"The Dirty Stories of Jean Eustache" at SIFF Cinema: Jul 14 - 23

In an atypical move, SIFF Cinema have adopted the totality of the retrospective of "Jean Eustache: A Rarely Seen French Director", from the premiere of the Janus Films series run at New York's Lincoln Center. As the Film Society at Lincoln Center put it; "Few filmmakers have captured the sheer sorrow and humor of being alive in a time and place more majestically than Jean Eustache. A fellow traveler of Cahiers du Cinéma in the late 1950s, Eustache was a satellite figure of the ascendant Nouvelle Vague while it was revolutionizing the aesthetics and aesthetic politics of narrative cinema. But he emerged in the second half of the 1960s as a singularly formidable filmmaker in his own right, directing several fiction films and documentaries before producing one of French cinema’s all-time masterpieces, the titanic and epochal "The Mother and the Whore". This film is considered the centerpiece of any Jean Eustache retrospective, “It’s a historical marker in a way that few other films are,” wrote Jonathan Rosenbaum in the Chicago Reader; “not only the nail in the coffin of the French New Wave and one of the strongest statements about the aftermath of the failed French revolution of May 1968, but also a definitive expression of the closing in of Western culture after the end of the era generally known as the ’60s.” At the time of the release of this new restoration by Les films du Losange, Richard Brody wrote for The New Yorker, "'The Mother and the Whore', Newly Restored, Still Overwhelming". In which he states; "It’s overwhelming in its length and in its emotional intensity. It’s a self-consuming masterwork that seems to burn itself up as it passes through the projector. It’s a film of rage and self-punishment, of arrogance and humiliation and, ultimately, of ferocious irony about pleasure and power, desire and submission. What’s original in its style is the sheer profusion of dialogue, which exceeds in quantity, density, and tone even the talk in contemporaneous films by Éric Rohmer."

Richard Brody continues by saying; "Where Rohmer’s cinematic language is dialectical, Eustache’s is torrential. The characters in “The Mother and the Whore” don’t so much talk with each other or even at each other as bare their souls verbally and pour out confessions in soliloquies - especially the movie’s protagonist, Alexandre, as played by Jean-Pierre Léaud." In this "Threesome and Then Some", as it was put by The New York Times, Léaud's Alexandre is a creature of impulses and monstrous in his insistence. Adopting and discarding attitudes, he is given to absurd, self-hypnotizing rants that fascinate Veronika, charm Marie, and repulse the viewer. He conceives himself as a dandy who reads Proust and listens to Édith Piaf, and his obsession with the past, mainly the aborted revolution of 1968, is the focus of his delusions. Yet, as established by Roger Ebert in his 1999 review; "The first time I saw "The Mother and the Whore," I thought it was about Alexandre. After a viewing of the newly restored print being released for the movie's 25th anniversary, I think it is just as much about the women, and about the way that women can let a man talk endlessly about himself while they regard him like a specimen of aberrant behavior. The film made an enormous impact when it was released. It still works a quarter-century later because it was so focused on its subjects, and lacking in pretension. It is rigorously observant, the portrait of an immature man and two women who humor him for a while, paying the price that entails". Here in this series, framing the above masterwork SIFF presents the totality of , "The Dirty Stories of Jean Eustache", which features the titular "A Dirty Story", alongside, "Robinson’s Place", "Le Cochon", "Numéro Zéro", "The Virgin of Pessac", Eustache's own remake "The Virgin of Pessac '79", and "My Little Loves". The latter, on which The New Yorker's Richard Brody weighed in again, offers a summation of the series as a whole; “In Eustache’s loamy, holistic vision, the events are shaped less by the demands of drama than by the meanderings of consciousness itself."

