The True Gen

Cinema Guild - An Online Film Society (Blogsite)

2012-02-11T13:11:00.006-05:00

Cinema Guild - An Online Film Society is a blogsite devoted to presenting online films organized by director and other film-related topics. Follow this link to visit the site:

http://cinema-guild.blogspot.com/

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Roland Petit

2012-02-09T21:36:00.005-05:00

Roland Petit and his wife Zizi Jeanmarie

Roland Petit (1924-2011) was a ballet choreographer who worked on stage and in films.

Read more about him here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Petit

Carmen (1949):

[follow all 3 parts from the first here]:

Hans Christian Andersen (1952) [excerpt]:

Black Tights (1960) [excepts]:

[Follow all 2 parts of Carmen from the first here]:

Notre-Dame de Paris (1965) [with music composed by Maurice Jarre]:

[Follow all 6 parts from the first here]:

Le Jeune Homme et La Mort (1966):

[Another version, follow all 2 parts from the first here]:

Pink Floyd Ballet (1972):

[Another version]:

Les Intermittences du Couer-Proust Remembered (1974) [excerpt]:

L'Arlesienne (1974):

[follow all 6 parts from the first here]:

La Chauve-Souris (1979) [excerpts]:

[Follow all 2 parts from the first here]:

The Blue Angel (1985) [with music composed by Marius Constant]:

La Diable Amoureux (1989) [excerpts] [with music composed by Gabriel Yared]:

[Follow all 2 parts from the first here]:

Clavigo (1999) [excerpts] [with music composed by Gabriel Yared]:

[Follow all 2 parts of this excerpt from the first here]:

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Sisters

2012-02-02T13:55:00.003-05:00

Sisters (1973) is a film written and directed by Brian De Palma that stars Margot Kidder and Jennifer Salt and is scored by Bernard Herrmann. It's a psychological thriller, not without aspects of satire, that uses techniques like split-screen effects in highly-inventive ways.

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The Sadist

2012-02-02T00:32:00.004-05:00

The Sadist (1963), a low-budget film written and directed by James Landis, is about an escaped convict and his girlfriend who hold a group of teachers hostage in a junkyard. Despite the film's limited means, the basic situation is so well-rendered that it creates a constant tension throughout.

More information about the film can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sadist_%28film%29

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Owens Foundation for Wildlife Conservation (Website)

2012-02-02T00:09:00.002-05:00

Mark and Delia Owens have been working in Africa since the 1970s with hyena and elephants and more recently in Idaho with grizzly bears and gray wolves. They have written books about their work and have been the subject of a National Geographic special and a made for TV film. More information about them and their organization can be found here:

http://www.owens-foundation.org/index.html

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Akira Ifukube: The Sea of Okhotsk

2012-02-01T01:42:00.004-05:00

A work originally composed in 1958 (and revised for piano, voice, bassoon, and contrabass in 1988) by Japanese composer Akira Ifukube.

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Tangemania (Website)

2011-12-30T06:01:00.006-05:00

Tangemania is the website of Yale Cinema professor Aaron Gerow who has written widely on Japanese cinema. Follow this link to take a look:

http://www.aarongerow.com/

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Paleothea (Website)

2011-11-07T23:30:00.003-05:00

Paleothea is a website that recounts tales involving women in Greek mythology in down-to-earth prose. Most of the myths are illustrated with images from classical paintings. Follow this link to take a look:

http://www.paleothea.com/

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Briauna Mariah (Website)

2011-11-02T04:31:00.005-04:00

Briauna Mariah is a model based in the Northwest. Follow this link to take a look at her website:

http://www.briaunamariah.com/

She also has a blogsite where she talks about her experiences modeling. Follow this link to take a look:

http://thisboldlife.blogspot.com/

You can also follow or friend her on Facebook. Follow this link to see her page:

https://www.facebook.com/#!/model.briaunamariah?sk=info

The same with Google Plus. Follow this link to see her page:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/117652757698233681437/posts#117652757698233681437/posts

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Intimate Lighting

2011-10-20T20:00:00.004-04:00

Intimate Lighting is a 1965 Czech film, directed by Ivan Passer, that is considered one of the highlights of the Czech New Wave.

Here is Roger Greenspun's 1969 review of the film from The New York Times:

IVAN PASSER made "Intimate Lighting" in 1965. It played at the 1966 New York Film Festival. I've seen it several times now, most recently in connection with its opening at the Fifth Avenue Cinema, and it loses none of its charm, to age or to repeated viewing. It is one of those very special movies that does not so much reveal new secrets each time you see it as confirm a justness and good humor that was never hidden.

Passer's anecdote (it doesn't amount to a story) concerns a cellist from Prague who, with his young mistress, visits a country town where he is to give a concert with the local orchestra. He spends a day and a night with an old school friend, a violinist who heads the town's music school and who has settled down with his mother and father, a plump wife, three kids, a car, and a garage full of chickens.

Nothing very significant happens. There is a family dinner, some amateur chamber music, and country funeral and a wake, a drunken late-night session involving the two friends and a family breakfast the next morning—with which the movie ends.

"Intimate Lighting" is constructed out of a series of minor embarrassments and low-keyed confrontations. Everything in the film's situation suggests incongruity and ironic distancing. But Passer has been at pains to keep all lines of communication open and never cruelly to play lifestyles off against one another. His warmth is neither sentimental nor condescending. And in all likelihood he has made a funnier movie from an awareness of imperfect reconciliations than he could have from an exploitation of disparities.

Understatement both in performance and technique, which has become a characteristic almost to cliché in many Czech movies, works perfectly in "Intimate Lighting." Passer, who has been known mostly as a scenarist to Milos Forman, is a perceptive director, and he has a fine cast to work with.

Because everybody except Vera Kresadlov (the mistress) has essentially a character part to play, it is difficult to single out anyone for praise. But I especially enjoyed Vlastimila Vlkova as the athletic grandmother, and Karel Uhlik as the town pharmacist whose violin technique is a struggle between musicianship and arthritis.

"I love this music. I love it passionately," says the pharmacist, who then takes up his violin and virtually saws apart a movement of "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik." But he does love it, and the mess he makes of Mozart is the kind of testimony to love with which "Intimate Lighting" is filled. All the country people protest too much—their love of art, of family, of the lives they have to lead—but their protestations add up to a truth to which men agree and which it would be folly to disapprove.

