Continuum Film Blog

"paris is small for those who share so great a passion as ours."

I had a crush on this film before I even saw it...

Les Enfants du Paradis (1945) d. Marcel Carné

I'm going to see the restoration tonight.  It will be my 15th or 16th time seeing it--I've lost count. I would always cry at the end.  I saw it once at the theater in Paris that plays it continuously.  But I stopped seeing it long before it became available generally on DVD.  Before I had heard of a dvd. I've never watched a videotape of it.  I may have watched it on TV once.  You went to see it--if it was playing somewhere...like France. I had a book of the film. The cover is tattered and that's how I "saw" the film in between it's rare outings. But some time after college I saw l'Atalante by Vigo and fell in love with it instead. I would cry at the end but with delight. Still, I can recite whole scenes of Paradis in english and in french (well, at least the men's roles). Baptiste (Jean-Louis Barrault) was my obessesion.  I tried to turn innocent young guys attempting to be my boyfriend into him--rather like crazed surgeon, Pierre Brasseur, in Eyes Without a Face.  Speaking of Pierre, I find him, as Frédérick Lemaître, much more alluring now than pining, pale, white-faced Baptiste. Black-faced-Othello, agressive, Frédérick!

Brasseur...

who always reminded me of...

Le Pew!

Anyway, can't say more now--I have to go and fight for a premium seat not in the "paradis" of Walter Reade--and take a trip down the "Boulevard du Crime" to my old days.

And cry?

It's a big movie at 3 hours+ but with a passion like ours...

 

red tails: un filme de...?

 

“It’s exactly like Star Wars…The story is too fantastic and wonderful to cram into 2 hours.” If we get a good first weekend…there is a prequel and a sequel and they’re better than this movie by a long shot…I took the soft center."

Well, it is what it is! I find this clip of George Lucas discussing RED TAILS on the Daily Show both illuminating and amusing!

    Illuminating because he addresses some of my very mixed feelings about the movie. My father, Lee (Buddy) Archer, was a Tuskegee Airman and he and his good friend Dr. Roscoe Brown ("The Gruesome Twosome"), consulted on the film and appeared in the accompanying documentary, Double Victory. Dad passed away in January 2010 and did not get to see any of the completed film.

I attended a preview screening a couple of months ago and the premiere last week. The film, much improved from the first time I saw it, should be supported. As a daughter, at first I found Red Tails disappointing, having had the good fortune to hear first-hand stories from the Airmen all of my life (I'll never forget the image of the small sea of red jackets at my mother's funeral in 1996). As a filmmaker tho', I'm intrigued by the way Red Tails is being hyped, the vague authorship of the movie and how it fits into Black cinema, historically. The amusing part is that I thought that Lucas called the film the 1st black-cast film (!) but, in fact, he claims "It's one the first all-black action pictures ever made."(see below)

Also funny--or at least a little hyperbolic--is his fear that the film, if it fails, will endanger if not destroy the opportunities for black filmmakers from this weekend on--prompting from Greg Tate and others the moniker “George Lucas, Black Filmmaker”! But I think Lucas is actually referring to the dangers of big —or should I say GI-normous budget films with predominantly black cast with a black director at the helm. This confused authorship between Lucas and the film’s director, Anthony Hemingway, is intriguing and in the clip Lucas self-effacingly disparages the film (the "soft" center) but inadvertently or unconsciously depending on how you feel about Lucas’ motives, displaces director Hemingway who he does not otherwise refer to in the interview.

The soapy and boyish "soft center" he describes is a truncated and specifically located episode, with hugely compressed characters. The focus then is mainly on dogfights and air(and digital) technology with an almost complete lack of context for the characters--particularly the absense of black women or almost any women--who are not even referenced (no gals back home? No sisters, no Mamas?), nor of African Americans at home following the airmen's adventures.

Well, I guess all of this was relegated to the prequels and sequels that hopefully will be produced (and maybe with my help!)but now hang in the balance of the OPENING WEEKEND BOX OFFICE!!

Anyway, all of this reminds me that all-black/colored movies directed by blacks and whites have existed since the movies began. There’s more than one per decade (I'll make a list later)!  For example, preserved in part by our own Women’s Film Preservation Fund, A Fool and His Money (1912) is thought to be the first American film featuring an all African-American cast. And it was made by a LADY!—Alice Guy Blaché who owned Solax Studios, in Fort Lee, New Jersey and produced and directed dozens of films in the silent era.

The first all black action picture?  What about The Norman Studios The Flying Ace set in WW1 and made in 1926! This film featured air battles, special effects (the camera turns completely upside down), comedy, action, daring aerial rescues AND romance!!

