REPERTORY CINEMA

Cinema is a storehouse, a silo....!

"I was constantly driving my car around the country, especially in the Southwest. "
-Fritz Lang

Above stills taken from Fritz Lang's 16mm film of Tombstone, Arizona. The University of Wisconsin website is carrying twenty clips of Lang's 16mm short films of the Southwest, U.S.A., taken in the years 1938-1953.

Only occasionally do these clips have the character of home movies and some, like the Tombstone clip, are very exacting; one could even speculate that they were intended as inserts for some unknown Lang film. The majority of clips are like landscape films; endless pans, occasional reverse shots...

Several links for more background on recent Straub/Huillet:

--2 beautiful dossiers from NEW FILMKRITIK on QUEI LORO INCONTRI, in German. Includes material on Pavese, Costa, Jean-Marie's "Testament" which he recited to a crowd at the Viennale '04 (a passage from Hölderlin's Der Tod des Empodokles), DALLA NUBE ALLA RESISTENZA...
http://filmkritik.antville.org/stories/1463920/
another HERE.
and HERE.

--Libération's report on the Straubs and Venice by Olivier Seguret, in French. It begins "Vive Lenin! It is Jean-Marie Straub who inspires this heartfelt cry to us."
http://www.liberation.fr/culture/cinema/204111.FR.php

--Essay on QUEI LORO INCONTRI by Carlos Adriano, in Portugeuse.
http://p.php.uol.com.br/tropico/html/textos/2758,1.shl

--A profile of a documentary film on Straub/Huillet's staging of QUEI LORO INCONTRI, at the Teatro Francesco di Bartolo in Tuscany, May 2005.
http://www.sulmonacinema.it/Filmestival2005/pagine/conc_incontri.html

_____________________________

THREE MESSAGES

Full english translation of Straub's "Three messages" to Venice. Translation, prologue and epilogue by Tag Gallagher (thanks to Craig Keller for also keeping me abreast) :

A new film by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Quei loro incontri ("Those encounters of theirs"), had its world premier a few days ago in competition at the Venice Film Festival. The movie's dialogue consists of the last five dialogues of Cesare Pavese's Dialoghi con Leucò ("Dialogues with Leuco"). And the jury (headed by Catherine Deneuve) had determined to give a special Lion to the Straubs “for invention of cinematic language in the ensemble of their work.” The Straubs, however, did not show up for their film or ceremony. Instead they sent a number of their actors who left Pisa at 4 a.m. to be in Venice on time for the film’s press conference, where Festival director Marco Müller announced Danièle was ill and that Jean-Marie had sent a statement, which Giovanna Daddi, one of the actors, read:

__________________________________________________________

Three messages
Jean-Marie Straub

First) It’s come too soon for our death - too late for our life.
Anyway, I thank Marco Müller for his courage. But what do I expect from it? Nothing. Nothing at all? Yes, a small revenge. A revenge "against the intrigues of the court," as is said in The Golden Coach. Against so many ruffians.

Why Pavese?
Because he wrote:
"Communist doesn’t mean just wanting to be. We’re too ignorant in this country. We need communists who aren’t ignorant, who don’t spoil the name."

Or again:
"If once it was enough to have a bonfire to make it rain, or to burn a vagabond on one to save a harvest, how many owners’ houses need to be burnt down, how many owners killed in the streets and squares, before the world turns just and we have our words to say?"

Pavese has the bastard say: "The other day I passed by the Mora. The pine tree by the gate’s not there anymore." Replies Nuto: "The bookkeeper had it cut down -- Nicoletto, that ignorant man. He had it cut down because the tramps would stop in its shade and beg, you understand…"
Again Nuto, elsewhere:
"Given the life he leads, I can’t call him a poor fool, as if it would do any good… First, the government should burn up all the money and the people who defend it."

Best wishes.

Second) I have been:
1. at the Venice Festival (as journalist) in 1954, I chose to write on three films:
SANSHO DAYU -
EL RIO Y LA MUERTE -
REAR WINDOW.
No prizes!
2. At the Festival (short films) in 1963 with my first film MACHORKA-MUFF(‘62): no prize.
3. At the Festival in ‘66 with NICHT VERSöHNT (Not Reconciled, 1965). Projection paid for by Godard!
4. At the Festival with CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH !
5. At Venice for retrospective in 1975 (wanted by Gambetti) of all our films up to MOSES AND ARON (included), 1974.
At the Festival of Cinematographic Art with Quei loro incontri for A Roaring Lion.

