How to Make a Book with Steidl
A good Memorial Day flick (if you are interested in more intellectual pursuits)!
It is available on Netflix, here.
56 Up
The 7 Up series is one of my favorite documentary series of all time. You should watch it, from the start! The latest just opened at the IFC Center last night. Excited to see it this weekend!
56 Up is playing at the IFC Center now. More info here.
NY Times review here.
Gothamist chats with director Michael Apted here.
Gordon Matta-Clark
It’s Gordon Matta-Clark night at Chez Violette!
Gordon Matta-Clark-Conical Intersect (1975)
Gordon Matta-Clark-Fresh Kill (1972)
Hulme Crescents
The American Look pt. I
“Improved styling constantly adds to the ease and grace and gaiety of American Living.”
“Homes have more than new plans, they have new patterns for living, made attractive by luxurious interiors.”
“Women and men alike are increasingly interested in the look of things, they eagerly give their attention to what is new and beautiful and advanced.”
The American Look pt. II
“Those who dream in design are always contributing to our ways of work.”
“There is a fresh look to fun in the America today, stylists have added new zest to recreation by bringing an exciting look to the large variety of things which make leisure hours more pleasurable.”
“The family at home is enjoying the convenience and the functional beauty of walls of glass, merging room with room, blending inside with outside.”
Searching
Here Is Always Somewhere Else: The Disappearance of Bas Jan Ader
Searching: Bas Jan Ader, Arianna Carossa & Mie Olise
September 6 — October 6, 2012, Opening: Thursday, September 6, 6—8PM
at Mixed Greens, Chelsea. More information here.
Installation views, Mie Olise paintings, photos by Etienne Frossard
From the Mixed Greens website:
Mixed Greens is thrilled to present Searching, a group exhibition focusing on the work of Bas Jan Ader, Arianna Carossa, and Mie Olise. All three artists explore formal and conceptual ghosts, romanticism, and myth. Through open-ended narratives and juxtapositions, their work comes to represent an artist’s timeless search for connection and communication.
It is often said that a sailor’s boat becomes an extension of himself. In Searching, the artists use the horizon, the ocean, and the vessel as stand-ins for their own quests for meaning. Their work is an extension of their personal histories and research. All three are searching for something that is more easily felt than named, and the process of searching is far more important than any one object of the search.
Artist’s websites:
Bas Jan Ader
Arianna Carossa
Mie Olise
Some photographs from a studio visit I did with Mie a couple of years ago when her studio was in Bushwick/Williamsburg.
arty movie films
Marina Abramović
Marina Abramović The Artist is Present has an extended run at Film Forum. More information here.
From the Film Forum website:
Marina Abramović: seductive, controversial, fearless, outré. Her retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art (March – May 2010) featured an extraordinary performance, experienced by 750,000 people, many of whom waited hours for the chance to sit silently across from her at a small table, where she remained for 7½ hours daily, without eating, drinking, or moving. The intensity of her gaze, the intimacy of the act (paradoxically in a huge, brightly lit room, filled with onlookers) moved some to tears and other acts of extreme emotion. Matthew Akers’s film records the artist as she prepares herself physically and spiritually for the ordeal — as might be expected — with tremendous discipline, humor and guile. With comments by MoMA curator Klaus Biesenbach, art critic Arthur Danto, gallerist Sean Kelly, and hundreds of members of the public (including James Franco) who were fortunate enough to attend this landmark event.
Augustin Doublet
Q & A with Schoolhouse resident and filmmaker Augustin Doublet.
QUESTIONS:::
C & P:You are from France and have been living in NYC for 3 years now. How do you find the experience of living in New York? Do you prefer it to Paris?
Augustin: New York is a very challenging city and if ever you’re not in the mood or feel, let’s say melancholic, the city does not forgive it and can be harsh . In comparison to Paris the pace, the architecture, and the art de vivre is much softer.
On the other side, if you’re able to project yourself, your energy and your ideas on the city and break through the glass, the city gives you back so much in terms of dynamism, exchange, network, and money.
C & P: Did you come to NYC to study film? What program are you part of?
Augustin: Indeed. I first came here as an exchange student at Brooklyn College while I was finishing a Master’s Degree at a Parisian university.
Then I realized how much more I could and had to get from the city, Brooklyn College, and the Schoolhouse, so I decided to stay and with the help of the dean of the Film Department of the Brooklyn College I’ve been allowed to pursue my studies here.
C & P: Did you create films when you lived in France?
Augustin: Yes, I used to work mostly in the pre-production of documentaries. I worked for Gedeon Programmes for a couple of years as an AD and ghostwriter and on some other TV projects.
Otherwise at that time I was mostly painting and shooting stills, and art videos. The cinema has always been present but more as a vanishing point.
