GME DVD Distribution – Alexander Kluge and Werner Schroeter Films – Now Available on DVD for North American Institutional Sales

Gartenberg Media Enterprises is pleased to present DVD publications by Alexander Kluge and Werner Schroeter, both seminal figures of the New German Cinema that emerged in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

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These two films by Alexander Kluge both star his sister Alexandra Kluge in the leading role. YESTERDAY GIRL (1966) is about Anita G., a young East German woman who travels to West Germany in search of a better life. Encountering troubles with the law, she is ultimately unable to deal either with a Communist regime or a free-market economy. In PART-TIME WORK OF A DOMESTIC SLAVE (1973), Roswitha Bronski is a married mother of three at the center of the protest movement. She finds her plans for social change are easier to realize outside family life. The 2-disc DVD also offers five short films by Alexander Kluge related to the two feature films.

“Though often acknowledged as one of the most important avant-gardists of his generation in Europe, Alexander Kluge does not think of himself as such. He considers himself a partisan of an “arriere-garde” whose project is not to push into new aesthetic territory or be the vanguard of a new kind of film art, but to “bring everything forward”—to bring forward all the lost utopian aspirations of past political and aesthetic projects, all the wishes and hopes that history has left unrealized. His is a project of redeeming past failures. This might seem an odd claim by Kluge, who was a pioneer of the German New Wave as it emerged in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, and a signatory and moving force behind the famous OBERHAUSEN MANIFESTO of 1962 which declared “The old film is dead.” But like his intellectual precursor Walter Benjamin, Kluge has always thought any project for authentic renewal must consciously detour through the past in order to avoid creating what another of his great intellectual mentors, Bertolt Brecht, called the “bad new”— essentially the recreation of existing oppressive social relations and tired aesthetic forms in the guise of a glossy, marketable and illusory “New.” For Brecht, Fascism was the exemplary “bad new”; for Kluge, the “bad new” consisted of the dreary products of the “culture industry” and the tedious social conditions prevailing in Germany—about which he once said that they were bad enough that no one was really happy, but not bad enough to make anyone do anything about them.”

– Christopher Pavsek, Cinema Scope

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This 2-disc DVD set presents new restored versions of two rare classics by Werner Schroeter, and compliments GME's prior release of two separate DVD editions comprising other key films by this unconventional artist, EIKA KATAPPA & DER TOD DER MARIA MALIBRAN and DER BOMBERPILOT & NEL REGNO DI NAPOLI. WILLOW SPRINGS (1973) was shot in a village in the Mojave desert and describes a house run by three man-eaters. TAG DER IDIOTEN (1981) was shot in the USSR. A woman experiences psychic disintegration and ends up in a mental institution. Rare short films by and about Werner Schroeter as well as stills from the shooting of TAG DER IDIOTEN are added as bonus features.

"WILLOW SPRINGS (1973) is the only film which Werner Schroeter has shot in the United States. The scene is a lonely, dilapidated house with a bar on the edge of the Mojave desert; the house, like the place in which it is located, is called "Willow Springs". The three Amazons sit in their lair, waiting for men to rob, love, and kill. But in this "feminist" counter-world, "male" power structures continue to function: the "master thinker" and priestess Magdalena (Montezuma) dominates the ethereal Christine (Kaufmann), who, in love with herself, is the sterile embodiment of an art grown unsensual. At the very bottom of the hierarchy is Ila (von Hasberg), the maid who says next to nothing. She not only finds sexual contact with the stranger Michael (O'Daniels), but also love. The two contrive to flee, but the murderous Magdalena kills them. "Art" also kills herself, before she goes out into the desert as the Black Angel, the title of Schroeter's next film, which was made in Mexico in 1973/74…Eroticism and force, introversion and exaltation, sensual happiness and destructive power – all these things come forth in the “Kammerspiel” intimacy of the allegorical drama WILLOW SPRINGS."

