Jul 29, 2009

2nd August 2009; Truffaut's 400 BLOWS


400 BLOWS
A film by François Truffaut
Country : france
Year : 1959
Runtime:99 min
French with English subtitles
2nd August 2009 ; 5.45 pm
Ashwin Hospital Auditorium
Call 94430 39630
http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.com/

I demand that a film express either the joy of making cinema or the agony of
making cinema. I am not at all interested in anything in between. –

François Truffaut

“The 400 Blows,” from 1959, is still the best; indeed, time has fortified this sharp, slender account of a misbegotten boyhood into one of the unassailable monuments of French cinema.
Francois Truffaut's "The 400 Blows" (1959) is one of the most intensely touching stories ever made about a young adolescent. Inspired by Truffaut's own early life, it shows a resourceful boy growing up in Paris and apparently dashing headlong into a life of crime. Adults see him as a troublemaker.

The title, 'Les quatre cent coups' is literally translated as The 400 Blows; however, since it's an idiom, a direct translation is imperfect. The phrase loosely means "Raising Hell", and, while that's not an English interpretation, it's a reasonable approximation.
We are allowed to share some of his private moments, as when he lights a candle before a little shrine to Balzac in his bedroom. The film's famous final shot, a zoom in to a freeze frame, shows him looking directly into the camera. He has just run away from a house of detention, and is on the beach, caught between land and water, between past and future. It is the first time he has seen the sea.
Antoine Doinel was played by Jean-Pierre Leaud, who has a kind of solemn detachment, as if his heart had suffered obscure wounds long before the film began. This was the first in a long collaboration between actor and director.
It is said that this film, which M. Truffaut has written, directed and produced, is autobiographical. That may well explain the feeling of intimate occurrence that is packed into all its candid scenes. From the introductory sequence, which takes the viewer in an automobile through middle-class quarters of Paris in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, while a curiously rollicking yet plaintive musical score is played, one gets a profound impression of being personally involved—a hard-by observer, if not participant, in the small joys and sorrows of the boy.



Truffaut was cinema

François Roland Truffaut was born in Paris on 6 February, 1932, son of Jeanine de Monferrand and an unknown father. His mother's future husband took him on as an adopted son and gave him his surname. But that was all. From birth the boy was placed in the hands of a nanny, such was the family's shame of having a single mother. From this stranger's hands he was rescued by his maternal grandmother, who took him to live at her house. His grandfather imposed discipline relieved only by the literary and musical predisposition of his grandmother, who taught the boy to love books. Upon her death François, aged ten, moved in with his parents for the first time.

His first contact with cinema occurred at eight years of age. The film was Paradis perdu (1939) by Abel Gance. Truffaut went to the movies secretly, without paying, truant from school, and taking advantage of every moment in which he was alone. At fourteen, after successively abandoning several schools, he decided to be self-taught. Truffaut tried to see three films a day and to read three books a week. A regular at the Techniciens du film meetings, his 'great school' was the Cinémathèque that Henri Langlois had reopened in December 1944. In October 1948 he himself created a film club, Cercle cinémanie, using money obtained from working in a grocery store. He had to steal a typewriter from his father's office to cover the cost of the first screenings, which took place on Sundays in a rented theatre.

In April 1950 he began working as a journalist at Elle magazine. He spent the following two years trying to break from military ranks and was imprisoned for attempting to desert. Freedom came about in February 1952.

Over the next few years, Truffaut became a critic (and later editor) at Cahiers. He was notorious for being brutal and unforgiving in his reviews, especially his take on French cinema of the day. He was called "The Gravedigger of French Cinema" and was even banned from the Cannes Film Festival in 1958. He developed one of the most influential theories of cinema itself, the auteur theory.

After having been a critic, Truffaut decided to make films of his own. He started out with the short film Une Visite in 1955 and followed that up with Les Mistons in 1957. After seeing Orson Welles' Touch of Evil at the Expo 58, he was inspired to make his feature film debut Les Quatre Cent Coups (The 400 Blows). Rest was history.

