avant-garde, experimental, surreal film

how about Basma Alsharif?

http://www.bam.org/film/2016/basma-alsharif

i guess i should see some Bruce Baillie in NYC this weekend

http://www.filmlinc.org/festivals/art-of-the-real/

i did.

Andrew Noren?

http://www.moma.org/calendar/film/1629?locale=en

soliciting Straub / Huillet recomms for May (only seen Not Reconciled)

http://www.moma.org/calendar/film/1641?locale=en

I bought Anti-Clock on a whim the other day. It's supposed to be pretty abstract and hard to follow- a sort of Finnegan's Wake of British cinema. Anyone seen it?

Haven't managed to get a copy yet but have seen clips and love what I've seen so far. I am an ardent Arden stan, though (I love both Separation and the Other Side of the Underneath, though the latter is intensely harrowing). There's an element of 60s/70s feminist performance theatre to her work that I think some people struggle with, as well as the abstraction.

Afraid I can't help with Morbs' request, but would like to hear a report back.

You've got Anti-Clock! I bought it you in the last few months..

V jealous of that Straub/Huillet retrospective - only know Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, thanks to this Region 2 DVD set (guess I should get around to watching the other two films there)

http://www.newwavefilms.co.uk/view-film-detail.html/?viewListing=Mjc=

xxp I tried watching it (alone) but I wasn't really watching it properly. Not much happens but a lot happens if you know what I mean. It's easy for my attention to wander and then miss out on a lot of detail. I'll give it another go next time I've nothing to do. The DVD has loads of extras and additional short films.

Going to see this on Sunday, a former ILXOR tell me that a Dwoskin retrospective DVD set is in the works

http://luxscotland.org.uk/events/screening-lux-scotland-presents-pain-is-by-stephen-dwoskin/

Ward - you've got to watch Sicilia! ASAP, its the best.

Crossing the Threshold: Experimental films and live performances from Malcolm Le Grice

soliciting Straub / Huillet recomms for May (only seen Not Reconciled)

http://www.moma.org/calendar/film/1641?locale=en

― we can be heroes just for about 3.6 seconds (Dr Morbius), Tuesday, 26 April 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You've got to see Too Early/Too Late

So much good shit - I'd get to the Holderlin and Pavese adaptations and def Sicilia! (which at nearly 70 mins is not a short)

Hate how these are relegated to galleries - what's the screen at MoMa like?

In the meantime the BFI is treating to a Spielberg season #bumsOnSeats policy y'all!

Thanks xyzzzz, will get right on it

The MoMA screens are proper theaters; i haven't checked how many are in theater #1, the biggest room and screen

You've got Anti-Clock! I bought it you in the last few months..

― lilcraigyboi (Craigo Boingo), Wednesday, April 27, 2016 10:16 AM (4 hours ago)

Doh, you know what, I had *completely* forgotten this and was gonna ask to borrow your copy. FFS, me.

Werner Nekes - Hynningen

Music by Anthony More of Slapp Happy (along with a lot of other films by Werner Neukes).

Hoberman's piece on Straub-Huillet in the Times today is not going to set off a MoMA stampede -- he quoted Straub saying their movies were made to be walked out of, and finished by asking the curator if he was feeding the audience "spinach."

TBF, it's hard to think of a 'campaign' that would result in lines around the block for a complete Straub-Huillet retro, if gross deception is not involved. In a way, emphasising the alienated difficulty of these films makes them seem more alluring, more of a challenge to be taken on.

Thanks to xyzzzz, I watched Scilia! - not on a big screen, unfortunately (it's worth saying that it's a very beautiful film in places, cinematography by frequent Rivette collaborator William Lubtchansky, though the framing/editing is totally Straub-Huillet's own - incredible repetition of unmotivated slow pans over empty rural landscapes, other shots that carry on well past their 'end'). In places, it reminded me of Costa's Horse Money, or seemed like it could be one source for Costa's style, a way of presenting historical narrative, giving voice to the unvoiced etc.

Hilarious quote from Straub.