Third) Besides I wouldn’t be able to be festive in a festival where there are so many public and private police looking for a terrorist - I am the terrorist, and I tell you, paraphrasing Franco Fortini: so long as there’s American imperialistic capitalism, there’ll never be enough terrorists in the world.
______________________________________________________________


Marco Müller then closed the Press Conference without any of the actors getting a chance to say a word. (Straub's citations are from Pavese's La luna e i falò [The moon and the bonfires], which the Straubs filmed in 1979 as part of Dalla nube alla Resistenza [From the cloud to the Resistance].)

Straub’s messages caused a furor at the Festival and in the Italian press -- but have been virtually unreported outside of Italy. Was an award still in order? The jury met again. At least one jury member, American Cameron Crowe, objected it was not opportune, on the eve of the anniversary of 9/11, but consented on an understanding that the Festival would "distance" itself from Straub's "anti-American" message. (Apparently it's anti-American to oppose imperialism.)

The award was given but the "distance" was not announced -- thank goodness! We have nothing to fear from the world being filled with "terrorists" such as Straub defines himself -- people making movies like Straub. But we have everything to fear from neo-McCarthyites who seek to hinge artistic recognition on an endorsement of imperialism.

-Tag Gallagher

"I do it because some of the younger people must know..." -Huillet

--facsimilies of Jean-Marie Straub's "Three Messages" to the Venice film festival, in his absence. The center handwritten sheet is translated in my previous post below. A complete english translation will be posted or linked to shortly. As for actual english language reportage, critique, or analysis of the film itself (QUEI LORO INCONTRI aka The Meetings), we may have to wait some time for that. This is the only english report on the film that I know of, by Reuters; blissfully ignorant and somewhat ostracizing.

The last typewritten sheet above deals with "Why Pavese?" (QUEI is based on the last five dialogues of Pavese's Dialogues with Leuco) and, like the films of Straub/Huillet, consists of small sections of text that express singular outrage (Pavese was perhaps even more singular and alone than the Straubs in his communism) at "how the world goes", in the words of one member of the cast. Nothing is "little" in what the Straubs do, from the equality of things in their films, from shot to shot, to a "little" passage in Pavese tossed at the immodest atmosphere of a film festival (the cutting down of a pine tree because tramps were getting shade and begging there, quoted in the 3rd message above) or Vittorini (a dialogue on ricotta in their film OPERAI, CONTADINI) -- feeling as a weapon.

The urgent handwritten note or dedication is integral to Straub/Huillet. In fact they have a long history of side-propagation at festivals and public events. Handing out provocative leaflets (to get MACHORKA-MUFF seen against the wishes of it's producers), passing notes, verbally dedicating a film to the Vietcong at a certain screening ("that morning we saw in the newspapers that the bombing of Hanoi had begun again, and we said simply, at that moment, showing the film to those people, that the film was dedicated to the Vietcong."), tacking up flyers saying "This film was turned down by the Selection Committee of the Cannes festival" (says Huillet, "If I feel I must say this about the Cannes festival, it's not out of revenge or to rock the boat in any way. It won't rock anything at all; I do it because some of the younger people must know...")

And because nothing is little and the letter is handwritten, or typewritten, rather than word processed, and because the Straubs began their very first film MACHORKA-MUFF with a handwritten note ("No story; a visual, abstract dream") and have since filmed many other handwritten notes -- dedications to Holger Meins (who died on a hunger strike in prison as a suspected Red Army Faction terrorist), or to "Barnabé the cat"... for the connection between everyday life, political action and cinema...for all that, I post these facsimilies.

(Thanks to Klaus Volkmer for info and documents)

"I would not be able to celebrate in a festival where there are so much public and private police looking for a terrorist. I am that terrorist. To paraphrase Franco Fortini: as long as American imperialistic capitalism exists, there won't be enough terrorists in the world. All the best, Jean-Marie".

Message from Jean-Marie Straub to the Venice Film Festival, 6 September 2006

"D'altronde non potrei festeggiare in un festival dove c'è tanta polizia pubblica e privata alla ricerca di un terrorista - il terrorista sono io, e vi dico, parafrasando Franco Fortini: finché ci sarà il capitalismo imperialistico americano, non ci saranno mai abbastanza terroristi nel mondo."

