The Rest Is Noise Festival - My weekend in the 1960s

This post will give you a general overview on the talks I've attended during the past weekend, I have many notes to go through and I unfortunately got ill, so the posts on each event will be a little bit delayed, but I promise I'll try to write them as soon as I can!
This said here are the fantastic events I attended, (desctriptions taken from the event's booklet).

Saturday 26

Richard Weight - The Sixties, For Now

Richard Weight discusses the social liberalism of Britain in the 1960s, the country's relations with the USA and Europe and the founding of the modern, largely secular country we live in today. This is followed by a discussion with Jude Kelly, Artistic Director of Southbank Centre, before questions are taken from the audience. Richard is the author of Patriots: National Identity in Britain 1940-2000 and Modern British History: The Essential A-Z Guide. Richard also taught history at UCL, King's College London and Boston University.

Psychiatry and the 1960s

The writing and teaching of R D Laing caused a dramatic shift in attitudes towards mental health in the 1960s. Heavily influenced by existential philosophy, Laing tore up the rule book and became a huge influence on successive generations of psychiatrists, writers, and philosophers. In this event, his son Adrian Laing, a lawyer and writer, discusses his influence with chair Anthony David.

Double Bill: John Cage & Roland Kirk's Sound & What the Future Sounded Like

Dick Fontaine's experimental 1966 film Sound brings together two very different musical iconoclasts - Rahsaan Roland Kirk and John Cage - who shared a similar vision of the boundless possibilities of music. In What the Future Sounded Like, the fascinating story of British electronic music is revealed.

The Noise of Third Cinema: 1968 and Film

Bev Zalcock, filmmaker and teacher, and Helen de Witt from the BFI explore the relationship between radical film practices and politics, including the emerging influence of feminism. Taking Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino's revolutionary film, The Hour of the Furnaces, and their manifesto, 'Towards a Third Cinema', as the starting point, this discussion, which included extracts, will look at the films of the anti-Vietnam War protests, the May '68 uprisings, the Black Panther Party and other activist movements.

Sunday 27

The Beat Generation

Iain Sinclair has long been recognized as a great writer of the marginal and the esoteric, and his latest book American Smoke is a journey in the footsteps of the Beat writers and the landscapes rhey inhabited. He discusses the lasting impact of figures such as Charles Olson, Jack Kerouac and William Borroughs with chair Garth Cartwright, author of More Miles Than Money: Journeys Through American Music.

Zappa on Zappa

Gail Zappa, Frank Zappa's widow, in conversation about her life, the 1960s in the US and the UK, and being a rock and roll wife. 

Noise Bites

A whistle-stop tour of the key artists, movements and political breakthroughs of the era. With 15 minutes per topic, the need-to-know subjects include the cult film Performance, The New Hollywood, Computers and Artistic Experiment, and Feminist Performance Art.

Roger McGough & Brian Patten

The cultural melting pot of 1960s Liverpool gave rise to the most significant poetry movement of the era, when Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten fused pop sensibility and a zest for performance to create The Mersey Sound. At this very special event, McGough and Patten read poems and discuss Liverpool during that heady decade, before taking questions from the audience.

Angela Davis

Angela Davis is an iconic figure of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. She emerged as a nationally prominent activist and radical in the 1960s as a leader of the Communist Party USA and had close relations with the Black Panther Party. At this event, Angela Davis looks back at the enormous social gains made during a decade of revolution, and their resonance for the present day. Chaired by Jude Kelly, Artistic Director of Southbank Centre.

Suggested Viewings for the Weekend - KCL Film Studies

From the module British National Cinema: Millions Like Us (Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat, 1943). A war-time propaganda picture focusing on the role of women during WWII, interesting in terms of message, character representation, and sense of community.

From the module Hollywood Cinema: Beverly Hills Cop (Martin Brest, 1984). Biggest grossing film in 1984, Eddie Murphy's laugh (can be both hilarious and annoying), a film embodying the structure of the high concept in the blockbuster era.

From the module Contemporary Spanish Cinema: Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona (Woody Allen, 2008). A film that works on many levels: simple pleasurable experience about the turistic Barcelona, a transnational and "fake" representation of Spanishness, a starting point for stardom studies, plus Javier Bardem is always a visual pleasure.

From the module Chinese Cinemas: The Goddess (Yonggang Wu, 1934) Probably the most modern and interesting silent film I have ever seen, emotional, starring the "Chinese Garbo" Ruan Lingyu, a tragic movie star figure in the 30s.

Roger Corman in Conversation - BFI Gothic

This evening has been one of the greatest and most thrilling experiences of my life so far. I got to meet one of my myth: the legendary Roger Corman.

