God plays sax, the Devil violin (2004)

God plays sax, the Devil violin (2004)
Dumnezeu la saxofon, dracu la vioara (2004)
43 min
Documentary | Short
Director: Alexandra Gulea
Writer: Alexandra Gulea
Stars: Adrian, Bicu, Filip
Country: Romania
Language: Romanian

A documentary made in Cinéma vérité style by Romanian director, Alexandra Gulea rolls her camera through the minds, corridor and rooms of Romanian psychiatric institution of Gura Ocnitei, somewhere in between Bucharest and Southern Carpathians. Even in the uninterrupted availability of  basic needs, life of about 300 inhabitants is like a stagnant pool laden with green boredom. They are chained in the continuous overflow of  time as seconds, minutes, hours, days...Living in their memories, carrying the burden of present and unable to think of future, forsaken by God and Devil.

To overcome this they are creating their own community inside the hospital (the outdoor visuals of hospital resembles that of Hospital of the Transfiguration (1979) based on Lem's novel ). They drink coffee, smoke cigarettes, married- trying to create ripples in their still green water.This is also an urge for endurance also a resistance towards the barricades that prevent the flow of wind into their minds from a parallel outside world.

Usage of photographic still video images in a greenish tone powerfully transmits stillness inside the minds in mental asylum. The documentary becomes an artistic brilliance when the images are stitched with discontinuous voices and music.

Gaganendranath Tagore Art

Gaganendranath Tagore was born on on 18th of September, 1867, at Jorasanko in the Tagore family home in Calcutta. He was the nephew of Rabindranath Tagore. Though he didn't receive any formal education in painting later became a prominent figure of Bengal School of Art. He founded the Indian Society of Oriental Art along with his brother Abanindranath Tagore. Gaganendranath was inspired by Japaneese painting techniques, especially  Yokoyama Taikan and other Far Eastern styles, between the years 1906 and 1910. Also he got inspirations from European experimental art like Cubism and used geometric compositions in Indian/Oriental context, build up his own brand of Cubism. Maybe he was the first to use these types of try outs fruitfully.
However he is best known for his political cartoons and social satires on Westernised Bengalis. His work was exhibited in the 22nd exhibition de Societe des peintres orientalistes francais (1914) in Paris, London, Belgium and Holland, and in a travelling exhibition organised by the American Federation of Art and ISOA (1924) in London and Germany, and he exhibited in the Athene Gallery in Geneva in 1928.
Rabindranath Tagore, his uncle commented on his art, thus, in 1938: "What profoundly attracted me was the uniqueness of his creation, a lively curiosity in his constant experiments, and some mysterious depth in their imaginative value. Closely surrounded by the atmosphere of a new art movement ... he sought out his own untrodden path of adventure, attempted marvelous experiments in coloring and made fantastic trials in the magic of light and shade."
Died in 1938.

Magician (1925)
Water Color

Himalayan Bride

Rabindranath Tagore in the Island of Birds

Composition

Das Kino Und Der Tod (1988)

Das Kino Und Der Tod (1988)
Cinema and Death
West Germany
46 min
Documentary
Director: Hartmut Bitomsky

Using "basic" cinematic concept and techniques Hartmut Bitomsky made this documentary about murder in celluloid. He explains each scene by showing photographs of film scenes through movement of his hands. All the documentary scenes are static like images and also inside it film images are moving. Through this ways he examines Torn Curtain, Blow-Up, Band A Part and a series of classic/B grade films which include murder scenes.  In this documentary too we are not seeing the film clips as "clips" but we are seeing it. Bitomsky severalize a film into film images, its movements, music and voices then uniting them into a single piece through separation. In cinema time is considerably shrunk while dealing with killing- For 2 days death, cinema allows only 15 minutes which clearly shows the tyrannic fist of film over time and eyes. We can see, in this documentary too, time is slaughtered in editing table, showing a burning cigarette and a digital clock.
In first set of movies ie; Hitchcock's Torn Curtain and Seigel's Killers we can see the potential of killers. When it reaches Band A Part "nothing is more unreal as film death" Godard cancels all detailed symptoms of a so called film murder. Underworld by Fuller, Un Chien Andalou by Buñuel and Psycho by Hitchcock viewer is not exactly seeing the "killing" but his mind conceives "a murder has taken place". How photography played a crucial role in films is studied through Antonioni's Blow -Up, Shakedown by Joseph Pevney. Director brilliantly visualizes Bazins " Photography as shroud of reality" dialogue through the images from Chabrol's Les Bonnes Femmes sequencing from the murder scene to backwards.  Bitomsky points out the two classes of murder victims in film- One with a clear destiny and others without ( usually appear as mass) can be seen in Griffith's Massacre, Neutrality and Mechanization of death in Wild Bunch/ Western Movies, Morality of Killing in Orders to kill and Kiss Me deadly and also some other interesting murder classifications.

