Imagens que Não Se Bastam

30.12.2014

Jacob Riis, Bandit's Roost, 
59 1/2 Mulberry Street (1888).

Numa entrevista recente, Pedro Costa fala sobre a inclusão das fotografias de Jacob Riis em Cavalo Dinheiro (2014) como parte integrante do trabalho artístico que conduziu ao filme e às suas imagens:

Há até uma proximidade com o cinema americano, com o filme de David W. Griffith, The Musketters of Pig Alley. É o mesmo mundo de becos e meliantes. O trabalho fotográfico de Riis está depositado no Museu da Cidade de Nova Iorque, no Harlem, que inventariou os negativos e tratou da digitalização. Mas eu nunca pensei no Jacob Riis como um fotógrafo americano, sempre o vi como o emigrante que ele foi, irmão daqueles que fotografava. Tem uma história de vida muito comovente, muito chaplinesca, vagabundava pelas ruas sem um tostão, com um cãozito que o seguia para todo o lado... E ele escrevia, ruminava muito o que via, usava as imagens como um complemento para escrever apontamentos sobre a vida de miséria nos tenements, os lúgubres e sobrelotados prédios de Nova Iorque da época. Ou seja, as fotos não acabavam em si, eram um pretexto para mostrar a realidade aos homens do poder naquela altura, para denunciar e protestar. É uma atitude muito nobre: uma fotografia, um filme, têm de dar continuidade a alguma coisa. Fazer um filme só por fazer um filme não devia chegar, não é?[1]

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[1] “Pedro Costa: Guarda o Meu Silêncio para Sempre”, entrevista de Francisco Ferreira, Expresso, “Atual” 2196, 29 Nov. 2014, 7.

Cinema 6

27.12.2014

The sixth issue of Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image, edited by Susana Viegas, has now been published. The contents may be consulted, read, and downloaded here:

“Editorial: Gilles Deleuze and Moving Images”, Susana Viegas

Articles:

“Cinema: The ‘Counter-Realization’ of Philosophical Problems”, Mirjam Schaub (University of Applied Sciences (HAW) Hamburg)

“Visual Effects and Phenomenology of Perceptual Control”, Jay Lampert (University of Guelph/Duquesne University)

“Double-Deleuze: ‘Intelligent Materialism’ Goes to the Movies”, Bernd Herzogenrath (Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main)

“Bringing the Past into the Present: West of the Tracks as a Deleuzian Time-Image”, William Brown (University of Roehampton)

“Thought-Images and the New as a Rarity: A Reevaluation of the Philosophical Implications of Deleuze’s Cinema Books”, Jakob Nilsson (Stockholm University)

“Visions of the Intolerable: Deleuze on Ethical Images”, Joseph Barker (Pennsylvania State University)

“Artaud Versus Kant: Annihilation of the Imagination in the Deleuze’s Philosophy of Cinema”, Jurate Baranova (Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences)

“Para Além da Imagem-Cristal: Contributos para a Identificação de uma Terceira Síntese do Tempo nos Cinemas de Gilles Deleuze”, Nuno Carvalho (University of Lisbon)

Book Reviews:

“Ecologies of the Moving Image: Cinema, Affect, Nature”, Niall Flynn (University College Cork)

“Brutal Vision: The Neorealist Body in Postwar Italian Cinema”, Adam Cottrel (Georgia State University)

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Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and the Moving Image: 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5

Cinema & Filosofia

27.12.2014

Foi recentemente publicado pelas Edições Colibri uma colecção de ensaios que condensa muito do trabalho de investigação conduzido no âmbito do projecto “Cinema e Filosofia: Mapa de um Encontro”, coordenado pelo João Mário Grilo. Cinema & Filosofia: Compêndio reúne textos sobre 18 tópicos, da percepção ao arquivo. O meu capítulo é dedicado ao cinemático e tem por título “O Conceito Aberto de Cinemático”.

Mundo Sur/real (9)

16.12.2014

The Heart of the World (2000).

Os Canibais (1988).

Barton Fink (1991).

Serão mostrados amanhã nas Sessões do Carvão, os primeiros às 18h30, o segundo às 21h30, na Casa das Caldeiras.

