Summer events in London 11/08/2011
Amid this season of festivals, here are two events that have caught our attention.  EXHIBITION: 15 August - 4 September 2011 Tristan Bates Theatre, 1A Tower St, London WC2H 9NP The Museum of Broken Relationships is an award winning exhibition of seemingly ordinary yet incredibly poignant objects. Donated by individuals from all over the world, each object tells the story of a past relationship. More information from Tristan Bates Theatre.  FILM SCREENING: 22 August 2011 Opera Holland Park, London A Summer Celebration of Iranian Film will include cultural exhibitions and an outdoor screening of The Song Of Sparrows (dir. Majid Majidi). For more more information and details of the forthcoming 2nd London Iranian Film Festival see the UKIFF website. Add Comment The Cine-Tourist 10/04/2011
 Objects under surveillance 06/01/2011
Besides the Screen International Seminar 02/11/2010
The Autopsies Group Work of Film project is interested in this international seminar on 'all modes of cinema that are not film.' See this website for more information about the forthcoming Besides the Screen International Seminar held at Goldsmiths, University of London, on 20-21 November 2010, and for details of how to register. See here for information about the forthcoming joint symposium at Goldsmiths, University of London on 27-28 November 2010. Prof. Beatriz Colomina will give the key-note address on 'Multi-screen architecture' at the first event, organised by the Goldsmiths Leverhulme Media Research Centre. Motels in the movies 11/06/2010
 Autopsies group member Jann Matlock talks about motels in film noir and B-movie thrillers in a special episode of Studio 360 on the 50th anniversary of Psycho, broadcast on Public Radio across America this weekend. Listen to her interview here, and the full programme on the Studio 360 website. Image above: still frame from motel sequence in Alice in the Cities (dir. Wim Wenders, 1974). Image below: motel in Without Warning (dir. Arnold Leven, 1952).   Edgar G. Ulmer's B-Film, Detour (1945) depicts an ever-growing nightmare of calamities that befall the man on the road. We never see the motel sign from the fateful highway, but the short stay Al Roberts makes in this ramshackle inn along the Arizona state highway gives him time to deliberate about his future. There he will prepare to take over the identity of Charles Haskell, Jr. whose classy car we see parked in front of the motel in the still above. As Roberts's voice-over tells the story, Haskell has picked him hitchhiking, proceeded to have a heart attack while driving--and then "accidentally" hits his head on a rock. Money, car, suitcase, and even name thus accrue to the man alone on the highway--until he pulls out of the motel where he's slept off the shock (see the sstill for the seamy furnishings) and meets the "femme fatale," Vera who will blackmail him and then "accidentally" perish in her turn. This film's account of the crisis for many Americans who had fought in WWII shows how much the aftermath of the war had jeopardized connections as well as identity. The aftermath of the war likewise created a crisis in having a place to belong, as these excursions through the seedy world of motels and--later in the film--short-term apartment rentals, will demonstrate. Discussed in the Studio 360 interview above, this film moves through the kind of motels that will mushroom along American highways in the postwar era. Autopsies Group member Jann Matlock writes about this world in "Vacancies: Hotels, Reception Desks, and Identity in American Cinema, 1929-1964," in Moving Pictures/ Stopping Places: Hotels and Motels on Film, ed. David B. Clarke et al. (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 2009), pp. 73-142.  A bout de souffle: 50 years young 18/03/2010
retrouver ce média sur www.ina.fr A bout de souffle (dir. Jean-Luc Godard) first came out in cinemas in France on 16 March 1960. Members of the Autopsies Group will no doubt be turning to their copy with fresh eyes on the lookout for objects now absent from everyday life (Patricia's vinyl collection, the many tools of the trades of journalists and photographers, the operator controlled telephone system, etc. etc.) In the meantime, this clip from a French television programme broadcast on 25 March 1960 shows an interview with jazz pianist Martial Solal who performed the original music for the film. Solal explains he discovered jazz aged 15 when American troops arrived in Algiers in 1943, and jazz records began to be played on the radio, introducing the music of Art Tatum, Kenny Wilson and Benny Goodman. Inspired by the editing techniques of Godard's film, Solal says he found it easy to come up with the refrains to 'punctuate' the sequences. Fifty years on, A bout de souffle looks, and sounds, a fresh as ever. The future of transport that never was 09/03/2010
