Offbeat Cinema
8 Oct 2011 / Amsterdam Cinema Magazine / Free BĂŠla Tarr / Architectuur Film Festival Rotterdam / Terayama Shuji / Cinekink / Dave Chapelle /
Cognitivism and Semiology. Don't know what it is? Well here is your chance.
October 29-30 at Delicatessen Zeeburg, Amsterdam
Offbeat Film Theory School 2
This time it's serious. For more information and registration send email to offbeatcinema@gmail.com
Editors Anna Dobrosovestnova Co-editors Zoe Goldstein, Edward Milhuisen Graphic Design Brit Pavelson Custom Typeface Guðmundur Úlfarsson Contributors Baylee Brits, Gianluca Turricchia, Nicola Bozzi, Paola Pistone, Jeffrey Babcock, Jennifer Lyon Bell, John Bezold, Robert Kijowski, Roberto Herrera, Thijs Witty We thank Guillaume Filion, Kino Praxis, Luuk van Huët, Matt Ogden
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Contents 5 On Screen Now Corruption is the Status Quo: ‘Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within’ by Roberto Herrera On Screen Now: Béla Tarr The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: Béla Tarr’s A Torinói ló by Paola Pistone Béla Tarr and the Question of Mass and Materiality by Baylee Brits
14 Column From Objects of Knowledge to Subjects of Desire by Gianluca Turricchia
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Film and City: RAFF The Rise of Many, the Fall of One by John Bezold
22
Interview CineKink: The Really Alternative Film Festival by Jennifer Lyon Bell
26 Column Bamboozled. Dave Chappelle and the Social Responsibility of TV Sketches by Nicola Bozzi
28 Notes from Underground Throw Away Your Books by Jeffrey Babcock (Reprint:) Cinema Detour: No Logo Cinema by Jeffrey Babcock
34 Offbeat's Choice Kino Praxis: United Red Army
36 Offbeat Hollywood Conan Barbarian 3D by Robert Kijowski
39 Agenda October
On Screen Now
Corruption is the Status Quo by Roberto Herrera
On Screen Now
Corruption is the Status Quo: ‘Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within’ by Roberto Herrera ‘Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within’ has become a pop culture phenomenon in Brazil for two reasons. To begin with, it is the first Brazilian fiction film to illustrate the immoral and violent character of the military police of Rio de Janeiro, in particular the Special Police Operations Battalion, popularly known as BOPE. The second reason is attributed to the pioneering nature of this film in contemporary Brazilian cinema, using a political genre to expose, with a realism never seen before, the close relationship between the rise of paramilitary forces and the political classes.
Tropa de Elite 2 – O Inimigo Agora é Outro (2010) BR, 116 min. In Portuguese with Dutch subtitles. Premieres on 22 September in Rialto and Pathé.
The film seeks to expose corruption, illustrating real facts such as how the police act in the favelas (slums), occupying the territory that was once run by drug dealers. For example, the film captures the moment when the corrupt cops realize that they can profit from the favelas beyond the money that the drug dealers pay them in bribes in order to sell drugs (in local slang: O arrego, “The pissing”). The officers begin to take control of access to basic services such as gas, television and the Internet – using fear to force favela residents to pay a fee for these services. 6
Roberto Herrera
Elite Squad 2: The Enemy Within
The phenomenon of paramilitary forces in Rio de Janeiro is something that all people know, and is a widely debated topic in the streets, at universities, and in some newspapers. In the film we see how the militia operates in the favelas by extorting citizens, but also acts to favor the presence of some politicians in the favelas, making strategic alliances that serve to win votes. ‘Elite Squad 2’ shows corruption in Brazil coming from above, infecting virtually the entire state machine. The realism with which the film portrays this shocked everyone, highlighting many important people from the political scene, and certainly troubling many others; some characters in the film, such as State Governor Gelino (played by Julio Adrião) and Congressman Fortunato,
also a television presenter (played by André Mattos), are allusions to well known public figures, familiar to Brazilian audiences. The film goes beyond the denouncement of corruption and poses the following question: What is the political reason for the continuing existence of the favelas? At the end of the film, the camera flies over Brasília, we see the Government House and we hear the voice of Lieutenant Colonel Nascimento (played by Wagner Moura) – the new hero and vigilante, not only in Rio de Janeiro but now the entire country. With audacity he suggests that behind Brazilian poverty and ignorance, it is in the interest of certain political forces to keep things exactly as they are.
Roberto Herrera
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On Screen Now: Béla Tarr
Béla Tarr
The Unbearable Heaviness of Being: Béla Tarr’s A Torinói ló
The Unbearable Heaviness of Being:
The Turin Horse (2011) HU/FR/DE/CH/USA, 146 min. Premiers on Thu 20 October in EYE Film Institute and Pathé
Béla Tarr’s A Torinói ló by Paola Pistone “In Turin on 3rd January, 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche steps out of the doorway of number six, Via Carlo Albert. Not far from him, the driver of a hansom cab is having trouble with a stubborn horse. Despite all his urging, the horse refuses to move, whereupon the driver loses his patience and takes his whip to it. Nietzsche comes up to the throng and puts an end to the brutal scene, throwing his arms around the horse’s neck, sobbing. His landlord takes him home, he lies motionless and silent for two days on a divan until he mutters the obligatory last words, and lives for another ten years, silent and demented, cared for by his mother and sisters. We do not know what happened to the horse.” A black screen and the above introductory words introduce The Turin Horse, the latest and self-proclaimed last film of Béla Tarr’s career. The film gives an imaginary account of what happened after that episode, showing six days of the life of the carter, his daughter and their horse.
It begins with a long tracking shot, accompanied by a majestic and hypnotic chamber music score, which shows the fatigued horse pulling the man on his cart, slowly moving through a wind storm. The carter lives in a small farmhouse with his daughter in conditions of extreme poverty, the horse being their only means of subsistence. Every morning the daughter helps the father to get dressed. Every day she goes to fetch water from a well. Every night they share the same dinner consisting of one boiled potato eaten with bare
hands. After every meal one of them sits in front of the window and stares at the gale raging outside. Their daily routines are only interrupted by a visitor who recites a monologue about how the world is doomed to destruction, and by a group of gypsies. The same hypnotic musical score accompanies the repetition of their gestures. Their life goes on rather uneventfully, until the horse refuses to eat, the well runs dry, and the lamp won’t light anymore. At the end of the sixth day, when the gale is finally over, there is nothing left: no food, no water, no light.
Paola Pistone
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On Screen Now: Béla Tar
The Turin Horse is a film about “the unbearable heaviness of life”, as the director himself has stated. The characters’ repetitive gestures establish a routine in which no comfort is to be found. The depiction of the ordinary is not a reassuring one. There is something disturbing in the endless repetition of actions, rituals and events. There is something painful in the perseverance of the characters, in their insistence on holding on to life.
the horse when she pulls the cart). And the film seems to suggest that this connectedness applies to us all. “Day will become night, and the night will be at the end” – words written in the book that the woman receives from one of the gypsies. Those prophetic words, as well as the cryptic trailer of the film (which only shows the fading lantern light), disclose what the film is ultimately about. The light goes off, and only darkness is left. It is hard to imagine a more definite farewell to cinema.
Béla Tarr’s last film is a return to the essential. Essential are space and time: the camera only shows the farmhouse, the stable, and the immediate surroundings, and the 146 minutes of the film cover only six days. Essential are the plot and the dialogue, both reduced to the minimum. It is also a return to a cinema that counts on the affective power of the image more than on narrative. The story is told through faces, gestures, objects, and their affective power. No exceptional event distracts us from those essential elements. God is dead, and there is no godly or metaphysical entity that saves the characters from their despair. The only element that suggests transcendence, the gale, is a destructive one. Such attention to the particular, however, is meant to allude to something universal. The horse, the father and the daughter are all bound in the same plight (at the end, the daughter even takes the place of 10
Paola Pistone
On Screen Now: Béla Tarr
Béla Tarr and the Question of Mass and Materiality by Baylee Brits I want to take up a question of aesthetics here, as pertaining to film as a unique category of mass art; a question that I think is exemplified in Béla Tarr’s filmmaking, and which has resurfaced specifically with reactions to Tarr’s latest work. Béla Tarr is a Hungarian film director of significant international reputation; a reputation for harrowing, unassimilable films which achieve that paradoxical and rare status of being upheld and lauded precisely for their outsider status, the achievement in part being the elegant refusal of the films. Tarr’s most recent film, ‘The Turin Horse,’ is exemplary of his work, particularly at the level of visual production. Like many of his films, it is shot in very long takes on Kodak 35mm film; this film stock, however, is only available at a length of 300 metres, making the maximum take possible roughly 11 minutes. This stifles – apparently – Tarr’s need for long(er) takes; Tarr (half seriously) rages against this limitation in an interview, calling it “a kind of censorship” on Kodak’s behalf, and claiming that this is his “only limitation.” This is perhaps a flippant remark, but one that I think bears investigation, because Tarr’s frustration focalises the problematic of aesthetic autonomy as regards mass art in a particularly important way. The Turin Horse has an exceptionally limited distribution: with only a few copies in existence, the film can be seen exclusively at film festivals and one can only speculate on where or how it will be released following its tour 12
Baylee Brits
Béla Tarr and the Question of Mass and Materiality
of the festival circuit. This very limited access harks to the aesthetic rarefaction that Tarr’s rant against Kodak traces: the material refinement of film is necessarily obscure, and its aesthetic realisation seems to cohere with obscure(d) access. My question is whether Tarr’s rage against utilitarian film production (Kodak’s film lengths) necessarily negates something important to the medium of film; that is, its quality as a mass (re-produced) art?
