Venus in the Garden (2011)

Venus in the Garden (2011)
I Afroditi stin avli (original title)
63 min


Country: Greece | Germany
Language: Greek


Director: Telémachos Alexiou
Writer: Telémachos Alexiou
Stars: Athina Mathiou, Alex Vardas and Stavros Svigos

Mid-summer heatwave. Nikos and Alain, two male prostitutes and a female pimp, Monica, get tangled in a peculiar relationship after meeting in a dark street called POUTANA. They fall in love, play with guns and talk about card games, money and theatre castings. Is this a game of role playing the three of them have invented to pass their time in a remote, empty summer house? Have they been reading Jean Genet? Whether a mirror image of the characters’ reality or an elliptic depiction of their distorted, dream-like perception of it, I Afroditi Stin Avli, by juxtaposing disparate literary and art references, leads its isolated characters towards dissolution. And yet, in its strange language, it presents this dissolution as a triumph.

Things are Queer (1973)

Things are Queer (1973)
Photographer: Duane Michals
Nine silver gelatin prints with hand applied text. (Köln: Ann and Jürgen Wilde, Zülpich, 1973).

Duane Michals (born February 18, 1932) is an American photographer.[1] Michals's work makes innovative use of photo-sequences, often incorporating text to examine emotion and philosophy.

Awards:

Honorary Fellowship of The Royal Photographic Society, 1991.
Gold medal for photography, National Arts Club, 1994.
Masters Series Award, School of Visual Arts, 2000.

Mother’s Hands

Mother’s Hands
Artist: Robin Eley
Oil on Belgian linen
410mm x 305mm

Eley was born in London in 1978 to an Australian father and Chinese mother. In 1981, the family returned to Australia where he completed his secondary education. In 1997 he travelled to the US to attend Westmont College, earning his BA in Fine Arts and captaining the basketball team. His work was recently recognised in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize (highly commended runner-up in 2010 and highly commended 3rd place in 2011). His debut solo exhibition Singularity recently concluded at Hill Smith Gallery in South Australia. He now lives in Adelaide with his wife, Rachel.

To Rome with Love (2012)

To Rome with Love (2012)
112 min


Country: USA | Italy | Spain
Language: English | Italian


Director: Woody Allen
Writer: Woody Allen
Stars: Woody Allen, Penélope Cruz and Jesse Eisenberg



To Rome with Love is a 2012 romantic comedy film written by, directed by, and starring Woody Allen. The film is set in Rome, Italy. The film was released in Italian theaters on April 13, 2012, and opened in Los Angeles and New York City on June 22, 2012.
The film features an ensemble cast, and Allen himself in his first acting role since 2006's Scoop. The story is told in four separate vignettes: a clerk who wakes up to find himself a celebrity, an architect who takes a trip back to the street he lived on as a student, a young couple on their honeymoon, and a funeral director who has a talent for singing in the shower.(Wikipedia)


Set in the romantic city of Rome. The intertwining stories of a worker who wakes up to find himself a celebrity, an architect who takes a trip back to the street he lived on as a student, a young couple on their honeymoon, and a frustrated opera director who has a talent for discovering talented singers.(IMDB)

TTRAILER:

Happy

Happy
Artist: Rejani Sen

Le gai savoir (1969)

Joy of Learning (1969)
Le gai savoir (original title)
95 min
Country: France | West Germany

Language: French


Director: Jean-Luc Godard
Writers: Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (text)
Stars: Juliet Berto, Jean-Pierre Léaud and Jean-Luc Godard

How do we learn? What do we know? Night after night, not long before dawn, two young adults, Patricia and Emile, meet on a sound stage to discuss learning, discourse, and the path to revolution. Scenes of Paris's student revolt, the Vietnam War, and other events of the late 1960s, along with posters, photographs, and cartoons, are backdrops to their words. Words themselves are often Patricia and Emile's subject, as are images, sounds, and juxtapositions. In addition to the two characters' musings, the soundtrack includes narration, music, news clips, and noise. The result is a montage, a meditation, a reflection on ideas and how words and images mix - and how filmmaking is a path. (IMDB)

Joy of Learning (French: Le Gai savoir) is a 1969 film by Jean-Luc Godard, started before the events of May 68 and finished shortly afterwards. Coproduced by the O.R.T.F., the film was upon completion rejected by French national television, then released in the cinema where it was subsequently banned by the French government. The film was entered into the 19th Berlin International Film Festival. The title references Nietzsche's The Gay Science.(Wikipedia)