LIFE AND CAREER
For those of you who are not familiar with his work, here's a little background:
"Roger William Corman is an Academy Award-winning American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Much of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Admired by members of the French New Wave and Cahiers du Cinéma, Corman was the youngest filmmaker to have a retrospective at the Cinémathèque Francaise, as well as the BFI and the Museum of Modern Art. In 2009, he was awarded an Honorary Academy Award. Corman mentored and gave a start to many young film directors such as Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese and Peter Bogdanovich. He helped launch the career of actor Peter Fonda. Corman has occasionally taken minor acting roles in the films of directors who started with him, including The Silence of the Lambs, The Godfather Part II, Apollo 13, The Manchurian Candidate, and Philadelphia. A documentary about Corman's life and career entitled Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel premiered at Sundance and Cannes Film Festival in 2011, directed by Alex Stapleton. In total, Roger Corman has produced over 300 movies and directed more than 50."

INTERVIEW - The Gothic and the Edgar Allan Poe Cycle
Mr. Corman talked about his childhood experience of the Gothic, in terms of films he was a big fan of Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein, but the big infatuation came when he was 12 and was assigned a work on an Edgar Allan Poe's short story for school. After that he asked his parents for the whole collection of Poe's works. 
When he started working as a filmmaker Gothic genre was out of fashion.
Producing films for the American International Pictures (AIP) meant having a very low-budget, working on a double bill over 10 days and shooting in black and white. Mr. Corman suggested to use colour for the adaptation of Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher. Since they were complaining about the lack of monsters in the story, Corman clarified that the house is actually the monster.
Going back to his first big experiences with horror The Undead was his first horror picture (1956), we then moved to a clip from A Bucket of Blood, the opening credits sequence.
Corman explained that the character's speech was meant to be meaningless in order to represent a pretentious and fake artist. This was his first comedy-horror film and it was shot in 5 days. The setting is a beat cafè of the time, it was also one of the first films to have such a contemporary setting, and to be a very innovative approach to an "house of wax" story.
As you will notice by watching it the opening is shot in long take with a frequent use of dollies, he wanted the camera to wander around and show the space while the fake artist's speech went on.
We then moved to one of his most interesting works: the Poe Cycle:

1. House of Usher (1960)

2. The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

3. The Premature Burial (1962)

4. Tales of Terror (1962)

5. The Raven (1963)

6. The Haunted Palace (1963)

7. The Masque of the Red Death (1964)

8. The Tomb of Ligeia (1964)

We watched House of Usher's trailer, the title is different from the original story because the company wanted to put emphasis on the "house".
Corman thought about the most clichè way of opening a picture regarding a classic, so he brought in the idea of the book opening on the story as a kind of joke to open the film.
Since the AIP was a very small company, having 15 days for the making of a film was a gamble, but also meant a step forward for them.
He was then asked about the use of Cinemascope and widescreen in the cycle, since all Poe's stories are very claustrophobic. That was again the company's idea since Cinemascope was selling very well, and it fortunately was a success for the House.
After that he really wanted to make The Masque of the Red Death, but Bergman's The Seventh Seal had just come out. So, he made The Pit and the Pendulum first.
He started using horror stars from the earlier period such as Boris Karloff, bringing in better and good actors was a great improvement for the pictures also. 
There's an anecdote about the making of The Raven that I found very interesting. The film starred Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Boris Karloff. Three great and very different actors. On the second day of shooting Karloff went to Roger to tell him Lorre was improvising the whole script and he had no idea on what to do. This problem between the actors was connected to their training: Lorre, German actor, studied with Bertolt Brecht and the Stanislavsky method, whereas Karloff, had an English background. They finally managed to solve everything. I haven't seen the film yet, but the interviewer quoted the wine-tasting scene of which Corman is very pleased, especially for the idea of introducing humour in the picture, because in that way they were always trying to vary from one production to the other.
We continued with the trailer of Tomb of Ligeia, shot in England. The Poe films were doing very well there, and by shooting in England they could also get a subsidy and obtain a longer schedule, plus the casting of very good British actors.
For The Masque of the Red Death he explained that the script looked too simple for him, so, together with a writer, they incorporated another Poe's short-story as a subplot to make it more complex.
In 1961 he had faced his first failure: The Intruder. 
A film I was waiting to hear about was The Man with X-Ray Eyes (1963). The film is sci-fi/horror story, an attempt to combine these two genres. The original idea saw the protagonist as a man having x-ray visions, he then changed the character into a doctor working on vision. The ending of the film is also a religious moment: we see the doctor seeing through the centre of the universe, being blindened by the powerful vision of God. Stephen King actually wrote an alternative ending to the film. He thought of redoing it in the future since it would improve a lot thanks to the new technologies.
The Terror (1963) has a very intricate story concerning its making rather than the actual film plot. He shot it in two days shooting 15 pages a day with Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson. The latter saying that Corman would be the only person to hire him for 10 years. He always believed in his talent, and said that Nicholson is always a great writer, who wrote many things for him too.
For the last Poe picture, Tomb of Ligeia, he tried to work with the unconscious mind as both Poe and Freud did, without being aware of external influences. He tried to work on an hermeneutic environment. 
An interesting common element in his films are the figures of heroines who become monstrous, which is also a theme that ran through Poe. He often took a story and turned the lead into a woman, because it brings more dramatic value and complexity. 