It is here that a trap lies, in the fundamental confusion between genuine and capitalist understandings of ‘mass,’ and it is in this respect that I think Tarr’s films are educative as a form of contemporary avant-garde film. It is vital – in responding to Tarr’s films – that we as critics maintain our own critical fidelity to an exact understanding of this universal project: the difference between that addressed-to-all and that which is all-access.
Are the generic technics of film production not completely intertwined with film as a mass art? Is Tarr’s need for obscure film – in the material sense – just an aesthetic fetish that betrays one of the genuinely important material aspects of filmmaking; namely, that mechanical reproduction necessarily places film as a mass art, a radically egalitarian art, addressed to all – or at least to a very large scale? There is an oft quoted statement by Tarr, issued as part of his human rights work with Cine Foundation International, which starts with the exclamation: “Cinematography is an integral part of universal human culture!” The recourse to universalism here is of utmost significance. The universality of film claimed by Tarr seems to contradict his tirade against Kodak, where aesthetic integrity is absolutely coterminous with aesthetic autonomy, autonomy from available mass-manufactured film. Is Tarr’s attachment to marginal film – in the very material sense – and his rage against Kodak, a misplaced avant-gardism that has no place in film making – by its very material nature reproducible, widely disseminatable?
Film – as a medium which is capable of the universal address, the address to human culture rather than particular cultures, as Tarr insists upon in his statement for Cine International – must be articulated and practiced as a mass art. Not, as Tarr makes clear in his film practice and aesthetic fidelities, a massive art, an art that is ultimately wed to the watery ciphers of genuine egality: all-access, wide dissemination, easy conversion and transmission – ciphers merely of the culture industries devoid of any true address to all, devoid of the possibility of a genuinely mass art. We must not confuse accessibility with address, a mistake too often made in regards to Tarr’s praxis. It is in pointing out this discrepancy that I hope we can clear a little more breathing room for the emergence of a universally addressed film that challenges its material expectations, and that bears a fidelity to formal perfection, something we might call – although it seems that this word may be lost to us – an avant-garde.
Baylee Brits
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Column
From Objects of Knowledge to Subjects of Desire by Gianluca Turricchia
From Objects of Knowledge to Subjects of Desire
From Objects of Knowledge to Subjects of Desire: Rémi Lange's The Path to Love by Gianluca Turricchia “Do you think there is an Algerian gay identity?” An apparently naive question that Karim, sociology student at the Sorbonne, addresses to a very attractive, sexually ambiguous Farid. Indeed, how to combine one’s sexuality with constructions such as nationality, ethnicity or citizenship?
The Path to Love (2001) Rémi Lange, FR, 70 min
This is a question that hosts of sociologists have tried to answer in countless ways, in an effort to single out the magic ingredient that would make this recipe a successful one. Another very legitimate question to raise: where does the sociologist’s will to know originate from, exactly? Is there a desire that propels theoretical production? Director Rémi Lange presents us Tarik El-Hob (The Road to Love) in an attempt to fool around with established categories: What does it mean to be an Algerian? What does it mean to be gay? And how complicated can it get if you would “mess up” both into, for example, Algerian gay? The sociologist’s discussion clearly shows its weak spot for clichés that betray Orientalist, racist, homophobic views of theother-that-is-not-us (and forever will be inassimilable). These views are not only embedded in what passes for seemingly neutral scientific parlance. Instead, they constitute the parlance itself right from the start, whenever we want to account for an object that we obstinately choose to identify as having, say, an irreconcilably other culture or sexuality. Inevitably, we fall back into the same game of reproducing old essentialist clichés. Lange’s take on the thorny question seems ambiguous: is it a film that documents – or maybe a Gianluca Turricchia
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Column
documentary that brings Karim’s sociological research into film? In a key scene we see Karim watching TV, stumbling by chance onto an interview with writer Abdellah Taia, a renowned and controversial gay writer from Morocco. Taia recounts an ancient tradition that survived until the mid 20th century in the oasis of Siwa in Egypt. There, men from the lower social classes were allowed to marry a woman only after their 40th birthday. Before that age they could still marry, but only another man. Their bond was celebrated openly and festively. Dances
accompanied the ritual and their love was consummated in the open, in a nearby palm forest. Intrigued by Taia’s answer to the Orientalist’s interpellation of a problematic Arabic gay identity, Karim appropriates the same format to carry out interviews with other, less famous, Maghrebi gays he finds through personal announcements. 16
Karim takes his camera and (conceptually) rebuilds it from a recording device of countless summer vacations spent with family to a knowledge-producing medium, behind which he hides his scrutinizing gaze: the Maghrebi gay man is enabled to account for his own condition, but only after the meticulous framing by the scientist’s off-screen presence and questions. Yet the film ridicules the attempts at maintaining a “neutral” observing distance when the researching subject and the object of research find themselves within the reach of a caress. The touch destabilizes the grammatical split of subject and object that structures the way knowledge is usually produced by scientific disciplines. It subverts a knowledge whose goal is to unveil his object and to master it. Instead of expropriating a discourse from the body that produced it, the encounter between Karim and Farid short-circuits the disembodying mechanism of the recording medium and re-fleshes the scientist’s disincarnated subjectivity. Farid’s words, if taken literally, do not reveal any hidden meaning. They are just empty signifiers. His account combines the texture of his voice together with the choreography of muscles that instantiate a body in his act
Gianluca Turricchia
From Objects of Knowledge to Subjects of Desire
of addressing an other. Karim is forced to drop his sociological knowledge taught at the university, while at the same time he must dust off something he confined to his private bedroom: ori-
The Latin word studium only secondarily refers to studying: its primary meaning, now forgotten, reflects the passion or the will to dedicate oneself to an object. A researcher’s passion is never neutral: dedication is a skill that demands a bodily presence and the knowledge it produces as living. Living knowledge sets into motion: the film carries Karim and Farid on a trip to Morocco. Not to search for their roots, but to transport their mutual dedication outside the conventional confines of scientific knowledge.
ental dance. Here, dance materializes at once an Arabic cultural heritage and a means (not a medium) to engage with another body in a constant renegotiation of the space they share and of the multiplicity of the relations created by those instantaneous triangulations.
Their embodiments have to rephrase themselves as a movement of proximity. Knowing each other, in the most proper sense of the word, proceeds as a dance.
Eventually Karim splits up with his girlfriend, but Lange carefully avoids motivating the split through a comingout scene. Does their relationship end because Karim finally discovers his gayness, or maybe only because he embarks upon a new love? These questions remain unanswered, simply because it is anything but what the film tries to convey. Gianluca Turricchia
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Film and City
The Rise of Many, the Fall of One
by John Bezold
Rotterdam Architecture Film Festival
The Rise of Many, the Fall of One: AFFR – The Architectuur Film Festival Rotterdam Lost Town (2009) Jörg Adolph
AFFR: 6 – 9 October At LantarenVenster, Rotterdam
by John Bezold As 2011 dwindles and 2012 begins to near, architecture is coming into yet another age of its own, but only after its topsy-turvy tumble during the late2000s Great Recession, when architecture shed its over-the-top image. Ours is an age of growing collaboration and cooperation – the age of the individual has ended within the world of design. Architects, constructors, psychologists and countless unseen others are uniting to cross-pollinate their knowledge and create the world’s built environments. Alongside this artistic collaboration – and surrounded by crumbling statues, suspension bridges, shining monuments and worn-out sidewalks – the general public no longer cares to let architects and their creations subconsciously direct human behaviour. Rather colour, form and transparency are bonding together to tickle
our unconscious in ways previously unseen. Users now help give shape to a building more than a building shapes them. Helping to highlight the power the human soul can have on architecture, to those unaware and those all too familiar, is the 2011 AFFR – Architectuur Film Festival Rotterdam; part fantasy, part fiction, and fully situational. After dissolving in 1972, the Situationists International left to the world their definition of the dérive – a drift through an urban landscape – devised to perfect the designing of environments that fulfil humanity's primitive desires for food, shelter, sex and love. Rooted in the idea that advanced capitalism was (and maybe still is) destroying 'society', the dérive was conceived as a journey through an urban environment during which the participant consciously loses
John Bezold
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Film and City
Medianeras (2011)
all consciousness, allowing the intriguing urban inconsistencies, social interactions and inert balls of matter – buildings – to direct their every move. Perhaps the most important component of the dérive is not the act of drifting itself, but the motivation and underlying force for completing the task in the first place: to escape the mundane existence of everyday urban life.