 The suspended metro in Fahrenheit 451 (1966) While carrying out research into Paris transport networks I recently came across an image that seemed strangely familiar. Illustrating one of the many proposed transport projects for the Paris region during the 1960s was a photo of a suspended metro train. The project has now been completely forgotten and despite lengthy development and testing the technology was never adopted in France. And yet the suspended metro is known the world over for it is immortalised in François Truffaut's film Fahrenheit 451. In the film, adapted from Ray Bradbury's novel, the suspended metro appears in the daily commute between the city centre and the residential suburbs. On board, Clarisse notices her neighbour Montag, and the two establish a friendship on the daily commute to their respective jobs in the fire station and school. Truffaut made the suspended metro sequences on a location shoot near Orléans in France. In 1959, engineering film SAFEGE built a 1370 metre track at Châteauneuf sur Loire to conduct tests for a new form of rapid and silent public transport. The project generated much interest from abroad but before the company could sell the technology it would first have to build a working system in France. When Truffaut's team arrived for filming at the test track in March 1966 development for the SAFEGE metro was at its height, and the system seemed likely to be rolled out imminently for commercial operations. At least two proposals were developed for the Parisian suburbs, but the first was rejected due to technical difficulties, and the second abandoned in October 1966 for financial reasons. A few years later the test track was dismantled and the carriage was sold for scrap. By chance, however, the unit immortalised on film by Fahrenheit 451 escaped the smelter and after providing a home for the iron merchant's son it was used as a chicken hut. Discovered in a field in 1991, the carriage was bought by members of a local association (ARSATI) interested in the history of the Aérotrain - another experimental transport system developed near Orléans in the 1960s and 70s. After restoring the carriage in 1994, ARSATI planned to display the SAFEGE metro in a museum dedicated to innovative transport, but sadly the unique metro was vandalised and the project abandoned.  The vandalised SAFEGE carriage (image reproduced with permission from http://safege.free.fr) Truffaut wrote he was determined to use the suspended metro in his film, and remarked that even though it seemed out of date compared to the neighbouring high speed Aérotrain experiments it was still a glimpse into a future that otherwise pretty much resembled contemporary England. Over forty years after the release of Fahrenheit 451, the suspended metro of the film still seems strikingly modern - or at least timeless compared to the brick houses of Montag's street, resembling the London outer-suburban commuter belt of the 1960s, and the sea of rooftop television aerials in the title sequence. The film remains the last resting place of a transport system out of its time. Jacob Paskins References to the SAFEGE suspended metro from Le Métro Suspendu website (in French).  The commute to work in Fahrenheit 451 Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno 24/11/2009
To put you in the mood for the upcoming Found Footage Film Night, hosted by the Autopsies group on 9 December, don't miss Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno (L'Enfer), currently showing in selected cinemas. Began in 1964, l'Enfer had an unlimited budget, an all star cast, and Clouzot as a director obsessed with creating a new visual language for cinema. After scores of screen tests and three weeks of location shooting the film was never completed, and the 185 reels of film produced were left abandoned for decades. The present release is a documentary that tells the story of the film that never was, and mixes interviews with the original crew with a montage of Clouzot's 35mm rushes. The story line of the intended is film was never going to change the course of cinema history, but the visual treatment may have, as the quite extraordinary sequence of experiments with colour and sound shows. The documentary's reconstruction of the film, occasionally adding sound to the rushes, and recreating key dialogue with actors reading the original script, is subtle and well judged, leaving the shimmering found film footage to take centre stage. Further information from BFI Southbank: http://bit.ly/8MbTef Jacob Paskins |