Andrzej Pagowski Art

Andrzej Pagowski was born in 1953.
He graduated from the Academy of Fine in Poznań, Faculty of Poster Design under professor Waldemar Świerzy. Since 1977 he has designed over 1000 posters printed both in Poland and abroad. He is also an author of numerous book illustrations, drawings for magazines, artwork for CD booklets. He is also a TV and theatre stage designer as well as a screenwriter.

In 1986 he started co-operation with various magazines as their artistic director. For several years he was "Playboy" Polish Edition Art Director.

In 1989 he became involved in advertising business, without giving up his individual development as a graphic designer. He is KreacjaPro Company owner and Creative Director.

Andrzej Pągowski had numerous individual exhibitions in Poland and all over the world. He received several dozens Polish and international awards, among which there are the most esteemed awards in the International Competition The Best TV and Film Poster in Los Angeles and first prizes in the Chicago International Film Poster Competition. Recently he received many awards for his achievements in the field of advertising. There are numerous prizes for advertising achievements in recent years as well.

Bez Konca (No End) Poster- 1985
Director:  Krzysztof Kieślowski

8 and Half Polish Poster- 1988
Director: Federico Fellini

Tabu Poster (1988)
Director: Andrzej Baranski

Psie Serce- M. Bulhakow (Heart of a Dog)
Drama

Ballad of Narayama, Polish Movie Poster (1986)
Director: Shôhei Imamura

John Lennon, Polish Poster 1979

Short Film About Love (photo) 1988
Director: Krzysztof Kieślowski

Beauty and the Beast (1946)

Beauty and the Beast (1946)
"La belle et la bête" (original title)
93 min
Director: Jean Cocteau
Writers: Jean Cocteau (dialogue), Jean Cocteau (screenplay),  Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont (Story)
Stars: Jean Marais, Josette Day, Mila Parély
Country: France
Language: French
Jean Cocteau, a notable artist in avant-garde group, is only gently demanding a "child like simplicity" to watch his subdued fairy tale "La belle et la bête" adapted from Jeanne-Marie Le Prince de Beaumont's story of the same name. His cinematic imagery, surreal scenes, stunning costumes, also every elements (with the support of Rene Clement) with its magical blending gave hands to "Beauty and Beast" to attain heights in world cinema.
"Once upon a time" there lived a merchant with his four siblings Adélaïde, Belle, Félicie and Ludovic and was forced  to send his beautiful daughter Belle to the castle of horrible and powerful Beast. The entry of Beast in his black, glittering costume with hairy face, sharp eyes, grunting voice (resembles a cat) is absolutely fantastic in the shadows and lights of forest saying "You steal my roses".Beast is living in a dense forest and he is rejected creature because of his non-perfection; he is a mixture of human and animal and he is cursed to live isolated. When he falls in love with Belle he wants her to marry him and live with him in the same castle,ie, the dark deserted forest. We can see his living atmosphere is so magical and unreal for the outside world, the moving hands holding candelabra, magic mirror, gloves that helps to travel anywhere removing all the barriers, . Cocteau handled this magical scenes with absolute beauty and his surrealist visual language is so simple yet mesmerizing.
One the great visuals i love in this movie is the beast drinking water from a shallow stream. Its so wonderfully crafted with the splashing sounds of water and his animal voice. As Cocteau says at the start, when we say to children "a beast closely resembling face of a large cat, drinking water" they will surely imagine in this way. Fairy tales need only imagination, no thinking, they are simple only the reader/viewer need the simplicity.
When Belle saw Beast at first, she became scared and fainted and Beast says don't look into his eyes. Gradually he is becoming a child in front of her and shivering at her glance, avoiding his violent nature (Remember the scene when Belle telling her love towards Avenant to Beast, he suddenly disappears with anger and returns with blood stains forces viewers to think he killed Avenant, but in the very next cut Cocteau shows as Avenant and Ludovik playing). Sometimes he even losing words to answer her and finally as director says, her love transformed his beastly physic to beauty. When Avenant (Belle's lover) was killed by the armed statue, he became a beast and his body is given to the Belle's Beast which make the story more fairyhood.
Some critics linked this movie with the Liberation of France which is quite interesting. The chained France under German Regime (Vichy France,1940-1944) is finally getting its magnificence. " In love with Belle, that is, Beauty, the Beast suffers afresh an unfree nature despite owning the Enchanted Castle and its spectacular grounds and the trappings of wealth, that is, the magnificence of France. One can go mad trying to determine to what degree, if any, the filmmaker was conscious of his decision to find in the fairy tale such vibrantly recent historical matter, but without doubt the Beast’s predicament evolved from Cocteau’s artistic use of it as the perfect symbol."
Directed by French poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau, the film stars Josette Day as Belle and Jean Marais ( Cocteau's lover) as The Beast.

