http://waltzwithbashir.com/
Sunday 24 May 2009
Persepolis
(autobiographical animation)
[Persepolis is the poignant story of a young girl in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. It is through the eyes of precocious and outspoken nine year old Marjane that we see a people's hopes dashed as fundamentalists take power
- forcing the veil on women and imprisoning thousands. Clever and fearless, she outsmarts the "social guardians" and discovers punk, ABBA and Iron Maiden. Yet when her uncle is senselessly executed and as bombs fall around Tehran in the Iran/Iraq war, the daily fear that permeates life in Iran is palpable.
As she gets older, Marjane's boldness causes her parents to worry over her
continued safety. And so, at age fourteen, they make the difficult decision to send her to school in Austria. Vulnerable and alone in a strange land, she endures the typical ordeals of a teenager. In addition, Marjane has to combat being equated with the religious fundamentalism and extremism she fled her country to escape. Over time, she gains acceptance, and even experiences love, but after high school she finds herself alone and horribly homesick.
Though it means putting on the veil and living in a tyrannical society, Marjane decides to return to Iran to be close to her family. After a difficult period of adjustment, she enters art school and marries, all the while continuing to speak out against the hypocrisy she witnesses. At age 24, she realizes that while she is deeply Iranian, she cannot live in Iran. She then makes the heartbreaking decision to leave her homeland for France, optimistic about her future, shaped indelibly by her past.]
-text by youtube user "SonyPicturesClassics"]
Saturday 23 May 2009
William Kentridge
wikipedia info on William Kentridge
William Kentridge - Johannesburg (1989)
Johannesburg the Second Greatest City after Paris is the first in this series, and was made from twenty-five drawings. The sound-track includes music by Duke Ellington. It introduces the viewer to the characters central to most of Kentridge's subsequent films in the series. Soho Eckstein is a prosperous Johannesburg property developer, equally indifferent to the well-being of his workers and the emotional needs of his wife. He is portrayed frontally, wearing a pinstripe suit, sitting behind his desk where he guzzles food and drink, or stares bleakly at the destroyed terrain of the mining landscape. In contrast Felix Teitelbaum, Soho's alter-ego, appears nude, seen from behind, gazing into the landscape. His water-soaked, sexual fantasies of Mrs Eckstein contrast powerfully with the aridity of Soho's business, and with the faceless crowds of African miners who advance and retreat on the edges of Soho's world. The title of this film is ironic: the wasteland it depicts, in the land and in the emotional relationship between Soho and his wife, is the result of the growth of Soho's power, crudely analogous both to colonialism and to capitalism. Made just at the time when international pressure on South Africa to abolish apartheid had reached its greatest intensity, the film is a reminder that western societies were once built on similarly inhumane principles. Kentridge's multiple layers of complicity and responsibility allow for no simple readings.
(text added by youtube user "ead1529")
William Kentridge - Monument (1990)
Monument is Kentridge's second film in the series and explores his feelings of ambivalence about the privileges and comforts of the white South African society into which he was born. It was made from a basis of eleven drawings and is accompanied by music composed by Edward Jordan. Soho Eckstein, wealthy real estate developer, here assumes the guise of civic benefactor and erects a monument to the black South African work force, from whose labour his wealth is derived. The monument is a huge statue of an anonymous African workman. During the ceremony of unveiling the monument, in the first half of the film, the statue comes to life. Slowed by the enormous burden on his shoulders, he makes his way across the outskirts of the city, before disappearing into the distant landscape. As both product and embodiment of nature, he represents the moral dilemma at the core of Soho's empire and, by analogy, that of the white South African élite. Soho may feel sufficient gratitude towards the anonymous multitudes labouring for his luxury to build a monument in tribute to their work, but if in this act of recognition they become human, he must acknowledge their suffering and his abuse of them. For Kentridge, abuse of the populace runs parallel to exploitation of the land, as the second half of the film makes clear by the proliferation of billboards, lamp posts, loud-speakers, microphones and other bleak geometric forms appearing throughout the gradually expanding urban landscape.