Jacques Rivette's "OUT 1: Noli Me Tangere" at SIFF Cinema: Jan 8 - 13

Next month SIFF Cinema will feature one of the rarest screenings of the past 40 years, including a marathon presentation on January 13th! Those who live in New York were privileged to the premier of this new restoration of "Jacques Rivette’s 1971 Film, ‘Out 1: Noli Me Tangere’" as part of BAMcinématek's two-week engagement this past November. The Guardian's review, "Out 1: Noli Me Tangere: 13-Hour Art Film is a 'Buff's Ultimate Challenge" not only noting the film's scarcity, but the challenges of it's duration and narrative experimentation. This nearly 13-hour work has stood for decades as a kind of filmic holy grail. A cinematic soak both sprawling and intimate, which has been almost impossible to view in the more than 40 years since its ill-fated release in 1971. In testing the porousness of the border between narrative and experimental film, and sporadically injecting the work with galvanic shocks along the way, Rivette’s monstrous cinema experiment delivers an experience that is satisfying in-part for precisely the reason it is thoroughly exhausting. This duration-oriented film experiment by an artist without whom there'd likely be no David Lynch or Charlie Kaufman, the operator in the shadows of the French New Wave, Jacques Rivette. Best known in English speaking cultural spheres for his dreamy, non-sequitur, political, feminist, "Celine and Julie Go Boating" along with "Le Pont du Nord" of a decade later, which has seen a lot of press in the subsequent year since the rerelease of a new restored print in theaters, like that of Max Nelson's "Rep Diary: Le Pont du Nord" for Film Comment. The parallels between Rivette and Lynch's work made explicit in Dennis Lim's "A Winding Trip Reverberates in Cinema" and the rediscovery off his film seen as a path forward for all of contemporary cinema in David Thomson's "Come and See" in the pages of Sight & Sound.

For many cineastes though, certainly fans of the New Wave, Rivette's "OUT 1: Noli Me Tangere" has always been THE holy grail. A nearly thirteen hour loose adaptation of Honoré de Balzac’s "L'Histoire des Treize" from his "La Comédie Humaine", one like "Celine and Julie Go Boating" and "Le Pont du Nord", the film centers on Rivette's central obsessions; conspiracy, community, theater, games, multiple personifications, illusion and madness. The extended duration, oblique themes and non-linear dreamlike construction no doubt working against it's larger release, even in the more conducive cultural/cinema environs of the early 1970's. So much so that "OUT 1: Noli me Tangere" has been screened in it's totality on so few occasions, that they previously could be counted on two hands. When French television turned down the complete thirteen hour version, Rivette created a four hour reconstruction, "OUT 1: Spectre" which focuses more intensively on the intertwining tales of the two featured rival theater companies and central mysterious Cabal. Literally one of the only chances to see it that decade, (on home video, online, in the theater, or otherwise), this shorter reconstructed version screened at Northwest Film Forum as part of their "Lighter Than Air: The Films of Jacques Rivette" retrospective in 2007. The mythic, ultra-obscure, 'unviewable' status of this rare, significant work in the totality of the New Wave, will end for most viewers in January with Kino Lorber's deluxe box set release of "OUT 1: Noli Me Tangere".

Jacques Rivette's "OUT 1: Noli me Taneger" released on Absolut Medien

One of the rarest major works of the past four decades by a director without whom there'd likely be no David Lynch or Charlie Kaufman, the operator in the shadows of the French New Wave, Jacques Rivette. Best known in English speaking cultural spheres for his dreamy, non-sequitur, political, feminist, "Celine and Julie Go Boating" along with "Le Pont du Nord" of a decade later, which has seen a lot of press in the subsequent year since the rerelease of a new restored print in theaters, like that of Max Nelson's "Rep Diary: Le Pont du Nord" for Film Comment. The parallels between Rivette and Lynch's work made explicit in Dennis Lim's "A Winding Trip Reverberates in Cinema" and the rediscovery off his film seen as a path forward for all of contemporary cinema in David Thomson's "Come and See" for Sight & Sound. For many cineastes though, certainly fans of the New Wave, Rivette's "OUT 1: Noli me Tangere" represents THE holy grail. A nearly thirteen hour loose (this is the New Wave after all) adaptation of Balzac’s "L'Histoire des Treize" from his "La Comédie Humaine" like that of "Celine..." and "Le Pont..." the film centers on Rivette's central obsessions: conspiracy, community, theater, games, multiple personifications, illusion and madness. The extended duration, oblique themes and non-linear dreamlike construction no doubt working against it's larger release, even in the more conducive cultural/cinema environs of the early 1970's. So much so that "OUT 1: Noli me Tangere" has been screened in it's totality on so few occasions, that they can be counted here. When French television turned down the complete thirteen hour version, Rivette created a four hour reconstruction, "OUT 1: Spectre" which focuses more intensively on the intertwining tales of the two featured rival theater companies and central mysterious Cabal. Literally one of the only chances to see it that decade, (on home video, online, in the theater, or otherwise), this shorter reconstructed version screened at Northwest Film Forum as part of their "Lighter Than Air: The Films of Jacques Rivette" retrospective in 2007. The mythic, ultra-obscure, 'unviewable' status now ends for this significant work in the whole of the New Wave's ouvreur with Absolut Medien's box set release of "OUT 1: Noli me Tangere / Spectre".

