(2004, HUBERT SAUPER) "But economically, it's good." As the Nile Perch, introduced into Lake Victoria, Tanzania, in the 60s, gobble up almost all the native species, a fish for guns trade ensues - but what do the locals get out of it? "Harrowing, indispensable, extraordinary work of visual journalism and also a work of art." - A.O. Scott, NY Times.
(1995, ULRICH SEIDL) Austrian urban alienation and angst - but why stop there? - in unblinking look at nothing-in-my-life-but-Fido Viennese and their bizarre pet relationships. "I have never looked so directly into hell in the cinema." - Herzog.
(1978, ERROL MORRIS) California pet cemeteries and those who use them: the bereft pet lovers; the renderer; the marketing whiz who avoids negative words, even when talking to his little daughter -- bizarre, hilarious, and riveting. "It's the only authentic film on love and emotions and...late capitalism. An extremely pure film." - Herzog.
(1981, ERROL MORRIS) "You ever seen a man's brains?" A preacher sermonizes on the meanings of "therefore"; a hunter gives inside tips on tracking down turkey gobblers; and a geezer who catches and keeps wild animals: the oddball residents of a Florida swamp town have their say. "The greatest film ever made." - Herzog.
Two works by longtime Magnum photographers that expand the concerns and styles seen in their still work to moving pictures. Elliott Erwitt's delightful Beauty Knows No Pain is a poker-faced look at the selection and training of the Kilgore College Rangerettes, a female marching and cheerleading squad run by the exacting Gussie Nell Davis, who could hold her own against any Marine drill sergeant. In Think of England, Martin Parr travels around his native England with the question "What is Englishness?" He comes up with some surprising answers as he moves from north to south, from lawn parties to working-class neighborhoods.
Cambodian Odyssey / Video Diaries: Dying for Publicity
Author of the highly regarded photo book Vietnam Inc., Philip Jones Griffiths has made Southeast Asia one of his particular specialties, becoming familiar with the histories and cultures of the region through over three decades of travel. Director Richard Traylor-Smith accompanies him on a trip to Cambodia, during which Jones Griffiths talks not only about his experiences in the area but also of his approach to photojournalism.
In his work as a photographer, Chris Steele-Perkins has been to some of the world's most troubled spots, recording at times scenes of almost unimaginable suffering. In Video Diaries: Dying for Publicity, Steele-Perkins has the chance to reflect on his role as witness, what he looks for, why he looks for it, and what role he might or should play in the lives of his subjects. A poignant meditation on creating art that hopes to make a difference.
The Magnum Story I: Decisive Moments / El Otro Lado
Part one focuses on Magnum's four founders - Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David "Chim" Seymour - from their work in the 1930s and the war to the early years of the agency. A time in which photojournalism was having a greater impact on the public than ever before, the late '40s and '50s saw the agency defining its mission while expanding to include many emerging talents; Part one traces the agency's growing pains, as it struggled to establish itself critically and financially in a highly competitive market.
El Otro Lado is a deeply moving look at immigrants attempting to cross the border into the U.S. illegally.
(Both 1980) HUIE'S SERMON: A black preacher's Sunday sermon in a Brooklyn church escalates to an ecstatic climax which brings the entire church to its feet. GOD'S ANGRY MAN: Dr. Gene Scott, a thickly sideburned three-piece-suited televangelist preacher - and one time NYC late-night regular - collects several hundred thousand dollars within 30 minutes, but never mentions faith. "Imagine Travis Bickle with his own late night talk show." - Paul Arthur, Film Comment. Plus PRECAUTIONS AGAINST FANATICS (1969).
Shot in the harem of the ruling family of Dubai, Behind the Veil offers a fascinating glimpse into a mysterious, legendary world. Eve Arnold documents the preparations of a young sheikha as she awaits her upcoming marriage. Arnold begins the film with images that one might "expect" in a harem, but gradually reveals how many of the traditional practices give way under the pressure of a new generation.
Eve Arnold may have photographed Marilyn Monroe more than anyone else. What is certain is that during their many sessions, they developed a unique and surprising relationship. Rosemary Bowen-Jones explores the dynamics of the photographer/sitter relationship, always a charged situation but especially when the sitter is one of the century's most iconic figures.
Magnum photographer Jean Gaumy has alternated throughout his career between film and still photography. These three pieces, all dealing with the sea, are excellent examples of Gaumy's lyrical approach to filmmaking.
On the Rowanlea Trawler (1992) is a short, impressionistic journey on a Spanish fishing trawler, a project made in parallel to a photo book created on the same subject. La Boucane (1984) documents the women who prepare fish for smoking on the coast of Normandy. Stunningly composed, with an enormous sensitivity to these women's remarkable faces, La Boucane at times recalls the "poetic realism" of Jean Renoir.
The Magnum Story II: The Savage Years / The Russian Prison: A Separate Life
Part two of this history of Magnum focuses on the '60s, a decade whose nearly constant turbulence was ably captured by Magnum photographers. Cornell Capa, Burt Glinn and Elliott Erwitt documented the changes in styles that characterized the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations, while Philip Jones Griffiths and Marc Riboud devoted much of their work to the war in Vietnam. Part two also looks at photographer Eve Arnold's work and experiences on the set of John Huston's The Misfits, with Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable.
The Russian Prison: A Separate Life: A rare and revealing visit to a Russian prison.
THE FLYING DOCTORS OF EAST AFRICA (1969) Western physicians bring humanitarian aid and medical relief by airplane to poor villages in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania. HANDICAPPED FUTURE (1971) Herzog explores how treatment of disabled children in Germany and the US differ. NO ONE WILL PLAY WITH ME (1976) A preschooler is odd kid out until a classmate meets his talking (!) pet raven. THE UNPRECEDENTED DEFENCE OF FORTRESS DEUTSCHKREUZ (1966) Four men slowly go crazy as they guard an abandoned castle in Austria from an imaginary attacking army.
