Print the Fact!

William Witney is a director whose films have given me hours of uncomplicated pleasure. I've always been a great defender of his directorship, especially in movie serials he made in collaboration with John English, among which Adventures of Captain Marvel, probably their most famous work, is a cinematic prelude to all Indiana Jones actioners and even late Fritz Lang adventure films. That's why I encouraged the editor of the first encyclopedia of film directors in Farsi/Persian to include Witney/English among his 1000 chosen names for the book. Convinced by my arguments about the importance of this duo in establishing high standards for low-budget action films, the editor asked me to write the entry myself which I immediately accepted.

William Witney [source: Vimeo]

During the process of researching and writing I learned that Witney is a favorite of Quentin Tarantino and it didn't surprise me. On the contrary, I saw that the exploitative, fast-paced and one-dimensional films of two directors can correspond very well. But recently, after watching Django Unchained, which I loathed, I read Kent Jones' response to a Tarantino interview which showed to me the superstar director of Django has been carried away by his assessment of Witney as the most democratic Western maker, inasmuch as to bash John Ford as someone very un-Witney.

London Critical Theory Summer School: Slavoj Žižek

Soundtrack Mix, 1-6

ميكس ساوندترك، قسمت اول تا ششم

Miles Ahead

آسانسور، جاز و شبي زمستاني

يك آمريكايي (با يك ترومپت) در پاريس

احسان خوش‌بخت

قبل از هرچيز، قبل از لويي مال و حتي قبل از ژن مورو، مايلز ديويس است كه آسانسور به سوي سكوي اعدام را راه مي‌اندازد، يا در واقع آن را، و زمان را، براي موريس رونه و ما متوقف مي‌كند. اولين نُت مايلز روي تاريكي پرده سينما شنيده مي‌شود و بعد نماي آيريسي مثل فيلم‌هاي صامت از چشم‌هاي ژان مورو به كلوزآپي از او در كيوسك تلفن باز مي‌شود. اما حتي بازترين نماي اين عنوان‌بندي هم نشاني از حصر و تنهايي دارد. دريغ از ديده شدنِ حتي گوشي تلفن؛ همه چيز در جهت خيره‌شدن و ستودن مورو سامان يافته. تكرارِ je t'aime كه از هر دو سو گفته مي‌شود مثل نت‌هاي مكمل موسيقي فيلم، سازي مضاعف، عمل مي‌كند. اين آغاز نسخۀ اسپانياييِ آسانسور است كه از نسخۀ اصلي زودتر موسيقي را آغاز مي‌كند (در نسخۀ اصلي، موسيقي بعد از باز شدن نما و كات به موريس رنه مي‌آيد). موسيقي ترومپت‌نواز، آهنگساز و رهبر اركستر سياه‌پوست آمريكايي، مايلز ديويس (1991-1926) ، براي اين فيلم اثري است رمزآميز، محزون، شاعرانه و تكرار نشده در تاريخِ سينما. 

The Pre-Truffaut Jean-Pierre Léaud

It is widely known and accepted that it was François Truffaut who discovered Jean-Pierre Léaud and gave him the role of the rebel kid in Les quatre cents coups [The 400 Blows]. However, this is far from being true, because just a year before Truffaut's groundbreaking and Cocteau-backed premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, Léaud has appeared in the French swashbuckler film La Tour prends garde! (Georges Lampin, 1958), starring Cocteau's lover, Jean Marais.

In this small but unforgettable role, Léaud's jaunty features, his involvement in adult's world and his hunger for an early maturity is well-manifested. Naturally this 14 year-old kid caught monsieur Truffaut's attention and the rest is history.

Film Ads in Iran#22: Richard Fleischer

Cyrus’ Awakening (1974): A Documentary by Enrique Meneses

Today we have a guest blogger, writing about a documentary on Iran from the 1970s. Our guest is Dr. Lidia Merás and the subject, Cyrus’ Awakening [watch here], a film made by her former neighbor and the renowned journalist Enrique Meneses:


Old school journalist Enrique Meneses, the person behind the famous pictures of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro in Sierra Maestra (1958), visited Iran at least four times. The first visit was in 1958, after being expelled from Iraq following King Faisal II’s assassination. He returned in 1974 commissioned by Spanish Public television to make a reportage for the memorable series ‘Los reporteros’ [The reporters, TVE1].

Cyrus’ Awakening gives an in-sight on contemporary Iran in the aftermath of the oil-fueled ‘Green revolution’. Meneses interviewed Mohamed Reza Pahleví and the empress Farah Diba who were engaged in modernizing of the country (banning polygamy, granting women with the same rights than men and promoting contemporary art, among other contributions). After an historic introduction to Persia, the ancient name for Iran, the film outlines the country’s economy agenda and political alliances as well as some aspects on mass media, higher education, folklore, craftsmanship and religion…all in thirty minutes. Interestingly enough, Meneses explains some key ideas on Zoroastrian beliefs, whereas Shiite Islam is never mentioned.

Revisiting 5 Favorite Jazz Films with Comics

If cinema itself has been freewheeling in its use and abuse of other art forms to show what influential critic Raymond Durgnat calls “the impossible,” why, when it comes to talking about films, should we be limited to literary forms of expression?

That’s the question illustrator and co-author Naiel Ibarrola and I asked ourselves before launching into a new form of film criticism using the comic format to tell our alternative history of cinema, a project that’s occupied us since last year.

The great thing about comics, as a medium, is the endless freedom you have in playing with elements of time and space, building up scenes, putting people in one place talking to each other, where in reality they had been thousands of miles away and never spoken the same language. Hence the comic, like cinema, becomes the art of the impossible. The comic imitates the cinema. So far, we have used the illustrations to show how a Raoul Walsh composition is realized; how an imaginary conversation between Yasujiro Ozu and Fritz Lang takes place in a dingy French café; and to fulfill many other cinephilic fantasies through ideas, colors and drawings. Now we want to share some of them with you.

SEE ILLUSTRATIONS AND READ THE ARTICLE HERE

Poetics of Space: Roeg's (In)Significance

Insignificance (Nicolas Roeg, 1985)

Survival of the Unfit

CINEPHILIA & REVOLUTION

A familiar practice in Persian film literature is that of the “cinematic memoir”—personal reminiscences of the film culture of pre-Revolutionary Iran.

Bolstered by a nostalgic tone, these autobiographical texts deal with the themes of childhood, adolescence and encounters with cinema in a Westernized Iran. The authors of such memoirs frequently depict Iran as a haven for cinephiles. Considering the number of films that were shown in pre-Revolutionary Iran and the diversity of their origins, this may be taken as an accurate characterization.

Read the full article here