May 2011, Amsterdam
Offff B eeeat Cinema no 4 Underground
Cinema
Magazine
FREE
AndrĂŠ Bazin and kitty doing some film critique
4 Editorial
Contents
5 On Screen Now ––Traveling Through a Real-time Farewell: Review of The Life of Fish by Caridad Botella ––The Myth of the American Sleepover: One Night for a Lifetime by Nicola Bozzi 14 Report ––“Cinema & Society”: Where Has Theory Gone? by Odile Bodde 17 Dvd Review ––Ramin Bahrani's American Dream Trilogy by Paola Pistone 22 Interview ––On iPhone Performative Filmmaking with Seth Carnes 26 Off Beat's Choice ––Teorema: Pasolini's Queer Manifesto by Gianluca Turricchia ––Cinema Derive: Quasi-Documentary Evening by Jeffrey Babcock ––Business as Usual 34 Columns ––Action on the Negative: Yasmine Kassari’s L’Enfant Endormi by Baylee Brits ––Cinema is Undead by Luuk van Huët 42 May Agenda 46 Introduction to Amsterdam Cinemas
Off Beat Cinema 4 Editors Anna Dobrosovestnova, Edward Milhuisen Graphic Design Brit Pavelson & Guðmundur Úlfarsson Contributors Nicola Bozzi, Luuk van Huet, Caridad Botella, Paopla Pistone, Jeffrey Babcock, Odile Bodde, Baylee Brits, Gianluca Tirrucchia Printing Flyeralaram Marketing Guillaume Filion, Evgenia Sveshinsky, Alondra Vargas We thank Thijs Witty, Kriterion, OT301 Cinema, EYE, Alex Boyce, Alex Tirajoh Special thanks to Indrek Pärna, Sandra Savelli & Disko Advertising To advertise in Off Beat Cinema magazine send an email to offbeatcinema@gmail.com Vacancies We are currently looking for writers and marketing specialists. Don't hesitate to drop us a line to offbeatcinema@gmail.com Feedback Please feel free to send us any ideas, tips, pictures or other interesting information for our magazine to offbeatcinema@gmail.com
Editorial Shortly after the publication of his second Cinema volume in 1986, in the interview to the French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma, Gilles Deleuze spoke about the connection between philosophy and cinema. By putting movement in the image, cinema has the ability to put the movement in our minds. This spirituality – as a matter of fact, what is spirituality if not the movement of the thought? – the amazing power that cinema has on the thoughts and emotions of the viewer, is what drives the team of Off Beat Cinema. This team is an ever growing force of people from various nationalities, backgrounds and professional occupations. Dear reader, the issue you hold in your hands or read from your computer screen, is a special one. It is one step closer to the Off Beat Cinema that we strive for – a magazine not based on personal likes or dislikes, grades and judgment of particular films or people, but a magazine about Cinema. With a healthy balance of critical theory and passion we communicate that momentum by sharing with you original and independent views. See you at the cinema! Anna Dobrosovestnova
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La Vida de los Peces
On Screen Now
Off Beat Cinema 4
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On Screen Now
Traveling Through a Real-time Farewell: Review of The Life of Fish
La Vida de los Peces
Matías Bize, 84 min, in Spanish with Dutch subtitles Script: Matías Bize and Julio Rojas Screened at Rialto
by Caridad Botella
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Winner in the category Best Latin American Film at the Spanish Goya Awards 2011, La vida de los peces tells a subtle but confronting story about the inescapable passage of time and the regrets we might have about decisions taken in the past. Continuing to display a taste for stories grounded on the doubt and difficulties that love relationships bring along, Chilean director and writer Matías Bize has put together a touching film every adult can relate to. Which thirty-something hasn’t been to an old friend’s reunion where people mostly talk about the past nostalgically? Who hasn’t wandered through a path paved with the words “what if…”?
Off Beat Cinema 4
From 5 - 12 May the 7th edition of the Latin American Film Festival (LAFF) will be held in the Louis Hartlooper Complex in Utrecht. Besides screenings of 39 features, 13 documentaries and 9 shorts, the festival will also provide master classes and FilmExtras, Filmroutes and a special night in cooperation with Hivos and EYE. La vida de los peces is the festival’s opening film, but it is also part of a Matias Bize retrospective in Rialto Amsterdam in cooperation with EYE. Sat 07 – Director Bize will attend the retrospective for a Q&A session – Sábado, una película en tiempo real (2003) Chile, 65 min. English subtitles – La vida de los peces (The Life of Fish, 2010) Chile, 84 min. Dutch subtitles Sat 14 – En la cama (In Bed, 2005) Chile, 84 min. Dutch subtitles – Lo bueno de llorar (2006) Sp. English subtitles From Thu 12 La vida de los peces will have a daily screening in Rialto.
The film takes place in just one setting, something Bize had already tried in En la cama (In Bed, 2005), and therefore relies heavily on dialogues, acting and art direction. The story opens with 33-year-old travel writer Andrés (Santiago Cabrera) who is back in Chile for a short while, after ten years of life in Berlin; he is spending his last evening at an old friend’s birthday party. Slowly, it becomes clear something terrible happened in the past, which led Andrés to his own exile, leaving the love of his life, Beatriz (Blanca Lewin), behind. Engaging in existential conversations with various key characters while he is preparing to leave the party, Andres takes us on a trip through all the different stages of life: his friends, Mariana’s (Antonia Zeger) pregnancy and her baby in the cradle, teenage boys, girls in their twenties and the old lady of the house. Andrés remains the distant spectator who isn’t part of any of them; this fact is strengthened by the fact that he leads and earns his life as a passer-by tourist. “The hard part is to stay and to deal with the every day life”, says one of his old friends. Yet at the party the past catches up with this handsome traveler until it stares him right in the face and it becomes time to take new decisions. Time is the main omnipresent issue in the name of the film. This is well accentuated by the use and abuse of slow motion camera-work, which follows the protagonist’s steps, almost in real-time, from room to room, through the animated and yet silent background of the party. The party (and life) goes on while Andrés escapes from participating in it, having the conversations, away from the sight of the others, under the tamed light or through the filter of a fish tank. La vida de los peces is easy on the eye but ruthless on the soul. Bize’s only sin is his nostalgia, which translates into too many bittersweet remarks and heavy dialogues. There is even nostalgia towards the graphics of the video game Space Invaders, which is put against modern digital aesthetics, which can seem a bit redundant as the story itself is nostalgic enough. Yet Bize’s film hides an intriguing narrative, which is carefully unfolded, step-by-step till the very end.
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On Screen Now
The Myth of the American Sleepover: One Night for a Lifetime by Nicola Bozzi
The Myth of the American Sleepover
David Robert Mitchell, USA, 93 min, in English Script: David Robert Mitchell Screened at Cinecenter
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Whether American or not, you know what a sleepover or pyjama party is, if anything, because of the movies. I, for one, have seen my share of teenage comedies and college flicks, from the mainstream hits focused on stoner odysseys to the more introspective indie films. Still, although fundamentally nothing new, The Myth of the American Sleepover by David Robert Mitchell came as a refreshing view to me. Clearly the movie places itself on the indie and arty end of the spectrum, honoring preceding classics with soft images and subtle cleverness. The film has been compared to Gus Van Sant's Elephant, but unlike his later Last Days – which dealt with the demise of a Kurt Cobain clone – it really does smell like the teen spirit of the legendary Nirvana song.