Nekromantik (1987)

Nekromantik (1987)
75 min
Director: Jörg Buttgereit
Writers: Jörg Buttgereit, Franz Rodenkirchen
Stars: Bernd Daktari Lorenz, Beatrice Manowski, Harald Lundt
Country: West Germany
Language: German
Rob Schmadtke and his lady friend's affection towards corpses makes him to work for  "Joe's Cleaning Agency", a company that removes bodies from public areas. He can satisfy sexual desire using the corpses acquired through this job. An extremely sick, disturbing, sordid, mad also anti-social movie, which nails in to viewers eyes, entangled scenes of necrophilia, love making with a decayed corpse, bathing in a tub filled with blood and fluids from corpses.
Apart from the perversion of a maniac, the film is forcing to reject so called  social beliefs (may be good/bad) by loving corpses sexual intercourse with them and even he feels nauseating in the presence of a living body. Throughout the film we can see a complete absence of fact "sex as a meaningful biological process of construction a future generation". Showing sex as a mechanical activity (like fixing an iron rod as penis for corpse) rejecting the physical sexual purity is also an interesting side of this subject. Life made him a murderer and finally he enjoys ultimate orgasm through the progression of death. ("For each man who regards it with awe, the corpse is the image of his own destiny. It bears witness to a violence which destroys not one man alone but all men in the end." -- Georges Bataille- from Buttgereit's official website)
In this movie Director didn't have any intention to create fear in viewers by adding gory music but he used romantic, pleasant back ground scores which makes it more strange.
The film is currently banned outright in Iceland, Norway, Malaysia, Singapore, and the provinces of Nova Scotia and Ontario in Canada. In 1992, The Australian Classification Board banned the film outright in Australia due to "graphic necrophilia content". In 1993, the film was banned in Finland. The film was banned outright by the Office of Film and Literature Classification in 1999 due to "revolting, objectionable content (necrophilia, high impact violence, animal cruelty and abhorrent behavior)". The film is banned in a number of other countries as well.
This 1987 West German movie is directed by Jörg Buttgereit.

Festen (1998)

The Celebration (1998)
"Festen" (original title)
 105 min
Directed by
Thomas Vinterberg
Writers: Thomas Vinterberg (screenplay), Mogens Rukov (screenplay)
Stars: Ulrich Thomsen, Henning Moritzen, Thomas Bo Larsen
Country: Denmark | Sweden
Language: Danish | German | English
To celebrate the sixtieth birthday of Danish patriarch Helge Klingenfeldt, the family members are assembled at their family hotel, including the eldest son Christian, a successful Parisian restaurateur, daughter Helene and younger Micheal. The charming, animated ceremonial hall soon transforms in to a grotesque, nauseous atmosphere through some words (or call as revelations, even its a cliche) from elder Christain. It mainly centered on the sexual molestation done by the father, Helge Klingenfeldt to his offspring, Christian and Linda (Christan's twin-sister who has committed suicide).
The first movie in Dogma'95 series is absolutely a new experience from Thomas Vinterberg. Film didn't use any artificial lights, optical effects like technological stuffs, no background scores but concentrating on the theme, cinematography thereby bringing the "pure" aesthetics Through razor edged almost hand held cinematography and editing "Festen" advances by screwing the viewers. While seeing the activities of the mass inside a room, the maidservants it smells like Bunuel.
"Victim" is a thorned-crown which is transferred through words and evidences from person to person. In the first portion of movie, the son reveals his mind and saying he was a victim and in the climax the father reveals/admits his crime and transforming to victim. The main thematic difference between Vinterberg's own The Hunt (released in 2011) to Festen is the absence and presence of evidences. Hunt is more puzzling due to the avoidance of evidences but Festen is more concrete.
Film was screened in Cannes Film Festival (1998) and won Jury Prize.