Conversations Ep.6- Griffin & Freilich on Faces Places by Agnes Varda

This time we review a current film.  Our podcast producer over at Nolascape.org says:

Agnes Varda’s delicious Faces Places (Visages Villages) had a brief run in Zeitgeist, then two showings in the French Film Festival at the Prytania last month. It is available on Amazon download now, for purchase or rental. It is rewarding to see, a few times.

Henry and Jonathan discuss the chemistry between Agnes Varda, with Godard the last of the Nouvelle Vague, and JR – a small woman of 89 years and an active, wiry guy of about 35. JR has a short, high, square van decorated as a giant lens equipped with a photo booth and a printer – I think they are called giclée – that makes poster prints about three feet by five feet that roll out through a  long slot in the side of the van. There is a lot more to this film than the photo van, of course, but making the process immediate and participatory, it catalyzes the interaction. The people are photographed in the booth or in outside scenes, the posters printed and the pasting up done almost immediately with the participation of the subjects and the village. Not just images, the photos are part of an event.

Several of the Agnes Varda films mentioned in the Conversation are on Filmstruck: Murs Murs, Vagabond, Cleo from 5 to 7, La Pointe Courte and Le Bonheur. Filmstruck has 14 Varda films – so far.

I learn a lot from Henry and Jonathan’s discussions, but to get the blend of simplicity and complexity in Faces Places – the visual and emotional charm and challenge of the places, the rapport of JR, who is about 35, and Agnes who is 89, their travels, projects and creative cooperation, somehow mixing successfully with visual and verbal reference to their own works and styles – try to see it.

The podcast is available on iTunes.  Here...

Also directly from Nolascape- here...

Film Conversations Ep4: 40 Guns w/ Henry Griffin and Jonathan Freilich

40 Guns is a very strange and interesting western by Sam Fuller.  Nolascape, who produces and hosts our show says this:

       What a film.

        I had never seen or even heard of it until Henry and Jonathan put it in the frame for a Conversation.
         

From one point of view, it can look like a collection of horse opera clichés. A pace or two to the side to let the light hit it from another angle, and it is Sophocles set against the unfinished clapboard fronts of a prairie pioneer town instead of the columns of a Mycenaean palace. Are the two bath scenes just non-sequitur comedy skits with cowboy song musical accompaniment, or are they choral interludes in a play of destiny?

Henry and Jonathan will figure it out.

Indeed we will...and do.  And, you should too.  Improve your film buffery...get into the new film buffet- CONVERSATIONS.

Conversations 2: Podcast- In The Mood For Love w/ Henry Griffin and Jonathan Freilich

Nolascape is hosting and producing  film heavy conversations by Professor Henry Griffin and the author of this site.  This one on a great movie by the singular director- Wong Kar Wai.  The film is just beautiful to look at, and there is far more beneath the surface...

Nolascape says-

In this episode Henry and Jonathan discuss In the Mood for Love. If you don’t know this film or the work of Chinese director Wong Kar-Wei, I would suggest diving in. In the Mood for Love is a visual and auditory feast that you can watch over and over, like you look at a great painting or statue again and again. Color, sound, image, movement, quiet passion, powerful emotion powerfully restrained – it’s special.

Suggestion from the amateur (me): think about the title again after you watch the film.

Some intro facts:

• Written and directed by Wong Kar-Wai (sometimes Kar-Wai Wong)

• Main actors: Tony Chiu-Wai Leung, Maggie Cheung,

• Locations: Hong Kong, Cambodia, Singapore.

• Release date: 2000

• Available on Filmstruck

Wong Kar Wai

Conversations: New podcast on 'Tetro', with Henry Griffin and Jonathan Freilich

Last week the great blog, Nolascape, starting putting up the first in a series of conversations on films with Professor Henry Griffin and the author of this site.  The first is about Francis Ford Coppola's film, Tetro, starring Vincent Gallo.  A great movie filmed in, and featuring Buenos Aires. The photography is striking as is the subject.

The relationship between film and sound is right in line with the fascinations that drive this website.  Loving film, we hope you will take a listen.  The conversations cover a lot of territory and contain much reflection on sound.  The podcasts are in a more focused than the meandering and exploratory conversations with musicians that are hosted here at Jonathan Freilich Presents, and suits the nature of the silver screened subject.  We have already recorded a few for nolascape, and there are many more to come.  We will let you know as they go up.

As usual ours are also on iTunes.  The conversations on film are as well.

Of interest: The Yossarian society

Here is an interesting website.

There is a new society being birthed.  Concerned with a number of things I would think, but right now the site has a good deal of focus on the plague of folks that would distract you from anything of actual importance in New Orleans, by endlessly attempting to suggest that sound ordinances are somehow a mark of great civilization- more than the culture of music!?!?!  

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What can be said...Katrina courted throngs of people that have no idea and have fallen prey to some rich maniacs and carpetbaggers who are attempting to gain vast long term control over the profit systems in New Orleans.  But, it's surely the old Louisiana political story:  a new pipeline to fly high volumes of cash into a few local old pockets under the guise of renewal and a few beads for the new masses caught in the excitement.

Anyway, this mysterious

Yossarian Society

sheds more light than this brief rant-ette.

For instance, the Society says this... 

"Yossarian is entry level anarchism.

We like anarchism if it is funny. When it is a challenge, like Emma Goldman, not so much. So let’s try to start with some funny.

Yossarian’s philosophy is a first step. What happens when the Governing Caste slips its anchor? Yossarian pokes it in the eye."

     ...Can't be bad...who, after all, didn't get the tragic truths of 'Catch-22'.  If Heller could only see this world!