[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca46VETqpEQ&feature=related[/youtube]
.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_03F1faeV_g[/youtube]
Gare du Nord.
Fabulous short fiction film, in two parts, by the legendary filmmaker Jean Rouch, well-worth reposting.
(The 16 minute short was shown as part of Paris vu par… Others included Rohmer, Chabrol, Godard et al.)
(Gracias Benji Z.)
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/28358349[/vimeo]
Yep. One l’il weird short film by one of the grand dames of contemporary cinema.
(Gracias Andrés.)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glxOojE8Cxw[/youtube]
Jean Painlevé. Crazy wonderful him.
Click click click.
Mexico’s Cineteca Nacional–under the direction of the amazing Paula Astorga—has become unstoppable.
And now they have a new project called “Archivo Memoria”: a new initiative looking to rescue Mexico’s ‘social memory”, plus provoke the use of the rescued material in contemporary film projects, co-ordinated by non other than our very dear Audrey Young.
“Archivo Memoria se propone emprender la búsqueda de estos registros en imagen, de aquello “no visto†que también forma parte de la historia fÃlmica de nuestra nación: pelÃculas de eventos familiares ─bautizos, bodas, cumpleaños─, noticieros, cine turÃstico, pelÃculas industriales, material censurado, cine educacional, obra experimental, pruebas de cámara, grabaciones bélicas, material de archivo, animaciones, pietaje antropológico y otros fragmentos efÃmeros.
Registros que dejan ver el contexto en el que fueron creados, y que en conjunto reflejan los cambios por los que ha transitado la sociedad mexicana. Material que a primera vista podrÃa parecer intrascendente pero que, de alguna manera, tiene un valor histórico que enriquece el patrimonio cultural de la nación y que, guardado en armarios o bodegas, sin las condiciones técnicas apropiadas para su conservación y preservación, corre el riesgo de desaparecer. PelÃculas no sólo de gran valor para la historia de nuestra cultura, sino con un gran potencial para reutilizarse y que hoy en dÃa sirve para comprender la historia reciente de México.
Como parte de esta iniciativa, la Cineteca Nacional, en colaboración con el Orphan Film Project y Walter Forsberg, llevará a cabo, el próximo viernes 26 y sábado 27 de agosto, el Primer Encuentro Archivo Memoria, el cual mostrará los resultados del Orphan Film Symposium, junto con hallazgos del proyecto Archivo Memoria y los primeros cortometrajes realizados por los artistas e investigadores Kyzza Terrazas e Issa GarcÃa Ascot.”
Más info aquÃ
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“…always this story of what it is to be human, i.e. confronted with alterity, with the Other who is infinitely possible and yet infinitely closed and inaccessible, no matter what one does. And it’s from there that one journeys, works, loves, fucks…”
*
Buena plática, buena pelÃcula, buenos mezcales: no hay mejor forma de pasar un jueves.
Entrada gratuita.
(Labor, Interior13 Cine y Tóxico Cultura invitan)
“To work in the abyss between fiction and reality, to work between what you know and all that is mysterious: I love that tension. I think its important to find the cinematic in everyday life, a hungry point of view, daily. When you dig into people’s individual worlds and develop a keen sense of smell, to question, investigate, invent, to find fiction. The real is different to the realistic.”
-Óscar Ruiz Navia at Tóxico Lab-
Oscar Ruiz Navia, talentosÃsimo y multipremiado director de cine estará impartiendo un taller teórico/práctico de 6 dÃas en donde exloraremos métodos de selección/observación de personas que existen en la vida cotidiana y que puedan convertirse en personajes cinematográficos, construyendo un universo que confunda la vida, el sueño y la ficción.
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Más informes en www.toxicocultura.com/ruiznavia.
(Los talleres de Tóxico se llenan de volada, asi que si les interesa escriban muy pronto)
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Tóxico Lab es una nueva serie de talleres diseñados especialmente para (y por) una nueva generación de talentosos artistas emergentes.
Agradecemos profundamente la colaboración de la Cineteca Nacional de México, asi como el apoyo de The Lift, el British Council, y el programa de TED Fellows.
Says The Independent:
Some of those enamoured by the first grainy images of cinema had brought a projector in 1940s Bombay. As the first images whirred to life on a taut white cloth raised in clearings in villages, a novel cultural experience presented itself before audiences who sat agape, witnessing the magic. Gradually, old projectors found themselves carted off into dusty villages by maverick lawyers, doctors and producers who formed the first touring cinema companies. Till today, the same projectors- though modified and much Indianized – have been handed down like heirlooms across generations spanning more than six decades.
More here, at World Press Photo
(Gracias Anita Doron)
¨The problem with a shot like this, if you want to know, is getting it done.Most of us begin with a cliché – not always, but most of the time -and that´s fine, but you have to look at it from all sides and clarify it.