(text added by youtube user "ead1529")
William Kentridge - Mine (1991)
Mine is Kentridge's third film, although it is often shown by the artist as second in the series, before Monument (Tate T07483). It was made from eighteen drawings and is set to Dvorak's Cello Concerto in B minor, Opus 104. In it, Kentridge develops the analogy between landscape and mind begun in the earlier films. A journey into the mines provides a visual representation of a journey into the conscience of Kentridge's invented character, Soho Eckstein, the white South African property owner who exploits the resources of land and black human labour which are under his domain. Throughout the film the imagery shifts between the geological landscape underground inhabited by innumerable black miners and Soho's world of white luxury above ground. When Soho, breakfasting in bed, pushes down the plunger of his cafetière, its movement is transformed into a rapid descent through the tray, through the bed and into the mine-shaft. Here the miners' world of overwhelming misery is depicted in claustrophobic tunnels where they are trapped digging, drilling and sleeping, embedded in rock. Above ground, Soho sits at his desk in his customary pin-stripe suit and punches adding machines and cash registers, creating a flow of gold bars, exhausted miners, blasted landscapes and blocks of uniform housing. At the end of the film a tiny, live rhinoceros is carried up from underground to appear on Soho's desk. This, like the image of a Nigerian Ife head which appears at the beginning of the film, alludes to exoticising colonialist attitudes towards Africa and its people, which reduce human and animal resources to trinkets and symbols of wealth. It also refers to the ecological damage caused by industry, a theme common to this series of films.
(text added by youtube user "ead1529"
Sobriety, Obesity and Growing Old is the fourth film in the series. It was made from twenty-five drawings and features Dvorak's String Quartet in F, Opus 96, choral music of South Africa, and the M'appari aria from Martha by Friedrich von Flotow, sung by Enrico Caruso. It picks up the narrative and themes begun in Kentridge's first film, Johannesburg the Second Greatest City after Paris (Tate T07482), and follows the development of the relationships between his cast of invented characters, Soho Eckstein, his wife and her lover, Felix Teitelbaum. These relationships reflect, metaphorically, the changing political situation in South Africa at the time the film was made. Demonstrations and marches in opposition to the apartheid régime together with the governmental relaxation of most of the State of Emergency regulations and restrictions heralded the beginning of a change in the country's power structure (and white attitudes towards black African rights). Soho, a symbol of South African white power, develops the capacity for awareness, longing and love and the potential for guilt and repentance. This is played out through the loss of his wife to Felix (his emotional alter-ego) which climaxes, through the couple making love, in the crumbling of the buildings of Johannesburg as megaphones declare a state of emergency. Soho is left alone with a cat in a vast open landscape and the words 'HER ABSENCE FILLED THE WORLD'. In the final scene of the film Soho has had to recognise the magnitude of his grief and longing, and lies, still wearing the business suit which symbolises his social position, embracing his naked wife in the middle of a field, where they gradually become submerged under rising waters. Crowds of black protestors, who had appeared marching through a 1950s version of Johannesburg earlier in the film, have receded to a respectful distance as Soho has found a connection to his feelings and hence his land.
(text added by youtube user "ead1529")
- Felix in Exile (1994) (south africa)
Felix in Exile is Kentridge's fifth film. It was made from forty drawings and is accompanied by music by Phillip Miller and Motsumi Makhene. It introduces a new character to the series: Nandi, an African woman, who appears at the beginning of the film making drawings of the landscape. She observes the land with surveyor's instruments, watching African bodies, with bleeding wounds, which melt into the landscape. She is recording the evidence of violence and massacre that is part of South Africa's recent history. Felix Teitelbaum, who features in Kentridge's first and fourth films as the humane and loving alter-ego to the ruthless capitalist white South African psyche, appears here semi-naked and alone in a foreign hotel room, brooding over Nandi's drawings of the damaged African landscape, which cover his suitcase and walls. Felix looks at himself in the mirror while shaving and Nandi appears to him. They are connected to one another, through the mirror, by a double-ended telescope and embrace, but Nandi is later shot and absorbed back into the ground like the bodies she was observing earlier. A flood of blue water in the hotel room, brought about by the process of painful remembering, symbolises tears of grief and loss and the Biblical flood which promises new life. Kentridge has commented: 'Felix in Exile was made at the time just before the first general election in South Africa, and questioned the way in which the people who had died on the journey to this new dispensation would be remembered'. In this film Nandi's drawing could be read as an attempt to construct a new national identity through the preservation, rather than erasure, of brutal and racist colonial memory.
