Jean Genet – Page 8 – { feuilleton }

The Angelic Conversation

Title by John Dee, words by William Shakespeare, narration by Judi Dench and music by Coil; Derek Jarman’s oneiric film/poem is released on DVD, along with two other works.

The BFI releases three Derek Jarman films together—Caravaggio (1986), Wittgenstein (1993) and The Angelic Conversation (1985)—all digitally restored and re-mastered for DVD and each with extensive and illuminating extra features.

The films were made with the BFI Production Board, whose aim was to foster innovation in British filmmaking, thus providing a natural home for Jarman’s artistic sensibility. These three films represent highpoints in his career and are perhaps the most enduring in their appeal and relevance to contemporary audiences.

Intense, dreamlike, and poetic, The Angelic Conversation is one of the most artistic of Derek Jarman’s films. With his painter’s eye, Jarman conjured, in a beautiful palette of light, colour and texture, an evocative and radical visualisation of Shakespeare’s love poems.

Of the 154 sonnets written by Shakespeare, most were written to an unnamed young man, commonly referred to as the Fair Youth. Here, Judi Dench’s emotive readings of 14 sonnets are coupled with ethereal sequences; figures on seashores, by streams and in colourful gardens. The disruption of these magical scenes with images of barren and threatening landscapes echoes perfectly the celebration and torment of love explored in the sonnets.

Shot on Super-8 before being transferred to 35mm film, the unique technical approach results in a striking aesthetic, with Coil’s languorous soundtrack completing the intoxicating effect.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• James Bidgood
• Kenneth Anger on DVD…finally
• Un Chant d’Amour by Jean Genet

James Bidgood

Bobby Looking Out Shuttered Window from Pink Narcissus, mid- to late 1960s.

Blue Boy from Pink Narcissus (Bobby Kendall), mid- to late 1960s.

James Bidgood’s deliriously rich photographs are currently on exhibition at Clampart in New York, and the show includes stills from his classic film Pink Narcissus. Bidgood discusses his work here. And for those of us not in NYC, there’s a Taschen collection available.

James Bidgood: Photographs from the 1960s
January 4th–February 17th, 2007
Clampart
521–531 West 25th Street
Ground Floor
New York City 10001

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Kenneth Anger on DVD…finally
• Un Chant d’Amour by Jean Genet

Kenneth Anger on DVD…finally

Finally…well, we’ll see. Forgive my sceptical tone, these announcements have been cropping up for years although this one seems genuine, with an Amazon page and everything. Good to know that it’s a Fantoma production since they did a great job with Jodorowsky’s Fando y Lis.

The enigmatic Marjorie Cameron portrays the
Scarlet Woman for Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome.

The word “classic” is often used too easily but these films are classics by any standard, masterworks of underground filmmaking, pioneering in their gay content (Fireworks [1947] is like Genet directed by Jean Cocteau and all the more remarkable since Anger was still a teenager when he made it), camp and occult in equal measure, and Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, made in 1954, can claim to be one of the first examples of truly psychedelic cinema. DVD would be the perfect medium to present Inauguration with multiple soundtracks (it’s had at least two over the years) although I suspect we’ll only get the Janacek score and not the bizarre Electric Light Orchestra version I saw once at a cinema screening.

At long last, THE FILMS OF KENNETH ANGER VOLUME 1 is finally available on DVD this January.

Fantoma Films’ special edition DVD hits stores on January 23, 2007.

“It’s time that Kenneth Anger’s work became more available, because he is, without a doubt, one of our greatest artists.” Martin Scorsese

Cinematic magician, legendary provocateur, author of the infamous HOLLYWOOD BABYLON books and creator of some of the most striking and beautiful works in the history of film, Kenneth Anger is a singular figure in post-war American culture.

A major influence on everything from the films of Martin Scorsese, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and David Lynch to the pop art of Andy Warhol to MTV, Anger’s work serves as a talisman of universal symbols and personal obsessions, combining myth, artifice and ritual to render cinema with the power of a spell or incantation.

Covering the first half of Anger’s career, from his landmark debut FIREWORKS in 1947 to his epic bacchanalia INAUGURATION OF THE PLEASURE DOME, Fantoma is very proud to present the long-awaited first volume of films by this revolutionary and groundbreaking maverick, painstakingly restored and presented on DVD for the first time anywhere in the world.

In production for over 5 years, THE FILMS OF KENNETH ANGER VOLUME 1 is easily the most requested title in Fantoma Films’ history. Painstakingly restored by Fantoma, these shorts represent the beginning of the independent film movement as we know it today and Anger’s revolutionary use of blending film to music has often been credited as giving birth to the music video. The films contained in this set include: FIREWORKS (1947), PUCE MOMENT (1949), RABBIT’S MOON (1950, shown here in the rarely seen 16 minute version), EAUX D’ARTIFICE (1953), and INAUGURATION OF THE PLEASURE DOME (1954).