So you start with the idea of discovery……
…Showing a mountain without the window, without anything.
A torn curtain
Then you ask yourself, but why?
It will inhibit the viewer´s imagination instead of opening it up and you say to yourself:
¨yes, after having filmed Mount Etna, Mount Saint Victoire, why add another one?¨
And so you renounce, slowly.
Then one fine day…
One fine day you realise that it´s better to see as little as possible.
You have a sort of…reduction, only it´s not a reduction – it´s a concentration and it actually says more.
But you don´t do that from one day to the next. You need time and patience.
A sigh can become a novel.¨
- J.M Straub
(Gracias Michel Lipkes)
Ans so we repost his polaroids, to conmemorate.
(Michelangelo Antonioni gave Andrei Tarkovsky a Polaroid camera in the 70s, and they say it rarely left his side since then.)
(More here)
—
(Lots of film stuff on the Tóxico Blog, do take a look. You can also follow us on Twitter @ToxicoCultura, with much love from Mexico City. And thanks to our friends @Criterion for the retweet!)
“When I speak of poetry I am not thinking of it as a genre. Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality… Such an artist can discern the lines of the poetic design of being. He is capable of going beyond the limitations of coherent logic, and conveying the deep complexity and truth of impalpable connections and hidden phenomena of life.
Without such perception, even a work that purports to be true to life will seem artificially uniform and simplistic. An artist may achieve an outward illusion, a life-like effect, but that is not at all the same as examining life beneath the surface.
I think in fact unless there is an organic link between the subjective impressions of the author and his ojective representation of reality, he will not achieve even superficial credibility, let alone authenticity and inner truth.”
These above are observatories in Chile’s Atacama Desert, whose sky is said to be the most transluscent of our planet and one of the best places on earth to watch the far corners of the universe.
It takes 2 seconds for light to get here from them moon. It takes 8 minutes for the light of the sun to travel to earth. And because all light and all sound have to travel, even the images and sounds that we think we are receiving in the present time are really the past, they already happened, if even only with a millionth of a second ago. So we all live in the past, continuosly. There is no present, they voices in this documentary tell us.
They also tell us that the Atacama Desert is also the driest of the lands. So dry in fact, that it functions as a giant mummifier of human bodies–which are surprisngly preserved in this moistureless coffin. Pre-Columbian mummies, 19th century explorers and miners; but also the remains of political prisoners that “disappeared†in the military coup of September, 1973 by presidential decree.
And so the place holds a strange, poignant mix of arqueologists, astronomers and also relentless mothers looking for the bones of family members; all sifting in the past, still searching, above and below.
Gorgeous film by Patricio Guzman, one of Latin America’s most celebrated documentary filmmakers: always both utterly political and profoundly poetic.
Red an interview here, and watch Patricio Guzman in conversation with Cinema Tropical right here.
(And be warned: trailer does not do the film justice.)
Stunning autobiographical film by Paula Markovitch, who debuts as a director.  Until recently, Markovitch was best known as the scriptwriter behind Fernando Eimbcke´s films—and non withstanding that they are great films, in my opinion El Premio leaves them in the dust.
This is an autobiographical story. The action takes place in the locations of my childhood, to which I always return in my dreams. I can still hear the sound of the wind clearly, never-ending and wet. I see the unfriendly beach. The sea is yellow and grey. Storms make the walls tremble. These are hostile times. At school we are exposed to the overwhelming mediocrity of fascism and its ridiculous ceremonies. I am seven years old. I go to school. I know I must not reveal my true identity to the other kids. I’ve been told that my family’s safety depends on my silence. I’m forced to lie. I lie, just as they told me to. I manage to make them believe my lies. I desperately try to look like all the others but now my mother feels sad and despises me. I am wicked and stupid and make her suffer. What should I say? What should I keep to myself? What should I do to earn my mother’s approval and please the others? In a world so full of confusion and fear, who are we supposed to be?â€
The film won two awards at the Berlinale, and Best Film at Guadalajara, plus Best Actor Prize for her 7-year old (amazing) protagonist.
You can watch Paula interviewing her two young actors here.
The informal storytellers of a small village in El Salvador gather around this film’s images, weaving past and present, remembering the devastating effects that the civil war had upon their lives, and how this tiniest of places was, for a while, Â annihilated from the face of the earth until they came back to sweep chipped human bones from the ground, build houses, start all over again.
Mesmerizing voices, beautiful images, brutal memories, wonderful structure, amazing sound design. So darn intoxicating to see how many powerful documentaries arc coming from contemporary Mexican cinema nowadays.
Directed by Tatiana Huezo, whose grandmother comes from this village.
