Fourth lecture from the ‘Notes Towards a Definition of Communist Culture’ Masterclass Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck College, 17. June 2009, 3:00pm

A two hour, wide ranging, and topical talk.Read More »

Review:

Norman Mailer wrote:
According to Vogel–founder of Cinema 16, North America’s legendary film society–the book details the “accelerating worldwide trend toward a more liberated cinema, in which subjects and forms hitherto considered unthinkable or forbidden are boldly explored.” So ahead of his time was Vogel that the ideas that he penned some 30 years ago are still relevant today, and readily accessible in this classic volume. Accompanied by over 300 rare film stills, Film as a Subversive Art analyzes how aesthetic, sexual, and ideological subversives use one of the most powerful art forms of our day to exchange or manipulate our conscious and unconscious, demystify visual taboos, destroy dated cinematic forms, and undermine existing value systems and institutions. This subversion of form, as well as of content, is placed within the context of the contemporary world view of science, philosophy, and modern art, and is illuminated by a detailed examination of over 500 films, including many banned, rarely seen, or never released works. I think that it must be the most exciting and comprehensive book I’ve seen on avant-garde, underground, and exceptional commercial film. The still pictures are so well chosen that their effect is cumulative and powerful.Read More »

From IMDB:

Faye Hanlon is a community-college professor with an emotionally depressed husband and an abundance of sexual frustration. Her sister drags her to a male strip-club for a girls-night out, where she discovers that one of the dancers is her failing student Rick Monroe, a.k.a. “Ricky the Rocket”. A heated affair between teacher & student ensues, as Faye struggles to reconcile her emotions and make consequential life choices: Continue her lustful sessions with the studly-but-shallow teen stripper? Or break it off with Ricky & work to salvage her marriage to the loving-but-distant husband?Read More »

“Camille 2000, with its cast of wealthy, weary sophisticates, clear plastic blow-up beds, outlandish metal dresses, refined S&M orgies, and Euro-psychedelic music, is often cited as the quintessential Metzger film. In fact, all that’s missing in the world of the doomed romantic Marguerite Gautier (Daniele Gaubert) is a gilded go-go cage. Fans of the 1935 Garbo version may be startled to see that Metzger’s update, underneath the wild period decor, is recognizably the same story, though Gaubert’s existential exhaustion may be less evident to an audience mesmerized by the parade of Italian haute couture and decor.” – Gary Morris, Bright Lights Film JournalRead More »

Quote:
Andrew Morton is an attorney who made it out of the slums. Nick Romano is his client, a young man with a long string of crimes behind him. After he lost his paycheck gambling, hoping to buy his wife some jewelry, she announced she was pregnant, Later he finds her dead from suicide. When he turns again to robbery he’s caught by a cop and Nick pumps all his bullets into him in frustration. Morton’s appeal to the court emphasizes the evils of the slums.Read More »

“Metropolis is not one film, Metropolis is two films joined by the belly, but with divergent, indeed extremely antagonistic, spiritual needs. Those who consider the cinema as a discreet teller of tales, will suffer a profound disillusion with Metropolis. Whait it tells us is trivial, pretentious, pedantic, hackneyed romanticism. But if we put before the story the plastic-photogenic basis of the film, then Metropolis will come up to any standards, will overwhelm us as the most marvelous picture book imaginable.”
— Luis Buñuel: Metropolis. In: Great Film Directors. Edited by Leo Braudy, Morris Dickstein. New York 1978, p. 590Read More »

This series was released by Madman Films in Australia last year with an Introduction by the excellent Adrian Martin and, more importantly, completely new subtitles.Read More »

Description:The film is about friendship and incipient love between ten-form schoolchildren Ksenia and Boris. Rude and hypocritical interference of the people around, who saw platitide and even lechery in their feelings, spoilt their relationship, inflicted heavy spiritual trauma, destroyed their feeling, which could have grown into real big love.Read More »

Quote:
Present-day Chad. Adam, sixty something, a former swimming champion, is pool attendant at a smart N’Djamena hotel. When the hotel gets taken over by new Chinese owners, he is forced to give up his job to his son Abdel. Terribly resentful, he feels socially humiliated. The country is in the throes of a civil war. Rebel forces are attacking the government. The authorities demand that the population contribute to the “war effort”, giving money or volunteers old enough to fight off the assailants. The District Chief constantly harasses Adam for his contribution. But Adam is penniless; he only has his son…. Read More »