Join the student committee every Third Thursday! This Third Thursday we will watch Black Angel at 8:45 pm at the PFA Theatre.
Based on the novel by pulp writer Cornell Woolrich, Black Angel is a complex murder mystery first released in 1946. Wronged wife Catherine Bennett strives to save her wrongly convicted husband Kirk for having killed singer Mavis Marlowe, blackmailer and seductress. If that weren't complicated enough, Mavis's former alcoholic husband joins Catherine on her quest to prove Kirk's innocence and in the process falls in love with her. Intoxicated by the numerous images of violence, sex, and murder, the audience feels as though in a drunken stupor. A "booze-drenched B movie" not to miss!
Don't forget, after the film we will head up to I-House for drinks!
Showing posts with label Zoe Langer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Zoe Langer. Show all posts
1.21.2009
Fellini and Imagination: Amarcord (1973)
"I WANT A WOMAN!!!!!" Uncle Teo bellows in desperation from a treetop in the Italian countryside. Really, don't we all?
From the depths of his imagination, Fellini portrays our deepest desires. In surreal images, Fellini paints a world of fantasy that treated the themes of the darkest realities. Fascism in 1930's Italy pervaded every aspect of life, from family to the economy. Central to Fellini's film Amarcord, fascism is both comical and brutal, sometimes personified and even portrayed in ridiculous dance sequences comparable to a Beyonce music video.
Dancing in the snow with imaginary women, the young men of this film fulfill their sexual desires only in their minds. With the beautiful and bright cinematography in this film, we are left wondering is it all but a dream for us too?
Amarcord will be shown at the Pacific Film Archive Friday, January 23, 2009 at 8:50pm.
Zoe Langer
From the depths of his imagination, Fellini portrays our deepest desires. In surreal images, Fellini paints a world of fantasy that treated the themes of the darkest realities. Fascism in 1930's Italy pervaded every aspect of life, from family to the economy. Central to Fellini's film Amarcord, fascism is both comical and brutal, sometimes personified and even portrayed in ridiculous dance sequences comparable to a Beyonce music video.
Dancing in the snow with imaginary women, the young men of this film fulfill their sexual desires only in their minds. With the beautiful and bright cinematography in this film, we are left wondering is it all but a dream for us too?
Amarcord will be shown at the Pacific Film Archive Friday, January 23, 2009 at 8:50pm.
Zoe Langer
11.22.2008
A Tale of Two Brothers and a Prostitute: Rocco and His Brothers
Two words: Alain Delon. The very definition of sexuality, Delon is sure to tickle your fancy if not make you swoon completely. Underneath his rugged yet classically handsome visage, exists a dynamic actor who brings emotion and complexity to every character. Such complexity can be seen in his role as the gentle and emotional Rocco in Luchino Visconti’s definitive Neorealist work, Rocco and His Brothers.
First released in 1960, Rocco and his Brothers is a dramatic and provocative film that constructs and deconstructs Italian society in a post-fascist era. Set against the sweeping and powerful music of Nino Rota, director Luchino Visconti depicts Italy’s transformation through the family dynamic, specifically through the relationship between two brothers Rocco and Simone. Presented in five distinct chapters, the film reflects the internal divisions that plagued Italy during the sixties, between north and south, between classes, and within the family itself. Visconti examines how each member of the Parondi family is affected by their translocation from southern Italy to the large city of Milan. Indifferent and cold, the urban landscape proves unsympathetic, so much so that a prostitute becomes the only vessel of solace.
The pivotal scene depicts the rape of Nadia, the prostitute who captured the desire of both brothers Rocco and Simone. Simone having had Nadia first feels a claim to her and thus rapes her in front of Rocco. Rocco, who had genuine romantic feelings, becomes transformed at the site of such a display of utter brutality. What strikes me about this scene is how each brother undergoes a transformative process. Nadia is central to this transformation causing Simone to descend into complete bestiality, reduced to animalistic passions and having hardly retained his human essence, while cruelly converting Rocco’s idealism both about love and country into cold pragmatism having “seen” the reality of human desire.
Nadia becomes a metaphor for Italy itself, first looked upon with idealistic eyes but subsequently stirring disillusion in its admirers. Sexually defiled and stripped of its identity, Italy is portrayed as a place of ambiguity, uncertainty, and hopelessness, capable of reducing man to his most basic instincts and revealing his innate and inevitable bestiality. The image of Italy as a prostitute is nothing new, in fact Dante compares Italy to a whore in the sixth canto of Purgatorio “not a ruler of provinces, but a whore!” However, Visconti makes Italy so sordid it adds something new and other, forcing his audience to revaluate the supposed positive aspects of urbanism and modernity. This film is certainly worth watching, if not for its psychological realism and beautiful cinematography, then for Alain Delon who can easily be watched for two hours or more.
Rocco and his Brothers will be shown at the Pacific Film Archive Wednesday, December 10 at 7:00pm.
