Offscreen Notes
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Chris Marker: 1921-2012
Born Christian François Bouche-Villeneuve, the great French filmmaker Chris Marker passed away on July 30, 2012 at the age of 91. Marker was part of the golden age of French intellectual and artistic experimentation in France circa the 1950s, becoming an important figure among the Left Bank artistic community. France in the 1950s was a heady place to be, influenced by the recently deceased philosopher Henri Bergson, and other philosophers and film thinkers Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Emmanuel Mounier, Andre Bazin, and Alexandre Astruc. Marker soaked in all of these ideas into what would become one of the most unique contributions to cinema, forming an original essayistic style of filmmaking that shred through established boundaries such as fiction, documentary, and experimental. If Marker would only have made one film, La Jetée (1962) he would have earned his place in film history. Composed almost entirely of still images (showing the influence of photography, the photo-roman, and comic books on Marker), the nearly thory minute La Jetée is arguably one of the greatest meditations on time, memory, and by extension, science-fiction time travel. The themes of time and memory would haunt Marker (as well as his colleague Alain Resnais) for the rest of his life, even extending to the medium of interactive CD art with his now classic ‘Immemory” CD. I urge you to read The Guardian obituary for the details of Marker’s fascinating life history.
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Ernest Borgnine: 1917-2012
I must admit to being one of those people who in the past had prematurely thought of Borgnine as being dead. Well, life has caught up. One of the greatest American character actors ever has passed away at the age of 95 on July 8, 2012. His list of film roles is as long (over 200 films) as it is impressive. My favorite of his standout performances include From Here to Eternity (he’s the guy that beat the stuffing out of Sinatra), Marty, The Wild Bunch, Dirty Dozen, Willard, and I briganti italiani, RIP Ernest.
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Is Canadian Cinema Sexy?
New issue of the Montreal-based online journal Montreal Serai on Canadian cinema. Articles include:“Canadian Cinema: Sexy?” by Mirella Bontempo, “Canada: Culture or Coma?” by Mark Krupa, and “Notes on Film and Concsiousness” by Patrick Barnard.
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Ray Bradbury 1920-2012
The world of fantasy has lost one of its greatest figures, Ray Bradbury, who died on June 5, 2012 at the age of 91. Bradbury spanned the golden age of Fantasy and carved himself a huge place in the annals of what he would describe “science fantasy” (as opposed to science fiction, hard science or fantasy). His work touched every possible medium, pulp fiction, radio, literature, theater, poetry, television, motion pictures, including great shows like The Twilight Zone, as a mini-series (The Martian Chronicles, his own anthology TV series, the films Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes, The Illustrated Man, and many more. I will always remember him along with two of his favorite long time friends, Ray Harryhausen and Forrest J Ackerman. Only Harryhausen the —the only one of them I’ve actually met— is still alive. Soon, but hopefully not too soon, a real era of fantasy will be over.
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Andrew Sarris: 31 October 1928 – 20 June 2012
One of America’s most important and influential film critics/teachers Andrew Sarris passed away on June 20, 2012 at the age of 83. Sarris is survived by her film critic wife since 1969, Molly Haskell. Sarris’ defining achievement was his groundbreaking book The American Cinema: Directors and Directions 1929-1968, which helped re-define a generation of cinephiles around the notion that film was an art born out of the same artistic juices of painting or literature: the singular vision of the artist. Throughout the 1970s Sarris engaged in famous critical battles with notorious anti-auteurist Pauline Kael. Sarris wrote for nearly thirty years for the Village Voice (where his student Jim Hoberman also toiled for many years until his recent dismissal), taught film studies at several universities and continued to write in his usually witty and urbane style right up until his death.