Edited by Paulina del Paso, who has taken several Tóxico International Workshops.
***
“Y la muerte no tendrá dominio.
Los muertos y desnudos serán uno solo
con el hombre en el viento y la luna del poniente;
cuando sus huesos queden limpios y desaparezcan
tendrán estrellas en el codo y el pie;
aunque se vuelvan locos estarán cuerdos,
aunque se hundan en el mar volverán a levantarse;
aunque los amantes se pierdan, el amor no desaparecerá,
y la muerte no tendrá dominio.”
-Dylan Thomas-
Guillermo del Toro–who debuted Cronos, his first film, 18 years ago today at the Guadalajara Film Festival–curated a Vampire film cycle for this year´s edition. But now “The Vampire and Sex”, one of the films included in his selection, has stirrred up quite a bit of controversy and will no longer be projected.
El Santo–the main charachter and the most legendary of all Mexican wrestlers– appeared in many B-movies back in the day, always apt for the whole familly. So when this film full of naked women surfaced (it was thought to be an urban myth for many years) its seems his 8 children cried foul: maybe because of this more sexualized version of their dad, maybe because they want to claim copy rights; very possibly both.
Such a shame. Neck-loving vampires, sex and masked men with capes seemed like a good combination for this tuesday afternoon.
Mini-maratón de cine y plática.
Participan en la mesa Carlos Casas (Es) director de la trilogÃa, Maximiliano Cruz (Mx) , miembro de la distribuidora Interior13 Cine y programador de FICUNAM, y Antonio Zirión (Mx) , antropólogo visual y profesor-investigador de la UNAM-I.
Puedes ver la programación completa aquÃ.
Una colaboración del Centro Cultural España, Tóxico Cultura, y Map Productions.
(Muchas gracias a The Lift y La Colección/Fundación Jumex y el British Council  por el apoyo a las actividades generales de Tóxico, y a Daniel Viera por hacer posible este proyecto.)
“In Heaven, everything is fine. … You’ve got your good things, and I’ve got mine.â€
Eraserhead (1976)
(Via If We Don’t, Remember Me)
(Gracias Rogelio Sosa)
“Yo vengo de un provincia del norte de Argentina donde existÃa la costumbre de dormir la siesta–la duermen los adultos que trabajan y a los chicos hay que tenerlos quietos. En mi casa mi abuela nos contaba cuentos, la mayorÃa aterradores, y tenÃan la función de inmovilizar a las criaturas en la cama o donde sea para que los adultos pudieran dormir. Ese mundo de las narraciones orales y muchos aspectos de esas formas de construcción del lenguaje definieron el cine que hago.
Sumergidos en el aire, como en una gran piscina vacÃa de agua, asà estamos. Crecemos entre conversaciones, ondas que se desplazan por el aire y nos envuelven, nos atraviesan. Pero hemos consagrado nuestro tiempo al ojo. Hay una forma de construir el cine desde el sonido y entre todos los sonidos, el de la lengua materna. Podemos cerrar los ojos y evitar ver, pero no tenemos párpados para el oÃdo. El sonido en el cine es lo inevitable. Somos animales muy especiales que emitimos sonidos con sentido. Eso nos convierte en unas rarezas. El que escribe para cine, y el que actúa, tiene que hacer ese juego de escribir una partitura para ser emitido por ese animal extraño; con la doble cualidad de que ese sonido tiene todas las caracterÃsticas comunes–ritmo, volumen–y además una muy compleja que es la del sentido. Cuando mi abuela nos contaba cuentos yo creo que su arte era no era sólo lo horrible que eran las historias–que todavÃa gravitan en las mentes de nosotros, de los hermanos que las escuchamos–sino también en el ritmo, en las formas de las pausas, en las formas en que ese sonido que nos iba envolviendo hasta atraparnos y retenernos en la cama.”
-Lucrecia Martel-
(Loose transcription of a talk she gave in Spain, watch full video here)
Filed away in the Centro de Documentación at the Cineteca Nacional are promotional brochures from 1975, records of an orange-saturated world of geometric-patterned carpets that hasn’t existed for thirty years. The Cineteca caught fire in 1982, less than ten years after opening, its entire collection destroyed. (Within Mexico, the cause of this “cultural crime†is still officially listed as unknown, although those inclined to paranoia whisper that it was sabotage, the obliteration of a country’s past. Legend has it that the print of the Polish film playing when the fire started was somehow salvaged from the rubble, and that everywhere it’s shown a fire breaks out.)
