A woman sits on a park bench, reading from an enormous orange book. On its cover we can just make out the word “Magic.” The woman draws vaguely-occultish diagrams in the sand with her shoe—or perhaps she is just doodling. After a few moments, a loudly-dressed woman stumbles past her, dropping things—various small accessories, a doll—as she goes. The first woman tries to bring her attention to these missing items and then, failing to get her attention, sets off in pursuit. From the first woman’s strange hesitations and sudden decelerations, and the second woman’s occasional backward glances, we soon realize that there is a playful or ritual quality to their pursuit. Are we watching a kind of roleplay between friends or lovers? An extended and rather eccentric meet-cute? Two characters behaving, or two actors acting? The chase takes both women out of the park, up a long set of stairs,...
- 7/26/2021
- MUBI
The following article accompanies the audiovisual essay Paratheatre - Plays Without Stages (From I to IV) by Adrian Martin and Cristina Álvarez López and commissioned by Chris Luscri for the 2014 Melbourne International Film Festival premiere of Jacques Rivette's 1971 magnum opus Out 1 - Noli me tangere.
In Jacques Rivette’s monumental Out 1 (1971), we see two theatrical works perpetually in progress — until, due to the force of many factors both internal and external, both projects collapse. Yet what we witness are not, in any conventional or normative sense, rehearsals. They are more like what Jerzy Grotwoski called paratheatre: playing without a stage, without an audience ever in mind or in attendance, playing for the sake of playing itself, for the process of working it out and working it through.
Every critical commentary on Out 1 (and its double, Out 1: Spectre from 1974) refers to the prominent place in it of theatre — a prominent place it enjoys,...
In Jacques Rivette’s monumental Out 1 (1971), we see two theatrical works perpetually in progress — until, due to the force of many factors both internal and external, both projects collapse. Yet what we witness are not, in any conventional or normative sense, rehearsals. They are more like what Jerzy Grotwoski called paratheatre: playing without a stage, without an audience ever in mind or in attendance, playing for the sake of playing itself, for the process of working it out and working it through.
Every critical commentary on Out 1 (and its double, Out 1: Spectre from 1974) refers to the prominent place in it of theatre — a prominent place it enjoys,...
- 8/7/2014
- by Cristina Álvarez López & Adrian Martin
- MUBI
Argentinian director whose films drew heavily on the stories of Jorge Luis Borges
Although the Argentinian director and screenwriter Eduardo de Gregorio, who has died aged 70, had lived in Paris since 1970, his work was always identifiably South American. This can be attributed to the overpowering influence of the labyrinthine stories of Jorge Luis Borges on a generation of South American artists.
De Gregorio brought this Borgesian aura to bear on the five features he directed, and on the screenplays he wrote with Jacques Rivette and Bernardo Bertolucci. In fact, for the latter's The Spider's Stratagem (1970), De Gregorio adapted the Borges story Theme of the Traitor and the Hero, smoothly transposing it from Ireland to Italy. It was an elaborate piece of Oedipal plotting in which, revisiting the village in the Po valley where his father was murdered in 1936, a young man discovers that his father was not a hero, but a traitor.
Although the Argentinian director and screenwriter Eduardo de Gregorio, who has died aged 70, had lived in Paris since 1970, his work was always identifiably South American. This can be attributed to the overpowering influence of the labyrinthine stories of Jorge Luis Borges on a generation of South American artists.
De Gregorio brought this Borgesian aura to bear on the five features he directed, and on the screenplays he wrote with Jacques Rivette and Bernardo Bertolucci. In fact, for the latter's The Spider's Stratagem (1970), De Gregorio adapted the Borges story Theme of the Traitor and the Hero, smoothly transposing it from Ireland to Italy. It was an elaborate piece of Oedipal plotting in which, revisiting the village in the Po valley where his father was murdered in 1936, a young man discovers that his father was not a hero, but a traitor.
- 10/19/2012
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
News.
Above: Harris Savides. Photo by Brigette Lancombe for Interview magazine.
We were saddened and shocked to hear of the passing of one of film's great cinematographers, Harris Savides. Our brief note includes an indelible clip from Gerry, one of his collaborations with Gus Van Sant. David Hudson has rounded up commentary at Fandor.
One of Savides' chief collaborators, director David Fincher, is also in the news with an animated film project that's appealing to Kickstarter to get funded.
Two big trailer debuts have sprung on us over the last week. One's the second trailer for Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained:
...and the other is the first full trailer for Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty:
Filmmaker Jon Jost has started a petition calling for Ray Carney to return underground director Mark Rappaport's film materials. As the petition explains:
"In 2005, when Mark Rappaport moved to France, Ray Carney,...
Above: Harris Savides. Photo by Brigette Lancombe for Interview magazine.
We were saddened and shocked to hear of the passing of one of film's great cinematographers, Harris Savides. Our brief note includes an indelible clip from Gerry, one of his collaborations with Gus Van Sant. David Hudson has rounded up commentary at Fandor.
One of Savides' chief collaborators, director David Fincher, is also in the news with an animated film project that's appealing to Kickstarter to get funded.
Two big trailer debuts have sprung on us over the last week. One's the second trailer for Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained:
...and the other is the first full trailer for Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty:
Filmmaker Jon Jost has started a petition calling for Ray Carney to return underground director Mark Rappaport's film materials. As the petition explains:
"In 2005, when Mark Rappaport moved to France, Ray Carney,...