(text added by youtube use "ead1529")
History of the Main Complaint is the sixth film in the series and is based on twenty-one drawings. It was made shortly after the establishment in South Africa of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It was set up to conduct a series of public hearings into abuses of human rights perpetrated during the apartheid era. The hearings, in which individuals told their stories of personal suffering, were held in order to make reparation for abuse and in the hope of creating reconciliation between peoples. The underlying theme of this film is a (self) recognition of white responsibility. This is played out through a 'medical' investigation into the body of Soho Eckstein, the white property-developing magnate and greedy-capitalist protagonist of most of the preceding films, which provides the starting point for a revelation of conscience.
In the beginning of the film Soho lies in a hospital bed in a coma. A Monteverdi madrigal plays on the soundtrack. Clone Sohos appear in pin-stripe suits to examine the recumbent body and penetrate it with stethoscopes. This activates the machinery of Soho's office desk (seen in earlier films) - paper punch, telephone, adding machine, ticker tape, rubber stamp, typewriter - suggesting a journey into the layers of memory which constitute the unconscious. The film cuts repeatedly between the clacking and ringing world inside Soho's body-mind and the view through a car windscreen as he drives along a night road. As his body is tested, the brutally violated bodies of black Africans appear at the side of the road. Red crosses appear at points of impact, on the victim's skull, and then on Soho's. Finally a figure runs across the road and is hit by Soho's car. As the body is flung up against the windscreen, Soho, in his hospital bed, awakens from his coma. He has discovered 'the weight keeping him unconscious' (Kentridge quoted in William Kentridge 1998, p.112) and, through its discovery, is restored to strength and power back at his office desk. However, this restoration is a return to a position which was shown, in an earlier film in the series, Mine 1991 (Tate T07484), to be one of abusive white authority and it is therefore not clear that he has made any moral progress. Kentridge has left this deliberately open-ended through the bowl of blue water (symbolising emotional connection and healing in his films) in Soho's hospital room, which remains untouched throughout the film. In the exploration of memory portrayed in this film Soho has not actually found the truth of his complaint (a complaint which is also a complaint against him). The investigation into the troubled, amnesiac, white South African psyche, explored by Kentridge in his films, has not yet been completed in life or in art. Tate T07481 provides a later development of Kentridge's themes.
(text added by youtube use "ead1529")
wikipedia info on William Kentridge
William Kentridge - Johannesburg (1989)
Johannesburg the Second Greatest City after Paris is the first in this series, and was made from twenty-five drawings. The sound-track includes music by Duke Ellington. It introduces the viewer to the characters central to most of Kentridge's subsequent films in the series. Soho Eckstein is a prosperous Johannesburg property developer, equally indifferent to the well-being of his workers and the emotional needs of his wife. He is portrayed frontally, wearing a pinstripe suit, sitting behind his desk where he guzzles food and drink, or stares bleakly at the destroyed terrain of the mining landscape. In contrast Felix Teitelbaum, Soho's alter-ego, appears nude, seen from behind, gazing into the landscape. His water-soaked, sexual fantasies of Mrs Eckstein contrast powerfully with the aridity of Soho's business, and with the faceless crowds of African miners who advance and retreat on the edges of Soho's world. The title of this film is ironic: the wasteland it depicts, in the land and in the emotional relationship between Soho and his wife, is the result of the growth of Soho's power, crudely analogous both to colonialism and to capitalism. Made just at the time when international pressure on South Africa to abolish apartheid had reached its greatest intensity, the film is a reminder that western societies were once built on similarly inhumane principles. Kentridge's multiple layers of complicity and responsibility allow for no simple readings.