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Kaneto Shindô 1912-2012
The great Japanese director, a contemporary of Mizoguchi, Ozu, Kurosawa, Naruse, and others, passed away on May 29, 2012 at the age of 100 (born April 28, 1912). As noted in the Guardian obit, Shindo was influenced by his mentor Kenji Mizoguchi (on whom he did an over two hour long documentary, Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director, which is available on the Criterion DVD of Ugetsu), and in terms of his outlook on life and art, the bombing of Hiroshima (where he was actually born). My own lasting impressions of Shindo were based on two striking black and white, cinemascope films, Onibaba (1964) and Kuroneko (1968), powerful horror films centered around Japanese supernatural stories of war-time greed, jealousy and retribution.
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Cinéma dans la rue
Following budget cuts by Harper’s Conservative government the decision was taken to shut down the venerable NFB location on St. Denis street, including its groundbreaking, innovative CinéRobothéque. Local filmmakers, cinephiles, critics, teachers and activists have joined together for a three-day celebration of what will be missed if the cuts proceed. The public is invited to partake in a conference, a symbolic ‘joining of hands’ outdoor screenings and more. For info: PRESS_RELEASE_Conference_Cinéma_dans_la_rue_June_4_2012.pdf
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Peter Mettler Retrospective: May 2-May 6
May 4, 2012 to May 6, 2012
The Cinematheque Quebecoise is mounting an impressive complete retrospective of Canadian-Swiss filmmaker/artist Peter Mettler. The event, which will project the films in print versions (16mm, except for two filmed in high definition), also includes an intriguing life musical improvisation with Mettler himself (also a musician) and experimental guitarist Fred Firth, and a Mettler masterclass.
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Amos Vogel: April 18, 1921-April 24, 2012
Austrian born film critic, writer, teacher, programmer Amos Vogel passed away in his Greenwich Village apartment in New York City, where he lived since the 1940s, at the age of 91. Vogel’s idiosyncratic book Film as a Subversive Art (with one of the greatest film book coves ever, pictured above) in a way helped shape my own eventual interest in the more bizarre and esoteric aspects of cinema, and the appreciation of a border less notion of cinema where art house, politics, sex, horror and neurosis lived together happily. In a way, Vogel’s understanding of the myriad psycho-sexual, socio-political links between all form of cinema, avant-garde and popular, foreshadowed what is more commonly known now as ‘psychotronic’ cinema or ‘trash cinema’ or ‘paracinema.’ Vogel was instrumental, along with Jonas Mekas and Film Culture, of promoting the avant-garde and experimental cinema as founder and programmer (along with his wife Marcia) of the repertory house Cinema 16 from 1947 to 1963. “After the demise of Cinema 16, Vogel founded the Lincoln Center Film Department and was co-founder of the New York Film Festival, of which he became the first director where he programmed until 1968” ( Paul Cronin, The Sticking Place).
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Marc Gervais: RIP, March 25, 2012
Marc Gervais, who was described in the linked The Gazette obit piece, as a “priest with a passion for film,” died on March 25, 2012, at the age of 82. As noted in The Gazette obit, Gervais became a Jesuit priest in 1963 and an academic in 1967. When one thinks of religion and cinema as professions, perhaps Scorsese comes to mind, as someone who had planned to become a priest but changed to cinema instead. In both professions, passion is a must, and it is something that Marc definitely had. I can attest because I was one of the many who took one of his famed cinema courses at the Loyola Campus, this going back to the early 1980s. I took two courses with him, one on the French New Wave, the other on Hollywood Genres. The double bill screenings were one night, the analysis/lecture the next. What I remember most was during the analysis nights, when he would freeze an image on the (now defunct) Athena Analyzer Projector (a 16mm projector which allowed you to stop, go back/forward one or more frames at a time), say a few words, stop, then gesticulate with his arms while repeating, “TSL, TSL” (short hand for texture, structure, language). At times I yearned for a more direct approach (“ok, TSL, but what does that shot mean!), but now I realize his approach was also to keep cinema, like a religion, somewhat of a mystery. I will remember him fondly (ed. Donato Totaro).