INTERVIEW: The street films and the New World Pictures
Being a member of the counterculture in the 60s he wanted to take some time apart from the studio and actually go shoot on the streets.
So he made the first biker movie: The Wild Angels (1966). The producers wanted a story in which the "monsters" were the Hell's Angels, he wanted the opposite: he wanted them to be the main focus, the heroes or antiheroes, his identification being with the "bad guys".
In 1970 he decided to turn to producing by funding his company: New World Pictures. He was a bit tired of the genre and was more interested in contemporary subjects.

INTERVIEW: What about Jaws? The coming of the blockbuster.
The big come-back of the monster movie actually happened in 1975 with Spielberg's Jaws about which a scholar said: "What is Jaws but a big-budget Roger Corman's film?"
Corman explained that the big studios were starting to understand. And then there was Star Wars. These pictures were bigger and better. This was a big problem for B-movies and smaller companies. He actually talked to both Spielberg and Lucas and they both watched his films and the old monster movies when they were young.
Even with these complications, Roger Corman managed to stay, and still be, in the business.

Q&A

• What's next in the monster world?                     
• He is now looking back, working on Greek mythology, with a subject like Medusa, for example.
• 3D in the 50s and today.
• 3D is great when naturally and intelligently used such as Cameron did with Avatar. On the other hand, there are films which are not as good which damage the concept. Gravity is another recent and excellent example of 3D use. 
• Can you talk about the making of The Trip?
• Joe Dante is working on a documentary about the making of this film. The purpose of the film was to shoot a long LSD trip, with the help of Nicholson and many others. The funny thing is that Bruce Dern, the main character, had no experience with LSD.
• Are there today actors of the caliber of Karloff, etc.? 
• Yes, there are good equivalents today. 
• Contemporary filmmakers he admires.
• Coppola, Scorsese, Christopher Nolan, Alfonso Cuàron. 
• How do you manage to work on a very small budget?
• The small budget is a challenge, and it allows you to use intelligence and creativity more.
• Which filmmakers influenced you the most?
• He has been influenced by every film he saw, he particularly admires Eisenstein (The Battleship Potemkin staircase scene), Hitchcock, Hawks, Ford. He said: "I was absorbing the world around me."
• What about women directors?
• He worked with quite a few great women: Tina Hursh, Amy Jones, but even if we did not have so many great women directors we have a great number of women producers. Usually the most successful and richest. 

Last, but not least, I bought the book about his career (Crab monsters, teenage cavemen and candy stripe nurses. Roger Corman: King of the B Movie, Chris Nashawaty) 

and got his autograph and the picture with him. It was a great moment, a unique chance probably, I am glad I did not miss it.

p.s: Corman keeps a pencil and a pad near his bed because he happens to wake up in the middle of the night with ideas to write down. (I should start doing that too.)

London Film Festival: Screentalk - Ralph Fiennes

In occasion of the London Film Festival the BFI hosted a very special guest: Ralph Fiennes presenting his film The Invisible Lady which he directed and in which he starrs as Charles Dickens. 
Last Friday I went to attend his Screentalk about his acting and directing career and future aspirations.
His first aspiration was that of becoming a painter. This changed for him after watching Laurence Olivier's Henry V which made him understand his love for Shakespeare and the language leading him to the theatre.
His first key role on screen was that of Heathcliff in Wutherings Heights adaptation (Peter Kosminsky, 1992), and this role is what brought him to Steven Spielberg's attention. 
His video audition for Spielberg's Schindler's List was actually the first time he got to direct and direct himself.

We then watched a clip from Schindler's List: when his character, Amon Goeth is looking at himself in the mirror. Raplh Fiennes explained his understanding of the character and the film, the Nazis portrait in that case is that of a real man, the film is trying to depict the day by day reality, it is not a judgemental review. He did a lot of study on the character, in this sequence we are shown someone examining themselves: "Do you ever think of forgetting people?" 
Being asked about S. Spielberg's attitude in directing his actors, he explained Spielberg has a really powerful vocal energy, and he is very specific about physicality, moreover, he stated, "Steven always has great ideas".

