Archive for June, 2013

Requiem – by A.Tanner, Tabucchi, Pessoa and Lisbon

Sunday, June 30th, 2013

  • . (directed by Alain Tanner)

    Artfilm -Requiem this Lisbon is a city of soul.

    The living and the dead meet and settle accounts. In the footsteps of the poet Fernando Pessoa, in a desolate Lisbon, between dream and reality, people from the present and ghosts from the past converse in a manner both grave and light-hearted, and shrug off their burden of regret between midday and midnight of the last Sunday in July

    Requiem

    Antonio Tabucchi and Fernando Pessoa

    The Reality of Dreams:

    The “reality” of the worlds created by Pessoa and Tabucchi often combines this dreamlike state with the Portuguese concept of saudade, which, according to Tabucchi, “describes the melancholic nostalgia one feels for people, things, pleasures, and times now lost.” The world, real or imagined, seems just beyond reach.

    Tabucchi Elegiac Italian Writer – In the Tabucchi universe the dead rise, speak and go out to dinner.

  • (Click to see large) Nocturne Indien (directed by Alain Corneau based on Tabucchi’s novel)
    Gorgeous trailer here ..Nocturne Indien .(Go through an annoying ad.. it’s worth the visit for the soundtrack alone.)

  • Fernando Pessoa

    R.I.P Sara Charlesworth – Conceptual Photographer

    Wednesday, June 26th, 2013

  • Sara Charlesworth Incisive Conceptual Photographer dies at 66.

    Artist Sarah Charlesworth, whose trenchant work investigated pop culture by borrowing from and tweaking its imagery, died of a cerebral hemorrhage yesterday, according to her New York gallery, Susan Inglett. She was 66.
    Ms. Charlesworth is perhaps best known for her “Modern History” series, which she made from 1977 to 1979 by producing photographs of the front pages of various newspapers, typically excising all the content except the nameplate and photographs.

  • Sara Charlesworth homepage


  • Carnival Ball, 2011. Fuji Crystal Archive Print, mounted and laminated with lacquer frame, 39 1/2″ by 30″/ 41 1/2″ by 32″. Edition of 8.

  • See Half Bowl

  • In the Mood for Julia Kristeva

    Monday, June 24th, 2013
  • Book cover of Julia Kristeva Black Sun appears here on Post Mutant Eggplant – Tristana/Toledo


    Julia Kristeva


    Sollers and Julia.. (photo above) Julia Kristeva married Derrida’s close ally.

    Derrida’s closest intellectual comrade in the late 1960s and early 1970s was the writer and editor Philippe Sollers, who published a number of Derrida’s early essays in Tel Quel. But the friendship soured. Sollers wanted Tel Quel to become the cultural journal of the French Communist Party (PCF) and enforced strict obedience to the Moscow line. At a dinner with the Derridas, one telquelian launched into a passionate defence of the Soviet invasion of Prague, where Marguerite’s relatives lived. It did not go down well. Sollers was also worried that Derrida’s reputation might eclipse his own, suspecting that Derrida’s essay in praise of his novel, Numbers, was a covert ‘attempt at appropriation’. In 1967 Sollers had secretly married the Bulgarian literary theorist Julia Kristeva, whose career he was also keen to promote over Derrida’s. Rebuffed in their efforts to capture the cultural apparatus of the PCF, in the early 1970s Sollers and Kristeva converted to Maoism. This led to a deepening estrangement from Derrida, whose friend Lucien Bianco, a distinguished Sinologist, had disabused him of any illusions about revolutionary China. When Derrida gave an interview to La Nouvelle Critique, a PCF literary journal, Sollers and Kristeva protested by ‘boycotting’ a dinner in his honour. Derrida’s Tel Quel years were over. Years later, in her novel The Samurai, Kristeva would mockingly depict Derrida as Saïda, founder of ‘condestruction theory’, a man who was so attractive to American feminists that they ‘all became “condestructivists”’.)(Via Not In the Mood – a review of Derrida’s bio..)

    Sollers is also an interesting writer. For Maoism, read Chinese Women, which is both good and sad – Alan Sondheim via email

    Julia Kristeva ‘James Bond of Feminism

    In November this year, Kristeva visited China to give lectures at Fudan University in east China’s Shanghai.
    This was not Kristeva’s first time in China, as she had previously visited in 1974 with a group of left-wing students who were championing social equality. Afterwards, she wrote about her experience in a book titled About Chinese Women.

