Today is the day of the midterm elections, a day which will mark the stark transition from functionaries on the center who can’t accomplish anything holding office to functionaries on the right who are too busy yelling in every direction to accomplish anything holding office. Under that grand political tradition whose unwavering slogan is “Losing = Tyranny,” much has been made from candidates on the far right (who will become mainstream right if elected or exponentially grating windbags if not) about staging an armed revolution if, y’know, that whole democracy thing doesn’t work out for them. Well, before the pasty and overweight turn off the Fox News echo chamber and actually embody the daunting degree at which human action can precede human thought by taking arms against an administration that has done nothing to challenge their 2nd Amendment rights, I’d like to use the history of cinema to illustrate what true revolt against actual...
- 11/2/2010
- by Landon Palmer
- FilmSchoolRejects.com
As Al Jolson jazz-handed in the new age of talkies, Metropolis proved that silent films were still valid. John Patterson enjoys some quiet time
The silent cinema that died in 1927 on the introduction of sound with The Jazz Singer always reminds me of the sunken city of Atlantis. Each was glorious, sophisticated, inventive, and each had reached the apogee of its greatness – until everything was pulled under by the deluge and an entire culture, a highly developed civilisation coherent unto itself, was lost forever in a single night.
When I say the apogee of its greatness, the proof is in the names of the myriad masterpieces released just at the moment when silence stopped being golden: Fritz Lang's Metropolis, the most expensive movie yet made, and Gw Pabst's Pandora's Box, from Germany's gigantic Ufa Studios; Fw Murnau's Sunrise, considered by many the poetic peak of silent cinema; Victor Seastrom's The Wind,...
The silent cinema that died in 1927 on the introduction of sound with The Jazz Singer always reminds me of the sunken city of Atlantis. Each was glorious, sophisticated, inventive, and each had reached the apogee of its greatness – until everything was pulled under by the deluge and an entire culture, a highly developed civilisation coherent unto itself, was lost forever in a single night.
When I say the apogee of its greatness, the proof is in the names of the myriad masterpieces released just at the moment when silence stopped being golden: Fritz Lang's Metropolis, the most expensive movie yet made, and Gw Pabst's Pandora's Box, from Germany's gigantic Ufa Studios; Fw Murnau's Sunrise, considered by many the poetic peak of silent cinema; Victor Seastrom's The Wind,...
- 9/6/2010
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
First the history, then the list:
In 1969, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas decided to open the world’s first museum devoted to film. Of course, a typical museum hangs its collections of artwork on the wall for visitors to walk up to and study. However, a film museum needs special considerations on how — and what, of course — to present its collection to the public.
Thus, for this film museum, first a film selection committee was formed that included James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney, plus, for a time, Stan Brakhage. This committee met over the course of several months to decide exactly what films would be collected and how they would be shown. The final selection of films would come to be called the The Essential Cinema Repertory.
The Essential Cinema Collection that the committee came up with consisted of about 330 films.
In 1969, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas decided to open the world’s first museum devoted to film. Of course, a typical museum hangs its collections of artwork on the wall for visitors to walk up to and study. However, a film museum needs special considerations on how — and what, of course — to present its collection to the public.
Thus, for this film museum, first a film selection committee was formed that included James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney, plus, for a time, Stan Brakhage. This committee met over the course of several months to decide exactly what films would be collected and how they would be shown. The final selection of films would come to be called the The Essential Cinema Repertory.
The Essential Cinema Collection that the committee came up with consisted of about 330 films.
- 5/3/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
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