The English Patient (Anthony Minghella, 1996) is the film during which he got more curious about the directing, the actual making of the film.
In 2011 he had his first directing experience with Coriolanus, one of the most difficult Shakespeare's works. The play turned into a film made it even harder. He had to figure out a way to make it cinematic, this is also why he said that one of the hardest works is that of the screenwriter's: the responsibility of conveying the film to the reader and viewer.
The clip we watched was that of the "gladiatorial fight" between Coriolanus and Gerard Butler's character.

Talking about his latest film, we had the chance to see a couple of extracts. The film is about Charles Dickens's relationship with a younger actress when he was still married. The film is filled with the idea of a woman seeking a kind of closure with a past love.
But the film also presents the tragic figure of the other invisible woman: Catherine Dickens, the wife, who was she really? She wanted to keep and donate Dickens's letters so that one day the world would know he loved her once.
I really liked the extracts, so I can't wait to see the film! Here you can see the video of Fiennes on the red carpet: http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/video/video-ralph-fiennes-red-carpet
I'll leave you this phrase Ralph Fiennes said during the Q&A:

"The theatre is the purest arena for an actor."

What Shall I Read Today? Part 9

Two, Irène Nemirovsky (1939)

Reading Irène Nemirovsky's novels is always like reading into myself, looking at myself in the mirror. One has to read her words seriously to understand how brutal her writing can be behind a surface of tenderness.
She wasn't afraid of words, and she wasn't afraid of life and death, she was fire in the blood.
Deux (Two), of which I couldn't unfortunately find any English translated quote, was published in 1939 and considered Nemirovsky's first romance novel.
The simplicity of the story leaves space to the extreme characterization and intensity of the protagonists. They are the reason why this is, in my opinion, one of the best stories about growing up ever written. It is a great study of the passage to adulthood, the passion of twenty-year-old people, the great love that can fade away with time and when a ring is put on your finger.
From these sketches of life we get to know Marianne, Solange, Antoine, Dominique, Gilbert and Evelyne.
I think this book hit me in particular way because, even though it is set in the post-First World War Paris, I am now twenty myself and I experiment their same feelings, the same hunger for life, to which the protagonists try to hold on to until the end.

"I met her in a kingstown bar

We fell in love I knew it had to end

We took what we had and we ripped it apart

Now here I am down in kingstone again

Everybodys got a hungry heart..."

(Bruce Springsteen, Hungry Heart)

She would have loved Springsteen's attitude towards the being young.

The opening quote is the only one I can rewrite in English, but I will write down some of my favourites in Italian anyways.

Favourite Quotes:

"We seek no more the tempest for delight,

We skirt no more tthe indraught and the shoal - 

We ask no more of any day or night

Than to come with least adventure to our goal..."

Rudyard Kipling, The Second Voyage

"Si baciavano. Erano giovani. I baci nascono in modo così naturale sulle labbra di una ragazza di vent'anni! Non è amore, è un gioco; non si insegue la felicità, ma un attimo di piacere. Il cuore non desidera ancora niente: è stato colmato d'amore durante l'infanzia, saziato di affetto. Che taccia, adesso. Che dorma! Che lo si dimentichi!"

"Niente può alterare lo splendore della gioventù."

"A volte prendeva un volume a caso, non lo leggeva ma lo apriva appena un po' e lo respirava, come si annusa il bouquet di un vino, poi lo rimetteva al suo posto, esattamente, e ne cercava un altro."

"Da giovani, in certi momenti in cui la felicità arriva al punto più alto, quasi doloroso, si è al tempo stesso attori e spettatori - spettatori inebriati, innamorati di se stessi."

"Solo la gioventù sa come vola il tempo. Più tardi, ci si abitua alla brevità della vita, come alla malattia, alla sfortuna, ma a vent'anni ogni istante che passa lo si vorrebbe trattenere, stringerlo a sè, come più avanti il bambino che cresce."

"Come sempre, quando si aspetta la morte di qualcuno che non è indispensabile alla nostra esistenza, al nostro stesso respiro, non si pensa tanto al morente quanto a noi stessi."

"Ogni essere umano si rassegna facilmente alla freddezza, all'indifferenza degli altri, a condizione di regnare in almeno uno o due cuori."

"Quando si cessava di tormentarsi l'un l'altro per volersi finalmente bene?"

Suggested Viewings for the Weekend KCL Film Studies

From the module British National Cinema: Say it with Flowers (1934) directed by John Baxter. A British quota-quickie famous among local audiences because of its use of the beloved music hall tradition and one of its biggest star's performance: Marie Kendal.

From the module Hollywood Cinema: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) directed by George Roy Hill. Paul Newman and Robert Redford in a revisitation of the Western genre becoming a manifesto of the Hollywood Renaissance? Definitely one my favourite films among this week's. And watch out for references to the French New Wave!