Glad you liked Sicilia! Ward - source novel is very much worth reading btw (I think its a great visual intro to those landscapes in mid-cent Italian Lit of Pavese, Vittorini, Moravia, Morante)

And Costa worked with Straubs. Some of Haneke's work is very much S/H (Haneke stole the sequence in Egypt in Too Early/Too Late for the end of Hidden)

some of huillet/straub's films are quite amazing, so it's impossible to dismiss them, but i also find it kind of impossible not to find them (and some of their more ardent supporters like tag gallagher) a bit silly in their conviction that somehow three-hour films of nonactors declaiming communists texts fromthe 1930s while standing in a calabrian forest are going to aid the Revolution.

even in their worst films, there is something undeniably gripping about the way they record sound, the way they frame people and landscape, their cutting rhythms, etc. it's just that the political conceits behind their "program" seem really misguided to me.

actually, one of the better critiques of their recent (by which i mean last 20 years) work is actually in a trotskyite publication of all places. scroll down to about halfway through: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2002/05/baf3-m20.html

i actually kind of like pedro costa's first two features but otherwise i have to say he seems like something of a charlatan to me. if anything he has all of the huillets' self-seriousness and not enough of their filmmaking skill.

here's another attack on straub and costa from the World Socialist Website critic David Walsh, who despite having some serious blinkers on a lot of time, is not at all a bad critic: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/03/25/fic3-m25.html

re: Costa being a charlatan. You may or may not like what he is doing but I think his work in the inner cities is deeply felt, committed and comes from a genuine place.

From a scan those pieces don't really give me much to re-think. Looking at the events in mid-70s Portugal from the POV of Cape Verdians is a great way of looking at those events - and carry even more of a charge today, given what is happening in Europe.

re: Straubs. I actually don't see the fuss. From the half-dozen I've seen they seem very watchable and I can only imagine there being other reasons for the difficulty in presenting their work at the BFI. I've seen old arthouse 'classics' in old prints with four fucking people over the years. Seriously, what's the hold up?

I've been hot and cold on Costa, but i generally found Horse Money hypnotic on first viewing. I am gonna steer clear of the more "declamatory"/lengthy S-H films tho. That leaves enough for me to dip my toe.

S-H roundup, including link to Hoberman

https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/daily-jean-marie-straub-and-daniele-huillet

and linking this Pinkerton piece on S-H because I walked out on History Lessons at the two-thirds mark last week, feeling Straub wouldn't mind. The Bach film was fine, though.

http://frieze.com/article/we-make-our-films-so-audiences-can-walk-out-them

Only the strong survive Straub-Huillet – and I wouldn’t have shirked the test for all the world.

#maMan

Although I was just talking abt my struggles with Brecht's prose on ILB.

soliciting Straub / Huillet recomms for May (only seen Not Reconciled)

Read this as Straub / Huillet romcoms, which would be great.

Although, if anyone can recommend a good place to start with them, that would also be great.

ed.b, if you still have access to a DVD machine capable of playing Region 2 DVDs, I would recommend this two disc set from New Wave films, which contains Straub-Huillet's biggest hit - Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach - and Sicilia!, which xyzzzz astutely recommended above.

Aren't all their films romances?

http://www.newwavefilms.co.uk/view-film-detail.html/?viewListing=Mjc=

RIP Peter Hutton

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rM4V7lAy74M

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/27/movies/peter-hutton-filmmaker-with-austerely-romantic-worldview-dies-at-71.html

:(

Straub / Huillet retrospective at UC Berkeley, starts on Jan 26, until May 2017

http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/program/not-reconciled-cinema-straub-huillet

coming to America

https://thefilmstage.com/news/grasshopper-film-to-release-catalogue-of-legendary-filmmaking-duo-jean-marie-straub-and-daniele-huillet/

http://grasshopperfilm.com/film/straub-huillet-collection/

Yvonne Rainer recommendations?

https://www.filmlinc.org/series/talking-pictures-the-cinema-of-yvonne-rainer/#films

Journey from Berlin is all I've seen - can't remember much about it, except thinking it was good.

Would so see Madame X. Ulrike Ottinger is really good.

Have fun!

obit roundup for Paul Clipson

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5371-the-daily-paul-clipson-1965-2018

RIP Jonas Mekas

http://gothamist.com/2019/01/23/jonas_mekas_avant-garde_film_auteur.php

re: the straub/huillet discussion upthread, full retro happening in london over the next three months: https://www.goethe.de/ins/gb/en/ver.cfm?fuseaction=events.detail&event_id=21471962&

RIP Barbara Hammer

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6250-barbara-hammer-s-legacy

word seems to be spreading that straub has passed

:-(

Straub and Godard In the same year, damm. And Rest in Provocation.

RIP. I saw From the Cloud the the Resistance, Antigone and Machorka-Muff just this year. All amazing, and the first is so singular and strange.

Here's a lovely curated playlist of shorts:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5xOztE613KMOvfW_L5zaa6j3cdLUwO4c

I have more vivid memories of reading Richard Roud's Straub book than the films themselves, intriguing though they were.
I should get around to watching Sicilia!, which James Quant of TIFF was always talking up.

couple of days left to catch two, imo, unmissable online retrospectives of female experiemntal filmmakers:

ellie epp on ultra dogme: https://ultradogme.com/2023/08/18/ellie-epp/

jun kurosawa on equinox: https://equinox.film