Sept 2011
Offbeat
Amsterdam Cinema Magazine Free
7 Cinema
Film and City Amsterdam Now Interview with Tommy Wiseau The Films of Peter Forgรกcs Jerzy Skolimovski Images from Japan
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
All texts are owned by their individual authors. Copyright Š 2011 Offbeat Cinema Amsterdam All rights reserved
Editors Anna Dobrosovestnova, Edward Milhuisen Design Brit Pavelson Title typeface Guรฐmundur ร lfarsson Contributors Thijs Witty, Gianluca Turricchia, Nicola Bozzi, Paola Pistone, Nine Yamamoto-Masson, Aily Nash, Jeffrey Babcock, Edward Milhuisen, Marta Guerrini, Tino Buchholz Marketing Evgenia Sveshinsky, Anna Dobrosovestnova We thank Guillaume Filion, Alex Tirajoh, Jeffrey Babcock, Annie Wu, Kriterion Advertising To advertise in Offbeat Cinema magazine send an email to offbeatcinema@gmail.com Vacancies We are currently looking for a sales/ PR person. If you are passionate about cinema and don't mind selling, 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 Support us Like the magazine and would like to contribute financially? Please send an email to offbeatcinema@gmail.com
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Editorial
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Column The Deep Endings of Jerzy Skolimowski by Edward Milhuisen
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Amsterdam Now Concrete Development: A Struggle for Creativity by Tino Buchholz Cinema Detour: No Logo Cinema by Jeffrey Babcock Home Movies Against Archive: The Films of Peter Forgรกcs by Edward Milhuisen
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Interview Home Movies Against Archive: The Films of Peter Forgรกcs by Thijs Witty
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Interview Interview with Tommy Wiseau by Paola Pistone
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Column: Film and City Attack the Block. The Night the Ghetto Woke Up by Nicola Bozzi
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Offbeat's Choice Kinema Nippon Presents: Images from Japan by Nine Yamamoto & Aily Nash
36 Agenda September
Editorial
Autumn Oh how we yearned for a glimmering ray of sunshine, in our open-air screening seats soaked by the torrential deluge of a Dutch summer monsoon. Temptation lured, but the sweet promises of summer were rarely fulfilled. We say to hell with such humiliating anticipation. We say, embrace the autumn! Dear reader, we welcome you to our September issue. Among others, you will find a special Amsterdam Now section reflecting on uneasy events of the summer, such as the eviction of Schijnheilig, the closing of the video rental stores and a general sense of restlessness in the current alternative cinema scene of Amsterdam. We also invited Tino Buchholz, who recently made a documentary about the cultural “breeding places� in Amsterdam, to write an article about the making of his film. We believe that, once the wave of anger and anxiety has calmed down, it is necessary to sit back, take a distance and try to discover new paths in the changing cultural environment. We also believe in variety of opinions, in dialogue, in pro-activity and co-operation instead of aggression, passivity and distrust. We believe in the future. And we believe in learning from the past. In August we finally set our humble but useful webpage on its wordpress wheels. Asides archiving the print issue, you will find uncut versions of interviews, reviews and opinions on current events and screenings, reflections on our recent cinematic discoveries and other nice bonus stuff that in one way or another inspired us. Do not hesitate to voice your opinions and suggestions on web via comments, e-mail or our Facebook page. You are certainly welcome to write for our website as well. Enjoy this issue, and, as always, see you at the screenings around the city! Offbeat Team 4
On Screen Now
The Deep Endings
Stills from Deep End (1970)
of Jerzy
Skolimowski by Edward Milhuisen
On Screen Now
The Deep Endings of Jerzy Skolimowski Deep End (1970) UK/DE, 90 min. Now available on a combined DVD/ Blu-ray disc by the BFI. Essential Killing (2010) IL/PL/NO, 83 min. Premieres on Thu 8 Sept in Pathé.
Essential Killing marked a come back for the hitherto virtually forgotten Polish director Jerzy Skolimowski (1938), an alumni from the illustrious National Film School in Lodz, which also gave us Polanski, Kieslowski, Wajda, Zanussi and Munk. He is perhaps best known for writing the script for Polanski’s Knife in the Water, and for his own films The Shout (1978) and Deep End. The latter, considered a lost classic, was fished out of the pool of oblivion only this year, 41 years after production, in a restored print for theatrical and combined DVD / Blu-ray release. In Essential Killing Vincent Gallo (Buffalo 66 and ahem... Brown Bunny) gives a compelling and deservedly awardwinning performance as a combatant called Mohammed, supposedly an Afghan though his precise background is never stated. After killing a party of profit-greedy US mercenaries, he is captured and taken to a Bagram type airbase, where he is interrogated and waterboarded. Deafened by bomb blasts and disorientated from combat stress reaction, he cannot, or at least will not, speak during the entire film. His symtoms resemble the quasihallucinatory disorientation of the young partisan protagonist in Elem Klimov’s masterpiece Idi I Smotri (Come and See), especially when later on Mohammed’s vision starts to distort, either from hunger and sleep deprivation or from eating a treacherous type of berry.
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Edward Milhuisen
The Deep Endings of Jerzy Skolimowski
Stills from Essntial Killing (2010)
Mohammed is “extraordinarily renditioned” to Poland, presumably to be held in one of the CIA’s black sites such as the disused airport of Szymany. He manages to escape en route in Poland’s snow-covered countryside, a harsh climate very different from what he is accustomed to. His survival mechanism is turned all the way up to 11 on the dial, in a series of encounters to which the film’s title alludes. NATO helicopters may emerge from behind any hilltop in a game of cat and mouse that forms the essence of the film, very much like Joseph Losey’s film Figures in a Landscape. Despite the context of the Global War on Terror (GWoT), Skolimowski’s wanted to make a depoliticized film. Dialogue is kept to a bare minimum, which helps to strip away rhetoric, moral posturing and defining labels – such as “Taliban terrorist” or “freedom fighter” – that all too often dehumanize more than they clarify. Mohammed is foremost a human being, simply struggling to survive. Whether the director has succeeded in his intention will depend on the conditioning of the individual viewer. Those deeply locked into the binary logic of “either you are
with us, or you are with the terrorists” may have a hard time empathizing with Mohammed’s will to live. Exhausted, starved and wounded, staring death in the face, Mohammed eventually finds an isolated house inhabited by a Polish peasant called Margaret, played by Emmanuelle Seigner (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and The Ninth Gate). Margaret takes him in and tends to his wounds. Here Skolimowski takes the humanitarianism of the final act in La Grande Illusion (1937) one step further. Whereas in Jean Renoir’s anti-war film the communication barrier between fugitive prisoner of war and nominally treasonous Good Samaritan is based on a mere difference of language, in Essential Killing they are not only foreigners divided by language, ethnicity and religious culture, they are also both deaf-mute. Margaret’s deafness has rendered her immune to the propaganda machine of the GWoT. Her act of compassion transcends the big illusion that is grounded in ethnic and cultural pride, and exacerbated by the conditioning of language, to redeem both sides of the conflict, albeit for a brief moment and on a very
Edward Milhuisen
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On Screen Now
modest scale. This transcendent aspect is then accentuated by the symbolism of a white horse – no East European film is complete without one, though it may also represent Al Buraq, the white horse carrying prophets in Islamic mythology – which Margaret provides for Mohammed to continue on his journey. Skolimowski is not interested in intricate plots. There is not much real development – the protagonist without a background stumbles from one haphazard event to another, in an alien environment inhabited by people of whom he understands little – until everything is rounded up in a defining and truly poetic conclusion. Deep End has exactly the same structure yet in an entirely different setting, that of a swimming pool. It deals not with war but with something equally frightening for the film’s awkward teenage protagonist: the daunting prospect of having to approach females in the quest to lose his virginity. Instead of dipping a toe in the waters of sexuality with a girl of his own age, the impatient 15 year old Mike wishes to dive in head first with an experienced girl or woman, who all seem willing enough yet whose maturity forms a challenge to his fragile confidence. A new job as a swimming pool attendant raises his options. He quickly becomes infatuated with his colleague Susan (Jane Asher), who explains he can earn extra tips by taking care of certain needs of female customers in the changing rooms. One such needy customer is played by the ripened Diana Dors in a hilarious scene. Dors’ image as the British blonde bomb-shell answer to Marilyn Monroe and Jayne 8
Edward Milhuisen
Stills from Essntial Killing
The Deep Endings of Jerzy Skolimowski
Mansfield seems to have gotten in the way of being taken seriously as an actor, thus now sadly forgotten by everyone not part the baby boom generation. The easygoing Susan has both a fiancé and an older lover, but acts teasingly unattainable for Mike. Thus his increasing desperation drives him towards one foolish act after another in his attempt to woo her, or at least to sabotage her relationships with her lovers. So is the film the classic it is made out to be? Partly. The film only becomes truly poignant in the latter part of the final act, when Susan and Mike find themselves in the deep end of the emptied pool in a scheme to retrieve her expensive engagement ring. Events take a sudden turn, and with them the entire atmosphere of the film, leading to yet another of Skolimowski’s hauntingly poetic endings.