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“Mundo Sur/real”: (1) · (2) · (3) · (4) · (5) · (6) · (7) · (8)

Revista Alma Azul 10

15.12.2014

Esta Revista Alma Azul inclui um texto meu, “Fotografar, Filmar, Escrever”, escrito a partir de um poema de Al Berto, e lido pelo Ricardo Correia e por mim na Casa da Esquina em Março deste ano. Há de certeza muito a descobrir nas páginas deste número. Fica o convite para a próxima quinta-feira.

Mundo Sur/real (8)

09.12.2014

Les Jeux des anges (1964).

Um Z e Dois Zeros (A Zed & Two Noughts, 1985).

Alice (Neco z Alenky, 1987).

Serão mostrados amanhã nas Sessões do Carvão, os primeiros às 18h30, o segundo às 21h30, na Casa das Caldeiras.

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“Mundo Sur/real”: (1) · (2) · (3) · (4) · (5) · (6) · (7)

From Us to Us

07.12.2014

A Portuguese Farewell.

Tomorrow I participe in a one-day event on Portuguese cinema and the Carnation Revolution held at University College London and co-organized by the University of Coimbra. I am thankful for the invitation and I would like to express my gratitude to André Rui Graça. Further information about the papers and the speakers may be found here.

Here is an outline of my talk, which is titled “From Us to Us: A Portuguese Farewell in 1980s Portugal”:

The central topic of A Portuguese Farewell (Um Adeus Português, 1986), directed by João Botelho, is memory in Portuguese society — more precisely, the necessity of memory and its sparse presence in 1980s Portugal. The film alternates scenes in the past, set in 1973 during the colonial war in Africa, with scenes in the present, set in 1985 in rural and urban areas of Portugal. A soldier dies in the war and the family gathers twelve years after his death. This study is anchored in four thematic concerns that are addressed in the twelve segments of the film: the colonial war, class relations, labour, and religion. My analysis emphasises the context of the film, interpreting it as a meditative depiction of the difficulty of coming to grips with the Portuguese nation’s history and the suffering of its people in a particular time. A Portuguese Farewell was released in the year when Portugal entered the European Economic Community. Such a moment served the narrative of Portugal as transitioning from an Atlantic past to an European destiny. It, once again, eluded the much needed conversation between us, from us to us, as Portugal integrated a capitalist structure of dominion that was further developed within the European Union. For Botelho, the colonial war had become history and therefore could be reflected upon. Influenced by the materialist filmmakers Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, the director uses the constant back and forth between a distant past (in dense black and white) and an opaque present (in postcard-like colour) only to reveal an absence in between them: the 25th April Revolution of 1974, an event connected with the end of the war as well as with profound social and economic changes that opened the possibility of a different future. The revolution is not yet history.

Mundo Sur/real (7)

02.12.2014

Dois Homens e um Roupeiro (Dwaj Ludzie z Szafy, 1958).

No Céu Tudo é Perfeito (Eraserhead, 1977).

Experiência Alucinante (Videodrome, 1983).

Serão mostrados amanhã nas Sessões do Carvão, os primeiros às 18h30, o segundo às 21h30, na Casa das Caldeiras.

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“Mundo Sur/real”: (1) · (2) · (3) · (4) · (5) · (6)

Surface

02.12.2014

Wide Experience

27.11.2014

Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine.

Peter Tscherkassky’s CinemaScope films are experimental films, but they are, first and foremost, films of experience. The aesthetic research that connects this trilogy — L’Arrivée (1997/98), Outer Space (1999), and Dream Work (2001) — and Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine (2005) is displayed in the stirring use of the wide format, which highlights the uniqueness and coherence of these works.

Jim Hillier notes that experimental and avant-garde films try to escape the conventional even when they are narrative. They are “likely to explore organising structures other than narrative ones or, when narrative-based, to explore different processes and possibilities.”[1] Such cinematic works can pursue “questions which conventional narrative films would not even remotely consider, such as questions about the nature of the photographic image, or related questions about the tension between representation and abstraction in film.”[2] In analysing Su Friedrich’s Sink or Swim (1990), he considers the film categorically narrative and claims that “like many avant-garde films, its perplexing qualities are essential and integral to the pleasure(s) it provides.”[3] The same may be said about Tscherkassky’s body of work.

