The Surreal House at the Barbican

"There was a door
There was a key
I opened the door and
the key wouldn't stop
Bleeding"

I wrote the poem above after I have started re-re-re-reading the indispensable book by Clarissa Pinkola Estes- Women Who Run with the Wolves.



I first heard of the book back when I was teaching English in an independent school in Sao Paulo over 15 years ago. All the girls were talking about it - either reading it or intending to.

On my copy of the book, thanks to my semi-obsessive mania of writing on it and adding the date when I read it - I can tell how much this book has been through with me over the years. Also I can see how some lessons take years and years to be assimilated and learnt.

But the funny thing is that I got a text message today from a friend whom I have not seen in a long time telling me about a current exhibition at the Barbican, The Surreal House -showcasing the works of artists like Francesca Woodman and Rebecca Horn and the late Louise Bourgeois.

Rebecca Horn's Piano

Somehow, for me, this highly personal and probably generally irrelevant occurrance is connected to the news of the show.

Here's the link for the Barbican website and the exhibition: www.barbican.org.uk/artgallery

MINA

I am delighted to share the news that Pedro Almodovar is currently working on a biopic about the Italian songstress Mina, due to be released in 2012.



I was introduced to her work by an Italian friend - Diego, you know it's your fault! And I have come to love her passionate and dramatic style.

Her song "La Voce del Silenzio" was key for the authentic characterization of longing of the character Estela in my first play, "The Sea at Night".

Mina has been a musical phenomenon for over 50 years. All I can do here is to share a taster of her talent.

 

Sandra Nettelbeck (b. 1966)

Read an interview with German film director Sandra Nettelbeck on the excellent "Women & Hollywood" blog by Melissa Silverstein.

In it Nettelback talks about her new film "Helen" which tells the story of a woman who seemingly has it all. But the reality is that Helen (played by the always charmingly beautiful Ashley Judd) struggles with severe depression.

To read the review of the film and the full interview, just click on the link that is this post's title!



Silverstein says: "Though it’s tough to watch Helen’s journey, the film is not depressing, in fact it’s a film about hope and shows all of us that it is possible to get better. It takes time, help, patience and love."

Catherine Breillat (b. 1948)

Below is an extract of an interview with Breillat from the "Electric Sheep" magazine as published on the 16th of July 2010.

In the interview, the fearless French film director talks about her latest film, "Bluebeard", based on the eponymous nightmarish fairy tale by Charles Perrault which tells the story of a girl trapped as a bride of an extremelly violent man. For the full interview click on the link that is this post's title.



Although the film was one of the highlights on last year’s festival circuit, it has taken a while for Catherine Breillat’s Bluebeard to get a UK theatrical release. Originally scripted and produced for French television, Bluebeard is a subtly suggestive retelling of Charles Perrault’s fairy tale about an ugly and extremely wealthy lord whose wives disappear under mysterious circumstances, until he falls for the much younger Marie-Catherine, who agrees to marry him in order to escape the shadow of her beautiful, talented older sister. What makes this understated, low-budget film a pure pleasure is the bold, teasing dialogue between the two sisters in the film’s framing plot, set in modern time, in which Catherine, the younger girl, thoroughly enjoys terrifying her older sister Anne by reading her the infamous tale from a book found in their attic. Playfully grim and increasingly disturbing, with a wonderfully cruel narrative that hints at the fiercely, sexually provocative spirit of Breillat’s previous work, Bluebeard slowly inveigles you before hitting you hard.

Pamela Jahn took part in a round table with Catherine Breillat at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival, where the film had its world premiere.

Q: Of all fairy tales, what is it that fascinated you so much about the story of Bluebeard?

Catherine Breillat: When I was a child this was my favourite fairy tale, but I was always astonished that this tale was actually told to little girls, because it’s a fairy tale in which women are killed – Bluebeard is a real serial killer. In fairy tales, you often find a protagonist who is an ogre, like in Little Red Riding Hood for instance, who feels the urge to eat the victims in order to feed himself. But in the case of Bluebeard, you are talking about a human being who marries his victims, including this young woman. But in a way, he is as innocent as Marie-Catherine.

If you look at my films, you will see that I am somewhat obsessed by the relationship between victims and their executioner, but as if the relationship was a rational thing in a physical sense, a relationship between two different forces that measure themselves. And therefore I’ve always wanted to make a movie about Bluebeard. I had decided to make it before I started shooting The Last Mistress. I went to Arte and told them that I wanted to make the movie in five months, and within three or four weeks I wrote the script and organised the shoot. But then I had my stroke and all of a sudden I got a little scared about making the film. But eventually, my desire to make it was stronger and I decided to go ahead with it.

source: www.electricsheepmagazine.co.uk

The Mistress Bookshelf: Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood (2006) by Karen Ward Mahar

About "Women Filmmakers in Early Hollywood" on The Johns Hopkins University Press (Publisher).

For more information on the book's author, Karen Ward Mahar click here.

Support independent bookshops! Buy the book here.

Leaving (Partir, 2009) a Film by Catherine Orsini

Leaving, or Partir in its original French title (2009), is a film co-written and directed by Catherine Corsini starring Kristin Scott Thomas as Suzanne. We are introduced to her character in the film as if somewhere mid-sentence. The film starts half way through the characters' journey and this is up to the viewer to realize as the film progresses.

