R:Andrzey zulwaski,Poland 1989
the masterprojekt of andrzej wajda scholar zulawski which he started to shoot in 1977 after he directed nachtblende with romy schneider and klaus kinski in paris. zulawski got banned from poland after his first feature diable and went back to paris where he had lived with his diplomat father and studied film before. to film on the silver globe was his dream ever since he was a teenager and red “the lunar triology” his grandoncle jerzey zulwaski had written. a group of astronauts landed on the silver planet to die and plant the seed for an unwanted bastard mankind desperately yearning for a new earth astronaut messiah fullfilling their prophecies. as the natives of the planet start to gather an army against the invaders a new spaceship arrives. wide angle lenses, the pictures printed in blueish-silverish color, the actors madly screeming and running about, no minute without language, a thunderstorm of words that is. unusually reduced sciencefiction aesthetics crash a rich dark naturehandcraft culture, bitter minds on both sides. jeff invites you for 3 hours observing of THE FINEST sci-fi. http://www.film.org.pl/prace/na_srebrnym_globie/glob_wybor.html [1] [2] [3] [4]

Lets start with a well-known anecdote that summarizes Ozus Yasujiros approach as a director. Ozu told his actors to act like vegetables. He would angle them at perfect 90 degrees to each other and tell them to behave like turnips.
This anecdote may sound slightly excentric. But it is also almost the only approach to make Ozus extremely socially conservative work in any way relevant for me. Because what his quiet fables of family values and unmarried and compliant daughters boil down to, are in essence the relations of things (vegetables included) to each other. Imagine the mute drama of impassible commodities frozen in still lives, represented by humans acting as vegetables. Most of these dramas revolves around a seemingly compulsory erasure of  subjectivity in one way of another – parents die, daughters are married off, life is disappointing. Interestingly the cinematic result of these processes is invariably a thing, or yet another still life. Lets say the story starts off with an unmarried daughter and ends with the still life of a vase, clock, lamp post or  telephone pole. Shots of such objects became one of Ozus ´trademarks and got called pillow shots. If we take away the cutesy from the term, then what is actually witness is a transition from human via vegetable to object.
As subjectivity is wrung from actors and characters alike, they first become vegetables and then perfect, empty and superficially compliant objects,  smoothly exchanged within patriarchal capitalist society. Something like a vegetable soup can. The transition runs thus from actors and objects to actants to pick up a Latourian notion, initiated by the semiotician Greimas.

Now this opens up interesting discussions about conformist and  gendered objects. Because what becomes apparent in Ozus movies is that not all things are created equally and that some things have to be polished and streamlined by social conformism  in order to become perfect commodities. The quiet, deadening and perfectly horrifying violence of the process of objectification is where Ozu´s work links to the present in a productive way.
(S.a. Ed Rushas admirable series: “Product Still Lives”)

R:Richard Kelly,Samuel Goldwyn , USA 2006

after Donnie Darko it seems Richard Kelly was free to do whatever he wanted. and he decided to go to the end of the world – again and a very american one aswell. there he lost himself with the wheel of madnass and cynicism.

how very surprised he was when the cannes film festival accepted his application and even put the film into the 2006 competition.

this is the last of california films to be shown at monday screenings. kellys l.a. saga released in 3 graphic novels and a feature film (consisting of 3 parts) tells the story of boxer santaros (dwayne ‘the rock’ johnson) loss of memory and entanglement in a neomarxist underground organization uprising while the californian government after peakoil and 2 atomic catastrophies engages a german scientist to built a huge power plant close to the shore of l.a. generating power out of ocean current — and with this distracting the rotation rate of the planet.

one of jeff goldblums favorite popfilms with a wonderful soundtrack and an amazing crew: sarah michelle gellar, justin timberlake, sean william scott.