Off Beat Cinema 4
Set in a Detroit suburb on the last night of summer, the plot follows four story lines that revolve around personal searches for romance, acceptance, maturity or revenge. The protagonists are a group of teens, boys and girls of different ages, all looking for a last good time before fall comes and sweeps them all back to school or to college, away form their suburban homes. There is the young blonde with the labret piercing, encouraged by her geekier friend to try and kiss an older guy at the pool party; the lonely searcher following an almost ghostly vision of the ideal girl - glanced at the supermarket - through the night; the creepy stalker hanging onto the memory of a couple of twins he took theater class with; the betrayed girl of an unfaithful boyfriend having her revenge at the other girl's party. Throughout all these mini-plots, sex, love or a simple kiss are all that is at stake but the story is built on the impalpable tension of social codes, attraction, and unsaid truths. As well as, of course, its mythical landscape.
– toilet paper the neighbors' houses – There is something paradoxical about the way American suburbia is so present as a mnemonic reference for us all, the Western youth. Those white houses, with their green lawns, are so iconic that we are seduced into believing they are an archetype, instead of a very specific
architectural typology, predominant in a very specific geographical context. Another paradox underlies the mix of excitement and boredom that teenagers populating this environment seem to experience - as represented with a special glow in Ghost World, from the Daniel Clowes comic. Clowes' kids may sport subcultural accessories but his retroinfused style makes his illustrations look less detailed and site-specific than they actually are, a sort of rounded atmosphere that blurs the edges of the characters and the places portrayed. From its very name, Ghost World takes the form of a suspended memory, a sleepy cavalcade infused with the strange thrill that is so typical of any tale of American youth. From Ferris Bueller's Day Off to American Pie, the threshold to college is a period of pioneering conquers and life-changing revelations. College is that buffer zone where adult codes coexist with unrelenting desires, where parents' expectations loom and pile up on peer pressure. And it's the place of sex and (Animal) frat houses, too. College kills the ghost world that preceded it and, with its completion, marks the end of that American Beauty – music and sex – which director Sam Mendes obsessively chased in his first movie (a good example of a European feeling nostalgia for someone else's past). The Myth of the American Sleepover stands somewhere near the end of the pre-college ghost world and the poster illustration echoing Clowes is the first signal of this. The colorful ensemble of
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On Screen Now
It's clear we are floating in a dimension where, for one night, anything can happen. The characters wander through fullness and voids, friendly crowds and metaphysical wastelands – highways, woods, abandoned halls – where adults are either absent or asleep. Before the morning comes, the city is free for the kids to toilet paper the neighbors' houses, swim drunk or make out on chipped steps. After that, the daily parade of roles and rules will reclaim its domain, everyone distanced by the cleansing awkwardness
– make out on chipped steps – The clear definition of a rainy, sleepless dimension of its own makes The Myth of the American Sleepover something different from Ghost World's pop cultural geography and far from Elephant's tragic acceleration towards an Event. The film is closer to Michelangelo Antonioni's silent wanderings, where the characters cross metaphysical landscapes rather than negotiate a truth through dialogue. Trapped in a slow but limited slice of time, the viewer is left reconstructing a mnemonic space, outlined through vectors drawn by the teens' eyes. Tracing the lines of attraction between the characters, the film unrolls to its reassuring ending like a cathartically predictable puzzle, in which viewers will appreciate their own participation rather than the final outcome. That is, it is a worthy viewing even if you're not – and have never been – an American teenager.
The Myth of the American Sleepover
– swim drunk –
of the morning light. Until then though, it's time to be courageous and daring, to reach out despite a deep solitude that all the protagonists have to struggle with. Each of the four main characters has a moment in which to separate from their friends and undertake their personal search on their own, eventually reaching somewhat of a goal that was not necessarily what they were envisioning.
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protagonists poses in a group shot, drawn as graphic novel versions of themselves, the clothes simplified to brand-free templates, the colors flattened to one tone each. Rather than Ghost World the movie, David Robert Mitchell's first feature film is dense with the same type of suspended tension we find in the comic – in which you have the time to look at the images and absorb them before you read the text balloons. In fact, the dialogues are definitely not the highlight here: they are dry and leave all the confused frills of common conversation to the imagination. The tension radiates from the eyes of the protagonists, which fill the gaps between the words, telling a story of their own. And it soaks up the whole environment, mythifying the streets, the living rooms, the trees, the swimming pools.
Off Beat Cinema 4
The Myth of the American Sleepover
On Screen Now
Off Beat Cinema 4 From 28 March to 1 April the Rietveld Art Academy organized the five-day conference “Cinema Clash Continuum: Film and History in the Age of Godard”. Odile Bodde attended the program called “Cinema & Society: Where Have the Subversives Gone?” Which, you have to admit, sounds promising.
“Cinema & Society”: Where Has Theory Gone? by Odile Bodde While scanning the program I noticed that the guests and topics of Cinema & Society had very little to do with Godard, but this also made me curious. The program’s description posed an interesting question: "In an age of global unrest, growing control and command by the State, and a stifling grip of the mainstream consensus culture, filmmakers may wonder if they can be subversive at all. It may be that the requirements of protest result in the sacrifice of originality and artistic inventiveness. Is that too high a price for a filmmaker to pay?" However, the three speakers BAVO (Gideon Boie), artist Jonas Staal and scholar Miodrag Suvakovic, who were featured before the main section on American filmmaker Lech Kowalski, hardly shared any mutual relationship. There was no link explicated between the three with cinema, subversion in the age of Godard, or with Lech Kowalski’s films. Despite this
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Report
‘cultural therapists’ and ‘conflict managers’ with neighborhood projects that camouflage the real issues of vandalism and property speculation.” However, BAVOs actual agenda proved otherwise when he proclaimed that “artists should profit from these neo-liberal political parties, should not simply reject them, but should seek an active attitude in working together with these parties. Artists have a lot more in common with Geert Wilders than seems at first instance: both fight for an increased sense of personal freedom and discipline.” This subversive proclamation stirred up the audience but made painfully clear that the program's curator, Stefan Majakowski, obviously had had no idea what the beliefs of this spokesperson of artistic participation re-
Artist Jonas Staal is known for The Geert Wilders Works, The Geert Wilders Work — A Trial I – II, and The Barack Obama Project in which he "displays an ingenious concept combining an original visual language with questions of political correctness regarding race." However, none of these projects were touched upon or analyzed with regards to their content during the conference. Instead, Staal connected his art projects to a sense of subversion by showing how art can become subversive through the contexts that he creates for them. But instead of feeding this back into the projects that were mentioned on the website, he gave us three new individual case studies in which he showed how art and politics can meet, intensify and mock each other. He did not further interrogate the implicit and problematic relationship between art and politics.
Cinema and Society
Miodrag Šuvakovic
ally were when inviting him.
BAVO (left), Jonas Staal (right)
After the three introductions, curator Majakowski undertook an interview with Lech Kowalski, whose film Born to Lose: The Last Rock and Roll Movie (1999)
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aporia, “spokesperson of artistic participation” BAVO and artist Jonas Staal were interesting because their work related to political issues in the Netherlands today. BAVO was introduced to the audience as having written the pamphlet Too Active to Act, which supposedly "wipes the floor with Dutch neo-liberal cultural policy" and states that “artists have become
Off Beat Cinema 4 was shown at the end of the program; a "monument to Punk culture and independent filmmaking". Majakowski showed a plenitude of fragments from Kowalski’s work (a lot of which focuses on Punk music), which were accompanied by extensive comments from the filmmaker. Despite the fact that Kowalski has definitely made interesting documentaries, the curator behaved more like an old friend and admirer of Kowalski, turning the conversation into a fan interview that idolized the filmmaker, rather than a tantalizing eye-to-eye one would expect from a meeting like this. The two-hour section was little more than a director’s cut with a live voice-over. Neither Kowalski nor Majakowski analysed the fragments on their subversive traits, or took a critical stance towards the film’s implicit or explicit themes - let alone to Kowalski’s position of filmmaker framing the characters from a highly subjective position.
