11th Sept 2011; Fritz Lang's M

M
A Film by Fritz Lang
Year : 1931
Country : Germany
Runtime:110 minutes
German with English sub titles
11 Sept 2011; 5.45 pm
Perks Mini Theater

A 15 minutes documentary on M will follow the main screening.

M, filmed in only six weeks, is far and away Fritz Lang’s most popular film and his own personal favourite. It tells the story of a pathological child-killer, superbly played by Peter Lorre. It’s hard to believe that M was made in 1931. If we allow for the fact that it’s in black and white, it is more engaging to the eye, more incisive in its irony, more firm in its grasp of social complications than most of the films that come along today.

The film's story was inspired by the career of a serial killer in Dusseldorf. In "M,'' Franz Becker preys on children -- offering them candy and friendship, and then killing them. The murders are all offscreen, and Lang suggests the first one with a classic montage including the little victim's empty dinner plate, her mother calling frantically down an empty spiral staircase, and her balloon--bought for her by the killer--caught in electric wires.
Certainly "M'' is a portrait of a diseased society, one that seems even more decadent than the other portraits of Berlin in the 1930s; its characters have no virtues and lack even attractive vices. In other stories of the time we see nightclubs, champagne, sex and perversion. When "M'' visits a bar, it is to show closeups of greasy sausages, spilled beer, rotten cheese and stale cigar butts.

The letter M with which he is tagged—for Mörder, German for “murderer”—guarantees that, under the wit and satire, a dark current flows. The killer, Hans Beckert, is presented in the film with a certain amount of sympathy for the way in which he is the helpless victim of his own pathology.
Because of Lang’s sensitive treatment of the killer, his characteristic fatalistic development of events gains a rare tragic intensity.

Fritz Lang

Fritz Lang (December 5, 1890 – August 2, 1976) was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known émigrés from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute. His most famous films are the groundbreaking Metropolis (the world's most expensive silent film at the time of its release) and M, made before he moved to the United States, his iconic precursor to the film noir genre.

Lang was born in Vienna.After finishing school, Lang briefly attended the Technical University of Vienna, where he studied civil engineering and eventually switched to art. In 1910 he left Vienna to see the world, At the outbreak of World War I, Lang returned to Vienna and volunteered for military service in the Austrian army and fought in Russia and Romania, where he was wounded three times.

Lang soon started to work as a director at the German film studio Ufa, and later Nero-Film, just as the Expressionist movement was building. Lang's wife co-wrote all of his movies from 1921 through 1933., including 1922's Dr. Dr. Mabuse the Gambler, he first in the Dr. Mabuse trilogy, 1924's Die Nibelungen, the famed 1927 masterpiece Metropolis, and the 1931 classic, M, his first "talking" picture.

Whereas Lang was worried about the advent of the Nazi regime, partly because of his Jewish heritage, his wife and screen writer Thea von Harbou had started to sympathize with the Nazis in the early 1930s and joined the NSDAP in 1932. They soon divorced. Lang's fears would be realized following his departure from Austria,Upon his arrival in Hollywood in 1936.

Lang made twenty-one features in the next twenty-one years, working in a variety of genres at every major studio in Hollywood, occasionally producing his films as an independent. Lang found it harder to find congenial production conditions in Hollywood and his advancing age left him less inclined to grapple with American backers. While his career had ended without fanfare, his American and later German works were championed by the critics of the Cahiers du cinéma. Lang died in 1976.

4th Sept 2011; Carlos Sarin's The Window

The Window (2008)
A film by Carlos Sorin
Country: Argentina
Year :2008
Run time :85 minutes
Spanish with English subtitles
4th Sept 2011;5.45pm
PERKS MINI THEATER

The Window (2008) is a gentle masterpiece of cinema written and directed by Carlos Sorin. It is about living and dying and how, hopefully, we all can approach that last day on earth. Filmed in Argentina's Patagonia by cinematographer Julian Apezteguia with an emphasis on sunshine and landscape this little film humbly presents the final day of living of 80-year-old writer Antonio (Antonio Larreta) . This is a big day for Don Antonio. His son, a noted European pianist whom he hasn't seen in years, is coming to visit him, and the housekeepers are buzzing about preparing for the prodigal son's return.

In The Window the images are not heavy and portentous, but play as a background soundtrack to the sensory impressions and ambiance within the confined spaces of a man's last day on earth. Sorin's plot less film deals with the light and not the shadows, and with an airy leisure and humor that belies the melancholy and foretold destiny of a dying old man.

