Histoire(s) du cinéma

These two articles focusing on Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du cinéma are the openers of the recent screening the past issue, as in the issue before an international poll has selected Godard’s Histoire(s) (along with Gilberto Perez’s The Material Ghost: Films and Their Medium) as the most significant publications in our field in the past decade: […] Read More

Logical Aesthetics

Research as Cultural Practice has been addressed now for some time, but this work by gatescherrywolmark I came across the other day is really presenting its expression/result in form of an interesting and refreshing media piece. The visible traces of the past in the present provide the essential material from which the video, Logical Aesthetics, […] Read More

America’s Change

Visualization of Obama’s Victory Speech >>> see source page .. and as it has been an historic event let’s also link to this visualization of Martin Wattenberg – the site History Wired, a visualization of a selection of objects from the Smithsonian Museum. (This was built in collaboration with Judy Gradwohl at the Smithsonian.) A […] Read More

the ultimate underground movie

Yesterday I posted on Ken Jacobs Online Exhibition at tank.tv and gave two short examples of the films to be seen there. ‘The Whirled’, which was a pre-work to his magnum opus ‘Star Spangled to Death’. And this latter film definitely deserves some more words. Synopsis according to Jim Knipfel (from an interview with K.Jacobs): […] Read More

Ken Jacobs Online Exhibition at tank.tv

Don’t miss this kind of unique opportunity to watch these rarely seen films: Ken Jacobs Online Exhibition at tank.tv / Curated by Mark Webber Ken Jacobs (b.1933) has been active as a filmmaker, performer and teacher for the past five decades. Rigorous and dedicated, his work is characterised by a keen eye for formal composition […] Read More

assume the fetal position ….

Today I came across an article in in the german newspaper FAZ (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) which offers a read-worthy, though kind of bitter review on the heritage which the current president of the US will leave behind to all of us. As looking back and recounting the distortions caused over the years within the understanding […] Read More

new new deal (*)

Saskia Sassen writes on Open Democracy on the recent financial crisis – the article ‘The new new deal‘ is obviously the opener for a new series ‘When local housing becomes a global electronic instrument’ … and it might be interesting to read further opinions and analysis on the theme: The current moment would be a […] Read More

Z32

Avi Mograbi’s presentation at the Venice Film Festival this year seemingly offered an interesting approach towards a difficult theme in which the filmmaker questions his own political and artistic approach. The film, based on real interviews, but concealing the attester’s identity is set up as a musical documentary tragedy. An Israeli ex-soldier who participated in […] Read More

two North African cities on focus in Berlin

The House of World Cultures Exhibition In the Desert of Modernity. Colonial Planning and After examines the colonial fantasies of the West(/Europe) using the north-african city Casablanca as an experimental playground of modernistic ideas and the consequent impact of this enforced transformations. From the 1930s on, colonial North Africa was transformed into a laboratory for […] Read More

… the way art works / Chinese way

The Committee to Protect Journalists points to an interesting – or better to say – shocking interview with Zhang Yimou, film director, who did the coreography for the Beijing opening show: Thanks to Xiao Qiang, director of the China Internet Project at the University of California Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and Sophie Beach at […] Read More

The Disorder of Things

One hardly hears anything anymore about Italian filmmaker Lina Wertmüller, who once started as Federico Fellini’s assistant on the set of 8 1/2, except that there has been her birthday the other day. But she might be worth to be recalled for some of her extra ordinary films or as the Harvard Film Archive put […] Read More

Andy’s screen tests – for his birthday

“The many Screen Tests evidence a variety of behavior of its portrait subjects, but amazingly little improvisation. The subjects actually look like they are captured and about to be interrogated, but the interrogation never happens, because Andy wanted to capture the essence of the person only, no interference, just like no interference with the camera […] Read More