For the final breakfast the grandmother has made an eggnog so think and rich it won't pour out of a glass. She tells the family and guests that "with a little patience" they will have a treat. And so in the last scene they all stand, glasses raised, mouths open, utterly ridiculous but sublimely patient.

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Thunderbean Animation (Website)

2011-10-20T19:34:00.001-04:00

Thunderbean Animation is both an independent animation studio and a company that releases DVDs of classic animated shorts. To see examples of the work they've done and find out how to purchase their DVD releases of vintage cartoons, follow this link:

http://www.thunderbeananimation.com/

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Japan Today (Website)

2011-10-20T19:22:00.002-04:00

Japan Today is a website devoted to current news from Japan. Included are news items about Japanese art, entertainment, and culture. Follow this link to take a look:

http://www.japantoday.com/

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Sights Within (Website)

2011-10-20T19:10:00.004-04:00

Les Noisettes (The Nut-Gatherers) by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

SightsWithin is a website that offers high-quality scans of classical paintings by such artists as Watteau, Fragonard, Bouguereau, Alma-Tadema, Gerome, & Friedrich, and other works of early photography and architecture.

In their own words: "SightsWithin is here to share the magnificence of art created throughout history. Its goal is to give everyone access to all of these creations. However, there are contemporary limits to this striving. Newer artworks, unfortunately, cannot be published. Any artwork of an artist that hasn't deceased more than 70 years ago cannot be displayed on this page due to copyright restrictions. The exception of that rule is given in the cases where we receive explicit permission to display one's artworks. Nevertheless, we hope you find many personal treasures among the works we have managed to collect."

Follow this link to take a look:

http://www.sightswithin.com/

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The End of August at the Hotel Ozone

2011-10-14T07:03:00.000-04:00

The End of August at the Hotel Ozone is a 1967 Czech science-fiction film, directed by Jan Schmidt and written by Pavel Juracek, that concerns itself with a band of women looking for mates in a post-apocalyptic landscape.

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Pajama Guy (Blogsite)

2011-10-14T06:33:00.004-04:00

Steve Kurtz is a Los Angeles-based writer-television producer. His personal blog serves up his opinions on television, music, theater, films, news events, and politics. Follow this link to take a look:

http://pajamaguy.blogspot.com/

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Geoff George (Website)

2011-10-14T05:42:00.001-04:00

Follow this link to visit the website of Michigan-based photographer/filmmaker Geoff George:

http://www.gsgfilms.com/

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Corpus Fluxus (Website)

2011-10-07T17:29:00.002-04:00

Corpus Fluxus is the website of independent filmmaker and performance artist Ross Lipman. Lipman is also one of the team of people who restore films at the UCLA Film & TV Archive. Lipman can be seen at work in Alejandra Espasande Bouza's 2010 short, Allegro Non Molto:

Follow this link to see Lipman's own website and learn more about his activities:

http://www.corpusfluxus.org/

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Ikarie XB-1

2011-10-05T04:21:00.006-04:00

Ikarie XB-1 is a 1963 Czech science-fiction film directed by Jindrich Polak and written by Pavel Juracek who later wrote the screenplays for the Czech films Daisies and The End of August at the Hotel Ozone.

More information about the film can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikarie_XB-1

You may need to click on the CC closed captions icon for the subtitles to play with the image:

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Koko's Earth Control

2011-10-01T06:48:00.000-04:00

Here is Max and Dave Fleischer's 1928 surreal and apocalyptic animated short, Koko's Earth Control.

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Benjamin Frankel (Website)

2011-09-15T00:16:00.001-04:00

Benjamin Frankel (1906-1973) was a British composer who wrote several symphonies, a violin concerto, and many scores for films and television. Follow this link to the composer's official website run by the Benjamin Frankel estate:

http://benjaminfrankel.org/

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The Projection Booth (Website)

2011-09-07T16:48:00.001-04:00

Follow this link to The Projection Booth, a website that features downloadable podcasts of talks about cult films that often include interviews with actors and filmmakers:

http://www.projection-booth.com/

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Nihon Poster (Blogsite)

2011-09-02T12:39:00.001-04:00

Follow this link to visit Nihon Poster, a French-language blogsite devoted to vintage Japanese film posters:

http://nihon-poster.tumblr.com/

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Rene Gruau (Website)

2011-09-02T10:23:00.003-04:00

Rene Gruau (1909-2004) was an illustrator best known for creating ads for postwar French fashion houses. Follow this link to learn more about his life and work:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Gruau

Follow this link to the official website for his illustration work:

http://www.renegruau.com/en/

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Jacques Fath (Website)

2011-09-02T09:49:00.002-04:00

Jacques Fath at work

Moira Shearer wearing Fath in The Red Shoes

Jacques Fath (1912-1954) was a French fashion designer, responsible, in part, for what was called the "New Look" in postwar haute couture. He designed the wardrobe that Moira Shearer wears in The Red Shoes and the front of his fashion house can be briefly glimpsed in the film as well. Follow this link for more information about Fath's life and work:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Fath

After Fath died in the mid-1950s, the fashion house bearing his name continued to produce a line of scarfs and perfumes. Today, it is producing a line of handbags styled to appear vintage.

Follow this link to the fashion house's current website:

http://www.jacquesfath.com/

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PCO Concert Recordings (Web page)

2011-09-01T19:58:00.001-04:00

Follow this link to a web page on The Peabody Institute of the John Hopkins University website where you can listen to and download free classical music recordings by the Peabody Concert Orchestra:

http://www.peabody.jhu.edu/pcorecordings#link459

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ReDiscovery's Paperback Classics (Web page)

2011-09-01T19:48:00.001-04:00

Follow this link to a page on the ReDiscovery website where you can find free downloads of classical music:

http://www.rediscovery.us/paperbacks.html

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A Different Stripe (Blogsite)

2011-09-01T12:28:00.001-04:00

Follow this link to read a blog about books from the New York Times Review of Books:

http://nyrbclassics.tumblr.com/

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Die Verkaufte Braut (The Bartered Bride)

2011-08-31T22:35:00.000-04:00

Here is Max Ophuls' 1932 film, The Bartered Bride, an adaptation of the operetta by Bedrich Smetana, in German with English subtitles.