– Wolfram Schütte

"DAY OF THE IDIOTS (1981) opens with a frenetic overture. A beautiful, young woman (Carole Bousquet) puts on an eccentric act in an attempt to attract the attention of the world around her and that of her boyfriend – she smears her face with lipstick, orders three cups of coffee at once in a café, and occasionally switches from men’s to women’s clothing. Her conformist, considerate boyfriend, whom she “wishes she could see into to find out if he really loves her”, is crazy about his records, which she then tramples on. When the public is called upon by the media to assist in the search for “terrorists and their accomplices”, the line linking the insanity of Carol’s puberty and that of the public at large hums with life. She randomly denounces innocent women to the police until she is caught one day and sent to an asylum…DAY OF THE IDIOTS (1981), a fantasy on the torment and joy of yearning, on insanity and reality, transgression and identity of the self ranks among the most mysterious, the most perplexing of Werner Schroeter’s narrative films."

– Wolfram Schütte

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Additional Titles Of Related Interest From GME:

Sarah Vaughan – USPS First-Day-of-Issue Forever Stamp Ceremony March 29th at The Newark Symphony Hall, Newark, NJ

In 2014, Gartenberg Media Enterprises was engaged on an exclusive basis by the Estate of Hugh Bell to manage the collection of Hugh Bell’s photographs and to further the artist’s legacy. We are therefore proud to announce the featuring of one of Hugh Bell's iconic photographs of Sarah Vaughan on a USPS Commemorative Forever Stamp. The United States Postal Service is hosting a First-Day-of-Issue Stamp Ceremony for the release of the Sarah Vaughan Commemorative Forever Stamp at the Sarah Vaughan Concert Hall at Newark Symphony Hall in Newark, New Jersey on March 29th, 11am.

Above: Sarah Vaughan (Hugh Bell, 1955) and the Sarah Vaughan 2016 USPS Commemorative Forever Stamp

From The USPS Website:

"Sarah Vaughan was one of America’s greatest singers, successful in both jazz and pop, with a talent for improvisation and skillful phrasing and a voice that ranged over several octaves.

The stamp art is an oil painting of Vaughan in performance based on a 1955 photograph by Hugh Bell. A few lines of selvage text explain her importance as a Music Icon. The cover side of the pane features a larger version of the stamp art, a list of some of Vaughan’s popular songs, and the Music Icons logo. Bart Forbes was the artist and Ethel Kessler was the art director. The 11 a.m. First-Day-of-Issue dedication ceremony will take place March 29 in Newark, NJ, at the Sarah Vaughan Concert Hall."

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Hugh Bell Biography:

Hugh Cecil Bell was born in 1927 in Harlem, New York City to parents from the Caribbean island of St. Lucia. As a young man he first attended City College, and then graduated in 1952 with a degree in Journalism and Cinematic Art from NYU. After NYU, Bell put his Film Degree to use and found work as a cameraman for television commercials.

Early in his career, Bell was befriended by the cinema verité pioneer, Richard Leacock, who was interested in helping minorities find a professional footing. Bell assisted Leacock on the shooting of several documentaries, including “Jazz Dance” (1952). He also accompanied Leacock on several trips to Spain, where Bell met and photographed the world-famous Spanish bullfighter, Dominguin, as well as Lauren Bacall and Ernest Hemingway. Bell’s friendship with Leacock continued to deepen, and over the ensuing decades, he photographed the Leacock family in an extended series of candid portraits at their family home.

In 1952, Bell shot his first of many legendary photographs of jazz greats,“Hot Jazz”. In 1955, Edward Steichen selected “Hot Jazz” for the groundbreaking exhibition “The Family of Man” at The Museum of Modern Art. Over 2 million photos were submitted and only 503 were selected. The exhibit showcased work from 273 photographers including Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston and Irving Penn. This was the first instance of Hugh Bell’s photographic work being shown alongside these towering figures of modern photography.

During the 1950’s, Hugh Bell frequented all the top Jazz clubs in New York City such as the Village Gate, the Open Door Café and Circle in the Square. He encountered and photographed many legendary musicians, including Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Sarah Vaughan. Bell’s lifelong passion for taking Jazz photographs, often referred to as his “Jazz Giants” series, has been published in books and magazines. His jazz photographs have also graced the covers of innumerable vinyl jazz records.