THE FILMS OF KENNETH ANGER VOLUME 1 contains the following special features:

-High Definition transfers from newly restored elements.
-Screen specific audio commentary for all films from Kenneth Anger.
-Rare outtakes and behind-the-scenes images.
-Restoration Demonstrations.
-A 48 page book with a written appreciation of Kenneth Anger by legendary
filmmaker Martin Scorsese, exclusive to this release, extensive notes for
each film, rare photos, never before seen sketches for Anger’s unproduced
film PUCE WOMEN, and more.

Fantoma Films’ DVD of THE FILMS OF KENNETH ANGER VOLUME 1 will be available in stores on January 23, 2007 for a retail price of $24.98.
Fantoma Films: www.fantoma.com
MySpace page: www.myspace.com/fantomafilms.

(Thanks to Jay!)

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Ten films by Oskar Fischinger
• Lapis by James Whitney
• La Villa Santo Sospir by Jean Cocteau
• Un Chant d’Amour by Jean Genet

Un Chant d’Amour by Jean Genet

Genet’s gay classic at Ubuweb.

Un Chant d’Amour, 1950, 269 mb (AVI)

Packed with shots of full frontal hard ons, masturbation, and extreme close ups of sweaty feet, armpits and thighs, Jean Genet’s only film is confrontingly explicit. Though no sex takes place, the erotic factor of Un Chant d’Amour is off the scale, and makes for a sensational viewing experience that feels like watching porn. As well, as a twenty-five minute black and white avant garde short, it’s everything but commercial, and it was even abandoned by its director who, à la George Michael, disowned it in the mid seventies on the grounds that he had reached a far more sophisticated plateau of artistic expression, and was embarrassed by this crude early work. No wonder then, that Un Chant D’Amour has been banned, censored and blacklisted ever since its 1950 release.

This is quite a shame, for apart from being an excellent and extremely horny short film, Un Chant d’Amour is quite the hidden treasure, an underviewed and lushly romantic avant-garde tribute to yearning and desire, and and a frustrating glimpse of what might have been if Genet had kept making films.

Stuck in airless and solitary prison cells (somewhere in Algeria, presumably), sexy inmates drive themselves to the edge with obsessive erotic longing for each other. Almost mad from solitude and longing, they blow cigarette smoke through mini glory holes, and writhe against thick concrete walls, knowing their man is on the other side. A sexually suspect guard spies on them, one by one, peep show style, and they sometimes notice, and perform for him. He gets so worked up he breaks into a cell, whips the inmate, and gets him to fellate his gun. Symbolism and dream sequences abound, but are hard to distinguish from the narrative proper as Genet’s use of repetition, ritual, and stylised movement is unrelentlingly hypnotic.

Un Chant d’Amour’s resonance is mostly due to images that would never make the cut of modern pop culture, certainly not a modern commercial film. Saying that most gay-interest films pale in comparison, then, is unfair. However, Genet’s sensuous presentation makes his two central characters’ almost insane cravings tangible and heartfelt. No amount of dialogue compensates, and furrow-browed pleas for tolerance and happiness drag things in the opposite direction fast. The fantasies of Un Chant D’Amour involve smoke, flowers, dance and forests as well as hair, sweat and muscle. This rocking back and forth between lush romance and salty carnality is a little dizzying, but masterfully (unknowingly?) evocative. By comparison, most other gay films look like tupperware parties, gatherings of politically activated animatronic eunuchs.

Like The Deep End, Un Chant d’Amour taps into elemental energies and ignores politics and socialisation, and as a result comes closest to capturing (pre-rainbow flag) “gay” on screen.

Review by Mark Adnum
www.outrate.net

View: The Modern Magazine

Portrait of Charles Henri Ford in Poppy Field by Pavel Tchelitchew (1933).

View magazine was an American periodical of art and literature, published quarterly from 1940 to 1947 with heavy emphasis on the Surrealist art of the period. The astonishing list of contributors included Jorge Luis Borges, Alexander Calder, Albert Camus, Marc Chagall, Joseph Cornell, Jean Dubuffet, Lawrence Durrell, Max Ernst, Jean Genet, Paul Klee, Henry Miller, René Magritte, André Masson, Joan Miró, Georgia O’Keefe, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Edouard Roditi, Yves Tanguy, and Pavel Tchelitchew.

Continue reading “View: The Modern Magazine”