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Iran

2011-08-31T22:22:00.000-04:00

Here is Iran, a 1971 documentary directed by Claude Lelouch with a score by Francis Lai.

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American Look

2011-08-31T13:10:00.002-04:00

Here is the 1958 industrial documentary American Look, directed by W.F. Banes & John Thiele, an amazing time capsule of 50s home, office, and car design.

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SatoriMentor (Website)

2011-08-31T13:03:00.001-04:00

Follow this link to SatoriMentor, a website devoted to information for beginning filmmakers wanting to make their own indie films or break into the Hollywood film industry:

http://satorimentor.com/

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Elephant On a Wire (Blogsite)

2011-08-31T12:49:00.002-04:00

Elephant On a Wire is simply the personal expression of a woman who likes elephants, makes jewelery, and loves inspirational slogans and images of glamor.

Follow this link to take a look:

http://elephantonawire.tumblr.com/

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Doctor Macro (Website)

2011-08-31T12:29:00.002-04:00

Follow this link to see free, high-resolution scans of film posters, lobby cards, film stills, and stills of actors and actresses. Doctor Macro has a great collection to peruse and download:

http://www.doctormacro.com/index.html

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Artinfo (Website)

2011-08-31T12:18:00.002-04:00

If it's about painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, or design, old and new, ARTINFO has the latest news from "the scene".

Follow this link to take a look:

http://www.artinfo.com/

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Sankaku Complex (Website)

2011-08-31T11:27:00.003-04:00

Whoever named Sankaku Complex wasn't kidding. It's complex! Prepare yourself for an overload of visual and textual information. Also, prepare yourself for large breasts and a lot of nudity in general. Of course, this isn't just a porn site, what is going on here is a lot of information and fan input about anime and manga, a majority written by Japanese commenting on their own culture. And, in addition to the anime-manga-related posts, there is a lot of off-color news stories about real Japan itself.

Follow this link to take a look:

http://www.sankakucomplex.com/

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Atlas Obscura (Website)

2011-08-29T11:59:00.001-04:00

Follow this link to the Atlas Obscura website to see images and read descriptions of some of the oddest tourist destinations on the planet:

http://atlasobscura.com/

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Midnight Eye (Website)

2011-08-29T04:30:00.001-04:00

Follow this link to the Midnight Eye website devoted to information and interviews about Japanese cult films:

http://www.midnighteye.com/

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Art of the Title (Website)

2011-08-29T04:26:00.001-04:00

Follow this link to the Art of the Title website devoted to background information on the design and creation of title sequences for films and television shows:

http://www.artofthetitle.com/

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National Film Preservation Foundation (Website)

2011-08-29T03:07:00.002-04:00

Follow this link to see the National Film Preservation Foundation website. Be sure to visit the "screening room" to see clips from the films they have helped to preserve:

http://www.filmpreservation.org/home

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The New Zealand Film Archive (Website)

2011-08-29T03:00:00.001-04:00

Follow this link to The New Zealand Film Archive website where you can see film clips and read news about film in this remote corner of the Pacific:

http://www.filmarchive.org.nz/

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British Pathe (Website)

2011-08-29T02:55:00.002-04:00

Follow this link to look at 90,000 clips from British newsreels made by the British division of the Pathe film company:

http://www.britishpathe.com/

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The Banff Centre (Website)

2011-08-29T02:21:00.001-04:00

Follow this link to The Banff Centre website to learn more about their programs and festivals devoted to mountain-themed art and culture:

http://www.banffcentre.ca/

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Steep Edge (Website)

2011-08-29T02:12:00.001-04:00

Follow this link to the Steep Edge website where you can see clips and trailers and rent or purchase downloads of films devoted to extreme sports:

http://www.steepedge.com/

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Kendall Mountain Film Festival (Website)

2011-08-29T02:04:00.001-04:00

Follow this link to the Kendall Mountain Film Festival website to learn more about modern-day films about mountain-related sports and cultures:

http://www.mountainfilm.co.uk/index.html

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New England Ski Museum (Website)

2011-08-29T01:55:00.002-04:00

Follow this link to the website of a museum devoted to the history of winter sports in New England. See photos, read stories, and buy memorabilia:

http://secure.skimuseum.org/

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Mont-Blanc Speed Flying

2011-08-29T01:46:00.001-04:00

Here is an excerpt (the opening minute) from the 10-minute long 2008 film, Mont-Blanc Speed Flying, directed by Didier Lafond, about a team of paragliders in the French alps.

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The Birdman of the Karakoram

2011-08-29T01:41:00.000-04:00

Here is Alan Hughes' 2009 film, The Birdman of the Karakoram, about two men paragliding in the mountains of Pakistan.

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David Bordwell: Ozu and the Poetics of Cinema

2011-08-29T00:32:00.004-04:00

Follow this link to download a pdf of this now out of print 1988 book on the films of Yasujiro Ozu:

https://www.cjspubs.lsa.umich.edu/electronic/facultyseries/list/series/ozu.php

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Noel Burch: To the Distant Observer

2011-08-29T00:27:00.001-04:00

Follow this link to download a pdf of this now out of print 1979 book on Japanese cinema from the link below. The file includes a cover scan and an essay about Burch's work and viewpoint:

https://www.cjspubs.lsa.umich.edu/electronic/facultyseries/list/series/distantobserver.php

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Donald Richie: Japanese Cinema

2011-08-29T00:24:00.001-04:00

Follow this link to download a pdf of this now out of print 1971 book on Japanese cinema from the link below. The file includes a cover scan and a new introduction by Donald Richie:

https://www.cjspubs.lsa.umich.edu/electronic/facultyseries/list/series/japanesecinema.php

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Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Violin Concerto

2011-08-29T00:03:00.000-04:00

Here is an appreciation of the Korngold Violin Concerto from The Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704804204575069461091400560.html?mod=WSJ_ArtsEnt_LifestyleArtEnt_3#articleTabs%3Darticle

Here is the entire concerto performed by Hilary Hahn:

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Jerry Goldsmith: The Thunder of Imperial Names

2011-08-28T23:58:00.003-04:00

This is a live performance of The Thunder of Imperial Names, a short work celebrating key names of Americana originally composed by Jerry Goldsmith in 1957 for an episode of the CBS Radio Workshop.