Is this a film about second chances? Is it about redemption? Without wishing to spoil anything on this gem and with the sole intent of urging you to watch it, I can honestly say Corsini releases the narrative and its characters from any premeditated cinematic cliche. Everyone seems bare, vulnerable even.

What's the danger lurking behind every decision or every word said or unsaid? The ever present sensation that something is about to combust, to explode is effortlessly played with grace and a certain darkness by the exuberant Thomas, who seems to play the character as if she has seen better days, as if the party is over. But you are led into this chapter of her life and therefore we are made to follow through her next crossing.

It is a mature effort, a film for film lovers, for an intelligent audience. An audience who does not wish to be underestimated or patronized by a regurgitated, colored-by-numbers plot. It casts a direct light on its characters, almost like a documentary - if it wasn't for the added drama, passion and quest for atonement. But what is revealed and how, really seems to be under the characters' control, until they can't control it no more.

Catherine Corsini's official website (in French).

Kristin Scott Thomas and Sergi Lopez in their quest for release on Leaving (2009)

Lucrecia Martel (B. 1966)

Maria Onetto in The Headless Woman

The resurgence of Latin American Cinema became evident in the late 90s, early 2000. Until then LAC has been marred by decades of censorship, lack of funding, and overturn by Hollywood movies.

Nowadays the story is, both literally and figuratively, quite different. Not only has cinema been revitalised by an injection of funding and international interest, there’s also been the realization that women are powerful players in the industry, both in front and behind the cameras.

From this “new wave” of Latin American movies, one of the main figures in the past decade has been Lucretia Martel. Born in Argentina in 1966, Martel made home movies as a kid but never intended for this to be her profession. In 1988, Martel moved to Buenos Aires to study Communication, and there it was where she started making short films - one of her shorts entitled “The Dead King”, received various international awards.


Lucrecia Martel

During the late 1990s, Martel directed documentaries for TV as well as children’s programmes which were widely acclaimed by the Argentinean press for their dark sense of humour.

In 1999, she realised her first feature, Le Cienaga (2001), about two families living in the northern region of Argentina - where Martel is from - during one of the hottest summer in Argentinean history. The film received worldwide acclaim.

Martel has also written and directed The Holy Girl (2004) and The Headless Woman (2010) – both equally haunting and compelling movies. Martel’s work seems to explore not only human condition through the individual’s senses and desires, but also it questions the reliability of the visual medium as external evidence.


text by Luciana Saldanha

source: Reverse Shot (Reverse Shot is a quarterly, independently published film journal)

access an exclusive interview with Martel on: www.reverseshot.com/article/interview_lucrecia_martel

Still celebrating Bigelow's victory...

Kathryn Bigelow makes history as first woman to win best director Oscar

Iraq war film The Hurt Locker wins six awards including best picture and best original screenplay

Kathryn Bigelow (left) celebrates her best director Oscar with Barbra Streisand. Photograph: Matt Sayles/AP

Article by Matthew Weaver


Kathryn Bigelow today became the first woman in history to win the best director award at the Oscars.

Her low-budget Iraq war film, The Hurt Locker, about a bomb disposal team, was the big winner at the ceremony. It took six academy awards, including those for best picture and best original screenplay.

The Hurt Locker triumphed the over the 3D blockbuster Avatar, directed by Bigelow's former husband, James Cameron.

Cameron, who sat behind Bigelow at the ceremony in the Kodak theatre in Hollywood, was one of the first to offer congratulations when he reached over to tap her on the shoulder.

Bigelow described the award as a "moment of a lifetime" and dedicated her Oscar to the servicemen and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. "May they come home safe," she said.

The Hurt Locker is an apolitical film focusing on the heroism of bomb disposal experts. It was critically acclaimed but not a box office success and was attacked as unrealistic by bomb experts.

Bigelow was only the fourth woman to be nominated for best director in the 82-year history of the Oscars.

The previous female nominees were Sofia Coppola for Lost in Translation in 2003, Jane Campion for The Piano in 1993, and Lina Wertmuller for Seven Beauties in 1975.

Barbra Streisand, the director of films including Yentl and The Prince of Tides, presented the award.


In interviews after the ceremony, Bigelow resisted reporters' attempts to encourage her to gloat about her victory over Cameron. "I think he is an extraordinary film-maker," she said.

Much of the build-up to the Oscars had focused on the rivalry between the former couple, who married in 1989 and divorced two years later.

It was the subject of jokes from the hosts of the ceremony, Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin.

"She was so pleased to be nominated with him she sent him a beautiful gift basket – with a timer," Baldwin said.

Bigelow has for decades been a female pioneer in the male-dominated world of action movies.

Her previous films include Point Break, Strange Days and K-19: The Widowmaker. "I'm drawn to provocative characters," she told the Guardian in video interview last year.

At the Directors Guild of America Awards, where she also won the top honour, Bigelow said: "I suppose I like to think of myself as a film-maker", rather than as a female film-maker.


source: The Guardian

And The Winner Is...

Mo'Nique won an Academy Award for her outsdanding portrayal of an abusive mother in "Precious".



source: The Independent (Getty Images)

And The Winner Is...

Kathryn Bigelow and her historic Academy Award for Best Director for the film "The Hurt Locker", one of the six she won in Los Angeles last night.


source: The Independent (Getty Images)