Brilliantly exhibiting the monotony of the everyday against the mismatched backdrop of Buenos Aires is Gustavo Taretto's Medianeras (2011); a poetic tale of two city dwellers, living in two different buildings, on opposite ends of the same block. Martin and Mariana are a sombre duo within the Argentinian capital; Martin is a computer engineer frightened to leave his house, trapped within the digital world of the screen, while Mariana is freshly removed from a four year romantic relationship, and settling back into her old apartment. Often very slow and lacking cinematic 'ah–ha!' moments, the film is instead a sensory depiction of loneliness and self discovery after their lives have been jolted with psychological earthquakes, while the beauty of the everyday continues to waltz forward around them. When the lights in the city stop shining due to a power outage, both have a need for candles, 20
leave their houses, and cross paths at a shop on their street. This leads to a situation where both finally meet, greet and begin their friendship as the story comes to a close. Rather than resisting change in their lives, both embrace it, reshape it and continue their drifts forward. It is often that the situations an architect intends to create are unwanted, unappreciated and deemed an unnecessary waste of money by the local public. Such is the case in the documentary Lost Town (2009) by Jörg Adolph, showing what happened when two young German architects won a competition to design a monument at sea off the coast of the English village of Dunwich – home to a gray haired mob highly suspicious of outsiders and their progressive ideas. The design proposal presented by the two architects was for a series of cylindrical and reflective stainless steel beams that rise out of the water offshore, arranged to recreate the silhouettes of the village's mediaeval churches that were claimed by the sea long ago. The monument was meant to be both a preservation of history and a new economic generator. The documentary, however, depicts the bitter mentally of those who can't see beyond their status quo. While the built situation created by the monument might have paved the way to renewed cultural interest and financial investment in East Anglia, the proposal now lies dead, shot down by village residents who love nothing more than the mundaneness of their everyday – and intend to keep it that way.
John Bezold
Rotterdam Architecture Film Festival
While the mundaneness of everyday life unfolds in the world, it’s those who strive for more than the everyday that ultimately discover or create the new. The Situationists International were a group of intellectuals, not architects, but their ideas and theories could
almost universally be applied and adopted by any individual or group that feels the need to escape the everyday. Whether a building, conversation, or sense of place, a situation is loosely defined as the 'way in which something is positioned vis-à-vis its surroundings.' And in this case, everyone is a Situationist – directing his or her life while on a quest for the perfect surrounding. The challenge of life is to know where to go, and which situations to avoid. But no situation will ever be the creation of one individual, as the age of individuality comes to a close and collectivity and Eye Over Prague (2010)
In Amsterdam, the balance between architectural residue of the old and the new is eerily, seamlessly achieved. In the Czech Republic's capital of Prague, this is far from the current case. A step back in time is the tale Prague markets to the world, a city of immaculately preserved architectural beauty – with little to no post WWII residue inserted within the finely woven web of urban places and spaces in its historic city centre. When the city held an international competition to design the new national library, Czech born and British residing architect Jan Kaplicky was chosen the winner. Following the unfolding of this overtly sensitive urban event is Eye Over Prague (2010) by Olga Špátová, a touching documentary about an architect whose work is well into the future, but grounded by the historical view that his fellow countrymen have of their city. Unlike the village of Dunwich, whose citizens resist an architectural intervention due to a lack of long-term vision for economic and cultural renewal, the citizens of Prague protest against Kaplicky's colourful, curvaceous and 'un-Czech' library due to its supposed lack of contextual respect. When a city is stuck in a situation that allows for no expansion beyond its beautifully decorated façades – like those of Haussmann's Paris – it becomes trapped within a contextual hell of its own making.
cooperation continue their rise, rendering the need for the construction of situations unnecessary. This makes the role of the architect in today's society minimal at most. No longer are buildings the sole director of a built environment as determined by one individual; the human soul now recognizes it too can have an influence, collectively with others, on buildings, and this will drastically reshape the built environment in the decades, generations and centuries to come. Perhaps the Situationists International were too quick to assume that the everyday needs escaping from, as global connectivity rises, individualism comes to an end, and the beauty of the everyday is increasingly highlighted – in this instance, through film.
John Bezold
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Interview
Cactus (2009) Anna Treiman, Denmark
CineKink:
The Really Alternative Film Festival by Jennifer Lyon Bell
CineKink: The Really Alternative Film Festival
And from a CineKink stance, whether it presents a positive or, at the very least, non-judgmental view of sexuality. Lisa Vandever
An interview with international erotic film festival co-founder/ director Lisa Vandever By Jennifer Lyon Bell CineKink is the world’s longest-running international erotic film festival. Founded in 2003, it’s based in New York City with a national tour schedule that includes Las Vegas, San Francisco, Portland, Los Angeles, Washington D.C., and Chicago. CineKink’s mission is to “recognize and encourage the positive depiction of sexuality and kink,” and over the years it’s come to be known in the US media as ‘The X-Rated Sundance.’ Here, CineKink’s co-founder and director Lisa Vandever answers a few questions for Offbeat Cinema. JLB: What type of films do you program for CineKink? LV: Our programming cuts across genres. We schedule everything from narratives to documentaries to experimental pieces and the occasional bit of porn. We’ll consider anything having to do with sex, really, and include both explicit depictions and non. JLB: What do you personally look for in a film? LV: The most important thing overall is how well a film connects with the viewer, whether it tells a story well, whether there’s a spark between the characters.
JLB: What are some films you're most proud of programming, and why? LV: My absolute favorite thing about the festival is being present at that moment when a film really connects with an audience - particularly if the filmmaker is also in the house and along for the ride. It was wonderful having director Erik Lamens with us for the screening of ‘S&M Judge’ [original title ‘SM-Rechter’, Belgium, 2009], his drama about a couple caught up in controversy because of their sexual proclivities...and a rare opportunity for the audience to see themselves represented in such a respectful and sympathetic manner. And this year, we had an amazing group of creators come together for a panel on ‘Ethical Porn making.’ While our schedule only includes a small amount of what is typically considered pornography, the works we do program generally come from filmmakers
Jennifer Lyon Bell
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Interview
working outside of the mainstream porn industry, with many focused on what’s seen as ‘feminist’ pornography. Rather than casting an uncritical eye on the field in the name of ‘sex-positivity,’ the discussion highlighted the importance of treating both cast and crew fairly, of letting actors have a say in what activities they’ll perform, and of underscoring for the viewer the consensual nature of the depictions. The panel was followed by our annual program/competition ‘Bring It!’ featuring a selection of porn scenes – and another proud moment for me. Sinnamon Love, the actress from this year’s winning title ‘Tristan Taormino’s Rough Sex II’ [dir.: T. Taormino, USA, 2010], was moved to tears by the experience of seeing herself up on the silver screen for the very first time. JLB: In the submissions you've seen over the years, have you noticed deeper thematic or stylistic trends developing? LV: The themes seem to shift from year to year. It's always such a relief once a seemingly random assortment of festival entries starts to make sense as a cohesive whole and I can see threads from one to the next. Overall, I’d say the most prevalent trend is women taking an ownership of their sexuality, both in terms of female directors creating graphic and also sexually-explicit works – the rise of feminist pornography – and in characters that are pursuing what brings them pleasure, now matter how far outside the norm. This year we had a couple of works that took on desires even beyond those depicted 24
in our customary fare: one wom-an’s yearning to be the recipient of a golden shower in ‘Piss’ [dir.: V. Peone and B. Bentley, USA, 2010] and another’s to somehow roleplay her fantasies of rape in ‘Cactus’ [dir.: A. Treiman, Denmark, 2009]. In both, we’re given a vivid picture of the longing each woman feels – much to the consternation of their respective partners, and a clear sense of how even an act of apparent subjugation, or of giving up control, can actually be a means to sexual freedom and empowerment. JLB: Are there any challenging philosophical issues that have cropped up for you and your team during film selection? LV: The only true limitations we cite in our call-for-entries is that works depict consenting adults, and we do also strive for that sense of sex-positivity. While the adult requirement is hard and fast, there are some exceptions otherwise. Occasionally a work might end on a negative or down note, but otherwise give a sympathetic portrayal of
Jennifer Lyon Bell
CineKink: The Really Alternative Film Festival
the sexuality depicted. Where a film depicts a non-consensual act, I’ll look to see that it might have been motivated by the character’s own fantasy. Or, as was the case with this year’s film ‘Caged’ [dir.: S.Brenninkmeijer, Netherlands, 2011], consider whether there’s a larger discussion going on about sexual freedom, pleasure and agency. I am very cognizant as a curator, though, that I’ve earned my audience’s trust over the years and am very careful about stepping over that line. JLB: Has the political atmosphere changed in New York over the years, and how has that affected the festival?
