May 22, 2012

26th May 2012; Art Documentary: HOW ART MADE THE WORLD part 1

CONTEMPLATE & KONANGAL
Joint presentation of
Documentaries on Art


HOW ART MADE THE WORLD
THE EPIC STORY OF HOW HUMANS MADE ART 
AND ART MADE US HUMAN
BBC Documentary
Episode 1 
-More Human Than Human-
Runtime : 59.30 minutes
26th  May 2012 ;  Saturday’ 5.45pm
Contemplate Art Gallery
Avanashi Road, opp PSG Krishnammal College,    Coimbatore 
http://konangalfilmsociety.blogspot.in/

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.
Professor V S Ramachandran explains the Herring Gull Test, an experiment with baby seagulls which illustrates the neurological principle of peak shift - the hard-wiring of brains to focus on parts of objects that matter the most. Peak shift is fundamental to understanding why we prefer exaggerated images of the human body.

How Art Made the World is a landmark documentary, made with the intention to generate public awareness about art history's relevance to contemporary culture,. 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, though art, we can historically trace human needs and desires because our minds drive us to create images. 

 Questioning how and why art influences society, Spivey employs art criticism, archaeology, political theory, and anthropology in order to posit theories in each hour-long segment. Episode one, "More Human than Human," traces our obsession with the human body by analyzing the Venus of Willendorf, Egyptian art, and Ancient Greece's preoccupation with athleticism. 

May 15, 2012

20th May 2012; Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront



On the Waterfront
A film by Elia Kazan
Country :USA
Year: 1954
Runtime:108 minutes
20th May 2012;5.45 pm
Perks mini Theater


The recipient of eight Oscars (including Best Picture), On the Waterfront represented a defining moment in the careers to two key participants: actor Marlon Brando and director Elia Kazan. A gritty, uncompromising look at union corruption on the docks of Hoboken, New Jersey, the film is loosely based on real-life events, and, even though the specific politics of the era no longer possess the immediacy they once had, they still carry weight within the context of the movie, which was one of the best acted efforts to come out of Hollywood during the 1950s. 
In many ways, the United States was formed on the backs of manual laborers (whether on assembly lines, in steel mills, in coal mines, or elsewhere), and few would deny the importance of the early unions to the welfare of the American worker. In the 1950s, unions were a vital force that permeated nearly every aspect of American industry, and, as with every repository of influence, the potential for graft was great. On the Waterfront takes a long, hard look at one such situation - and the impact it has upon the lives of those who don't play by the rules. Over the years, many critics have praised On the Waterfront for having what has been called a nearly perfect screenplay. 
This was the film made in 1954 by Elia Kazan after he agreed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, named former associates who were involved with the Communist Party . On the Waterfront unavoidably evokes the director's potent mixture of guilt and self-justification. It is left for the viewer to determine whether his justification is acceptable.

Despite all this, the fact remains that it is a powerful film and fantastic piece of pure cinema. Brando's performance is perhaps the most influential in film history.
Marlon Brando's Terry Malloy is a shatteringly poignant portrait of an amoral, confused, illiterate citizen of the lower depths who is goaded into decency by love, hate and murder. His groping for words, use of the vernacular, care of his beloved pigeons, pugilist's walk and gestures and his discoveries of love and the immensity of the crimes surrounding him are highlights of a beautiful and moving portrayal.
(Source:Internet)






Elia Kazan, (September 7, 1909 – September 28, 2003), was an award-winning film and theatre director, film and theatrical producer, screenwriter, novelist and co-founder of the influential Actors Studio in New York in 1947. Kazan was a three-time Academy Award winner, a five-time Tony Award winner, a four-time Golden Globes winner, as well as a recipient of numerous awards and nominations in other prestigious festivals as the Cannes Film Festival and the Venice Film Festival.

Kazan was born Elias Kazanjoglou in the Anatolian city of the Ottoman Empire, Kayseri,( Turkey) to a Greek family.His family emigrated to the United States in 1913 and settled in New York City. 

A highly successful stage director and a co-founder of "The Actors Studio" in New York, Elia Kazan brought his psychological and emotional philosophy of stage performance to Hollywood in 1945 and sparked a radical redefinition of screen acting during the 1950s while at the same time producing socially conscious films which challenged societal norms and addressed such controversial topics as anti-Semitism, racism, alcoholism, public corruption and the cult of celebrity. Further marked by compelling personal stories, Kazan's films also showcased career-defining performances by such 1950s film icons as Marlon Brando, James Dean and Natalie Wood.