Vincent Gallo receives blood on the set.
I found Mike’s foolishness overstated to the point of becoming annoying, not helped by the fact that the actor portraying him was chosen for his blonde mop-topped, Adonis-like features rather than his acting skills. The 1960s was of course a golden age for heroic fools in cinema. To give an example, I much prefer the profoundly anarchic protagonist in Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966) by Karel Reisz, another East European new wave director searching for more freedom in the British Swinging Sixties. Deep End can be seen as closing off that era. It has been praised for not having dated, but I don’t entirely agree. Not that it matters, it defines its time well: a period of relative sexual innocence that now seems far, far away.
Edward Milhuisen
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Amsterdam Now Concrete Development: a Struggle for Creativity by Tino Buchholz In 2003 I came to visit Amsterdam for the first time, for an academic/ activist conference on the Creative City organized by the International Network for Urban Research and Action (www.inura.org). By that time, I did not imagine that both, Amsterdam and INURA, would have greater impact on my later work and life. As an undergraduate student in urban planning from Dortmund I was impressed by a whole array of Amsterdam developYou can order the film from www.creativecapitalistcity.org ments that evolved from the grassroots. Back then, we or get it @ het Fort van Sjakoo, took a boat ride and set out to NDSM, which was just about to open as "Breeding Place" and Ruigoord, which Jodenbreestraat 24, A'dam hosted the Robodock festival, in the greater Amsterdam harbor area. I did not imagine that such things were Next Amsterdam screening: possible to be part of an “all inclusive� institutionalized 8 October 2011 urban framework. @ Filmhuis Cavia Tino Buchholz is a member of AKOPLAN, an institute for social and ecological planning, and a PhD researcher at the faculty of spatial planning at University of Groningen.
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Tino Buchholz
Concrete Development
It was somewhat of an eye-opener to look at urban planning from a different, self-organized perspective – and I gradually discarded the top-down planning perspective from there. I don't quite remember, if the term gentrification was used by then but it sure was not as dominant as it is today. I do remember the phrase commodification though. Frankly, it describes the transformation of social relations and space into market logics and products (commodities) rather well. Today, for the ones tired of the popular catch-phrase gentrification, commodification serves as sufficient substitute to describe the economic metamorphosis of public infrastructure (or neo-liberal regeneration) in advanced Western capitalist cities.
Six years later, I came to live in Amsterdam as a graduate student of the University of Groningen (2009). The task was to carry out research on creative experiments, affordable housing, urban movements and the right to the city. Almost ten years after the initial, official Amsterdam presentation of "Creativity and the City" (2003) – with Richard Florida as keynote speaker – former grassroots initiatives have left the experimental stage and are well known as institutionalized “breeding places”. Ten years later, it seems to make a difference, however, to sharpen the phrase and focus on Creativity and the Capitalist City. Many of the formerly creative developments have become (a) business as usual. Their subversive charm has been absorbed into the real estate market. Content wise, the stimulus for my film consisted in the crucial changes of urban regulations around the new millennium e.g. the introduction of the “right to buy” (yourself-in into social housing) in 2000. The abandonment of the “right to squat” in 2010 indicates a next step towards market radicalism or – depending on perspectives – market justice. It enforces private property rights and rolls back internationally unique, while socially progressive housing regulations. Technically, I owe the idea of filmmaking to my friend Benjamin Bischof, who is a director of photography, based in Cologne. When first asked to do a documentary, I set up a rough script, which basically followed my research interest. After the interview with Jamie Peck, (Professor of Economic Geography from Vancouver and one of the leading crit-
Tino Buchholz
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Amsterdam Now
ics of the creative class) the greater message of the Creative City Amsterdam was crystal clear. For sure, much has been written on gentrification and the city, certainly on Amsterdam. But who reads this? Who has access to academic journals? In order to leave the academic ivory tower my motivation therefore was to summarize the creative class discourse for a wider public, to portray the creative hype, capture Dutch reality and deconstruct it. The outcome is a two-year film project (2009-11) and independent production with support of the University of Groningen, Medienprojekt Wuppertal and INURA. It contains four chapters (55 mins, in English) and is more than a local documentary on Amsterdam. It describes the struggle for affordable space in advanced capitalist cities and its creative exploitation. Chapter one describes the (creative) role of squatting and inner urban movement struggles with market and/ or state co-optation. Chapter two introduces the market answer to squats protecting speculative vacancy with live-in guardians. Chapter three documents the very recent history of sound Dutch institutionalization: “Breeding Places” Amster-dam. Chapter four, finally, asks: What happens when the Hype is over? Housing as a Job or The Right to the City? One way or the other, this film is more than a local documentary. It is not so much a holistic Amsterdam picture that is portrayed, as a local excerpt that engages with a global discourse. This being said, I want to be clear about the film’s very distinguished focus on creativ-
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Tino Buchholz
Concrete Development
ity and the notion of the creative class as an instrumental tool in contemporary urbanism. Creativity and affordability are central here. At the same time, this is not a holistic picture of all social groups and classes (migrant communities etc.) that make the city. Richard Florida’s “Rise of the Creative Class” (2002, 2005) is an upper-middle class discourse, which works for roughly one third of Western society, and for two thirds it does not. I am fully aware, that this creative class policy only works within specific territorial (national) boundaries; and not even for all of the big Dutch cities – but surely Amsterdam. This critique is implicit to the story of my film. The most interesting chapter to a local and global audience is most likely the subject of Anti-squat, which has developed in the Netherlands and now expands all over Europe. Here again, I am aware of the work of Abel Heijkamp’s (2010) documentary Leegstand Zonder Zorgen (Carefree Vacant Property) without exploring the precarious living conditions of seven anti-squatters in more in-depth. For a scholarly and/or locally informed audience this film is not breaking news. Hence, I insist on it being a historical document that seeks a greater audience. It is the sum of local pictures (2009-11) and hopefully it is more, more of a global story. In this sense, I aim at a wide audience: academic, activist, artist and at best ordinary people, in Europe and beyond. After all, my aim is to capture a social democratic success story or feel good capitalism that has its limits, that has a start and an end, and which has reached its high peak. After the introduction
of the right to buy in 2000 and the ban of squatting in 2010, driving forces in the political economy in Amsterdam and the Netherlands are changing. The story remains open what will follow from here. The director of Breeding Places made clear that other cities, which do not have such a responsive institutional framework, will show far different results with local struggles for affordable space. After changing the regulations, however, Amsterdam itself may experience a radicalization of urban movements that politicize the use space again. The case of Gallery Schijnheilig was just a beginning. We have edited & published our footage of Gallery Schijnheilig entitled "Schijnheilig and the Right to the City" on Youtube.
