Luc Sante at the Film Forum

Over the past thirty years writer and historian Luc Sante has written brilliantly about photography, social history, popular music, literature and art for dozens of international outlets. His connection to film is also iron clad, having been a film critic, an actor, a consultant on Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York, and a film director.

This week Sante brings his latest work of film and social history to Seattle's Northwest Film Forum for its world premiere. The Other Paris explores the dark side of the City of Light over the course of one evening. Working with excerpts from classic and forgotten films, Sante exposes Parisian class structure, spends time with the destitute, visits a slaughterhouse, witnesses a murder, and observes Parisian life under the German Occupation. With running commentary from the director, we see the death of bohemia and the end of self-determination, meet prostitutes and thieves, and experience the sordid underbelly of one of the world's most beautiful cities.

Sante presents The Other Paris from Apr 18 - Apr 20 at 8:00 pm. Tickets are only $12 for Film Forum Members, and can be purchased right over here.

Castles in the Sky

The Japanese animation powerhouse Studio Ghibli was founded in 1983 by animation directors Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata. Ghibli produces films that are a wonderful antidote to American commercial animation - featuring genuine originality, dazzling animation and true storytelling weirdness. With baffling images and strange and subtle themes, many of their best works are truly not suitable for children.

SIFF Cinema is producing a second annual retrospective of Studio Ghibli’s films with glorious new 35mm prints of both the studio's biggest hits and some films that are rarely shown in the U.S., with most films presented in both English and in their original Japanese language with subtitles.

Wonderful stuff, and a great opportunity to see this gorgeous and unusual imagery on a big screen. Starting tonight at the SIFF Cinema downtown, and running until February 21. Tickets available here.

Paul Goodman Changed My Life

The film “Paul Goodman Changed My Life” pays tribute to a man — poet, teacher, social critic, and guru - who was once widely read, but has since fallen into an unmerited obscurity. It is that fall from public awareness that this documentary seeks to overcome.

Goodman was a member of the generation of Jewish intellectuals who made their way from the margins to the center of American cultural life. Born and raised in New York, he was an early opponent of the Vietnam War, a founder of Gestalt therapy and a member of the faculty of Black Mountain College in North Carolina, the institution that was home to such thinkers and artists as Ed Dorn, Robert Creeley and Robert Rauschenberg, and birthed the American avant-garde. Not only a public intellectual, Goodman was also an active participant in the movements that aimed to change society and not just reflect upon it.

Though married twice and the father of three children, Goodman was open and unapologetic about his sexual attraction to both men and women. “Paul Goodman Changed My Life” is a fascinating film that paints a composite portrait of a complex man who never stopped thinking and who was incapable of anything but honesty in thought and deed.

At the SIFF Cinema from December 2 through December 8, 2011.

Aono Jikken from the Gimli Hospital

Seattle’s Aono Jikken Ensemble has been in New York working with otherworldly film director Guy Maddin on a re-boot of his debut feature Tales From the Gimli Hospital. The film, originally released in 1988, tells the “true story" of Icelandic immigrants who arrive in a plague-stricken Canadian village. Already weird and imaginative beyond description, the film has been completely re-edited and dubbed with new narration and dialogue, and Aono Jikken Ensemble have spent months composing a new score featuring an all-star group of Icelandic string musicians and vocalists. AJE’s wonderful unique combination of traditional Asian, western and world instruments, combined with the Icelandic strings and voices, together with found objects, children’s toys and specially created sound devices should create a whole new sound world for Maddin’s epic film. The whole shebang appears at the Walter Reade Theater of Lincoln Center on November 18 & 19 as part of Performa 11 – New York City’s New Visual Art Performance Biennial. Who knows if this will ever tour, so for God's sake see it in New York if at all possible. If you're a supporter of AJE (and who isn't?) you get a discount if you buy online and use the discount code "member11." Full ticket details right here.

Best of Henson

Of course pretty much everyone from my generation has a great reverence for Jim Henson. We grew up watching Sesame Street, moved on to the Muppet Show, and watched Labyrinth and the Dark Crystal so many times that huge swaths of our population have memorized the dialogue. Henson's creativity was legendary and his mastery of television has influenced everything that came afterward.

