1LolaWalser
Fascinating topic about which I'm still almost wholly ignorant. As lilithcat mentioned in another thread, there was Alice Guy-Blaché, at the very birth of the medium, and who knows how many forgotten other besides those who acted.
2LolaWalser
Watched on Kanopy Meshes of the afternoon by Maya Deren and her husband, from 1943. The Kanopy version is presented silent, as it was meant to be, and with a few shots restored (don't know which ones).
You can find many uploads on YouTube but it seems people love to stick various soundtracks on this and I didn't want to be responsible for picking one, for me this is pure perfection and mystery completely silent. It's under 15 minutes. I don't know how to describe it...
You can find many uploads on YouTube but it seems people love to stick various soundtracks on this and I didn't want to be responsible for picking one, for me this is pure perfection and mystery completely silent. It's under 15 minutes. I don't know how to describe it...
3alaudacorax
>2 LolaWalser:
Lots of jumbled, fragmented thoughts from watching this. It was ... remarkable. Often quite beautiful. Like the film equivalent of a poem.Opium poppy? Weird dreams? Murder? Suicide? Death mirroring one's face? I must watch this again this evening.
Lots of jumbled, fragmented thoughts from watching this. It was ... remarkable. Often quite beautiful. Like the film equivalent of a poem.
4alaudacorax
>2 LolaWalser:. >3 alaudacorax:
... and now I've become obsessed with Maya Deren.
Watched Meshes of the Afternoon again, I watched it silent this morning, but this evening I've heard it with, apparently, her original audio--the characters' footsteps and so forth, plus one or two added sound effects. An astonishing difference. Watched At Land silently, then tried to watch with an added soundtrack, but that was unbearable.
Fascinating stuff. You can't just watch once: it makes you ponder on it and you have to watch again, 'from different angles', metaphorically speaking.
... and now I've become obsessed with Maya Deren.
Watched Meshes of the Afternoon again, I watched it silent this morning, but this evening I've heard it with, apparently, her original audio--the characters' footsteps and so forth, plus one or two added sound effects. An astonishing difference. Watched At Land silently, then tried to watch with an added soundtrack, but that was unbearable.
Fascinating stuff. You can't just watch once: it makes you ponder on it and you have to watch again, 'from different angles', metaphorically speaking.
5LolaWalser
Deren was thoroughly fascinating. I saw a programme dedicated to her years ago in NYC, followed by a talk about her filming in Haiti.
Regarding Meshes in the afternoon, this is the short note on Kanopy:
Of the film, with its subjective camera movement, jump cuts, and visual repetition, Deren wrote, "{it} is concerned with the inner realities of the individual and the way in which the subconscious will develop, interpret and elaborate an apparently simple and causal occurrence into a critical emotional experience."
The key is the key, no?--dropping the key to her house, the place she shares with her husband. Trying to catch up with the shadowy stranger who keeps walking away, to see if that really is she herself (mirror for a face--it's her own reflection). When the husband is reflected in the mirror, she breaks it.
The flower... is her innocence, her sex, both? Being picked up, carried around, abandoned...
I don't know, it's endlessly rewatchable and each time something new is teased out.
Regarding Meshes in the afternoon, this is the short note on Kanopy:
Of the film, with its subjective camera movement, jump cuts, and visual repetition, Deren wrote, "{it} is concerned with the inner realities of the individual and the way in which the subconscious will develop, interpret and elaborate an apparently simple and causal occurrence into a critical emotional experience."
The key is the key, no?--dropping the key to her house, the place she shares with her husband. Trying to catch up with the shadowy stranger who keeps walking away, to see if that really is she herself (mirror for a face--it's her own reflection). When the husband is reflected in the mirror, she breaks it.
The flower... is her innocence, her sex, both? Being picked up, carried around, abandoned...
I don't know, it's endlessly rewatchable and each time something new is teased out.
6Rembetis
A shout out for Mabel Normand who was multi-talented - actress, screenwriter, director, and producer. She's mainly remembered today through the fictionalised Jerry Herman musical 'Mack and Mabel'.