All images from: www.gerritrietveldacademie.nl/ project/cinema-clash-continuum-in-retrospective
Cinema and Society
Only the scholar in art theory Miodrag Suvakovic provided proper insight, highlighting different sides and layers of subversion in relation to art and cinema and thus tying some of the program’s loose ends together. Suvakovic implicitly demonstrated the shortcomings of Majakowski’s set-up; the program lacked thorough theoretical and objective analytical frameworks, opting instead for quasi engagement and the alleged self-evidence of the art. None of the sections of Cinema & Society really made an obvious connection. It would have already been (slightly) better had Majakowski focused on either art or film, and instead of his personal approach had kept a more critical distance towards his topic of enquiry.
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DVD Review
Ramin Bahrani's American Dream Trilogy by Paola Pistone
A.O. SCOTT – 'Neo-Neo Realism, American Directors Make Clear-Eyed Movies for Hard Times': New York Times, 2009
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Two years ago the American film critic A. O. Scott defined “Neo-Neo Realism” as a tendency of recent independent American cinema that breaks away from the Hollywood tradition and turns the attention to subjects rarely acknowledged by mainstream films, employing techniques that resemble the tradition of post-war Italian cinema. Such a tendency responds, according to Scott, to an “urge to escape escapism”, to affirm realism as an aesthetic strategy in order to “counter the tyranny of fantasy” imposed by both politics and mainstream cinema, and ultimately to try to find an answer to the question “what kind of movies do we need now?”
American Dream Trilogy
Ramin Bahrani, USA Man Push Cart, 2005, 91 min Chop Shop, 2007, 86 min. Goodbye Solo, 2008, 84 min DVD box distributed by De Filmfreak
Off Beat Cinema 4 Iranian-American screenwriter and director Ramin Bahrani is one of the young filmmakers indicated by Scott as the representatives of a supposedly “Neo Neorealist” phase in contemporary American cinema. The three feature films shot by Bahrani (Man Push Cart, 2005; Chop Shop, 2007; Goodbye Solo, 2008) all deal with the struggles of characters living at the margins of society and striving to achieve a better life than the one they lead, although the plots do not offer easy fulfilment to their “American dream”.
– "What kind of movies do we need now?" – Ahmad, the main character of Bahrani's first feature, Man Push Cart, is a Pakistani street vendor selling coffee and bagels in the streets of New York, and trying to save enough money to buy his own push cart. Alejandro, the young protagonist of Chop Shop, is a twelve-year old Latino boy who earns his living selling candies in the subway and working at construction sites, and strives to achieve a better life for himself and his sixteen-year old sister Isamar. He finds a job and accommodation in a wrecking yard nearby New York’s Shea Stadium, a desolated industrial area known as “The Iron Triangle”. Like Ahmad, Alejandro plans to buy his own food van and works hard to collect the necessary money. Goodbye Solo is set in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and is the story of the friendship between Solo,
a Senegalese taxi driver who dreams to become a flight attendant, and William, an American elderly man who offers him a considerable amount of money to take him on a one way journey to a place called Blowing Rock, where the current of the wind makes objects float upwards into the sky. Solo realizes that William intends to commit suicide, and accepts the unusual request only to prevent the old man to accomplish his plan. Although the three films show a certain engagement with social and political problems shared among contemporary societies, such as economic hardship, immigration and precarious employment, Bahrani's accent is always on the individuals and on the angle of the world they inhabit. The films do not unfold a theme, nor do they reduce the stories of their characters to socio-political allegories; instead they observe and carefully (re)construct certain fragments of reality. And it is from the direct contact with those realities that all three films came into existence. The protagonist of Man Push Cart is modelled on the life of Ahmad Razvi, the movie's main actor,
– urge to escape escapism –
a Pakistani bartender who worked as a push cart vendor; Chop Shop was inspired by the real lives of children working in the area of Shea Stadium; the idea behind Goodbye Solo arose from the en-
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DVD Review
Alejandro Polanco, Ramin Bahrani, Michael Simmonds
The director transfers these realities to the screen with a style that tends to conceal the meticulous work behind the film, in order to keep the attention of the viewer on the subjects, rather than on any technical or aesthetic feature. A nearly invisible camera work, the absence of musical score, and the employment of unknown actors (the cast of the first two movies is composed of non-actors, and while the protagonists of Goodbye Solo are professionals, none of them had previously played leading roles), are all strategies to avoid compromising the credibility of the impression of reality that the films want to achieve.
American Dream Trilogy
Photo: Jon Higgins
counter between the director and a Senegalese taxi driver, with whom Bahrani spent several months, accompanying him in his night shifts.
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The impression of truth, together with Bahrani’s graceful humanism, is fundamental in encouraging the viewer to engage with the characters, appealing to the spectators’ responsibility to take the characters' existence outside the movie theatre. And in the attempt of bringing those lives from the screen to the “real” world of the viewers seems to lie the director’s answer to Scott’s question: “what kind of movies do we need now?”
Off Beat Cinema 4
Man
Push Cart
Chop
American Dream Trilogy
Solo
(Photo: Jon Higgins)
DVD Review
Goodbye
Shop
Off Beat Cinema 4 For the February issue of Off Beat Cinema, I interviewed Seth Carnes about his work in the field of Live Cinema. On this occasion, I approached him on account of his first short film, “iheart variation 003”, shot with an iPhone4 and the result of filming a performative art project which took place in a hotel in New York City.
On iPhone Performative Filmmaking Caridad Botella: Watching the video I see different layers of content, the object filmed is one of your own art projects, about movement and music combined, about the process of shooting the movie, it’s also an open narrative. What do you want to communicate with this film? sic.ph shop.artwelove.com www.rogersmitharts.com gyanriley.com
Seth Carnes: These variation projects fit within the greater iheart project, which is an exploration of symbolic language and its living contextualization, the flux of its meaning across time and filtered through culture. On the large black Velcro wall, one can see 15 framed black symbols on white; they are limited edition prints created with artwelove.com, who also helped set up this show at the Roger Smith Hotel. Alone, any symbol represents an idea; in juxtaposition, the meanings change, and so comes the idea of symbol variations as not only representing new meanings for the grouped symbols, but a total artwork as sculpture, installation, print, and human interaction and interpretation. The film attempts to capture these ideas across time.
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Interview
CB: Did you have any kind of script or is it organic work?
the narrative of the image relate to the music and vice versa?
SC: The “script� for this film is closer to an improvisational jazz, dance performance or theatre set-up, i.e. variable actions within set parameters. The basics: within a party in a hotel lobby and foyer, invited guests, hotel guests, or random passers-by came together to create variations of printed artworks stuck to a Velcro wall. The variation order and who made then generate spontaneously, based on who arrived first and showed interest. You can see at the start of the film that people are more sober, it’s less crowded and noisy, and as the variations progress, so does the energy flow. Each variation essentially became a vignette, both in start and stop, who participated, and the feeling of the musical score created live on the spot by Gyan Riley.
SC: The film aims to capture art as alive and vibrant, in the moment, whether artmaking, music score on location, or the filming process itself. The most static feature is the time-lapse film footage that serves as the anchor, in one set place, taking one photo every 2 seconds for the duration of the night. In the edit, I attempted to reformulate the energy, gestures and identity of each variation and all of them as a cohesive group made in one evening. On the link between image and music, Gyan is an amazing artist and performer, and we talked beforehand only once about how to best capture the audio of his live score. He just came in, set up, sat down and started playing unique compositions based on the energy of a given variation in progress. I love working with him because he comes with no ego and a heap of talent, so helpful in collaborative artistic process.