What's interesting is that in the years since his death, no one has come close to claiming his niche. I can't think of a single popular artist today who speaks to children and adults with such equal fluency, and whose work has such huge commercial appeal without ever being trite, saccharine or downright mercenary. We all knew Henson was unique at the time - it's looking more and more like he was true genius.

Starting tomorrow, November 5, the new SIFF Cinema at the Uptown is celebrating the work of Jim Henson by screening including the three original Muppet films, the fantasy classics The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, and eight different collections of classic shorts featuring from The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, and rarities from the Henson vaults.

The series runs through November 22, and the full schedule is available here.

And if you haven't seen this in a while, it's a perfect moment to re-visit Henson's 1966 short film Time Piece. Brilliant, anti-authoritarian, and not a single muppet. Enjoy.

New Spanish Cinema

This week brings the third edition of the Festival of New Spanish Cinema to the SIFF Cinema in downtown Seattle. This traveling series, both more beautiful and more popular than anyone expected, brings a dozen recent films by Spanish filmmakers both new and renowned. Every film looks to be a highlight, though I'm particularly drawn by La Mitad De Oscar - a drama set on the windswept landscape of Almeria - and a revival of the creepy 1976 classic ¿Quien Puede Matar Un Nino? or "Who can kill a Child? - a tale of a remote island full of only giggling children who seem to have murdered all the adults.

And I'm fascinated to see Bicycle, Spoon, Apple, a documentary on the immensely popular Catalan politican Pasqual Maragall. Maragall is the Grandson of renowned Catalan poet Joan Maragall, was the Mayor of Barcelona who brought the 1992 Olympic games that forever changed the city, and stepped down from his position as President of the Catalunya upon his announcement that he had Alzheimer's Disease. He is still a beloved figure among left-leaning Catalans, and this should be a remarkable portrait.

The series runs from September 21 to 25 and series passes are available here.

George Kuchar

Legendary underground filmmaker George Kuchar died on Tuesday in San Francisco.

Kuchar and his twin brother Mike made films together from childhood, using an eight-millimeter camera, props from their family’s New York apartment, and actors enlisted among friends and neighbors. Their entire career was spent making beautiful and heartfelt movies on a shoestring budget, inspiring hundreds of self taught film makers, not to mention the many thousands of amateur directors who post their work on Youtube, Vimeo and other sites.

The Kuchar brothers began receiving outside attention in the early ’60s with cheaply made and riotous films like “I Was a Teenage Rumpot.” Their film "Pussy on a Hot Tin Roof" caused a scandal at the New York Eight Millimeter Club, which brought the Kuchars to the attention of underground filmmaker Ken Jacob and Village Voice film critic Jonas Mekas. In 1964, at 22 years old, they had their first retrospective at the New Bowery Theater.

Kuchar had something of a popular breakthrough with his 1966 film short “Hold Me While I’m Naked,” a semi-autobiographical rumination on the frustrations of a maker of soft-core pornographic films. That film, along with a series of films he made on annual visits to a trailer park in Oklahoma during tornado season, became his best-known work. There is a terrific selection of Kuchar's work right here on UbuWeb.

In 1971 he was invited to teach filmmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute, where he remained on the faculty until earlier this year. Teaching provided him with a steady income as well as hundreds of amateur actors — his students — willing to be cast in some of his movies. After a long career, during which he made hundreds of movies, Kuchar died in San Francisco at the age of 69.

Cycling In The Netherlands In The 1950s

At the same time that the Eisenhower Interstate Highway system was being built in the United States in 1956, sounding the death knell of all reasonable and human scaled forms of transportation in this country, nearly 85 percent of the population in the Netherlands were getting from point A to point B by bicycle. Today there are about 16 million bicycles in Holland, slightly more than one for every inhabitant. About 1.3 million new bicycles are sold every year.

This charming video, discovered on the ever useful youtube, is a great collection of images of Dutch cycling in the 1950s. Makes one yearn for civilization.

Clouzot's Inferno

“Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno” is a fascinating documentary about a movie that was never made.

In 1964, Henri-Georges Clouzot was a titan of French cinema, venerated for films like “The Wages of Fear” and “Diabolique." It had been four years since he had made a film, and Clouzot conceived an ambitious project — to be called “L’Enfer” — a story of sexual jealousy and psychological instability that would encompass an array of new and radical techniques.