Caged (2011) Stephan Brenninkmeijer, NL
LV: CineKink NYC takes place at the Anthology Film Archives in the East Village, a traditionally artsy, liberal enclave, and has been fairly well buffeted from any of the changes that have occurred in areas like Times Square, where gentrification and a Disneyfication has pushed out most of the old porn shops. A bigger change for us has been a fragmentation of the city’s
BDSM scene, as local organizations see their memberships dwindle ... more caused from the impact of the internet than any political force, as kinky folk find new ways to meet and exchange information. JLB: What does ‘alternative cinema’ mean to you? Are CineKink films generally classed as ‘alternative cinema’? Why or why not? LV: Our original tagline was “the really alternative film festival” and played off the notion that our offerings were even more “out there” than fare at other festivals. I’ve always seen alternative cinema as that coming from places other than the Hollywood studios – or for porn, outside of Chatham, California [the hub of the US studio porn industry]. The bulk of our programming comes from independent filmmakers, regardless of which side of the ‘adult’ fence they’re working on. We also present an annual CineKink Tribute award recognizing “outstanding depictions of sex-positivity” to works in the mainstream. JLB: What’s your ultimate goal as a festival director? LV: We reached a milestone – and new audiences – with our first-ever write-up last season in the Wall Street Journal [the largest newspaper in the US, with a focus on ‘serious’ economic and international issues]. I’d like to see that kind of focus expand to other popular media outlets and to draw attention to the festival as a true destination event.
Jennifer Lyon Bell
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Column
Bamboozled Dave Chappelle and the Social Responsibility of TV Sketches by Nicola Bozzi Dave Chappelle is an odd person. World famous, a millionaire, but when you hear him speak he seems like a regular guy you might hang out with like a friend of yours, having a beer at a bar in the early evening. I never met him, never saw him live, but that's the impression I get from his stage and TV persona. Dave was already doing stand-up in his early teens – so he must have been used to all the attention and everything – but when he famously flipped out and left his very successful sketch show on Comedy Central, it looked like show business was not a comfortable environment for him anymore. He ran to Africa without telling anybody, then laid low for a while until he finally released an interview on Oprah, explaining that it wasn't just celebrity paranoia that made him walk away from a new 50 million dollar contract. “I was doing sketches,” he said on the show, “that were funny, but socially irresponsible.” For those who don't know it, Chappelle's Show was one of Comedy 26
Central's hit TV shows and a DVD blockbuster. In his sketches, Chappelle and a handful of other AfricanAmerican comedians (among whom were Charlie Murphy, Eddie's brother, and the legendary Paul Mooney, who used to write with Richard Pryor) re-enacted all possible stereotypes about black culture, from crack to slavery, challenging political correctness and breaking barriers in social commentary that few dared to approach. Chappelle's Show was a success regardless of audience ethnicity, its catch-phrases popularized and repeated all over, and was also the first TV appearance for the then unknown Kanye West, now one of the biggest pop stars around. Just before the beginning of the third season, though, Dave started to feel a bit different towards his own humor. Apparently, some people were laughing at his jokes and characters for the wrong reasons. While exposing the contradictions and social issues of the African-American community by using racial stereotypes, the comedian had unwillingly confirmed and reinforced some of them. Chappelle's story has much in common with one of Spike Lee's least acclaimed movies, Bamboozled. Produced with a low budget (and for this reason rather avant-garde looking),
Nicola Bozzi
Dave Chappelle and the Social Responsibility of TV Sketches
the movie follows Pierre Delacroix, a Watts University-educated black TV writer, during the production of a modern revival of the minstrel show. These kinds of shows, very popular in nineteenth century America, featured music and comedy sketches performed by white actors in so-called “blackface” (which means they used burnt cork to darken their faces and thus ‘look black’). Obviously this type of entertainment provided the worst possible image of African-Americans, and by reviving this format as a sort of provocative blow to the sensitivity of a modern TV audience, Pierre tries to use stereotype for a good cause. The show becomes very successful, but eventually the only thing it achieves is the desensitization of the public and the anger of a radical African-American guerrilla.
to TV, though recently he gave a radio interview, the first in years, and he did show some of his newly expressed commitment in a project titled Dave Chappelle's Block Party. The film, directed by Michel Gondry, documents the preparations of a dream hip-hop concert that the comedian brought to Brooklyn, featuring artists including the Fugees (reunited for the occasion), Erikah Badu, Mos Def, The Roots, Dead Prez, and Kanye West. The movie was produced before the trip to Africa, but it became famous afterwards.
Although the fact that Pierre is played by Damon Wayans suggests that the movie was targeting the stereotypeladen TV series In Living Color, in which the comedian starred, we could apply the same satire to Chappelle's Show (although the latter was notoriously smarter). In a way, like Delacroix, Dave was also getting laughs out of the awful depiction of his own people, the tongue-in-cheek effect eventually disappearing for certain viewers and validating the same ignorant prejudices it wanted to debunk.
From the aforementioned radio interview, it's still not clear what Dave will do now. He buffed up a little at the gym, but he still sounds laid back as usual. He's doing stand-up again, but it does not seem like we'll see another comedy special anytime soon. In the interview he says his current material also deals with the Comedy Central incident and all that, so we can just hope he will release it in some kind of format as soon as possible.
On Oprah, Chappelle said he wouldn't go back to TV unless a few conditions changed; namely, unless he got more control and royalties from the DVD money, which he could reinvest into the community. So far he hasn't returned
Bamboozled doesn't end well, projecting a somber shadow on the current state of television. Chappelle is not on TV anymore, but it would be nice to see what comes next from him, even outside of the box.
Nicola Bozzi
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Notes from Underground
Throw Away Your Books by Jeffrey Babcock
Throw Away Your Books
Born in 1935 in the rustic Tohoku region of Japan, Terayama Sh没ji was an avant-gardist, iconoclast, photographer, director, playwright, criminal, novelist, heretic, filmmaker, cultural critic and poet. In his time, his work incited scandal, outrage and violence, and he was even called a terrorist. Today, he is a cult phenomenon in Japan, but is virtually unknown in the West. He is one of the favorite directors of the music group Stereolab and they called their 1996 album after his banned short film Emperor Tomato Ketchup.
The Cinema of Terayama Shuji: DNA on Mon, Oct 17
Terayama's youth was one of turmoil, and therefore bizarre childhood memories haunt most of his films. His father died when he was young, he watched his mother descend into madness, and when he was 9 he barely survived the American firebombing of his home city which killed 30,000 people in WWII. As a teenager he quit school early and decided to get his education by working in the wild bars of the red-light district in Shinjuku, Tokyo. In general Terayama dismissed formal education, saying that "More can be learned about life through boxing than by attending school and studying hard." By the way, this also happens to be the belief of Andrei Tarkovsky and Werner Herzog...the idea that the most important thing is to live life, to have experiences, to have something important to say, and that the technical side of film can actually be learned very quickly. This is in direct contrast to most cinema today, which consists of people who have been over-taught how to make films and who value technique and mimicry over real content. The cinema of Herzog, Terayama and Tarkovsky are vast explorations and not well-educated products. Terayama started off in the 50s as a poet, wellknown for writing subversive haiku and tanka poems. In the 60s Terayama was part of a rising wave of Jeffrey Babcock
29
Notes from Underground
disenfranchised youths known as the Runaway Movement. From this movement Terayama understood that creativity was not something that should be limited to artistic closets, but that it should be connected to real life. In 1967 he formed an experimental theatre group called TenjĹ? Sajiki, which was totally made up of outcasts – poets, transvestites, street musicians, circus performers, gamblers and dwarfs. Their events were staged in galleries and theatres, but also spilled out into the streets of the city. In 1971 they even did an astounding performance at the Mickery Theatre on the Rozengracht here in Amsterdam. In the 70s Terayama also started making feature films, which were wild barrages of colour filters, poetry, and
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experimental rock music (a clear prototype for punk). Thematically they were transgressive psycho-sexual journeys, added to broken and scattered narratives which reflected his own shattered biography. What is also wonderful is that he had no problem whatsoever with suddenly inserting non-narrative formal experiments into his narrative films, boldly breaking down a division which should indeed
Jeffrey Babcock
Throw Away Your Books
be dead and buried. And in fact it was his untrained, autodidact approach to filmmaking that separated him from all the other directors of the Japanese New Wave of the time. It's also what makes his films more fresh and intensely original, and keeps them vital still today. His films from this period have an almost religious cathedral-like beauty to them, with the coloured filters working like stained glass, infusing his images with a poetic spirituality. Despite this beauty, his films often plunge deep into taboo subject matters which has caused critics to declaim his films as pornography.
