UrbanicaBlog
by Israel Baumgartner
Currently viewing the category: "Cinema"
Maries Georges Jean Méliès was born in Paris in 1861 and from a very early age he showed a particular interest in the arts which led, as a boy, to a place at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris where Méliès showed particular interest in stage design and puppetry.
Méliès’ principle contribution to cinema was the combination of traditional theatrical elements to motion pictures – he sought to present spectacles of a kind not possible in live theatre.
In the Autumn of 1896, an event occurred which has since passed into film folklore and changed the way Méliès looked at filmmaking. Whilst filming a simple street scene, Méliès camera jammed and it took him a few seconds to rectify the problem. Thinking no more about the incident, Méliès processed the film and was struck by the effect such a incident had on the scene – objects suddenly appeared, disappeared or were transformed into other objects.
Méliès discovered from this incident that cinema had the capacity for manipulating and distorting time and space. He expanded upon his initial ideas and devised some complex special effects.
He pioneered the first double exposure (La caverne Maudite, 1898), the first split screen with performers acting opposite themselves (Un Homme de tete, 1898), and the first dissolve (Cendrillon, 1899).
Méliès tackled a wide range of subjects as well as the fantasy films usually associated with him, including advertising films and serious dramas. He was also one of the first filmmakers to present nudity on screen with “Apres le Bal”.
Faced with a shrinking market once the novelty of his films began to wear off, Méliès abandoned film production in 1912. In 1915 he was forced to turn his innovative studio into a Variety Theatre and resumed his pre-film career as a Showman.
In 1923 he was declared bankrupt and his beloved Theatre Robert Houdin was demolished. Méliès almost disappeared into obscurity until the late 1920’s when his substantial contribution to cinema was recognised by the French and he was presented with the Legion of Honour and given a rent free apartment where he spent the remaining years of his life.
Georges Méliès died in 1938 after making over five hundred films in total – financing, directing, photographing and starring in nearly every one.
EIKO ISHIOKA is a revolutionary artist whose internationally acclaimed work for stage, screen, advertising, and print media has made her one of the premiere visual artists of the 20th century. Best known as the Academy Award winner for costume design for Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Eiko’s provocative and shockingly beautiful vision can be seen on August 18th in The Cell, starring Jennifer Lopez.
Eiko’s long list of credits includes the 1985 Cannes Film Festival Award for Artistic Contribution for her production design of Paul Schrader’s film Mishima, a Tony nomination for the stage and costume design of the Broadway play “M. Butterfly,” and a Grammy Award for the art work for Miles Davis’ “Tutu” album, to name just a few. Most recently, Eiko brought her creative sensibilities to bear on the conservative opera world with her costume design for Richard Wagner’s “Ring Cycle,” at the Netherlands National Opera.
Mata Hari was the stage name Dutch-born Margaretha Zelle took when she became one of Paris’ most popular exotic dancers on the eve of World War I. Although details of her past are sketchy, it is believed that she was born in the Netherlands in 1876 and married a Dutch Army officer 21 years her senior when she was 18. She quickly bore him two children and followed him when he was assigned to Java in 1897. The marriage proved rocky. The couple returned to the Netherlands in 1902. Margaretha then made her way to Paris where she reinvented herself as an Indian temple dancer thoroughly trained in the erotic dances of the East. She took on the name Mata Hari and was soon luring audiences in the thousands as she performed in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Madrid and other European capitals. She also attracted a number of highly-placed, aristocratic lovers willing to reward her handsomely for the pleasure of her company. With the outbreak of World War I, Mata Hari’s cross-border liaisons with German political and military figures came to the attention of the French secret police and she was placed under surveillance. In February 1917 Mata Hari returned to Paris and immediately arrested; charged with being a German spy. Her trial in July revealed some damning evidence that the dancer was unable to adequately explain. She was convicted and sentenced to death.
Style Inspiration: Greta Garbo as Mata Hari
Jerry Schatzberg is a photographer and film director, he photographed for magazines such as Vogue, Esquire and McCalls. He made his debut as a feature film director with 1970′s Puzzle of a Downfall Child starring Faye Dunaway Faye . He went on to direct films such as Scarecrow, which shared the grand prize at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival,The Seduction of Joe Tynan, Honeysuckle Rose with Willie Nelson, Misunderstood and The Panic in Needle Park, which starred Al Pacino. Schatzberg still resides in New York City, where he is working on several film projects, including a sequel to “Scarecrow,” co-written with Bruce Springsteen’s former Publicist, Seth Cohen.
Columbia Pictures has released the new poster for The Smurfs, opening in theaters on August 31, 2011. Directed by Raja Gosnell, the big screen adaptation features Neil Patrick Harris, Jayma Mays, Sofia Vergara, Hank Azaria, Anton Yelchin, Jonathan Winters, Katy Perry, Alan Cumming, Fred Armisen, George Lopez, Paul Reubens, John Oliver, Kenan Thompson, B.J. Novak, Jeff Foxworthy, Wolfgang Puck, Gary Basaraba and Tim Gunn.