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Eames Office (Website)

2011-08-28T23:45:00.001-04:00

Charles Eames and his wife Ray Kaiser Eames were primarily furniture designers. But this is only the tip of their entire output. Follow this link to learn more about them and their work:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_and_Ray_Eames

The Eames design office is still being run by Charles's grandson from his first marriage, Eames Demetrios. Follow this link to the Eames Office website:

http://www.eamesoffice.com/

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SX-70

2011-08-28T23:38:00.000-04:00

Here is SX-70, a 1972 film made to promote a camera from Polaroid, directed by designers Charles and Ray Eames with music by Elmer Bernstein.

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The Fiberglass Chairs

2011-08-28T23:34:00.001-04:00

Here is The Fiberglass Chairs-Something Of How They Get The Way They Are, a 1970 film about industrial production directed by designers Charles and Ray Eames film with a light jazz score composed by Buddy Collette.

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Les Cristaux Liquides

2011-08-28T23:13:00.000-04:00

Here is Les Cristaux Liquides (Liquid Crystals), a 1978 film by Jean Painleve set to music by Francois de Rouxbaix.

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La Peine du Talion

2011-08-28T23:04:00.002-04:00

This is La Peine du Talion [The Talion Punishment (aka Tit for Tat)] (1906), directed by Gaston Velle, a charming, if archaic (and even somewhat violent), early hand-tinted French short film about a group of magic butterflies who turn the tables on a lepidopterist and his two assistants.

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Life in Japanese Film: Donald Richie (Interview)

2011-08-28T22:46:00.003-04:00

Donald Richie is one of the finest writers on Japanese film and culture. Follow this link to see a 75 minute discussion with him about those topics:

http://fora.tv/2009/04/21/Life_in_Japanese_Film_Donald_Richie

Here is a link to the Wikipedia page about Donald Richie mentioned in the interview clip:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Richie

And don't forget to look over all the selections at Fora.tv to see other lectures and interviews on a wide variety of subjects.

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Die Toten Hosen: Auflosen

2011-08-28T22:38:00.000-04:00

This is a music video (in German without English subtitles), directed by Wim Wenders in 2009, for the song "Auflosen" by the group Die Toten Hosen from their album "In Aller Stille".

The couple in this music video obviously enjoy visiting each other but for some reason have chosen not to live together. She has a larger loft space than his hotel room and perhaps she requires "space" for herself, just as she writes in a journal which is a personal activity and space he is excluded from. Even though they seem to wait boring hours for each other, perhaps they fear that if they live together or marry, another sort of negative quality would emerge where they'd rather be dead, as might be indicated by the brief shot of the couple shooting themselves in the head in silhouette when they stand together in the same window frame. At another point, the couple is framed again in a window whose pane comes between them. Throughout the video, they are together, yet separate.

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Perfume: Voice

2011-08-28T22:29:00.002-04:00

Here is the incredibly cute and leggy J-Pop girl group Perfume with their 2010 song "Voice". I do not know who directed this music video (which is in Japanese without subtitles), but it presents a self-reflexive view of celebrity and stardom. Despite the main lyric, "Everything...you need to use your voice," the life of a pop icon is more than just singing: the icon lives in an unreal (and as depicted in the video, surreal) world of cartoon props where timing, dance, and image are just as important as the voice.

The girls are dominated by cookie cutter patterns (actually patterns of all kinds, background patterns, patterns on their clothing, etc.) but struggle to fit themselves into these molds. In one key shot (2:56-3:10), the girls cannot discover themselves in a forest of figures and end standing apart from them. The women are nominally icons who don't completely become symbols and so retain some of their own individuality and human identity. On the other hand, in another shot (3:24-3:39), the girls walk aloofly through a row of similarly-shaped silhouettes of people indicating that they are apart from the crowd and exist beyond the ordinary public.

The icon is both human and celebrity, someone who exists between the real and myth, between person and projection. In one moment, she's human, but in the next second, she can become a photograph with fake tears coming from her eyes. Or, as is indicated when the girls complete billboard images of themselves (2:10-2:24), the star is a half human/half-icon sort of hybrid.

The girls obtain their false diamond treasure. It's the "heart" from inside the chest of one of those public figures implying that fame, money, or the love of fans still originates with the public. It's also "the real thing" (as fake as it looks) as opposed to the version they reject from a different origin in a store window (you can't purchase the love of fans). The trio hold their diamonds aloft in the same position that their hands were held in in the video's opening shot. Does this gesture mean they were special to begin with and destined to find the treasure all along? At the start they hold aloft "thin air". Does this means the diamonds they obtain at the end are also no different from thin air? But just then, at their moment of triumph, their false patterned world collapses around them. Fame is fickle. Stardom insecure. The wall that forces itself on them at the very end is not unlike the other walls (either solid or with some part cut out) that they’ve had to file past or conform through to get to their destination. Indeed, it's simply a larger version of the wall of black dots that one of the trio walks past near the start of the video. But this time the holes in the patterned wall are ironic. By falling around the girls, the holes reveal just how fake the fake world they’ve been inhabiting really is while revealing the lights and set of the video they've been making. Oh well. Confronted with nothingness, the girls simply laugh and remain "just girls". Or do they? Throughout the video, surface appearance is contrasted with reality. We see the trio laughing like normal girls but, because we don't also hear them laugh as we should, in this last moment, the girls miss out on becoming completely real people to us. Finally, voiceless, the girls, surrounded by the darkness of the set in the real world, can't break free from their ghostly limbo somewhere between life and artifice.

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Plastic Bag

2011-08-28T22:24:00.004-04:00

Plastic Bag is a short film from 2009 about a specific environmental concern, told from a unique point of view, narrated by film and stage director Werner Herzog, and directed by Ramin Bahrani.

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Deep Glamour (Website)

2011-08-28T16:02:00.001-04:00

Virginia Postrel's amazing website, Deep Glamour, is constantly on the lookout for "things glamorous". Perhaps the site is more for the ladies in the audience, but it looks at culture through a very specific prism and discovers a number of appealing surprises. The site also links to a plethora of other neat sites, images, and articles.

