kagablog

in south africa the criminals who are everywhere always get away with everything. except of course the poor who only get away with nothing.

aryan kaganof

zef matabane and tsietsi mashinini

Inside/Out by Jonathan Rosenbaum

” An uncredited Jean-Luc Godard produced this 1997 third feature
by the singular American independent Rob Tregenza (Talking to
Strangers, The Arc), and along with Hungarian filmmaker Bela
Tarr, Godard is certainly a presiding guru over this powerful
if enigmatic view of life in and around a psychiatric hospital
somewhere in rural, snowbound America. Shot by Tregenza himself
(one of the best cinematographers on the planet) in
black-and-white 35-millimeter ‘Scope–mainly in extremely long,
choreographed takes that transpire with a minimum of dialogue
but with an extremely inventive and original Dolby sound
track–the film offers not so much a plot in the usual sense as
a series of interlocking characters and events governed, like
the film’s title, by polarities: sound and image, interior and
exterior, sanity and madness, freedom and institutional
captivity, society and isolation. According to clues planted in
the clothes and decor (especially the cars), the action begins
around 1945 and ends in the present or near future, but to
confuse matters further the characters and their behavior
remain unaging constants. Tregenza’s background in existential
philosophy serves him well: every shot comprises an event, and
most of them were shot only once, in a single take (as in
Talking to Strangers), allowing change and contingency to shape
the material. Art conceived as both adventure and
confrontation, Inside/Out requires a certain amount of creative
energy from the audience but grandly repays the effort.
–Jonathan Rosenbaum

Truth is:

a race which responds to the abstract awe of reality
with proud, given grin
and sheer Dance
CANNOT
accommodate the cynical, analytic superstition
of a race which
frowns
and scuttles,
abjectly quantifies
in the face of God.

Cancer
Psychosis
is the only
viable
call-and-effect

Here’s amen to
‘culiar fronds
to come..

the only i is the truth
and the only truth the i

The only trick
(yawning canyons to be sure)
is to
somehow
make the Mulah

and remain
self- ish

The film was premiered in Mexico on 8 May 1962 and was also sent to the Cannes Film Festival, where its reception was mixed (Edwards 1982: 171).6 It starts as it ends, with the image of a church and a Te Deum that acts as a background for the credits. The first sequence opens at night, on a street sign indicating the location of the action for the entire narrative – except the closing sequences in a church. Following the initial title of Bunuel and Alcoriza’s screenplay, the camera is on the ironically named Calle de la Providencia and it is to a fine mansion on this street that its owner Edmundo Nobile (Enrique Rambal) and his wife Lucia (Lucy Gallardo) return with eighteen dinner guests after a night at the theater to see Donizetti’s Lucia de Lammermoor (1835, based on Sir Walter Scott’s The Bride of Lammermoor 1819, revised 1830) starring one of the guests, Sylvia (Rosa Elena Durgel). The guests are all served by the one loyal butler, Julio (Claudio Brook) who is the only servant to share the same fate as those who sat to dinner.7 At the absurdly platitudinous meal Leticia (Silvia Pinal’s character) receives a sobriquet from Alicia (Jaqueline Andere), and she becomes known as `la Valkiria’ (`the Valkyrie’). Alicia insists that Leticia’s insistent preservation of her virginity is redolent of some kind of `perversion’, a theory graphically enacted and perhaps vindicated when Leticia is seen hurling an object through a dining room window with apparent sexual frustration. The other guests comment that `han roto una ventana; seguramente lo hizo un judio que pasaba’ (`someone broke a window, must have been a passing Jew’) and so on, relentlessly as Bunuel satirizes an entire value system to which they cling. Weirdest of all: for no apparent reason, they all simply fail to leave. They still manage to find justification for each other in the name of politeness. In the morning, a jumbled replay of the dinner dialogue from the night before also serves to `surrealise’ the morning. Alicia comments tautologically, `yo lo encuentro muy original a todas las cosas que se salen de la rutina’ (`I find novel all those things that aren’t routine’) as they become the paradoxical `guestages’ of the Nobile household.8 Half starved, they eventually make their way out in a state of hysteria, but only with the help of Leticia, the once frustrated Valkyrie. Throughout, the camerawork of Gabriel Figueroa suggests intensive and sometimes hyperactive social interaction and then disintegration. Taking in the characters mostly in medium and medium-long shots, the camera glides elegantly from one set piece of chat and patter to the next, panning and tracking, as if just another guest at the party. With the onset of the guests’ psychological breakdown there are more close-ups, and the earlier basic contrasts possible in a black and white film of this period give way to more studied, complex light and shadow effects.

