Film. Woman. Coffee – Previous sessions
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FILM. WOMAN. COFFEE (Filmas.Moteris.Kava – paklausykime, ką mums kalba filmai) - explores films through a feminine-caffeine-affected-brain point of view.
A film is not only for being watched. It also can be evaluated and analysed. A woman does not evaluate the films here, she analyses their types of visual fiction using her feminine caffeine-affected mental processes which are activated by emotional tones such as feelings, experienced affects and emotions. Get yourself a cup of coffee and configure your brain on this tune at 9.00pm on Mondays:
March 9th
A film in which Cameron and Schwarzenegger learnt the craft. We can not give up watching The Terminator as from the very first scene it’s stimulating our cognitive apparatus in ways which allow us to participate with our behavioural and emotional responses. After a blackout in the opening sequence, there are two and a half minutes of credits, supported by the music of the main Terminator theme. There is nobody we’ve heard of except for that Schwarzenegger person who was in Conan the Barbarian.
What’s a terminator? The title – a single word – is from Latin and means the finisher. The intrigue is here – there is a science fiction film, called something like the finisher, and we are about to watch it.
(Repeated on March 16th, 9pm)
March 23th
Miriam and John Blaylocks are very modern and glamorous vampires, Sarah Roberts is a doctor researching sleep and human longevity. The film cuts back and forth between the timelessly tasteful, artefact-filled interior of the Blaylocks home and the stark functional research labs of Sarah. There is a neat conflation of sex, vampirism and “medical” element.
What do you think of the scenario – beautiful charmingly anonymous lover who, during an unusually passionate sexual encounter, transmits some virulent infection that cannot even be diagnosed, let alone cured? Is vampirism a blood disease?
(Repeated on March 30th, 9pm)
April 6th
The climax to Maria’s murder of her sexual partner is rapidly intercut with scenes of the bullfighting students practising their skills. Fifty-two shots in just under three minutes.
There is a paradox of this fascination with death and it is very closely related to desire, so the themes of the corrida ritual, death and religion, are central to Pedro Almodovar’s film Matador.
Garcia Lorca, the famous Spanish writer, puts it thus: “Spain is the only country in the world where death is a national spectacle <…> in the liturgy of the bulls, that authentic religious drama, <…> just as in the mass a God is worshipped and sacrificed”.
(Repeated on April 13th, 9pm)
April 20th
In David Lynch’s Rabbits it becomes important not WHO is on the screen, but WHAT it is doing there. This alienating device makes the narrative rather than the characters the focal point of interest. Now the audience has a possibility to enter the world of the metaphysical and concentrate on the structure of the presentation
However I would never like to call Rabbits one more “typical Lynch” outcome. Even though there are several symbols and traditions which refer to Lynch’s world, the series is still of a different genre, which at some point might be called noir. Back lighting creates certain silhouettes and shadows on the upper part of the back wall what is fantasmatic universe of noir.
Indeed, in general terms, I think that the narrative of Rabbits is complicated only by its simplicity.
(Repeated on April 27th, 9pm)
May 4th
Человек с Киноаппаратом (Man with a Movie Camera, 1929)
The Man with the Movie Camera is in many ways a film about film. Even though the opening credits state that it presents an experiment in the cinematic communication of visible events without the aid of intertitles (a film without intertitles) or scenario (a film without a scenario), it is still possible to discern a particular narrative. Dziga Vertov actually believed that film was capable of showing what he called “kinopravda” (film-truth). This also means that Kinopravda doesn’t order life to proceed according to a writer’s scenario, but observes and records life as it is, and only then draws conclusions from these observations”.(Vertov, 1984: 45). Significantly, Vertov does not call this theme “truth” in the absolute sense, but film-truth, admitting the creative/manipulative possibilities even in documentary filmmaking. He says: “It is far from simple to show the truth, yet the truth is simple.” (Vertov, 1984:2)
(Repeated on May 11th, 9pm)
May 18th
Los Amantes del Circulo Polar (The Lovers of the Arctic Circle, 1998)
Los Amantes del Circulo Polar successfully conveys the impression of circular rather than linear structure. Moreover, the film even indulges in metacommentary to reassure us of the circularity of its narrative: ‘Es bueno que las vidas tengan varios círculos. Pero la mía, mi vida, sólo ha dado la vuelta una vez, y no del todo. Falta lo mas importante’, Otto is heard saying at the beginning and at the end. But…
(Repeated on May 25th, 9pm)
June 1st
The Spielbergian ethics of the family maintains that a good, ethical life involves demonstrating care for family members, and that one has moral obligations to family members and close friends that are not owed to strangers and that are therefore unique. It is a type of virtue ethics; it holds that moral worth derives from having a good character, adopting certain virtues (above all, care), and habitually exercising good judgment. The Spielbergian ethics of the family maintains that personal identity, or who one is, is an important factor in determining how one should act and be treated.
(Repeated on June 22nd, 9pm)
June 29th
Pierrot le Fou (Crazy Pete, 1965)
Why not to analyse a sequence of this film exploiting the film language components? Look – the colours for Godard are rediscovered and purified partly by discarding any appeal to realism or reducing colour to thematic function, and the palette is determined and limited, specifically to the world of each film or even scene. Godard associates certain colours with particular narrative elements, and then builds each episode around a dominant colour or colours combination (Neupert, 2002). Author claims, that Godard’s pattern is that his character number one (usually woman) seems tied to red, as always wear red, character number two (the first man) wears blue. As a result the red close up of Marianne is replaced by peaceful green and blue contrast. The pines, the sky, the sea and it ends up with the totally light and plane in colours close-up of Ferdinand in a field of grass… Have you ever noticed that, huh?
(Repeated on July 6th, 9pm)
July 13th
Although “In the Cut’s” thematic analogues are “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” and especially “Klute”, with its themes of willful female self-endangerment and self-entrapment, in its carnality it is reminiscent of “Human Desire” – like Fritz Lang film, it is sticky with sweat and semen. According to Meg Ryan the main character Frannie is heartbroken and shrunken into herself by feminine grief, but makes a seemingly tiny movement to make a soul connection, and it seems not important that the soul Frannie connects with is very good at cunnilingus.
(Repeated on July 20th, 9pm)
July 27th
Central do Brasil (Central Station, 1998)
It is quite clear that the plot and the thematics of the film are shaped around a set of crucial religious motifs. However this film cannot be translated into allegory so easily. There is also a set up contrast between the ideology of the city and that of the provinces. In the restless urban environment, the main characters’ journey becomes a central metaphor, sometimes used in incongruous ways.
(Repeated on August 3rd, 9pm)
NEW SEASON OF FILM.WOMAN.COFFEE.
Comments ( 1 Comment )
[...] guess films on the radio are the same as music in the newspaper. Anyway J. and I, we are working to make films on the radio [...]
Films on the radio – how it works? | Reclameville added these pithy words on Oct 05 09 at 4:10 pm