Columbia Pictures greatly anticipated the film, promising “unlimited” support, with a sense that this would be a historic work. But as the production grew in scale Clouzot grew more demanding, more obsessive and harder to work with. The crew and cast grew restless and alienated, and Clouzot, who seemed to go mad himself, had a heart attack. The project came to a screeching halt and was never completed.

Serge Bromberg, the documentary's director and narrator, worked with Clouzot's widow to unearth 85 film cans containing some 15 hours of footage. There were some completed scenes and hours of tests that the meticulous director had conducted to assess everything from costumes to camera lenses to complicated optical effects. The images that have made it into the documentary are frequently beautiful, if sometimes bizarre, and give a tantalizing sense of what might have been while chronicling the disintegration of Clouzot and his epic.

“Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno" plays at the Northwest Film Forum this Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Heaven and Hell

Those lucky enough to ride the elevator at the swank new Standard Hotel, on the western edge of Manhattan, are treated to an otherworldly piece of eye candy: "Civilization," a depiction of heaven, hell, and purgatory created by video artist Marco Brambilla. The enormous video collage is cobbled together from hundreds of scenes, lifted from movies. As the elevator rises, the sequence, running from an overhead projector, ascends to heaven. As the elevator descends, the video runs in reverse, ending in hell. The piece runs as one enormous loop.

Absolutely hypnotic.



Thanks to mega gorgeous Anne Grgich for the tip!

...speaking of Harry

This is an excerpt of one of Harry Smith's earliest film experiments, created between 1946 and 1957. This movie was made through a combination of hand-drawing directly onto the film strip, and batiking each individual cell, a process involving successive layers of dye, through which masked areas of the strip form abstractions. The process is involved and exhausting, the results fascinating and beautiful. It took him 9 years to create his first 10 short films, they are well worth 6 minutes of your day to watch.

Up Up and Away

Tell me Luke Geissbühler doesn't deserve to win some kind of Father of the Year award.

This past August, Geissbühler and his young son Max attached an HD video camera to a helium-filled weather balloon that rose into the upper stratosphere. The two spent eight months developing a camera housing that would survive 100 mph winds, temperatures of 60 degrees below zero and speeds of over 150 mph.

The intrepid duo then traveled from their home in Brooklyn to a remote area of Orange County, NY with their camera and a GPS system carefully wrapped in a homemade styrofoam capsule and fitted with a parachute. The balloon reached a height of nearly 20 miles above the earth before it exploded and the camera came spiraling back to Earth.

The result is an awe-inspiring video that sends the viewer into space and back again. Check it out.

Bicycle Film Festival

That last post reminds me...

The 10th annual International Bicycle Film Festival rolls into Seattle this week, from October 7-10. One of the Seattle organizers, Ryan from Go Means Go!, has been working overtime to get some worthy Seattle-made films included in the international touring program, and he succeeded gloriously. Among a small handful of locally produced films is Man Zou, a gorgeous travelogue by Jason Reid about biking from Beijing to Shanghai in a rapidly-changing China. The festival kicks off this Thursday at the King Cat Lounge at 2130 6th Ave. with a DJ set by hip hop legend Prince Paul, followed by three days of film screenings at Western Bridge in SoDo. The festival pass is $35, and individual tickets cost $10. The after parties are free. The full schedule is right here. (Watch the trailer for Man Zou here. The film itself screens on October 10th at 5 p.m.)

Fixed dexiF

A beautiful and hypnotic little bike film from Dan Nasser out of Savannah, GA.

Capitol Cinema

Earlier this week the magnificent Capitol Theater in downtown Olympia was sold to its longtime tenant, the Olympia Film Society. The volunteer-run non-profit film society, which operates on a shoe string budget to say the least, had been renting the 1920's-era movie palace since 1986.

The theater's owner had been trying to sell the place along with the retail building surrounding it, but after negotiating for months, and lowering the price repeatedly, he finally decided to sell just the cinema to OFS for $300,000. Call it one one more recession-era success story.