Kevin Bauman photographed 100 abandoned houses in Detroit, Michigan. Once a city of almost 2,000,000 citizens, Detroit has since lost over half its population over the last sixty years. The abandoned houses project began innocently enough roughly ten years ago. As the number of photographs grew, a documentary style emerged.
These pictures reminds me of a documentary I watched a few years ago called Grey Gardens by Albert and David Maysles. The film depicts the everyday lives of two reclusive socialites, Edith “Big Edie” Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter Edith “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale were the aunt and first cousin of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis. The two women lived together at Grey Gardens for decades with limited funds, resulting in squalor and almost total isolation.
Louis Kahn was a world-renowned American architect of Estonian Jewish origin, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Convinced that contemporary architects could – and should – produce buildings which were as monumental and as spiritually inspiring as the ancient ruins of Greece and Egypt, Kahn devoted his career to the uncompromising pursuit of formal perfection and emotional expression.
The few buildings that Louis Kahn did realise were so remarkable that they established him as one of the most important figures in 20th century architecture, whose influence is compared to that of Le Corbusier and Mies Van Der Rohe.
On the evening of his death, Kahn had flown back to the US from India where he was building the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. He had gone to Penn Station to board a train home to Philadelphia. The Institute of Management and another ongoing work, the Capital Complex of government buildings at Dhaka in Bangladesh, were not only Kahn’s most ambitious project, but among his architectural masterpieces. Yet he had built so little during his life that he died bankrupt owing hundreds of thousands of dollars.
My Architect a son’s journey
Louis Kahn had two illegitimate children with two different women outside of his marriage. His son Nathaniel always hoped that someday his father would come and live with him and his mother, but Kahn never left his wife. Instead, Kahn was found dead in a men’s room in Penn Station when Nathaniel was only 11. Nathaniel travels the world visitng his father’s buildings and haunts in this film, meeting his father’s contemporaries, colleagues, students, wives, and children.
American illustrated Movie Poster designed by Yoko Komura.
Breathless (1959) is the first feature film directed by Jean-Luc Godard.The film uses the famous techniques of the French New Wave: location shooting, improvised dialogue, and a loose narrative form. In addition Godard uses his characteristic jump cuts, deliberate “mismatches” between shots, and references to the history of cinema, art, and music. Much of the film’s vigor comes from collisions between popular and high culture Godard shows us pinups and portraits of women by Picasso and Renoir, and the soundtrack includes both Mozart’s clarinet concerto and snippets of French pop radio.
Last week I found this book in the street called ,The Little Fellow, by Peter Cotes and Thelma Niklaus.
The book was printed in 1965 and tells the story of Charles Chaplin, an actor and comic film director of the silent film era, he became one of the best-known film stars in the world before the end of the First World War. Chaplin’s films were highly successful and became a household name throughout the world.
When Chaplin first started with the Keystone Company he was paid $ 150 a week, by 1915 he was receiving $ 1,250. Three years later, Chaplin signed cinema’s first million-dollar contract. During this period Chaplin’s films included The Tramp (1915), The Pawnshop (1915), Easy Street (1917), The Immigrant (1917) and A Dog’s Life (1918), The Kid (1921) and in 1940 The Great Dictator.
While in exile, Chaplin wrote his memoirs, My Autobiography (1964) and directed the movie, A Countess from Hong Kong (1966). He Died in Switzerland on 25th December, 1977.
Federico Fellini was an Italian film director. Felline was born in Rimini, a resort city on the Adriatic, he was fascinated by the circuses and vaudeville performers that his town attracted. His education in Catholic schools also profoundly affected his later work, which, while critical of the Church, is infused with a strong spiritual dimension. [...]
Federico Fellini was an Italian film director. Felline was born in Rimini, a resort city on the Adriatic, he was fascinated by the circuses and vaudeville performers that his town attracted. His education in Catholic schools also profoundly affected his later work, which, while critical of the Church, is infused with a strong spiritual dimension. His career in cinema spanned five decades and he gained much critical acclaim. He won many awards including four Oscars in the Best Foreign Language category. His films offer a combination of themes including memory, dreams, fantasy and desire. They are often intimate looks at people at their most bizarre and the term “Felliniesque” is used when depicting an ordinary scene that has been altered by the addition of hallucinatory imagery.
Many current filmmakers such as Woody Allen, David Lynch, Pedro Almodovar and Terry Gilliam have claimed to have been influenced in their work by Fellini.
The fashion photographer Sebastian Faena pay a homage to Felline with ” Hell’s Bellas”, the editorial will be available at V magazine.
