Dimitri Kirsanoff's 1926 classic Ménilmontant, which is either a short feature or a very long short, is one of the great things. If you haven't already seen it, you have just been handed an urgent mission.Related to the impressionist school of Epstein, Dulac, amd Delluc, but not actually part of that gang or, seemingly, associated with any school, movement or company, Kirsanoff, an Estonian emigré, fashioned a silent film without intertitles that plays like an unholy mash-up of Chaplin and David Lynch.But little of Kirsanoff's other work is seen or discussed. A few lovely shorts are available on YouTube, but what became of him when he was absorbed into the film industry and had to become a professional?Le crâneur (The Hotshot) is the answer. It's a fifties crime movie inhabiting a world familiar to cinephiles from the movies of Jean-Pierre Melville, only the gangsters don't wear white...
- 2/16/2017
- MUBI
African-American film 'Bert Williams: Lime Kiln Club Field Day.' With Williams and Odessa Warren Grey.* Rare, early 20th-century African-American film among San Francisco Silent Film Festival highlights Directed by Edwin Middleton and T. Hayes Hunter, the Biograph Company's Lime Kiln Club Field Day (1913) was the film I most looked forward to at the 2015 edition of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. One hundred years old, unfinished, and destined to be scrapped and tossed into the dust bin, it rose from the ashes. Starring entertainer Bert Williams – whose film appearances have virtually disappeared, but whose legacy lives on – Lime Kiln Club Field Day has become a rare example of African-American life in the first years of the 20th century. In the introduction to the film, the audience was treated to a treasure trove of Black memorabilia: sheet music, stills, promotional material, and newspaper clippings that survive. Details of the...
- 6/16/2015
- by Danny Fortune
- Alt Film Guide
Visage...
Voice...
Vitaphone...
In Dimitri Kirsanoff's Menilmontant a destitute waif, betrayed and abandoned by the man who seduced her, sits on a park bench with her newborn infant. Beside her is an old man eating a sandwich. This wordless exchange is one of the greatest moments ever committed to film. Nadia Sibirskaia’s face reveals all of life’s cruel mysteries as she gazes upon a crust of bread.
The persistence of hope is the dark angel that underlies despair, and here it taunts her mercilessly. A whole series of fluctuations of expression and movement in reaction to anguish, physical pain involving hesitation, dignity, ravenous hunger, survival, self-contempt, modesty, boundless gratitude. All articulated with absolute clarity without hitting notes (without touching the keys). Chaplin could have played either the old man on the bench (his mustache is a sensory device!) or Nadia. And it would have been masterful and deeply affecting,...
Voice...
Vitaphone...
In Dimitri Kirsanoff's Menilmontant a destitute waif, betrayed and abandoned by the man who seduced her, sits on a park bench with her newborn infant. Beside her is an old man eating a sandwich. This wordless exchange is one of the greatest moments ever committed to film. Nadia Sibirskaia’s face reveals all of life’s cruel mysteries as she gazes upon a crust of bread.
The persistence of hope is the dark angel that underlies despair, and here it taunts her mercilessly. A whole series of fluctuations of expression and movement in reaction to anguish, physical pain involving hesitation, dignity, ravenous hunger, survival, self-contempt, modesty, boundless gratitude. All articulated with absolute clarity without hitting notes (without touching the keys). Chaplin could have played either the old man on the bench (his mustache is a sensory device!) or Nadia. And it would have been masterful and deeply affecting,...
- 6/30/2014
- by Daniel Riccuito
- MUBI
The second in a short series celebrating the films of the Pathé-Natan company, 1926-1934.
La petite Lise (1930) seems like a film from Mars. It's so dazzling and unique that it should be a textbook classic, and then it wouldn't be so startling. I suppose its failure to perform at the box office is all the explanation we need for why it didn't join the canon, although other commercially unsuccessful movies have managed it. It's finally emerging into the light, I think, and taking its place as a truly innovative early sound film: dialogue occupies such a distant third place in the film's scheme that calling it a talkie seems quite wrong.
One anecdote stands out: when producer Bernard Natan first saw the film Jean Grémillon had made for his company, he told the director that he'd never again be employed by Pathè-Natan, in such forceful terms that Grémillon...
La petite Lise (1930) seems like a film from Mars. It's so dazzling and unique that it should be a textbook classic, and then it wouldn't be so startling. I suppose its failure to perform at the box office is all the explanation we need for why it didn't join the canon, although other commercially unsuccessful movies have managed it. It's finally emerging into the light, I think, and taking its place as a truly innovative early sound film: dialogue occupies such a distant third place in the film's scheme that calling it a talkie seems quite wrong.
One anecdote stands out: when producer Bernard Natan first saw the film Jean Grémillon had made for his company, he told the director that he'd never again be employed by Pathè-Natan, in such forceful terms that Grémillon...
- 3/15/2012
- MUBI
Ménilmontant (1926) was written, directed, produced, edited and co-photographed in Paris by Dimitri Kirsanoff. And it is, on any terms, a remarkable piece of writing, direction, production, editing and cinematography.