Tour cycliste du canal Paris (1989)

Tour cycliste du canal Paris (1989)
Photographer: Marie Babey

Killed the Family and Went to the Movies (1969)

Killed the Family and Went to the Movies (1969)
Matou a Família e Foi ao Cinema (original title)
78 min


Country: Brazil
Language: Portuguese

Director: Júlio Bressane

Writer: Júlio Bressane

Stars: Márcia Rodrigues, Renata Sorrah and Antero de Oliveira

There are many concurrent plots in this film. The main one being the one in which a desperate guy kills his parents with an open razor and then goes to the movies. At the same time, other violent events happen when two girls realize they are in love with each other.(IMDB)

This uneven feature combines suicide, torture, violence and Lesbianism in this satirical comedy. The director attempts to show the problems and moral dilemma faced by members of the middle class as they express their concerns over social issues. There is no discernible plot in this verbose film plagued by audio and video problems. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Pablo Picasso Light Drawings with Gjon Mili (1949)

Pablo Picasso Light Drawings with Gjon Mili (1949)
Artists: Pablo Picasso, Gjon Mili (Photograpger)

When LIFE magazine’s Gjon Mili, a technical prodigy and lighting innovator, visited Pablo Picasso in the South of France in 1949, it was clear that the meeting of these two artists and craftsmen was bound to result in something extraordinary. Mili showed Picasso some of his photographs of ice skaters with tiny lights affixed to their skates, jumping in the dark — and the Spanish genius’s lively, ever-stirring mind began to race.

“Picasso” LIFE magazine reported at the time, “gave Mili 15 minutes to try one experiment. He was so fascinated by the result that he posed for five sessions, projecting 30 drawings of centaurs, bulls, Greek profiles and his signature. Mili took his photographs in a darkened room, using two cameras, one for side view, another for front view. By leaving the shutters open, he caught the light streaks swirling through space.”

This series of photographs, known ever since as Picasso’s “light drawings,” were made with a small electric light in a darkened room; in effect, the images vanished as soon as they were created — and yet they still live, six decades later, in Mili’s playful, hypnotic images. Many of them were also put on display in early 1950 in a show at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

Finally, while the “Picasso draws a centaur in the air” photo that leads off this gallery is rightly celebrated, many of the images in this gallery are far less well-known — in fact, many of them never ran in the magazine — but they are no less thrilling, after all these years, than the iconic picture of the archetypal creative genius of the 20th century crafting, on the fly, a fleeting (albeit captured forever on film) work of art.

A note on the last image in the gallery: An excerpt from a 1968 special issue of LIFE, devoted entirely to Picasso, describes a typical scene at his home: “Putting on a mask is sometimes enough to set Picasso off into a kind of witch-doctor frenzy. He roars and writhes behind his gorilla mask, dances away to the mirror, returns in a rubber devil’s mask to swoop down on his daughter Paloma. Picasso was one of the first European artists to recognize the magic and beauty of African masks, and his own masks show the enduring power of that early influence.” (Life Magazine)

Kid Dancing (1972)

Kid Dancing
New Orleans, Louisiana, 1972
Photo: George W Gardner

Eli (2002)

Eli (2002)
Artist: Lucian Freud
Completion Date: 2002
Style: Expressionism
Technique: oil
Material: canvas


Freud loved dogs (at home and on the dog-track), but not sentimentally or with any fellow-feeling:

"The only thing I don’t like about them is what’s called doglike devotion. Also, I have a hatred of habit and routine. And what dogs love is just that. They like regular everything, and I don’t have regular anything. I have a timetable, but no routine."-Lucian Freud

Photo by Pat Crowe

Photo by Pat Crowe
Country: USA

All In A Row and All Gone Awry

All In A Row

All In A Row and All Gone Awry
Artist: Steve Hanks
Type: Water Color

Image Size: 14 X 26.5 in.
Edition Size: 2000


Originally I planned to do one painting with seven babies, some happy, some crying, maybe one crawling away and another pulling someone's ear. But when I had the babies all together, each parent let me know in no uncertain terms that they did not want me to paint their baby as the crying one. I understood because my daughter was in this painting too.