Tscherkassky’s cinema is a meta-cinema, which we may take simply as a “mark of modernity,” but that in this case is not merely conceptual, but also experiential. The Austrian filmmaker shows the film stock, displays the process of editing, that is to say, puts the materiality of film on view. Connected with these actions, his films showcase an interest in the intense emotional effect of cinematic experience. In a sense, it is accurate to describe the material from which Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine was composed as found footage — taken from Il buono, il brutto, il captive (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, 1966), directed by Sergio Leone. Some filmmakers go on a quest to find certain images (Oliver Pietsch) or to create large organised archives (Matthias Müller), Tscherkassky finds a new film in an existing film. This is why Drehli Robnik is able to read Tscherkassky’s film and Leone’s film together. The worn-out bodies that inhabit the western spaghetti are devoted to gold rush as a kind of fetishisation; they resist being abstracted from their physicality and Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine presents intervening times and spaces populated by living dead without place or goal.[4] The marks and instructions are unique to the film and to each one of its copies like the figures and scenes are distinctive of Il buono, il brutto, il captive. Tscherkassky manipulates them, creating a new narrative that distinguishes “Eli Wallach’s Tuco from Leone’s main figures, the nameless Saxons: Lee Van Cleef’s ‘Angel Eyes’ and Clint Eastwood’s ‘Blondie’ or ‘man with No Name’,”[5] a new figurative structure, and a new immense experience.

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[1] Jim Hillier, “Swimming and Sinking: Form and Meaning in an Avant-garde Film”, in Style and Meaning: Studies in the Detailed of Film, ed. John Gibbs and Douglas Pye (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 155.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid., 166.

[4] Drehli Robnik, “Interventions in Saint Hill: On the Messianic Materialism of Peter Tscherkassky’s Instructions for a Light and Sound Machine”, in Peter Tscherkassky, ed. Alexander Horwath and Michael Loebenstein (Vienna: Filmmuseum Synema Publikationen, 2005), 84-86.

[5] Ibid., 88.

V Encontro de Jovens Investigadores do CEIS20

25.11.2014

Mundo Sur/real (6)

25.11.2014

L’Invention du monde (1952).

Encontro em Bray (Rendez-vous à Bray, 1971).

Céline et Julie vont en bateau (1974).

Serão mostrados amanhã nas Sessões do Carvão, os primeiros às 18h30, o segundo às 21h30, na Casa das Caldeiras.

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“Mundo Sur/real”: (1) · (2) · (3) · (4) · (5)

As Imagens Ressonantes

21.11.2014

Agatha et les lectures illimitées (1981).

A vigésima edição dos Caminhos do Cinema Português começou há uma semana. Esta edição integra, pela primeira vez, um simpósio sobre a fusão da artes no cinema no qual vou participar como orador convidado. O encontro científico decorre hoje no Anfiteatro IV da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra.

De manhã, apresento a comunicação intitulada “As Imagens Ressonantes: A Escrita Fílmica de Marguerite Duras”, às 11h. De tarde, modero a Sessão II, entre as 14h e as 15h30. O programa detalhado do evento está disponível nesta página.

Mundo Sur/real (5)

18.11.2014

Armadilhas da Tarde (Meshes of the Afternoon, 1943).

El topo (1970).

Trzecia czesc nocy (1971).

Serão mostrados amanhã nas Sessões do Carvão, os primeiros às 18h30, o segundo às 21h30, na Casa das Caldeiras.

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“Mundo Sur/real”: (1) · (2) · (3) · (4)

Mundo Sur/real (4)

12.11.2014

La Nez (1963).

Les Abysses (1963).

Suna no onna (1964).

Serão mostrados hoje nas Sessões do Carvão, os primeiros às 18h30, o segundo às 21h30, na Casa das Caldeiras.

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“Mundo Sur/real”: (1) · (2) · (3)

Mundo Sur/real (3)

04.11.2014

Spare Time (1939).

Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947).

O Último Ano em Marienbad (L’Année dernière à Marienbad, 1961).

Serão mostrados amanhã nas Sessões do Carvão, os primeiros às 18h30, o segundo às 21h30, na Casa das Caldeiras.

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“Mundo Sur/real”: (1) · (2)

V Mostra de Cinema da Amazónia

03.11.2014

CFP Cinema 7

28.10.2014

Cinema: Journal of Philosophy and Moving Image invites submissions for its seventh issue on Posthumanism, edited by Patrícia Castello Branco. The submission deadline is 30 November 2014 (for 500-word abstracts). The complete CFP is available here.