The Cine Móvil program sent mobile cinema units ambling around rural Mexico in those pre-fire years, bringing ‘buen cine mexicano’ to small villages that often didn’t even have electricity, let alone a movie theatre. There were three different vans with three different routes, outfitted with four-wheel drive (“taking the abruptness of our geography into considerationâ€) and with room for two: beds, a bathroom, a kitchen, storage space for the projection equipment, a small film archive, workbench, screens, sound equipment. The young projectionists lived in the vans for the month it took to wind their way through the countryside, traveling from town to town during the day, setting up their equipment for a screening each night and making super 8 documentary films on those they encountered.
(But where are the vans? And where are the films? Were they lost to the fire? Or are they out there somewhere, hidden away?)
-Audrey Young, Tóxico International Intern–
[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6728530019973103765#[/googlevideo]
O Pátio. Short Film by Glauber Rocha, an influential Brazilian film director, actor and writer.
(The name Glauber, given by the mother, is inspired by the name of the German scientist Johann Rudolf Glauber (1603-68), who discovered the sodium sulphate or “Glauber ‘s salt”.)
This was the first film he ever made. He was 17 years old.
(“Donde no hay imágenes vivas no hay arte ni poesÃa”, le dijo alguna vez su padre. Al parecer le hizo caso.)
***
“We were modestly looking to escape from the “creative†effortlessness that literature and the plastic arts (as well as music) could offer us, and we searched for what would be considered difficult or impossible: organize a filmic universe, living for itself, without knowing, principally, the human problematic emerging from it. The work process was simple: like two human figures – male and female -, thrown on a patio in black and white, with sea and sky view and surrounded by foliage, we start with the camera, used as an instrument, in search for the cleanest appearance, more purified, and which would leave from its real state for the poetic state, only by framing solutions, from the selective point of view of the filmmaker in search for valid elements that, in the editing room, would propose the problem of “creating†the rhythmic organism, the film in its state of cinema as cinema.
It’s true that the use of human figures created, inside the filmic logic, a small anecdote. However we believe that it’s isolated on the background, since what will impose on it, basically, is the filmic climate, the new dimension of poetry that the play creates. “Patio†doesn’t want to “mean†anything, doesn’t want to “make a speech on or tell†this or that human attitude, but simply create in its proper scope what we would find in the Greek Cacoyanis and in the Kubrick of “Killer’s Kissâ€: “states†that only can be created by framing and montage, the work materials of a filmmaker who’s aware of his trade. This affirmation can seem pretentious, but it’s just an honest attitude towards the cinema, that, in the right term of the critic Cláudio Bueno Rocha, nowadays doesn’t exceed the simple art of entertainment.
-Glauber Rocha, in “Jornal do Brasilâ€, Rio de Janeiro, March 29, 1959-
(Buen artÃculo en español aquÃ.)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt-8btq7kt8&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]
Orson welles spent almost 30 years of his life trying to complete a film: his own version of the Quixote. He died trying, becoming somewhat a Quixote himself in the process. Click here to see what has been called ‘the 6 most beautiful minutes in the history of cinema’ — filmed in a movie theater in Mexico City, back in the days. (It plays right after an interesting conversation with Jonathan Rosenbaum, stay patient.)
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“I’ll summarise this. It’s very simple: I think, and I hope that you’ll agree with me, that Mizoguchi, Ozu, Griffith and Chaplin are the greatest documentary directors, and thus the greatest directors of life, of reality. They are the directors who hide things, who close the doors, and you can open them, sometimes. Yet, to open the doors of such films is difficult, dangerous – it’s work. Sometimes when we think that we’re going to show everything, that we make a documentary to show everything, in fact we don’t show anything, we don’t see anything, we’re just scattered…
So, the real directors don’t distinguish between documentary and fiction. Never in my life have I thought: am I making a documentary, am I making a fiction, and what are the ways to make one or the other? They don’t exist. We film life, and the more I close the doors, the more I hinder the spectator from taking pleasure in seeing himself on the screen – because I don’t want that – the more I close the doors, the more I’m going to have the spectator against me, perhaps against the film, but at least he will be, I hope, uncomfortable and at war. That is, he will be in the uneasy situation of the world.”
-Pedro Costa-
(Gracias BenjamÃn Z.)
“As a cinematographer you have to be a chameleon and adapt to different directors. But I don’t like the idea of simply illustrating a script. A script is pages and words, and the image is the basic unit of the film’s language. So it’s very important to work out the transition from word to image. The most inexhaustible landscapes for me remain faces and bodies: I like to look at people, to look at them in order to love them. It’s like dancing with someone, except with a camera you don’t touch them. I just want to tell them that I’d like to put my hand on them.”
PROYECCIÓN Y PLÃTICA PÚBLICA
CINETECA NACIONAL
26 DE OCTUBRE / 8PM
Agnès Godard es una de las directoras de fotografÃa de cine más importantes a nivel internacional, reconocida por su manera de darle una personalidad distintiva a cada pelÃcula en la que trabaja, y por su versatilidad prodigiosa.