In 1971 Terayama directed his first feature film Throw Away Your Books, Rally in the Streets. It's a film which still divides modern Japanese audiences like hell. It is considered a masterpiece by many (especially the young) but also draws a lot of critical flack (especially from the establishment). The film is a perfect example of his kaleidoscopic aesthetic style which was by that time already crystallized. It is dreamily com posed of wonderfully noisy music, trippy coloured filters, sexual memories and a broken free-form narrative full of psychedelic surrealism. In it we also see an excellent example of his provocative
approach to theatre, as we watch his cast performing guerrilla-style on the streets of Tokyo. Its plot is elliptical and loose, and its rampant mixture of out-of-control imagery and wild music seems to have been a big influence on films like Harmony Korine's Gummo. Throw away your books... has been described as a "phantasmagoric masterpiece of rebellion" but it has rarely been screened here in the West. The film is a call to action that is as relevant today as when it was made in 1971, but the title doesn't mean that Terayama wants us to give up reading. Rather, it means that we should open up our reading to everything around us – we should read our cities as if they were books, we should be studying the life around us.
Note from editors: In the previous issue we printed an article by Jeffrey Babcock which was edited without the permission of the author. We offer our apologies for the mistake made to the author and to our readers. On the next spread we include the original, unedited article. We promise our authors and readers not to repeat the same mistake in future. Thank you for contributing to and reading Offbeat! ď ?
Jeffrey Babcock
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Notes from Underground
Cinema Detour: No Logo Cinema by Jeffrey Babcock In the middle of Peter Watkins' seminal film La Commune (2000) he suddenly throws some statistics at us. He tells us that 83% of all films screened in Europe are American films. He goes on to tell us that all foreign films screened in the US come to less than 3%. And since Watkins' film was made 11 years ago, the statistics have probably only gotten more extreme on both sides of the equation. So it's absolutely clear that things are seriously out of balance. And that situation gets even worse when you discover that many of the films made in Europe are being forced into the American studio template, or they don't get funding (for example, in Italy). Scandinavia seems to be the glaring exception in this case. Also a little bit in France and Belgium. Poor Alejandro Jodorowsky has been sitting in Paris for ages now, unable to get funding for his next film (the last film he made was over 20 years ago). But at the same time, despite the fact that American cinema "undemocratically" dominates the European market, it seems ironically clear that Hollywood has reached a dead-end. To an absurd level they are resorting to formula films, 32
CGI spectacles, sequels and remakes to cover up their lack of raw creativity and vision. Film scripts are passed around the offices of corporations, each person amputating something until the final screenplay is generic, hollow, inoffensive to anyone, dumbed down to the mind of a 12 year old and generally castrated. The people in the industry know it...they even tell me. But they are not allowed to change. So instead of taking risks, they just dump more and more money into the same old formulas. This creates a sort of a crisis, but one which points out that now is a brilliant time for Europe to take back its own identity and start making cinema again rather than imitating the American model. After all, cinema should be diverse, no? Isn't cinema the perfect way to open people's minds? Isn't every film an open door, leading to its own world, and the greater variety of films we have, the more doors that are opened? Who should be responsible for pushing such a movement forward? Well, it should be coming from cultural institutions like the Fillmmusem, since they have the finance and the power to do it...but they are clearly lacking in passion and vision. Let's take a close look at how they are doing things. So very few people are going to the Filmmuseum. Why? Because the programming isn't very exciting. (Do we really need an Alain Delon, Robert De Niro, Romy Schneider or Jack Nicholson retrospective?) So what is their solution? Instead of taking risks and improving their undynamic programing, they instead hire an advertising firm to "brand"
Jeffrey Babcock
Cinema Detour: No Logo Cinema
them (the same one that advertises Coca-Cola throughout Europe). The result is this insipid EYE logo everywhere. This is the same strategy as the big corporations and Hollywood studios...the quality of the product is going down (or was always poor to begin with), so they dump money into marketing strategies and PR to save them. No one needs the EYE logo because cinema shouldn't be logo-ed. Cinema shouldn't be branded. If you want people to go to the cinema, then you need better programming, don't rely on advertising. On top of it all, the Filmmuseum of course has the best location in the city...totally central, right in the Vondelpark. But instead they dump tons of cash into building a new space in the North (which has gone way over budget already). But the point of all this is that it's clear that any movement of real strength is not going to come from an institution. It will have to come from somewhere else. And if cinema has become more narrow in its scope than ever before in history, then where can we turn to for inspiration? Well, there is an entire history of cinema at our disposal, to venture through, to get lost in, to be influenced by. There are thousands of individual films in the past that have largely been forgotten about, that can serve this function. Which brings us now to the raison d'etre of alternative cinemas in Amsterdam, and the idea that maybe the way forward is through the past. In fact, the history of cinema is deeply rich, and offers a million times more possibilities than what is offered
today in the Pathé – which is, after all, a cinema for the living dead. And what's more, at alternative screenings like what Kino Praxis does at the OT 301 or I do at DNA, the films are given an introduction and therefore put into some kind of context. Some added information and some passion. Films are not just thrown at the audience like in the Filmmuseum or in a multiplex. Wow, I always wonder why the programmers at the Filmmuseum never run into the cinema all excited and tell why they programmed that evening's film, what it is about it that they love or find fascinating. But it will never happen... When I first started screening films myself, people told me that there wouldn't be any interest and the reason why the Pathé shows blockbusters is because that's what people want. But that's absolutely not true from what I have seen. Here in Amsterdam there are so many people who are enthusiastic about seeing something different. And maybe in America people are starting to catch on- from what I hear ticket sales in the U.S. are dropping like a bomb...something like 20%. I promise you that if you took away all of the advertising and all the media hype, the corporate big-budget domination and all the Hollywood studio propaganda, then there would be far more diversity in Amsterdam, and the cinema scene would be almost totally unrecognizable to what it is today. It would also be closer to what people really want, rather than what is being sold to them. Vive le Cinéma! Long live dreams.
Jeffrey Babcock
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Offbeat's Choice
United
Red The United Red Army was a Japanese revolutionary group, established in 1971. It united the Japanese Red Army Faction and the Maoist Revolutionary Left Wing of the Japanese Communist Party.
