Performance

This documentary provides a fascinating look at one of the world’s greatest schools of dance, the Kirov School in Leningrad, where renowned dancers such as Nijinsky, Karsavina, Anna Pavlova, Nureyev, Baryshnikov and Makarova have studied. This documentary provides a close-up look at the regimen these dedicated young dancers must follow in order to fulfill their dream of entering the company. Princess Grace of Monaco, a long-time dance enthusiast who supported ballet in her own principality, narrate the film.Read More »

Hamlet is going crazy. His father has died suddenly of a strange disease, and his mother has married her deceased husband’s brother, of all people, after just one month. Hamlet has nighttime visions of his father, who claims his brother poisoned him, and exhorts Hamlet to take revenge and kill his new stepfather. Hamlet acts the part of the crazy man in order to hide his plans, and loses his grip on reality in the process. The whole world becomes a stagnant swamp to him. Desire and sexuality become a threatening abyss. The friends surrounding him turn out to be spies deployed by his stepfather to keep an eye on him. Read More »

Classic movie with Herman Brood, who plays a bankrobber trying to go straight by becoming a rock’n’roll star. Takes place in and around Amsterdam’s punk/new wave scene, with appearances by Nina Hagen, Les Chappell, and Lene Lovich. Includes the marriage between Herman Brood and Nina Hagen, in the church at Ruigoord.Read More »

Words from Ian McKellen
When Toby Robertson, artistic director of Prospect Theatre, decided to revive our Richard II, he thought to accompany it with his own production of Edward II, a play he had previously directed with Derek Jacobi and other Cambridge undergraduates in 1957. I recall he asked Alan Bates, who was busy elsewhere. I may even have suggested myself to play both kings. In 1969 it was still considered an outrageous play, after all, perhaps, the first drama ever written with a homosexual hero. Edward’s death with a red-hot poker thrust into his bowels had been discretely mimed behind a curtain when Harley Granville Barker played the eponymous role. We showed all, as it were, with the aid of a glowing torchlight and dim lighting.Read More »

This is a wonderful documentary movie about Butoh-dancer-legend Kazuo Ohno.
It’s a German movie, so there will be some introductory talk and some voiceovers in German, but the other parts of the movies mostly consist of talks in English or in Japanese with an English interpreter sitting next to the people talking in Japanese – so you will be able to understand pretty much without knowing any German. And even if you dont understand anything, the film is just worth it for the wonderful material showing Kazuo Ohno.Read More »

From Jordi Torrent’s program notes for “Raúl Ruiz: works for and about French TV,” at Exit Art (Nov 1987):

LA PRESENCE REELLE works through four axes of plot which are intercut throughout the film:
1. Adam Shaft, an out-of-work actor who recently worked on an interactive video disk documentary about the Avignon Theatre Festival, and who is now in a studio watching the program with the help of a computer specialist. Through conversations between Shaft and the computer specialist we find out that only 10% of time-space images in the video disk have been recorded from actual footage and the rest of the disk has been created by the computer using the ‘real presence’ of living beings. At one point Shaft complains because in the video disk his images are saying things that he never said. The computer specialist explains to him that his words have been used to create an entity that thinks and talks by itself, but that will not necessarily say things that Shaft would have thought or said.Read More »

In 1974, Marker made La solitude du chanteur de fond, which follows Yves Montand as he
prepares a benefit concert for Chilean refugees. That Montand had not performed live in many
years made his participation in this concert all the more significant. The portrait of Montand
is intercut with footage from films in which he starred, including Costa Gavras’s Z (1969) and
L’Aveu (1970), both filmed in Chile with the support of Allende. Montand reflects on the role
of politics in culture and on the nature of political films, themes of considerable interest
to Marker. In addition, the film includes footage smuggled out of Chile that tracks the final
days of the democratically elected government of Allende before the coup of September 11, 1973.
Chris Marker, Nora M. Alter, 2006Read More »

Quote:
This historic 1974 recording of King Lear brings to audiences today both a great production of Shakespeare’s classic, but also a performance of towering brilliance from the formidable James Earl Jones. This recording, made at Joseph Papp’s legendary open air New York Shakespeare Festival, also captures the brilliant performances from the late Raul Julia, alongside a great cast that includes Paul Sovrino, Ellen Holly, Rosalind Cash, and Lee Chamberlain.Read More »

Pepperminta is an anarchist of the imagination. She lives in a futuristic rainbow villa and according to her own rules. Colors are the young woman’s best friends and strawberries are her pets. She knows the most amazing remedies to free people of their fears. Pepperminta’s wish is for everyone to see the world in her favorite colors. Werwen , a young plump and shy man yet whose sex appeal Pepperminta finds highly attractive, and the beautiful Edna, who talks to tulips, join her on her passionate mission. These three musketeers of a different kind set out to fight for a more humane world. Wherever the gang appears, everything is turned upside down and people’s lives are transformed in the most miraculous and wondrous of ways.Read More »