Originalmente estudió periodismo por varios años antes de dedicarse al cine; aun siendo periodista fue aceptada en el prestigioso IDHEC (Institut des Hautes Etudes Cinématographiques) en Paris. Después de graduarse empezó a trabajar como asistente de cámara para Wim Wenders, y fue la elogiada operadora de cámara para Alas del deseo, cuya belleza visual y ritmo marcaron un hito importante en la historia del cine.
Poco después empezó sus legendarias colaboraciones con Claire Denis, como directora de fotografÃa de pelÃculas tales como Nénette et Boni, Beau Travail, Trouble Every Day y 35 Rhums. Además ha trabajado cercanamente con Agnès Varda, Alain Resnais, Peter Handke, Peter Greenaway y Erick Zonca, entre otros. Las texturas y la belleza de sus imágenes cinematográficas le han ganando prestigiosos premios, incluyendo un Cèsar.
Agnès viene por primera vez a México a través de Tóxico, y dará un taller exclusivo de 3 dÃas, en el cual hablará con profundidad sobre sus métodos de trabajo, las ideas personales que guÃan sus decisiones cinematográficas, sobre la técnica precisa y intuición necesaria, además de contarnos acerca de sus proyectos más recientes. También tendremos la oportunidad de verla recreando en vivo la filmación de una escena.
Agnès inaugura The Tóxico Film Series, un nuevo proyecto de Tóxico Cultura creado para cuestionar las posibilidades de la imagen, desde varias perspectivas; con el apoyo de La Cineteca Nacional, La Colección/Fundación Jumex, The Lift y el British Council.
Más información en www.toxicocultura/godard
Twitter: @ToxicoCultura
Trailer de “Verano de Goliat”, de Nicolás Pereda.
Pereda acaba de ganar el premio de “Mejor filme Orizzonti” en el Festival de Venecia.
***
(“Verano de Goliat” se estrena en noviembre en el DF; será distribuida por Interior 13–queridos aliados de Tóxico. Además, Gabino Rodriguez, el protagonista de todas las pelÃculas de Pereda, tomó el Tóxico Workshop de Cristoffer Boe)
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“Uno está bastante condenado a una forma de percibir–por la educación, por la costumbre, la cultura–en fin, a una forma de percibir los hechos. El cine lo que te permite es distorcionar esa percepción un poco. Y en esa distorción, para mi, con suerte, entre quien hizo la pelÃcula y los espectadores puede haber alguna revelación. Y entonces uno intenta ese juego. A veces la revelación se produce, a veces no… una pequeña revelación, no digo una gran verdad–no creo en la gran verdad– pero una pequeña iluminación entorno a lo que nos rodea. Es un juego casi perceptual que uno propone al espectador”
-Lucrecia Martel-
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Click on image to see Meetin’ WA: Godard interviewing Allen in 1986.
Click on image to see  a (beautifully shot) short film by British director Alicia Duffy.
She  is presenting her first feature-lenght film (entitled “All Good Children”) this year at Cannes.
(Take a look at the trailer here.)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqxGBXolmw4[/youtube]
I arrived in Buenos Aires two weeks ago. I stay for a little over a month. I have been living close to a train track, 100 meters away from an old metal bridge where  one can lean against the railing with a cup of hot coffee to watch the trains pass by. I have been editing my first feature-length documentary with el dueño de la tijera y el péndulo, la barbarie doméstica, editor descalzo, Felipe Guerrero.
Watch a fragment of his experimental film “ParaÃso” above. Directed by him and music by our friend Sebastián Escofet.
(10 am)
(Back to work)
(Mmm, film)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMJ4thppCkk[/youtube]
A fragment of a lesser-known short documentary by Werner Herzog:
take a deep breath before pressing play.
“A whole film exists already in a sensation, in an intuition. It is all about availability; I put myself at the service of the fantasy I have, Â I let it materialize. So I don’t create a system, nor a school. My method of working is to remain open. An artist is like a medium: a mind, nerves, body, hands, a vessel to be inhabited by a feeling, a fantasy, an idea, that later become characters, scenarios, that become story.”
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PAsYkrEwjM[/youtube]
From Burden of Dreams, a documentary by Les Blank on the making of Fitzcarraldo: a fiction film that Herzog calls his “best documentary”.
(Tóxico favorites, both of these films)
(Gracias Pancho)
I have been looking for this Frederick Wiseman film for some time now.
This documentary was shot at the Bridgewater State Hospital for the criminally insane, in Massachusetts; it shows inmates inside the asylum, living a harsh reality behind the bars of their own–and the system’s–unreason.