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In the winter of 1972, the United Red Army defected to the mountains in the Gunma Prefecture. Here the group established camps and trained for military purposes. The group purged itself one by one of members deemed not sufficiently revolutionary. Many of the twelve victims died tied to posts in the cold outdoors, while others were beaten to death or slaughtered with knives. In this shocking act of “death by defeatism”, the United Red Army’s
Army
United Red Army United Red Army (2007) Kôji Wakamatsu, JP, 190 min Tue 25, 20:30 at OT301, Kino Praxis
execution of 14 of its own members established the myopia of ‘60s radicalism in its militant form. Kôji Wakamatsu’s stunning film mixes several re-enactments of the mountainous commies with interesting historical footage, mostly to clarify the development of the various factions that turned towards armed struggled in order to advance their world revolutionary war. Severe budget limitations lead to a minimal aesthetic, which effectively underscores the United Red Army’s own harrowing worldview, one projected from a deep asceticism that replaced actual political engagement with acts of ritualistic purification. Wakamatsu’s film not only explores the socio-psychological intricacy that steadfastly legitimates its own violent acts, but also into the impossible engagement between a militant dysphoria and an intolerant political landscape. 35
Offbeat Hollywood
Conan Barbarian 3D by Robert Kijowski “Conan was born on the battlefield… with a silver spoon in his mouth.” Growing up is never the most effortless endeavor. Tales and canards alike of home life and personal strife are as plentiful as they are colorful. Never is this so unequivocally ostensible than during the formative teenage years. As befit with our experiences is the evannascent breath of life commensurate with that of death. So how do you attenuate the stories a polity of patina had built for, quasi-literally, ages? With the proper financial backers and some over-privileged teens, you recreate the artifice of edifice ten times as tall and ten times as garish, touting its new and improved spineless support. Welcome to the Academy of Avarice, where over36
privileged is understood and where Dean Marcus Nispel’s Conan the Barbarian 3D is the new student-made orientation video. Never mind the Lionsgate at the entrance, as all you need do is exert the smallest bit of force to get it to open. Now inside the Academy this day, we find everyone... partying? What is this convivial madness and what could possibly be the source of this condign sanctimony on hallowed grounds? Why, on the grounds that they just lost $70m dollars on Conan! We’ll first take heed to the hollowed head. The host of the frivolity is director Marcus Nispel, known for his overseeing several schools of sequacious thought with a litany of remakes. His stentorian voice in supplanting any semblance of ingenuity with ingenue-ty was so unequivocally fabled, it’s now ineffable. Legend has it that if you visit any one of those abandoned schools nee movie theatres on a dark night, you can still hear the
Robert Kijowski
Conan Barbarian 3D
band of whispers saying, “this sucks, and I want my hour and a half back”. As the major domo lives in the moment, living off of the fad of the land, his skull begins to bobble to the tunes of a bye! gone! era that eminence greasy from the DJ booth. These three discord jockeys are the writers, vastly undiscovered “talent” creating scripts so soporific, they ought come with their own warning label. Since they’ve managed to collectively spin a much beloved cultclassic co-writ by Oliver Stone into daft junk they parcel and pass off as dialogue, they should all be hung as one anemia of the state of screenplays. Lastly, we’ve the most gracious and magnanimous benefactors also known as producers. Their intent maybe with just as much pretext as the aforementioned two insidious positions. When the cornerstone for the school was laid, so were they. When it wasn’t towering enough, they got higher with it. When the film called for more effects to suck even more, they blew their investors even harder for more green. The matrick-ulation into this Academy is as effortless as it is selective. Jason Momoa has managed to pass muster due to his chiseled physique and rakish good looks. His turn as Conan, however, was so sickening it had my stomach turning outward as his vomit inducing inflection exited in but one of two modes: taciturn or bellowing. His wielding a blade stoked a fire in my heart, not because I want to be him, but rather due to the realization with every slash, I hacked away money now filling his pocket. Jason is at the academy
as the no-Can-do heir-head to Arnold’s throne, thus his daddy paid his tuition. It’s simply too bad recessive traits like talent were not passed down. Our next enrollee is Stephen Lang, cutting a swath through the do-gooder (and not better) confluence of events as ne’er do well Khalar Zym. Mainly known for his jackboots rather than reboots, he’s entered the Academy with a tryst-fund: a little nest egg with the dalliance known as Avatar. Though his visage is menacing, his acting is more mincing than any amount of carnage in the film. No amount of depredation perpetrated on screen by him could rival what was done off-screen in preproduction. Aiding in his complicity of simplicity is Rose McGowan, as the termagant Marique. Perhaps the most widely recognized out of all four main characters, she was admitted to the Academy because she knew her visage alone would rake in verdant leaves, turning them to red-hot cash much like autumnomously falling foliage. This brand of student deluges their mind with delusions of the film getting better, simply by their countenance and repudiationexcuse- reputation of other roles. Like her character, she is veritably crushed by her own hubris. Her ichorouswinged talon-t didn’t make her all demeaner and her only amorous angle was so shockingly one-note, it ought send her to the Electra-d chair. Rounding out the deClasse of 2011 is Rachel Nichols, who managed to enter this institution not too dissimilarly from
Robert Kijowski
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Offbeat Hollywood
her on screen beau-and-arrow, guiding her to the com-Promised Land. As the intransigent yet transient Tamara, Nichols was beset on all sides by evil and besotted by the Barbarian. Eschewing scintellect for plain guts, she was only contrapuntal to Conan as a duet in the suite swan song of the movie – the ending credits. Don’t worry, all of them joined in the anathema-c chorus. As the party progresses, so does the action. The libations are flowing, the music is blaring and secrets are divulged. Our caesura starts here, as in the film, we learn naught more than that humanoid sand-monsters are bested with as much as a cut, water-crested Kraken are allayed sole-ly with Filet O’ Master, and that even those in command of the Netherworld want the film to end quickly. As we now step back into the party, it was just learned that during the only action scene remotely engaging, the sex sequence, 38