7robertajl
To add to the list, let's remember Frances Marion who started off working for Lois Weber (who deserves an entry of her own). Marion wrote many silent film scripts, including ones for Mary Pickford. She transitioned into talkies, won two Academy Awards, wrote stage plays, was a war correspondent, and there's probably more but I'm too lazy to look it up.
8LolaWalser
Drat, I can't remember where I saw Lois Weber discussed recently... I do recall I first heard of her in a footnote about an actress called Mildred Harris (in Jeb & Dash)--made a note of it to look up the films the diarist (Jeb Alexander) was writing about.
Have any of you seen Cheryl Dunye's The Watermelon Woman? It's a great movie for anyone interested in explorations of early film (among other reasons to be interested in it). Dunye's "fictionalised documentary" focusses on a black actress from the 1930s, credited only as "the watermelon woman". In her search for more information about her Dunye comes across other women pioneers of filmmaking, including the formidable white woman director who seems to have had more than a professional relationship with the black actress. SPOILER (and, really, you should avoid it if you want to see the movie):both characters are fictional. But I bet you won't know until the very end. Because not only did Dunye do a smashing job of creating the 1930s figures and giving them a story--it's all so plausible, it's like the stories and people we HAVE heard of.
By the way, John Waters fans take note, Dunye's film takes place in Baltimore.
Have any of you seen Cheryl Dunye's The Watermelon Woman? It's a great movie for anyone interested in explorations of early film (among other reasons to be interested in it). Dunye's "fictionalised documentary" focusses on a black actress from the 1930s, credited only as "the watermelon woman". In her search for more information about her Dunye comes across other women pioneers of filmmaking, including the formidable white woman director who seems to have had more than a professional relationship with the black actress. SPOILER (and, really, you should avoid it if you want to see the movie):
By the way, John Waters fans take note, Dunye's film takes place in Baltimore.
9defaults
Are you familiar with Germaine Dulac? La coquille et le clergyman is a touchstone of early surrealist cinema. I couldn't tell you what it was all about but it was quite a bewitching experience.
10LolaWalser
>9 defaults:
Yes! Dulac was probably the only female filmmaker I'd known for quite a while, precisely because she comes up in the surrealist context. For the longest time that and La souriante Madame Beudet were the only films by a woman I had seen.
Here is a good copy of the latter on YT:
The Smiling Madame Beudet 1923 - Silent French Film
Yes! Dulac was probably the only female filmmaker I'd known for quite a while, precisely because she comes up in the surrealist context. For the longest time that and La souriante Madame Beudet were the only films by a woman I had seen.
Here is a good copy of the latter on YT:
The Smiling Madame Beudet 1923 - Silent French Film
11robertajl
>8 LolaWalser:
I think my favorite scene, a mixture of laughing and horror, is when the "archivist" just dumps all the materials out of a box onto a table and a few shots later lectures Cheryl about how she can't film anything because "this is a safe space."
I think my favorite scene, a mixture of laughing and horror, is when the "archivist" just dumps all the materials out of a box onto a table and a few shots later lectures Cheryl about how she can't film anything because "this is a safe space."
12LolaWalser
>11 robertajl:
That was a hilarious scene! I was also surprised and delighted to see (in the credits) that the archivist was played by the writer Sarah Schulman, a favourite NYC voice.
That was a hilarious scene! I was also surprised and delighted to see (in the credits) that the archivist was played by the writer Sarah Schulman, a favourite NYC voice.
13robertajl
>1 LolaWalser:
I watched the Alice Guy-Blaché documentary, Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché on YouTube. (There was a thread about it but I can't remember where.) I'd never heard of her and I'm overwhelmed with how much she accomplished. She was an extremely prolific filmmaker although much of her work is lost. When she lived in the States she also had her own production company, Solax Studios. Her story is fascinating so I thought the documentary well worth while.
Also, as a side benefit, if you struggle to understand the rapid fire, elision-ridden speech of the modern Parisian, give yourself a break and take pleasure in the interviews with her, which took place in the '60s. They're so much easier to understand.