All Gone Awry

So I divided it up into two paintings. All Gone Row was the painting that all the parents wanted to see. All gone Awry allowed me to paint the reality. My daughter is the second from the right.--Steve Hanks

Laugaliai (1984)

Laugaliai (1984)
Photographer: Romualdas Požerskis
Country: Lithuania


Romualdas Požerskis (b. 7 July 1951 in Vilnius) is a Lithuanian photographer and a 1990 recipient of the Lithuanian National Prize. He attended Kaunas Kaunas Polytechnic Institute from 1969 to 1975, and has been a member of the Lithuanian Union of Art Photographers since 1976.
Požerskis' work has been featured at solo and group exhibitions in Poznań, Poland, at the House of Photography in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, and at the Mala Galerija in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia in 1981, as well as in Tokyo, Berlin, Estonia, Munich, and other international venues. Many of his solo exhibitions have been featured at galleries in Vilnius.
His major works include Victories and Defeats (1974–1976); At a Hospital (1976–1982); Old Towns of Lithuania (1974–1982); Village Festivals (1974–1993); Gardens of Memory (1977–1993); The Last Shelter (1983–1990); Muses (1988–2001); Mirage’s Dossier (2002– 2003); and The Little Alfonsas’ Miseries and Joys (1992–2003).

No End (1985)

No End (1985)
Bez konca (original title)
109 min
Country: Poland

Language: Polish


Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski
Writers: Krzysztof Kieslowski, Krzysztof Piesiewicz
Stars: Grazyna Szapolowska, Maria Pakulnis and Aleksander Bardini

No End (Polish: Bez końca) is a 1985 film directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski and starring Grażyna Szapołowska, Maria Pakulnis, and Aleksander Bardini. The film is about the state of Martial law in Poland after the banning of the trade union Solidarity in 1981. Kieślowski worked with several regular collaborators for the first time on No End.(Wikipedia)

It's 1982: Poland is under martial law, and Solidarity is banned. Ulla, a translator working on Orwell, suddenly loses her husband, Antek, an attorney. She is possessed by her grief, and Antek continues to appear to her. She seeks to free herself in her work, in her relationship with her son, in sex, and in hypnosis. In a subplot, Ulla refers the wife of one of her husband's clients Darek, a jailed Solidarity strike organizer to Labrador, a world-weary, aging attorney, who works to free Darek by various political manipulations and psychological ploys. Written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>  (IMDB)

Ratings: 90% (Rotten Tomatoes Critics)

Berkeley in the Sixties (1990)

Berkeley in the Sixties (1990)
117 min
Documentary

Country: USA
Language: English



Director: Mark Kitchell
Writers: Mark Kitchell, Susan Griffin, and Stephen Most
Stars: Jentri Anders, Joan Baez and Frank Bardacke

Berkeley in the Sixties is a 1990 documentary film by Mark Kitchell. The film highlights the origins of the Free Speech Movement beginning with the May 1960 House Un-American Activities Committee hearings at San Francisco City Hall, the development of the counterculture of the 1960s in Berkeley, California, and ending with People's Park in 1969. The film features 15 student activists and archival footage of Mario Savio, Todd Gitlin, Joan Baez, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Huey Newton, Allen Ginsberg, Gov. Ronald Reagan and the Grateful Dead. The film is dedicated to Fred Cody, founder of Cody's Books. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.(Wikipedia)


Wins
1990 Sundance Film Festival: Audience Award; 1990.
National Society of Film Critics Awards 1990: Best Documentary; 1991.
Nominations
63rd Academy Awards nominee: Academy Award for Documentary Feature; 1990.[2]
1990 Sundance Film Festival: Grand Jury Prize; 1990. (Awards)

Rickshaw (2008)

Rickshaw (2008)
Artist: Ajay De
12.5x 36 in
Charcoal & Acrylic on paper

Ajay De, born in 1967, graduated from the Government College of Arts and Crafts, Kolkata, and did his post-graduation from Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai. His solo exhibitions have been held at various prominent art galleries in Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Kolkata, and Tokyo. He has also participated in group shows in New York, Dubai, Mumbai, Pune and New Delhi, apart from several other exhibitions organised by reputed institutions across India. 