    Julia Kristeva (click to see large)

    Julia Kristeva (24 June 1941) is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, sociologist, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has lived in France since the mid-1960s.
    Her sizable body of work includes books and essays which address intertextuality, the semiotic, and abjection, in the fields of linguistics, literary theory and criticism, psychoanalysis, biography and autobiography, political and cultural analysis, art and art history. Together with Roland Barthes, Todorov, Goldmann, Gérard Genette, Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Greimas, and Althusser, she stands as one of the foremost structuralists, in that time when structuralism took a major place in humanities. Her works also have an important place in post-structuralist thought.

    Portrait of Nusch Éluard by Man Ray – Le Temps déborde by Paul Éluard

    Friday, June 21st, 2013

    Portrait of Nusch by Man Ray

    Nusch Éluard (by Man Ray) – in “Le Temps déborde” (Paris 1947). This book of Paul Éluard was published (under the pseudonym of Didier Desroches) several months after the very sudden death of Nusch (28 Nov. 1946); it contains 14 poems and is illustrated with 11 photos of Nusch by Man Ray and Dora Maar. It is dedicated to Éluard’s friends, Alain and Jacqueline Trutat, who helped him to go through this tragedy.

  • Paul Eluard
    and Nusch Eluard by Man Ray
    Photo via

  • Lee Miller’s photo Roland Penrose, Paul and Nusch Eluard.

    Portrait of N. Eluard by Picasso – One <> <> <> <>two <> <> <> <> three

    The combustive Nusch Eluard Born: June 21, 1906

    ¨Nusch had beautifully chiselled lips, her blood-red lipstick emphasized her voracity, her long black hair highlighted her bone structure, her whole body, the way that she moved, exuded a fiery sensuality. Éluard, who was tall and somewhat ungainly with astonished watery-blue eyes, was clearly in thrall to her.¨

    She was model and muse to Man Ray, Picasso and her very own Éluard (whom she married after abandoning color geometry genius Max Bill) but she was no wall flower. Very liberated and with inspiration of her own, she concocted crazy collages in her nights of insomnia. She lived fast and died as if stricken by too much beauty in the streets of Paris at the age of 40.

  • R.I. P. James Gandolfini – The Man Who Was There To Do It With Style

    Wednesday, June 19th, 2013
  • Kristen Steward on the passing of James Gandolfini

    Kristen Stewart talks James Gandolfini’s death: ‘Every memory flooded back and gutted me’

  • James Gandolfini R.I.P he was 51 years old.

  • The Other James Gandolfini: “Sopranos” Actor Remembered For Support of Injured Vets, Community Media (Democracy Now – Amy Goodman)

  • Thanks to Dave Hall – Alive Memories:Home from Iraq was produced by James Gandolfini.

    I doubt any obit’ will mention this docu series he made which I wish would be shown more widely. Soldiers are also victims from these fruitless wars, I feel so sorry for some of them …believing they made a difference , still believing it was worth it. James Gandolfini was a remarkable man.

  • Miyake, Morimura Collaborate + Citizen Keene Adopts a Son

    Tuesday, June 18th, 2013
  • This photo by Morimura is a departure from his usual satirical performances.


  • Issey Miyake collaborated with the performance artist.. see him upside down wrapped in something.

  • Cute Dog

    See more Yasumasa Morimura

  • Happy birthday Donald Keene .. he is 91 years old.

    His latest adventure? Professor Keene adopted a son.

    The adoption grew out of a friendship that started in 2006, and eventually led to Mr. Uehara’s moving into Mr. Keene’s Tokyo home and helping the older man out with things like keeping his large collection of books organized.

    Interesting review of his book by Colin Marshall.. Donald Keene on Familiar Terms.

    His autobiography is an excellent read.. what an amazing life.

    Keene Observation Donald Keene

    Enigmatic Emperor Emperor Meiji

    Ken Loach – His New Film + Documentary – 2013

    Monday, June 17th, 2013

    Happy birthday Ken Loach

    Ken Loach won Palm d”Or at Cannes in 2007 –see the trailer ..The Wind that Shakes the Barley.

    See a funny scene from Riff Raff.. Margaret Thatcher’s funeral (youtube)

    Ken Loach has suggested that the UK privatize the funeral of Margaret Thatcher.

    Ken Loach – Documentary – Allende Sept 11.(youtube)
    (repost)
    See Previous Post – Salvador Allende Setp 11, 1973.

    Ken Loach full of fight..

    Adrien Brody was cast to play the Pianist after Polanski saw him in Bed and Roses directed by Ken Loach. (see the trailer)

    Igor Stravinsky and Balanchine – An Inspired Partnership

    Monday, June 17th, 2013

    Birthday of Igor Igor StravinskyGoogle Igor
    Igor by Pablo Picasso (via)
    See previous post.