In addition to jazz clubs, Bell went to and photographed local boxing matches, dance performances and legitimate plays, including Jean Genet’s “The Blacks,” a seminal theatrical production starring James Earl Jones, Roscoe Lee Brown, Cicely Tyson, Maya Angelou, and Godfrey Cambridge, that was mounted at the St. Mark’s Playhouse in 1961.

Bell opened his own studio in Manhattan in the 1960’s. Over the course of the ensuing decades, he worked as a commercial photographer. He produced photographs for print advertisements; many of which were targeted specifically to the Black community.

Interspersed with his commercial work, Bell also focused on portraiture. During this period, he is most known for his images of the female figure. In 1970, a series of these portraits were published in Avant Garde magazine in a feature entitled, “Bell’s Belles”. Throughout this period, he also traveled to the West Indies, focusing on the region of his geographical heritage. He photographed carnivals in Trinidad and Haiti, and daily life in Antigua. He also traveled to Brazil, where he took photographs of the local citizenry.

Hugh Bell passed away on October 31, 2012. He left behind an extensive and wide-ranging photographic legacy that is now ready for rediscovery.

For more information about the Hugh Bell archive and his photographs, please contact:
info@gartenbergmedia.com

GME DVD Distribution – Maya Deren Experimental and Dance Films Now Available on DVD for North American Institutional Sales

Gartenberg Media Enterprises is pleased to present DVD publications of Maya Deren's EXPERIMENTAL FILMS and DANCE FILMS.

"She is the mother of us all"

 – Stan Brakhage

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Maya Deren was one of the most pre-eminent avant-garde filmmakers of the 20th century; her first film MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON (1943), is the most renown experimental film throughout all of film history. She became known as a major proponent of the “trance” film, and her movies are a transitional link between the European avant-garde films of the 1920’s (see, for example, CINÉMA DADA and SURREALISM AND EXPERIMENTS IN BELGIUM CINEMA), and the American avant-garde films of Kenneth Anger, Gregory Markopoulos, Stan Brakhage and others. Deren was also a poet and developed an interested in modern dance (see also MAYA DEREN: DANCE FILMS). In her experimental films, she also collaborated with other artists, who appeared in her films, including poet Anaïs Nin, musician John Cage, dancer Frank Westbrook, and her filmmaker-husband, Alexander Hammid.

"The cinema of Maya Deren delivers us from the studios: it presents our eyes with physical facts which contain profound psychological meaning; it beats out within our hearts or upon our hearts a time which alternates, continues, revolves, pounds, or flies away.... One escapes from the stupidity of make-believe. One is in the reality of the cinematic fact, captured by Maya Deren at that point where the lens cooperates as a prodigious discoverer."

- Le Corbusier, 1945

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Maya Deren (1917-1961) developed an interest in dance during her first years living in New York City. According to scholar P. Adams Sitney, “In the early forties she conceived the idea of writings a theoretical book on modern dance and looked for a professional dancer to work with her. She interested Katherine Dunham in her project and traveled with her on her tour of 1940-1941. The book never materialized…” Several years thereafter, Deren integrated her interest in modern dance into her filmmaking practice, and in the 1950’s did fieldwork in Haiti on rituals, dances, and voodoo. She also collaborated with choreographer Anthony Tudor and students of the Metropolitan Opera Ballet School in the making of THE VERY EYE OF NIGHT (1952-55).

Deren’s first dance film, A STUDY IN CHOREOGRAPHY FOR THE CAMERA (1945) was subtitled “Pas de Deux”, referring to the co-equal role of the camera and the on-screen dancer in terms of the interplay between movement, space, and time.

"In this film, I have attempted to place a dancer in a limitless, cinematographic space. Moreover, he shares, with the camera, a collaborative responsibility for the movements themselves. This is, in other words, a dance which can exist only on films The movement of the dancer creates a geography that never was. With a turn of the foot, he makes neighbors of distant places. Being a film ritual, it is achieved not in spatial terms alone, but in terms of a time created by the camera."