Gypsy Children Kissing (1917)

Gypsy Children Kissing
Photographer: André Kertész
Esztergom, Hungary
Date : 1917

André Kertész (2 July 1894 – 28 September 1985), born Kertész Andor, was a Hungarian-born photographer known for his groundbreaking contributions to photographic composition and the photo essay. In the early years of his career, his then-unorthodox camera angles and style prevented his work from gaining wider recognition. Kertész never felt that he had gained the worldwide recognition he deserved. Today he is considered one of the seminal figures of photojournalism.

The Pinball Game

The Pinball Game
Artist: Alexander Shubin
Acrylic in Canvas
16x20

Run Lola Run (1998)

Run Lola Run (1998)
Lola rennt (original title)
81 min

Country: Germany
Language: German


Director: Tom Tykwer
Writer: Tom Tykwer
Stars: Franka Potente, Moritz Bleibtreu and Herbert Knaup

Run Lola Run (German: Lola rennt, literally Lola Runs) is a 1998 German crime thriller film written and directed by Tom Tykwer and starring Franka Potente as Lola and Moritz Bleibtreu as Manni. The story follows a woman who needs to obtain 100,000 German marks (50,984 Euro) in 20 minutes to save her boyfriend's life. The film's three scenarios are reminiscent of the 1981 Krzysztof Kieślowski film Blind Chance; following Kieślowski's death, Tykwer directed his planned film Heaven.

In contrasting reviews, Film Threat's Chris Gore said of the film, "[It] delivers everything great foreign films should - action, sex, compelling characters, clever filmmaking, it's unpretentious (a requirement for me) and it has a story you can follow without having to read those annoying subtitles. I can't rave about this film enough -- this is passionate filmmaking at its best. One of the best foreign films, heck, one of the best films I have seen", while Jonathan Rosenbaum of The Chicago Reader stated, "About as entertaining as a no-brainer can be--a lot more fun, for my money, than a cornball theme-park ride like "Speed," and every bit as fast moving. But don't expect much of an aftertaste."
Ranked #86 in Empire magazines "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.(Wikipedia)

Ratings: 93% (Rotten Tomatoes Critics)

Awards

The White Slave (1913)

The White Slave (1913)
Artist: Abastenia St. Leger Eberle (1878–1942)
Country: USA

Abastenia St. Leger Eberle, was an American sculptor. Her most famous piece The White Slave caused controversy representing child prostitution.
The White Slave was exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show in New York, and which caused "a storm of violent controversy" because of its shocking combination of contemporary realism and the nude. The sculpture represented child prostitution, which at the time was euphemistically called white slavery.

She exhibited her two sculptures in the 1913 Armory Show including White Slave (1913;destroyed;posthumous bronze, private collection). The sculpture a censure of abduction of young woman for prostitution, represents a smoothly and simply formed young woman cowering her nudity, while the roughly modeled auctioneer solicits bids for her. It cause controversy when published on the cover of  " The Survey" magazine of May 3, 1913. 

Fucking Åmål (1998)

Show Me Love (1998)
Fucking Åmål (original title)
89 min
Country: Sweden | Denmark
Language: Swedish

Director: Lukas Moodysson
Writer: Lukas Moodysson
Stars: Alexandra Dahlström, Rebecka Liljeberg and Erica Carlson


Åmål is a small insignificant town where nothing ever happens, where the latest trends are out of date when they get there. Young Elin has a bit of a bad reputation when it comes to guys, but the fact is that she has never done *it*. Another girl in her school, Agnes, is in love with her but is too shy to do anything about it. For a number of reasons, Elin ends up at Agnes' birthday party as the only guest. They have a girl's night out together but after that Elin desperately avoids Agnes, refusing to even consider her own feelings toward Agnes.(IMDB)


Show Me Love is a 1998 Swedish film directed by Lukas Moodysson, the title for non-English speaking countries is Fucking Åmål.
The film follows the lives of two seemingly disparate teenage girls who begin a tentative romantic relationship. The film first premiered outside Sweden at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival under its original title. According to Moodysson, the problem with the original title started when the film was Sweden's candidate for the Academy Awards, though it was eventually not chosen as a nominee: the Hollywood industry magazine Variety refused to run an advertisement for a film with that title, and thus American distributor Strand Releasing asked for a new title to be chosen. Moodysson took the new title from the song at the end of the film, by Robyn. Distributors in other native English speaking countries then followed suit.
For writer Moodysson, it was his directorial debut in a full length film. Starring in the lead roles were Rebecka Liljeberg, as Agnes, and Alexandra Dahlström, as Elin. The film received an overwhelmingly positive reception and won four Guldbagge Awards (Sweden's official film awards) at the 1999 ceremony. Its international awards include the Teddy award at the 1999 Berlin Film Festival.
The Swedish title refers to the small town of Åmål in central Sweden. Only a few scenes were actually filmed in Åmål, but these were not included in the final version: the main shooting took place in the nearby town of Trollhättan, location of Film i Väst's (the company that produced the film) film studios.(Wikipedia)