Follow this link to take a look:

http://deepglamour.net/

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Kakuzo Okakura: The Book of Tea

2011-08-28T15:16:00.001-04:00

The Japanese Tea Ceremony developed as a way of applying Zen Buddhism to the actions of everyday life. The ceremony is structured like a circle. A series of elaborate and ritualized actions are done in a specific order leading up to the drinking of the tea. The drinking itself becomes a brief moment of altered consciousness where the drinker becomes aware of the present moment and in doing so transcends the world around them. After the drinking, the steps leading up to the drinking are collapsed in reverse completing the circle.

Here is a pdf file of Kakuzo Okakura's brief but wonderful 1906 book, The Book of Tea, now in the public domain, which was an attempt to explain zen-based Japanese aesthetics to Westerners.

Kakuzo Okakura: The Book of Tea

http://www.mediafire.com/?mnkjaknymnz

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Eihei Dogen: Shobogenzo

2011-08-28T15:13:00.003-04:00

This is a link to a pdf file of the public domain book, Shobogenzo, an 1000+ page work concerning the wisdom and meditation practices of Zen Buddhism by the 18th Century Soto school zen master Eihei Dogen.

Eihei Dogen: Shobogenzo

http://www.mediafire.com/?m4yzjum1jmm

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Peter Watkins (Website)

2011-08-28T15:04:00.001-04:00

Peter Watkins is a British filmmaker, the director of the 1965 Oscar-winning documentary, The War Game. He maintains a website devoted to his films, latest news, and critiques of modern mainstream media. To see it, follow this link:

http://pwatkins.mnsi.net/index.htm

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TokyoFashion (Website)

2011-08-28T14:58:00.003-04:00

TokyoFashion.com is a website devoted to the wild, creative fashion that current Japanese youth display on the street of Tokyo.

Follow this link to see photos and read news and articles about this fascinating cultural phenomenon:

http://tokyofashion.com/

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The Japan Media Arts Festival (Website)

2011-08-28T14:51:00.002-04:00

Japanese art and design are not only historic but contemporary. Every year the best in media art forms is celebrated in the annual Japan Media Arts Festival.

To view the Festival's own website, follow this link:

http://plaza.bunka.go.jp/english/

And, for even more information about the festival, follow this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_Media_Arts_Festival

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The Art of Japan (Website)

2011-08-28T14:49:00.006-04:00

Follow this link to The Art of Japan, a website that features picture galleries and brief texts discussing Japanese origami, architecture, gardens, paintings, and sculpture:

http://library.thinkquest.org/27458/index.html

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Superpower: The Extraordinary Power of the Internet (Web Page)

2011-08-28T14:46:00.003-04:00

Follow this link to explore a web page from the BBC World Service website containing a series of reports and video clips with a wide variety of people involved with computing and the World Wide Web:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specialreports/superpower.shtml

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Sir James George Frazer: The Golden Bough

2011-08-28T14:40:00.002-04:00

This file contains pdf files of the complete 15-Volumes of the book, The Golden Bough, by Sir James George Frazer (in the 3rd edition from 1922 which is in the public domain). This is a key text on pre-Christian, pagan beliefs & rituals. Most people encounter this work in the still rather thick 700-page one-volume abridged version, but here is the complete unabridged work in its entirety.

Sir James George Frazer: The Golden Bough

http://www.multiupload.com/D5JF56WOH0

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La Calda Vita (Blogsite)

2011-08-28T14:37:00.003-04:00

Catherine Spaak (born in 1945) was the daughter of Charles Spaak who wrote the screenplay to Jean Renoir's film, La Grande Illusion. At 14 she made her film debut in Italy launching a career that included some of the more interesting European teen films of the early 60s.

There is a blog called La Calda Vita (named after one of her films) devoted to the actress. It's filled with commentary about her and her films, screen captures from those films, and other rare photos and articles.

Follow this link to the site:

http://catherinespaak.blogspot.com/

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Albert Lewin

2011-08-26T12:43:00.012-04:00

Albert Lewin

Since there is no website devoted to the films of Albert Lewin, hopefully this page will aid those looking for basic information and introduce Lewin to those unfamiliar with him.

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Biography

Albert Lewin (1894-1968) was a screenwriter and film producer who directed six films. Those six did not place Lewin in the top rank of directors. Instead, Lewin has even been sometimes called arty and pretentious. But Lewin's films do have their champions: Martin Scorsese arranged for a new print of Pandora and the Flying Dutchman to show at the 2008 New York Film Festival. Ultimately, though, the Lewin films are cult items. Even so, in a deeply-commercial Hollywood, in Lewin, it had a real art-lover and intellectual at the helm of both production and filmmaking.

Born in Brooklyn to poor Jewish parents, Lewin was a high school valedictorian, and through scholarships, went on to become a Phi Beta Kappa as an undergraduate, a Masters in English literature from Harvard, and a PhD candidate at Columbia University. There, he completed all his work except for writing the dissertation. He then spent a year teaching at the University of Missouri. Through friends, he obtained jobs in New York as both a film reviewer and a script reader. In 1923, he traveled to California for Samuel Goldwyn just as MGM was being founded. By 1927, Lewin was the head of MGM's script department, and by 1929, Lewin was a producer.

During the 1930s, Lewin produced Red-Headed Woman, China Seas, Mutiny on the Bounty, and The Good Earth. With the death of his mentor Irving Thalberg, Lewin quit MGM and moved briefly to Paramount before he started his own production company and produced So Ends Our Night and his first film as a director, The Moon and Sixpence.

During this time, he used his position as a film producer to meet and befriend many artists and authors and he used his earnings to build a vast art collection. He even commissioned a 6-bedroom house from architect Richard Neutra (two images of which are shown below). In 1959, Lewin suffered a heart attack that kept him from making films after which he moved from California to New York to live out his final decade.

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Bibliography

So far, only two books have been written about Lewin: Albert Lewin by Patrick Brion, written in French, and Botticelli in Hollywood--The Films of Albert Lewin, by Susan Felleman, written in English:

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The Moon and Sixpence

The Moon and Sixpence (1942) is based on a novel by W. Somerset Maugham, who in turn based his book on the life of Paul Gauguin. It's the story of a highly-mannered turn-of-the century London stockbroker who breaks with convention and becomes a painter. In the process he leaves his job and his wife, steals the wife of a friend but then leaves her too, and then he finally leaves civilization altogether to live in Polynesia. He paints only for himself, not for society, and he leaves instructions to his native wife to burn all of his works after he dies.

