Bats have no bankers and they do not drink
and cannot be arrested and pay no tax
and, in general, bats have it made.
Henry for joining the human race is bats,
known to be so, by few them who think,
out of the cave.
Instead of the cave! ah lovely-chilly, dark,
ur-moist his cousins hang in hundreds or swerve
with personal radar,
crisisless, kid. Instead of the cave? I serve,
inside, my blind term. Filthy four-foot lights
reflect on the whites of our eyes.
He then salutes for sixty years of it
just now a one of valor and insights,
a theatrical man,
O scholar & Legionnaire who as quickly might
have killed as cast you. Olè. Stormed with years
he tranquil commands and appears.
“Almendros was an artist of deep integrity, who believed the most beautiful light was natural light…he will always be remembered as a cinematographer of absolute truth…a true master of light”
Malick hired Nestor after seeing “Wild Child’ by Francois Truffaut. He liked the feeling of silent cinema from Nestor’s camera treatment.
“My job was to simplify the photography, to purify it of all the artificial effects of the recent past,” said Almendros. To that end, he and Malick studied the silent films of Griffith and Chaplin, they used real firelight to illuminate faces, they recreated the arid loneliness of Andrew Wyeth and the inviting interior warmth of Edward Hopper, they achieved all of their special effects in the camera. For the stunning shot in the locusts sequence where the insects ascend to the sky, they dropped peanut shells from helicopters and had their actors walk backwards while running the film in reverse through the camera. When it was projected everything moved forward except the locusts! (Movie Maker)
List of Nestor Almendros’ filmography
(Notable with his collaboration with Truffaut, Rohmer, Barbet Schroeder.. he filmed Meryl Streep in Sophie’s Choice, Kramer vs Kramer.. etc. )
Nestor Almendros with Francois
(Nestor filmed 9 out of 27 films by Truffaut)
“Life Lessons” directed by Martin Scorsese, starring Nick Nolte and Rosanna Arquette) – see Nestor’s fluid camera work here.
In his later years, Almendros co-directed two documentaries about the human rights situation in Cuba, Mauvaise Conduite (1984) (Improper Conduct) about the persecution of gay people in Cuba, and Nadie escuchaba (Nobody Was Listening) about the arrest, imprisonment, and torture of former comrades of Fidel Castro.
Nestor who was educated in Cuba was a friend of Reinaldo Arenas who appears in this film (part 5)
The witnesses in ”Improper Conduct” include distinguished writers, journalists, playwrights, doctors, poets and painters, as well as more ordinary folk such as tour guides and hairdressers, a number of whom spent time in one or more of the country’s forced-labor camps.
Susan Sontag, the American critic and a former supporter of the Castro regime, describes the Castro campaign against homosexuals as ”a heritage, in a way a ‘Puritan’ one, that is deeply embedded in the morals of the Left.” She continues: ”The discovery that homosexuals were being persecuted in Cuba shows, I think, how much the Left needs to evolve.”
In a new documentary, myths and assumptions about the Oscar-nominated heartthrob who struggled with his sexuality are replaced with the little-known truth
opening, 5-8 pm, Thursday, 03 November.
The show remains up until 17 December.
Zeitgeist Gallery | 1819 21st Avenue South | Nashville, TN
“My illustrated version of Paris France by Gertrude Stein appeared in the Seeing Gertrude Stein Five Stories exhibit
at San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum and will now move to Washington, DC, to appear in Insight and Identity,
Contemporary Artists and Gertrude Stein, at Stanford-in-Washington.” Ward Schumaker via email.
Seeing Gertrude Stien Five Stories
I love my wifey so completely
Oh so completely, and she is
To have a lovely cow a real
Cow splash goes the cow now,
Splash splash splash lovely
Baby smelly cow comes out of
Baby anyhow now
As both artist and activist, Nancy Spero’s career spanned fifty years. She was renowned for her continuous engagement with contemporary political, social, and cultural concerns. Spero chronicled wars and apocalyptic violence as well as articulating visions of ecstatic rebirth and the celebratory cycles of life.