Zoe Langer
First released in 1960, Rocco and his Brothers is a dramatic and provocative film that constructs and deconstructs Italian society in a post-fascist era. Set against the sweeping and powerful music of Nino Rota, director Luchino Visconti depicts Italy’s transformation through the family dynamic, specifically through the relationship between two brothers Rocco and Simone. Presented in five distinct chapters, the film reflects the internal divisions that plagued Italy during the sixties, between north and south, between classes, and within the family itself. Visconti examines how each member of the Parondi family is affected by their translocation from southern Italy to the large city of Milan. Indifferent and cold, the urban landscape proves unsympathetic, so much so that a prostitute becomes the only vessel of solace.
The pivotal scene depicts the rape of Nadia, the prostitute who captured the desire of both brothers Rocco and Simone. Simone having had Nadia first feels a claim to her and thus rapes her in front of Rocco. Rocco, who had genuine romantic feelings, becomes transformed at the site of such a display of utter brutality. What strikes me about this scene is how each brother undergoes a transformative process. Nadia is central to this transformation causing Simone to descend into complete bestiality, reduced to animalistic passions and having hardly retained his human essence, while cruelly converting Rocco’s idealism both about love and country into cold pragmatism having “seen” the reality of human desire.
Nadia becomes a metaphor for Italy itself, first looked upon with idealistic eyes but subsequently stirring disillusion in its admirers. Sexually defiled and stripped of its identity, Italy is portrayed as a place of ambiguity, uncertainty, and hopelessness, capable of reducing man to his most basic instincts and revealing his innate and inevitable bestiality. The image of Italy as a prostitute is nothing new, in fact Dante compares Italy to a whore in the sixth canto of Purgatorio “not a ruler of provinces, but a whore!” However, Visconti makes Italy so sordid it adds something new and other, forcing his audience to revaluate the supposed positive aspects of urbanism and modernity. This film is certainly worth watching, if not for its psychological realism and beautiful cinematography, then for Alain Delon who can easily be watched for two hours or more.
Rocco and his Brothers will be shown at the Pacific Film Archive Wednesday, December 10 at 7:00pm.
Zoe Langer
11.21.2008
When you’re smiling the whole world smiles with you? The faces of Yue Minjun
A laugh can be inviting, it can be derisive, it can also be contagious. Laughter loves company, because there is always a part of us that wants others to laugh with us. Laughter usually inspires positive connotations: laughing with friends over drinks, laughing at a hilarious episode of The Office (the British version, of course), or engaging in witty repartee. But what happens when laughter becomes sinister, mocking, or even grotesque?I asked myself these questions when looking at the oeuvre of Chinese Contemporary artist Yue Minjun, whose works are currently displayed at the Berkeley Art Museum. Yue’s works form part of the Cynical Realist movement, a modern art movement that developed in the 90’s in Beijing. Works associated with Cynical Realism have a pragmatic, humorous, and ironic tone that often comment on on the pursuit of the individual within a collective society. Yue’s work can almost always be identified by a multitude of widely laughing faces, usually representing the artist himself, against looming and bright backdrops. I can’t help but wonder: what does this incessant and excessive amount of laughter mean? There is something eerie and disturbing about its seriality and obsessive repetition, almost as if laughter becomes ubiquitous and devoid of intimacy.
La Liberté guidant le peuple (1995) is a particularly fascinating work that plays on Eugène Delacroix’s famous painting of the same name painted in 1830. Rather than depicting Liberty as a voluptuous and bare breasted female, Liberty undergoes a complete transformation becoming a lanky male in a white t-shirt and brown leather sandals. There is no distinction between leader and subject. Does this indicate that liberty is absent, overly present, or a mere non-entity? What does it mean to make liberty among the mass collective? Eyes closed to the uncertain future, smiles are nevertheless plastered across each identical face. Seemingly looking forward to change, figures raise their arms in triumph. What is the real meaning of triumph here? In the Delacroix, revolution marks the end of monarchical rule, thus evoking a real sense of victory and sacrifice. Yue’s portrayal of revolution is much more ambiguous. During the Cultural Revolution, artists were obligated to portray peasants content in their surroundings and bearing a white smile. Clearly, Yue makes a parody of such paintings, with the clear connotation that sacrifice and triumph are illusory.
Within modern China sacrifice even seems unnecessary and devalued. In the face of modernization and westernization individual identity is lost. However, Yue’s work is not simply a discussion of individuality versus collectivity. Hidden beneath the immediacy of his works is a political commentary that reveals the all too rapid shifting of identities, landscapes, and values intrinsic to modernity. Urbanization threatens to impose itself onto populace, depicted as non-descriptive skyscrapers that menacingly seep into the foreground. Reflected in the water without windows, the architecture is just as anonymous as the subjects of the painting. Just as in his other important work Everybody Connects, people are reproduced and discarded like objects on a conveyor belt.
Disconcerting in the least, Yue provokes his viewer to question his or her place within modernity and the inevitable grey area that we have inherited from an overly modernized world. Too cynical for you? Keep in mind Yue is a Cynical Realist.
Zoe Langer
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