"in asmuch as the Vendôme column is a monument devoid of all artistic value, tending to perpetuate by its expression the ideas of war and conquest of the past imperial dynasty, which are reproved by a republican nation's sentiment, citizen Courbet expresses the wish that the National Defense government will authorise him to disassemble this column."

Gustav Courbet, 1871

(later, the Paris Commune took a vote and dismantled the column)

IN MEMORIAM SOUND MOVIES (for Richard Modiano)

(Above once was embedded a sound clip of the immigrant's song from Renoir's TONI [1935]. The sound clip host went out of business.)

1935

HERE FORMERLY RESIDED THE TEXT OF PEDRO COSTA'S TOKYO SEMINAR OF 2004 "A Closed Door That Leaves Us Guessing"

HERE'S WHERE THE TEXT RESIDES NOW:

http://www.rouge.com.au/10/costa_seminar.html

--all handshakes,
Andy R.

TWO SIDES TO EVERY STORY (1974,Michael Snow)
(one of the finest uses of youtube I've yet seen)

Une visite au Louvre (2004, Straub/Huillet)

(dead link)

I know of one incident wherein an opportunist selling Straub/Huillet bootlegs on ebay received a hand-written letter from the Straubs telling him to STOP NOW (he instantly tried to sell the note!). I also know that the Straubs held their film CEZANNE back from being subtitled so as to preserve the integrity of the paintings. My posting of this clip goes against the Straubs presumed wishes on both these counts.

I don't quite understand the intention of posting the first 7 minutes of a film on youtube. And, as if to really test the idea's utility, the same man who posted the first 7 minutes of Une visite au Louvre has also posted the first 14 minutes of OUT-1 (759 minutes to go)! At 7 min intervals ("parts") that would be 109 "parts". Paul Gallagher, the good fellow who posted these, has well over 100 clips posted on Youtube, many worth checking out (Foucault conversation with Chomsky, Dans le noir de temps by Godard, etc).

I post it here because it brought me so much pleasure to see a bit of this film again. Perhaps it's because it reminds me of sitting in a packed house in Vienna to watch two sucessive versions of it in a row (I counted 3 differences between the 2 versions: 1) a variation in the pan across the Louvre exterior, 2) a variation on an overhead shot of the Seine later in the film, and 3) a minutely but distinctly varied voice-over intonation)...

Even in seven minutes I think you can see some of the eventfulness of a single Straub/Huillet shot. The pan across the Seine and Louvre exterior has the quality of an act; an action taken, not simply taken in. You can see the level of minutae on which the Straubs are working.

In any case, listen to Cezanne (the voice-over):

"Look at that...the Victoire de Samothrace. She's an idea, she's a whole people, a heroic movement in the life of a people, yet the fabric clings to her legs, her wings flutter, her breasts swell. I don't need to see her head to imagine her look, because all the blood which beats, circulates, sings in her legs, her hips, throughout her body, has passed in torrents into my brain and has entered my heart. When the head is gone, so what, the marble has bled...While up there in the primitives, you can chop the necks of all those little martyrs with the executioner's sword and there's a little vermilion, a few drops of blood...They have already flown bloodless up to God. Souls can't be painted. And here, Victory's wings, you don't even see them, I don't see them anymore. We don't think about them anymore, the seem so natural. Her body doesn't need them to be able to fly away in full triumph. It has elan...Whereas the haloes of the virgins and saints surrounding Christ, one sees only them. They impose themselves on us. They embarrass me. What do you want? You can't paint souls. You paint bodies, and when bodies are well painted, then, damn it, the soul, if they have one, the soul radiates and shows through from everywhere.

(...) but I know nothing colder than his (David's) Marat! What a petty hero! A man who had been his friend, who had just been assasinated, whom he should have glorified for all of Paris, for all of France, for all posterity. Did he just toss that sheet over him and wash him off in his bathtub? He was thinking about what people would say about the painter and not what they would think about Marat. It's a bad painting. And he had the cadaver right in front of his eyes!".