I'm not sure why Marcel L'Herbier and Jean Epstein seem to be regarded as almost marginal figures in cinema, important, but somehow off the beaten path. I think they're as major as you can get. But Kirsanoff is even more neglected: he barely has a toehold in film history at all. And he seems to me to be in their league, though as yet I've seen only a little of his work. I'd even say that for Ménilmontant alone he should be in the highest ranks of French silent filmmakers. His career includes short, experimental films, as well as low-life melodramas and a German mountain film with Dita Parlo. His last film dates from 1957, the year of his death.
Ménilmontant falls...
I'm not sure why Marcel L'Herbier and Jean Epstein seem to be regarded as almost marginal figures in cinema, important, but somehow off the beaten path. I think they're as major as you can get. But Kirsanoff is even more neglected: he barely has a toehold in film history at all. And he seems to me to be in their league, though as yet I've seen only a little of his work. I'd even say that for Ménilmontant alone he should be in the highest ranks of French silent filmmakers. His career includes short, experimental films, as well as low-life melodramas and a German mountain film with Dita Parlo. His last film dates from 1957, the year of his death.
Ménilmontant falls...
- 1/19/2012
- MUBI
Welcome to the last Underground Film Links post of 2010. I started this feature this year and it quickly became one of the most popular destinations on the site. Keep those great links coming in 2011!
Squeaking in under the wire, Wreck and Salvage’s Aaron Valdez comes up with the quote of the year, perhaps the quote of the century: “Who the f*** is Stan Brakhage compared to Charlie Chainsaw?” I’ve long felt the same thing, but have failed to put it quite so eloquently. Just to be clear: I am 100% absolutely not kidding. A big, special Bad Lit congrats to Andrea Grover, the new curator at the Parrish Art Museum in Sag Harbor, NY! I totally screwed up and forgot to post the news earlier that the always incredibly awesome Ata Film & Video Festival in San Francisco had a special touring program screen all the way over in Hong Kong earlier this month.
Squeaking in under the wire, Wreck and Salvage’s Aaron Valdez comes up with the quote of the year, perhaps the quote of the century: “Who the f*** is Stan Brakhage compared to Charlie Chainsaw?” I’ve long felt the same thing, but have failed to put it quite so eloquently. Just to be clear: I am 100% absolutely not kidding. A big, special Bad Lit congrats to Andrea Grover, the new curator at the Parrish Art Museum in Sag Harbor, NY! I totally screwed up and forgot to post the news earlier that the always incredibly awesome Ata Film & Video Festival in San Francisco had a special touring program screen all the way over in Hong Kong earlier this month.
- 12/26/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
First the history, then the list:
In 1969, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas decided to open the world’s first museum devoted to film. Of course, a typical museum hangs its collections of artwork on the wall for visitors to walk up to and study. However, a film museum needs special considerations on how — and what, of course — to present its collection to the public.
Thus, for this film museum, first a film selection committee was formed that included James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney, plus, for a time, Stan Brakhage. This committee met over the course of several months to decide exactly what films would be collected and how they would be shown. The final selection of films would come to be called the The Essential Cinema Repertory.
The Essential Cinema Collection that the committee came up with consisted of about 330 films.
In 1969, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, Stan Brakhage, and Jonas Mekas decided to open the world’s first museum devoted to film. Of course, a typical museum hangs its collections of artwork on the wall for visitors to walk up to and study. However, a film museum needs special considerations on how — and what, of course — to present its collection to the public.
Thus, for this film museum, first a film selection committee was formed that included James Broughton, Ken Kelman, Peter Kubelka, Jonas Mekas and P. Adams Sitney, plus, for a time, Stan Brakhage. This committee met over the course of several months to decide exactly what films would be collected and how they would be shown. The final selection of films would come to be called the The Essential Cinema Repertory.
The Essential Cinema Collection that the committee came up with consisted of about 330 films.
- 5/3/2010
- by Mike Everleth
- Underground Film Journal
Repertory theaters on the coasts are truly offering a window onto the world this spring, with Jia Zhangke and Bong Joon-ho retrospectives, as well as New French Cinema in New York, "Freebie and the Bean," "Killer Klowns from Outer Space" and Jason Reitman's favorite films invade Los Angeles, and the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin is offering a fond farewell to the video cassette. But consider this a hello to seeing classics, oddities and rarities on the big screen over the next few months.
Cities: [New York] [Los Angeles] [Austin] More Spring Preview: [Theatrical Calendar]
[Anywhere But a Movie Theater]
New York
92YTribeca
Is there a more energetic way to start the spring than with a screening of Russ Meyer's "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" (Feb. 20, with editors Rumsey Taylor, Leo Goldsmith and Jenny Jediny in attendance)? Perhaps not, but it's only the start of an exciting spring season at the 92YTribeca Screening Room, which will present several special events over the next few months.
Cities: [New York] [Los Angeles] [Austin] More Spring Preview: [Theatrical Calendar]
[Anywhere But a Movie Theater]
New York
92YTribeca
Is there a more energetic way to start the spring than with a screening of Russ Meyer's "Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" (Feb. 20, with editors Rumsey Taylor, Leo Goldsmith and Jenny Jediny in attendance)? Perhaps not, but it's only the start of an exciting spring season at the 92YTribeca Screening Room, which will present several special events over the next few months.
- 2/20/2010
- by Stephen Saito
- ifc.com
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