A low-budget film, the tale of this forceful, iconoclastic painter was a surprise financial and critical success (Lewin later wrote that he thought the film was going to be a flop). Audiences may have been intrigued by the story's sex and the main character's misogyny, and, perhaps, they saw something heroic in the main character's rebellious, anti-social life choices.

In any case, the film itself established certain basics that became staples of Lewin's cinema thereafter. The first basic is a concern about art and with painting in particular. All six of Lewin's films will make some reference to painting. Several will have a "Lewin painting" in them, one key work that is highlighted within the film. While The Moon and Sixpence was shot in black and white, the paintings in it are shown in color, a device that Lewin will use twice more when showing the "Lewin painting" in his two other black and white films.

A second basic concern, at least found in Lewin's first three films, is with the end of the 19th century. I'm not exactly sure what the fin-de-siecle means to Lewin but all six of his films, even those which take place in the modern era, are set outside of America. Perhaps Lewin's concern is not so much with this particular time period as it is with the past in general or with the exotic and fantastic which require Lewin to place his films at some distance from the modern America surrounding his audience.

A third concern that marks Lewin's first three films as a sort of trilogy is that each features a male character who is cynical, jaded, decadent, hedonist, misogynist, and amoral (I know, quite a combination). In all three cases, that dark character is portrayed by George Sanders, whose persona as a dominating elite figure adds to and is also further developed by the films.

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The Picture of Dorian Gray

Dorian Gray (Hurd Hatfield) as painted by Henrique Medina

Dorian Gray's corruption as painted by Ivan Albright

The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) is set in London during the 1880s. The film is probably the best known of Lewin's six features and it's the quintessential Lewin film in that it takes in all of his concerns with art and moral decadence along with elements of horror and the supernatural.

According to Susan Felleman, the character of Dorian Gray discovers selfishness when he falls in love with his mirror image in a work of art. This sudden narcissism perverts his original good-guy altruism into hedonism and leads to his moral downfall. As much as Lewin himself loves art and fills his frames with pianos, paintings, statues, Art Nouveau prints, and even a Balinese dancer (of the Devi Dja troupe that also appears in The Moon and Sixpence), art, in this context, is presented in its shadowy, negative aspect as something which captivates, controls, and dooms while it holds out an unobtainable romantic ideal.

This message still doesn't invalidate Lewin's belief in the positive power of art (his film itself is positive art meant to remind people not to follow the same path as Dorian). The question raised is one of art's influence. Portrait paintings glorify the ego and may be seen as, at least in this context, as producing a negative effect.

Dorian's portrait also includes the rendering of the statuette of a cat. The extent of art's power over humanity is made explicit when George Sanders links the cat statuette with one the cat gods of ancient Egypt. Dorian takes both the cat statuette and the physical painting home with him. The film continues to reference the cat statuette. Shot compositions tend to include it and even place it in the foreground. Later, Dorian reads a quote cats and one of the film's characters says it thought the statuette's eyes moved. The implication in all of this is that the source of the magic that allows Dorian to look young while his portrait becomes ravaged comes from within the statuette. Lewin will return to this idea of art possessing malevolent magical forces in his later films.

The cinema, as a two-dimensional medium, has always had a problem with depth and surface. One conventional way of communicating depth involves the audience "reading" and interpreting the facial gestures of the actors. But since Dorian Gray is a story about a deceptive surface, that is, about a pretty boy with a heart of evil, Dorian's interior emotions do not show on his face. Lewin gives us a fair number of close-ups of Dorian and Hurd Hatfield intentionally looks stiff and expressionless so we can read no emotion from him. His face becomes like a mask. To underline this point, actual masks can be seen as decor on the walls of the pubs Dorian frequents (the upper class walls of Dorian's home and those of the people he dines with feature mirrors and more portrait paintings which, too, might be seen as masks or frozen expressions). Additionally, all of Dorian's debaucheries are depicted off screen which is another way of saying you can't get the whole story from the surface.

Rather than read surfaces, Lewin suggests we read his images symbolically. Interestingly, the symbolism in the film is blatant and obvious as if Lewin is telling the audience that this is how they should approach watching the film. The masks are one symbol. The statuette of a knight on a horse is another. Dorian knocks it over on its side and leaves it in that position throughout the period of his debaucheries, but when he is determined to make up for his past sins, he picks the statuette up and rights its position.There is the butterfly that Sir Henry captures as he seduces Dorian with his ideas. It's a symbol of Dorian. But it's also a representation of the female genitalia. As Susan Felleman points out in her book, the series of dissolves between seeing the butterfly in the dish and seeing it mounted and propped up against a statuette suggest an androgyny that can be applied to Dorian as well. The figure of a noose is another symbol (it can be seen in the painter's studio, Dorian is "noosed" by a coachman's whip, Dorian's friend draws him with a noose twice, and Dorian's would-be assassin carries a small cord in the shape of a noose). Just like the clock that chimes (yet another symbol) when Dorian's fiance mentions happiness, the noose is a foreshadowing of the doom to come. When a bar-girl asks the assassin what would he would do if he found Dorian, the man doesn't answer verbally but tightens the noose he holds. Moments later the bar-girl announces verbally that the man is trying to kill Dorian. Lewin is saying that even the most low-life "lowbrow" can understand the reading of symbolic gestures and therefore any cinema audience should be able to read a film through such symbols as well.

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The Private Affairs of Bel Ami

The "Lewin painting": Max Ernst's The Temptation of St. Anthony

The Private Affairs of Bel Ami (1947) is based on a novel by Guy de Maupassant and is set in Paris during the 1880s. It's basically the story of a man who uses women to advance himself. In the original novel, he succeeds at this triumphantly, but in Lewin's more Hollywood version, Bel-Ami must be punished for his moral transgressions. Before that happens, however, Lewin offers the audience an evil cad and dandy the equal of the decadent men of his previous two films. Although the decors are rich with art once more and although the film contains a "Lewin painting" shown in a color clip, the art is not as central to the story as it was in the previous films. Decor, lighting, and framing become the more significant tools through which Lewin communicates his themes. That said, the painting itself does seem to follow the lines of the other "Lewin paintings" in that it casts a spell over its owner and its depiction of a fallen Saint Anthony beset by demons speaks truth to Bel Ami when he sees it.