The book opens with an extended discussion of Diego Velázquez’s painting Las Meninas and its complex arrangement of sightlines, hiddenness, and appearance. Then it develops its central claim: that all periods of history have possessed certain underlying conditions of truth that constituted what was acceptable as, for example, scientific discourse. Foucault argues that these conditions of discourse have changed over time, from one period’s episteme to another. Jean Piaget, in Structuralism,[1] compared Foucault’s episteme to Thomas Kuhn’s notion of a paradigm. Foucault demonstrates the parallelisms in the development of three fields: linguistics, biology, and economics.
These were culled from a variety of French philosopher Michel Foucault’s works – from the early “Madness and Civilization” (1965) through the last two published volumes of “The History of Sexuality” (1985-1986) – and some key essays …
In order:
1. Michel Foucault, cover illustration for Alan Sheridan’s ‘The Will To Truth’;
2. The Ship of Fools (‘Madness and Civilization’)
3. Marquis de Sade, by Man Ray (‘The Order of Things’)
4. ‘Las Meninas’, by Velazquez (‘The Order of Things’)
5. Friedrich Nietzsche, by Munch (‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’)
6. Don Quixote, by Picasso (‘The Order of Things’)
7. Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon (‘Discipline and Punish’)
8. Jeremy Bentham (‘Discipline and Punish’)
9. Philippe Pinel (‘Madness and Civilization’)
10. Friedrich Hoelderlin (‘The Father’s “No” ‘)
11. David Ricardo (‘The Order of Things’)
12. Georges Bataille {‘Preface to Transgression’)
13. Jorge Luis Borges (‘The Order of Things’) (continue below)
(see more from youtube comment)
Michel Foucault sings his philosophy through a surreal collage landscape. The film is from a series of mini-musicals based on the works of the great philosophers.
You mentioned that you’d advise students to prepare for the “long haul”–how have you sustained your work through the years?
One rule I set for myself right early on was that I should not be dependent on the vagaries of the art market. It has given me a degree of independence. I wouldn’t have dared doing certain things without that. Teaching has given me the economic base one needs. But it’s not only for the money. I enjoy teaching. I learn a lot from students.
Trickle Up
Haacke’s interest in real-time systems propelled him into his criticism of social and political systems.[2] In most of his work after the late 1960s, Haacke focused on the art world and the system of exchange between museums and corporations and corporate leaders; he often underlines its effects in site-specific ways. (wiki)
This letter of solidarity, signed over by 50 intellectuals and activists in China, was posted to Utopia yesterday. Thanks to everyone for the translation and editing work!
He steered the discussion away from the Cold War debate between communism and capitalism, noting that former communists, particularly in China, “are today the most efficient, brutal capitalists.”
The communist revolution “failed absolutely,” he said, suggesting that “the only way we are communist is that we care about the commons,” citing the environment as an example.
Forrest Bess (October 5, 1911 – November 10, 1977) Painter, fisherman, visionary, eccentric – Forrest Bess was one of the most original American artists of his generation
Bess showed at Betty Parsons Gallery in New York City, along with artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. In the 1950s, he also began a life-long correspondence with art professor and author Meyer Schapiro, and sexologist John Money
Bess makes it clear that his paintings were only part of a grander theory, based on alchemy, the philosophy of Carl Jung, and the rituals of Australian aborigines, which proposed that becoming a hermaphrodite was the key to immortality. In 1960, Bess operated on himself to become a pseudo-hermaphrodite. This physical manifestation of his theory never achieved the results he had hoped for and, ironically, this quest for immortality was the beginning of a slow decline in both his health and his creative output
His letter
<>
Forrest
October 5 birthday
Denis Diderot + Lumiere (previous post –L’espirit de France )
Picasso’s Meninas 
sings his philosophy through a surreal collage landscape. The film is from a series of mini-musicals based on the works of the great philosophers.