Adam Sekuler's 8 Years of Programming Excellence at Northwest Film Forum

This next season sees the final Northwest Film Forum calendar curated by Adam Sekuler. Adam's arrival in Seattle as Northwest Film Forum's programming director coincided with the end of the greatest decade of film I've personally bore witness to in the cinema. A decade where friends and myself would attend some 30-40 films annually in the Seattle International Film Festival which then encompassed kaleidoscopically diverse forms, styles and natures of film. From genre movies, to Horror, Sci-Fi and Anime, to more somber Arthouse and New Global Cinema, to Documentaries and Dramas. It was one of the greatest decades the festival has seen in it's 40 year run. With it's conclusion in the mid-2000's the void was to be filled by the visionary curatorial insight of the programming at Northwest Film Forum. If there was something written in the pages of the New York Times, Village Voice, Film Comment, Sight & Sound or Cinema-Scope, it was a good bet that between SIFF, Northwest Film Forum and the then-adventurous Landmark Theatres, there would be opportunity to see it. But this isn't about the shrinking forums and context to witness cinema in our city, it's instead an overview of Northwest Film Forum's near-decade of programming excellence. Eight years in which I saw such visionary series' as Hungary's marathon-take master of rain, time and darkness "The Harmonic Resistance of Bela Tarr" and the lesser know Japanese auteur of the familial melodrama, after Ozu and Naruse, Northwest Film Forum took a "Long Take on Mizoguchi". French New Wave outsider Rivett, without whom there would be no David Lynch or Charlie Kaufman "Lighter Than Air: The Films of Jacques Rivette", groundbreaking work from the Nordic regions, "Sisu Cinema: Nine From the Finnish New Wave" and century of sci-fi from Russian, "From the Tsars to the Stars: A Journey Through Russian Fantastik Cinema". One of the film finds of my adult life, Portugal's new master of the ultra-minimal, "Still Lives: The Films of Pedro Costa", the stunningly conceived retrospective of Japanese New Wave provocateur, "A Man Vanishes: The Legacy of Shohei Imamura", and another major find, the discovery of the films and installation work of the sublime Thai visionary, "The Short Films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul". A trio by Japan's incomparable Studio Ghibli, which may have supplied my most perfect moviegoing experience to date; seeing "My Neighbor Totoro" with an audience of children in "Dream Screen: Three by Miyazaki". On the polar opposite end of the spectrum, transgressive urban tales of wayward ladies and cool Yakuza in "No Borders, No Limits: 1960s Nikkatsu Action Cinema", more French New Wave wonders unnearthed in "The Labrynthine Alain Robbe–Grillet", the humor, satire and absurdity of "Miloš Forman’s Formative Films", and another great find of the decade from South America, "At The Edge Of The World: The Cinema of Lisandro Alonso". 