“The movie was both a landmark piece of journalism and a landmark work of art. It made the Massachusetts Correctional Institution at Bridgewater one of the most infamous madhouses in the country, and it is now one of the most celebrated documentaries of the ’60s. It is also notable for two reasons that have nothing to do with its merits. It was the first picture to be directed by Frederick Wiseman, a former law professor who at age 37 was beginning a long series of rich and challenging films. And it is the only movie in U.S. history to be banned for reasons other than obscenity or national security.”
Read an interview with Wiseman here.
And see the movie here or here.
(Gracias Jannike)
“I see things that are impossible to believe and experience people and situations that permanently misplace my previous knowledge constructs. And losing my conceptual frameworks and assumptions is not unlike losing the backpacks upon immigrating to Israel. I possess nothing more than a temporary understanding. And I’m unexpectedly grateful.
If I tried to control reality by making sense of it, by needing certainties and truths, I would miss all that is invisible and obscure and overlook the fluid places where magic lies. I gather my knowledge in fragments, and when they begin to form into a solid, singular piece, I break them apart by the introduction of another fragment. When the fragments crash, it sounds like heavy metal played by forest creatures in leather dunce caps and frayed silk wings. It’s haunting.
I call on us to experience the joy of relinquishing the judgments we’ve made. Let’s fight when we want to surrender and surrender when we want to fight. Let’s live as a deranged creature, hungry for the unknown, repeatedly ripping up plans and blueprints to see what emerges from nothingness, from bare faith. ”
–Anita Doron, Filmmaker–
From her great TED Fellow talk, murmured from stage in a way that was deliciously transfixing, and did derange.
(Gracias Anita)
“This short film by American director Ramin Bahrani (Goodbye Solo) traces the epic, existential journey of a plastic bag (voiced by Werner Herzog) searching for its lost maker, the woman who took it home from the store and eventually discarded it. Along the way, it encounters strange creatures, experiences love in the sky, grieves the loss of its beloved maker, and tries to grasp its purpose in the world.”
(Click here to see.)
(Gracias Benji Z.)
The House is Black (1962, 22 Minutes), is the only film from Forough Farrokhzad, possibly Iran’s most noted and controversial female poet. A look inside a leper colony, the documentary short has been called “the greatest of all Iranian films” by Jonathan Rosenbaum, and is (now) frequently referred to as one of the lynchpins of the Iranian New Wave.  And between the clinical dialogue (in every sense of the definition) are snips of poetry by Farrokhzad, read by the author herself, that elevates the colony’s plight to the level of that Old Testament paragon of unanswered and cruel kismet.
Via the wonderful UBU Website.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7Lk2OR9q-E[/youtube]
A fragment from a short documentary by Werner Herzog.
Ski flying.
Mmm.
*
Provoke the unexpected. Expect it.
*
(Little Eddie filming the Maysles brothers)
We love them. Both the Maysles brothers and the Edies. And now there is Grey Gardens, the book. We still have not seen it, but the film is a definite Tóxico all-time favorite.
More on this, after the break. Meanwhile, do take a look at a letter Little Edie wrote in response to the now infamous New York Times review of those days. Wonderful answer.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enoJAHDoQ5w[/youtube]
Obitateli, or Inhabitants, by Artavazd Pelechian.
A must-see classic from the 70s, made entirely out of archival footage.
Photographs by Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan– a Cannes Festival darling since his debut–and who actually started out as a photographer before getting into cinema.
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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPi9i3gfSAM[/youtube]
Says Amy Stein’s blog:
Meshes of the Afternoon is groundbreaking avant-garde film from 1943. It was directed by the great Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid. If it feels vaguely familiar to you it may because it was a major influence on David Lynch and his films Lost Highway and Inland Empire.
(In two parts. Look for the second half on You Tube.)
Images by Carlos Casas. From The End trilogy.
Carlitos Casas. Filmmaker, visual artist, sound artist and somewhat of a poet of the everyday. Oh: and Tóxico Padrino extraordinaire.
Says Carlos:
“The trilogy of films dedicated the most extreme environments on the planet, I was interested in living in these lands trying to capture those lives styles which are dissapearing, I was interested in the collective imaginary of these places and their mythic idea of the end of the world. I was interested in landscapes, places that carried in a certain way a feeling of the “Endâ€, through abandonness, remoteness, harshness of the land and of course living conditions, places that could represent in a way a post apocalyptic future scenario and at the same time a certain archaic civilisation feeling. I was interested in the people living in this peripheries of civilization and how they survive their everyday life, why they were here and how they were managing to survive. I was interested in living among them, following their rhythms and trying to understand their ways, their reasons.”
***
(Take a look at his website for more images, films, texts and sounds.)
(And click here to learn about MAP Productions: a headquarter for the creation cultural projects–based in Paris and Uzbekistan– Â that Carlos recently created with his wife Saodat Ismailova, also an award-winning filmmaker, and one of the most incredible women I know.)