After all, it would be sad, if creativity took serious damage from Richard Florida and his mere economic interpretation. Creativity is not an end in itself but aims for something. That's a normative issue (to be defined). In the film, Bart Stuart says: "The city is not an office, where you can plan everything, who is sitting where, for how long and how much is that ... The City is more of the mess we don't want". I couldn't agree more. Therefore, today’s challenge will be to reclaim the creative city and insist on democracy.
Tino Buchholz
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Amsterdam Now
Cinema Detour: No Logo Cinema by Jeffrey Babcock
In the middle of his seminal film La Commune (2000) Peter Watkins 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, these statistics have probably only become 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
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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, 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, since
Jeffrey Babcock
Cinema Detour: No Logo Cinema
they have the finance and the power to do it...but they are clearly lacking in passion and vision. So what is their solution? Instead of taking risks and improving their undynamic programing, they instead hire an advertising firm to “brand” them (the same one that advertises Coca-Cola throughout Europe). The result is insipid logos 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. 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 and dumping tons of cash into new buildings. But the point of all this is that it’s clear that any movement of real strength is not going to come from institutions. 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’s 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 Cinema 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 a multiplex. I always wonder why their programmers 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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Amsterdam Now
The Death of the Video Rental and the Future of Home Viewing As much Offbeat Cinema likes to praise the glory of film viewing in its classic form – collectively witnessing a celluloid dream projected on a large screen, among a group of strangers – with a certain idealistic emphasis on its social aspect, home viewing is just as much an integral part of the cinematic experience.
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For many ardent film aficionados, certainly those above the age of 25, visiting a local video rental shop will have formed a part of their cinematic education. For the past 23 years, various rental stores in Amsterdam have catered to audiences with refined tastes. However, the closing of two of the last three video stores specializing in arthouse film this summer forms a telltale sign that defines the end of an era. In the last week of June the Cult Videotheek threw in the towel and the Movie Center on the Overtoom is soon to follow suit. Both stores cite as the cause of their demise a dramatic fall in amounts of video rentals combined with the high costs of renting shop space – in the case of the Overtoom shop ca. €4000 per month. Not counting the public libraries, the Movie Center on the Ferdinand Bolstraat will become the last remaining arthouse video rental store in town – for how long, one can only wonder. Long Live Video On Demand? Video on Demand (VOD) is the legal and commercial exploitation of streaming films and TV shows, either via cable TV or the Internet. Although the Internet is global, and many VOD services operate internationally, the content remains bound by distribution rights that differ per country. Just about every media company and its dog are now hoping to take a share of the profitable Dutch VOD market. Of the smaller players, Ximon and Mubi are interesting for their specializations, Dutch films and arthouse films respectively. However, the concept of the “Long Tail” – which states that companies have
The Death of the Video Rental and Future of Home Viewing
virtually unlimited shelf space online and can thus afford to stock an abundance of less commercial, hard-to-find items – will make it very difficult for smaller companies specializing in a niche market to compete with big global players like iTunes and Amazon. Many of the hopefuls, especially the smaller ones (such as former video rental stores), won’t survive the inevitable shakeout of also-rans.
most Dutch streamers charge roughly €5 per film, whereas a Netflix customer in the US pays a flat rate subscription of $7 (€4.20) per month to watch an unlimited amount of films. With such low prices it only needs a small amount of law enforcement, the threat of fines or being disconnected from your Internet service provider, to get a sizeable amount of illegal downloaders warmed up to the idea of VOD. The future seems to be at home more than ever. Film audiences are advised to stock up on vitamin D supplements. * An inside history of the Movie Center, as told by co-founder and co-owner Jan Nooij, can be found on our website.
Netflix, the most successful streamer of films in the US, is scheduling its D-Day on European shores for spring 2012, most likely in a partnership that sees Philips providing set-top box hardware (so called Internet Protocol Television, or IPTV). It is expected to be a game changer that will drive down prices. At the moment
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Column
Home Movies Against Archive:
The Films of Peter Forgรกcs by Thijs Witty
The Films of Peter Forgács
most gruesome scenes of extermination, the very intent remains enucleation: the withdrawal of a catastrophe from any vision. All that we will have seen is mere representation.
The egregious truism of the society of integrated spectacle is that memory no longer hinges upon actual retention. The citizen of the metropolis is a lobotomized consumer of the past, gazing upon it from safe distance. As Robert Musil cogently wrote: “Anything that endures over time sacrifices its ability to make an impression. Anything that constitutes the walls of our life, the backdrop of our consciousness, so to speak, forfeits its capacity to play a role in that consciousness.” However, at the moment the citizen stops experiencing anything beyond the stale images of historical representation, he also starts to show an increasing interest in “historical sense.” National identity, collective memory, public archives: these are the catchphrases of a world emerged in schizophrenic loopholes of sensing and belonging. The images of the Shoah in which we are enveloped are exemplary of these strange times. Everyone has seen Schindler's List; everyone knows the remarkable feat of resistance by that brave private Ryan. But the surplus value of these films is not ethical realignment, it is obscene enjoyment. Vicarious suffering is encouraged through an operation of the eye: while it is perfectly possible to represent the
The horrors of the Nazi death camps have forced the society of the spectacle into a moralistic self-regulation, in which it needs to remind itself “never again the Holocaust”. If Norman Finkelstein hasn’t exposed the exploitative tendencies of this memorial regime enough, surely Theodor Adorno’s wise dictum “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” suffices to note the many contradictions at play when nations start to commemorate their own co-implication in genocides for the sake of collective memory. For well over two decades, the Hungarian filmmaker and installation artist Peter Forgács (1950) has been collecting amateur film footage from JewishHungarian families. In a private archive in Budapest, Forgács has produced numerous films based entirely on this home movie material. The majority of the collected films stems from a period shortly before World War II and shows the humdrum daily life of the Jewish bourgeoisie. In the thirties, only wealthy families could afford the expensive hobby of filming, logically leading to the reservation of precious strips of film for pivotal private occasions such as family birthdays, weddings or holidays. An unsettling aura surrounds these moving images: we know only too well the fate that awaited these people. However, the images themselves betray not a care in the world: all smiles and sheer happiness.