from encyclopedia britannica

this translation by dionysos andronis was first published on cineastes.net

By HOLLAND COTTER

Louise Bourgeois in 2009.

Louise Bourgeois, the French-born American artist who gained fame only late in a long career, when her psychologically charged abstract sculptures, drawings and prints had a galvanizing effect on younger artists, particularly women, died on Monday at the Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. She was 98.

The death was reported by Wendy Williams, the managing director of the Louise Bourgeois Studio.

Ms. Bourgeois’s sculptures in wood, steel, stone and cast rubber, often organic in form and sexually explicit, emotionally aggressive yet witty, covered many stylistic bases. But from first to last they shared a set of repeated themes, centered on the human body and its need for nurture and protection in a frightening world.

Among her most familiar sculptures was the much-exhibited “Nature Study” (1984), a headless sphinx with powerful claws and multiple breasts. Perhaps the most provocative was “Fillette” (1968), a large, detached latex phallus. Ms. Bourgeois can be seen carrying this object, nonchalantly tucked under one arm, in a portrait by the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe taken for the catalog of her 1982 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art. (In the catalog, the Mapplethorpe picture is cropped to show only the artist’s smiling face.)

this report first appeared here

CAMERON PLATTER AT WHATIFTHEWORLD/ GALLERY
HARD TIMES / GREAT EXPECTATIONS
June 2 – July 3rd 2010
Opening Reception: Wednesday June 2 at 6.30pm

WHATIFTHEWORLD/ GALLERY is pleased to present Hard Times / Great Expectations, a solo exhibition by Cameron Platter. Loud, brash, colorful and anti–aesthetic, his work is an ironic, sincere, and cynical take on what it means to be alive in South Africa today.

In Hard Times/ Great Expectations, Platter presents a suite of new large-scale colour drawings, sculpture, and video. Taking its cue from sub-tropical sleaze and degradation, it is a look into the sweat, dirt, perversity and absurdity of everyday life.

Mixing new and traditional mediums, his work is an intoxicating vision of Good vs. Evil, documenting contemporary morality through the telling of simple stories drawn and appropriated from the media, TV, films, art, history, pornography, battle scenes, downtown-cityscapes, politics, music, and religion.

His targets and influences include Lamborghinis, Kawasaki’s and beautiful women in fishnets; megalomania and the mass media; James Bond and Richard Pryor; corrupt politicians; penis extension machines and strip clubs; children’s stories, crime fiction and gangster films; Southern African woodcut and craft masters; tabloid horror stories; wildlife, real life and things falling apart…

He has been called, amongst other things: “the delinquent love child of Quentin Tarantino and Dr Seuss”, “the undisputed king of afro-bling,” and “an agent provocateur with a sinister agenda.”

Born 1978 Johannesburg Cameron Platter lives and works in Shaka’s rock, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. This is his debut solo presentation with WHATIFTHEWORLD/ GALLERY.

For further information please contact Justin Rhodes or Ashleigh McLean at 021 448 1438 or via email at Justin@whatiftheworld.com or Ashleigh@whatiftheworld.com

Whatiftheworld Gallery, 208 Albert Rd, Woodstock, Cape Town South Africa

T: +27 (21) 448 1438
M: +27 84 414 4554
M: +27 76 422 2387

this article first published here: http://www.thefilmjournal.com/issue5/kerkhof.html