– Maya Deren on A STUDY IN CHOREOGRAPHY FOR THE CAMERA (1945)

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Additional Titles of Related Interest From GME:

RECAP: "Art of Jazz" Reviews in Harvard Magazine and The Boston Globe

Reviews on "Art of Jazz: Form/Performance/Notes" from both The Boston Globe and Harvard Magazine have appeared online, both featuring photographer Hugh Bell. Here is what they had to say:

Sarah Vaughan (1955)

There are books, posters, and photographs. The latter mostly offer portraits of musicians — Hugh Bell’s gorgeous presentation of a gorgeous Sarah Vaughan stands out…

– The Boston Globe

Birds—caged and escaped, singing and flying—have figured prominently throughout the history of jazz, and of African-American arts more broadly, Grant explains: think Nina Simone’s “Blackbird” and John Coltrane’s Bye Bye Blackbird. In the exhibition, they are a visual motif stitching the installations together. Illustrated birds decorate the pages of picture books, while a black and white portrait of saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker by Hugh Bell hangs on the neighboring wall…

– Harvard Magazine

GME Sponsored the 2015 Film and Costume Design Conference held at NYU Steinhardt – Video Excerpts of Proceedings Now Available

GME was a proud sponsor of the 2015 Film and Costume Design Conference held at NYU Steinhardt on October 17, 2015. The conference, organized by Nancy Deihl and Drake Stutesman, covered a wide scope of topics related to the role of costume in film. Click below for the full description and schedule from the conference and to watch the video featuring highlights from the conference.

http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/art/costume/archive_events/film_costume_rendering_realities

GME DVD Distribution – The Man With The Movie Camera & L'Inhumaine, Now Available on Blu-ray for North American Institutional Sales

Gartenberg Media Enterprises is pleased to present Blu-ray publications of Marcel L’Herbier’s L’INHUMAINE (1924), a film that showcased the most cutting-edge modern arts in France and Dziga Vertov’s THE MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA (1929), Soviet cinema’s crowning achievement produced at the apotheosis of the silent film era.

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"I am an eye. A mechanical eye. I am the machine that reveals the world to you as only the machine can see it. I am now free of human immobility. I am in perpetual motion. I approach things, I move away from them. I slip under them, into them. I move toward the muzzle of a race horse. I move quickly through crowds, I advance ahead of the soldiers in an assault, I take off with airplanes, I fall on my back ad get up at the same time that the body falls and gets up. This is what I am, a machine that runs in chaotic maneuvers, recording movements one after the other, assembling them in a patchwork. Freed from the constraints of time and space, I organize each point of the universe as I wish. My route is that of a new conception of the world. I can make you discover the world you did not know existed.”

– Dziga Vertov, Kino-Eye Manifesto (1923)

These words, written in 1923 (only a year after Robert Flaherty’s NANOOK OF THE NORTH was released) reflect the Soviet pioneer’s developing approach to cinema as an art form that shuns traditional or Western narrative in favor of images from real life. They lay the foundation for what would become the crux of Vertov’s revolutionary, anti-bourgeois aesthetic wherein the camera is an extension of the human eye, capturing “the chaos of visual phenomena filling the universe.” Over the next decade-and-a-half, Vertov would devote his life to the construction and organization of these raw images, his apotheosis being the landmark 1929 film THE MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA. In it, he comes closest to realizing his theory of ‘Kino-Eye,’ creating a new, more ambitious and more significant picture than what the eye initially perceives. This Blu-ray edition brings together four key films from the oeuvre of Dziga Vertov.

Dziga Vertov (née David Abelevich Kaufman) studied medicine before turning to the arts. He was inspired by the Futurist movement as well as the French avant-garde. Just after the Russian revolution, in 1918 he became editor-in-chief of the first regular newsreel, CINEMA WEEK. In 1922, he was put in charge of a new newsreel, KINO-PRAVDA; one issue of which, KINO-PRAVDA NEWSREEL 21: LENINIST FILM TRUTH, is included in this Blu-ray edition.

