Unspoken Cinema

A new video added to the " Where is cinema heading to? " series from the Centre Pompidou event (see the other videos already posted here ) : Wang Bing, who filmed the 9h long documentary, Tiexi Qu : West of Tracks (2003). Wang Bing, où va le cinéma ? envoyé par centrepompidou Real and Fiction "When I make a film, of course, I tell a story. In fact, while telling this story, I am one of its participants. Storytellers, the artists, used to have a certain influence on the audience. But personally I don't want to endorse this role. This vocabulary implies the notion of impartiality and truth. I have a hard time to situate my work. No matter how a film tells a story, it's very difficult to close in on the truth. During one's life, there are times when things are hard to grasp. We can't handle them. Every filmmaker has trouble being impartial during the creative process, or even... being true to oneself. I think it's very difficult. It's something har...

Mobile Men is a short film by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, one of 22 (3 minutes long) segments from the omnibus called Stories on Human Rights (2008/Russia/Germany), in honor of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This initiative was born under the auspices of the UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS and was made possible thanks to the support of the EUROPEAN UNION, the FRENCH MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AND EUROPEAN AFFAIRS - FRANCE, the FRENCHE MINISTRY OF CULTURE AND COMMUNICATION - CNC and SESC São Paulo, Brazil. Created and produced by ART for The World , Stories on Human Rights is the first film project on such large scale bringing together filmmakers and artists, using the universal language of art to tell stories through six themes that capture the ideals enshrined in the Universal Declaration: culture, development, dignity and justice, environment, gender and participation. Find all the other shorts by Walter Salles, Marina Abramovic, Jia ...

Yesterday, was the 15th anniversary of Béla Tarr's greatest masterpiece, Sátántangó , which world première was held on February 8th 1994 in Hungary. Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote an article on this occasion for a Hungarian newspaper and it is published on his website too. Read it online here . According to IMDb , it has been screened in only 7 countries (at festivals), of which only 3 gave it a (limited) commercial distribution. Hungary and The Netherlands in 1994, and France in 2003. I hope this info is incomplete. I believe there was a couple of exceptional screenings in NYC a few years ago. Let me know where and how you could discover this rare and epic film yourself, if you had the chance to experience it.

After some minor delays, UNSPOKEN journal is back in ignition, with a new extended deadline and a new guest-editor too. The list of confirmed contributors is looking good, but the call is still open––as a last call––to all. + + + Dear Unspoken Contributor, We are delighted that you have expressed interest in contributing to the debut issue of UNSPOKEN. As you will already know this issue is dedicated to the great Béla Tarr. But we are equally happy to announce Yvette Bíro, esteemed screenwriter and peer of Tarr, as our guest-editor. Bíro's writings and films chart a startlingly lucid and compelling course through aesthetic and philosophical landscapes. UNSPOKEN is inspired by such explorations and seeks further adventures of this uncharted cinematic and theoretical terrain. Advice and what we need from you: Confirmation If you have not done so already, please provide in an email your chosen topic with a title (and abstract of 250 words if possible), and a short biography for us to ...

Tip via Dave McDougall Excerpt from an interview with Abbas Kiarostami from the Taste of Cherry DVD (Criterion?), date unknown (if anybody has any info please share)

Radio interview by Laure Adler on France Culture (09-24-2008) 45' [FRENCH-ENGLISH] [My translation] Laure ADLER : [..] Staying with poetry, meditation and the importance granted to the flow of time, we propose you to listen to the Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr on the occasion of the release of his film, based on a Georges Simenon adaptation, L'homme de Londres (1933). Béla Tarr, thank you very much to be here with us tonight. The Man From London (2007), which premièred at the Cannes festival two years ago, is finally released on French screens now, and it's the occasion for our radio program to try and understand your universe. Firstly, I would like to know if you went to the movies very young? TARR Béla : Yes, often times. When I was a kid I liked to go to the movies. But I have to say, I don't anymore now. ADLER : Why? Because you're busy doing your own films? TARR : No. Because often I have the feeling that the audience laugh while I want to cry. ...

Copyright © by Dan Schneider Bela Tarr became the most well known Hungarian director of films with the 1987 release of Damnation (Kárhozat). And, it’s no wonder. While not an inarguably great film, it is certainly close, and a good case for its greatness can be made. More cogently, the film showed Tarr as a filmmaker who is singular, despite some manifest parallels to the work of Andrei Tarkovsky and Theo Angelopoulos. This 117 minute long black and white film, shown in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio is similar, in structure, to Tarkovsky’s Stalker, and in pacing to Angelopoulos’s films, although its visual imagery is straight out of the Italian Neo-Realism of the 1940s and 1950s. The film opens with a long slow pullback from a hot of a tramway of mining buckets moving back and forth, suspended over a bleak landscape, part of a small mining town. The sounds of the mechanized drudgery set the tone for the film, and as the camera pulls back from the buckets we see that we are inside an apartment,...

