Films byTexts by 1979
Article NL EN
8.02.2023
Frieda Grafe 1979
Translated by

Neorealist films did not seem more realistic because of the masses, the common people, the everyday life. The bourgeois-novel individuals and their psychological analysis are redundant because stories no longer need to be made convincingly plausible. But the old relationship is not merely reversed; the documentary does not gain the upper hand at the expense of the narrative. Rossellini neither relies on the fantastic coincidences of surrealist aesthetics, nor does he leave everything to devices, as cinéma vérité later did. His gaze and that of the camera are combined. A new reality only comes into view through a new way of perceiving.

FILM
Jeanne Moreau, 1979, 94’

During the the summer of 1939, Marie has just turned 12 and goes on holiday to her grandmother’s house in central France. When she meets new country doctor, she discovers a previously unknown feeling.

FILM
Jean-Luc Godard, 1979, 20’

In Scénario de Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1979), director Jean Luc Godard discusses many of the themes, motifs and film-making practices that would eventually be utilised in the creation of his following film, Sauve qui peut (la vie) (1980). Like Sans Titre, Scén

FILM
The Herd
Zeki Ökten, 1979, 121’

Scripted by Yılmaz Güney (Yol) from prison, Süru [The Herd] depicts the tragic disintegration of a tribal family during Turkey’s turbulent transition to capitalism.

FILM
Doomed Love
Manoel de Oliveira, 1979, 261’

A story about doomed love between two people from different worlds and the impact in their lives. Based on the nineteenth-century novel of the same name by Portuguese writer Camilo Castelo Branco.

 

Conversation EN
19.05.2021

Selma Baccar’s film opens with a series of portraits of women who have marked the history of Tunisia through the ages. In a theatrical way, Sophonisba, Kahina, Jelajil, and Aziza present themselves to us as the predecessors, through their courageous actions, of this young girl, Fatma, in 1975.

Article NL EN
12.05.2021

“It’s a sort of acrobatic distance, here in Hedda Gabler, that makes you hold your breath in suspense (the acting is wonderful!) until it should be released by laughter. There’s a spluttering retelling of a wildly unlikely story, a kooky imitation of melodramatic conflicts, a travesty of critical unriddling, offering this extremely slow, calm countercurrent full of rapids and waterfalls.”

Article EN
31.03.2021

Élie Faure tells us that the aging Renoir, when he used to refer to this light in Women of Algiers, could not prevent large tears from streaming down his cheeks. Should we be weeping like the aged Renoir, but then for reasons other than artistic ones? Evoke, one and a half centuries later, these Bayas, Zoras, Mounis, and Khadoudjas. Since then, these women, whom Delacroix – perhaps in spite of himself – knew how to observe as no one had done before him, have not stopped telling us something that is unbearably painful and still very much with us today.

Article EN
31.03.2021

“I started from the idea that the more a woman is traditional, the less she needs an association with folklore in terms of sound. When you come across the image of a person whose clothes and attitude are very “conservative”, there’s no need to associate this person with flutes or tambours. At the end, during the party in the caves, the women dance while singing the most ordinary songs, popular street songs really, and I linked this to the fourth dance of Bartók’s “Dance Suite”. I thought it emphasized the inherent nobility of these women. I got the impression that it was original music, written especially for this moment!”

Article EN
31.03.2021

Assia Djebar’s treatment for La Zerda et les chants de l’oubli [The Zerda or the Songs of Oblivion] (1978-1982): “Without any comment, however, shortly before and during the credits, three known paintings by Delacroix unfold in long shots and in slow pan shots that focus on details of characters, horses or costume elements, each of the paintings linked to an atmosphere of music and fantasia from the pre-colonial Maghreb.”

FILM
Fernand Deligny, Alain Cazuc, 1979, 56’

“What has happened to them in these images, besides the goats that have become theirs, are children who come from far and go far again. They are autistic, mute. They have not found a connection with the consciousness that has developed over thousands and thousands of years of civilisation.

Article NL
29.01.2020
Frieda Grafe 1979
Vertaald door

De neorealistische films leken niet realistischer voor de massa, voor de kleine mensen, voor het dagelijkse leven. De individuen en hun psychologische analyse uit de burgerlijke roman zijn overbodig omdat er geen verhalen meer overtuigend aannemelijk gemaakt hoeven te worden. Maar de oude verhouding is niet zomaar omgekeerd, het documentaire krijgt niet de overhand ten koste van het narratieve. Rossellini vertrouwt niet op het fantastische toeval, de kern van de surrealistische esthetiek, noch laat hij alles over aan de apparatuur zoals later de cinéma vérité deed. Zijn blik en die van de camera worden gecombineerd. Een nieuwe realiteit komt maar in zicht via een nieuwe manier van waarnemen.

FILM
Femme entre chien et loup
André Delvaux, 1979, 111’

In Antwerp during and after the Nazi occupation, a young woman, Lieve, is torn between her love for two men with opposite ideals: her Flemish nationalist husband Adriaan (Rutger Hauer), who goes off to fight with the German troops on the Eastern front, and a wounded French resistance

Conversation NL
20.11.2019

“Ik hou dus niet zo van het spectaculaire. Omdat ik denk dat men altijd zo clichématig naar de dingen kijkt dat het zinloos wordt, elke betekenis moet verliezen. En ik vind het geen punt, wanneer een actrice niet echt sterft, om dan ook te tonen dat ze niet echt dood is. Ik denk niet dat je één moment volledig in de personages gelooft. Ze spelen een schijn en dat vind ik iets wat heel belangrijk is om te tonen. Ik vind het niet belangrijk of ze ademt of niet. Maar het is ook niet zo dat ik haar vraag om expres hevig te ademen. Dat laat ik aan het toeval over.”

Article NL EN
20.11.2019

“Het is een soort acrobatische afstand, die je hier in Hedda Gabler de adem doet inhouden van spanning (er wordt prachtig gespeeld!), tot ie in een lach bevrijd zou moeten worden. Er is een proestend navertellen van een wild-onwaarschijnlijk verhaal, een kolderieke imitatie van melodramatische conflicten, een travestie van de kritische ontraadseling, die deze heel trage, rustige tegenstroming meegeeft vol versnellingen en watervallen.”

FILM
Andrei Tarkovsky, 1979, 163’

How I love your eyes, my friend,
With their radiant play of fire,
When you lift them fleetingly
And like lightning in the skies
Your gaze sweeps swiftly round.

FILM
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1979, 111’

“It seems as if Fassbinder needed to purge his system after In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden (1978), a traumatised remake of Louis Malle’s Le feu follet (1963), chronicling a transsexual depressive’s last days, and inspired by the suicide of Fassbinder’s lover Armin Meier.

Article EN
31.03.2021

“I started from the idea that the more a woman is traditional, the less she needs an association with folklore in terms of sound. When you come across the image of a person whose clothes and attitude are very “conservative”, there’s no need to associate this person with flutes or tambours. At the end, during the party in the caves, the women dance while singing the most ordinary songs, popular street songs really, and I linked this to the fourth dance of Bartók’s “Dance Suite”. I thought it emphasized the inherent nobility of these women. I got the impression that it was original music, written especially for this moment!”