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CB: Image and music are obviously very intimately related, can you tell me about the process of putting both together? How does
Seth Carnes
iHeart Variation 003
Off Beat Cinema 4 CB: How is the process of shooting with an iPhone? SC: Apple created an easy gestural interface for shooting with the iPhone. With just one button push it starts recording HD video and audio straight onto its hard drive. With gestural smart phone cameras, anyone can shoot video, even children who cannot read yet. That said, it remains a camera at core, that requires skill to frame and capture moments that will enter into a film’s narrative. CB: Why did you decide to shoot this movie with an iPhone? Had you used a cell-phone for shooting a movie before?
– People are so used to seeing iPhones, using them as cameras helped maintain the informal atmosphere –
SC: This is my first film specifically shot and edited with iPhones as cameras. The decision to shoot with multiple iPhones relates to the concept of the film and the art show performance it aimed to capture, a one-night performative art party in an NYC hotel lobby. I originally planned to record only in time lapse, but this seemed too removed from the gestural, performative and improvised parts of the piece. Capturing this energy needed more angles, more recording of gesture, and cameras and their operators themselves embedded within the action and therefore, the film.
CB: How do you get the videos into Final Cut Pro and how was the process of editing, post-producing? SC: Raw iPhone footage is recorded in H.264 so I transcoded all of it into the Apple ProRes codec, along with the timelapse video, to make for a smoother time in Final Cut Pro. It’s possible to record and edit a film within the iPhone alone, but my film has so many sources and the live musical score from Gyan Riley; I needed a professional application to tie it all together.
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Interview
CB: What are the advantages of using an iPhone, which enabled the narrative and film to unfold as it did? Did you find any disadvantages? SC: The iPhone and smart phones like it are becoming physical extensions of the human body into digital networks and augmented reality. As Marshall McLuhan said, our nervous systems are extending into the electric networks, and the iPhone is now a primary conduit. This can be seen by how many smart phones increasingly stay in people’s hands at all times,
CB: How do you plan to distribute the film? SC: Through the Internet mostly. I’ll likely send it to a few film festivals. It’s a nice document to show in a possible retrospective down the line, and great one for far in the future when it will seem quite antiquated. CB: How do you see the future of film making using mobile media? SC: The devices will become smaller and more powerful, increasingly merging with our senses and body. I know that may read scary to some, but it’s inevitable. We will see amazing and terrifying artistic outputs from this radical change. For example, Apple or somebody else will soon make eyeglasses featuring frames with small cameras and microphones on left and right side, lenses with overhead displays and augmented reality, GPS, wireless networking, and earbuds on the backside for sound into the ear. Devices will jack into the optic nerve and we’ll be able to throw a handful of hummingbird drone cameras into the air; the US military already has them in use. Reality is catching up to science fiction.
Seth Carnes
SC: In NYC at least, people are so used to seeing iPhones in constant use, using them as cameras helped maintain the informal atmosphere desired in this film. And yes, filming with them is intimate and tightly connected to the body, hand and eye. iPhone video is not true HD, it’s 1280x720 pixels, compressed and pretty grainy... there are also unique optical effects that bend and blur what’s captured when the phone or what it’s recording is in fast motion. This makes it a special format and camera, a bit like the Super 8 for the 21st century.
rather than stored into their bag or pocket. Some of this dynamic appears in this film, where subject and object, organic and mechanical eye, living and recorded life, begin to show signs of merger. It’s also a nice way to document an art show on the cheap.
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CB: Some filmmakers who have used phone cameras say it’s less intimidating and more intimate to film with a cell-phone. There also an element of working more with the whole body and less with the eye. How did it feel for you to shoot with a camera that fits the hand?
Off Beat Cinema 4
Teorema
Off Beat's Choice
Off Beat Cinema 4 Teorema (1968) Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italy, 105 min Tuesday 17 May 20:30 €4 Kino Praxis at 301Cinema
Teorema: Pasolini's Queer Manifesto by Gianluca Turricchia Ever since its first appearance at the Venice Film Festival in 1968, Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema has occupied an awkward position in film history by breaking the taboo governing the nonrepresentation of homoeroticism. Even after the proliferation of the “gay cinema” subgenre and its normalization within the mainstream, the film’s precise collocation is no less a trouble now than at the time of its release. For instance, unlike a good deal of “gay cinema”, Pasolini deliberately chooses not to focus on the gay character’s inner struggle on his way out of the closet. He does not inscribe the homosexual’s vicissitudes into the cliché of the coming of age story. Instead, the movie both complicates and relegates those narratives to a marginal position: it is not a matter of analyzing a (male) homosexual psyche, but of investigating what has led to the liberation of queer – nonnormative – sexualities and what social implica-
tions this process entails. For this reason Teorema is first and foremost a film of 1968, and a good deal of its queerness is contained in the ambivalence of being both a product of and a critique against that wave of change that affected the past century so deeply (even though not on the same terms). Teorema starts unexpectedly in the guise of a documentary. An aerial shot of a factory plant forms an allusion to the ongoing social struggle that familiarly typifies our representation of those years. As soon as the perspective narrows down and a journalist interviews a bewildered factory worker, we suddenly hear that this particular battle in the class struggle is over since the factory’s capitalist owner, Paolo (Massimo Girotti), has granted his workers full control of the plant in an unannounced, immense act of generosity. How could such a choice ever emerge? Pasolini moves the camera behind the exclusive walls of Paolo’s upper
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to fulfill their newly created individual desire. Emilia (Laura Betti) leaves the house where she served as a maid and becomes a miracle-worker in her native peasant village. The once respectable mother and wife (Silvana Mangano) turns into a promiscuous predator. Her daughter Odetta enters a psychiatric hospital, while Pietro discovers his homosexuality, and subsequently forsakes his studies to become an artist. Last but not least, here is the reason why Paolo, like a renewed Saint Francis, strips himself from his earthly belongings as a sign of desertion from a society he no longer wants to be part of.
Similarly, each encounter between the mysterious guest and an individual member of the household conjures a change in the latter that is none other than a reconfiguration of their singular existence and a subsequent crisis of their identities. This subversion takes the form of a sudden illumination – Les Illuminations being the title of one of Rimbaud’s works – that ends up “awakening” another self within the alienated character, resonating with Rimbaud’s catchphrase “je est un autre” (I is another). Fueling this “otherization” is an intense yearning that the movie renders by repeatedly taking shots of the guest’s crotch, suggesting those characters deeply desire the stranger: they all want him to enter their life, and fill the void of their bourgeois existence from which they seek “liberation”.
Finally, what use does Teorema make of “queer”? If not as an adjective defining an intimate quality of the story, Teorema claims “queer” as a verb to reframe family narratives. It addresses a double-edged critique of both home and work, while registering how the disintegration of those spaces opens up previously unimagined ways for desiring bodies to cross each other. Thus the film establishes a continuum between economic production and sexual reproduction, only to register them being undone and redone by a new regime of power ultimately disentangled from the traditional father figure wielding the rights of property and hedonic taboo. Instead, power makes its appearance as a young, ambiguous stranger; an angelic - or diabolic – lover that perversely enchains his subjects by creating in them, along with new needs and desires that are posited as repressed, the conditions for their very next liberation: simply, more desire. Is there any way out of this?
The guest’s sudden departure completes this ambivalent liberation: their family bond is finally broken and everyone tries
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class household in Milan where it finds an estranged ambiance. The milieu’s airtight isolation from outside affairs reveals a counterintuitive choice for unpacking the spirit of May ’68 that is embodied by a mysterious, charming guest visiting the family (Terence Stamp). He divulges neither his name nor his background: silent as to what his identity might be, the only thing he reveals of himself is his passion for Rimbaud’s poems. A detail that colors the guest’s function in a tone that is poetic in its most literal sense – in the Greek etymology of poiéo, “to make” – as an art of giving shape to life.