This film is Huillet/Straub's blast against a certain alienatation from art -- painting -- and from the spirit of nature and life that inspired the paintings (which the Museum isn't helping). And since every Straub film is about the class struggle in some way (even if by implying that that which gets in the way of lived nature must be done away with) it reminds me of an incident I once read about:

In 1920, a Kapp (fascist) putsch sparked riots in Dresden and while the people of Dresden were fighting to defend democracy a stray bullet hit a Rubens painting in the Zwinger museum. Oskar Kokoschka issued a public statement in which he suggested, in all seriousness, that the fighting be moved out onto the heath outside of town or even replaced by single combat between political leaders of opposing camps. George Grosz, Spartacist as he was at the time, said:

"(we're) delighted that bullets flew into galleries and palaces, into Rubens masterpieces, and not into the houses of the poor. Workers! Every time that the artist paints something that the bourgeois can cling to and that dazzles you with illusions of beauty and happiness, that artist is strengthening the bourgeoisie and sabotaging your class consciousness, your will to power."

Everything must be kept in mind.

Quei loro incontri - Straub/Huillet 2006

"AFTER WORK" 1919-1920 George Grosz

Shocked by the arrogance and brutality of the current US-backed Israeli assault on Lebanon, myself and Gabe Klinger have hammered out a screening of two films by Lebanese filmmakers whose work is of great interest. This Chicago screening is in solidarity with the Lebanese civilian population and all proceeds will go to medical and political organizations in need.

Wael Nourredine's film CA SERA BEAU (FROM BEYROUTH WITH LOVE, 2005) is part of the program and paints a complex, radically discordant view of Hariri's Beirut. What some call a brief period of peace after 30 years of civil war was completely shattered in July by massive Israeli strikes. But Wael's film is anything but sanguine about this period. This Beirut is the one fatigued by war's memory,with constant military presence, Starbucks, surveillance, drug-use, apathy, suicide, rage, picture postcards and religion. The film opens with the still burning wreckage of a car-bomb that killed the western-friendly Hariri and reflects the dissatisfaction of a society at war with intruding interests.

here is the press release for the screening:

RECENT FILM AND VIDEO WORKS FROM LEBANON - A screening to benefit Lebanese civilians in need of food, shelter and medical supplies. 

The program will consist of: 

"Ça cera beau. From Beirut with Love" by Waël Noureddine (30', 2005, Lebanon/France) U.S. Premiere. Mutilated, the city of Beirut shows its wounds from years of war. The architecture, along with the many bullet-holed walls and ruined buildings, affects the psychological health of its inhabitants. The strong military presence only adds to this void, which leaves young people to choose between drugs, the army, or religion. + a video interview with Noureddine (3') 

"Untitled Part 3b: (As If) Beauty Never Ends" by Jayce Salloum(11'22, 2003, Lebanon/Canada) Beauty persists even in the most desperate conditions: this video essay superimposes images of orchids in bloom over refugee camp conditions after the Sabra and Shatilla massacre in 1982. + a video introduction by/with Salloum (3')
The entire program will run approximately one hour. Suggested admission: $5.00. 

Two screening dates:FRIDAY, AUGUST 18 at 7:30 PM and SATURDAY, AUGUST 19 at 4:00 PM 

Location: Columbia College Ludington Building 1104 South Wabash Avenue Third Floor Auditorium (Room 302)

Proceeds go directly to the Lebanese Red Cross, Hamoud Hospital in South Lebanon, and Samidoun Coalition, which runs the Sanayeh Relief Center in Beirut (see websites below).

For more information, contact Gabe Klinger at gabe.klinger@sbcglobal.net or kinoslang@hotmail.com

Thank you for your support.

 ----- For details about the beneficiaries, please consult the websites of these organizations: 
Hamoud Hospital: http://www.hammoudhospital.com/war2006/relief.html Lebanese Red Cross: http://www.dm.net.lb/redcross/index.html http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/siteeng0.nsf/iwpList2/Help_the_ICRC? OpenDocument Samidoun: http://www.samidoun.org

From Tom Sutpen: "Today, were he still among us, would have been the 95th birthday of American Cinema's true poet of human failing, Nicholas Ray. We here at If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger . . . would like all of our visitors to mark the occasion by carving out a few errant moments to reflect on a period when this neck of the medium was able to demonstrate a degree of compassion for our panoply of weakness, and not, as they do in this hour, simply cash in on it with bottomless contempt."