From other countries in Europe we got great German New Wave, "Divided Cinema: German Cinema at The Wall", the brilliant, dark, British detective procedural "Red Riding Trilogy", the return of some the greatest of South Korea's hyperviolent cinema with "Pan Chan-Wook's Vengeance Trilogy". There was more greatness from Portugal with "The Portuguese Melodies of Miguel Gomes", and stunning documentaries from one of South America's greats in "Patricio Guzman’s Chile". Not many would conceive to program a series highlighting "New York Noise: Tales From the No Wave", and wondrous Czech absurdity, decadence and surrealism of "Jan Svankmajer: The Surreal Puppet Poet". Memorable times sitting in the dark of the Film Forum include the astonishing power of the Globalization Trilogy by Michael Glawogger including "Workingman's Death", "Megacities" and "Whore's Glory", with the director presenting the films in attendance, almost moving me to tears with his daring, passion, generosity and insight. The atmospheric, sociopolitical dramas of Turkey's Nuri Bilge Ceylan were also a discovery, both his masterpiece "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia", and my personal introduction to his cinema with "Climates" seven years before. Other notable political programming depicted the ongoing battle between Iran's independent cinema and the results of the 2009 election, explicitly Jafar Panahi's "This is Not a Film". There was also more ridiculous meta-fare to be had with Guy Maddin's pastiche of silent and early cinema, his theatrical, absurd, grandiose, "Brand Upon the Brain" screened on the massive Cinerama screen with live symphony and Maddin himself as the evening's orator. We also saw French visionnaire Claire Denis' finest film of her career to-date, "35 Shots of Rum" along with other modern wonders from central Europe, Ulrich Seidl's brutal, humanistic, "Import/Export". The world-over was represented in Carlos Reygadas' rapturous, transcendental "Silent Light", Steve McQueen's directorial debut, "Hunger" and Kiyoshi Kurosawa's move into familial psychodrama with "Tokyo Sonata". We also saw the return of what may be China's greatest living filmmaker, in Jia Zhang-Ke's "24 City", the extended roadshow cut of Olivier Assayas' "Carlos" and Gaspar Noe's redefining of the technical scope of cinema itself with "Enter the Void".

After introducing me to his films back in 2005, with the mesmerizing fugue of "Tropical Malady", Northwest Film Forum was the one theater in town with the prescience to program Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Palme d'Or winning "Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives". They were also the theater in town with the insight to know a W.G. Sebald "Rings of Saturn" documentary would find an audience, Grant Gee's "Patience (After Sebald)". Again they thought to book a return to the romantic postmodern lushness of Miguel Gomes' cinema with "Tabu". Yet more groundbreaking programming followed with the sensorial onslaught of Harvard Sensory Ethnography Lab's Véréna Paravel & Lucien Castaing-Taylor's "Leviathan" and their touching, intimate, "People's Park", both of which had their Seattle premier at Northwest Film Forum. Film Forum also had the insight to program Peter Strickland's hauntological genre homage "Berberian Sound Studio", Carlos Reygadas' return with his otherworldly and divisive "Post Tenebras Lux", and an extended retrospective of the heartbreaking, existential, magical-realist film of the Polish auteur, "Krzysztof Kieslowski: Revelations of the Human Soul". Great genre series were also had, like a summer of Samurai Cinema featuring Masaki Kobayashi, Hideo Gosha, Hiroshi Inagaki and Kihachi Okamoto "A Man, A Blade, An Empty Road". Striking one-offs included the most poetic and hauntingly original directorial debut I'd seen that decade, Lucile Hadzihalilovic's "Innocence". We also got a rare near-comprehensive overview of the work of my personal favorite of the Japanese post-War directors. His humanistic everyday depiction of modern life was my gateway into the Japanese film of the era, inspired in no small way by "The Enduring Cinema of Mikio Naruse". And last but not least, the occasion of my fifth viewing of what's considered one of the greatest films of all-time, Yasujiro Ozu's "Tokyo Story". These all only touching on some of Adam's insight, faith in his prospective audience, and vision as a curator. His time at the Northwest Film Forum has been a true urban, community-enhancing gift to us all over the course of these 8 years. I wish him the best in his European endeavors. Personally, professionally, culturally, his presence in our city will be missed.