From the module Contemporary Spanish Cinema: Tesis (1996) directed by Alejandro Amenabar. One of the best firsts features ever. The film is an intense study on spectatorship starring the already star Ana Torrent and the soon to be stars Fele Martinez and Eduardo Noriega in a breathtaking thriller questioning the desires of our gaze.

From the module Chinese Cinemas: Rouge (1988) directed by Stanley Kwan. What happens when the ghost of a 1930s brothel's prostitute walks into the present to find her lost lover? And what happened to the Hong-Kong she left, where everything was red and gold, and love was one and only forever? This film has already found its place among my favourites.

Some suggested viewings from KCL Film Studies Course

Since I watched 6 films during the past 5 days, I thought I could share the films' titles weekly as suggested viewings for you!

From the module British National Cinema: Evergreen (1934) by Victor Saville, starring the star Jessie Matthews, great if you love musical, London, theatre life and art deco.

From the module Hollywood Cinema: Casablanca (1942) by Michael Curtiz, always classy, never goes out of fashion, personally I am never tired of watching it, "Here's looking at you kid."

Disorder by Huang Weikai, of which you can read more in my previous post:

http://artbookscinema.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/chinese-visual-festival-disorder-by.html

From the module Contemporary Spanish Cinema: Raise Ravens (1976) by Carlos Saura. Beautiful, I would say, fascinating, symbolic, starring two wonderful actresses such as Ana Torrent and Geraldine Chaplin.

From the Film Society weekly screening: Masculin Feminin (1966) by Jean Luc Godard. Starring the grown-up Jean Pierre Leaud, a wonderful reflection on French youth in the 60s, a reflection on genders, and just as good as only Godard could have made it.

From the module Chinese Cinemas: A City of Sadness (1989) by Hou Hsiao-hsien. Difficult to follow, I have to admit, slow and long, but once you start feeling part of the narrative it is an amazing journey in the depth of Chinese unspoken history and non-speaking people. 

Chinese Visual Festival - Disorder by Huang Weikai

Thanks to my Chinese Cinemas lecturer two days ago I had the chance to see one of those films that will be very difficult to find anywhere else.
The screening was at KCL and the chosen film was Disorder, montage documentary by Huang Weikai.
The film won the Chinese Visual Festival Jury 1st Prize this year accompanied by this comment:

"Disorder is an exciting and anarchic revival of the city symphony documentary that reveals the cruel energy of China's social transformation."

"There meaning and methos to the madness, and Huang creates a montage laden with meaning by playing off unrelated scenes of fake traffic accidents, police action and rampaging pigs with shots of everyday people simply going about their lives to suggest imagined narratives and shared experiences."

I found the film extremely interesting not only from a formal point of view, but also in terms of ideas and concept. It had the incredible quality of resembling human stream of conscioussness suggesting an association of images to the audience, whose responsibility is to connect all the pieces and understand the content hidden behind the form.

 Since it is very interesting and the chance of finding it online is quite rare I will write the interview with the director contained in the event's handout.

James Mudge: Amongst other things, the film's title suggests chaos, and this definitely comes across very strongly when watching it - what message or themes were you trying to convey?

Huang Weikai: My film showed the absurdity of city life. The news we read every day is always more "amazing" than a novel or movie. Sometimes we can't help asking whose city this is. We choose the cosmopolitan living lifestyle, while it brings us a lot of things that are unreasonable and unpredictable. Therefore we need to reflect on it.

JM: Can you tell me a little bit more about how the film was made? I believe it was pulled together from thousands of hours of footage - who shot this and how did you go about editing it together?

HW: Between 2008 and 2009, I collected various footage shot by amateur cameramen. I watched around 1000 hours of footage, then decided to make a city symphony of my own. None of the previous city symphony documentaries made before seemed to feature the voice of reality, like Walter Ruttmann's Berlin Symphony, Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera and Godfrey Reggio's Life out of Balance. The first two films were made in the silent film era, and the last one uses electronic music. This time, now in the DVD era, I told myself I could not use a soundtrack. Now the city symphony is mixed with various sounds and episodes. I knitted them together like knitting a sweater, with the design and style of the current age.

JM: The black and white look is very distinct - why not colour?

HW: There are two reasons. The first is because the footage came from different cameras, the quality and colours vary and therefore they need a unified style. Another reason is I used to learn Chinese ink painting and therefore prefer presenting pictures in black and white. I made quite a lot of adjustment in the black and white pictures as well. For example, I enhanced the contrast and turned almost all the skies in the city into pure white. Some of the original footage is grainy and some is not. I turned them all into the grainy ones in the final film.

JM: It's a radical approach that's very different to other Chinese documentaries, and which makes the film really quite unique - why did you choose to make it in this way?