The film contains two moments that supersede the whole, one comic and the other downright chilling. The first moment is set up through a series of details. Bel-Ami writes a newspaper column. His friends feed Bel-Ami false information for him to publish that allows them to become rich. These friends neglected to let Bel-Ami in on their scheme and he doesn't profit from it though he certainly would like to. In a wonderful moment of the pot calling the kettle black, when he learns he's been excluded from their riches, he decries, "Those scoundrels!"

The chilling moment involves the deathbed scene of Bel-Ami's friend. The friend is dying surrounded by his wife and Bel-Ami. The man dies. And, in front of this corpse who isn't even cold yet, Bel-Ami and the newly-minted widow make plans for a tryst. Hollywood morality or not, Lewin somehow gets away with this moment of extremely dark sexuality.

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Pandora and the Flying Dutchman

The Man Ray-designed chess set that Lewin borrowed for the film

The "Lewin painting" (in its second appearance) by Ferdie Bellan

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951) is set in Spain in 1930 (as indicated on a banner at a racing car's speed test). It marks a departure from the Sanders trilogy in several ways. First, Pandora features an original script by Lewin rather than one which is a literary adaptation (Lewin's The Living Idol will also be a Lewin original). Second, it is set more or less in modern times. Third, the entire film is in color not just those brief moments where the paintings appear. Fourth, the main character is no longer a cynical, decadent male who uses sex for personal gain or pleasure but is a female seeking true love. In fact, Lewin's last three films, in color, featuring female protagonists, and each dealing with the supernatural, can be seen as their own trilogy, a sort of feminine inversion of the previous three Lewin films. Pandora specifically can be seen as a sort of anti-Dorian Gray in that when Pandora sees her mirror image in the "Lewin painting" it makes her lose her initial cruelty and selfishness and become aware of things far beyond herself. This is the power of art in its positive rather than negative aspect.

In Dorian Gray, Dorian attacks his portrait and as a result, it changes. Pandora, too, attacks her painting and as a result, it changes as well (though not as supernaturally). As in Dorian Gray, Pandora's portrait appears twice in two different forms (actually it appears a third time restored to its initial appearance, eternally recurring as it were), one as a likeness and the other as a more abstract image, reflecting Pandora's change from herself in her present life into a myth or an eternal spirit that can continually reincarnate.

Pandora has the choice of three men: a race car driver, a bullfighter, and a cultured painter. In Lewin's art-lover's world you can guess which one she ultimately falls in love with, the traditional he-men being unable to transport her to the ecstasies that an artist can (LOL). Of course, this extraordinary painter is also supernatural, being the legendary immortal Flying Dutchman. This links Pandora's search for love with the transcendent and eternal that are missing from "regular" men and the mundane modern world. Setting Pandora in modern times allows Lewin to contrast the modern with the past and he includes a highly-satiric episode where drunken revelers cavort amongst ancient ruins showing us that the modern simply cannot measure up.

But it's neither the modern nor the antiquated that Lewin is stalking here. In a phenomenal moment, the moment in the film when Pandora consummates her love, Lewin shows us the sands of an hourglass freeze and stop falling and then the hourglass itself cracking. Love and human sacrifice stop time and transcend both the modern and ancient altogether to reach the magical and heavenly. The mythological Pandora was responsible for bringing evil into the world, but through this Pandora, the negative power of art and the evil spirits that use art to enter the world (the basic premise of The Picture of Dorian Gray) are not released at all, quite the contrary (in the "Lewin painting" Pandora's box is held but is definitely closed). Given how dark the Sanders trilogy could become at times, Pandora, in contrast, is remarkably positive and spiritual.

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Saadia

Saadia (1954) is finally set in the present, though in French Morocco. Saadia and the Lewin film that follows it, The Living Idol, are less satisfactory films than Lewin's previous four. Lewin wrote a script based on the life of the painter Goya and another Pandora-like tale based on Faust but neither script was filmed. Although there is no way to tell, those films seem as though they might have been better productions than the two films Lewin completed. That said, both Saadia and The Living Idol deal with topics of interest to Lewin and are certainly related thematically to the rest of his work.

At first, Saadia appears to be a story about the conflict between science and superstition as a doctor tries to wrest a woman, Saadia, from the clutches of a sorceress named Fatima. The film also implies that Fatima's attachment to Saadia is possibly a lesbian one, and, throughout the film, Fatima is associated with images of fire relating to her jealousy and anger over losing Saadia to men (in one provocative image of Fatima before a campfire, her vagina seems to erupt into flame). Fatima magically invokes a plague that becomes the main concern of the film as Saadia risks her life to obtain the plague serum after it has been captured by bandits. But, as it turns out, the film's basic conflict isn't between science and superstition at all but between white and black magic. [White magic is defined as magic you use to help others while black magic is defined as magic you use against others for your own personal gain.] After the doctor's friend, the tribal leader, is wounded protecting Saadia from the bandits, it turns out that the doctor's scientific medicine simply cannot save him. It is only through the intervention of group prayer that he survives.

Although the film posits the supernatural over the rational and materialistic, it still seems to favor Western civilization over Oriental barbarism. Paintings figure in every Lewin film and here the tribal leader is a painter who also drives a modern convertible (unlike, as in Pandora, here, the modern is seen somewhat favorably against the traditional). The doctor is a European man of medicine who also plays the piano. The film's heroes are cultured men associated with the arts. The two men are also both interested in Saadia, but, being civilized, both are willing to give her up to the other man if need be without conflict. In contrast, the bandits' leader, Bou Rezza, is a mutton-eating lecher who forces himself on Saadia and is willing to let innocent people die of the plague. His bandit followers are no better. Bou Rezza is also associated with fire, a destructive force that ultimately consumes both him when his tent burns and later Fatima (though filmed, the scene of her burning at the stake was cut by MGM).

Fatima is also associated with art through the primitive voodoo-like doll and later a stolen sketch of the doctor that Fatima uses to cast spells. However, as the antagonist, Fatima is hardly modern, cultured, or civilized. Lewin suggests as he did in The Picture of Dorian Gray and Pandora and the Flying Dutchman that art has a magical power which can be used for good or evil.