Sorin infuses his film with visual landscapes both interior and exterior and deconstructs the final day from dawn to dusk with the symphony of life -- chirping birds, the wind, discordant notes from a piano tuner, even water in the pipes as someone takes a shower. Life is all around Don Antonio and Sorin lets him see and hear it all.

Employing simple camera setups, he lets the spectacular Argentine light fill the house and wash over the surrounding fields. What interests Sorin isn’t emotion, really, but process. When the processes are mundane - tuning a piano, taking Don Antonio’s blood pressure - he manages to make them engrossing. And when the process isn’t at all mundane - the surrendering of life - Sorin handles it with impressive circumspection.

Death for Don Antonio is a reluctantly willing journey of transcendence where cinematic images (a key, a 40-year-old Champagne bottle, a first edition, a toy soldier) become the remaining sparks of precious remaining hours of life. Significantly, at the end of the film, when the old man dies, the last image and sound is of a scratchy and faded film running to its end as if projected through an old camera.

Carlos Sorin

Carlos Sorin is an Argentinian film director, screenplay writer, cinematographer, and film producer. At the age of six, Carlos Sorín got a hand-crank projector with comic strip tapes made of paper. In those times television was not very common, and instantly, from the moment when he switched off the lights, closed the windows and projected the images onto a sheet hung on the wall, he was sure that cinema was going to be his future.

When he was 8 years old, he got another projector capable of showing 16mm movies, and one year later, he received a motorized projector. At the age of 14 he worked with the first camera, a 16mm rope-Kodak. Later on, as the years went by, the motorized Bolex, the Arriflex, Aatons and finally the 4K digital cameras arrived. For him, there was no doubt that technology was the way of entrance into cinema. When he left the film university Escuela de Cine de la Universidad de La Plata he became camera assistant, and only a little later director of photography. After ten years in this job, he successfully became a director of commercials—a job he exercised for too many years.

In 1986, he made his first theatrical motion picture, La Pelicula del Rey (A King and his Movie), which was awarded the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, and the Goya Award of the Spanish Film Academy for the Best Foreign Film, among many other awards. Encouraged by these accolades, he rapidly launched himself into the making of his second movie, Eversmile New Jersey, a film that became an experience of failure. After this failure, he began directing commercials again.
In 2002, when he was ready to settle an open personal account with cinema, he directed and produced Historias Mínimas (Intimate Stories). The film won an innumerable series of international awards (among others the Special Prize of the Jury at San Sebastian 2002 and 8 Silver Condors) and opened the door again to other opportunities.

At that point in time, he finally gave up his career making commercials in order to concentrate on directing dry cinema. In 2004, he directed Bombon, El Perro (Bombon, the Dog) (FIPRESCI award in San Sebastian 2004) – a worldwide theatrical success – and in 2006 El Camino de San Diego (The Road to San Diego). In 2008 he directed The Window.

28th Aug 2011; Sydney Lumet's Fail-Safe

Fail-Safe
A film by Sydney Lumet
Country :USA
Year: 1965
Runtime: 112 minutes
28th Aug 2011
Perks Mini Theater

A 16 minutes documentary on Failsafe with
Sydney Lumet and others will be shown.

Based on the novel "Fail-Safe" by Eugene Burdick and Harvey Wheeler, Sidney Lumet directed this shocking masterpiece of cold-war realism. Fail-Safe was and remains a real crackerjack of a film. It is an uncompromising look at the folly of total reliance on machines at a time when the smallest error can have catastrophic consequences.
Today, we live in an age when the world has taken a small step back from the game of nuclear brinksmanship that characterized the 1950s and '60s, although the threat of isolated nuclear terrorism is still very real. Even in such a climate, the situation portrayed in Fail-Safe still seems frighteningly possible, so at the time of its original release, one can only imagine its effect on thinking people.
Due to astronomically unfortunate computer error, a flight of Strategic Air Command (SAC) bombers originating in Alaska carry 2 nuclear warheads past what is known as the 'fail-safe' point. With Russian military jamming their communication they cannot be recalled. They are headed toward Moscow to drop their bombs and complete their mission. The options of stopping them are both limited and extremely time sensitive.
Henry Fonda portrays the President of the United States in a role he wears like a tailor made suit. Attempts to abort the mission fail and the President is left with no more options... aside from the unthinkable.
Communicating with the aptly crippled Secretary of Defense, various military personnel, visiting political scientist Groeteschele (Walter Matthau) and the Russian Premier (through his his translator 'Buck' played by Larry Hagman) a most impossible, totally unacceptable decision is absolutely believably concluded.
Stunning is an understatement. This is without question, the best Cold-war film ever made. The performances are outstanding, the messages are both subtle and coldly obvious with a conclusion as eviscerating as any. A great film to introduce to friends as so few people have seen it before.
(Source : Internet)

Sidney Lumet

Sidney Lumet is nevertheless a master of cinema. Known for his technical knowledge and his skill at getting first-rate performances from his actors--and for shooting most of his films in his beloved New York--Lumet has made over 40 movies, often emotional, but seldom overly sentimental. He often tells intelligent, complex stories. His politics are somewhat left-leaning and he often treats socially relevant themes in his films.