HW: The feetless bird in Wong Kai Wai's Days of Being Wild initially came from Godard's Bande à Part. Two novels from Latin American were published on the similar subject before Alain Robbe-Grillet made his L'Année Dernière à Marienbad. Quentin Tarantino could not have made his Reservoir Dogs without watching Ringo Lam's City on Fire. No matter how original a film looks like, it must have its elements from some work which came before. I want to just try something a little different with each one of my works.

JM: Are there any other artists or directors, from China or around the world, whose works you admire or who have influenced you?

HW: I like Godard and Wong Kai Wai's films. However, I would like to quote a Chinese writer, Yu Hua's words to answer this question. He said: "The predecessor writes influence to those after them is like sunlight to trees. A tree will grow under the sun, but more importantly, it will grow up like a tree instead of like a sun. All writers' growth will be healthy and they will be themselves instead of like someone else." Directors are the same.

JM: What's your opinion on the modern Chinese documentary film making scene and how it has been developing in recent years?

HW: I am just one of the filmmakers and I admit my vision is not wide enough to see the picture of the whole Chinese documentary making world. However, I notice many of my friends begin to get interested in documentaries and many start to film by themselves. I believe more and more will join in the group.

JM: I know you've been invited to be a visiting scholar in New York, and have taken Disorder to a lot of different film festivals around the world - how different is it making films in and about China?

HW: I only know about independent documentary making in China. When most people start filming, they usually would ignore or care little about sound of the film and would just focus on the subject of the film. I witnessed documentary making in the US just once or twice but I hardly know enough to comment.

The Rest is Noise Festival - Southbank Centre

"I wanted to tell the story of the 20th century through  it music." 

Alex Ross, author of The Rest Is Noise

As mentioned in my previous post I want to talk about The Rest Is Noise Festival inspired by Alex Ross' book and hosted by the Southbank Centre.

The Festival has been going on since January 2013 and here is a little recap of the past events:

"The first half of 2013 has seen us take a fascinating journey through the music of the 20th century. We started at 1900, when the world was on the brink of imploding into the First World War, and travelled through the end of the Second World War, just as America's star was on the rise and the Iron Curtain drew an impenetrable barrier across a shattered Europe.

During this time we provided a map for audiences that included talks, films, debates and concerts to help explain the relationship between classical music and the social and political changes of the last century. This approach, inspired by Alex Ross' book The Rest Is Noise, has allowed us to see the music of that period 'in the round' - bringing in the history of science, technology, philosophical and political movements."

Jude Kelly, Artistic Director, Southbank Centre

On the last weekend of this October the time will go back to 1960s and for only £15 for the day pass or £25 for the weekend pass, these are all the things you can see:

Saturday 26 

Film Screenings: Heimat 2 and much more besides

Tariq Ali. In this keynote talk the author and activist discusses a radical decade and key figures such as Henry Kissinger and Malcolm X

Stephen Montague. Listen to This Get to know the music of the 1960s

Pop Art. An overview of the transatlantic movement which dominated the 1960s art world

Marina Frolova Walker. Director of Studies in Music, Cambridge, discusses Shostakovich in the 1960s

May '68. The students protests that turned into one of the most powerful moments of the 1960s

Sunday 27

The Beat Generation. Explore the words and music of the 1960s underground

Zappa on Zappa. Gail Zappa speaks about her husband Frank

The Beatles. Discussion on the early years of the legendary band, based on new biographical material

Joe Boyd. The producer and writer in conversation about the 1960s

Roger McGough & Brian Patten. The legendary Mersey poets read poems and celebrate Liverpool in the 1960s

Angela Davis. Legendary civil rights activist looks back on a decade of revolution

Yellow Submarine

These are only some of the exciting activities going on during that weekend, and among the November ones I will just mention a couple such as: 

Hanif Kureishi about tensions in Thatcherite Britain

Layla Alexander-Garrat, Tarkovsky's on-set-translator, speaks about the legendary film director

Film Music of the 1970s: the great film scores from John Williams to Bernard Herrman

"What do two world wars, votes for women and a moon landing sound like?

Here comes the 20th century."

2001: A Space Odyssey Featuring Philarmonia Orchestra and Chorus

Yesterday night I probably attended the most emotional event of my life so far. Since I am obsessed with Kubrick's work I just couldn't miss the occasion of rewatching his masterpiece with live orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall.

The event was presented in association with BFI with support from Warner Bros.