Despite boasting a terrific staff, having a well curated year-round calendar, and being Olympia's only alternative or art house cinema, being a tenant in the building had seriously limited the film society’s opportunities to raise funds as grant agencies were reluctant to give upkeep money to a group that didn’t own its space. Now that they own the place the money should come pouring in. And their biggest annual event, the 27th Olympia Film Festival, which is always a great party, will be better than ever. The Festival runs from November 12th through the 20th.

Thanks to iphone-alot for the photo!

RobZ TV

On Friday September 10th local artist, film maker, disc jockey, bicycle revolutionary and semi-professional drinker Rob Zverina releases the fourth volume of his beautiful film collection RobZ TV.

Since 2003, Zverina has filmed tens of thousands of unscripted video shorts using only a pocket camera. He routinely chooses the best of these and compiles them into lovely 2 DVD sets featuring dozens of films, all shorter than 1 minute, which are equal parts documentary, cinema verite and serendipitously perfect moving images. The films in volume 4 were recorded between May and October 2004 and feature restaurant work, kisses, the Jones Soda promo van, strangers at the Seattle Public Library, beer taps, and counting pebbles on a beach.

The screening will be an informal affair at a new Capitol Hill vintage clothing store, Indian Summer at 534 East Mercer Street, hosted by owner Adria Garcia. DJ Port-a-Party will be on hand to provide a soundtrack. The films will be projected through a window and visible from the street as well.

DVDs of Volume 4 are available at the event for $10 each or you can order them direct from Rob. The films start as soon as it's dark enough.

The Sign Painters

Film maker Faythe Levine has a new obessesion. Levine, who directed the DIY documentary Handmade Nation has recently turned her attention to the lives and craft of American sign painters. Nearly invisible, there are still hundreds of men and women in this country who carefully paint signs and advertisements on shop windows, sandwich-boards, boats, cars, billboards, playgrounds, farmers markets, hot dog stands and theme parks. Levine, along with co-director Sam Macon is in the midst of creating The Sign Painter a documentary film chronicling the stories of modern day painters and legends of the craft. The film includes interviews with contemporary sign painters like Seattle's own Sean Barton, and also meets artists like Rey Giese who has been a sign painter for 75 years and continues to work.There is no release date yet for the film, but Levine is maintaining both a blog and a Flickr account to document the process.

Filmed By Bike

The Eighth Annual Filmed by Bike film festival takes place at Portland's Clinton Street Theater April 16-18. The festival features nothing but short films, eight minutes or less, all of which prominently feature bikes. The films have almost nothing else in common, hailing from all over the world, and ranging from love stories to travelogues to serious documentaries to animated fantasies to music videos. The juried selection of 40 films are compiled into two separate programs which rotate through the weekend.

The festival opens on Friday the 16th with a famously well attended street party sponsored by New Belgium Brewery and featuring bands, sets from DJ Anjali and Incredible Kid and lots and lots of bikers in their Spring finery. Go here for full festival schedule and ticket information.

Visual Music

A six day series at the Northwest Film Forum takes a loving look at the long and complex relationship between recorded music and motion pictures. The "Visual Music" series pays special attention to the iconoclastic artists working in film from the 1920's through the 1970's who pioneered concepts, techniques and technologies which have retained a surprising strength to surprise and inspire, and have proven profoundly influential to today's sound-and-image culture. It's a rare opportunity to see restored film prints by genius animators like Oskar Fischinger, Mary Ellen Bute, Jordan Belson and Robert Breer on the big screen.

The series opens this Friday, April 9, and runs through Wednesday the 14th. The full schedule, including extensive information about the films, is available right here.

Star Wars Uncut

I love this idea. A team of 473 movie makers and animators are in the process of recreating the first Star Wars film, 15 seconds at a time. Masterminds Aaron Valdez and Casey Pugh have split the entire movie into 473 equal length clips. Any film maker in the world - professional, amateur or certified lunatic - can claim a scene, film it, and upload it. When every scene has been recreated, the auteurs will stitch them together into a new feature length film - Star Wars Uncut.

At this point, about 80% of the film has been claimed. I watched a handful of scenes - some of which are great, some of which are mediocre, and some of which defy description. I quite like this one from Montreal animator Malcolm Sutherland.



Stay tuned to watch the whole thing!