Teorema: 17 May, 20:30; Overtoom 301
Off Beat's Choice
Off Beat Cinema 4
Cinema Derive: Quasi-documentary evening
Double Take (2009) Johan Grimonprez, BE/DE/NL, 80 min, in English Sunday 29 May 20:30 â‚Ź4 301Cinema In this film, based on a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, director Johan Grimonprez (Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y) casts Alfred Hitchcock as a paranoid history professor, unwittingly caught up in a double take on the cold war period. The film takes as its premise an incident in Hitchcock's life when, in town after leaving the set of The Birds, he meets his double 20 years in the future (thus 20
years older). This incident starts off a chain of events that serve as a reflection on doubles and doppelgangers, especially in relation to the culture of ‘50s America. Subverting a meticulous array of TV footage and using The Birds as an essential metaphor, Double Take traces catastrophe culture's relentless assault on the home, from cinema's beginnings to the present day. A puzzling and inventive philosophical documentary that Hitchcock himself would have loved.
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This quasi-documentary film begins with a long exploration like "The Zone" from Tarkovsky's Stalker: bushes glimpsed derelict tunnels, shelves of books made of lead with rocks on them, more leaden books with fragments of glass in and around them, light from overhead windows shines on rubble and dust- filled corridors. “Action-movie season ain't over quite yet, folks. Sure, Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow isn't exactly your conventional salute to Armageddon. No guns, no baddies, no hot babes, no long-haired hunks. The pace is slow. The dialogue's pretty non-existent - and mostly European. The setting is pastoral. The soundtrack is Ligeti. But still, Sophie Fiennes' (The Pervert's Guide to the Cinema) portrait of artist Anselm Kiefer, I would contend,
could also be seen as one of the finest action movies ever made. For those struggling to understand the link, let me explain further. If for a moment we think of the action movie in terms of the essentials - death-defying explosion, destruction and extremity Over Your Cities fits very beautifully into the category. Kiefer's creative process - like the narrative of any decent shoot 'em up - is violently metamorphic. Results are achieved only through a quite extraordinary, noisy and explosive effort. We see him swing huge giant concrete huts around by crane, flinging them on top of one another as if they were toys. We see him hurling masonry. We see him cutting up the earth with a digger. Books are burnt. Rocks are cooked. Glass is smashed. Dirt is lobbed. Like a modern Prometheus, we see him creating a volcano, hovering sweatily over a rocky mound covered in molten metal, fire-blasting the solid metallic rivulets until they start to weep again." - Igor Toronyi-Lalic, theartsdesk.com
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Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow (2010) Sophie Fiennes, 105 min, in Fr/Eng/Ger with English subtitles Sunday 29 May 22:00 â‚Ź4 301Cinema
Cinema Derive: Sun 29 in 301Cinema
Off Beat's Choice
Off Beat Cinema 4 Inside Job (2010) Charles Ferguson, USA, 108 min Sunday 8 May 15:00 €6,50 IDFA in Kriterion
Business as Usual In this enlightening and Academy Award winning documentary Charles Ferguson asks the right questions to the insiders of the financial crisis of 2008. IDFA in Kriterion: The always well informed Ferguson interviews many involved Because many of the people and commentators: hedge fund managers, the chairdocumentaries screening man of the Federal Reserve, members of the US Congress, at the IDFA are never to be seen again in Dutch economy professors and a remarkable honest and openly theaters afterwards, French minister of finance. While some have to squirm in Kriterion and IDFA took the initiative to bring back the order to avoid his critical questions, Ferguson's persistence always manages to see through the smooth-tongued queshighlights of the festival in the program “IDFA in tions. This way of working enables him to explain the free Kriterion”. This collection fall of the banks to even the biggest financial dummy. The contains both recent films and forgotten gems by old carefully constructed documentary pretends that there’s maestro’s and promising a toxic dependency between the financial service industry, talent. IDFA in Kriterion Washington and economy faculties at universities. The fidocumentaries are being introduced and discussed nancial sector knew nothing of boundaries and became corby guest speakers from rupted due to deregulation, and Ferguson answers for those all parts of the world. So responsible. come visit Kriterion for an opportunity to enjoy one Shot in razor-sharp HD and with the voice over of Matt Daof the documentaries in IDFA’s rich archive! mon, Inside Job analyses the rise of the “grab all you can”
culture and the criminal excesses. Ferguson previously made No End in Sight, a well received, thorough analysis of the war in Iraq and wrote books, among others High Stakes and No Prisoners: A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars.
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Inside Job: 8 May, 15:00 in Kriterion
Off Beat's Choice
Off Beat Cinema 4 Yasmine Kassari’s 2004 film L’Enfant Endormi (“The Sleeping Child” or “The Sleeper”) explores negative aesthetics through a narrative that looks at the contretemps of communities changed by economic migration.
Action on the Negative: Yasmine Kassari’s L’Enfant Endormi by Baylee Brits
A day after their wedding in the countryside of northeastern Morocco, a young bride, Zeinab, is left alone by her husband as he joins his countrymen to work clandestinely in Europe. Zeinab discovers that she is pregnant. Not wanting her baby to be born before her husband's return, she prolongs her pregnancy. Time passes. Her husband does not return. L’Enfant Endormi is focussed not on the story of migration or the migrant’s life away from the home they left, but instead on the sense of absence that persists in their wake; the palpable absence in their homes and villages, which are left in a negative existence that is mirrored in the film’s visual
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aesthetics, where the use of external focalisation generates a sensate experience of negativity. Several times the camera pans over a landscape devoid of people or animals, the only movement and sound being that of the wind: everything is static but for the air. The camera’s failure to move, indeed its temporary surrender to time, sees the visual effect of the film capitulate to photography and landscape painting, an aesthetic rendering which has visual links to the landscape painting of Turner or Wyeth.
– 'Exposure is the action on the negative' – Kodak, Exposing Film
L'Enfant Endormi
The plot of L’Enfant Endormi develops only according to the exchanges between the men abroad and the women at home, exchanges that occur predominantly via filmed messages sent across the Mediterranean, presumably because the villagers are (textually) illiterate. The wives who remain in the village send their own brief filmed messages back to the men, and, after a dearth in communication, the narrative culminates in Zeinab sending her husband a photograph of herself, her niece and her mother-in-law. Here, we are dealing less with mediated communication – i.e. the issue of interface – but rather the exchange of tapes as media artefacts.
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But perhaps the most interesting way in which the film revolves around the negative is in fact not intra-diegetically, but rather in the action of film upon the narrative. The reference to the film negative is a subtractive aesthetic gesture: the narrative, propelled by the transport of film, is constrained by its reference to its own visual source, an effect that is redoubled through the story of the “sleeper”. The method of prolonging the pregnancy is a traditional practice based on the myth that a healer can provide a talisman – a small inscription sealed in casing - that puts the foetus to sleep, in order to be awakened later by washing the talisman. Once created, the sleeper maintains inert life. Rendered static through a text sealed in copper, it carries authority not
Off Beat Cinema 4
L'Enfant Endormi
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Off Beat Cinema 4 through hermeneutics but through hermetics, a term that is especially significant given its double meaning: besides being an adjective meaning “complete and airtight”, it refers to magical practices.