As social criticism, Sidney Lumet addresses throughout his long career on numerous issues related to American society - on corrupt police (Serpico, 1973, The Prince of New York, 1981 and in the Night Falls on Manhattan (1997)), on television (A Dog Day Afternoon, 1975 ), on Justice ( Twelve Angry Men In 1957, The Verdict, 1982 ) on MacCarthyism (Daniel, 1983), on alcoholism (Lendemain From Crime, 1986) and on racism (Counter-survey, 1990).

Born on June 25, 1924, in Philadelphia, the son of actor Baruch Lumet and dancer Eugenia Wermus Lumet, he made his stage debut at age four at the Yiddish Art Theater in New York. He played many roles on Broadway in the 1930s (such as "Dead End"), and his acting debut in films came in One Third of a Nation (1939). In 1947 he started an off-Broadway acting troupe that included such future stars as Yul Brynner and Eli Wallach, and other former members of Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio who had become unsatisfied with Strasberg's concepts.

Lumet made his stage directing debut in 1955. He made his feature film directing debut with the critical and financial hit 12 Angry Men (1957), which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and earned Academy Award nominations for Best Picture, Director and Adapted
Screenplay, and is justly regarded as one of the most auspicious directorial debuts in film history.

Lumet has made over 40 movies, which earned nearly 50 Oscar nominations. In 1993 he received the D.W. Griffith Award of theDirectors Guild of America and in 2005 a well-deserved Honorary Academy Award. He died at the age of 86 on 9th April 2011.

7th August 2011; BAL (Honey)

Bal (Honey)
A film by Semih Kaplanoglu
Country:Turkey
Year 2010
Runtime: 103 minutes
Turkish with English subtitles
7th August 2011; 5.45pm
Perks Mini Theater
Perks School

Turkish filmmaker Semih Kaplanoglu’s Bal (Honey) fall under the spell of this contemplative drama about a boy (Altas) and his dad (Besikçioglu), a rural beekeeper. Bal walks a fine line between affecting, character-based drama and long-take academicism, nearly always coming down on the side of the former thanks to the film's close alignment with the viewpoint of its preteen protagonist.

The plot of Bal (Honey) is simple and incidental: the straightforward story of a young boy’s all encompassing love for his father and his weariness of everyone else.

Set in the impossibly lush mountains along the Black Sea coast of northeast Turkey, it could have been a nature film, made only to capture the stunning mist-bathed surroundings. But perhaps it’s a tribute to Yusuf (Bora Altas), the seven-year-old protagonist with the unnerving presence of a pensive cub.

Yusuf doesn’t utter a word to his mother (Tulin Ozen), stutters when called upon in class, and regards everything around him with bemused silence. But his father (Erdal Besikcioglu)—a beekeeper who plants his hives high up in the soaring trees—wisely cajoles the boy to speak in whispers, and he responds in the same hushed tones.

Their relationship pushes the two into a private space within their already isolated landscape. When his father doesn’t return from a trip into the woods, Yusuf and his mother go looking for him. If he isn’t found, Yusuf might lose his only connection to the world.

Bal revels in the beauty and sweetness of children and nature. Bal, which resembles more of a fairytale and feels centuries away from the modern world.

Perhaps it should be treated like a two-hour meditation for which a patient mood and disposition are absolutely critical. And like a meditation, the effects may only be palpable after the spell is broken and the movie ends.
(Source:Internet)

Semih Kaplanoglu

Semih Kaplanoğlu (born 1963 in İzmir, Turkey)is a Turkish playwright, film director and producer. He graduated from the Cinema and Television Section of the Faculty of Fine Arts at the Dokuz Eylül University in his hometown. He became an assistant cameraman for two award-winning documentary films.

Later, Kaplanoğlu wrote the script and directed a television series with 52 episodes, which became successful at the channels Show TV and InterStar. The first film he directed, Herkes Kendi Evinde (Away From Home) won many awards participating at international film festivals. Kaplanoğlu's second feature film Meleğin Düşüşü (Angel's Fall) premiered at the 2006 Berlin International Film Festival and found wide interest by international film critics and audience.