    Song for My Father – Horace Silver

    Saturday, June 15th, 2013

  • Song for my father by Horace Silver (Blowing the Blues Away – Previous post)

  • Click to see large
    Click to see large
    Photos by Fung Lin Hall

    Happy father’s day!

  • Djuna Barnes’ Force Feeding, Differential Action and L’Immoralist

    Wednesday, June 12th, 2013
  • Sketch by Djuna Barnes

    Djuna Barnes (American, 1892–1982), Sketch of a woman with hat, looking right, for “The Terrorists,” New York Morning Telegraph Sunday Magazine, September 30, 1917. Ink on paper, 12 3/4 x 8 1/2 in. (32.4 x 21.6 cm). Djuna Barnes Papers, Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries (via)

    Force feeding Djuna Barnes clipping

  • Photo below “Differential Action” by Thomas Eakins

  • L’immoralist
    Louis Jourdan and James Dean


  • Photo collage by Fung Lin Hall

    Independent Filmmaker Jon Jost on The Road

    Saturday, June 8th, 2013

    Roger and me by Jon Jost (Roger Ebert reviewed his film)

    I am certain that most people who meet me and tell me I am “famous” heard of me through Roger.


    Still from All the Vermeers in New York (Art 21 youtube_)

    In March 1991 Jost was honored, along with Producer Edward Pressman, with the IFP/West’s first “John Casavettes Lifetime Achievement Award” for independent filmmaking.

    In March, 2000, he received the “Maverick Spirit Award,” at the San Jose-based independent “Maverick” festival.
    (via Jon Jost homepage )

    Intense viewing

  • .Jon Jost Work (All the Vermeer in New York)

  • Something from his past….
    Click to see large

    50 years ago, taken in Cassina Amata di Paderno Dugnano, Italy. A family, the Rebosio’s. picked me up hitch-hiking & I stayed with them 3 months and shot my first film, Portrait, of their 12 year old daughter, Matilde. Thanks to FB we’re in touch again and they sent me this foto I took back then.

  • Jost vimeoJost IMDB

  • American Pastorial Thoughts and things (One of his blogs with a short bio)

  • Jon Jost & Sushi (Instanbul T-shirt Man photo by Fung Lin Hall).
    Jon Jost was filming at Grand Canyon, he took a day off to escape the tourists and found the time to meet me and my husband for a sushi dinner and conversation.. Jon was a nurse to Nick Ray when he was dying of Cancer . Forgot to ask him about Raul Ruiz..

    Roxanne Rogers gave Jost the T-shirt he was wearing. That day our thoughts were far away from Istanbul Turkey.
    See a group photo below. Roxanne currently resides in Istanbul providing her friends with some news.

    Click to see large

    Photo of a happy film family.. Jon Jost, Roxanne Rogers, Steve Taylor, and Kate Sannella cast and director of Coming To Terms.

    I look horrible (very into that trashy character) in all the other photos. This was the last moment I got to wear that dress as the first character. Right after this photo was taken we dashed off to find locations, change hair and make up for the second film we made….in TEN days!!! Jost works so fast when he is cranking. We were just falling all over our selves to keep up. It’s fabulous. Wish we were making another fim this year.” (Roxanne Rogers via FB)

  • Jon Jost was in Korea to showcase two films – film blog Coming to Terms

    I also sent the documentary shot last autumn in the Fukushima district in Japan, The Narcissus Flowers of Katsura-hima. It is a delicate work on survivors of the earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011. So far it’s been rejected by a handful of festivals

    This is where he went (to Grand Canyon) ..travellin man

    <> <> <>
    and snapped this

    Ray of Hope, Two Documenatries – Satyajit Ray and RabindranathTagore

    Wednesday, June 5th, 2013
  • Pather Panchali – Full film (youtube)

  • The Art of Film: Satyajit Ray, a viewpoint (youtube) (Highly recommended)

  • Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore was recently honored by the U.N.

    Click to see large (image via Old photos of India)


    Einstein and Tagore

    The film comprises dramatized episodes from the poet’s life and archived images and documents. (See full film directed by Satyajit Ray here)

    The documentary was made to celebrate Tagore’s birth centenary in May 1961. Ray was conscious that he was making an official portrait of India’s celebrated poet and hence the film does not include any controversial aspects of Tagore’s life. However, it is far from being a propaganda film.

  • Satyajit Ray (NYtimes)

    “I find I am inimical to the idea of making two similar films in succession,” wrote the great Indian director Satyajit Ray in 1966, and in this, as in everything he wrote or filmed, he spoke the truth.

  • Satyajit Ray: Introspections (1983) Part 1