Source: www.lenfantendormi.be
The sleeper, a product of the absence of Halima’s husband, dually bears and represents a negative temporality akin to the filmic negative - sealed from light at the peril of erasing the (foetal) image - which exemplifies the negative time of the village and the traversal of this time through film. What is most interesting here is that the negative is achieved through an aesthetic, not through the better-known visual acts of negation such as détournement. The film begs a wider theoretical question of the possibility of a negative aesthetic (indeed, the visual positive of negativity), which expands into the idea of a medium-specific negative: what would the negative aesthetic be in digital media?
Images on this and previous spread: from L’Enfant Endormi by Yasmine Kassari
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A reaction to Peter Greenaway's lecture: The Death of Cinema
Cinema is Undead On the 2nd of April, the renowned filmmaker, critic, artist and VJ Peter Greenaway gave an animated lecture (in both the literal and the figurative sense of the word) on his views of the current state of cinema in a packed screening room at Kriterion. The lecture was hosted by Jeffrey Babcock, the driving force behind the underground cinema scene in Amsterdam, who introduced Greenaway as a “Baroque Futurist” to a captive audience. Greenaway then proceeded to eloquently and wittily argue that cinema as an art form has been dead for almost 30 years, and that films suffer under a number of tyrannical conditions. I’ll do my humble best to recap his argumentation and will then offer a reaction to his statement, which acknowledges the current (deplorable) state of cinema but will present a different point of view. Even though I have sampled the classical canon of culture as a student of Cultural Studies and are in awe of Greenaway’s extensive cultural baggage, I find that my frame of mind has been formed, by and large, by popular culture, which gives me a different perspective on the matter.
Cinema is Undead
by Luuk van Huët
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Greenaway identified 1983 as the exact year of the cinema’s demise, when it was made obsolete in comparison to television by the pandemic proliferation of the infrared remote control. Greenaway then posited that every art form goes through a process of creation, then consolidation and finally
Off Beat Cinema 4
The first tyranny of cinema, according to Greenaway, is the tyranny of text. As scripts are composed of written text, he argues that we are still visually illiterate. Furthermore, he states that the structure of most films is based on novels, with a beginning, middle and end. The second tyranny of cinema is the tyranny of the frame. Greenaway says it’s an artificial structure and that a fixed frame is not conducive to an immersive cinema experience. The third tyranny of cinema is the tyranny of the actor. Actors, according to the evening’s lecturer, are trained to pretend they’re not being watched. Actors, in his opinion, are used as pretense vehicles, asked to fuck or die on our behalf. The fourth tyranny of cinema is the tyranny of the camera. The camera a very stupid object in the estimation of this filmmaker; it only records what you put in front of it. With this all-too-brief recap of Greenaway’s lecture out of the way (and I apologize for not doing his eloquence
justice and any inadequacies I may have written down here), I’d like to postpone a direct reaction and instead offer an alternative point of view. Source: www.petergreenawayevents.com
rebellion when someone comes along who manages to throw all the established rules away. Greenaway credits the Dutch Masters of painting as the predecessors of cinema as they were the first to examine the manipulation of artificial light. He furthermore identifies Eisenstein as the inventor of montage, the vocabulary of cinema; D.W. Griffith is named for introducing narrative into cinema – which Greenaway still considers a heinous crime – and Godard as the one who took all the rules and threw them out of the window.
Filmmaker flogging a dead horse
I think cinema is akin to a world after a zombie uprising, like those presented in the Trilogy of the Dead by George Romero or the ongoing graphic novelization The Walking Dead. The film industry is in panic, as the world would be in such an event, and blockbusters are not unlike ravenous groups of brainless undead, devouring everything in their paths. Like the undead, zombies are a violent bunch, but since they reproduce by biting other humans, they don’t need to have sex. Which is just like the blockbusters predilection for showing graphic violence but being extremely ambivalent and prudish when it comes to sex. And like the endless stream of remakes, sequels, pre-
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How can you recognize these survivors from the decomposing, moaning masses? Easy! These are the qualities cinema has to cultivate in order to survive the cinematic apocalypse: Films have to be Brazen in order to survive. Films that dare to show things in unflinching detail, which doesn’t mean torture porn or graphic violence, but emotional intensity and bravery instead. Filmmakers need to take risks, not make cookie-cutter films based on theme park rides or board games. Filmmakers have to be Resourceful to make their films with minimal budgets and skeleton crews instead of sprawling sets and a crew numbering in the thousands. This doesn’t necessarily mean every film should be a Cassavetes-like kammerspiel: the sci-fi road movie Mon-
sters boasts special effects equal to any studio film, but cost less than a million to make. Films have to be Alive. The shambling blockbuster horde is lifeless and soulless, independent films should by contrast be full of life, spirit and vitality. Films that celebrate every facet of life and give you reasons to be grateful for living are needed to keep cinema out of the hands of the undead. Filmmakers should also have Vision. They should be able to look beyond their next project or film and develop a long-term point of view, be encouraged to work together with other filmmakers and artists. If anything should be considered dead, it should be tunnel-vision! Last but not least, we need Everyone. Not just you, kind reader, but we need to actively involve ourselves in cinema in order to keep it alive. Actively promote the films that rocked your world to those around you, visit your local underground cinema vigorously (and those across town as well), offer to do the vegan catering for a zombie film, become a fluffer for a feminist porn film, firebomb a multiplex (kidding), whatever it takes! And yes, my final conclusion is a corny acronym: cinema needs to be BRAVE. I told you my frame of reference is from popular culture, so just roll with it. Be Seein’ Ya Some More!
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quels, adaptations of theme park rides and board games – and the merchandising and video games that accompany them – zombies are relentlessly repetitive and unimaginative. They regurgitate the living and turn them into dead matter, endlessly consuming until nothing is left. The zombie is the pinnacle of mindless capitalism and the modern blockbuster is, in this way, its real-life counterpart. But all is not lost: in every good zombie film, there’s a plucky band of survivors who fight the zombies and the bad guys who inevitably try to profit from the carnage. The cinematic counterpart to these survivors? Alternative, independent and art house cinema, of course!
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301Cinema The Royal Tenenbaums (2001) 21:00 Wes Anderson, USA, 110 min
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Tropentheater Cineblend: 17:00 Dinner € 17.50 reservation required 19:30 Documentary and discussion, admittance free
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De Balie Cineville Talkshow: Howl (2010) 20:00 Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, USA, 84 min
Kriterion Modern Classics: 22:00 L’Armee des Ombres (Army of Shadows, 1969) Jean-Pierre Melville, Fr. 140 min
EYE Attenberg (2010) 19:45 Athina Rachel Tsangari, Gr., 95 min. & 21:45 In Greek with Dutch subs
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Rialto A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1982) 11:00 Woody Allen, USA, 88 min
Cinecenter Kaboom (2010) Gregg Araki, USA, Fr., 86 min. In English
Het Ketelhuis Neds (2010) Peter Mullan, UK, 124 min
Mammuth (2010) Benoît Delépine & Gustave Kervern, Fr. 92 min. In French, with Dutch subs
The Movies Never Let Me Go (2010) Mark Romanek, UK / USA, 103 min
(Shown daily after premiere)
May Agenda Location Movie 7 11
De Balie Martin Koolhoven’s Cinema Egzotik 20:00 presents: Vietnam Madness Platoon (1986) Oliver Stone, USA, 120 min Jacob’s Ladder (1990) Adrian Lyne, USA, 113 min
Rialto A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1982) 19:00 Woody Allen, USA, 88 min
22:15 Dead Leaves (2004) Hiroyuki Imaishi, Jap., 55 min
301Cinema Otaku! オタク: Anime 20:30 Paprika (2006) Satoshi Kon, Jap., 90 min
De Melkweg House By The Cemetery (Quella Villa 19:00 Accanto Al Cimitero, 1981) Lucio Fulci, It. 82 min. In English
Kriterion Modern Classics: 22:00 Guizi lai le (Devils on the Doorstep, 2000) Wen Jiang, China, 139 min
301Cinema Sandberg Institute Video Night (€2) 20:30 Short videos by artists from the Sandberg Institute
De Uitkijk Sunset Blvd. (1950) 11:30 Billy Wilder, USA, 110 min
Rialto A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1982) 11:00 Woody Allen, USA, 88 min
Kriterion Very Short Film Festival – JELTE 15:00 IDFA: Inside Job (2010) Charles Ferguson, USA, 108 min.