(text added by youtube user "ead1529")
William Kentridge - Monument (1990)
Monument is Kentridge's second film in the series and explores his feelings of ambivalence about the privileges and comforts of the white South African society into which he was born. It was made from a basis of eleven drawings and is accompanied by music composed by Edward Jordan. Soho Eckstein, wealthy real estate developer, here assumes the guise of civic benefactor and erects a monument to the black South African work force, from whose labour his wealth is derived. The monument is a huge statue of an anonymous African workman. During the ceremony of unveiling the monument, in the first half of the film, the statue comes to life. Slowed by the enormous burden on his shoulders, he makes his way across the outskirts of the city, before disappearing into the distant landscape. As both product and embodiment of nature, he represents the moral dilemma at the core of Soho's empire and, by analogy, that of the white South African élite. Soho may feel sufficient gratitude towards the anonymous multitudes labouring for his luxury to build a monument in tribute to their work, but if in this act of recognition they become human, he must acknowledge their suffering and his abuse of them. For Kentridge, abuse of the populace runs parallel to exploitation of the land, as the second half of the film makes clear by the proliferation of billboards, lamp posts, loud-speakers, microphones and other bleak geometric forms appearing throughout the gradually expanding urban landscape.
(text added by youtube user "ead1529")
William Kentridge - Mine (1991)
Mine is Kentridge's third film, although it is often shown by the artist as second in the series, before Monument (Tate T07483). It was made from eighteen drawings and is set to Dvorak's Cello Concerto in B minor, Opus 104. In it, Kentridge develops the analogy between landscape and mind begun in the earlier films. A journey into the mines provides a visual representation of a journey into the conscience of Kentridge's invented character, Soho Eckstein, the white South African property owner who exploits the resources of land and black human labour which are under his domain. Throughout the film the imagery shifts between the geological landscape underground inhabited by innumerable black miners and Soho's world of white luxury above ground. When Soho, breakfasting in bed, pushes down the plunger of his cafetière, its movement is transformed into a rapid descent through the tray, through the bed and into the mine-shaft. Here the miners' world of overwhelming misery is depicted in claustrophobic tunnels where they are trapped digging, drilling and sleeping, embedded in rock. Above ground, Soho sits at his desk in his customary pin-stripe suit and punches adding machines and cash registers, creating a flow of gold bars, exhausted miners, blasted landscapes and blocks of uniform housing. At the end of the film a tiny, live rhinoceros is carried up from underground to appear on Soho's desk. This, like the image of a Nigerian Ife head which appears at the beginning of the film, alludes to exoticising colonialist attitudes towards Africa and its people, which reduce human and animal resources to trinkets and symbols of wealth. It also refers to the ecological damage caused by industry, a theme common to this series of films.
(text added by youtube user "ead1529"
Sobriety, Obesity and Growing Old is the fourth film in the series. It was made from twenty-five drawings and features Dvorak's String Quartet in F, Opus 96, choral music of South Africa, and the M'appari aria from Martha by Friedrich von Flotow, sung by Enrico Caruso. It picks up the narrative and themes begun in Kentridge's first film, Johannesburg the Second Greatest City after Paris (Tate T07482), and follows the development of the relationships between his cast of invented characters, Soho Eckstein, his wife and her lover, Felix Teitelbaum. These relationships reflect, metaphorically, the changing political situation in South Africa at the time the film was made. Demonstrations and marches in opposition to the apartheid régime together with the governmental relaxation of most of the State of Emergency regulations and restrictions heralded the beginning of a change in the country's power structure (and white attitudes towards black African rights). Soho, a symbol of South African white power, develops the capacity for awareness, longing and love and the potential for guilt and repentance. This is played out through the loss of his wife to Felix (his emotional alter-ego) which climaxes, through the couple making love, in the crumbling of the buildings of Johannesburg as megaphones declare a state of emergency. Soho is left alone with a cat in a vast open landscape and the words 'HER ABSENCE FILLED THE WORLD'. In the final scene of the film Soho has had to recognise the magnitude of his grief and longing, and lies, still wearing the business suit which symbolises his social position, embracing his naked wife in the middle of a field, where they gradually become submerged under rising waters. Crowds of black protestors, who had appeared marching through a 1950s version of Johannesburg earlier in the film, have receded to a respectful distance as Soho has found a connection to his feelings and hence his land.