Of all classical Japanese directors, I love Kurosawa best. Of course Western critics will cringe now, because they have decided that he is “too Western” and doesnt fit their bill  of “Japaneseness”. Point is: Kurosawa – in contrast to many of his petit-bourgeois colleagues – knows precisely that this so-called “Japaneseness” is a mumbo-jumbo piece of culturalist crap, thorougly infused  by militarism and capitalist post-war conformism. It is reactionary ideology spiced with feudal accessories. Kurosawa – who was raised in this tradition  –  wasn´t impressed by this upstart aesthetics, but with the many ways people found to resist feudal obedience and submission.  Now this does partly also apply to Ikiru, which is a movie dealing with Kurosawas present – but the contemporariness of Kurosawas work at present paradoxically mainly derives from his period pieces. He describes a feudalism gone awry, reduced to a state of nature and a civil war in which people prey on each other. Diagonal tracking shots with dynamic movements cutting across are trademarks of his bold and flamboyant style. The feudal relations he captures are closely related to conditions faced in many parts of the world nowadays – among others several art worlds – where neofeudalism, patronage, clientelism and syncophantism reign supreme. Kurosawa, as the chronicler of feudal relations, shows the people who never put up with this. His low-life tricksters and itinerant warriors have found ways to navigate the slippery grounds of mercenary service and contracted labour – with grace, elegance and dangerous precision.
I´ll give an introduction to his work Yojimbo later on in May. If you want to download something in the meantime, pick Tsubaki Sanjuro, another great ronin flick. Note: Kurosawa is definitely not a woman (director), but hey, nobody´s perfect.
 
 

SAFE D:Todd Haynes, SONY, USA 1995

the second feature film by acclaimed queer filmmaker Todd Haynes.

With a wonderful cast – above all JULIANE MOORE. set in the late 80s san fernando valley the second monday screening takes us further out of the californian city into the outer rims and landscapes, where civilization has a sickening effect and is not as simple to adapt to as in invasion of the body snatchers! hahahaha.

Like Invasions we follow the story through grandiose structured shifts.a very simple narrative rhythm, subtle and disastrously violative to both feelings and expected filmcodes. sucked into a suburbia universe of pastell horrors and characters lost in wide shots, into scientific and esoteric explanations of deeply raped psychic situations. a spectacular setdesgn and badalamentiesque soundtrack.

please enjoy with Jeff Goldblum.

Today is the first session of Christophs seminar about Japanese cinema and he´s showing Mizoguchi Kenji´s immortal Saikaku Ichidai Onna (The Life of Oharu). A brillant ressource for this movie is Helmut Färbers legendary shot by shot description of the work. Here´s by Jonathan Rosenbaum: “Above all, it is a materialist analysis –- a depiction of woman treated, traded, valued, degraded, and discarded as material object: the inspection of Kyoto’s “most beautiful” women by Matsudaira’s servant (delineated in one lengthy tracking shot), periodically checking the details of his model drawing against the “specimens” offered; the remarkable subplot of the vulgar big-spender at the Shimabara brothel, who throws fistfuls of coins to watch the courtesans fight and scramble –- valuing Oharu “highest” because she refuses to participate, and then purchasing her as a consequence –- and cackling “Money is everything”, before being unveiled as a counterfeiter;(…) The obi (sash) that Oharu’s husband is clutching when he is killed is subsequently discarded in a strip tease where she “pays” Yakichi for his material by throwing it at him, offering her body at the same time.”
I will expand on cinematic things and thingness later on, when Christoph gets to show Ozu; for now go see Tanakas stunning performance, it´s an essential cinematic experience. As affective labour is permeating all working relations, Oharu´s fate becomes ever more contemporary: the parabolic trajectory of a thing that feels and which loses it´s value but not it´s poise during a spectacular fall from grace.

Here are some impression from the Yto Barrada/Deutsche Bank exhibition
 

April 25th: Riffs

this weeks class meeting will take place on Monday to go see Yto Barradas show. Its  free on Mondays and it will definitely be open – I called again.  Also see this petition on Guggenheims building practices in Abu Dhabi. This is a great text by T.J. Demos. on the Life Full of Holes project. T.J. will come round to give a lecture later in May. Also for those who are interested in jewelery and specifically Gemstone 7: here is the report of the US senate which details the DB´s role in bringing about the financial crisis and provides fascinating insights into contemporary arts political economy.
2.00 p.m, Unter den Linden 13/15.

Found footage workers, here is finally some relief:
during tutorials Jade mentioned this amazing search engine for movie quotes. Say you want to construct a found footage scene around the phrase : It´s all over. This will come up.

Inception

(2010)

But then what happens if you get bored with the stuff you ripped and rearranged? When fascination wears off and it´s all over, so to speak? There is a sustainable way of recycling the wreckage, as Alex pointed out. Look at this brillant documentary, which treats Hollywood movies as documentaries about urban transformations of Los Angeles, as involuntary truth engines recording the decay of public space among many other things. It´s somehow like putting the shot back into the landscape it was taken from. Maybe finally getting rid of it, too. It´s all over the place now. Lost footage as opposed to found footage.
Los Angeles plays itself, Thom Andersen.