Thinking of Ray today brings a lump to my throat. When people cry on television all you see is the fangs of the camera and their competitors.But when Farley Granger leaves Cathy O'Donnell's arms for one last heist, and when Cathy O'Donnell looks up from Granger's corpse surrounded by cops (the cameras today would be trained on the cops) you don't see fangs, you see frail human souls. Even when there's blood, like in the bathtub of PARTY GIRL, or on the igloo wall of SAVAGE INNOCENTS, there is gravity and grace, there is thought; there were hearts that pumped that blood through those bodies, and we immediately think of that -- not the pseudo-scientific hustlers swarming the scene (CSI).

He filmed storms, always human, plus: fine sand, dust, snow, humidity and swamps, brisk asphalt cities, tired domestic air, architecture, culture, fabrics, hypocrisy, rock 'n roll...

And who else inserted a shot of a bird struggling human ways like he? Who cared to?

THE TROUBLEMAKERS

by Gilles Deleuze


Why would the Palestinians be “valid negotiators” since they don’t have a country? Why would they have a country, since theirs has been taken? They have never been given any other choice than to surrender unconditionally. They have been offered only death. In the war that opposes them to Israel, Israel’s actions are considered legitimate reprisals (even if they appear disproportionate), while those of the Palestinians are treated exclusively as terrorist crimes. And an Arab death has neither the same value nor the same weight as an Israeli death.

Since 1969 Israel has continuously bombed and shelled South Lebanon. Israel explicitly recognized that the recent invasion of that country was not a reprisal for the Tel Aviv commando action (thirty thousand soldiers against eleven terrorists), but the premeditated, crowning moment of a whole series of operations whose initiative Israel reserved to itself. For a “final solution” to the Palestinian problem, Israel can count on the almost unanimous complicity of other states, with a variety of nuances and restrictions. The Palestinians, people with neither land nor state, are seen as obstacles by everyone. No matter how many weapons and how much money they have received from certain countries, they know what they’re saying when they declare that they are absolutely alone.

The Palestinian combatants also say that they have just won a certain victory. They had left only resistance groups in South Lebanon, groups which seem to have held up quite well. On the other hand, the Israeli invasion struck blindly at Palestinian refugees, Lebanese peasants, all the poor agricultural people. The destruction of villages and cities, massacres of civilians have been confirmed; the use of cluster bombs [bombes à billes] has been reported in several quarters. For several years this South Lebanese populace has been continuously fleeing and returning, in perpetual exodus, under Israeli blows that cannot very clearly be distinguished from terrorist acts. The current escalation has driven two hundred thousand people onto the roads without shelter. The state of Israel is applying to South Lebanon the method that proved itself in Galilee and elsewhere in 1948: it is “palestining” South Lebanon.

The Palestinian combatants are drawn from the refugees. Israel claims to defeat the combatants only by turning thousand of others into refugees, among whom new combatants will be born.

It’s not only our relations with Lebanon that make us say that the state of Israel is murdering a fragile and complex country. There is also another aspect. The Israel-Palestine model is determinant in current problems of terrorism, even in Europe. The worldwide understanding among states and the organization of a world police force with worldwide jurisdiction, currently under way, necessarily lead to an expansion in which more and more people are classified as virtual “terrorists.” We find ourselves in a situation analogous to that of the Spanish Civil War, when Spain served as the laboratory and experimentation for a still more terrible future.

Today, the state of Israel leads the experimentation. It is establishing a model of repression that will be converted in other countries, adapted by other countries. There is a great deal of continuity in its politics. Israel has always considered that the UN resolutions which verbally condemned it in fact proved it right. It transformed the invitation to withdraw from the occupied territories into the duty to establish colonies there. Currently it considers the deployment of the international force in South Lebanon an excellent idea…on the condition that this force is ordered to transform the region into a surveillance zone or a controlled desert. It’s an odd kind of blackmail, which the whole world will give up only if there is sufficient pressure to ensure that the Palestinians are finally recognized for what they are, “valid negotiators,” since they are in a state of war for which they are most certainly not responsible.

Translated by Timothy S. Murphy
(originally published in Le Monde, April 7, 1978)

stills of Kuhle Wampe (Dudow/Brecht, 1932, above), Le Pont du nord (Rivette, 1982, below), Puissance de la parole (Godard, 1988, below below)...thinking of this...