30 June 2012

Lois Weber - Suspense (1913)


Lois Weber (1879 —1939) was an American silent film actress,screenwriterproducer, and director, who is considered "the most important female director the American film industry has known", and "one of the most important and prolific film directors in the era of silent films"

19 June 2012

Maya Deren - At Land (1944)


At Land  (1944) is a 15-minute silent experimental film written, directed by, and starring Maya Deren. It has a dream-like narrative in which a woman, played by Deren, is washed up on a beach and goes on a strange journey encountering other people and other versions of herself. Deren once said that the film is about the struggle to maintain one's personal identity.
The composer John Cage and the poet and film critic Parker Tyler were involved in making the film, and appear in the film, which was shot at Amagansett, Long Island.

11 June 2012

Germaine Dulac - L'invitation au voyage (1927)

Germaine Dulac (born Charlotte Elisabeth Germaine Saisset-Schneider) (17 November 1882 – 20 July 1942) was a French filmmaker, film theorist, journalist and critic. She was born in Amiens and moved to Paris in early childhood. A few years after her marriage she embarked on a journalistic career in a feminist magazine, and later became interested in film. With the help of her husband and friend she founded a film company and directed a few commercial works before slowly moving into Impressionist and Surrealist territory. She is best known today for her Impressionist film, La Souriante Madame Beudet ("The Smiling Madam Beaudet", 1922/23), and her Surrealist experiment, La Coquille et le Clergyman ("The Seashell and the Clergyman", 1928). Her career as filmmaker suffered after the introduction of sound film and she spent the last decade of her life working on newsreels for Pathé and Gaumont.

08 June 2012

Pimpaka Towira - The Truth Be Told: The Cases Against Supinya Klangnarong

A documentary on Supinya Klangnarong, profiling the Thai media activist and her legal fight against defamation lawsuits brought against her by the Shin Corporation, at the time owned by the family of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Filmed over the course of nearly three years, The Truth Be Told: The Cases Against Supinya Klangnarong covers the political scene in Thailand in the last days of the Thaksin administration, the controversial sale of his family's assets to Singapore's Temasek Holding, demonstrations against Thaksin,  the 2006 Thai coup d'état and the post-coup atmosphere.
The film premiered in September 2007 during the Digital Forum in Bangkok.

07 June 2012

Alice Guy-Blaché - The Irresistible Piano (1907)


Chantal Akerman - Saute ma ville (1968)

Akerman was born to an observant Jewish family in Brussels, Belgium. Her grandparents and her mother were sent to Auschwitz; only her mother came back. This is a very important factor in her personal experience. Her mother's anxiety is a recurrent theme in her filmography. Akerman claims that, at the age of 15, after viewing Jean-Luc Godard's Pierrot le fou (1965), she decided, that same night, to make movies. At 18, she entered the Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle et des Techniques de Diffusion, a Belgian film school. During her first term, however, Akerman chose to leave and make Saute ma ville, a thirteen-minute black-and-white picture in 35mm. She partially subsidised Saute ma ville from shares she sold on the Antwerp diamond exchange, procuring its remaining budget through her clerical work. In 1971, Saute ma ville premiered at the Oberhausen short-film festival.

02 June 2012

Alice Guy-Blaché - the consequences of feminism

Selected filmography
La Fée aux Choux (The Cabbage Fairy) (1896) 
Little Tich and his Big Boots (1900)
Sage-femme de première classe (First Class Midwife) (1902) 
Danses Gitanes (1905)
La Esméralda (1905) (based on the Victor Hugo novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
L’Emeute sur la Barricade (1906)
The Birth, the Life and the Death of Christ (1906)
Madame’s Fancies (1907) 
La Saucisse (1907)
The Glue (1907)
The Irresistible Piano (1907)
A Fool and His Money (1912) 
Algie the Miner (1912) 
Making an American Citizen (1912) 

01 June 2012

Alice Guy-Blaché - La Fée aux Choux

La Fée aux Choux (The Cabbage Fairy) is one of the earliest narrative fiction films ever made. It was probably made before the first Méliès fiction film, but after the Lumière brothers' L'Arroseur Arrosé. The confusion stems from the uncertainty in the dating of these three films. Many film historians have accepted that La Fée aux Choux was made in April 1896, just a month or two before Méliès made his first fiction film. L'Arroseur arrosé (generally considered the earliest fiction film) was screened in December 1895.
La Fée aux Choux is sixty seconds long, possibly making it the earliest known film with a running time of at least one minute.
Alice Guy Blanché, the director of La Fée aux Choux, is one of the early cinema's most important figures, and had an extensive career as a director, producer and studio owner, working in both France and the United States. Guy Blaché appears in the film, dressed as a man.