Performance

“Created by Maya Deren as part of a Toronto Film Society workshop, this unpublished film ‘poem’ is a luminous work of nighttime choreography. It was also a trial run for her later film, The Very Eye of Night” — from the dvdRead More »

AMG plot
It makes sense that an offbeat director such as Peter Greenaway (The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, Prospero’s Books) would be attracted to a project such as 4 American Composers, a 1983 British television special profiling John Cage, Meredith Monk, Philip Glass, and Robert Ashley, four U.S. musical artists who haven’t been content simply to entertain, but feel compelled to “push the envelope” of music.Read More »

imdb user comment:
In 1957 Gustaf Gründgens staged a new production of Goethe’s Faust in which he once again played Mephisto, a part he had played since 1932. The brilliant production was a huge success and ran for a couple of years. In 1959 Peter Gorski captured the performance on film in his directorial film debut. Basically it is a registration of the production, but Gorksi did manage to accentuate the details of the acting by using enough medium and close-up shots which give a view on the acting you normally would not able to see in a theater.Read More »

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Life seems to be good for Shintoto, an up-and-coming rakugo artist who has just had his first sexual experience at a local brothel. Lucky for him, he gets to date the beautiful sex worker he meets that day, and a younger high school rakugo aficionado is also vying for his attention. But for clumsy, heart-on-his-sleeve Shintoto, life doesn’t stay rosy for long.Read More »

The story is set in southern Italy and recounts the tragedy of Canio, the lead clown in a commedia dell’arte troupe, his wife Nedda, and her lover, Silvio.Read More »

At first glance, you might dismiss Journey Through the Past as just another sci-fi quickie. Please DON’T do that. This 75-minute, R-rated musical documentary is a probing portrait of rock star Neil Young. The film begins in 1966, when Young was still with Buffalo Springfield, and concludes in “the present”-1972, that is. Also appearing are Neil Young’s faithful companions Stephen Stills, Richie Furay, Dewey Martin, David Crosby and Graham Nash. Songs include “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” and “Heart of Gold.” The direction of Journey Through the Past is credited to one “Bernard Shakey”-who also goes by the name of Neil Young ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie GuideRead More »

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An encounter between two of the most remarkable women artists of the 20th century, ONE DAY PINA ASKED… is Chantal Akerman’s look at the work of choreographer Pina Bausch and her Wuppertal, Germany-based dance company. “This film is more than a documentary on Pina Bausch,” a narrator announces at the outset, “it is a journey through her world, through her unwavering quest for love.”Read More »

Faust I und II. By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Arena Treptow, Berlin. 16/17 December 2000.

It took Peter Stein more than ten years to realize his life-long dream of staging both parts of Goethe’s tragedy in an unabridged version. He finally succeeded in raising sufficient funds to hire an ensemble and, most importantly, to engage Bruno Ganz for the part of Faust. They had worked together before; early in both their careers Ganz played Tasso in Stein’s famous production at the Bremen Municipal Theatre in 1969 and Peer Gynt and the Prince of Homburg at the Berliner Schaubühne in 1971 and 1974 respectively. However, even though casting was settled, a series of disasters still seemed to haunt the production. Read More »

About the performing body and how it affects viscerally the people who confronts it, looks at it and participates in the transcendental experience that is its primary affect. The ceremonial and meditative are the common responses to the weeklong series of performances that took place in November 2005 in the Guggenheim Museum in New York. From an art event to a social phenomenon, the seven performances became the talk of the town because it created among the visitors a sense of sublimation like prayer. The film attempts to reveal the mechanisms of this transcendental experience by just showing the performer’s body living the events inscribed in each pieces with details that outline the body fragility, versatility, tenacity and unlimited endurance.
—Babette MangolteRead More »