Momoa and Nichols didn’t use protection the irresponsible teens they are, and now she’s nearly five months pregnant. Both Lang and McGowan are not favorable... one bit. How dare they both upstage them? As with most overprivileged teenagers, angst is sure to set in, especially when liquor is lacquering their spirits. Hours later, they inebriatedly leave in pairs, Lang and McGowan to get more liquor and Momoa and Nichols to pick up his father to join in the mirth. Upon their respective way back to the Academy, both vehicles collide with each other, instantly killing Jason’s father and sending Rachel into immediate labor, thusly starting the true Conan with more life and vigor than this dead on arrival coil could ever. That’s not the tragedy however. The true tragedy is that the half realized dream in Nichol’s stomach, much like the half realized dream in the entire cast and crews’ minds, was incubated to life. I give the picture (factoring in my blood-groove) a three-quarter thumbs out of three. Addendum: This sword-cery left my eyes sore and sorry. It wasn’t in real 3D, but rather shot in 2D and in post-production affixed a superfluous dimension. The compunction of wasting my non-existant funds and precious time will hang over my head like the Sword of Damocles.
Robert Kijowski
Agenda / October –– Cinecenter –– Lijnbaansgracht 236 www.cinecenter.nl 020 – 623 66 15
Premieres
From Thu 6 Circumstances (2011) Maryam Keshavarz, FR/USA/Iran, 105 min From Thu 13 Begginers (2011) Mike Mills, USA, 105 min From Thu 27 Medianeras (2011) G. Taretto, ARG/ES/GR, 95 min
–– De Balie ––
Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10 www.debalie.nl 020 – 553 51 00 €8,50 / 6 / free with Cinevillepas Sat 01; Mon 3 Buddhist Film Festival Sun 04, 20:00 Cineville Talk Show: Begginers (2011) Mike Mills, USA, 105 min Wed 05, 18:30 Living Like a Common Man, Sande Rien Verstappen, Mario Rutten and Isabelle Makay. Followed by a panel discussion on migration. Thu 6 – Sun 9, 20:00 Amsterdam Turkish Film Festival Sun 13, 20:00 Cinema Egzotik: Night of the Zombies Sun 16, 15:00 Eastern Neighbours Film Festival Mon 24, 20:00 Rite du Cinema: Un Condamne a mort s’est echappe with Willem Jan Otten
–– EYE ––
Vondelpark 3 www.eyefilm.nl 020 – 589 14 00 Sat 1, 13:00; Thu 20 – Sat 22, 18:45 & 21:30; Thu 27 – Sat 29, 18:45 & 21:30; Sun 23, 19:00; Mon 24 – Wed 26, 20: 30; Sat 30 – Sun 31, 20:30; Fri 15, 21:30 The Turin Horse (2011) Béla Tarr, HU/CH/DU/FR, 146 min Sat 1, 21:15 The Man From London (2007) Béla Tarr, HU/DU/FR, 139 min Sat 1 – Mon 03 & Wed 05, 17:00; Tue 04, 17:30; Tue 11, 19:30 Abel (1986) Alex van Warmerdam, NL, 100 min Sat 1, 21:30 The Eye (2002), Oxide Pang Chun & Danny Pang, HK/SG, 99 min Sun 2 & Wed 5, 21:30 The Ouverture (2004) Itthisoontorn Vichailak, TH, 103 min Mon 3, 21:30 My Girl (2003) Vitcha Gojiew & Nithiwat Tharathorn, TH, 111 min
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Tue 4, 21:30 Tears of the Black Tiger (2000) Wisit Sasanatieng, TH, 110 min Thu 6, 18:45 Film socialisme (2010) Jean-Luc Godard, CH/FR, 101 min Fri 7, 19:30 Suzy Q (1999) Martin Koolhoven, NL, 82 min Sun 9, 19:30 Finnemans (2010) Thomas Korthals Altes, NL, 50 min Tue 11, 14:00 Orfeo Negro (1958) Marcel Camus, FR/BR/IT, 107 min Wed 12, 20:00 Breaking Ground, NL, Compilation program Sat 15, 19:15 & 12:00 Home Movie Day, Compilation program Mon 17, 19:30 Les mains d’Hermès (2011) Frédéric Laffont, Isabelle Dupuy-Chavanat, FR, Hermès-documentaire Tue 18, 19:30 Inter-Actions: Shorts by SEAT, Seattle Experimental Animation Team, Compilation program, E*Cinema Tue 18, 21:30 Monster Road (2004) Brett Ingram, USA, E*Cinema Sun 30 & Mon 31, 19:45 The Monster of Nix (2010) Rosto A.D., NL, 30 min Sun 30, 16:00 Het schimmenrijk, Hans Beerekamp presents, Compilation program
Brazil Film Festival
Sun 9 – Tue 11 & Sat 15, 19:15 Nelson Freire (2003) João Moreira Salles, BR, 102 min
Cinekid
Sat 1 & Sun 02 &Wed 05 & Sat 08 & Sun 09, 12:00 13:30 Ponyo on a Cliff by the Sea (2008) Hayao Miyazaki, JP, 101 min Sat 1 & Sun 02 & Wed 05, 15:30 E.T. (1982) Steven Spielberg, USA, 115 min Sat 8 & Sun 09 & Wed 12, 15:30 Minoes (2001) V. Bal, NL, 86 min
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60 yrs of Dutch TV
Sun 2, 15:00 ‘100 Jaar Televisie’, Compilation program Sat 8, 19:30 Television films, Compilation program Sun 9, 13:00 Max Lupa (1999) Nanouk Leopold, NL, 45 min Thu 13, 19:30 Anvers (2009) Martijn Maria Smits, NL, 39 min Fri 14, 19:30 Bijlmer Odyssee (2004) Urszula Antoniak, NL, 35 min Sat 15, 19:30 NTR KORT! 2011, Compilation program Sat 15 – Sun 23, Wed 26, Sat 29, Sun 30, 15:15 De Sterkste Man van Nederland (2011) Mark de Cloe, NL, 90 min Sat 15 – Sun 23, Wed 26, Sat 29, Sun 30, 13:30 Orla de Kikkerslikker (2011) Peter Dodd, DK, 80 min Sun 16, 16:00 Mama (2010) Beri Shalmashi & Sanne Vogel, NL, 48 min Sun 16, 19:30 Tunnelvisie (2010) Stefano Odoardi, NL, 50 min Thu 20, 19:30 Ooit (2008) Jaap van Heusden, NL, 39 min Fri 21, 19:30 Skin (2008) Hanro Smitsman, NL, 85 min Sat 22, 19:30 Foute vrienden (2010) Roy Dames, NL, 87 min Sun 23, 19:30 Den Helder (2008) Jorien van Nes, NL, 39 min Sun 23, 16:00 Maite Was Here (2009) Boudewijn Koole, NL, 40 min Fri 28, 19:30 Tussenland (2002) Eugenie Jansen, NL, 92 min Sat 29, 19:30 Familie (2002) Willem van de Sande Bakhuyzen, NL, 91 Sun 30, 19:30 Yu-lan (2004) David Verbeek, NL, 60 min
–– Filmhuis Cavia –– Van Hallstraat 52-I www.filmhuiscavia.nl 020 – 681 1419 All films start 20:30; €4
Thu 6 & Fri 7, 20:30 Noise and Resistance, Voices from the DIY Underground (2011) Julia Ostertag en Francesca Araiza Andrade, EU/USA, 87 min Sat 8, 20:30 Creativity and the Capitalist City (2011) Tino Buchholz, DE, 55 min Thu 13 & Fri 14, 20:30 Pan's Labyrinth (2006) Guillermo del Toro, MEX/ES/USA, 120 min Thu 20 & Fri 21, 20:30 Drag me to Hell (2009) Sam Raimi, USA, 99 min Thu 27, 20:30 HorrorCavia: Horror film from Cavia collection Fri 28, 20:30 Nederhalloween VII: 'over 100 jaar zijn jullie allemaal dood'
–– Het Ketelhuis –– Westergasfabriek www.ketelhuis.nl Pazzanistraat 4
Premieres
From Thu 6 Times Like Dees (2011) M. Schmidt & Thomas Doebele, NL, 88 min From Thu 6 Bennie Stout (2011) H. Verboom & K. Dobbelaer & D. Ebbinge, NL, 93 min
Sun 30 Halloween Children’s party Mon 31 Abre los Ojos (1997) Alejandro Amenábar, ES, 117 min
–– Kriterion –– Roetersstraat 170 www.kriterion.nl 020 – 623 17 08
Premieres
Thu 29 Sept Code Blue (2011) Urszula Antoniak, NL, 90 min Thu 13 Oct Beginners (2010) Mike Mills, USA, 104 min Thu 20 Ides of March (2011) George Clooney, USA, 101 min
Camera Japan
Sat 1, 13.00 Gantz II: Perfect Answer (2011) Shinsuke Sato, JP, 141 min Sat 1, 15:45 Good Morning to the World (2010) Satoru Hirohara, JP, 81 min Sat 1, 17:15 Toilet (2010) Naoko Ogigami, JP, 109 min Sat 1 ,19:30 Bushi no kakeibo (Abacus and Sword, 2010) Yoshimitsu Morita, JP, 129 min Sat 1, 21:45 Koi no tsumi (Guilty of Romance, 2011) Shion Sono, JP, 117 min Sat 1, 24:00 Onna na kappa (Underwater Love, 2011) Shinji Imaoka, JP, 87 min Sun 2, 12:00 Torokko (Rail Truck, 2010) Hirofumi Kawaguchi, JP, 116 min
Specials
Mon 3 Infernal Affairs (2002) Wai-keung Lau, Alan Mak, Hong Kong, 101 min Mon 10 The 39 Steps (1935) Alfred Hitchcock, UK, 86 min Thu 13 Balkan Snapshots Mon 24 Solyaris (1972) Andrei Tarkovskiy, USSR, 167 min
–– Melkweg Cinema –– Lijnbaansgracht 234a www.melkweg.nl 020 – 531 81 81 Start at 19.00, cost €7 / €6 unless stated otherwise
Camera Japan
Sun 2, 19:00 Stakeout (1957) Nomura Yoshitaro, JP, 116 min Mon 3, 19:00 Endless Desire (1958) Imamura Shohei, JP, 101 min Tue 4, 19:00 The Man Who Stole the Sun (1979) Hasegawa Kazuhiko, JP, 147 min Wed 5, 19:00 The Sun’s Burial (1960) Oshima Nagisa, JP, 87 min
Film Operator