In 1923, Vertov wrote a manifesto on “Kino-Eye”, in which he laid out the foundation of a new, independent anti-bourgeois aesthetic movement. For Vertov, the camera lens was an extension of the human eye. The film KINO-EYE 1924) applies these principles through his cinematic practice. The film reveals the joie de vivre of Soviet youth in a small village taking hold of their destiny, and building the future of the Soviet revolution.

In 1926, Vertov made STRIDE, SOVIET! (SHAGAI, SOVET!) and ONE-SIXTH OF THE WORLD, and in 1928, THE ELEVENTH YEAR. Following this, Vertov created his most famous film, THE MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA, one of the great city symphony films in the tradition of MANHATTA (1921) and BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A GREAT CITY (Walter Ruttman, 1927), as well as one of the most important movies about the filmmaking process.

Vertov’s next film, ENTHUSIASM: SYMPHONY OF THE DONBASS (1930) was a radical experiment in early sound filmmaking. Accustomed to experimenting with aural material, Vertov composed a particularly sophisticated sound track for his first sound film – focusing on the success of miners in achieving targets set by the central authorities – using the noises of machines and factory atmosphere.

Following this, Vertov produced THREE SONGS OF LENIN (1934), an ode to the founder of the Soviet Union. This film was released in both silent and sound versions, so that it could be shown in the Soviet Union in theaters that were not yet equipped for sound. The film was made during the rise of Stalin, and thus, suffered re-edits in the cause of Soviet Realism.

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In 1922, after several years of directing successful films for the Gaumont studios, Marcel l'Herbier created his own production company, Cinégraphic. In addition to producing films by Claude Autant-Lara, Louis Delluc, Jean Dréville and others, L’Herbier put together an extremely ambitious project, L’INHUMAINE, a film intended to showcase the most cutting-edge modern arts in France (plastic arts, decorative arts, architecture, high fashion, music and cinema). The film stars the opera singer Georgette Leblanc; the melodramatic story concerns a femme fatale who is courted by a series of lovers, including a young engineer (played by Jaque Catelain), who symbolizes the future and the miracle of science.

The screenplay was written with an operatic structure. L’Herbier wrote that he “built chords, plastic harmonies; what is important is not the stream of events, it is what is vertical, it’s plastic harmony.” For the production of the film, L’Herbier brought together some of the greatest artists from the time period, including painter Fernand Léger, architect Robert Mallet-Stevens, glassmaker René Lalique, fashion designer Paul Poiret, sculptor Joseph Csaky, tapestry-maker Jean Lurçat, and directors Alberto Cavalcanti and Claude Autant-Lara, all of whom contributed to the striking visual design of this noteworthy film.

Following L’INHUMAINE, L’Herbier directed FEU MATHIAS PASCAL (1925), a dramatic film starring Ivan Mouzjoukine with stylized sets by Lazare Meerson and Alberto Cavalcanti. Over the course of his career, L’Herbier wrote several articles and pamphlets opining about the deep nature of the “Seventh Art.” From the beginning, L'Herbier fought for the recognition of the status of the filmmaker as artist, and of film craftsman as creative forces in the visual design of the motion picture.

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Additional Titles of Related Interest From GME:

GME DVD Distribution – Spring 2016 Releases

With the spring academic season now underway, Gartenberg Media Enterprises is pleased to present a new slate of DVD and Blu-ray publications for distribution to the North American academic community. These digital editions, selected from film archives and boutique publishers worldwide, represent the entire breadth and depth of moving image history, ranging from Marcel L’Herbier’s L’INHUMAINE (1924), a film that showcased the most cutting-edge modern arts in France and Dziga Vertov’s THE MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA (1929), Soviet cinema’s crowning achievement produced at the apotheosis of the silent film era, through to Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s MYSTERIOUS OBJECT AT NOON (2000), the Thai director’s groundbreaking film that expertly blends cinematic fact and fiction in a manner that continues to defy both easy categorization and comparison.