Susan Felleman suggests that there is little difference between the tribal leader and Fatima in their obsession over art objects representing Saadia (his painting of her, her statuette) except that the tribal leader hasn't the primitive belief in magic that Fatima has and so his use of art to dominate Saadia is less powerful. If correct, then what Lewin is saying is that Western civilization may be "nicer" and more domesticated but it's also "weaker" than the primitive. This idea echoes Carl Jung who announced that the uncanny (basically magic) was banned from the rational, scientific world and therefore didn't "work" any longer. For Lewin, primitive magic does exist but that still doesn't mean he endorses the primitive. What he endorses is a return to white magic, a "civilized" magic as it were, where prayer and community defeat the darkness of Fatima's black magic.

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The Living Idol

The Living Idol (1957) is set in Mexico. Juanita, an archaeologist's daughter, is frightened by seeing the idol statue of a jaguar. This is the first of several other incidents involving jaguar symbols or real jaguars. These events lead a colleague of the archaeologist, Dr. Stoner, to conclude that Juanita is being stalked by an ancient jaguar spirit possibly because she is the reincarnation of a woman who was once ritually sacrificed to the jaguar god and that the god wants a "sacrifice" once again. Dr. Stoner forces a confrontation with the jaguar spirit so that it may be defeated and leave Juanita alone to live out a normal life. However, while the jaguar spirit is after Juanita, it is also willing to take substitute sacrifices along the way and pursues more than Juanita alone. To clarify that point, in both the flashback to the ancient sacrifice and in the scene of the modern jaguar attack, both sacrificial victims are scratched on their left cheek by the jaguar's paw.

Lewin called The Living Idol a "high-brow horror film" but it's more high-brow than horror as the jaguar spirit is never really shown but only implied and talked about. This suggests that Lewin's inclusion of the "horrific" is less about the horror itself than it is a departure point for Lewin to discuss morality or the role that primitive beliefs, religion, and the supernatural still play in the modern world. In that sense, Lewin's films are more like lectures about art and philosophy topics that fascinate him (and betray his roots as an academic).

Along these lines, there is a sequence in the film where Dr. Stoner is shown lecturing to his students about the history of human sacrifice (mentioning the wicker man of the druids decades before it would become the focus of another high-brow horror film). Lewin directly addresses human sacrifice in his films but seems ambivalent about it. It's a key issue in Pandora, where the characters' willingness to sacrifice for each other is seen as a positive. In The Living Idol, however, it's viewed negatively and is precisely the event everyone is working to avoid.

The lecture sequence in The Living Idol includes the moment where the "Lewin painting" appears, in this case, in the lecture slide images painted by Carlos Merida specifically for the film. However, the main art-related topic of the film isn't painting this time. Nor is it the piano music that Juanita plays in one scene (echoing the doctor's civilized piano playing in Saadia), nor the poetry she writes (Lewin also wrote poetry when he was younger), nor modern architecture (as represented by exteriors of the University of Mexico City). Here, the main art concern, echoing the voodoo-doll like statuette in Saadia, is sculpture, or rather, "skullpture" as Dr. Stoner writes it on the blackboard during the lecture scene (stating that sacrificed human skulls served as the basis for early art busts). This directly relates art and primitive belief systems and places the film's jaguar statue in a similar position to the supernatural cat statuette from Dorian Gray.

And yet, even though Lewin is once again dealing with art's "supernatural" power over people in its negative aspect, I don't see Lewin, as a lover and collector of art, as someone who really endorses exorcising demons through idol smashing. The art work is only a symbol, the messenger or container of the spiritual force. In Saadia, Lewin has already said that protection from negative forces requires that one invoke positive forces.

Both Saadia and The Living Idol end in the same way, with a wedding, followed by a final shot of a statuette. In Saadia, that statuette is the doll that Fatima has used to cast spells over Saadia. In The Living Idol, it is a pre-Columbian statue of a jaguar. The implication of seeing the negative symbol again in both endings is this: white magic may have won a happy ending in the case of this individual story but the black magic is still out there waiting another opportunity to emerge so the struggle against it must continue.

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The Unaltered Cat

After Lewin had a heart attack in 1959 and was ordered by his doctor to give up film production, Lewin worked on two film scripts and a stage play that were never produced. He did manage to complete and publish one last work, the novel The Unaltered Cat. The book is about a group of academics dealing with the deathbed confession of another academic who relates the story that his second wife was a were-cat.

Were-cats are typically the subject of horror tales but, as with his other works involving the supernatural, Lewin doesn't really treat the subject as a horror story. If anything, the story is an allegory about adultery and promiscuity (as the were-cat has kittens with the un-neutered house cat of the title) that links the book to the misogynist view of women in the first three Lewin films. Also, Lewin seems more interested in the lives of the academics than in creating any sort of chill up the spine. If there is any kind of horror story in there, it really doesn't matter that much. It's merely a hook that brings you into the company of these people and offers something a little less mundane to think about than the same book without it.

In her book on Albert Lewin, Susan Felleman dismisses The Unaltered Cat by saying it "reads like a dinner-table conversation at a faculty club--sometimes erudite, informative, and provocative, but too often tedious, didactic, and tendentious." And yet, it's that faculty club conversation aspect, with the characters delighting in using big words or creating puns and anagrams that, completely tangential to the story, that is delightful. The book includes some wonderful observations and philosophical judgments about life and a section about the agony of being in a hospital that must have come from Lewin's own experiences of having a heart attack.

Lewin adds the more personal. He has one of his characters mention reading Renoir, My Father by Jean Renoir. Renoir was a close friend who would return the favor by mentioning Lewin and The Unaltered Cat in his book, My Life and My Films. Lewin also returns to old themes and mentions the same myths and legends that are discussed in The Living Idol and, there again, is he repeats a line about the cat gods of Egypt that The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Living Idol, and The Unaltered Cat all share. Art and painting are less important in this novel than they are in Lewin's films, but the book's cover offers an excuse to present one final "Lewin painting" by Lewin's old friend Man Ray.

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The True Gen...

2011-08-26T12:42:00.002-04:00

...is a blog that offers video clips, hyperlinks, and download links to sources about art and culture. Welcome. Posts will be infrequent, but hopefully interesting. Also, because items come and go on the internet, there is no guarantee that any of the clips or links will be "working" at the time you visit them. However, I will do my best to clean up non-working links and keep the posts up-to-date.

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