Thijs Witty
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Who is to say what these
images mean, if anything?
Column
Forgács encourages this double consciousness in order to have his audience consider uncomfortable questions spectacular society has chosen to omit. What do these pictures mean for us, if not a general absence of meaning? Must we withdraw from sense or intelligibility in the encounter with these mundane impressions of a people destined for destruction? Forgács’ compilation films leave a sour aftertaste because catharsis – an acceptable answer to the questions that are raised – never arrives. As such, Forgács breaks with the conventional historiography of the Holocaust industry that prefers the paradigm of redemption and hope. Forgács rather shows how the banality of “unimportant” family history coincides with the inhuman oppression of fascism.
One of his better-known films, The Maelstrom: A Family Chronicle (1997), shows the daily life of the Peereboom family. The year 1933 marks an important moment for the Peerebooms, as daughter Annie is to be married. This memorable moment constitutes an important part of the film. We see a variety of festive moments, filled with ordinary people and ordinary 22
happiness. However, it is bliss in unusual times. The wedding takes place in the year 1933, around the time Adolf Hitler came to power as chancellor in Germany. His office and the perma-nent state of exception it would usher, sealed the fate of the Peerebooms, a family ignorant of what was to come. In another compilation film, The Danube Exodus (1998), Forgács conveys the narrative of a Jewish expulsion from Nazi Germany right before the invasion of Poland in 1939. The exodus on a boat steering down the Danube towards Palestine is interlaced with images of the repatriation of thousands of Germans from Bessarabia (currently Moldova) after the land's annexation by Russia in 1940. Both displaced groups were transported on the same ship, in opposite direction and a mere year apart from each other. Eighteen picture compilations contrast the fate of these two vastly different historical assemblages, but they also show the striking similarities: expulsion, intolerance and anxiety. Forgács thus forces the viewer to compare the seeming incomparable. These films prove there is only a relative unsayability to the Shoah, and it is the lesson Forgács wants us to learn. The illegitimate identity between memory and archive, one that is actively taken up as the monad for spectacular times, founds itself in the expropriation of positive historical experience. This operation is that of the museum: that what separates things from direct use into an exhibition that prohibits a use or an experience. It is from such devolution of memory, this archival operation that distances
Thijs Witty
The Films of Peter Forgรกcs
experience from its object by placing it in an economy of representations, that remembrance must be torn before we can even start to think the possibility for mourning, empathy or even repentance. Throughout his remarkable cinematic work, Forgรกcs invites viewers to absolve from museological interpellation and to open up towards a dialogue with the past itself: who is to say what these images mean, if anything? It saves the amateur footage from the historiographic perversion and the illegitimate desire for cathartic enjoyment when faced with measureless violence.
The work of the artist therefore starts where the work of the archivist can no longer reach. The only appropriate affect to this dissociation is empathy. Empathy, the reception of an understanding of the feelings of others without becoming immersed in them, is contained in the frames by way of withdrawal from sense. As such, the films of Forgรกcs expose not the tragic fates of anonymous protagonists, but displaces their assignment away from the confines of the archive into the only realm that does them actual justice: non-knowledge.
Thijs Witty
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Interview with
Tommy Wiseau by Paula Pistone Tommy Wiseau is the (credited) writer, director and producer behind the 2003 cult drama film The Room, which has been defined “the best worst film” ever made, or even “the Citizen Kane of bad films”. The film gained such an infamous notoriety thanks to the bizarre script, awkward music, and singular acting performances – Tommy playing the role of Johnny being the most striking of all. It’s no accident that the Cast & Crew section of The Room official website recites: 24
“His performance leads the viewers to think about life and its meaning. Tommy Wiseau will have a bright future in movies”. However none of these labels and definitions can prepare you enough for the experience. Astonishment, incredulity and bewilderment are guaranteed. Tommy Wiseau has kindly agreed to answer our questions and help us making sense of the uncanny watching experience. Questions: Paola Pistone & Marta Guerrini
with Tommy Wiseau
Paola Pistone: What made you become a film director? Tommy Wiseau: I'm a stage actor, actually. I studied acting for 15 years. After graduated I decided to go into acting, but at the same time, it is really hard to find a job, so I decided to write my own script. The Room was supposed to be a play first, but than I changed my mind because the number of people who go to stage theatre is less than the number of people who go to cinema. PP: Why is the film called “The Room”? TW: It's because it is a special place. We don't call it “a room”, I call it “the room”. The t-h-e is very important, because it’s a special place you only have the key for. It could be any place. It’s you who’s in charge. You don’t get any traffic ticket, you can drive 100, 200 mph, whatever you decide. It’s your place, that’s why it’s called The Room. People drive me crazy when they say “a room”: it is the room.
TW: Johnny and Lisa, as well as other characters, are based on real life. I studied psychology, I still do. Prior to shooting the movie I asked questions to people about relationships, I did a lot of research.
People don’t realize that, what you read online is completely false. The characters come from real life, we have many Lisas, we have many Johnnys in America, all over the world. Because if you take the language out, you could apply The Room all over the world. And I'm very happy that, as you probably noticed, it’s very popular in your country as well, in Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada. We have a lot of fans right now, but to respond to your question, all the characters relate to real life. They are not based on fantasies or assumptions, they are based on facts. PP: The character of Lisa can be read as a sort of Eve in the way she tempts Mark, but also as a snake who ruins the Eden Johnny has build for the two of them, and brings him to self-destruction. Where is the root of so much evil in your opinion?
PP: The characters of Johnny and Lisa are depicted as onesided: are they archetypal figures that represent good and evil?
TW: I don't know whether you are familiar with Cleopatra, the movie with Elizabeth Taylor. You can compare Cleopatra to Lisa from The Room.
Paola Pistone
25
Interview
The relationship between Lisa, Mark and Johnny... they are friends first. Lisa’s got everything under control but everything is going under the tubes because eventually Mark decides not to love her. It’s like in real life. Sometimes you have this happiness and in five minutes everything goes down the tubes. If you put somebody off, you will have the same thing. It’s a red flag: don’t do that, because later on you will have consequences based on your actions. It’s part of life, we learn from life, based on what’s right, what’s wrong, how far you as a person can go. The message should be: be a better person for tomorrow. PP: “You are tearing me apart, Lisa!” Is that (by now legendary) line a reference to Rebel Without a Cause? TW: No it’s not, not at all. Coincidently people are referring to this movie. But this line goes pretty well with the script. It’s a black comedy. For your information we do have, in America, people who actually talk in a funny way, in a very dramatic, emotional way. But again, the line does not refer to any movie except The Room.
PP: Did you follow the script closely or was there room for improvisation? TW: Absolutely, we followed the script – you can buy it if you want, because we sell everything as you probably noticed. I had a six months rehearsal process, I learned that from my background in theatre. The script is very important. Plus we used two camera's format, an HD camera as well as a 35mm (what you see in the theatre is the 35mm print). You had to follow the script 26
Paola Pistone
with Tommy Wiseau
somewhat – I say “somewhat” because I believe in improvisation too. But I followed the script very closely because otherwise I couldn’t finish the movie. Besides, I changed the whole crew four times. Some people quit, some people got fired, some people tried to tamper my project. It’s a roller coaster ride, it was, let me tell you.