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Dziga Vertov’s THE MAN WITH THE MOVIE CAMERA comes closest to realizing Vertov’s theory of the “Kino-Eye”. It is one of the great city symphony films in the tradition of MANHATTA (1921) and BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A GREAT CITY (Walter Ruttmann, 1927), as well as one of the most important movies about the filmmaking process. This Blu-ray edition also includes other films in the Vertov canon, including KINO-EYE (1924), KINO-PRAVDA NEWSREEL #21: LENINIST FILM TRUTH, ENTHUSIASM (1931), and THREE SONGS OF LENIN (1934).

L’INHUMAINE stars the opera singer Georgette Leblanc; the melodramatic story concerns a femme fatale who is courted by a series of lovers, including a young engineer (played by Jaque Catelain), who symbolizes the future and the miracle of science. For the production of the film, L’Herbier brought together some of the greatest artists from the time period, including painter Fernand Léger, architect Robert Mallet-Stevens, glassmaker René Lalique, fashion designer Paul Poiret, sculptor Joseph Csaky, tapestry-maker Jean Lurçat, and directors Alberto Cavalcanti and Claude Autant-Lara, all of whom contributed to the striking visual design of this noteworthy film. This Blu-ray edition also includes as a bonus feature a short on the making of this stylized film.

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"She is the mother of us all"
– Stan Brakhage

Maya Deren was one of the most pre-eminent avant-garde filmmakers of the 20th century, now represented by two DVD editions of her work: MAYA DEREN: EXPERIMENTAL FILMS and MAYA DEREN: DANCE FILMS. Her first film MESHES OF THE AFTERNOON (1943), is the most renown experimental film throughout all of film history.  She became known as a major proponent of the “trance” film, and her movies are a transitional link between the European avant-garde films of the 1920’s (see, for example, CINÉMA DADA and SURREALISM AND EXPERIMENT IN BELGIAN CINEMA) and the American avant-garde films of Kenneth Anger, Gregory Markopoulos, Stan Brakhage and others. Deren was also a poet and developed an interested in modern dance. She collaborated with other artists, who also appeared in her films, including poet Anaïs Nin, musician John Cage, dancer Frank Westbrook, and her filmmaker-husband, Alexander Hammid.

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GME is pleased to present two DVD publications representing work by major proponents of the New German Cinema movement of the 1960’s, 1970’s, and 1980’s.

The DVD of YESTERDAY GIRL and PART-TIME WORK OF A DOMESTIC SLAVE comprises two films by Alexander Kluge that star his sister Alexandra Kluge in the leading role. YESTERDAY GIRL (1966) is about Anita G., a young East German woman who travels to West Germany in search of a better life. Encountering troubles with the law, she is ultimately unable to deal either with a Communist regime or a free-market economy. In PART-TIME WORK OF A DOMESTIC SLAVE (1973), Roswitha Bronski is a married mother of three at the center of the protest movement. She finds her plans for social change are easier to realize outside family life. The 2-disc DVD also offers five short films by Alexander Kluge related to the two feature films.

Following up on our previous DVD release of Werner Schroeter’s EIKA KATAPPA and DER TOD DER MARIA MALIBRAN, this current DVD set presents new restored versions of two rare classics by Werner Schroeter. WILLOW SPRINGS (1973) was shot in a village in the Mojave desert and describes a house run by three man-eaters. TAG DER IDIOTEN (1981) was shot in the USSR. A woman experiences psychic disintegration and ends up in a mental institution. Rare short films by and about Werner Schroeter as well as stills from the shooting of TAG DER IDIOTEN are added as bonus features.

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In order to further academic interest in genre studies, we are introducing two Blu-ray/DVD Combo pack editions of film noir movies, TOO LATE FOR TEARS (1949) and WOMAN ON THE RUN (1950). Both films were restored under the auspices of the Film Noir Foundation.  