La vida de los peces (The Life of Fish, 2010) Chile, 84 min. In Spanish with Dutch subtitles
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Sábado, una película en tiempo real (2003) Chile, 65 min. In Spanish with English subtitles
Rialto Matías Bize retrospective: *attended by the director for Q&A
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De Melkweg What have they done with Solange? 19:00 (Cosa Avete Fatto a Solange?, 1972) Massimo Dallamano, It. 110 min. In English
Kriterion Very Short Film Festival – JELTE
until June 6 Terrore All ‘Italiano - Italian Giallo retrospective
De Melkweg Bird With Crystal Plumage (L’ucello Dalle 19:00 Piume Di Cristallo, 1970) Dario Argento, It. 1970, 92 min. In English
Kriterion Very Short Film Festival – JELTE
Filmhuis Cavia Solntse (The Sun, 2005) 20:30 Aleksandr Sokurov, Rus. 110 min
The Movies Premiere: Water for Elephants (2011) Francis Lawrence ,USA, 122 min
Rialto Premiere: The Human Resources Manager (2010) Eran Riklis, Isr./Ger./ Fr., 103 min
Filmhuis Cavia Solntse (The Sun, 2005) 20:30 Aleksandr Sokurov, Rus. 110 min
Rialto A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy (1982) 19:00 Woody Allen, USA, 88 min
Kriterion IDFA: A Film Unfinished (2010) Yael Hersonski, Isr./ Ger., 89 min.
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Kriterion Cinema Eutopia: Arabian Night
EYE The Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) 15:15 Wes Anderson, USA, 87 min. age 8+
16:00 One Fire Ignites Another (2010) Stacey Lee & Clare van den Berg, NL, 52 min. documentary
Rialto Matías Bize retrospective: En la cama (In Bed, 2005) Chile, 84 min. In Spanish with Dutch subtitles Lo bueno de llorar (2006) Sp. In Spanish with English subtitles
Filmhuis Cavia Ruhr (2009) 20:30 James Benning, Ger. 120 min
Kriterion Premiere: Monsters (2010) Gareth Edwards, UK, 94 min
The Movies PREMIERE: Welcome to the Rileys (2010) Jake Scott, USA, 110 min
Premiere: Made in Dagenham (2010) Nigel Cole, UK, 113 min
Rialto Premiere: La vida de los peces (The Life of Fish, 2010) Matías Bize, Chile, 84 min. In Spanish with Dutch subtitles
De Melkweg Amer (Bitter, 2009) 19:00 BE, FR Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani 86 min. In French. Premiere with additional shorts by the directors
Filmhuis Cavia Ruhr (2009) 20:30 James Benning, Ger. 120 min
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Kriterion Movies That Matter: When They Are All Free (2011) James Rogan, UK, 67 min
21:00 Teorema (1968) Pier Paolo Pasolini, It., 90 min
20:45 La Ricotta (1963) Pier Paolo Pasolini, It., 16 min
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301Cinema Kino Praxis 20:30 Introduction by Gianluca Turricchia (UvA), with a free drink
De Melkweg Strange Vice of Mrs Ward (Lo Strano 19:00 Vizio Della Signora Wardh, 1971) Sergio Martino It., 81 min. In English
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Kriterion Die Brücke (The Bridge, 1959) 22:00 Bernhard Wicki, Ger. 103 min
19:15 E* Cinema: Optical Poetry: Oskar Fischinger Retrospective. 70 minute selection featuring 20 short films
16:00 E* Cinema: Jordan Belson: Films Sacred and Profane. 60 minute selection of short films: Caravan (1952), Samadhi (1967), Light (1973), Music of the Spheres (1977/ 2002)
EYE Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) 15:15 Wes Anderson, USA, 87 min. age 8+
22:15 The End of August at the Hotel Ozone (1967) Jan Schmidt, Cz., 77 min
301Cinema Cinema Derive: Czech New Wave 20:30 Larks on a String (1969) Jiri Menzel, Cz., 90 min
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Rialto Filmfestival Cinéma Arabe until June 1
Filmhuis Cavia Koridorius (The Corridor, 1995) 20:30 Sharunas Bartas, Lith., 85 min
301Cinema Kino Kabaret: 19:00 Open and free meeting for people who want to make short films
EYE Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) 15:15 Wes Anderson, USA, 87 min. age 8+
Rialto Sommaren med Monika 19:00 (Summer with Monika, 1953) Ingmar Bergman, SWE, 96 min
Kriterion Submarine Channel in Kriterion
301Cinema Kitten Soup Cinema: The best short 20:30 animation films from around the world
De Melkweg Blood and Black Lace 19:00 (Sei Donne Per L’assassino, 1964) Mario Bava It., 84 min. In English
Kriterion De Slag in de Javazee (1995) 22:00 Niek Koppen, NL. 135 min
22:15 Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965) Russ Meyer, USA, 83 min
EYE Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) 15:15 Wes Anderson, USA, 87 min. age 8+
301Cinema Cinema Derive: Sexploitation 20:30 Sex and Fury (1973) Morifumi Suzuki, Jap., 93 min
Rialto Sommaren med Monika (Summer with 11:00 Monika, 1953) Ingmar Bergman, SWE, 96 min
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If time is missing check venue website
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EYE Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) 15:15 Wes Anderson, USA, 87 min. age 8+
Rialto Pablo Trapero retrospective: Mundo grúa (Crane World, 1999) Arg. 90 min Carancho (2010) Arg. 107 min
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Rialto Jong: Les triplettes de Belleville (2003) 19:30 Sylvain Chomet, Fr. 80 min
De Melkweg Animator The Previews - monthly 19:00 pre-premiere of a Japanese Anime
Filmhuis Cavia Sanxia haoren (Still Life, 2006) 20:30 Zhang Ke Jia, China, 111 min
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Cinecenter Premiere: Welcome to the Rileys (2010) Jake Scott, USA, 110 min Premiere: Mine Vaganti (2010) Ferzan Ozpetek, Italy, 110 min. In Italian
EYE Mistérios de Lisboa (2010) 19:00 Raúl Ruiz, Pr./ Fr. 266 min. In Portugese.with Dutch subs
Rialto Premiere: Mine vaganti (2010) Ferzan Ozpetek, Italy, 110 min. In Italian with Dutch subtitles
Filmhuis Cavia Sanxia haoren (Still Life, 2006) 20:30 Zhang Ke Jia, China, 111 min
Rialto Sommaren med Monika 19:00 (Summer with Monika, 1953) Ingmar Bergman, SWE, 96 min
EYE Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) 15:15 Wes Anderson, USA, 87 min. age 8+
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301Cinema Cinema Pasta: Food, film and folk 19:00 dance. Fresh pasta €3,50 20:30 La Terra Trema (1948) Luchino Visconti, It., 154 min. €4 23:15 Tammurriata (Southern Italian folk dance) free workshop by Isabella Ruggiero
Melkweg Night Of The Devils 19:00 (La Notte Dei Diavoli, 1973) Giorgio Ferroni, It. 91 min. In English
Kriterion Ballada o soldate 22:00 (Ballad of a Soldier, 1959) Grigori Chukhrai, USSR, 1959, 88 min
301Cinema Cinema Derive: Documentaries 20:30 Double Take (2009) Johan Grimonprez, Be./Ger./Nl., 80 min 22:00 Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow (2010) Sophie Fiennes, Fr., 100 min
11:00 Sommaren med Monika (Summer with Monika, 1953) Ingmar Bergman, SWE, 96 min
Leonera (Lion’s Den, 2008) Arg. 113 min
Rialto Pablo Trapero retrospective: Familia rodante (Rolling Family, 2004) Arg. 103 min
Filmhuis Cavia Koridorius (The Corridor, 1995) 20:30 Sharunas Bartas, Lith., 85 min
Cinecenter Premiere: Howl (2010) Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman, USA, 85 min
The Movies Premiere: Rien à declarer (2010) Dany Boon, Fr. 108 min In French, with Dutch subs
Off Beat Cinema 4
––301Cinema ––
www.ot301.nl Overtoom 301 All evenings €4 unless stated. 301Cinema is located in the former building of the Dutch Film Academy on the Overtoom. It was squatted in 1999 and, although legalised since then, has kept its radical political flavour, housing a cinema, vegan restaurant, workshops for dance and health and a stage for theatre and (live) music. The cinema has a wide range of screenings from cult classics to contemporary documentaries and experimental multi-media presentations with live music. It is fairly unique for Amsterdam in that all foreign language films are screened with English subtitles.