Truffaut was the most popular and successful French film director ever. Truffaut passed away at an early age of fifty two, in the year 1984. Truffaut was a passionate and sensitive man, and a committed and independent artist. A director who, more than loving cinema, represented it. He was cinema.

(Compiled from Senses of Cinema & Wikipedia)

Jul 23, 2009

26th July 2009 ; Documentaries on Art - 6 How Art Made the World


Documentaries on Art - 6


HOW ART MADE THE WORLD
Documentary presented by
Nigel Spivey
26th July 2009 ; 5.45 pm
Ashwin Hospital Auditorium
Call : 97904 57568


THE EPIC STORY OF HOW HUMANS MADE ART
AND HOW ART MADE US HUMAN

Konangal will be screening first two episodes of the six parts documentary ‘How Art Made the World’ this Sunday.

As part of BBC’s agenda to generate public awareness about art history's relevance to contemporary culture, the five parts documentary series How Art Made the World is a landmark. Host Dr. Nigel Spivey, a Classical Archaeology professor from Cambridge, asserts, over five episodes, that not only have cultures thrived according to their abilities to communicate visually, but also that, through art, we can historically trace human needs and desires because our minds drive us to create images.

Embark on a thrilling journey through time and five continents to the heart of creativity. Fusing social history, politics, science, nature, archaeology and religion, this landmark series unravels a universal mystery - why the world around us looks like it does. Modern-day mysteries are answered by journeying back to the beginning of civilisation via some of the most amazing man-made creations in the world.
A strong narrative thread drives through each film as exciting scientific demonstrations reveal how our minds, and those of our ancient ancestors, relate to art. Beautiful, surprising, compelling and above all, relevant, with a visual ambition worthy of its epic subject-matter, this awe-inspiring adventure will appeal not only to art lovers, but to anyone who has ever wondered about humanity’s place in the world.

The first two episodes combine art history with cognitive science and neurobiology, archaeology, human evolution, and anthropology—interdisciplinary inquiry at its best. Dr. Nigel Spivey narrates, easily moving back and forth between various disciplines to explain the human need for and ability to create representation in two-dimensional images and three-dimensional sculpture. The questions asked move beyond art criticism to explore why humans create certain kinds of images and why certain kinds of representations seem to produce heightened pleasure in our consumption of art.





Episode 1

More Human Than Human

One image dominates our contemporary world above all others: the human body. ‘How Art Made the World’ travels from the modern world of advertising to the temples of classical Greece and the tombs of ancient Egypt to solve the mystery of why humans surround themselves with images of the body that are so unrealistic.

The story, which begins in Austria with the discovery of the Venus of Willendorf, a tiny statue with greatly exaggerated female features, created some 25,000 years ago, chronicles our obsession with the "body beautiful" over the centuries.Episode 2

The Day Pictures Were Born

The discovery of prehistoric cave paintings in the last century led to the shocking realisation that humans have been creating art for over 30,000 years. Episode two reveals how the very first pictures ever made were created, and how images may have triggered the greatest change in human history.

"The Day Pictures Were Born" studies the earliest known cave paintings and the theories behind their creation. Long believed to be simply portraits of hunters' prey, new clues indicate this to not be entirely true. The series follows a lead that claims this art to be depictions of hallucinations experienced during tribal rituals.

Jul 13, 2009

19th July 2009; Satyajit Ray's Aparajito

Aparajito
A film by Satyajit Ray
Year : 1956
Run time: 110 min
Bengali with English sub titles
19th July 2009 ; 5.45 pm
Ashwin Hospital Auditorium
Call: 94430 39630
http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.com/

Aparajito, the middle installment of legendary film maker Satyajit Ray's Apu Trilogy, follows his 1955 debut, Pather Panchali, and precedes 1959's The World of Apu. Although Pather Panchali is a study of near-perfect cinematic style and exquisite emotional insight, Aparajito lifts Ray's talents to new levels.
The film is basically about Apu growing up and growing away from his mother. The highlight of the film is the mother-son relationship and conflict. The characterization of Apu and mother are a treat. Karuna Banerjee gives a brilliant performance as Sarbajaya.
As usual, the film is devoid of excesses both in form and content. In the early sequences of Aparajito, Ray paints a memorable picture of the city and its culture -- Banaras is a place where the ordinary and the majestic blend seamlessly together. Shots of the sacred steps and the men immersing themselves in the river are among the movie's most lasting images.