WOMAN ON THE RUN spotlights Ann Sheridan as an acerbic wise-cracking wife in search of her estranged husband who suddenly disappears after witnessing a gangland assassination. The films accomplished cinematography by Hal Mohr highlights the working class landscapes of mid-century San Francisco, adding atmospheric realism to the production that studio-bound efforts of the era could not hope to match. The film was directed by Norman Foster, noted for his capable handling of a series of the CHARLIE CHAN and MR. MOTO murder-mystery genre films of the 1930’s and 1940’s.

TOO LATE FOR TEARS was producer Hunt Stromberg’s last independent production, following a successful career in charge of THE THIN MAN comedic murder-mystery series for MGM in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Director Byron Haskin helmed a few noir titles in the late 1940’s, including I WALK ALONE (1948), staring Lizabeth Scott.

TOO LATE FOR TEARS provides Lizabeth Scott with the meaty role of frustrated housewife Jane Palmer, whose married life careens out of control with murderous greed when a suitcase filled with $60,000 is accidentally “tossed” to her and husband Alan (played by Arthur Kennedy). Beyond the fantastically theatrical turn by Scott, the production highlights an exceedingly devious performance by another noir icon, Dan Duryea.

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With his debut feature, MYSTERIOUS OBJECT AT NOON, acclaimed Thai filmmaker Apichatpong Weerasethakul expertly blended cinematic fact and fiction in a manner that fifteen years later continues to defy both easy categorization and comparison. A low-fi "genre bender," independently produced on a shoestring budget and subsequently endangered by neglect,  MYSTERIOUS OBJECT AT NOON, has now been painstakingly restored by the Austrian Film Museum and the Film Foundation from the best surviving elements.

The film blends Thai popular culture with American documentary and experimental cinema, and contains, according to programmer and critic James Quant, “perplexing, and exhilarating conflation of genre (fairy tale, road movie, documentary, horror, science fiction, folk anthropology, musical) and tone (by turn sad, surreal, exuberant, teasing, harsh). Its style manages to be both ramshackle and concatenated: the film’s structure is linear and convoluted at the same time, its title a telling convergence of the unknowable (mysterious object) and the temporally exact (noon). If the precision of the latter turns out to be misleading – time in the film is largely unfixed, in flux, employing historical anachronism and refusing to mark either diurnal specifics or the three-year span it took to make the film – Object’s modus, as is often the case in Apichatpong’s subsequent work, depends on surprise and unreliability, a knowing errancy not only of narrative progression and coherency but also of such formal constituents as sound source and signature, succession of shots, and identification of setting and performer.”

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LES HAUTES SOLITUDES (1974) is the fourth DVD release we offer of the oeuvre of Philppe Garrel, following upon DÉTRIUSEZ-VOUS (1968), LE RÉVÉLATEUR (1968), and LE LIT DE LA VIERGE (1969). This silent black and white film focuses on the visage of 40-year-old star Jean Seberg, fifteen years after BREATHLESS, struggling with alcohol, fear, loneliness chemical dependence and dementia. In an hour and fifteen minutes consisting almost exclusively of close-ups, an entire lifetime rises to the surface of a face. For all their superficial similarities, Garrel’s underground films are the opposite of Warhol’s in several key ways. Warhol worked towards a system of casually disposable imagery and celebrity. Warhol’s cool distance and authorial strategy of absence couldn’t be more different from Garrel’s anguished involvement in his films, especially the essentially non-narrative works of the ‘70s where the director’s gaze and its relationship with its subject often becomes the center of drama.

Spanish avant-garde filmmaker Adolfo Arietta’s first three films, made while he was in his twenties, are presented together in this DVD edition entitled “The Angel Trilogy,” with an accompanying booklet that provides incisive background about the filmmaker and these films – EL CRIMEN DE LA PIRINDOLA (1965), LA IMITACION DEL ANGEL (1966), and JOUET CRIMINEL (1969). Filmed with a grainy black-and-white texture, they star youthful Javier Grandès, Arrietta’s alter-ego. Each film alternates between the terrestrial world and an oneiric vision (replete with the main protagonist wearing angel’s wings); he inhabits a world of waking dreams.  