Here is a great clip from this rarely screened jewel!

 

Whether they run for two hours or for "6 SMASHING Reels!" black-cast films with their delights, issues, failings and travails are uniquely American and for me, essential in our understanding of the history of cinema.

SO,go see Red Tails this weekend!! You'll have fun!

red tails opens 1.20.12

More about the film a little later but if you are planning to see RED TAILS (2012) d. Anthony Hemingway, consider supporting it this opening weekend. The film cannot begin to represent the incredible history and amazing stories of the Airmen (which I have had the fortune to hear all of my life) but IT IS exciting, action-packed, appropriate for young people and well-acted with an attractive cast! It's clearly a labor of love and deserves an (enthusiastic and critical) audience.

Red Tails Trailer

Above: "Ina The Macon Belle" restored P-51 by Kermit Weeks and Dad and the original, early 1940s

wfpf screenings @ moma's save & project! nov. 2nd, 2011

Download WFPF_NOV2_FLYER_FINAL

3 landmark women's films from 1970!

A fantastic program of restored films @ The Film Society of Lincoln Center:

See you there!

my review: the black power mixtape 1967-1975

 

The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 has opened at The IFC Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinema!

I was so moved by this film when I saw it at New Director's this year.  I talked about it all the time and had planned an epic post for this blog. But then I was given the happy opportunity to write a review for Film Comment Magazine!

Third Streaming is showing selected stills from the film. At the opening reception Wed. night I was thrilled to meet Göran Hugo Olsson, the director. 

I gushed and gushed.

He was VERY gracious, poor thing!

Please read my review in the Sept/Oct 2011 issue of the magazine or online and tell me what you think.  Better yet, go see the film and let's really talk!

Martin and Harry!

 

  

extended!! pop on over to governors island for 3 more weekends!

 
EXTENDED!

pop-up screening at governors island 3 MORE weekends!

sept. 10/11th, 17/18th and 24/25th, 2011

I'm happy to be included in a "Pop-Up Screening" of 3 of my short videos as part of The West Harlem Art Fund's

LOOSELY COUPLED, a group exhibition on Governors Island.  We'll be at No. 17 Nolan Park. Pop on over!

This weekend, The West Harlem Art Fund will host a “pop-up” film screening on Governors Island. What better way to enjoy a house but to watch movies. And these movies deal with the issues of home, memories and important places. These films are a part of a series called Upstairs in the Basement. Read more about each individual work and the artist.

Films: “Upstairs in the Basement”: 

My maternal grandfather was a contractor and a kind of inventor. He built our two homes in Macon, GA. The first one burned to the ground as firemen and the Salvation Army watched from several yards away.  I only knew the 2nd house, built in the early 1960s.  It was a fascinating collage made of discarded materials from my grandfather’s job sites where he did decorative plaster-work in both antebellum mansions and modern city buildings. As a child, I was fascinated by the precarious ladder-pull attic where he kept his inventions and other antiquated curios. I had never seen a house with an attic.

Granddaddy loved to tell humorous stories and jokes but he also told bible and ghost tales.  An anecdote that he would laughingly recount (to my embarrassment) was the time he and I were in the attic and my mother was calling for me from just below. I yelled; “I’m with Grandaddy! I’m Upstairs in the Basement!!” Telling this story would bring tears to his eyes.

The Macon house is in ruins now; our family home in New Rochelle where we lived for 40 years was sold after my father died, and my 1st apartment of my very own was overtaken by developers and recently razed. These 3 little films all have to do with movies, memories, spaces and lost or hidden images. And not incidentally, they were all created "at home"...

Short Films

“Leader Film (Civitella Ranieri)” (2009) 5 min. video/digital animation w/Viet Le, Vladimir Pistalo & Shyam Selvadurai. Divertissement set in the Civitella Ranieri, a castle in Italy.  This “scrappy” short video emulates a reel of discarded outtakes used as film leader and filler when learning to edit.

"The Lincoln Film Conspiracy Prologue" (2007) 15 min. “trailer”. A multi-generic short film and multimedia installation that combines archival film footage, new video segments and digital image manipulation, collage and montage.

Based on the history of African-American independent silent and sound cinema, LFC is the story of an archivist who is investigating the disappearance of a collection of technologically progressive black films. Did the films disintegrate or explode like many other nitrate films? Evidence of great heat was found in the vicinity of the studio’s site.  Conspiracy theories are outlined: Was there a government plot in conjunction with Hollywood to destroy these “positive” movies leaving only denigrating images of black people? Or have the movies been Abducted by Aliens?