I watched the Alice Guy-Blaché documentary, Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché on YouTube. (There was a thread about it but I can't remember where.) I'd never heard of her and I'm overwhelmed with how much she accomplished. She was an extremely prolific filmmaker although much of her work is lost. When she lived in the States she also had her own production company, Solax Studios. Her story is fascinating so I thought the documentary well worth while.
Also, as a side benefit, if you struggle to understand the rapid fire, elision-ridden speech of the modern Parisian, give yourself a break and take pleasure in the interviews with her, which took place in the '60s. They're so much easier to understand.
14LolaWalser
Aw, and I still didn't get to her--but I did dig out the DVD, always a good first step... it's from 1996, Le jardin oublié: La vie et l'oeuvre d'Alice Guy-Blaché, by a Canadian filmmaker (I think Guy-Blaché first spent some time in Canada before moving to the States...) I'll look for that one too.
As it happens, the latest movie I saw was by a woman, Céline Sciamma's Bande de filles, 2014, English title Girlhood. Delights and troubles--very many troubles--of a sixteen-year-old black French girl from the poor suburbs who goes against the grain.
As it happens, the latest movie I saw was by a woman, Céline Sciamma's Bande de filles, 2014, English title Girlhood. Delights and troubles--very many troubles--of a sixteen-year-old black French girl from the poor suburbs who goes against the grain.
15LolaWalser
So, Lois Weber, you say--WOW! What a revelation. Watched her 1915 Hypocrites... may as well simply copy the description on Kanopy:
In sheer boldness of ideas and daring of the execution (yes there is a naked woman running hither and tither practically all the time) something like this, and from a female director, has hardly been topped today. It really makes me feel again that cinema--and film women above all--fell into a black hole of retrogression cca 1930s/WWII and never reemerged. At least, the bourgie, "mainstream" cinema. Because Weber was hardly making films for some rarefied circles, back in 1915--it was all going in front of the great unwashed.
Just compare everything that women like Weber represented--did--fought for, with the submissive housewives and sex kittens that came after, especially of the postwar period.
A downfall, I tell ya!
HYPOCRITES is an amazingly complex film in both narrative and technique, following the parallel stories of an early Christian ascetic and a modern minister, with most actors in dual roles. Gabriel (Courteney Foote) is a medieval monk who devotes himself to completing a statue of "Truth," only to be murdered by a mob when his work turns out to be an image of a naked woman. The contemporary Gabriel is the pastor of a large urban congregation for whom religion is a matter of appearances, not beliefs. The hypocrisy of the congregation is exposed by a series of vignettes in which the Naked Truth, literally portrayed by a nude woman, reveals their appetites for money, sex and power.
In sheer boldness of ideas and daring of the execution (yes there is a naked woman running hither and tither practically all the time) something like this, and from a female director, has hardly been topped today. It really makes me feel again that cinema--and film women above all--fell into a black hole of retrogression cca 1930s/WWII and never reemerged. At least, the bourgie, "mainstream" cinema. Because Weber was hardly making films for some rarefied circles, back in 1915--it was all going in front of the great unwashed.
Just compare everything that women like Weber represented--did--fought for, with the submissive housewives and sex kittens that came after, especially of the postwar period.
A downfall, I tell ya!
16robertajl
Kino Lorber has a collection called Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers. It's available on Kanopy and I think there's a portion of it available on Netflix. The curators talk about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdJfaXujq5o&feature=youtu.be
17LolaWalser
Thanks, subscribed. I don't do Netflix but between Kanopy and YouTube, I just might get to see a lot of that set.
Kanopy also has the Flicker Alley collection (not sure if all of it), here's a list of the authors included:
https://www.flickeralley.com/list-of-films-in-early-women-filmmakers-an-internat...
Kanopy also has the Flicker Alley collection (not sure if all of it), here's a list of the authors included:
https://www.flickeralley.com/list-of-films-in-early-women-filmmakers-an-internat...