(Carlos is also part of La Otra Maleta Mexicana, a collective art project created by Tóxico that is now showing  in Cuba)
Short documentary film (in three parts) created in 1963 by legendary Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens. Dialogues by the incomparable Chris Marker.
A fascinating little trip to the border of reality.
Click click click.
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(Ivens worked in collaboration with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Jacques Prévert, Frank Capra, Jean-Luc Godard, William Klein, Alain Resnais, Agnès Varda–and Marker of course.)
Our dear dear Quay Brothers–whose Tóxico workshop and lecture was a mind banquet for us all–have an exhibition up in NYC.
Read a post on it right here, from BLDG BLOG.
***
(“What happens in the shadow, in the grey regions, also interests us – all that is elusive and fugitive, all that can be said in those beautiful half tones, or in whispers, in deep shade.”
New work by Carlos Casas. Visual Artist. Sound Artist. Filmmaker. Toxico-padrino extraordinaire.
(This is both art installation material and also visual and audio research for one of his films in progress.)
“But film material can be joined together in another way, which works above all to lay open the logic of a person’s thought. This is the rationale that will dictate the sequence of events, and the editing which forms them into a whole. The birth and development of thought are subject to laws of their own, and sometimes demand forms of expression which are quite different from the patterns of logical speculation. In my view poetic reasoning is closer to the laws by which thought develops, and thus to life itself, than is the logic of traditional drama.
Through poetic connections feeling is heightened and the spectator is made more active. He becomes a participant in the process of discovering life, unsupported by ready-made deductions from the plot or ineluctable pointers by the author. He has at his disposal only what helps to penetrate to the deeper meaning of the complex phenomenon represented in front of him. Complexities of thought and poetic visions of the world do not have to be thrust into the framework of the patently obvious. The usual logic, that of linear sequentiality, is uncomfortably like proof of a geometry theorem. Associative linking allows for both an affective as well as rational appraisal. It possess an inner power which is concentrated within the image and comes across to the audience in the form of feelings, inducing tension in direct response to the author’s narrative logic.
When less than everything is said about a subject, you can still think on further.”
-Andrei Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time–
In 1973, photographer William Eggleston picked up a Sony PortaPak and took to documenting the soul of Memphis and New Orleans.
Click on Image to see film.
(Gracias Michel Lipkes)
On conventions, familiarity, strangeness and limbs
“Completely conventional movie making doesn’t make sense to me. Why would anyone want to do a film that someone else could have done? Unless you want a commercial film. An art-house film wants to say: I am a little different from what you’ve seen. And I will not bore you, trust me. Art-house movies should experiment more. We have less expectations to contend with. So make something interesting and personal. How can we cut a scene to contain different emotions? How can we twist a theme, make it both familiar and strange? But the more stylized or quirky your movie, the more natural the acting has to be. There has to be something to connect with, an anchor that you can relate to and that drags you into a strange world. Because if there is a certain point of departure that seems understandable, then the movie can twist and turn you, from this gravitational point onwards and take you out on a limb. But you need something to lure people to the limb first. Actors are one of the strongest anchors in movies. So they have to be very real. I am only conventional in the picking of my actors. I only choose the very best; it is that simple. I have used some of the best European actors in my films.”
***
(Boe gave a fabulous Tóxico Workshop in 2008. We were supposed meet again, a month ago, in Copenhagen. But, alas, life had it otherwise. Hopefully soon. Plus a new Tóxico interview. His thoughts on cinema still swim in our heads.)
Interesting web project: interviews with legendary documentary filmmakers such as Werner Herzog, Albert Maysles, Errol Morris, Michel Brault etc, who give their views on different aspects of non-fiction cinema. The web page can be browsed by fragmented or unified themes, like a series of tiny interviews. Mmm. Nice. Click image, or click here to see.
*
“Siempre las paredes. Siempre los pasillos, siempre las puertas y del otro lado, aún más paredes. Antes de llegar hasta usted, antes de reunirnos, usted no sabe todo lo que he tenido que atravesar. Y ahora, usted está aquà en donde la he traÃdo, y usted continúa a ocultarse. Pero yo estoy en este jardÃn, al alcance de su voz, al alcance de su mirada, al alcance de su mano…â€
(Still y diálogo de L’année dernière à Marienbad, del cineasta francés Alain Resnais, que vi este fin de semana por primera vez. Mmm…)
*
Gerald Edwards’s archive of all of Alfred Hitchcock’s on-screen cameos. See more here.