September, we’ll be doing the play, on the stage, “The Room”, because originally it was supposed to be on the stage. So from September to December we'll be travelling to different States and present The Room on the stage as well. We had the 8th anniversary of the room on this year. I'm very happy of what’s happening, and that a lot of people all over the world enjoy The Room. PP: Can you tell us something about your new projects?
PP: Red is a dominant colour in the film. What does it represent for you? TW: The red represents life, red represents also blood, and blood equals life. Absolutely, red represents life, that’s why I picked up the red colour. The red roses represent passion. It’s very important that people understand that there is a lot of symbolism within The Room. PP: Watching The Room became a cult experience among young people around the world. Many of them have given their own contribution to this experience, for instance with an online novelization of the film and a video game. What do you think of this phenomenon?
TW: I am working currently on a sitcom, The Neighbours, and on a feature movie (it’s a big secret, I won’t tell you the title but I’ll try to release it within six months). And I am also working on a vampire movie. And I’m working on the play, for the stage. We’ll start touring in September and we are preparing for Broadway, – not off-Broadway but on Broadway! So I'm very, very busy.
* Read full version of Tommy’s + interview with Greg Sestero, co-star in The Room as Johnny's best friend, on www.offbeat-cinema.com
TW: Honestly I did not expect that, now we're showing the room all over the world, I'm very happy. Plus, starting from Paola Pistone
27
Column: Film and City
Attack the Block:
The Night the Ghetto
Woke Up by Nicola Bozzi
Architecture in Attack the Block
Attack the Block is a sci-fi movie by Joe Cornish, from the crew who made Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. The British comedian’s directorial debut is quite a unique mix: a ghetto-blasting, actionpacked Ballardian dystopia that manages to have you in stitches, occasionally scare you, as well as administer some food for thought. The alternate balance of sci-fi and horror elements, hip-hop appeal and subterranean social commentary makes it an odd view, but the booming soundtrack and the effective setting make sure you’re deep into its dimension. Everything happens on Guy Fawkes Night, in and around a huge Neo-Brutalist building in South London, more precisely in the fictional Ballard Street. The protagonists are a group of teenagers from the block, who for the occasion – apart from the usual drug dealers and police officers – also have to cope with an invasion of pitch-black aliens with shiny teeth. The creatures creep into the kids’ lives in the span of one night, turning the high-rise in which they live into a fortress, prison and battleground, literally
crawling on its massive surface. By the time everything is back to normal we’ve lost some people along the way and we’ve seen the kids team up with a couple of outsiders. One is a young nurse whom they had mugged at the beginning and who, it turns out, is their neighbor. The other is a middle-class white boy who only comes over to buy drugs, probably an ironic impersonation of the director himself. The movie was shot in the disused Heygate Estate at Elephant & Castle, yet another example of a modernist colossus in an area that is being expensively regenerated for eco-sustainability and profit, a process of gentrification that is not without controversy in the community itself. In the years prior to the estate’s demolition – started in April this year and ending in 2015, due to asbestos – the complex has seen more filmmakers pass by than people living inside. In Cornish’s movie, though, the block is packed with families of all colors, the youngest sporting their bling and the oldest shut inside their rooms, behind barred doors.
Nicola Bozzi
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Column: Film and City
Once the aliens arrive, the already spaceship-like complex turns into a sinister environment, homely and foreign at once. Such a transition is rendered most effectively in one particular sequence: as the kids enter the building, the camera pans up to show the intimidating construction towering above, but moves along as it gets swallowed by it. Along with its urban setting and aforementioned soundtrack, the kids’ style, with their slang, BMX bikes, sneakers and hoodies, also contributes to give the flick a patina of cool and street-savviness that reminds of the French cult film La Haine. Apart from its more childish, playful vibe, though, Attack the Block is very different in the narrative spaces it creates. If in Mathieu Kassovitz’s movie space is mostly horizontal – the ghetto is exported to the city, its denizens clashing with the fancy gallery-goers and racist policemen – in Cornish’s film the outside space is literally sucked in, all drama converging in one, mostly vertical dimension. I say “mostly” because the most exciting pursuits in the film are carried on the ramps that architect Tim Tinker designed to connect the buildings to each other, in order to separate the pedestrians from the vehicles. Such an infrastructure can feel pretty creepy at night, as it happens with many of such typically modernist endeavors, but try it with aliens breathing down the back of your neck. Attack the Block plays a lot on the Ballardian transformation of infrastructure from man-made instrument to post-human constraint.The building's alien-infested corridors are no longer safe, so the fastest way in or out are either the stairs or the 30
elevators. But those, as well as the ramps, have also become traps. Like in J.G. Ballard's famous High-Rise, a community is isolated by both social conventions and physical architecture. The post-human infrastructure unleashes
people's most primal instincts and the community has to deal with itself. In Attack the Block, though, this happens on a different level. The outside is creeping in and the community has to fight back to defend its common ground. Another thing that Attack the Block and La Haine have in common is that both deal with rebellious youth in a tense social environment, breathing a fateful
Nicola Bozzi
Architecture in Attack the Block
atmosphere. In the latter we're in the banlieue and the kids are merely killing time, nervously waiting and going on with their daily routine before tragedy strikes. In the former everything happens like in a dream, an unexplainable event shaking up everyone's life in just a few hours, boiling down before dawn. Teenagers fighting aliens with samurai swords in a South London block sounds a bit like Pan's Labyrinth, where a little girl makes up a creepy fairy tale in order to escape from the far creepier Fascist reality in which she was living. The fact that the kids' parents are hardly even present in the movie, like most of the other tenants of the building, confirms the feeling that everything is happening in a separated dimension, almost a fantasy. The kids really want their shot at being heroes, they can't wait to kill the aliens. They want to mess around, but they get murdered and arrested. I am writing this article as the London riots are all over the news, so I hope you’ll forgive me if the reference I’m making to them sounds like too much of a stretch. The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones has compared the viral explosion of violence that started in Tottenham a few days ago to a Wellsian dystopia – or a Ballardian one, which seems the most popular version in the comments section of the article. His analogy is both scary and fascinating, and it made me think of Slavoj Žižek’s considerations about the 2005 banlieue riots near Paris. According to the Slovenian philosopher, in lack of the utopian ideology that characterized the May ’68 riots in the French capital, today’s crowds riot in order to say: “We’re here, and we’re from here.” Nicola Bozzi
31
Column: Film and City
In Cornish’s film, the boy that eventually saves the day is also arrested and, right before his final effort to get rid of the invaders, he wonders if – maybe – they’ve been sent by the government to provoke the ghetto inhabitants to finally kill each other off. After the final triumph, as reality sets back in and he is escorted away on a police van, the crowd cheers for him. The community recognizes his deed. The rhythm, the affectation, the slang and the quirks that make Attack the Block an odd and enjoyable movie often get in the way of taking it seriously. Nonetheless, despite it trying to have as much fun as possible, I believe it does send out a message. The UK has the lowest social mobility rate amongst the developed countries, but before we saw double-deckers up in flames we didn’t mind so much. If social inequities are obviously the problem, destroying your own neighborhood is hardly the answer. The kids in Cornish’s movie learn this lesson and so does the young nurse that helps them. Their block might be ugly, but they're in it together.
