Vitro Nasu

Agnes Varda’s “Faces Places” wins Golden Eye at Cannes

Varda and JR meet some charming personalities on their travels, but none of them can compare to the film’s central duo. JR is clearly a gifted and thoughtful creator, but he meets his match in Varda, whose firecracker mind is as sharp as ever. She displays none of the frailties so stereotyped for people her age (beyond an aversion to stairs — and who can blame her). Likewise, JR falls prey to none of the prejudice or impatience that youngsters are often portrayed as expressing towards their elders.

Film festival review

Varda & Jr take a playful journey (more photos here)

Happy birthday Agnes Varda (archive here)

Agnès Varda on her life and work
Artforum

Denis Johnson
(photo by Robert Miller)
Via

Remembering Denis Johnson – (New Yorker)

Denis Johnson wiki (July 1, 1949 – May 24, 2017)

Jesus’ Son

In 1999, the book was adapted into a film of the same name starring Billy Crudup, Samantha Morton, Denis Leary, Jack Black, Dennis Hopper and Holly Hunter.[3] It was directed by Alison Maclean and was received well by critics. It represents a rare attempt at turning a collection of short stories into a single, feature-length film. Johnson appears in the film briefly, playing the role of a man stabbed in the eye by his wife.

Metro Manila – Sean Ellis (Guardian)

Shot on a shoestring in a language he didn’t understand, Sean Ellis’s Metro Manila could be the most unlikely hit of the year.

HOW DID METRO MANILA PREPARE YOU FOR ANTHROPOID? (15 questions to Sean Ellis)

I think it gave me back my confidence. The making of The Broken was not a pleasant experience for me but I did learn a lot about the sort of filmmaker I wanted to be. I made Metro Manila on my own terms with my own money. It was a huge gamble but the result was a film that I’m very proud of. You take that confidence into the making of your next film and hope it gets you through the day to day process.

(Cillian Murphy from Anthropoid)

Happy birthday Cillian Murphy!

<>

A conceptual artist pays homage to surrealist Claude Cahun (Hyperallergic)

Born to an intellectual Jewish family in Nantes in 1894, Lucy Schwob changed her name to Claude Cahun around 1914, then moved to Paris and stripped herself of any gender-defining qualities. She shaved her head and began exploring her various “selves” in front of the camera, donning wigs, masks, and, sometimes, an incredibly bronzed fake tan.

See more here Google Claude Cahun

Benjamin’s passport photograph from 1928 – courtesy of the Walter Benjamin Archiv, Berlin.
Photo via

New Yorker(Walter Benjamin’s Unfinished Magnum Opus Revisited)

Take a Stroll Through Philosopher Walter Benjamin’s Brain at New NY Exhibit

‘It’s like the Talmud, there is commentary and sub-commentary’
Take a stroll through philosopher Walter Benjamin’s brain at new NY exhibit
His tragic death in the Holocaust cut short the Jewish thinker’s 1,000 page opus.
Through August 6, the Jewish Museum in New York’s immersive exhibit ‘Arcades’ brings it to life

Berlin Childhood
Name these children (arcade on FB)

Walter Benjamin (W.B for dummies on youtube)

Port Bou
Border crossing resting place

On Truth
Nothing is poorer than a truth expressed as it was thought. Committed to writing in such cases, it is not even a bad photograph. Truth wants to be startled abruptly, at one stroke, from her self-immersion, whether by uproar, music or cries for help. Walter Benjamin

The Story Teller by Walter Benjamin (Guardian Review)

Richard Brody New Yorker

One of the best documentaries of 2016, “Tower” (available on Netflix), is about a mass murder that took place on and around the campus of the University of Texas at Austin in 1966, when a twenty-five-year-old man named Charles Whitman, equipped with a trove of high-powered firearms, climbed to the observation deck of the school’s central tower and, from its vantage point, fired down on random passersby. The director of “Tower,” Keith Maitland, conducted extensive interviews with survivors of the attack, as well as with officers and civilians who, together, brought it to an end. He uses them ingeniously, weaving voices together to tell a multifaceted story from multiple perspectives while taking an original approach to the overfamiliar technique of rotoscoped reënactments. It’s too good to spoil, but suffice it to say that the fifty-year gap between the events and the making of the movie are built into the story dramatically and movingly.

Brave Hollywood (see trailer)

<>
The Start of the Lion Hunt – at the gallery

A R Penck dies

German artist A. R. Penck has died, aged 77. The artist and his work personified Germany’s division during the Cold War.

With James Lee Byers

See his art at Arnet

Close tie with Immendorf (scroll down)

Via