Via i heart photograph blog
“Juxtaposing a person with an environment that is boundless, collating him with a countless number of people passing by close to him and far away, relating a person to the whole world, that is the meaning of cinema.â€
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6vyuEKArUI&feature=related[/youtube]
Poema de Panero sobre sà mismo
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh5c5dmALKM[/youtube]
Jaime Chávarri habla sobre el Desencanto, documental español de culto de los 70s
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPqNn_ygFzw&feature=related[/youtube]
Fragmento del desencanto
(Gracias Carlitos Casas, Toxi-padrino y Toxi-musa)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnpofBtijF8[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RvmJan17q8[/youtube]
La Jetée, by the marvellous Chris Marker.
(Si no lo has visto, uff, te has perdido de una de las joyitas del cine.)
Este lunes 13 de abril comienza un ciclo de pelÃculas de Christopher Doyle, escogidas por Christopher Doyle
HOY: Away With Words, dirigida por Doyle
Todos los lunes, 8 pm, durante un mes
Cine Lido: Tamaulipas 202, Col. Condesa
Asà es. Hoy llega Christopher Doyle. Mañana Master-Class para 40 personas. El lunes conferencia abierta al público en general. Oh felicidad.
(Próximamente en la gran Ciudad de México.)
[nggallery id=44]
(Yes yes yes: the marvelous Christopher Doyle is our next Tóxico International Guest.)
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Asà es. Un nuevo Tóxico Master-Class impartido por el incomparable y legendario maestro del baile cinematográfico, Christopher Doyle; director de fotografÃa de Wong Kar-Wai, Jim Jarmush, Gus Van Sant, Zhiang Yimo…
4 y 5 de abril ‘09
Cuidad de México
Tóxico Master-Class
Puedes encontrar más información en www.toxicocultura.com/doyle
Si te interesa te recomendamos que escribas rápido ya que el cupo es (muy) limitado; como Doyle sólo está durante estos dÃas en el DF esta vez no habrá conferencia pública.
Cuota de recuperación: $1,250 pesitos
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuWZI0yUUHU[/youtube]
(Como probadita de lo que le espera a Tóxico este sábado 4 y domingo 5 de abril)
On the paradox of uniqueness
“if you think about it, being unique should not be that difficult. There are 6 billion people on this planet and yet we all look different. But we usually still try to be or seem like everybody else. It is the same with film. And there is always a battle between the collectiveness of language and a personal point of view. On one hand, I want it so that my film could have not been done by anybody but Herr Boe & Co. On the other hand, I need a context that can make it live outside just my own worldview. The question is always how to make a personal language collective, or how to make this collective language personalized. It has to be unique but it also has to make sense. You want to find a private language but let people know enough of this language to extract meaning from it.”
(Christoffer Boe–acclaimed Danish film director–gave a fabulous Tóxico Workshop in February 2008.)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scvF0NEFEPg[/youtube]
La Teta Asustada, de Claudia Llosa.
Fausta padece La Teta Asustada, una rara enfermedad que se transmite por la leche materna de mujeres que fueron violadas durante la gestación y la lactancia en la época del terrorismo. Un terror atávico que se transmite de generación en generación y que Fausta sufre en forma de hemorragias nasales en momentos de crisis. La joven, además, guarda un secreto que no quiere revelar hasta que la súbita muerte de su madre la obligará a encontrar una salida al laberinto, dentro y fuera de ella.
(Es la primera pelÃcula Peruana en ganar un festival importante: Oso de Oro hace un par de dÃas a la mejor pelÃcula del Festival Internacional de Cine de BerlÃn. La acabamos de ver hace un par de horas. BuenÃsima! Tóxico recomienda.)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FV799cwkhCY&feature=related[/youtube]
Trailer de pelÃcula de Jonás Cuarón, hecha enteramente a partir de fotos en las que documentó un año de su vida, y luego reconfiguró en una historia ficticia.
Y una entrevista con él aquÃ:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPtYxUuJGDU[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeKm16TFYIo[/youtube]
Nueva pelÃcula de Gerardo Naranjo, pronto en cines. Antojable…
Más aquÃ.
Y una entrevista con Gerardo aquÃ:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82Psc3l5pfs[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DMTlDMGteg[/youtube]
“Aquà se filmó” es otro maravilloso proyecto de Paula Astorga y su proyecto Circo 2.12.
Las pelÃculas se muestran al aire libre en lugares donde se filmaron, en copia de 35mm. Por lo pronto: el viernes 24 de octubre será la función al aire libre de “El callejón de los Milagros” en la Plaza de Santo Domingo y el sábado 25, “Rojo Amanecer” en la Plaza de las tres culturas.
(Paula es además consejera de Tóxico, cómplice en proyectos pasados, y esperamos pronto colaborar con ella en muchos otros.)
(Y por si se preguntaban: el diseño gráfico es de Alejandro Magallanes y Juan Carlos López.)
(Más información aquÃ.)