(text added by youtube user "ead1529")
- Felix in Exile (1994) (south africa)
Felix in Exile is Kentridge's fifth film. It was made from forty drawings and is accompanied by music by Phillip Miller and Motsumi Makhene. It introduces a new character to the series: Nandi, an African woman, who appears at the beginning of the film making drawings of the landscape. She observes the land with surveyor's instruments, watching African bodies, with bleeding wounds, which melt into the landscape. She is recording the evidence of violence and massacre that is part of South Africa's recent history. Felix Teitelbaum, who features in Kentridge's first and fourth films as the humane and loving alter-ego to the ruthless capitalist white South African psyche, appears here semi-naked and alone in a foreign hotel room, brooding over Nandi's drawings of the damaged African landscape, which cover his suitcase and walls. Felix looks at himself in the mirror while shaving and Nandi appears to him. They are connected to one another, through the mirror, by a double-ended telescope and embrace, but Nandi is later shot and absorbed back into the ground like the bodies she was observing earlier. A flood of blue water in the hotel room, brought about by the process of painful remembering, symbolises tears of grief and loss and the Biblical flood which promises new life. Kentridge has commented: 'Felix in Exile was made at the time just before the first general election in South Africa, and questioned the way in which the people who had died on the journey to this new dispensation would be remembered'. In this film Nandi's drawing could be read as an attempt to construct a new national identity through the preservation, rather than erasure, of brutal and racist colonial memory.
(text added by youtube use "ead1529")
History of the Main Complaint is the sixth film in the series and is based on twenty-one drawings. It was made shortly after the establishment in South Africa of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It was set up to conduct a series of public hearings into abuses of human rights perpetrated during the apartheid era. The hearings, in which individuals told their stories of personal suffering, were held in order to make reparation for abuse and in the hope of creating reconciliation between peoples. The underlying theme of this film is a (self) recognition of white responsibility. This is played out through a 'medical' investigation into the body of Soho Eckstein, the white property-developing magnate and greedy-capitalist protagonist of most of the preceding films, which provides the starting point for a revelation of conscience.
In the beginning of the film Soho lies in a hospital bed in a coma. A Monteverdi madrigal plays on the soundtrack. Clone Sohos appear in pin-stripe suits to examine the recumbent body and penetrate it with stethoscopes. This activates the machinery of Soho's office desk (seen in earlier films) - paper punch, telephone, adding machine, ticker tape, rubber stamp, typewriter - suggesting a journey into the layers of memory which constitute the unconscious. The film cuts repeatedly between the clacking and ringing world inside Soho's body-mind and the view through a car windscreen as he drives along a night road. As his body is tested, the brutally violated bodies of black Africans appear at the side of the road. Red crosses appear at points of impact, on the victim's skull, and then on Soho's. Finally a figure runs across the road and is hit by Soho's car. As the body is flung up against the windscreen, Soho, in his hospital bed, awakens from his coma. He has discovered 'the weight keeping him unconscious' (Kentridge quoted in William Kentridge 1998, p.112) and, through its discovery, is restored to strength and power back at his office desk. However, this restoration is a return to a position which was shown, in an earlier film in the series, Mine 1991 (Tate T07484), to be one of abusive white authority and it is therefore not clear that he has made any moral progress. Kentridge has left this deliberately open-ended through the bowl of blue water (symbolising emotional connection and healing in his films) in Soho's hospital room, which remains untouched throughout the film. In the exploration of memory portrayed in this film Soho has not actually found the truth of his complaint (a complaint which is also a complaint against him). The investigation into the troubled, amnesiac, white South African psyche, explored by Kentridge in his films, has not yet been completed in life or in art. Tate T07481 provides a later development of Kentridge's themes.
(text added by youtube use "ead1529")
wikipedia info on William Kentridge
Thursday 21 May 2009
KAYIP OTOBUS - LOST BUS OF CYPRUS
-if you find something about the director please write it as a comment
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