15:00 &19:00 € 7 / € 6 Thu 6, Sun 9, Tue 11, 19:00 La Vida Útil, Federico Veiroj (2010) UR/SP 2010, 67 min Fri 7 19:00 Surprise Film Sat 8, Mon 10, 19:00 Im Lauf Der Zeit (1976) Wim Wenders, BRD,175 min Wed 12, 15:00 (children) & 19.00 (adults) Workshop: Wonderful World of Film Projection Tue 13, 19:00 Sherlock Holmes Jr (1924) Buster Keaton, USA, 45 min Mon 17, 19:00 Fight Club (1999) David Fincher, USA/DE, 139 min Tue 18 & Sun 16, 19:00 Winterschläfer (1997) Tom Tykwer, DE, 122 min
Thu 20 & Mon 24, 19:00 Anyway the Wind Blows (2003) Tom Barman, BE, 127 min Fri 21 & Sat 22, 19:00 Inglourious Basterds (2009) Quentin Tarantino, USA, 153 min Sun 23, 19:00 El Viento Se Llevó Lo Qué (1998) Alejandro Agresti, AR/SP, 90 min Tue 25, 19:00 Cinema, Asperins and Vultures (2005) Marcelo Gomes, BR, 99 min Wed 26, 19:00 Serbis (2008) Brillante Mendoza, PH, 90 min Wed 19, 19:00 Cinematic Sounds: Häxan €10/€9, Guests: Annelieke Marselje (violin), Bianca Bongers (cello) en Huib van de Grint (guitar)
–– OT301 Cinema ––
Overtoom 301 www.ot301.nl All films €4, foreign films with English subtitles Sun 2: Cinema Pasta 19:00 A pasta meal for €3,50 20:30 I Vitelloni (1953) Federico Fellini, IT, 103 min 22:30 Tammurriata dance workshop (free) Tue 4: Zeitgeist 20:00 Introduction by Tom Nijkerk (WeTapWater) 20:15 Blue Gold: World Water Wars (2008) Sam Bozzo, USA, 90 min Tue 11: MovieSense 20:00 Introduction 20:10 Psycho (1960) Alfred Hitchcock, USA, 109 min 22:10 Frenzy (1972) Alfred Hitchcock, UK, 116 min Sun 16: Cinema Derive 20:00 Introduction 20:15 La Bête (1975) Walerian Borowczyk, FR, 93 min 22:00 Sex Hunter (1980) Toshiharu Ikeda, JP, 67 min
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Tue 18: YoungHwa Night 19:00 A Korean dinner for €5 20:30 Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (2002) Chan-wook Park, S. Korea, 129 min Sun 23: Cinema Derive 20:00 Introduction 20:15 Medium Cool (1969) Haskell Wexler, USA, 111 min 22:20 Emperor Tomato Catchup (1971) Shûji Terayama, JP, 27 min Tue 25: Kino Praxis 20:30 United Red Army (2007) Kôji Wakamatsu, JP, 190 min Sun 30: Cinema Derive 20:00 Introduction 20:15 Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) Werner Herzog, DE, 96 min 22:00 Land of Silence and Darkness (1971) Werner Herzog, DE, 81 min
–– Pathé ––
www.pathe.nl Pathé De Munt: Vijzelstraat 15 Pathé Tuschinski: Reguliersbreestraat 26-34
Specials
Wed 5 Oct Gay Night: Absent (2011) Marco Berger, AR, 90 min
Premieres
Wed 5 Sinterklaas En Het Raadsel Van 5 December (2011) Martijn van Nellestijn, NL, 85 min Wed 5 Bennie Stout (2011) Johan Nijenhuis, NL, 93 min Wed 5 Lion King 3D (1994) Rob Minkoff, Roger Allers, USA, 89 min Thu 6 Body Language (2011) Jeffrey Elmont, NL, 100 min Thu 6 Times Like Deese (2011) M. Schmidt & T. Doebele, NL, 88 min
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Thu 6 One Day (2011) Lone Scherfig, USA, 108 min Thu 6 Pianomania (2009) Robert Cibis Lilian Franck, AT, 93 min Thu 6 Circumstance (2011) Maryam Kashavarz, FR, USA, IR, 107 min Thu 6 Warrior (2011) Gavin O'Connor, USA, USA, 140 min Thu 6 Johnny English Reborn (2011) Oliver Parker, UK, 106 min Wed 12 Patatje Oorlog (2011) Nicole van Kilsdonk, NL, 90 min Wed 12 Razend (2011) Dave Schram, NL, 93 min Thu 13 Lotus (I) P. Simons, NL, 102 min Thu 13 The Three Musketeers 3D (2011) Paul W.S.Anderson, DE/FR/UK/ USA 102 min Thu 13 Habemus Papam (2011) Nanni Moretti, IT/FR, 102 min Thu 13 Spy Kids: All The Time In The World 4D (2011) Robert Rodriguez, USA, 89 min Thu 13 All Stars 2: Old Stars (2011) Jean van de Velde, NL, 120 min Thu 13 Footloose (2011) Creig Brewer, USA, 100 min Thu 13 Begginers (2011) Mike Mills, USA, 105 min Thu 20 Evet, I Do! (2008) Sinnan Akkus, DE, 90 min Thu 20 The Turin Horse (2011) Béla Tarr, HU/FR/DE/CH/USA, 146 min Thu 20 The Ides Of March (2011) George Clooney, USA, 101 min Thu 20 Abduction (2011) John Singleton, USA, 106 min Thu 20 The Guard (2011) John M. McDonagh, IE, 96 min
Thu 20 Almanya, Willkommen In Deutschland (2011) Yasemin Samdereli, DE, 97 min Thu 20 Restless (2011) Gus van Sant, USA, 94 min Thu 20 The Change-Up (2011) David Dobkin, USA, 112 min Thu 20 Contagion Steven Soderbergh, USA, UAE, 106 min Fr 21 Paranormal Activity 3 (2011) Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman, USA Fr 21 Het Gangstermeisje Wed 26 The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn (O.V.) 3D (2011) Steven Spilberg, USA Wed 26 Kuifje: Het Geheim Van De Eenhoorn (NL) 3D (2011) S. Spielberg, USA Thu 27 De Heineken Ontvoering (2011) Maarten Treurniet, NL Thu 27 Impardonnables (2011) André Techiné, FR, 111 min Thu 27 Medianeras (2011) Gustavo Taretto, AR/ES/DE, 95 min Thu 27 What's Your Number? (2011) Mark Mylod, USA, 106 Mon 31 The Monster Of Nix (2011) Rosto, NL, 30 min
Pathé Tuschinski
Sun 16 PACFESTIVAL The Help (2011) Tate Taylor, USA, IN, AE, 146 min The Ides Of March (2011) George Clooney, USA, 101 min We need to talk about Kevin (2011) Lynne Ramsay, UK/USA, 110 min La Piel Que Habito (2011) Pedro Almodovar, ES, 117 min Drive (2011) Nicolas W. Refn, USA, 95 min
–– Rialto ––
Ceintuurbaan 338 www.rialtofilm.nl 020 – 676 87 00
Premieres
From Thu 6 Circumstance (2011) Maryam Keshavarz, USA, IRAN, FR, 105 min From Thu 6 La mirada invisivle (2010) Diego Lerman, AR, FR, ES, 97 min From Thu 13 Habemus papam (2011) Nanni Moretti, IT, 104 min From Thu 20 Almanya (2010) Yasemin Şamdereli, DE, TR, 97 min From Thu 27 Medianeras (2011) Gustavo Taretto, AR, ES, DE, 91 min
Specials
Sun 2, 11:00; Wed 5, 19:00; Sun 9, 11:00; Wed 12, 19:00 Het gangstermeisje (1965) Frans Weisz, NL, 90 min Fri 7 22:00 - 03:00 Upload Cinema Fri 14, 11:00 Habemus papam (2011) Nanni Moretti, IT, 104 min Sun 16, 11:00; Wed 19, 19:00; Sun 23, 11:00; Wed 26, 19:00; Sun 30, 11:00 Barfly (1987) Barbet Schroeder, USA, 100 min Sun 16, 15:00 Pelikaan Man (2004) Liisa Helminen, FL, 90 min Mon 18, 15:00 De kleine maanbeer (2008) Thomas Bodenstein, DE, 71 min Thu 20, 15.00 Het zakmes (1992) Ben Somboogaart, NL, 90 min Fri 21, 15:00 Sven en de rat (2006) Magnus Martens, NOR, 90 min Date to be announced: Dochters van Malakeh (2001) Jet Homoet, S. H. Manesh, NL, 78 min
–– Tropentheater –– Kleine Zaal 2 Linnaeusstraat www.tropentheater.nl All films €9 / €8
Tue 4, 18:00 Cineblend: Monthly mix of documentary and discussion, €0.00 Wed 5, 20:30 Muziek in Beeld: Beyond Ipanema (2009) Guto Barra, USA, BR, 90 min, in English Thu 6, 20:30 Cine Brasil: Fordlandia (2006) M. Andrade, D. Augusto, BR, 50 min, in Eng with Dutch subtitles Fri 7, 20:30 Prem Sanyas – Light of Asia, €23 Fri 7, 20:30 Cine Brasil: The Bikini Revolution (2009) Albert Knechtel, Kiko Robeiro, Brd, Fr, BR, 84 min, in Eng with Dutch subtitles Sat 8, 20: 30 Cine Brasil: Simonal (2009) C. Manoel, M. Langer and C. Leal, 86 min, in Eng with Dutch subtitles Tue 25, 14:00 & 20:30 Central do Brasil (1998) Walter Salles, BR, 112 min, in Portuguese with Dutch subtitles Wed 26, 20:30 Un Homme qui crie (2010), Mahamat-saleh Haroun, Chad, FR, 92 min, with Dutch subtitles
–– De Uitkijk –– Prinsengracht 452 info@uitkijk.nl 020 – 6237460
Café Cineville
Fri 14 Requiem for a Dream (2000) Darren Aronofsky, USA, 102 min Fri 21 Platoon (1986) Oliver Stone, USA, 120 min
Film en Filosofie
Tue 11 Michael Clayton (2007) Tony Gilroy, USA, 119 min, talk by Patricia Pisters Tue 25 Il Caimano (2006) Nanni Moretti, FR/IT, 112 min, talk by Thierry Baudet
–– The Movies –– Haarlemmerdijk 161 www.themovies.nl 020 - 638 60 16
Premieres
From Thu 6 One Day (2011) Lona Scherfig, USA, 108 min From Thu 13 Habemus Papam (2011) Nanni Moretti, IT, 104 min From Thu 13 Begginers (2011) Mike Mills, USA, 105 min From Wed 26 The Adventures of Tintin 3D (2011) Steven Spielberg, USA/NEW ZL
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