Rastko Novakovic

Comments

IVAN GROZNI II BOYARSKI ZAGOROV

A film about all the men for whom power is god. There are too many of them around and they are sitting on weapons more deadly than Ivan had at his disposal. Sergei had to wear a mask to make this film in the style of Socialist Realism - this mask is beautiful. Stalin killed the film, which killed Eisenstein.

"I swear to God, I give my oath,

to fulfill the Tsar's will in Russia,

to destroy Russia's bitter enemies,

to shed in Russia the blood of those guilty.

And I will spare no one, including myself."

Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom

De Sade seen through the eyes of Italian fascism: one person's limitless freedom is another person's hell. Back in the 1970s, capitalism and consumerism used beautiful young bodies and made us eat shit. Digital surveillance capitalism now tries to control all of our desires and makes us eat plastic nurdles.

'Rameau's Nephew' by Diderot (Thanx to Dennis Young) by Wilma Schoen

Movies are not only story-driven, they can move like music or philosophy or an investigation of the world which does not hide the wondrous machines used to make films.

The JOURNEY

In its length and call for engagement The Journey breaks our daily relationship to capitalism: watching and discussing for hours, returning to the space and developing relationships with people. This mirrors the production of the film: over years and across continents, it is a trace of how various communities worked for peace and against nuclear proliferation in the mid-1980s. The Journey is also a tool for analysing our relationship to mass media (its form explicitly critiques what Peter Watkins named the Monoform). It is a set of provocations: ethical, political, spiritual. It is a space built for contemplation, learning, empathy. By the end of its 873 minutes, we have spent so much time with the people in this film, that we cannot write them off as irrelevant, foreign and other - even as ghostly images, they have become people in our world, the only one we have.

Anatomy of Hell

A woman asks a man to watch her body and explain his disgust and hatred for it; in the process she is martyred. It is clear how the embodiment of this man (played by porn star Rocco Siffredi) stands in the way of the beauty and desire of a woman to take her rightful place at the heart of a heartless world.

BAMAKO

The everyday survives despite everything and puts the colonisers and exploiters on trial, in a courtyard, among the washing lines.

Histoire(s) du Cinéma

Montage, not narrative. Cinema's debt to the arts, history, philosophy. Old hi/stories, new ideas, new feelings.

Deux

Hand-made, unruly, dreamy - films should be rough, camp diamonds, rather than polished, clean advertisments. Schroeter kept the flame of the 1960s alive.

Quei loro incontri

The directors picked up huge piles of rubbish to clean up the natural settings for their shots. The actors spoke the lines every day for over a year to bring out all the poetry and decadence of Cesare Pavese, that melancholy communist.

Gertrud

The filming took three months, the editing three days. It was booed in many places when it was released. They wanted Joan of Arc, but got Gertrud, the ultimate face of resistance.

Further remarks

Things were not the same after seeing these films. They are listed in the order I first saw them in.

Like any list it should continue without end. Thus, in no particular order:

11 - Envy (2021) - Natalie Wynn

12 - Killer of Sheep (1978) - Charles Burnett

13 - A King in New York (1957) - Charles Chaplin

14 - Dichtweefsel (1998) - Frans van de Staak

15 - A Canterbury Tale (1944) - Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger

16 - How Green Was My Valley (1941) - John Ford

17 - The Trial of Joan of Arc (1962) - Robert Bresson

18 - Lou n'a pas dit non (1994) - Anne-Marie Miéville

19 - The Other Side of the Wind (2018) - Orson Welles

20 - We Can't Go Home Again (1978) - Nicholas Ray

21 - I BE AREA (2007) - Ryan Trecartin

22 - W.R. – Misterije organizma (1971) - Dušan Makavejev

23 - La ville des pirates (1983) - Raúl Ruiz

24 - The Other Side Of The Underneath (1972) - Jane Arden

25 - Simone Barbès, or Virtue (1980) - Marie-Claude Treilhou

26 - The Memory of Justice (1976) - Marcel Ophüls

27 - Napoleon (1927) - Abel Gance

28 - Night and Fog (1955) - Alain Resnais

29 - Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003) - Tsai Ming Liang

30 - Leben – BRD (1990) - Harun Farocki

31 - Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) - Stanley Kubrick

32 - Jeannette, l'enfance de Jeanne d'Arc (2017) - Bruno Dumont

33 - Celine and Julie go Boating (1974) - Jaques Rivette

34 - Pohod (1968) - Đorđe Kadijević

35 - Chelsea Girls (1966) - Andy Warhol

36 - Possession (1981) - Andrzej Zulawski

37 - The Battle of Algiers (1966) - Gillo Pontecorvo

38 - Arsenal (1929) - Alexander Petrovich Dovzhenko

39 - Khrustalyov, My Car! (1998) - Aleksei German

40 - Crime Wave (1985) - John Paizs

41 - Libera Me (1993) - Alain Cavalier

42 - Entuziazm: Simfoniya Donbassa (1931) - Dziga Vertov

&cetera