- 10/17/2012
- by Notebook
- MUBI
Le Point and L'Express are among the French news outlets reporting that Marie-France Pisier has died at her home in Saint Cyr sur Mer at the age of 66. First mention is generally going to her work with François Truffaut; her debut, after all, was in his Antoine and Colette, a short film that was part of the 1962 anthology Love at Twenty and she would reprise the role in Stolen Kisses (1968) and Love on the Run (1979). The film many will be thinking of today, though, is Jacques Rivette's Céline and Julie Go Boating (1974). In 1981, Julia Lesage described her role in the film's development: "Script credit is given to Juliet Berto, Dominique Labourier, Bulle Ogier, Marie-France Pisier, and Jacques Rivette…. According to Berto, she and Labourier imagined creating a combination of Persona and What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? in a film with two female protagonists. Berto said, 'Each...
- 4/26/2011
- MUBI
"No more Lubitsch," said Billy Wilder, at the Great Man's funeral.
"Worse than that," said William Wyler. "No more Lubitsch movies."
The suspicion, amounting almost to a certainty, that Jacques Rivette will make no more feature films to follow the very lovely Around a Small Mountain, can inspire the fan with an irrational, vertiginous fear: no more Rivette movies? But in fact, there are numerous existing Rivette movies still not seen, or not seen in anything like ideal circumstances. The iceberg-tip of his oeuvre that's commercially available is supported by a vast submerged continent of unreleased work. And the films themselves are so rich, so palatial, exploring them would take lifetimes.
Still, if one was looking either for Rivette-related work to supplement his great mad corpus, or something that sheds an interesting sidelight on a major Rivette work, Sérail (a.k.a. Surreal Estate, 1976), by the Argentinian writer-director and...
"Worse than that," said William Wyler. "No more Lubitsch movies."
The suspicion, amounting almost to a certainty, that Jacques Rivette will make no more feature films to follow the very lovely Around a Small Mountain, can inspire the fan with an irrational, vertiginous fear: no more Rivette movies? But in fact, there are numerous existing Rivette movies still not seen, or not seen in anything like ideal circumstances. The iceberg-tip of his oeuvre that's commercially available is supported by a vast submerged continent of unreleased work. And the films themselves are so rich, so palatial, exploring them would take lifetimes.
Still, if one was looking either for Rivette-related work to supplement his great mad corpus, or something that sheds an interesting sidelight on a major Rivette work, Sérail (a.k.a. Surreal Estate, 1976), by the Argentinian writer-director and...
- 8/19/2010
- MUBI
Excerpts from an English translation (unknown author) of Jacques Rivette's 1976 film, Duelle (une quarantaine), screenplay by Eduardo de Gregorio and Marilù Parolini:
00:05:09,194 --> 00:05:12,064
I've lost his trail.
00:12:13,333 --> 00:12:18,220
He would come in and in a blink of an eye everything was different.
00:14:32,978 --> 00:14:35,671
He drank and drank...
00:14:46,787 --> 00:14:50,288
and made a big gesture, like this...
00:14:53,622 --> 00:14:56,615
and the mirror broke.
00:21:34,072 --> 00:21:37,679
Like anyone can sleep with these jungle drums around.
00:25:36,250 --> 00:25:38,886
One might say cursed.
00:26:38,342 --> 00:26:41,253
I don't like organizations.
00:26:42,492 --> 00:26:45,868
But I'm the organization.
00:28:31,598 --> 00:28:34,016
He's dead and I think only of myself.
00:28:56,908 --> 00:29:01,705
He burned, little by little, until he dissappeared.
00:...
00:05:09,194 --> 00:05:12,064
I've lost his trail.
00:12:13,333 --> 00:12:18,220
He would come in and in a blink of an eye everything was different.
00:14:32,978 --> 00:14:35,671
He drank and drank...
00:14:46,787 --> 00:14:50,288
and made a big gesture, like this...
00:14:53,622 --> 00:14:56,615
and the mirror broke.
00:21:34,072 --> 00:21:37,679
Like anyone can sleep with these jungle drums around.
00:25:36,250 --> 00:25:38,886
One might say cursed.
00:26:38,342 --> 00:26:41,253
I don't like organizations.
00:26:42,492 --> 00:26:45,868
But I'm the organization.
00:28:31,598 --> 00:28:34,016
He's dead and I think only of myself.
00:28:56,908 --> 00:29:01,705
He burned, little by little, until he dissappeared.
00:...
- 8/1/2010
- MUBI
Denis is in the tradition of Rivette, Renoir and Vigo, who found a way of unpeeling the real to discover inner meanings
Let's dispose of the old-fashioned opening straight away – it isn't that Claire Denis has a strong case for being considered the best female film director working today; it's far more that she is one of the most intriguing and provocative film-makers of any kind. Her latest film, White Material, is dominated by a woman, Maria (embodied with startling but characteristic commitment by Isabelle Huppert), a coffee-grower in a unnamed African country who becomes caught up in a terrible but inexplicable civil war. You can say it's a feminist picture in that Denis and Huppert build a complicated sensibility – helpless but angry, desiring but detached, an onlooker and a victim. But it's also a film that makes us feel we are seeing Africa as if for the first time.
Let's dispose of the old-fashioned opening straight away – it isn't that Claire Denis has a strong case for being considered the best female film director working today; it's far more that she is one of the most intriguing and provocative film-makers of any kind. Her latest film, White Material, is dominated by a woman, Maria (embodied with startling but characteristic commitment by Isabelle Huppert), a coffee-grower in a unnamed African country who becomes caught up in a terrible but inexplicable civil war. You can say it's a feminist picture in that Denis and Huppert build a complicated sensibility – helpless but angry, desiring but detached, an onlooker and a victim. But it's also a film that makes us feel we are seeing Africa as if for the first time.
- 7/8/2010
- by David Thomson
- The Guardian - Film News
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