The Seashell and The Clergyman-part03

Germaine Dulac, the director, was the only woman working as filmmaker at that time in France. at the first screaning there was a huge surrealist riot and Artaud was really pissed on the changes of his script. the movie apeared one year before Bunuel's masterpiece and in 1932, Artaud was claiming to be a precursor of Bunuel and Cocteau's films.

The Seashell and The Clergyman-part02

the British Board of Film Censors: "the film is so cryptic as to be meaningless. If there is a meaning, it is doubtless objectionable" :)

The Seashell and The Clergyman-part01

one of the three canonical surrealist movies (besides the obvious Un Chien Andalou and L'age d'Or), it is based on a script by Artaud. the order of the scenes is made by a surrealist accident: when the reels were sent from France to US for distribution they were re-assembled in a completly wrong order. And that version remained till today.

Zizek on Children of Men

now i understand why i liked it so much :) and of course for the incredible Oana Pellea

A happening in Belfast

here is what Arpad Schilling told me a few weeks ago. it makes you think about what kind of theatre you want to make:

"It was very funny, I met this Irish street artist and I tried to explain this problem with the theatre in Hungary and it was funny because in Ireland theatre is not so important inside the culture. No big theatres, no big companies, just a few money for theatre and he told me that he didn’t understand this problem. Because what is a theatre? Is it a big auditorium and a big stage? I’ve never been to a theatre, I’m not interested in theatre. I think that the interesting place is the street, back to the people, to paint something on the wall, to make a real action. A happening is good because is a real meeting and it has real effects. He showed me one action that his friends made in Belfast. They made an action in an army center. Some activists, they were actors or clowns, went to this army center and made a funny situation but it is a different culture. The army called the police and police arrived but it was not possible to take them out because is a different culture and a different kind of democracy. It was an interesting situation: the police, the army and between them there are the clowns. It was a real situation, with no in or out. They were able to take out the clowns in the end after one hour but after that the army center was closed. It was a big success for this theatrical action. It was only one day but they had to close the army center. And that was the real aim. "

William S Burroughs on September Songs

in very short time i will come up with a work in progress thing... a theatre script based on Exterminator! by Burroughs. i am reading it now and it has some incredible theatrical moments.

Delia's gone

another lovely and tough Johnny Cash song. it explains a lot just by its own lyrics. the video shows actually more. a type of reading that can be performed: at the first level we have this antiwoman song of a guy that kills his exlover. simple and ugly. at the second level, actually, the narrator is dead and Delia has buried him. Inside the grave her memory hunts him. is it because she runs from him? is the narrator in the grave of his world because she took the whole world with her? who is killing who? is it a sort of revearsed killing? is it a disssapeareance of a sort of being -in-the-world? quite possible.


Delia's gone


Delia, oh, Delia Delia all my life
If I hadn't have shot poor
Delia I'd have had her for my wife
Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

I went up to Memphis And I met Delia there
Found her in her parlor
And I tied to her chair
Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

She was low down and trifling
And she was cold and mean
Kind of evil make me want to Grab my sub machine
Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

First time I shot her I shot her in the side
Hard to watch her suffer
But with the second shot she died
Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

But jailer, oh, jailer Jailer,
I can't sleep 'Cause all around my bedside
I hear the patter of Delia's feet
Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

So if you woman's devilish
You can let her run
Or you can bring her down and do her
Like Delia got done
Delia's gone, one more round Delia's gone

video is here

Toilet Art in Budapest 2

Man With a Movie Camera (1929)

Dziga Vertov in his Soviet fashioned outfit

Man With a Movie Camera

Vertov's 1929 film has a reputation similar to Citizen Kane in film studies as the most analyzed movie of all time. A brief prologue announces that Man With A Movie Camera will contain no intertitles, plot or theatrical devices—Vertov considered fictional projects untruthful and counter-revolutionary—and will be an attempt "at creating a truly international, absolute language of cinema based on its total separation from the language of theater and literature." Vertov created a landmark of cinematic history, reworked lately by the Soviet montage theory and the underground movies of the 1960s.

Vertov investigates the camera as a tool for controlling and shaping our perceptions of reality and perhaps reality itself: the film opens with a theater that is getting ready for spectators without human intervention. Vertov planned every shot, every cut, meticulously and Man With a Movie Camera is still an important work for film classes and visual theorists. The film shows a series of glances at modern Russian life, with the action moving from filmed scenes, to scenes of people filming, to scenes of film being edited, to scenes of an audience reacting to the film and back again with fascinating fluidity. The camera itself is detached and also the subject of the film.

The story behind Vertov's film is perhaps more interesting than the story itself. Vertov spent several years filming, then just retired to an editing room where he supposedly threw every technique he had at the print, just to see what would happen. What we have is a film without a naration that shows the possiblities of the cinematic language.

When Vertov places the word "experiment" in the opening credits, he opens up a great deal of speculation to the meaning of his images. He could be trying to tell us something in an ethnographic way about realities in Soviet Union, but he's already said he's playing with the art form, so how ethnografic relevant is the significance of a scene?

Despite numerous differences, a good comparison lies in Luis Bunuel's breakthrough avant-garde Un Chien Andalou. Both 1929 experimental films contain surreal imagery and were created for artistic purposes to explore new directions for cinema, and both have influenced filmmakers ever since. Although Vertov primarily wanted to explore the technological possibilities of cinematography and the visual medium, while Bunuel focused on shocking audiences with representations of dreams, they both converge with cinematic expression that forces audiences to form their own meanings from the wordless imagery.