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Nicola Bozzi
Offbeat's Choice: Kine Nippon
Kinema Nippon: Images from Japan
by Nine Yamamoto & Aily Nash A benefit for the Japanese disaster relief The devastating Tohoku earthquake and tsunami of 11 March 2011 destroyed countless lives and livelihoods, swept away entire cities, resulting in a deep sense of disarray and uncertainty. Our friends in Japan and around the world, many of them artists, curators or cultural producers, found themselves, once again, faced with the question: What is the appropriate response — and the role of art — in the aftermath of such a disaster? Despite the severity of the catastrophe however, we have witnessed overwhelming support, perseverance and hope throughout Japan and the extended Japan community worldwide.
Kinema Nippon is a series of fund-raising screenings that present programs of experimental films, video art, and Japanese classics, held in several international cities in collaboration with local film and art institutions. By presenting film and video work to celebrate the visionary cinema of Japan, Kinema Nippon mobilizes the moving image as a catalyst for cultural awareness and unity during this crucial time. All proceeds from the screenings will go to disaster relief efforts in cooperation with the Japanisch-Deutsches Zentrum Berlin. www.kinemanippon.org Thu 15 @ Filmhuis Cavia: Nippon Re-Read I Fri 16 @ Filmhuis Cavia: Nippon Re-Read II Sun 18 @ OT301: Excerpts from Vital Signals, a program of early Japanese video work; Tokyo Days (1988) by C. Marker
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Offbeat's Choice
While it doesn’t monopolise the headlines anymore in the West, the crisis is far from over, with the situation at Fukushima still volatile and people’s sense of safety and trust in their government waning. More urgently than ever, we must continue to believe in the power of action on a micro-level. From the project’s inception, we were met with sincere enthusiasm by the artists featured in our programs to participate in this project. We were all eager to somehow help and contribute — the artists provided the content, and we, the platform and structure; and we are happy to be sending Kinema Nippon on the road now, at screenings throughout the world. Within our humble possibilities, we want to add another brick to the rebuilding efforts and manifest our solidarity.
Nippon Re-Read: Radical Fragments and Abstractions from Japan I & II Kinema Nippon’s two-part program presents a spectrum of experimental moving image works from Japan, ranging from the late ’60s to contemporary works. Although varying greatly in their formal and aesthetic concerns, the works all rigorously re-examine the everyday through their respective experiments and innovations in their medium.
medium rather than focusing on a visual referent. In White Calligraphy Re-Read (1967), Takahiko Iimura activates the Japanese characters of the Kojiki, the earliest Japanese historical chronicle, by deconstructing text into its constitutive graphic ciphers. These works, including Lika (2007) by Stom Sogo and Still in Cosmos (2009) by Takashi Makino, direct the attention of the viewer to the pictorial, emphasizing more painterly concerns, digital and celluloid textures, the visceral correlation of sound and image, and of flatness vs. representational depth. The works in Program II offer a poetic investigation into the fragmentary experience of the quotidian by eschewing narrative and rendering cultural images and references to unveil the uncanny within the familiar. Tomonari Nishikawa’s in-camera manipulation of bustling metro hubs in Shibuya–Tokyo and Tokyo–Ebisu (2010), as well as Shiho Kano’s pensive meditations on quintessential Japanese subjects, form a counterpoint to Toshio Matsumoto’s split-screen filmic hallucination of the late ‘60s underground, For the Damaged Right Eye (1969), which was made in conjunction with his seminal feature Funeral Parade of Roses (1969).
Abstractions of the mundane are seen in the graphic films in Program I, which deal directly with the materiality of their 34
Nine Yamamoto & Aily Nash
Kine Nippon
Optional World Link: Chris Marker’s Tokyo Days
“Frankly, have you ever heard of anything stupider than to say to people, as they teach in film schools, not to look at the camera?" the disembodied voice of Sandor Krasna, Chris Marker’s alter ego, muses in his 1983 masterpiece Sans Soleil. In his video-essay Tokyo Days (1988), Marker returns to Tokyo, unabashedly weaving through the city, capturing the gaze of the passers-by, the saleswomen in a department store, the aweinspiring modern consumer palaces, or a poster for a missing cat. The returned
look, the direct gaze at the camera: personal moments salvaged from the anonymous corridors of a hyper-stylised metropolis The ever-curious gaze of this modern flaneur finds the wondrous in oft-overlooked details with rare sincerity. We find Marker’s familiar companions, the cats and owls, the images of TVs. His video-eye renders a spectacular view of a row of escalators refracted through mirrors into an infinite echo, in keeping with the absurd spectacle of a unceasing parade of simulacra that epitomizes the ultra-modernity (and relative cultural vacuum) of the metropolises of the late ’80s. What at first appears as banal and artificial is revealed by an unaffected curious gaze, paired with the new modalities of looking and recording exacerbated by video, as a valid currency in an ultramodern metropolitan pop reality. Tokyo Days, significantly, was part of his multimedia installation Zapping Zone (1990), in which several of Marker’s shorter works were displayed on an arrangement of TV monitors, inviting the viewer to visually “zap” by and let his gaze wander across the moving images on the screens. Thus, with the invisible presence of the filmmaker, subtle references to previous works and a personal mythology, the enigmatic Tokyo Days can also be read as a mosaic piece in the mapping of memory.