A Word from Christiane Kubrick about Stanley Kubrick

"Stanley was very happy when he came across Richard Strauss' Thus Spoke Zarathustra. For him it expressed the overwhelming thoughts and longings we all feel when we as children look at the sun and the moon and the stars. How wonderful it would be if we could know more, understand more and be a million times smarter. That's what I feel today when I am looking at the latest Hubble telescope-wonders. Last time he was at Royal Festival Hall Stanley heard Verdi's Requiem; he could never have imagined that his film 2001: A Space Odyssey would years later be projected in this very hall over a live orchestra performance. Stanley was interested in the politics of power and his film expresses a deep wish for humanity to survive and to escape self-destruction. Is there outside help? Can we count on it? Stanley was not religious, but, like most of us, speculated in the face of the unknowable, hidden in an endless universe in which our little planet may not play any role at all. But it's all we have - it is a world to us."

Music and films are for me the most powerful combination of arts. As the amazing conductor, Benjamin Wallfisch, started preparing for the big opening sequence, my heart was pounding, I was feeling the whole range of emotions that the film text, the immensity of the universe, and the glorious Strauss' music, could possibly suscitate. 

The most impressive thing was that the conductor standing in front of the screen and his orchestra, directing all the elements, checking the timing and emotional impact of the musical language, was like Kubrick. In that moment he became the director, feeling, suffering, for his work of art. And entering someone else's feeling and their intensity is not something everyone can do.

I want to thank the Philarmonia Orchestra, whose work is of immense importance. Thank you for giving me a new and different way of looking at one of my favourite films of all time.

Don't miss out my next post in which I will talk about the The Rest is Noise Festival, and about the great events you can attend during the next three months.

Blue Jasmine: Woody Allen in a New York State of Mind

Last week I finally went to see Woody Allen's new film, Blue Jasmine, starring the wonderful Cate Blanchett, at the Ritzy Picturehouse in Brixton.
This will not be a long review, nor a scholar article. I just want to share with you what caught me more in this exquisite picture.

First of all, something concerning the director's path as an auteur in my personal experience. I grew up watching Woody Allen's films with my dad, I watched Annie Hall (my absolute favourite), Manhattan, Zelig, Hannah and Her Sisters, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Take the Money and Run, Bananas, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Matchpoint, Vicky Cristina Barcelona.
Suddenly I watched his new films without finding without finding that old New Yorker. And I know things change, and I also think it is very important for an artist of his level to be able to take risks. But, let's be honest. His last releases cannot possibly be compared to his old masterpieces, if not for the stable theme of couples forming and dismantling.
From the minute the film started, I had no more doubts, he is back with a suitcase full of his artistic life's experience, ready to move forward without forgetting the past.
The dicotomy past/future, expressed through the editing in Jasmine's flashbacks, is a constant in the film. But how does it involve the director even more than the character itself?
Woody Allen has set his films in the most different cities, but New York New York, and the Manhattan lifestyle, have always been a personal and artistic leitmotiv throughout his career.
Thinking about him as a character in his films, I have always noticed that the ones in which he looks like he is acting as himself, not as a character, are always the films having New York as a setting.
Annie Hall is a great example in terms of study of one's own life through the critical and objective eye of the camera. His story with Diane Keaton did not work out well? And there they are, together, telling us about the story of an unsuccessful, but great, lovestory. 
New York is the setting of Jasmine's flashbacks, of the high society parties in Manhattan, the patinate and glamorous life, and the fashion.
This last thing is what Jasmine materially brings with her when she moves to her sister in San Francisco: the Hermés bag is the physical hemblem of her link to the past.

My point is that Woody Allen, the director, and Woody Allen, the New Yorker, met again to cross the past boundaries together and, as the protagonist, try to accept the future. 
The differences between the cities are also emblematic: New York and San Francisco are geographically opposed, East and West Coast, the difference of accent, of lifestyle, etc.
The memory of New York will always stay, but Jasmine has to let it go. The rest of the world is out there, and the City of Allen's childhood, and his work of the 70s has changed now, and so have we.
This is only my personal opinion, of course, but I took this as personal life-lesson, and one of the greatest.
Shall we now talk about Cate Blanchett? Not only her appearance and elegance make her stand out from the crowd, creating again a contrast between lifestyles: she shines next to the people in San Francisco, and when she suddenly finds the man who remembers her about the past (elegant, glamorous, rich), it doesn't work. She was not meant to go back to that kind of life, to be stuck in the perfect coverstory marriage. Jasmine has to fix a more important thing first: herself.
This is A Film.
The script: brilliant, humorous, modern, Allen. 
The cast: Oscar performance by Cate Blanchett, great interpretation by the co-actors Alec Baldwin, Bobby Cannavale, Sally Hawkins and Louis C.K.
The directing: smooth, psychoanalytical, mixing the style of comedies and melodramas.