––Cinema De Balie ––
www.debalie.nl Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10 €7/ 5 / free with Cinevillepas De Balie building on the Leidseplein takes its name from its former function as a court of justice. Nowadays it is a playground for cultural progressives, mixing social, political and cultural perspectives by means of debates, talk shows, festivals, film screenings and theatre performances. Part of its film program consists of previews of premiering films hosted by a talk show.
––Filmhuis Cavia ––
www.filmhuiscavia.nl Van Hallstraat 52-I All films are €4 (free with Cinevillepas), start 20:30 and are with Dutch subtitles Unlike its name suggests, there are no rodents to be found in Cavia. Rather, it is the smallest cinema with 35mm film projection in Amsterdam, and also the most charming. It shares the building with a kickboxing gym on the ground floor, so occasionally a screening may be synaesthetically enhanced by the musky fragrance of fresh sweat. But don’t let that put you off because Cavia’s refined taste in film programming is well worth the experience.
––Cinecenter ––
www.cinecenter.nl Lijnbaansgracht 236 Cinecenter is located opposite De Melkweg close to the Leidseplein. Compared to other cinemas it may not be as outgoing in its approach to attract audiences; instead of bells and whistles
Cinecenter offers an intimate atmosphere and fine programming. The cinema shows contemporary independent and art house films, among which many French and Spanish language films.
–– Delicatessen ––
www.delicatessenzeeburg.com Sumatrastraat 32 Besides being a shop in the neighbourhood Zeeburg, Delicatessen hosts art exhibitions, organizes small cultural events such as special movie screenings, acoustic performances, and spoken word performances. There is a film screening every Wednesday at 20:30 under the name DeliMovie, with an optional dinner at 18.30. Check the website for the program.
–– EYE ––
www.eyefilm.nl Vondelpark 3 Responsible for the Netherlands' cinematographic heritage, EYE Film Institute manages an extensive and internationally renowned collection that features 37,000 films. EYE presents its films in relation to current and historical developments in art, culture, media and society. EYE organises exhibitions, film programs, festivals and other events in various locations such as its current location in the Vondelpark, Pathé Tuschinski and (in the near future) its new location on the IJ.
–– Het Ketelhuis ––
www.ketelhuis.nl Westergasfabriek, Pazzanistraat 4 Het Ketelhuis (“The Kettle House”) is located in the Westergasfabriek and is a screening and meeting centre for both the makers and fans of Dutch film. Its accent on Dutch films notwithstanding, it also shows international documentaries and European arthouse films.
–– Kriterion ––
www.kriterion.nl Roetersstraat 170 Started in 1946, Kriterion is a cinema completely and non-hierarchically run by students. Besides arthouse films Kriterion screens documentaries, short films and, naturally, student films. Kriterion hosts the yearly Imagine Film Festival for fantastic film.
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www.studio-k.nu Timorplein 62 The “K” in the name is a reference to Kriterion, from which Studio/K is a young offshoot. In keeping with Kriterion’s tradition, Studio/K is similarly run by students. It has quickly become a lively and vital cultural centre in the Indische Buurt of East Amsterdam. Besides a cinema it hosts a restaurant, club and stage for live music and theatre.
––Melkweg Cinema ––
www.melkweg.nl Lijnbaansgracht 234a All films start at 19.00 and cost €7/ 6 The program of the cinema in De Melkweg (“The Milky Way”) draws much attention to European arthouse films, animation, cult genre classics, martial arts and Asian films. The screenings are usually shown in special series grouped by director or genre. Furthermore it screens documentaries and music films.
––The Movies ––
www.themovies.nl Haarlemmerdijk 161 The Movies, with its stylish art déco interior, is Amsterdam’s oldest cinema that is still in use, having started under the name Tavenu in 1912. Within the boundaries of what is considered arthouse, it strives to find a balance between accessible “star attractions” and hi-brow film art, and occasionally screens special festival programs.
––De Nieuwe Anita ––
www.denieuweanita.nl Frederik Hendrikstraat 111 De Nieuwe Anita (a.k.a. DNA) is a one of the coolest places in Amsterdam to hang out. It has about four or five special nights every week, where bands play and poetry readings, art expos and even knitting nights are held. Every Monday at 20.30 there is a film evening under the name of Cinemanita for the next-to-nothing price of €2,50. Check the website for the program.
–– Rialto ––
www.rialtofilm.nl Ceintuurbaan 338 Rialto’s program of premieres focuses on films from Europe and non-Western cultures. Furthermore Rialto has various special programs, such as Rialto Podium, Rialto Laat and Rialto Wereld, which often combine a film screening with an introduction, interview or after-party. Rialto organises the yearly summer festival World Cinema Amsterdam.
–– Smart Cinema ––
www.smartprojectspace.net Arie Biemondstraat 105-113 Smart Project Space is located in the Pathological Anatomic Laboratory of the former hospital complex now called WG Terrein. Presenting a mix of arthouse, documentary, old classics and experimental video works from up and coming artists, Smart Cinema’s programming reflects the current shifting nature of contemporary film and video production.
–– Tropentheater ––
www.tropentheater.nl 2 Linnaeusstraat The whole world at your doorstep. The Tropentheater (Tropen as in “tropic”) is a place for concerts, dance performances, theatre and films from non-Western countries and the fringes of Europe. The films screenings are both documentaries from an anthropological perspective and feature films from Japanese to Bollywood, to Spanish and Turkish films.
–– De Uitkijk ––
www.uitkijk.nl Prinsengracht 452 De Uitkijk (“The View”) started in 1929 and is the oldest movie theatre in the Netherlands under the same name. Run by students, it presents various special screenings such as the monthly Upload Cinema (films from the Internet), viewings for Vrienden van De Uitkijk (Friends of De Uitkijk) and autism-friendly screenings. The theatre regularly hosts film festivals that focus on, for instance, French or Italian cinema.
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––Studio/K ––
In this issue of Off Beat Cinema What is on screen now? Where have the subversives gone? Where has theory gone? “What if…”? What kind of movies do we need now? How could such a choice ever emerge? Is there any way out of this? Is cinema dead? What do you want to communicate with this film? Did you find any disadvantages? Is that too high a price for a filmmaker to pay? Which thirty-something hasn’t been to an old friend’s reunion where people mostly talk about the past nostalgically?