Nine Yamamoto & Aily Nash
35
Agenda September –– De Balie ––
Kleine-Gartmanplantsoen 10 www.debalie.nl 020 - 553 51 00 €8,50 / 6 / free with Cinevillepas Thu 15, 20.00 Cinema Egzotik (Koolhoven & Simons): Heroic History When the Raven Flies (1984) H. Gunnlaugsson, IS, 109 min The Wild Bunch (1969) Sam Peckinpah, USA, 134 min Thu 15, 20.30 Documentary + debate Restrepo (2010) Tim Hetherington & Sebastian Junger, USA, 93 min Sat 17, 14.00 & 20.15; Sun 18, 14.00 IDFA Summer Tour (documentaries) The Boy Mir – Ten Years in Afghanistan (2010) Phil Grabsky, UK, 95 min Steam of Life (2010) Joonas Berghäll & Mika Hotakainen, FI, 85 min Anne vliegt (2010) Catherine van Campen, NL, 21 min Jongens zijn we (2009) Tomas Kaan, NL, 16 min Mon 26, 20.00 Rite du Cinema, film + discussion led by Willem Jan Otten: Dead Man Walking (1995) Tim Robbins, USA, 122 mins
36
–– Filmhuis Cavia –– Van Hallstraat 52-I www.filmhuiscavia.nl 020 - 681 1419 All films start 20:30; €4
Thu 15 Kinema Nippon presents Nippon Re-Read I Fri 16 Kinema Nippon presents Nippon Re-Read II Fri 3, 22:00 Outdoor screening at Van Beuningenplein: Down by Law (1986) J. Jarmusch, USA, 107 min, 35mm
–– EYE ––
Vondelpark 3 www.eyefilm.nl 020 - 589 14 00 Thu 1 – Wed 7, 19:30 & 21:30 Mary and Max (2009) Adam Elliot, AU, 92 min Thu 8 – Wed 14, 21:30 Slacker (1991) Richard Linklater, USA, 97 min Tue 13, 19:30 Eraserhead (1976) David Lynch, USA, 85 min + lecture by Solange Leibovici
Fri 16 – Fri 30, 19:30 Eraserhead (1976) David Lynch, USA, 85 min Fri 16, 21:30 Stories, Documentary about the making of Eraserhead, 85 min Fri 16, 19:45; Sat 17 + Sun 18, 20:00; Mon 19 – Wed 21, 18:00 Hoy como ayer (2011) Bernie Ijdis, NL /AR, 70 min. In Spanish with Dutch subtitles Fri 2, 21:00 Ronald Simons presents Cinema Curioso: cult, pulp, blaxploitation, kungfu & moren Tue 13, 21:15 E*Cinema: Dogs, Cities, People (shorts by recently graduated film makers) Sun 18, 21:30; Tue 20, 17:00 Japanese Story (2003) Sue Brooks, AU, 110 min. In English Wed 21, 21:30; Thu 22, 17:00 Tôkyô sonata (2008) Kiyoshi Kurosawa, JP / HK, 120 min. In Japanese with Dutch subtitles Wed 21 + Sat 24, 17:00 Ja zuster, nee zuster (2002) Pieter Kramer, NL, in Dutch Thu 22, 21:30; Sun 25, 17:00 Down By Law (1986) Jim Jarmusch, USA, 107 min Fri 23, 17:00; Sat 24, 21:30 Beautiful People (1999) Jazmin Didar, UK, 107 min Fri 23, 21:30; Mon 26, 17:00 Mysterious Skin (2004) Gregg Araki, USA, 105 min Tue 27 + Wed 28, 17:00 Capturing the Friedmans (2003) Andrew Jarecki, USA, 107 min
Thu 29 + Fri 30, 17:00 Abel (1986) A. van Warmerdam, NL, 100 min. In Dutch Thu 29 + Fri 30, 21:15 The Man from London (2007) Béla Tarr, HU, 139 min. In French with English subtitles
Chinese films
Sat 17, 17:00; Mon 19, 21:30 The Blue Kite (1993) Tian Zhuangzhuang, CN/HK, 138 min. With Dutch subtitles Sat 17, 21:30 The Eye (2002) Danny Pang & Oxide Pang Chun, HK / SG, 99 min. With Dutch subtitles Sun 18, 17:00; Sun 25, 21:30 In the Mood for Love (2000) Wong Kai-wai, HK /CN / FR, 98 min. With Dutch subtitles Mon 19, 17:00; Tue 20, 21:30 What Time Is it There? (2001) Tsai Ming-liang, FR / TW, 116 min. With Dutch subtitles
Cinekid
Sat 3 + Sun 4 + Wed 7 + Sat 10 + Sun 11 + Wed 14, 13:30 Laban, het allerliefste spookje (2009) L. Persson, SWE, 43 min Sat 3 + Sun 4, +Wed 7, 15:15 The Kid (1921) Charles Chaplin, USA, 68 min Sat 10 + Sun 11 + Wed 14, 15:15 Mirakel in Valby (1989) Å. Sandgren, SWE / DE, 80 min Sat 17 + Sun 18 + Wed 21 + Sat 24 + Sun 25 + Wed 28, 13:30 De rode ballon (1956) + Crin Blanc, het witte paard (1953) Albert Lamorisse, FR, 47 + 34 min Sat 17 + Sun 18 + Wed 21, 15:15 Kirikou en de heks (1998) Michel Ocelot, FR / BE, 74 min Sat 24 + Sun 25 + Wed 28, 15:15 Mijn leven als hond (1985) Lasse Hallström, SWE 101 min
–– Het Ketelhuis –– Westergasfabriek www.ketelhuis.nl Pazzanistraat 4
Premieres
From 25 Aug Mama Yelena Renard & Nikolay Renard , RU, 71 mins From Thu 29 De Bende van Oss (2011) André van Duren, NL, 110 min. In Dutch
Vondelpark
(Café Vertigo) outdoor screenings Fri 2, 21:00 The Lost Boys (1987) Joel Schumacher, 97 min Fri 9, 21:00 Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis (2008) Dany Boon, FR, 106 min
Classics
Mon 5 Once Upon A Time in the West (1968) S. Leone, IT / USA, 175 min Mon 12 The Matrix (199) A. Wachowski, L. Wachowski, USA / AU, 136 min
–– Melkweg Cinema ––
Thai films
Thu 22 – Wed 28, 19:15 Last Life in the Universe (2003) Penk-ek Ratanaruang, 112 min. With English subtitles Mon 26, 21:30 My Girl (2003) various directors (365 Film Production), 110 min. With Dutch subtitles Wed 28 + Fri 30, 21:30 6IXTYNIN9 (1999) Pen-ek Ratanaruang, 115 min. With Dutch subtitles Tue 27 + Thu 29, 21:30 Syndromes and a Century (2006) Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 105 min. With Dutch subtitles
From Thu 1 El Bulli: Cooking in Progress (2011) Gereon Wetzel, DE, 108 min From Thu 8 Poupoupidou (2011) G. Hustache-Mathieu, FR, 102 min From Thu 22 Submarine (2010) Richard Ayoade, UK / USA, 97 min From Thu 29 Code Blue (2011) Urszula Antoniak, NL, 81 min. In Dutch and English
–– Kriterion –– Roetersstraat 170 www.kriterion.nl 020 - 623 17 08
Premieres
From 25 Aug Melancholia (2011) Lars von Trier, DK / SWE/ FR / DE, 136 min From Thu 1 The Future (2011) Miranda July, USA, 91 mins
Lijnbaansgracht 234a www.melkweg.nl 020 - 531 81 81 Start at 19.00, cost €7 / €6 unless stated otherwise
Wed 7 – Wed 28 Elio Petri – The Forgotten Maestro of Italian Cinema: Wed 7; Sun 18 La Proprieta non e Piu Un Furto (1973) Elio Petri, 103 min Thu 8, Mon 12 A Ciascuno Il Suo (1967) Elio Petri, 99 min Fri 9; Sat 10 Indagine Su Un Cittadino Al Sopra Di Ogni So Spetto (1969) Elio Petri, 112 min Sun 11, 15:00 (free) Elio Petri: Appunti Su Un Autore (2005) documentary by various directors, 112 min Tue 13; Thu 15 L’assassino (1961) Elio Petri, 105 min Fri 16; Sat 17 La Decima Vittima (1965) Elio Petri, 92 min Mon 19 La Classe Operaia Va In Paradiso (1971) Elio Petri, 125 min