Mundo Sur/real (2)

28.10.2014

Rose Hobart (1936).

O Sangue de um Poeta (Le Sang d’un poète, 1930).

Tenente Kijé (Poruchik Kizhe, 1934).

Serão mostrados amanhã nas Sessões do Carvão, os primeiros às 18h30, o segundo às 21h30, na Casa das Caldeiras.

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“Mundo Sur/real”: (1)

Esta Terra é a Tua Terra

27.10.2014

O Interior: “As Quatro Voltas”

27.10.2014

As Quatro Voltas.

A última crónica que escrevi para o jornal O Interior é uma análise crítica do filme As Quatro Voltas (Le quattro volte, 2010), realizado por Michelangelo Frammartino. O texto pode ser lido aqui.

Otherwise

22.10.2014

Alias, “The Two”.

Alias (2001-6) belongs to a genre, the action thriller, in which the difference between good and evil is usually clear and reliable. However, this does not happen in this series. The protagonist, Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner), is a double-agent for the CIA and SD-6, which indicates the blurred boundaries between US government intelligence and covert activities and criminal activities. The ambiguity about the characters and the uncertainty about the fictional world are extended to the complex narrative structure and its entangled aspects: time, space, and narration.

Right from the pilot episode, “Truth Be Told” (1.01), Alias experiments with the ordering of events. This episode contains four flash-forwards. The sequence in which the chronological events of the story are arranged in the plot gives us access to glimpses of the future. The frequency, the number of times that any story event is shown in the plot, becomes significant — in “In Dreams” (4.19), for example, Arvin Sloane, the head of SD-6, relives some of his memories. There are other instances in which an initial scene is presented and the rest of the episode is a flashback that leads to it, such as “Mockingbird” (5.04). At other times, manipulations are more structural. Season two ends with an ellipsis. In “The Telling” (2.22), Sydney wakes up two years later not remembering what happened during that time. The omitted interval is then revealed all through the next season, starting with “The Two” (3.01). She needs to know who she was to know who she is.

The screen space is always a selective space that asks us to imagine (or to keep in mind) what is beyond it. Since in Alias the editing usually gives us access to the danger that someone faces, the relation between on-screen and off-screen space is used to create tension. This seems obvious, but nevertheless the series uses spatial design and direction to create images as striking as the mysteries of the story — “Another Mister Sloane” (4.16) is a good example. There are recurrent spaces in the series, the operational bases, the offices of the CIA, SD-6 headquarters, among others, but for the most part the action is expanded to a multitude of countries. This constant dislocation of the action fragments each episode in parts, each one identified by the city’s name. The place of action is global, potentially anywhere.

The narrative information in Alias is usually conveyed through the main character, Sydney. She is not present in all the scenes, consequently, the narration is not restricted to her. Even so Sydney’s explanatory voice-over is heard throughout the first season and the character becomes an internal narrator. Episode by episode, she is turned into a centre around which a group of new characters revolve — a group that includes her mother, her aunts, and her sister. Later, the voice-over disappeared and gave place to a less subjective narration. Narrative absences and limited points-of-view in certain sections abound as well as sudden events. At the end of season four, in “Before the Flood” (4.22), Vaughan, Sydney’s CIA handler, is revealing to Sydney that he is not who she thinks he is when their car is suddenly hit by another vehicle. They survive the crash and Vaughan is taken and then murdered. The introduction of new characters in the fifth and last season carries on the logic of continual narrative reorganization of the series. A case in point is the beginning of season four that is a kind of restart: the characters are working together again in a new unit called Authorized Personnel Only (APO) as if the series has started again. In addition, narrative arcs are interrupted by new ones and sometimes never reach full closure. This discontinuous development plays well with the unstable and unclear characters’ relations and motivations.

What is told cannot be separated from the way it is told. The narrative structure of the series mirrors the ambivalence and unsureness created by the story, generating the permanent feeling that the narrative could have gone otherwise. Yet there is nothing arbitrary about this. The coherence of this structure is stated in the word used as title: alias, a different identity, someone that can pass for another person or who becomes another person. From this point of view, the narration in Alias is mostly unreliable, because there is always something to be added, something we do not know that will change our reading of what we have seen and heard.

Mundo Sur/real (1)

21.10.2014

Entr’acte (1924).