Rating: 90% (Rotten Tomatoes Critics)

WATCH:

The Decalogue (1988)

The Decalogue (1988)
"Dekalog" (original title)
TV Mini-Series
572 min
Country: Poland
Language: Polish

Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski
Produced by Ryszard Chutkowski
Written by Krzysztof Kieślowski, Krzysztof Piesiewicz

The Decalogue (Polish: 'Dekalog' - and known as such in many English language editions) is a 1989 Polish television drama series directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski and co-written by Kieślowski with Krzysztof Piesiewicz, with music by Zbigniew Preisner. It consists of ten one-hour films, inspired by the Ten Commandments. Each short film explores one or several moral or ethical issues faced by characters living in modern Poland.
The series is Kieślowski's most acclaimed work, possibly "the best dramatic work ever done specifically for television"  and has won numerous international awards, though it was not widely released outside Europe until the late 1990s. Film-maker Stanley Kubrick wrote an admiring foreword to the published screen-play in 1991.Wikipedia.org

Read Review: Filmsufi.blogspot.in

Awards

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Sleeping Beauty (2011)

Sleeping Beauty (2011)
101 min

Country: Australia
Language: English


Director: Julia Leigh
Writer: Julia Leigh (screenplay)
Stars: Emily Browning, Rachael Blake and Ewen Leslie


Sleeping Beauty is a 2011 Australian erotic drama film that was written and directed by Julia Leigh. It is her debut as a director. The film stars Emily Browning as a young university student who begins doing erotic freelance work in which she is required to sleep in bed alongside paying customers. The film is based in part on the novel The House of the Sleeping Beauties by Nobel laureate Yasunari Kawabata.
The film premiered in May at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival as the first Competition entry to be screened. It was the first Australian film In Competition at Cannes since Moulin Rouge (dir Baz Luhrmann 2001). Sleeping Beauty was released in Australia on 23 June 2011. It premiered in US cinemas on 2 December 2011 on limited release. Critical reaction to the film was mixed.(Wikipedia Page)

In a review from the festival, Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian called the film "Technically elegant with vehemence and control . . Emily Browning gives a fierce and powerful performance . . There is force and originality in Leigh's work".David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter called it "soporific in every sense", with the reservation: "Cannes audiences tend to be more forgiving in sections geared to emerging talent, like Un Certain Regard or Directors' Fortnight. Outside the glare of Competition, even this pretentious exercise might have earned some appreciation for its rigorously cold aesthetic".Ian Buckwalter of NPR noted the film's "sexless and sterile" approach to its erotic material, saying, "This Sleeping Beauty is no fairy tale; it's stark, dispassionate and noticeably short on happily ever afters.

Read Review: Hollywoodreporter.com

Awards

Memento Amori( 2010)

Memento Amori( 2010)
Ivory Edition Bronzo Edition
38x34x26
Artist: Matteo Pugliese

Make Love, Not War

Make Love, Not War
Photograph
Artist: Unknown

Mumbatu (2007)

Mumbatu (2007)
Artist: Karen Cusolito
Height: 18FT
Weight: 11 TonsUS)
Composition: Salvage Steel, Retired Crane Cable
Installation: Crane
Engineering:Anchor bolt to concrete pad


Mumbatu is deep in a posture of introspection. His height is exaggerated, emphasizing his strength and lean musculature. Yet despite his imposing size, he is crouching down, with deep regard for the smaller nuances of life; the delicate balance between nature and humanity.

Mumbatu was created in 2007 and was first exhibited at Burning Man. He has since traveled to Maker Faire, 2008, Electric Daisy Carnival 2008 and 2010, and presently is on exhibit at American Steel Studios, Oakland, CA.