This documentary explores the life and work of the Austrian novelist, playwright and political activist, Peter Handke. The director managed to meet and stay with Handke in his house in the country side near Paris. Director Corinna Belz also did a portrait on the artist Gerhard Richter.Read More »
A film loosely inspired by the work Catatau, by Paulo Leminski. The poet imagined a historical hypothesis: “And if René Descartes had come to Brazil of Maurício de Nassau?”. Played by João Miguel, the character goes through the tropics, wild and contemporary, under the influence of hallucinogens, investigating issues of geometry and optics in front of a world utterly strange.Read More »
A false accusation leads the philosopher Socrates to trial and condemnation in 4th century BC Athens.
It was filmed in Spain with French actors in the principal roles — including Socrates and his wife Xanthippe. These actors spoke French during the shooting and dubbed themselves afterward. It is therefore much more authentic than the Italian dubbing currently available, and reveals a far more intelligent Socrates.Read More »
Third part of an experimental television program led by Grandrieux questionning TV flux aesthetic, this film focuses on a single interview with Jean-Louis Schefer who delivers his hypothesis on man-made images of itself.Read More »
Andrew Wyeth’s letter to Vidor wrote:
“For years I have wanted to write and tell you that I consider your war film The Big Parade the only truly great film ever produced. Over the years I have viewed the film many, many times and [with] each showing the certainty of its greatness deepens…I have always viewed it with awe and must tell you that in many abstract ways it has influenced my paintings.”Read More »
Roberto Rosselini directs this fascinating program tracing the life and work of 17th century French mathematician, religious philosopher and physicist Blaise Pascal, who made pioneering contributions to the fields of geometry and probability. The legendary Rosselini created this television film as part of a remarkable series geared toward illuminating the evolution of knowledge and history in Western civilization.Read More »
Rossellini, 1973: One makes films in order to become a better human being.
The New York Times, : Just watching Rossellini’s magnificent work may help a bit in that department as well.
In the final phase of his career, Italian master Roberto Rossellini embarked on a dramatic, daunting project: a series of television films about knowledge and history, made in an effort to teach, where contemporary media were failing. Looking at the Western world’s major figures and moments, yet focusing on the small details of daily life, Rossellini was determined not to recount history but to relive it, as it might have been, unadorned and full of the drama of the everyday. This selection of Rossellini’s history films presents The Age of the Medici, Cartesius and Blaise Pascal – works that don’t just enliven the past but illuminate the ideas that have brought us to where we are today.Read More »
»Der Entschluß steht fest, das KAPITAL nach dem Szenarium von Karl Marx zu verfilmen«, notierte Sergej Eisenstein am 12. Oktober 1927. Eisenstein, der mit Panzerkreuzer Potemkin (1926) die Filmsprache revolutionierte, wollte Marx’ Buch »kinofizieren«. Die Herausforderung, die von einem solchen Werk ausgeht, so glaubte Eisenstein, würde die Filmkunst von Grund auf umrücken. Ihm schwebte die Anwendung völlig neuer, von James Joyce’ Ulysses abgeleiteter Formen vor: »faits divers«, »emotionale Konvolute« und Reihen »dialektischer Bilder«.Read More »
Quote:
My film As You See is an action-filled feature film. It reflects upon girls in porn magazines to whom names are ascribed and about the nameless dead in mass graves, upon machines that are so ugly that coverings have to be used to protect the workers’ eyes, upon engines that are too beautiful to be hidden under the hoods of cars, upon labor techniques that either cling to the notion of the hand and the brain working together or want to do away with it.Read More »