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Tue 20, Mon 26 Buone Notizie (1979) Elio Petri, 110 min Wed 21 Cinematic Sounds: The Thief of Bagdad (1924) Accompanied by A. Marselje (violin) €10 / €9,00 Thu 22 I Giorni Contati (1962) Elio Petri, 90 min Fri 23; Sat 24 Todo Modo (1976) Elio Petri, 120 min Sun 25; Tue 27 Un Tranquillo Posto Di Campagna (1968) Elio Petri, 106 min
–– Cinecenter –– Lijnbaansgracht 236 www.cinecenter.nl 020 - 623 66 15
Premieres
From 25 Aug Melancholia (2011) Lars von Trier, 130 mins From Thu 1 The Future (2011) Miranda July, USA, 91 mins From Thu 15 Midnight In Paris (2011) Woody Allen, 94 mins
–– The Movies –– Haarlemmerdijk 161 www.themovies.nl 020 - 638 60 16
Premieres
From 25 Aug Melancholia (2011) Lars von Trier From 25 Aug La Prima Cosa Bella (2011) Paolo Virzi, IT From Thu 1 The Future (2011) Miranda July, USA, 91 mins From Thu 15 Midnight In Paris (2011) Woody Allen, 94 mins
Special
Thu 1 – Sun 4, 21.30; Sun 4, 12.30 Des hommes et des dieux (Of Gods and Men, 2010) Xavier Beauvois, FR, In French
–– De Nieuwe Anita –– Frederik Hendrikstraat 111 www.denieuweanita.nl
Mon 5 OSS117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (2006) Michel Hazanavicius, FR, 99 min Mon 12 Django (1966) Sergio Corbucci, IT / ES, 87 min Mon 19 Beau-père (1981) Bertrand Blier, FR ,123 min Mon 26 Head (1968) Bob Rafelson, USA, 86 min
–– OT301 Cinema ––
Overtoom 301 www.ot301.nl All films €4, foreign films with English subtitles
–– Central Library –– (OBA) Oosterdokskade 143
Tue 13, 14:00 Spoorloos (1988) George Sluizer, NL, 107 min
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Sun 18 Kinema Nippon: Excerpts from Vital Signals, early Japanese video work; Tokyo Days (1988) C. Marker
–– Pathé ––
www.pathe.nl Pathé De Munt: Vijzelstraat 15 Pathé Tuschinski: Reguliersbreestraat 26-34
Premieres
25 Aug Final Destination 5 (2011) Steven Quale, USA, 92 min 25 Aug Cowboys & Aliens (2011) Jon Favreau, USA, 118 min 25 Aug Melancholia (2011) Lars von Trier, DK / SWE / FR / DE, 136 min 25 Aug La Prima Cosa Bella (2010) Paolo Virzì, IT, 122 min Thu 1 Sept El Bulli: Cooking in Progress (2011) Gereon Wetzel, DE, 108 min Thu 1 Flypaper (2011) Rob Minkoff, USA Thu 1 The Devil’s Double (2011) L. Tamahori, BE, 109 min. In English Thu 1 The Ward (2010) John Carpenter, USA, 88 min Thu 8 Conan The Barbarian (2011) Marcus Nispel, 118 min Thu 8 Essential Killing (2010) Jerzy Skolimowski, PL / NO, 83 min Thu 8 Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011) Dan Fogelman, USA, 118 min Thu 8 Poupoupidou (2011) G. Hustache-Mathieu, FR 102 min Fri 9 Mere Brother Ki Dulhan (2011) Ali Abbas Zafar, IN Thu 15 Your Highness (2011) D. Gordon Green, USA, 102 min Thu 15 De President (2011) Erik de Bruyn, NL., In Dutch Thu 15 Apollo 18 (2011) Gonzalo López-Gallego, USA
Thu 15 Midnight in Paris (2011) Woody Allen, USA / ES 94 min Thu 22 Colombiana (2011) Olivier Megaton, USA / FR, 107 min Thu 22 Submarine (2010) Richard Ayoade, UK / USA, 97 min Thu 22 Jane Eyre (2011) Cary Fukunaga, UK/ USA,120 min Thu 22 Isabelle (2011) Ben Sombogaart NL, In Dutch Thu 22 Friends With Benefits (2011) Will Gluck, USA, 109 min Thu 22 Shark Night 3D (2011) David R. Ellis, USA Thu 22 Tropa de Elite 2: The Enemy Within (2010) José Padilha, BR, 116 min Thu 22 La guerre est declarée (2011) Valérie Donzelli, FR, 100 min Thu 29 De Bende van Oss (2011) A. van Duren, NL, 110 min. In Dutch Thu 29 Fright Night (2011) Craig Gillespie, UK/ USA, 106 min Thu 29 Bel Ami (2011) Declan Donnellan & Nick Ormerod, UK / FR / IT Thu 29 The Debt (2010) John Madden, USA, 114 min Thu 29 Code Blue (2011) Urszula Antoniak, NL, 81min. In Dutch and English Thu 29 Vallanzasca – Gli angeli del male (2010) Michele Placido, IT / FR / RO, 125 min
–– Rialto ––
Ceintuurbaan 338 www.rialtofilm.nl 020 – 676 87 00
Premieres
From Thu 1 The Future (2011) Miranda July, USA, 91 min From Thu 8 The Light Thief (2010) Aktan Arym Kubat, KG, 80 min. In Kyrgyz with Dutch subtitles From Thu 22 Tropa de elite 2 (2010) José Padilha, BR, 116 min. In Portuguese with Dutch subtitles From Thu 29 Porfirio (2011) Alejandro Landes, CO / UY / ES, 90 min. In Spanish with Dutch subtitles
Kleine Zaal 2 Linnaeusstraat www.tropentheater.nl All films €9 / €8
Wed 21, 20:30 Muziek in Beeld (music documentary and discussion) Gnawa Music – Body and Soul (2010) Frank Cassenti, FR / MA, 52 mins. With English subtitles Tue 27 ,14:00 & 20:30 The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (2007) Cao Hamburger, BR, 105 mins. In Portugese with Dutch subtitles Wed 28, 20:30 Goodbye Bafana (2007) B. August UK / BE / ZA, 118 min. In English
Specials
Sun 4 + Sun 11, 13.00; Wed 7 + 14, 19.00 Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993) Woody Allen, USA, 104 min Sun 18 + Sun 25, 13.00; Wed 21 + Wed 28, 19.00 A Woman Under The Influence (1974) J. Cassavetes, USA, 155 min Sat 17, 16.00 Dutch shorts by 2 graduates from the NFTVA film academy: Lieve Anne Marieke (2010) & Als ik jou niet had (2011) A. M. Graafmans, 13 min & 23 min Het Sintcomplot (2010) & Transhuman (2011) T. Nachbauer, 13 min & 21 min
Specials
Wed 7 Gay Night: Do Começo ao Fim (From Beginning to End, 2009) Aluisio Abranches, BR, 94 min Sun 11, 10:30 Manhattan (1979) Woody Allen, USA, 96 min. Tuschinski Fri 30 Mr. Nice (2010) Bernard Rose, UK, 121 min
–– Tropentheater ––
–– Studio/K ––
–– De Uitkijk –– Timorplein 62 www.studio-k.nu 020 6920422
Fri 2, 23:00 Café Cineville: Scream (1996) Wes Craven, USA, 103 min Sun 4 + Sun 11, 12:00 Annie Hall (1977) Woody Allen, USA, 93 mins. Fri 9, 23:00 Café Cineville: The Exorcist (1973) William Friedkin, USA, 132 min (director’s cut) Fri 16, 23:00 Café Cineville: Platoon (1986) or E.T. (1982) Fri 23, 23.00 Café Cineville: Trainspotting (1996) Danny Boyle, UK, 94 min
Timorplein 62 www.studio-k.nu 020 6920422
Fri 16, 13:00 + Mon 19, 14:00 La Vie Moderne (2008) Raymond Depardon, FR 88 min
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