In 1983 Kazan was honoured for his Life Achievement in a Kennedy Center ceremony. When he received in 1999 the Honorary Oscar, Warren Beatty rose and applauded and Nick Nolte remained seated stony-faced. Kazan's films have earned 22 Academy Awards and 62 nominations, including two Directing Oscars. He was married three times; all his wifes were blondes. "Being Greek, blondness is my fetish," Kazan wrote in The Arrangement. In 1932 he married Moly Day Thatcher, a playwright; they had four children. She died in 1963. Barbara Loden, an actress, writer and director, whom he married in 1967, died in 1980. From 1982 Kazan was married to Frances Rudge. Elia Kazan died on September 28, 2003, at his home in Manhattan.

May 8, 2012

13th May 2012; Akira Kuorsawa'a RAN


RAN
"Revolt"
A film by Akira Kurosawa
Country : Japan
Year: 1985
Runtime: 162 minutes
Japanese with English subtitles
13thMay 2012; 5.45pm
Perks Mini Theater
 
RAN can be mentioned as the single  greatest  Shakespeare adaptation ever. This epic retelling of Shakespeare's ``King Lear'' is set in feudal Japan, with the overlord Hidetora as the Lear figure, who starts with everything and ends with nothing. In place of the king's three daughters in Shakespeare, Kurosawa has substituted three warlord sons. It is the one faithful son who defies the old man, by refusing to go along with a false sense of family unity, and is banished. The reconciliation of father and son, when it comes, will be brief. 
Ran is an epic story of ambition, hubris, and aging. In contrast to the muted battle scenes of Seven Samurai, Ran is a graphic, sensoral depiction of the violence innate in the human soul. Through the use of suffusive colors to delineate opposing armies, Akira Kurosawa figuratively taints the serene landscape with the artificial, surreal hues of human tragedy and senseless destruction. 
As the conflict intensifies, the sweeping images fuse into a mesmerizing, heartbreaking chronicle of Hidetora's personal revelation and fall from grace. In the end, cast away by his family and humiliated by the consequences of his misguided actions, Hidetora returns to a state of nascent innocence and wanders the land - away from the madness of violence - and in the process, finds his own fleeting inner peace.
Emi Wada's costumes, which won an Academy Award, carry most of the film's color. The 1,400 costumes were handmade in Kyoto, traditional seat of Japanese tapestries.

 

The film is visually magnificent. Kurosawa refined everything he learned about battle scenes in "Kagemusha" and the earlier samurai epics. He uses several static cameras to film the action, cutting between them; because his cameras don't dart and whirl, we are not encouraged to think of ourselves as participants but as gods, observing, taking the long view here and then a closeup look.




Akira Kurosawa
1910 -1998

Akira Kurosawa was the youngest of seven children, born in Tokyo on 23 March 1910. A talented painter, he enrolled in an art school that emphasized Western styles. Around this time he also joined an artists' group with a great enthusiasm for nineteenth-century Russian literature, with Dostoevsky a particular favourite. Another influence was Heigo, one of his brothers, who loved film and worked as a benshi, a film narrator/commentator for foreign silent films. His suicide deeply affected the director's sensibilities.In 1930 he responded to a newspaper advertisement for assistant directors at a film studio and began assisting Kajiro Yamamoto, who liked the fact he knew 'a lot about things other than movies'. Within five years he was writing scripts and directing whole sequences for Yamamoto films. In 1943 he made his debut as a director with Judo Saga (Sanshiro Sugata), with a magnificent martial-arts sequence.
His early films were produced during the Second World War, so had to comply to themes prescribed by official state propaganda policy. It was Drunken Angel which was Kurosawa's first personally expressive work, made in 1948 and featuring Toshiro Mifune who became Kurosawa's favourite leading man.
For those who discover Kurosawa, they will find a master technician and stylist, with a deep humanism and compassion for his characters and an awe of the enormity of nature. He awakened the West to Japanese cinema with Rashomon, which won the top prize in the Venice Film Festival of 1951, and also a special Oscar for best foreign film. A golden period followed, with the West enthralled by his work. Seven Samurai, Yojimbo etc.
Following Red Beard (Akahige) in 1965 he entered a frustrating period of aborted projects and forced inactivity and when in 1970 his first film in five years (Dodeska-den) failed at the box office, he attempted suicide. Directing a Soviet-Japanese production, Dersu Uzala helped him to recover and took four years to make. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1975 and a gold medal at the Moscow Film Festival.
A true auteur, he supervised the editing of nearly all his films and wrote or collaborated on the scripts of most. His memoirs were published in 1982, titled Something like an Autobiography. In 1989 he won an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement. Kurosawa died in 1998.