Apu, now sixteen, wins a scholarship and departs for Calcutta, leaving her alone. It breaks Sarbajaya's heart, but she relents. Her health is failing, and the loneliness in the village takes its toll.
Engulfed in city life - studying during the day and working in a printing press at night to pay for his expenses - Apu grows away from his mother. His visits get shorter as the time passes. This emotional distance unnoticed by the growing Apu, hurts Sarbajaya deeply. She waits silently for her son's visit as her illness accelerates and falls into a depression.
Aparajito was filmed forty years ago, yet the themes and emotions embedded in the narrative are strikingly relevant to modern society (thus explaining why it is called a "timeless classic"). While watching this film, who doesn't nod knowingly when Sarbojaya carefully packs Apu's suitcase before his trip, adding a jar of home made butter and pleading with him to write soon? And how familiar is it when mother and son meet after a long separation, and her first comment is that he has grown taller and doesn't appear to be eating well? One aspect of Ray's mastery is that, even though he creates unique worlds for his stories, the films' basic, universal truths allow them to speak directly to the hearts of each viewer.
(Source – Internet)

Satyajit Ray was born in Calcutta into an exceptionally talented family who were prominent in Bengali arts and letters. His father died when he was an infant and his mother and her younger brother's family brought him up. After graduating from Presidency College, Calcutta, in 1940, he studied art at Rabindranath Tagore's University in Shantiniketan, West Bengal. He took up commercial advertising and he also designed covers and illustrated books brought out by Signet Press. One of these books was an edition of Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhya's novel, Pather Panchali, which was to become his first film. In 1947 Ray established the Calcutta Film Society. During a six month trip to Europe in 1950, he managed to see 100 films, including Vittorio De Sica's Ladri di Biciclette (1948), which greatly inspired him. He returned convinced that it was possible to make realist cinema and with an amateur crew he endeavoured to prove this to the world.

In 1955, after incredible financial hardship (shooting on the film stopped for over a year) his adaptation of Pather Panchali (Song of the Little Road) was completed. Prior to the 1956 Cannes Festival, Indian Cinema was relatively unknown in the West, just as Japanese cinema had been prior to Kurosawa's Rashomon (1950). However, with Pather Panchali, Satyajit Ray suddenly assumed great importance. The film went on to win numerous awards abroad including Best Human Document at Cannes. Pather Panchali's success launched an extraordinary international film career for Ray.

A prolific filmmaker, during his lifetime Ray directed 36 films, comprising of features, documentaries and short stories. These include the renowned Apu trilogy (Pather Panchali, Aparajito [1956] and Apur Sansar [1959]), Jalsaghar (1958), Postmaster (1961), Charulata (1964), Days and Nights in the Forest (1969) and Pikoo (1980) along with a host of his lesser known works which themselves stand up as fine examples of story telling. His films encompass a diversity of moods, techniques, and genres: comedy, satire, fantasy and tragedy. Usually he made films in a realist mode, but he also experimented with surrealism and fantasy.
Source : www.sensesofcinema.com

Jul 9, 2009

12th July 2009; Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love

In the Mood for Love
A film by Wong Kar-wai
Year:2000
Country: Hongkong
Cantonese with English subtitles
Run time : 98 min
12th July 2009; 5.45 pm
Ashwin Hospital Auditorium
Call : 94430 39630
http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.com/

With two interviews with Wong Kar-wai :
1.
Cinema Lessons -Interview at Cannes festival
2. Wong Kar-wai on In the Mood for Love