The first two films, EL CRIMEN DE LA PIRINDOLA and LA IMITACION DEL ANGEL take place on the streets and in Madrid’s apartment buildings. At the end of the latter film, the protagonist departs for Paris by train, escaping the oppression of Franco’s Spain with the City of Light (just as the filmmaker did in real life).

Once in France, Arrietta (and Grandès) encounter Cocteau’s favorite protagonist-hero, Jean Marais, who stars in JOUET CRIMINEL along with Florence Delay (the star of Bresson’s LE PROCÈS DE JEANNE D’ARC, 1962). Lotte Eisner, the esteemed critic, historian, and grande dame of the Cinémathéque Française wrote about JOUET CRIMINEL that “this film was made with the stuff of dreams.”

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Jurgen Reble, was a founding member of the German filmmaking group "Schmelzdahin" (1979–1989). This collaborative primarily focused on exploring the film material through bacterial processes and weathering. The filmmakers submitted both the film’s plastic base and its crystalline emulsion to multiple natural and mechanical alterations, sometimes exposing film to the sun (hung from the branches of a tree) or burying it. The films were then printed and sometimes mechanically altered on the optical printer.

They progressively abandoned experiments with bacterial decomposition, environmental effects, and mechanical alterations in favor of chemical intervention. PASSION is a personal film-journey in which Reble accompanies his unborn child through a ritual, following the seasons until his birth. Although similar in subject to Stan Brakhage’s WINDOW WATER BABY MOVING (1959), Reble’s film is a conceptual and stylistic departure from that film. Disruptions are caused by cosmic and natural phenomena (eclipses and volcanic eruptions), and human figures often disintegrate into vibrating chemical particles. Reble unites the molecular with the cosmic and birth with death, ultimately affirming the fragility of life, images of which are embedded on the substance of the organic celluloid film strip.

RECAP: Opening of "Art of Jazz: Form/Performance/Notes" – Featuring the Photographs of Hugh Bell.

Last night was the public opening reception for "Art of Jazz: Form/Performance/Notes," at the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery, Harvard University, featuring the photographs of Hugh Bell. The exhibition is now running through May 8th. Below are some photos from the event as well as an excerpt from the exhibition wall text:

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(left to right) Researcher Mira Schwerda, Exhibition Co-curator David Bindman & Jon Gartenberg from GME in Hugh Bell section of exhibit.

A number of the best 20th-century photographers were stimulated by the challenge of capturing the vivid interaction of small groups of jazz players, often in dark and smoky cellars, while others were intensely interested in the individuality of great jazz musicians. One of the least known examples of the former is the photographer Hugh Bell (1927–2012), represented here by images of some of the greatest jazz players and a heartbreaking series of the great singer Billie Holiday in one of her last appearances.

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Guests of the public opening looking at photos of jazz musicians by Hugh Bell.

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Guests of the public opening looking at the series of Billie Holiday photos from one of her last public appearances at Carnegie Hall, 1957. Photographs by Hugh Bell.

Dziga Vertov Films at Anthology Film Archives and The Jewish Museum

Dziga Vertov films are playing at Anthology Film Archives (January 29-February 7th) and at The Jewish Museum as part of the exhibition "The Power of Pictures: Early Soviet Photography, Early Soviet Film" (ends February 7th). GME carries several DVD publications of Vertov films for the North American university market (ENTUZIAZM; A SIXTH PART OF THE WORLD; THE ELEVENTH YEAR; THREE SONGS OF LENIN; STRIDE, SOVIET!). 

Film Classic Loves of Pharaoh To Screen at Historic Niles Theater February 21st – Showing Of Restored Silent Costume Epic To Benefit Egyptology Outreach

GME is the proud DVD/Blu-ray distributor in North America of the Ernst Lubitsch film THE LOVES OF PHARAOH which is screening at the Historic Niles Theater, Fremont, CA, sponsored by the American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California (ARCE/NC). Click below for more details from the ARCE/NC:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1708117779419962