The 4K restoration of SÁTÁNTANGÓ—Béla Tarr’s durational magnum opus, based on the novel by László Krasznahorkai—will screen twice this month, presented by the AmericanCinematheque.
Early on, I noticed that when the camera is rolling and the whole scene is moving, everyone starts to breathe in the same rhythm: the actors, the crew members, the cinematographer, everyone. You are all “in.” And that is very important. It creates a special tension. It gives a special vibration. Somehow you can feel it on the screen too. You become a part of it. — BélaTarr
This is the Age of Bong Joon-ho. The director of The Host (2006), Mother (2009), Snowpiercer (2013), and Okja (2017) was delighted to hear that a critic recently declared “Bong Joon-ho” not just a filmmaker but a genre unto itself.
Ahead of the release of his latest masterpiece PARASITE—a perfect marriage of the art film and the popcorn movie which won the 2019 Festival de Cannes Palme d’or—Bong has asked that reviewers not reveal any of the film’s significant details. So avoid Amy Taubin’s cover story in the current issue of Film Comment until after you’ve seen the film.
It’s safe to say that PARASITE is a comedic, politically astute twist on the upstairs-downstairs tale, wherein members of a resourceful family from Seoul’s lower depths—Song Kang-ho (who plays the father), Chang Hyae-jin (mother), Park So-dam (daughter), and Choi Woo-shik (son)—manage to insinuate themselves, to transformative effect, into the upper-class home of Mr. and Mrs. Park (Lee Sun-kyun and Cho Yeo-jeong).
Bong will be on hand at both the Arclight Hollywood and The Landmark throughout opening weekend for post-screening Q & A’s.
PARASITE
Now playing.
BONG JOON-HO IN PERSON
Saturday, October 12, following the 7:30 pm and 8 pm shows.
PAIN AND GLORY—joining Law of Desire (1987) and Bad Education (2004) to complete Pedro Almodóvar’s autobiographical trilogy—is here.
Cinema is probably the most important experience of my life. The characters in my films always go to the movies, talk about cinema, and explain themselves through films they’ve seen. In the case of PAIN AND GLORY, they also make films for a living.
My life has indirectly found its way into every picture I’ve made, but PAIN AND GLORY is the most representative of me. I have deposited in it everything that I own: my furniture, my paintings, my clothes, my intimacy, a few ghosts, my childhood memories, and my need to carry on making films as my only way of life.
It isn’t an autobiographical film as such, everything is mixed up with fiction. The character nailed by Antonio Banderas is an extension of myself. From the time I started writing the script (and remembering Federico Fellini had already made a monumental film—8 1/2—about a director going through a crisis), I considered Antonio to be my rightful Marcello Mastroianni. This movie would not have been possible without his delicate, emotional, and intense performance. He never tried to imitate me, but many people have told me that there’s a moment in which they no longer see Antonio, but myself. I believe that this is the most flattering thing that one can say about the extraordinary performance of my friend Antonio.
This film is about many things, including my love for cinema. I discovered cinema at open-air screenings during the summer in my hometown. Films were projected onto a whitewashed wall in the main square, and we boys would take a pee by both sides of the wall when we felt like urinating. That’s why the films from my early years smell of wee, of jasmine, and of a summer breeze. My wish is that the white screen never disappears from our lives. — Pedro Almodóvar
OH LES FILLES / Haut les filles—a new decade-spanning documentary—brings together ten of the “top girls” of French music culture who embody the defiant, persistent spirit of Édith Piaf, street waif of Belleville and punk rocker avant la lettre.
Director François Armanet—a veteran reporter for Libérationand Le Nouvel observateur, and current editor-in-chief of the weekly newsweekly L’Obs—has interviewed a select group to share the perils and rewards of being a women in what is often an overtly sexist industry.
Join Irmgard Emmelhainz and Soyoung Yoon for an e-flux launch and conversation about Emmelhainz’s new book JEAN-LUC GODARD’S POLITICAL FILMMAKING.
The book “offers an examination of the political dimensions of a number of Godard’s films from the 1960s to the present. The author seeks to dispel the myth that Godard’s work abandoned political questions after the 1970s and was limited to merely formal ones. The book includes a discussion of militant filmmaking and Godard’s little-known films from the Dziga Vertov Group period, which were made in collaboration with Jean-Pierre Gorin. The chapters present a thorough account of Godard’s investigations on the issue of aesthetic-political representation, including his controversial juxtaposition of the Shoah and the Nakba.
“Emmelhainz argues that the French director’s oeuvre highlights contradictions between aesthetics and politics in a quest for a dialectical image. By positing all of Godard’s work as experiments in dialectical materialist filmmaking, from Le Petit soldat (1963) to Adieu aulangage(2014), the author brings attention to Godard’s ongoing inquiry on the role filmmakers can have in progressive political engagement.”*
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