His name is Mr. Chow (Tony Leung Chiu-wai). Hers is Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk). In the crowded Hong Kong of 1962, they have rented rooms in apartments next to each other. They are not poor; he's a newspaper reporter, she's an executive assistant, but there is no space in the crowded city and little room for secrets.
In the Mood for Love is a lush story of unrequited love that looks the way its songs sound. Many of them are by Nat King Cole. This is the kind of story that could be remade by Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan, although in the Hollywood version, there'd be a happy ending. Instead of asking us to identify with this couple, as an American film would, Wong asks us to empathize with them; that is a higher and more complex assignment, with greater rewards.
The sense of history and nostalgia that pervades In the Mood for Love is a signature of Wong’s style and reminiscent of filmmakers such as Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard and Krzysztof Kieslowski. With history and nostalgia, however, come change and the notion of ‘before’ and ‘after’. The protagonists are caught in a constantly evolving space where time can stand still or be momentarily captured, but will eventually succumb to expiration.
Hong Kong provides the ideal setting for this exposition of human contact within a buzzing cosmopolitan city that is both vibrant and brash. Wong successfully grants introspective gazes at his characters (usually in sets of twos), exploring their insecurities, personal motives and ultimately the random nature of relationships.
The movie is physically lush. The deep colors of film noir saturate the scenes: Reds, yellows, browns, deep shadows. One scene opens with only a coil of cigarette smoke, and then reveals its characters. In the hallway outside the two apartments, the camera slides back and forth, emphasizing not their nearness but that there are two apartments, not one.
Using graceful slow motion sequences and nostalgic music, Wong Kar-wai juxtaposes the romanticism of a lost era with the unrequited longing of an impossible relationship in In the Mood for Love. Wong's highly stylized camerawork serves as a visual foil to the chaos of the meticulously structured mise-en-scene: the crowded living conditions, overly familiar neighbors, and imposing, uninvited guests reflect the claustrophobic, intrusive nature of traditional society.
(Source- Internet)


Wong Kar-wai

Wong Kar-wai is undeniably an auteur of striking and salient cinema, standing apart from much mainstream Hong Kong cinema. Wong belongs to the mid-1980s Second New Wave of Hong Kong filmmakers who continued to develop the innovative and fresh aesthetic initiated by the original New Wave. The Second Wave, which includes directors such as Eddie Fong, Stanley Kwan and Clara Law,

After obtaining a diploma in graphic design from the Hong Kong Polytechnic School in 1980, Wong become a television production assistant. Following work on several television drama series, he began working as a scriptwriter for television and then later for films. Wong’s directorial debut As Tears Go By (1988) marked his unique visual style and was screened as part of the ‘Critics’ Week’ at the 1989 Cannes International Film Festival. Wong’s next film Days of Being Wild, which featured several of Hong Kong’s beautiful and popular young stars, won five Hong Kong Film Awards, including Best Film and Best Director. His following effort, Ashes of Time (1994), varied greatly in genre, successfully subverting the conventions of the period martial-arts drama. During a break in the post-production of Ashes of Time, Wong made Chungking Express (1994), which later became a cult hit. Following this came Fallen Angels, which received considerable critical success when it was premiered at the 1995 Toronto Film Festival. In 1997, Happy Together premiered at the Cannes Film Festival where it garnered a Best Director Award for Wong. In 2000, Wong’s In The Mood For Love was also awarded Cannes accolades, including Best Actor for Tony Leung Chiu-wai and the Technical Prize.

With In the Mood for Love, the focus centres on the jilted figures of Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) and Su Li-zhen (Maggie Cheung Man-yuk). Their isolation and longing is transformed into a melange of intersecting paths and poignantly shared moments in which the possibility of a soulful connection is entertained. Again, Wong’s arbitrary rhetoric finds expression in the poetic and brightly drenched tones of his unique filmic aesthetic, and his much-loved themes of loneliness, isolation, and longing rise to the surface. However, whilst In the Mood for Love incorporates all of his usual stylistic and thematic traits, it also ascends to a new level where the cultural significance of Wong’s setting is explored in greater detail.
(Source - Internet)