One of the most famous and admired of all photographers, Robert Capa hailed from Hungary, but there are few for whom the designation "citizen of the world" would more appropriately apply. Known for his legendary love affairs and personal flamboyance, Capa, as Anne Makepeace's perceptive film demonstrates, was an enormous influence on other photographers. In Love and War offers a fascinating portrait of the man, as well as an important appreciation of the artist.
Raymond Depardon, a legend of contemporary photojournalism as well as one of France's most important documentary filmmakers, has shot everyone from African rebels to presidential candidates. In Les Années déclic (The Declic Years, a pun on the sound of a camera shutter), Depardon reflects on his life and his travels, and how experiencing so much of the world through a camera lens has shaped his perception.
A rarely screened classic by one of the century's master photographers, Cartier-Bresson's Le Retour (The Return) documents the return to Germany of thousands of "displaced persons," both POWs and other kinds of detainees. Made for the American Office of War Information, the film captures both the poignancy and at times the tragedy of common people trying to make sense of their lives in a new, liberated Europe.
The Magnum Story III: Close to the Edge looks at the group's fortunes as it moves into the '80s, a decade that saw a steep decline in the magazine market and hence in the fortunes of photojournalists. The film examines the inner workings of the group and also follows some Magnum photographers to China to capture the growing student uprising of spring 1989, events that led eventually to the tragedy of Tiananmen Square. Stuart Franklin's extraordinary photograph of a lone Chinese demonstrator facing down a tank remains one of the 20th century's most haunting images.
(1970) Literally, a mirage, and Herzog films plenty in this plotless but utterly hypnotic view of the Sahara. "Extraordinary...Three sections: an unpeopled, beautiful wasteland; signs of human wreckage; and the third showing wretched vestiges of life. Totally imaginative." - David Thomson. "Brilliantly original, utterly haunting." - Tony Rayns, Time Out (London).
(1992) The Fires of Kuwait, as Herzog's camera alternately joins fire fighters attacking well-head flames or floats above the devastation, like an alien floating above "a strange planet on which only bacteria, scorpions, and cockroaches can survive." "An evocation of hell on earth. Herzog's own hushed, awestruck voice intones the poetic narration, while the likes of Wagner, Mahler, Verdi and Pärt are enlisted to furnish an epic, elegiac musical backdrop." - Geoff Andrew, Time Out (London). "A masterpiece." - J. Hoberman.
For several months, Donovan Wylie traveled across Russia with a group of Orthodox priests who were hoping to solidify the faith of believers that might have lapsed during communism, or might have succumbed to Protestant evangelical missionaries. Wylie encounters some extraordinary personalities both on and off the train while creating a portrait of a country and a culture moving in several different directions simultaneously.
Photographer René Burri arrived in China in the mid-60s to make a film about the struggle between the culture's traditional values and the demands of the Marxist state. By the end of his shoot, the Cultural Revolution was in full sway, answering the question of tradition vs. modernity with an often bloody overhaul of a society as radical as the world had ever seen. A true document of an extraordinary - and extraordinarily tense - moment in modern Chinese history.
Misery Loves Company: The Life and Death of Bruce Gilden / My Father's Memory by Patrick Zackmann
The idea of "street photography," taking one's camera out into the world and shooting whatever catches one's attention, took on a special twist in the work of Bruce Gilden. His photographs are often records of his confrontations with his subjects, and the tension of the moment is as much a part of the final product as the light and shadows. Gideon Gold caught up with the wisecracking Gilden - described as a Damon Runyon of photographers - and provided a platform for Gilden to talk about his life, work, and ideas about photography.
LAND OF SILENCE AND DARKNESS (1971) What's it like to be blind and deaf? Unknowable, but in Herzog's first feature documentary, he focuses in on a middle-aged woman who tries to reach out to those similarly afflicted. "Of all of my films, this is the one I want to be available to audiences the most." - WH. Plus LA SOUFRIERE (1977) Herzog and crew head off to a Caribbean volcano about to erupt. Only trouble is, if it does, there ain't no film. "Herzog's maddest project... remains a disturbing, even intimidating, meditation on the apocalypse and a frighteningly vivid display of man's love of death." - Dave Kehr.
"[Meiselas'] film is a frank and startling meditation on the contradictions of the photographer's historical record and the recent past."--Leslie Camhi, Village Voice
No one captured more powerfully the suffering, sacrifice and, finally, the celebration that accompanied the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua than Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas. A decade later, Meiselas returned to Nicaragua to track down the people in her photographs - guerrillas, somocistas, simple bystanders. The result is a provocative study of a revolution and its aftermath, as well as a frank inquiry into the perils of recording history as it happens.
(1982, LES BLANK) Cast members drop like flies, a prop ship is trapped in rapids, director makes impossible demands; riveting account of crazed - even for Herzog - shooting of Fitzcarraldo. "Suggests Herzog's own documentaries about visionaries...at once funny and... somewhat frightening." - Dave Kehr. Plus Blank's WERNER HERZOG EATS HIS SHOE (1979) The director consumes footwear after losing a bet that Errol Morris's GATES OF HEAVEN would never be finished.
(Both 1971, Les Blank) SPEND IT ALL: Lives and music of the Louisiana Cajuns, with a local's self-tooth-extraction a memorable highlight. In A WELL SPENT LIFE, septugenarian Mance Lipscomb, legendary blues guitarist, looks back on a 60-year marriage and Texas sharecropping. Kurt Vonnegut's favorite movie.
Previous Week
More Details & Location