C & P: Tell me a bit about the films that you create. The 2 films that I have seen are very different, one a documentary about a local Bushwick character/photographer (What the Fuchs?) and the other a reflection on brutality (Vanishing Point). Have you always worked with a number of types of filmmaking? Do you prefer black and white film to color?
Augustin: I’m just experimenting. But looking at my work I can say that my imagination and my desire are very related to the location and environment I’m in.
For instance What the Fuchs? was an attempt to grasp some of the Bushwick hipstery mayhem through the portrait of the photographer Rafael Fuchs. Vanishing Point was the graphical aspect of Brooklyn, the shades of the train tracks, the broken warehouse, the turmoil of the graffiti.
Stills from Vanishing Point
C & P: Where does the text that the woman is reading in the film come from?
Augustin: The text has been written by Mariette Papic, a great poet and a dear friend of mine. I commissioned her for that piece; which brings a lot of depth and complex sensuality to the story.
C & P: Vanishing Point is shot in Bushwick and has the gritty look of films which were part of the “cinema of transgression” movement in the 1980s on the lower east side. Are you influenced by filmmakers like Nick Zedd and Richard Kern? Did seeing their films create a desire in you to come to NYC to make films?
Augustin: I discovered their work after the production of Vanishing.
When I first came here it was mostly the New Hollywood period that I had in mind. I was looking for the mood of the 70s. I was really fascinated by the harshness, dirtiness, and loose eroticism of the cinema of the 70s.
C & P: The film also utilizes the Schoolhouse space, did you have help from your housemates when filming? Is living at the Schoolhouse inspirational for you?
Augustin: The Schoolhouse is the first and only space I lived in since I arrived in NY. And I consider myself very lucky for that. I found myself right away surrounded by creative people who were already very active in the industry. Cassidy Mosher was working on Gossip Girl, Derek Deems (the DP of two of my films) was a freelance grip, Jennifer Sacks already set designed many shorts.
It was and it still is a very creative and challenging environment.
C & P: Who is the woman in the film? Do you use trained actors in your films or people that you know?
Augustin: Laura Graham who has the lead in Vanishing Point is a professional actress as well as a talented producer/director.
For my latest production I worked with mostly professional actors (Anna-Nora Bernstein who has the supporting lead role has already played major parts in a few features). However, I encountered the lead character Marcus Grant randomly on the basketball court of my block next to the Bushwick Housing projects.
Marcus delivered an incredible performance and I truly hope that ADAM will only be the beginning of his career.
There was a large cast and crew with some complicated scenes in terms of choreography and pacing, so we rehearsed a lot together, which is kind of unusual in the production of a short film.
The fact that I write direct and produce my own projects allows the cast as well as the crew to experiment with me throughout the process.
C & P: Tell me a little about the new film that you are working on now? When/where will you be showing it?
Augustin: ADAM will be shown during BOS. The story is about the odd and charming journey that Adam, a kid from the hood and Coco, a kleptomaniac actress, are going through during one day in Bushwick.
It encompasses the different aspects of the neighborhood: the gritty part, with the street scams, the violence, in a word the low-life reality, juxtaposed against the emerging artistic and creative side.
Stills from ADAM
C & P: What filmmakers/artists/places/etc… have been an influence on you?
Augustin: I truly discovered cinema when I was 16 thanks to a friend of mine Anton Solnitski (now a filmmaker). We missed classes together and spent our afternoons watching Bergman, Kubrick, and Kurosawa movies.
I would say that Fellini gave a lot of flavors and motion to my imagination. Wells certainly gave me a strong desire to tell stories and to keep on dreaming no matter what the obstacles may be.
Literature and art history are my first loves and it’s true that even if I’m not sure yet how they have or will influence me, authors like: Baudelaire, Melville, Celine, Rousseau, Kafka, Borges, Dostoevsky, Genet, or Koltes have been very present in my life.
The same applies to painters and photographers, to quote a few: Hopper, Freud, Bacon, Whistler, Courbet, Shiele, Goya, Giacometti, Rembrandt, El Greco, Koudelka, Franck, Moon, Avedon…
C & P: What could you imagine doing if you did not create art?
Augustin: I’m not really sure that I’m doing art I would just say that I’m experimenting and in doing so I try to travel and introduce myself to different cultures, patterns (psychological and visual) and people.
I’m not sure what I would do but I enjoy helping people to create and express themselves a lot. Or maybe I would try to open a restaurant in the south-west of France with a couple of friends.
Augustin’s room at the Schoolhouse
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The Schoolhouse will be open for Bushwick Open Studios from June 1 – June 3rd, stop by and see the fabulous space (and art inside) for yourself. More information here.
The Schoolhouse hours over BOS weekend:
Friday, the 1st – 5PM — 11PM
Saturday, the 2nd – 12PM — 11PM
Sunday, the 3rd – 12 PM – 8 PM
Augustin Doublet will be screening Adam all weekend.
Photos of Augustin © Christine Navin. Do not reproduce without permission.
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