has insisted that memory be restored. He has spent much of his career as a filmmaker digging deep into historical memory, beginning with the magnificent La batalla de Chile (The Battle of Chile, 1975-79), a street-level view of the coup itself at it unfolded. This remarkable film, in my view the best documentary every made, paid a high price for its existence and is a great expression of human solidarity – one of its valiant cinematographers, Leonardo Henrichsen, was shot and killed as he operated his camera. Jorge Muller Silva, perhaps the most celebrated photographer associated with the film, was taken prisoner by Pinochet and executed. The late Chris Marker, who now seems central to the international left of the postwar period, helped give birth to the film by donating thousands of feet of 35mm film. Guzmán followed this project with Chile, la memoria obstinada (Chile, Obstinate Memory, 1997), Le cas Pinochet (The Pinochet Case, 2001), Salvador Allende (2004) (the last two covered in other CTEQ reviews) and Guzmán’s most beautiful – and vexing – film to date, Nostalgia de la luz (Nostalgia for the Light, 2010). Some have accused Guzmán of monomania, which may be a measure of how low humanity has sunk, if we are indeed so unable to spot a truly heroic artist.
Allende September 11 1973
(See a video excerpt of Ken Loach Chile Sept 11)
Democracy Now.. Chiean Coup 1973 (Amy Goodman)
Pinochet victim widow fights for justice
Missing was directed by Coata Gavras.
