Art visual np2

I just rewatched A Zed and Two Noughts by Peter Greenaway (1985) and I am still amazed by the depiction of the two main (twins) characters for decay. In fact, in this film, they set up a series of biological observation devices that photograph very three seconds an organic body in decomposition in order to compose a accelerated cinematographic piece of its complete putrefaction. Greenaway actually introduces very quickly in the narrative this obsession as the first sentence pronounced in the film by those characters after the death of their two wives is: "How fast does a woman decomposes ?".

I recently wrote an article about Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo , the great constructive achievement it constitutes and the probable difficulties the film crew probably encountered in order to achieve this construction process. Burden of Dreams is a 1982 documentary by Les Blank that illustrate those difficulties and the continuous struggle for Herzog to achieve his movie in one of the most remote place of the Amazon forest. The movie actually show Herzog, extremely bitter, talking in a very intense way, about the absolute counter-harmony of the jungle and the obscenity of constant fight and survival struggle of its elements.

Two movies, so far (there are probably a lot of other potential ones), have deeply moved me for their extensive dramatization of a process of construction within their plots. Those two films are Andrei Rublev by Andrei Tarkovsky (1966) and Fitzcarraldo by Werner Herzog (1982). The first one depicts a fragment of life of XVth century Russian icon painter Andrei Rublev. Nevertheless, Tarkovsky dramatizes this life by lingering on surrounding events for which Rublev is only an influenced spectator. The most significant of them is the construction from A to Z of a bell for the local cathedral and is filmed extensively by the Russian director. The second film is one of the most famous of German director Werner Herzog's and introduces a passionate character of Fitzcarraldo who undertake a tremendous challenge involving a steamship and the native population of the Amazon Forest in Peru. I won't reveal what this challenge is about in order to save this amazing surprise for people w...

William S. Burroughs. A Man Within is a documentary directed and written by Yony Leyser which is about to be released in several American cities. The New York's opening is on this Wednesday 17th November at IFC and Yony will be there to answer post-projection questions on November 17th, 18th and 19th. The movie includes interviews of renowned people such as Gus van Sant, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Sonic Youth, David Cronenberg and a bunch of others. See the different dates for different cities on Oscilloscope Laboratories' website . Thanks Camille

Todor & Petru is a very short film created by CRCR , five students from the GOBELINS, l'école de l'image (applied art & digital media school in Paris) within the frame of an internship at Wizz Design in Paris. The results evoke a lot of things that have already been done, yet demonstrates an excellent articulation of technique and aesthetics. The five students are Remi BASTIE, Nicolas DEHGHANI, Jonathan DJOB NKONDO, NIcolas PEGON et Jérémy PIRES

I am kino-eyes. I am a builder. I have placed you, whom I've created today, in an extraordinary room which did not exist until just now when I also created it. In this room there are twelve walls shot by me in various parts of the world. In bringing together shots of walls and details, I've managed to arrange them in an order that is pleasing and to construct with intervals, correctly, a film-phase which is the room. Dziga Vertov, 1923 Film Architecture. From Metropolis to Blade Runner is a beautiful book about the relationships between Architecture and Cinema. It was edited by Dietrich Neumann in 1999 and includes essays by Donald Albrecht, Anton Kaes, Anthony Vidler and Michael Webb. I already posted an article about the Blade Runner's part (see previous post ), but other movies are depicted in this book which magnifies the beauty of their settings as an hyper-representative and expressive architecture. Film Architecture. From Metropolis to Blade Runner . Edited by Diet...

Blade Runner has been filmed in the very early 80's and was therefore registered in the tradition of giant models and settings in order to achieve a science-fiction scenery. I particularly invite you to watch this short documentary about the construction of the first scene of the movie offering a view on a dark Los Angeles which main light comes from the various oil rigs' fires. One get to learn in this documentary that those fire spills were originally shot for Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (see previous post ) ! The following images are excerpted from a book entitled Film Architecture edited by Dietrich Neumann about which I should soon write another article...

The Dark Knight is extremely interesting for a lot of reasons. The attempt of Christopher Nolan to adapt the myth to a recognizable reality for example is certainly one of them... But the main reasons to me come all from the character of the Joker. He is the only character who understands the totality of the situations. As far as his own behavior is concerned, he tells Harvey Dent: " I just do things. [...] I'm not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are . " For this reason he can be considered as the quintessence of the artist and his elaboration of dilemmas -one man being killed or an hospital being destroyed, one boat full of innocents or the one full of criminals to be exploded- implying the absolute freedom of choice of the persons exists only to " send a message " as he says in the film while artistically burning a monumental pile of bank bills (French people would probably recall Serge Gainsbourg bu...

A Walk Through H is a 40 minutes long movie created by Peter Greenaway in 1978. This film is a magnificent journey described only by the vocal narration (and a powerful music) and a series of 92 maps/painting hang on a wall of an art gallery. It is an ode to the map as a mean of representation of space, far away from the objectivity current maps are pretending to reach. The movie also depicts the narrator's fetishism for those maps that he finds or steals in order to end his journey. The maps themselves when approaching the end of the series acquire more and more subjectivity and therefore more and more uncertainty about the path they are actually showing. The whole vocal narration can be read by following this link . WATCH THE MOVIE

L’Année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year in Marienbad) is a 1961 film written by the Nouveau Roman author Alain Robbe-Grillet and directed by Alain Resnais . This movie is elaborated as a narrative labyrinth activated by a very dramatic and repetitive way of filming the disturbing baroque setting that close itself on the spectator.

The Five Obstructions is an additional proof of Lars Van Trier 's greatness. It is a documentary about the masochist pact signed between him and his mentor Jorgen Leth . In fact, Leth accepts to re-film five times his masterpiece The Perfect Human according to a set of constraints dictated by Lars Van Trier himself. The severeness and intransigence that LVT imposes on Leth is disturbing and so is the latter's acceptance of it. However, Leth answers with five variations of his Perfect Human that are as interesting for their creativity than for their reaction towards Lars Van Trier's instructions. In a nutshell, this movie is a beautiful moment of the creative process of art as much as an ambiguous theater illustrating the power of a human being on another one.

Eco Commune is a beautiful short movie by Richard Hardy for Nic Clear 's (see previous posts 1 and 2 and his manifesto for boiteaoutils) studio at the Bartlett. This film introduces a 2050 post-apocalyptic London gained by vegetation and wild animals. The city is eventually re-appropriated by humans but only in a way that consider those hybrids of ruins and nature as the new fabric of their environment. See also his Transcendent City and its Miyazaki-like graphics. THE ECO-COMMUNE from Richard Hardy on Vimeo .