Films byTexts by 1981
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!”

FILM
Johan van der Keuken, 1981, 143’

Johan van der Keuken went against the grain in 1980: from Amsterdam (on April 30 with the coronation riots and squatting actions) via Paris, southern France and Italy to Egypt. He made his personal travelogue in three parts for VPRO television.

Article NL
2.11.2022
Fernand Deligny 1981
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Introductie door

Sabzian publiceert de komende maanden de eerste Nederlandstalige vertalingen van enkele teksten van Fernand Deligny. Hij schreef verschillende teksten over camereren, een werkwoord dat zich onderscheidt van wat we doorgaans filmen noemen. Via dit neologisme opende hij een uniek perspectief op de camera. Deligny: “Wanneer ik voorstel om een boek te schrijven onder het uithangsbord van het camereren, wordt camereren de vlag waarvan ik de drager ben, met andere woorden de enseigne, terwijl uit dat woord de infinitief onderwijzen [enseigner] is ontstaan, wat nog een heel ander verhaal is.”

Article NL
11.05.2022

In 1982 debuteerde de Belgische filmcriticus/docent/academicus/televisieproducent en -programmator Eric de Kuyper met Casta Diva, een film die internationaal meteen werd opgemerkt. Deze tekst is zijn toelichting bij de subsidieaanvraag voor het Nederlands filmfonds, waarin hij vooral tracht zijn fascinatie te omschrijven en niet via woorden de beelden te evoceren. “Mijn weigering om een klassiek scenario te schrijven [mag] geïnterpreteerd worden als functioneel. In die zin dat ik van mening ben dat: 1. niet alle films ‘klassieke speelfilms’ hoeven te zijn; 2. men in bepaalde contextuele (voornamelijk financiële) omstandigheden naar andere filmvormen moet streven. Geen speelfilm betekent dus niet automatisch een ‘documentaire’ of ‘dus, een experimentele film’.”

FILM
Juliet Berto, Jean-Henri Roger, 1981, 90’

To secure the provisional release of his wife, Bruno denounces Bobby, a drug dealer who is killed by the police. A young woman tries to rescue the most addicted drug users and decides to avenge Bobby’s death.

 

FILM
Éric Rohmer, 1981, 106’

François works at night and loves Anne, who works during the day. This results in them never seeing one another. One morning, he sees her leaving her house with an airline-pilot. In the afternoon, instead of sleeping, he wanders the streets and recognises the pilot with another woman.

FILM
Bertrand Tavernier, 1981, 128’

Jim Thompson’s comic pulp novel Pop. 1280 is transposed from the sleepy South to listless Bourkassa, a French colony in tropical West Africa in 1938, as imagined by famed production designer Alexandre Trauner.

FILM
Andrzej Żuławski, 1981, 124’

A woman starts exhibiting increasingly disturbing behavior after asking her husband for a divorce. Suspicions of infidelity soon give way to something much more sinister.

 

“I guess when you’re there you want to be home, and when you’re home you want to be there.”

FILM
The Outsider
Béla Tarr, 1981, 122’

In an industrial town in Hungary, András, a music-loving young nurse, is fired for alcoholism. It's another failure in his life. As he wanders through the city, András drifts through his relationships, both social and romantic.

 

Conversation EN
2.06.2021

I think of myself as someone who has an instinctual understanding of what it is to be a minority person. That is someone whose existence is highly marginal in the society and understands it in the gut but will not be dominated by it. Therefore, I refuse all of those labels, such as Black Woman Filmmaker, because I believe in my work as something that can be looked at without labels.

Conversation EN
19.05.2021

“The International Women’s Year provided me with the opportunity to make it [Fatma 75]. I figured that, for the first Tunisian film entirely devoted to this subject, I must not resort to fiction but make an analytical work. Through this film, I set about demystifying what is called ‘the miracle of Tunisian women’s emancipation’.”

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!”

Conversation FR EN
17.03.2021

“[Fertile Memory] is the result of several years of work. I made several reports in the occupied territories, but I also have to say that the film was beyond me. The Palestinian question is basically an issue of oppression: an oppression that dominates the world. I said to myself that I would be able to give the Palestinian question a new dimension by talking about the most oppressed. I thought that women would help bring out all the contradictions.”

Conversation FR EN
17.03.2021

[C]’est le résultat de plusieurs années de travail, j’ai fait plusieurs reportages dans les territoires occupés, mais je dois dire aussi que le film m’a dépassé. Au fond, c’est quoi le problème palestinien, c’est le problème de l’oppression : une oppression qui domine le monde. Je me suis dit que c’était en parlant des plus opprimés que je parviendrai à donner une dimension au problème palestinien. J’ai pensé que la femme permettrait de faire ressortir toutes les contradictions.

Article FR EN
17.03.2021

The source that irrigates Fertile Memory springs from two poles that constitute the foundations and permanence of the Palestinian soul: usurped land and women. Few films show daily life in the physical and temporal reality (32 years for Mrs Farah Hatoum) of the Israeli occupation. And if these films exist, their lack of credibility is such that at best, we make do with imagining the thoughts behind the gestures and gazes – the deepest dimension of which only the prism of culture will render.

Article FR EN
17.03.2021

La mémoire fertile jaillit de deux pôles qui constituent les fondements et la pérennité de l’âme palestinienne : la terre usurpée et la femme. Rares sont les films qui donnent à voir le quotidien vécu dans la réalité physique et temporelle (32 ans pour Mme Farah Hatoum) de l’occupation israélienne. Ou, lorsque ces films sont, leur non-crédibilité est telle qu’on se contente dans le meilleur des cas, de deviner les pensées qui habitent gestes et regards et que seul, le prisme de la culture, nous restitue dans leur dimension profonde.

FILM
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1981, 119’

In 1938, a German singer falls in love with a Jewish composer in Zurich, who helps Jews flee Nazi Germany. She wants to help but is forced back to Germany. Her song "Lili Marleen" becomes a hit with soldiers and the Nazi top.

 

FILM
Patrick Keiller, 1981, 21’

Patrick Keiller's first film, Stonebridge Park, was prompted by the length and articulation of a footbridge over a major road junction in northwest London, and comprises moving-camera footage accompanied by a fictional narration written later. It's a film in two parts.

FILM
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1981, 115’

Germany in the autumn of 1957: Lola, a seductive cabaret singer–prostitute, exults in her power as a tempter of men, but she wants more – money, property, and love.

FILM
A Visit to Ogawa Productions
Jun’ichirô Ôshige, 1981, 62’

“I did like what you said earlier. Our practices define ‘civilization’. When they disappear, they’re ‘culture’. These days, video is the civilization, while film is turning into culture.”

FILM
Epitaph
Claes Söderquist, 1981, 27’

“In Epitaph, landscape has partly taken the place of man. The film can be described as a psychodrama about loss and of the expanding toil of memory.