Following a screening of DAVID WOJNAROWICZ—A CONVERSATION WITH SYLVÈRE LOTRINGER AND MARION SCEMAMA, Lotringer and AmyScholder will join Hedi ElKholti for a conversation about Scemama’s film and Wojnarowicz’s life and work.*
The film intercuts footage from Lotringer‘s extensive 1989 interview with Wojnarowicz—itself filmed by Scemama—with documents from the artist’s estate and papers, and Scemama’s personal archives.
A FlorenceLazar retrospective YOU THINK THEEARTH IS A DEAD THING… is now on view at JeudePaume.
It’s title evoking the “ecological ravages of colonialism” and the “emancipatory potential of history,” the exhibition features Lazar’s new video work 125 HECTARES (2019), as well as her photographic portraits and previous films, including LES PAYSANS (2000) and KAMEN (LESPIERRES) (2014).
From top: Florence Lazar, Jeune militant, 2008, photograph; Florence Lazar, 125hectares, 2019, video; Florence Lazar, Confessions d’un jeune militant, 2008, video; Florence Lazar, LesFemmes en noir, 2002, video; Florence Lazar, Kamen (LesPierres) , 2014, film; Florence Lazar, Socialisme ou barbarie, 2008, photograph. Photographs courtesy the artist, FMAC, Cnap Paris, and Jeu de Paume. Film and video images courtesy the artist, Sister Productions, Fort du Bruissin, and Jeu de Paume.
Johnny “Guitar” Logan (Sterling Hayden): Don’t go away.
Vienna (Joan Crawford): I haven’t moved.
Johnny: Tell me something nice.
Vienna: Sure. What do you want to hear?
Johnny: Lie to me. Tell me all these years you’ve waited. Tell me.
Vienna: “All these years I’ve waited.”
Johnny: Tell me you’d have died if I hadn’t come back.
Vienna: “I would have died if you hadn’t come back.”
Johnny: Tell me you still love me like I love you.
Vienna: “I still love you like you love me.”
Johnny: Thanks. [Takes another drink.] Thanks a lot.
The cinema of Jean-Luc Godard—unmatched in its longevity and rigor—is a history of versions, revisions, and doubles, and his new work The Image Book (Le livre d’image) is a filmmaker’s autobiography by a cineaste whose curiosity shows no sign of flagging. The film has five sections, referencing the fingers of a hand, and borrows from a century of footage, including clips from his own durational Histoire(s) du cinéma.
As in all of Godard’s work, standards of continuity, editing, and sound-and-image sync are distorted or discarded. Flows of knowledge and experience are interrupted and memory is questioned. When Godard’s screen turns blank, we can daydream. But when the soundtrack drops out, a chill descends and the world falls through an abyss of silence.
“A truth in art is that which the opposite is also true.” — Oscar Wilde
For Godard, truth appears in fragments. When it comes to the truth, it would be arrogant to think otherwise. In The Image Book, his use of the “lie to me” conversation from Nicholas Ray’s 1954 film Johnny Guitar speaks to something we demand of cinema, something to do with hope. Film is always eluding us—”running away,” as RaymondBellour wrote. It’s an act of abandonment by a thousand cuts, relieved only by the assurance that there is so much more to come.
The Image Book is screening twice daily at the American Cinematheque’s Aero Theatre for the next five days. You’ll want to see it more than once.
In the early 1990s, Ian Hart played John Lennon in two movies.* The first—THE HOURS ANDTIMES (1991)—imagines Lennon and Beatles manager Brian Epstein engaging in a nascent sexual relationship during a long weekend in Barcelona.
The film—written and directed by Christopher Munch, and co-starring David Angus as Epstein—has been restored by the UCLA Filmand Television Archive, and will screen on the closing day of their 2019 FestivalofPreservation.
*Hart’s second Lennon portrayal was in Backbeat (1994), directed by Iain Softley.
From top: IanHart (foreground) as John Lennon and David Angus as Brian Epstein in TheHours and Times; Angus (left) and Hart (2). Images courtesy the filmmaker, Antarctic Pictures, and GoodMachine.
A sensation at last year’s New York and AmericanFilmInstitute festivals, HERSMELL returns to Los Angeles as part of the inaugural Red Bull Music Center Channel film fest.
Starring the always-remarkable Elisabeth Moss as Becky Something—a rocker in drastic free fall—HER SMELL is not, according to the writer-director Alex Ross Perry, based on Courtney Love.
Perry will participate in a post-screening conversation, joined by the film’s composer KeeganDeWitt.
From top: Original poster; Elizabeth Moss in Her Smell; Moss with Dan Stevens. Images courtesy Gunpowder & Sky.
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