A Concha e o Clérigo (La Coquille et le clergyman, 1926).

Estrela do Mar (L’Étoile de mer, 1928).

Um Cão Andaluz (Un chien andalou, 1929).

The Hearts of Age (1934).

Kurutta ippêji (1926).

Serão mostrados amanhã nas Sessões do Carvão, os primeiros às 18h30, o segundo às 21h30, na Casa das Caldeiras.

O manifesto assinado por André Breton em 1924 sugeriu que a arte surrealista abre espaço para “a futura resolução destes dois estadostaparentemente tão contraditórios — que são o sonho e a realidade, numa espécie de realidade absoluta, uma surrealidade”. O surrealismo desenvolveu-se no cinema logo a partir desse ano e permaneceu uma força artística e estética vital nas décadas seguintes. Tal vitalidade está ligada ao modo como a arte cinematográfica de influência surrealista se manteve atenta ao real, dele extraindo elementos para o superar, ou seja, repensar, reformular, recriar, transformar. Os exemplos que compõem este ciclo afirmam-se pela sua realidade, entendida como experiência do real a que o filme dá corpo. O desafio lançado por Breton mantém-se actual e dirige-se tanto aos cineastas como aos espectadores de cinema. Será entendendo de que mundo cada uma destas obras emergiu que compreenderemos a sua surrealidade.

Jornada do Património

18.10.2014

Sessões do Carvão: “Mundo Sur/real”

17.10.2014

22 Out.:

18h30   Entr’acte (1924), real. René Clair | A Concha e o Clérigo (La Coquille et le clergyman, 1926), real. Germaine Dulac | Estrela do Mar (L’Étoile de mer, 1928), real. Man Ray | Um Cão Andaluz (Un chien andalou, 1929), real. Luís Buñuel | The Hearts of Age (1934), real. Orson Welles e William Vance

21h30   Kurutta ippêji (1926), real. Teinosuke Kinugasa

29 Out.:

18h30   Rose Hobart (1936), real. Joseph Cornell | Le Sang d’un poète (O Sangue de um Poeta, 1930), real. Jean Cocteau

21h30   Tenente Kijé (Poruchik Kizhe, 1934), real. Aleksandr Faintsimmer

5 Nov.:

18h30   Spare Time (1939), real. Humphrey Jennings | Dreams That Money Can Buy (1947), real. Hans Richter

21h30   O Último Ano em Marienbad (L’Année dernière à Marienbad, 1961), real. Alain Resnais

12 Nov.:

18h30   La nez (1963), real. Alexandre Alexeieff e Claire Parker | Les Abysses (1963), real. Nikos Papatakis

21h30   Suna no onna (1964), real. Hiroshi Teshigahara

19 Nov.:

18h30   Armadilhas da Tarde (Meshes of the Afternoon, 1943), real. Maya Deren e Alexander Hamid | El topo (1970), real. Alejandro Jodorowski

21h30   Trzecia czesc nocy (1971), real. Andrzej Zulawski

26 Nov.:

18h30   L’Invention du monde (1952), real. Jean-Louis Bédouin e Michel Zimbacca | Encontro em Bray (Rendez-vous à Bray, 1971), real. André Delvaux

21h30   Céline et Julie vont en bateau (1974), real. Jacques Rivette

3 Dez.:

18h30   Dois Homens e um Roupeiro (Dwaj Ludzie z Szafy, 1958), real. Roman Polanski | Eraserhead (No Céu Tudo é Perfeito, 1977), David Lynch

21h30   Experiência Alucinante (Videodrome, 1983), real. David Cronenberg

10 Dez.:

18h30   Les Jeux des anges (1964), real. Walerian Borowczyk | Um Z e Dois Zeros (A Zed & Two Noughts, 1985), real. Peter Greenaway

21h30   Alice (Neco z Alenky, 1987), real. Jan Svankmajer

17 Dez.:

18h30   The Heart of the World (2000), real. Guy Maddin | Os Canibais (1988), real. Manoel de Oliveira

21h30   Barton Fink (1991), real. Joel Coen

O Cinema como Interpelação do País

11.10.2014

Sessões do Carvão: “Lisboetas”

03.10.2014

“Caminhando para Abril...”

30.09.2014

Cinema, Poesia e Escrita

27.09.2014