His film Yumurta (Egg) brought many international awards for best film, best director, best screenplay.He founded his own film production company Kaplan Film. Its first feature film Egg was a co-production with Greece. Kaplanoğlu's film Süt (Milk) was released in Germany in January 2010, which with Yumurta (Egg) and the film Bal (Honey) produced in 2010, forms a trilogy called Yusuf Üçlemesi (Yusuf's Trilogy), named after the main character Yusuf of the films.

His 2010 film, Bal won the Golden Bear at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival.

16th July 2011; Documentaries on Art : ANDY WARHOL

CONTEMPLATE & KONANGAL

present

Documentaries on Art

Contemplate Art Gallery
Opp. PSG Krishnammal College
Avanashi Road

16th July 2011 ; 5.45pm


Pop art

Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art. Pop removes the material from its context and isolates the object, or combines it with other objects, for contemplation. The concept of pop art refers not as much to the art itself as to the attitudes that led to it. Pop art employs aspects of mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects. It is widely interpreted as a reaction to the then-dominant ideas of abstract expressionism, as well as an expansion upon them.And due to its utilization of found objects and images it is similar to Dada. Pop art is also associated with the artists' use of mechanical means of reproduction or rendering techniques.

Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol was born Andrew Warhola August 6, 1928. Born to Slovak immigrants, he was reared in a working class suburb of Pittsburgh. From an early age, Warhol showed an interest in photography and drawing, attending free classes at Carnegie InstituteProphetically, his first assignment was for Glamour magazine for an article titled "Success is a Job in New York."

Throughout the nineteen fifties, Warhol enjoyed a successful career as a commercial artist, winning several commendations from the Art Director's Club and the American Institute of Graphic Arts. During this period, he shortened his name to "Warhol." In 1952, the artist had his first solo exhibition at the Hugo Gallery, exhibiting Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman Capote. Subsequently, Warhol's work was exhibited in several venues throughout the fifties including his first group show at The Museum of Modern Art in 1955. In 1953 the artist produced his first illustrated book, A is an Alphabet and Love is a Pink Cake, which he gave to his clients and associates. With a burgeoning career as an illustrator, he formed Andy Warhol Enterprises in 1957.1960 marked a turning point in Warhol's prolific career. He painted his first works based on comics and advertisements, enlarging and transferring the source images onto his canvases with an opaque projector. In 1961, Warhol showed his paintings, Advertisement, Little King, Superman, Before and After, and Superman, Before and After, and Saturday's Popeye in a window display of Bonwit Teller department store. Appropriating images from popular culture, Warhol created many paintings that remain icons of 20th-century art including the Campbell's Soup Can, Marilyn and Elvis series. In 1962, the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles exhibited his Campbell's Soup Cans and in New York, the Stable gallery showed the Baseball, Coca-Cola, Do It Yourself and Dance Diagram paintings among others. In 1963 Warhol established a studio at 231 East 47th Street which became known as the "Factory."

In addition to painting and creating box sculptures such as Brillo Box and Heinz Box, Warhol began working in other mediums including record producing (The Velvet Underground), magazine publishing (Interview) and filmmaking. His avant-garde films such as Chelsea Girls, Blow Job and Empire have become classics of the underground genre. In 1968, Valerie Solanis, a periodic factory visitor, and sole member of SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) walked into the Factory and shot Warhol. The attack was near fatal.

In the 1970's, Warhol renewed his focus on painting and worked extensively on a commissioned basis both for corporations and for individuals whose portrait he painted. Works created in this decade include Skulls, Hammer and Sickles, Torsos, Maos and Shadows. Warhol also published The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (from A to B and Back Again). Firmly established as a major 20th-century artist and international celebrity, Warhol was given a major retrospective of his work at the Pasadena Art Museum which traveled to museums around the world. In the late seventies Warhol began dictating an oral diary to his colleague Pat Hackett, which became the basis for the best-selling Andy Warhol Diaries. He also frequented Studio 54 along with other members of the international jet-set saying, "I have a social disease. I have to go out every night."

The artist began the 1980's with the publication of POPism: The Warhol '60s. He also began work on Andy Warhol's TV, a series of half hour of video programs patterned after Interview magazine. In 1985, "Andy Warhol's Fifteen Minutes" appeared on MTV, half hour programs featuring celebrities, artists, musicians, and designers, with Warhol as the host. The paintings he created during this time included Dollar Signs, Guns and Last Suppers. He also produced several paintings in collaboration with other artists including Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Francesco Clemente.

Following routine gall bladder surgery, Andy Warhol died of complications during his recovery on February 2, 1987. (Compiled from Internet sources)