Excerpt from " What is Cinema ? " in defence of De Sica's Umberto D (1952) : "L'impossibilité où nous sommes d'en analyser les caractéristiques formelles ne procède-t-elle pas de ce qu'il représente l'expression la plus pure du néo-réalisme, de ce que Voleur de bicyclette en est comme le point zéro de référence, le centre idéal autour duquel gravitent sur leur orbite particulière les œuvres des autres grands metteurs en scène. Ce serait cette pureté même qui le rendrait indéfinissable puisqu'elle a pour propos paradoxal non point de faire spectacle qui semble réel, mais inversement d'instituer la réalité en spectacle : un homme marche dans la rue et le spectateur s'étonne de la beauté d'un homme qui marche. Jusqu'à plus ample informé, jusqu'à ce que soit réalisé le rêve de Zavattini de filmer sans montage quatre-vingt-dix-minutes de la vie d'un homme, Voleur de Bicyclette [Bicycle Thieves, 1948] est sans conteste l'ex...

Short videos on this question answered by Jia Zhang-ke, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Lisandro Alonso and Albert Serra. Jia Zhang-ke (Chinese + French subs) 58" [ centrepompidou ] Jia Zhang-ke : "I'm very confident in the future of cinema and I'm confident about new media, like internet or cell phones, that allow the audience to watch movies. But I'm also certain that the movie houses will last long. It's extremely important that the audience could gather in a common place to watch a filmic work. The size of the screen begs for respect, both for the work and the audience. This mutual respect will continue. And this is how I envision the future of cinema. Merci" Hou Hsiao-hsien (chinese + French subs) 1'25" [ centrepompidou ] HHH: "Well it's not like writting... where we only need a pen and a paper. To work with cinema it's different. Question is : what is the difference between images and words? It's totally different. How are we going to w...

Unspoken Cinema Journal Bela Tarr issue – Call for submissions To coincide with recent remarks made by Béla Tarr, that his next film may be his last, Unspoken Cinema Journal is delighted to dedicate its inaugural issue to the uncompromising Hungarian master. + Unspoken Cinema Journal is a quarterly periodical devoted to scholarship, discussion and the promotion of contemplative cinema. Despite its elusive definition, we recognize contemplative cinema as one that departs from the safety of neorealism and transcendental style; to fearlessly explore the undrawn aesthetic boundaries of minimalism, mutism, existentialist and materialist film. We also recognize contemplative cinema as a truly transcultural cinematic avant-garde. Our intention is to deliver as rich and engaging exploratory film criticism in this field as possible. Unspoken Cinema Journal encourages written and image (still) based submissions from a wide range of styles. We welcome established contributors as much as lesse...

Supportive Petition for Tarr Béla In the September issue of Cahiers ( #637 ), one of the best filmmaker working today, Béla Tarr, casually declares at the end of an interview being fed up. He wants to end his career after his next film ( in production now in November 2008 ) which will be his last. Tarr Béla, the Hungarian auteur who gave us : The Man From London (2007), Werckmeister harmóniák (2000), Sátántangó (1994), Damnation (1988), Almanac of Fall (1985), The Prefab People (1982), Family Nest (1979)... Excerpt from the end of the interview (my unauthorized translation), by Cyril Neyrat and Emmanuel Burdeau made in Paris, on June 26, 2008 : [about The Man From London ] Cahiers : you suppressed almost all dialogue from Simenon's novel. The lines remaining are very strong, and performed with power. Where from does this excess of emotional expression? Tarr : I maybe come back to my roots, Family Nest, my first movies in which I was very expressive. I admit I feel deeply...

TSAI Ming-liang 蔡明亮 (born October 27, 1957, Ku Ching, Malaysia) = 51 yold in 2008 13 films / 12 screenplays (1st film: 1991/latest film: 2009) INSPIRED BY : François Truffaut (Les 400 coups), Grace Chang, King Hu (Dragon Inn), Edward Yang? C.C.C. films ( strict model in red ) : Visage (2009); Madame Butterfly (2008); It's a Dream (2007) v ; I Don't Want to Sleep Alone (2006) v ; The Wayward Cloud (2005) v ; Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003) v ; The Skywalk Is Gone (2002) v ; What Time Is It There? (2001) v ; The Hole (1998) v ; The River (1997) v ; Vive L'Amour (1994) v ; Rebels of the Neon God (1992) v ; Boys (1991); INFLUENCE ON : Lee Kang-sheng, Lisandro Alonso, James Lee? Quick scroll : BIBLIOGRAPHY | BOOK | ONLINE ARTICLES | INTERVIEW | WEBSITES | DOCUMENTARY Visage / Face (2009) IMDb Pre-production Press conference in Paris (14 Oct 2008) video [Chinese] " Tsai's Visages: When Salome faced the Dharma " Translation by: Edwin Mak ( Fas...