This, in fact, reminds me of similarities between Blue Jasmine and Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodovar, 1988). The narrative construction around the film female characters, the attitude Al has towards women, all kinds of women, exactly like Ivan in Pepa's dream-sequence. 
My last point, since I am not writing a long essay, concerns what I was mentioning about screenwriting in my previous post: http://artbookscinema.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/screenwriters-on-screenwriting-tony.html
Tony Gilroy said that to do this job one has to know human behaviour, have empathy.
Woody Allen, his anxietes, his fears impersonated by himself or projected on the characters, his deep study of psychoanalysis and philosophy just gave me one thought.
No wonder he has become one of the most established directors of the 20th Century, they say you either have it or you don't, and he definitely has it and even more. 
In conclusion, dear Mr. Allen, I will be waiting for the next great picture. Thank you. 

Screenwriters on Screenwriting: Tony Gilroy

Second year has started, and I've been a little busy trying to readjust to the rhythm of the course (and the lenght of the readings).

However, last Sunday I had the pleasure to attend another screenwriting event, a lecture lead by Tony Gilroy.

As I did with Susannah Grant, here's a list of his greatest works:

The Cutting Edge (1992)

Dolores Claiborne (1995)

The Devil's Avocate (1997), co-writer

Armageddon (1998), co-writer

Proof of Life (2000)

The Bourne Identity (2002), co-writer

The Bourne Supremacy (2004)

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), co-writer

Michael Clayton (2007), writer and director

Duplicity (2009), writer and director

The Bourne Legacy (2012), director and co-writer

Nominations and Awards:

Academy Awards Nomination for Best Direction and Best Original Screenplay for Michael Clayton

Saturn Award Nomination for The Devil's Advocate

BAFTA Awards Nomination for The Bourne Ultimatum

BAFTA Awards Nomination for Michael Clayton

Boston Society of Film Critics Awards (2nd Place) for Michael Clayton

Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards Nomination for Michael Clayton

Chicago Film Critics Association Awards Nomination for Michael Clayton

Directors Guild of America for Michael Clayton

Edgar Allan Poe Awards Won for Michael Clayton

Edgar Allan Poe Awards Nomination for The Bourne Supremacy

Online Film Critics Society Awards Nomination for Michael Clayton

Satellite Awards Nomination for Michael Clayton

Toronto Film Critics Association Awards Nomination for Michael Clayton

USC Scripter Award Nomination for The Bourne Supremacy

Venice Film Festival Golden Lion Nomination for Michael Clayton

Writers Guild of America Nomination for Michael Clayton

First of all, Mr. Gilroy decided to give a lecture about the thing he knows the most: how to build an original screenplay. 

We have to remember that screenwriting is an imaginative work, and because of this it is unteachable.
This is why it's always good to start from something small and specific. Our characters have to rise from the dialogue.
But here is what made me think the most: to be a good screenwriter, one must know human behaviour, one must have empathy and when writing the outline be able to feel every scene as real. One has to see what he/she is writing. 

Tony Gilroy has had an interesting family life: son of a screenwriter who didn't want his children to end up in the industry, and here they are now: three sons, one editor, two screenwriters. Having a brother as a screenwriter, from what I understood during the meeting, is also very funny in terms of working on each other's work, advicing, and especially formatting: Mr. Gilroy described both his brother and him as "formatting freaks."
He sold his first screenplay when he was 30, before he had been doing the most different kinds of jobs, and, especially, that of musician. At some point he realized he could do much better as a writer, however the musician job earned him a great skill, fundamental to the film industry: he learned how to be a very good collaborator, which as screenwriter, and part of the film process, is something one should always be.
A very good exercise he and his brother did was reading screenplays, try to find the most of them, and read, learn through them. In fact, the more experienced you are the more you realize your screenplays become less and less dialogue, and more and more camera work.
During the Q&A he said two things I will add to my quotes Moleskine:
1. We have to get visually excited about what we're writing. (that's the way to make it work)
2. We should be directing every script we're writing before the director.
Last, but not least, his advice on writing action scenes:

• write what you know
• write what you see
• keep it real
• be specific

I was pleased to notice some similarities in explaining how the screenwriter's works during the two lectures I attended. Even though these two screenwriters couldn't be more different, they both underlined the pros and cons of the job, the risks one has to take, but, they both showed the love for their job, which should be everyone's goal in life. Not to end up doing something for money or to please others, but reach what you love because that is where you'll succeed.

I leave you with my favourite quote from The Bourne Identity, and the unforgettable Al Pacino's speech in The Devil's Advocate:

"How could I forget about you? You're the only person I know."

"Let me give you a little inside information about God. God likes to watch. He's a prankster. Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does He do, I swear for His own amusement, his own private, cosmic gag reel, He sets the rules in opposition. It's the goof of all time. Look but don't touch. Touch, but don't taste. Taste, don't swallow. Ahaha. And while you're jumpin' from one foot to the next, what is he doing? He's laughin' His sick, fuckin' ass off! He's a tight-ass! He's a SADIST! He's an absentee landlord! Worship that? NEVER!"