"Il Giallo della Paine!" (2011) 8 min.   A “scary” montage of vanished spaces playfully using the visual tropes and aural cues of 1970s, American and British horror and of the Italian thriller films known as "Giallo" (Yello).

 Ina Archer — Artist

Ina was born in Paris, France. She earned a BFA in Film/Video from RISD and a MA, in Cinema Studies at NYU focusing on race, preservation, early sound cinema and technology.  Ina’s multimedia works/films have been shown  nationally including Cinema Project’s EXPANDED FRAMES: a celebration and examination of critical cinema in Portland,OR. and “Cinema Remixed and Reloaded: Black Women Artists and the Moving Image Since 1970” at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, GA. and The Contemporary Art Museum, Houston. Her awards include residences at Vermont Studio Center,  Blue  Mountain Center and Civitella Ranieri in Umbria, Italy. Ina was a Studio Artist in the Whitney Independent Study program, a NYFA multidisciplinary Fellow and a 2005 Creative Capital grantee in film and video, and 2010 nominee for the Anonymous Was A Woman award. She is a member of New York Women in Film and Television’s Women’s Film Preservation Fund and a board member of IMAP, Independent Media Arts Preservation.  

Ina’s film writing includes reviews for Film Comment, The NY African Film Festival, Framework, The Journal of Cinema and Media, and Black Camera. She is an adjunct professor at Parsons The New School for Design in the Foundation Program of the School of Design Strategies.

I'll see you in the basement!

 

 

black x: african diaspora experimental film series, sat. may 14th!

I will have 2 short videos in this series screening Saturday, May 14th at 3pm. A panel discussion with the filmmakers and a reception will follow the screening.

Black X: African Diaspora Experimental Film Series
Curated by Bill Jennings
This marathon intends to present the work of black filmmakers working in experimental film styles and establish a supportive and authenticating audience for the work. These rarely seen and compelling films represent an uncompromised and revolutionary commentary on the cinema and black identity.

Dialectic Dialation Dir. Tocarra Thomas, 2009, 4 min. A mesmerizing, formal abstraction based on the mechanics of human perception. Rope Tricks Dir. Tocarra Thomas, 2008, 4 min. A beautifully filmed, but disturbing allegory about repression and self-liberation. ReProgram: Episodes 1-10 Dir. Shani Peters, 21 min. A group of 10 videos which unites characters from The Cosby Show and Good Times with members of the Black Panther Party. The sitcom families, both icons of economic extremes within the black community, are inexplicably united as one family. These figures, both fictional and historical, interact in "episodes" that loosely relate to the Panthers' Ten Point Program, which called attention to issues such as healthcare, housing, and police brutality. Reckless Eyeballing Dir. Christopher Harris, 2004, 14 min. Taking its name from the Jim Crow-era of black criminals staring at white women, this hand-processed, optically-printed amalgam reframes desire by way of everything from D.W. Griffith to Foxy Brown and Angela Davis. "RW" Dir. Ina Diane Archer, 2004, 3 min. "RW" creates a dreamscape comprised of characters from American gangster movies, black musicals, and 1950's era black women that questions the nature of racial identity. Hattie McDaniel Dir. Ina Diane Archer, 2002, 6 min. A media collage meditating on the legacy and cultural meaning of the academy award winning actress Hattie McDaniel. X – The Baby Cinema Dir. Robert Banks, 1992, 4 min. A media collage commentary on the legacy of Malcolm X and the commercialization of it through the film by Spike Lee. MPG: Motion Picture Genocide Dir. Robert Banks, 1997, 4 min. A visually stunning, hand-painted, film collage responding to the violence toward women and people of color as depicted in the mainstream cinema. The Fullness of Time Dir. Cauleen Smith, 2008. 52 min. In Smith's groundbreaking science fiction allegory, A "sister from another planet" is sent to earth to explore the terrain and learn our ways. In the process, she must make sense of the passage of time, the enormity of loss, and the new landscapes of New Orleans.
Panel Discussion: with directors Cauleen Smith, Tocarra Thomas, Shani Peters, Ina Archer, Christopher Harris. Moderated by Bill Jennings, Professor Radio, Television, Film at Hofstra University.

independent women! wfpf @ the tribeca film festival

Saturday, April 30th, 2011

    Windy Day (1968), d. Faith and John Hubley

Download WFPF @_TRIBECA 11 flyer

ny african film festival program satur"daaay-o"!

"Harry La Soculente" (2007) ina diane archer

Harry Belafonte is a panelist at the NY African Film Festival Program at the Museum of Art & Design.

If you liked the playful shots of HB in Black Power Mix Tape, you'll love Harry in actuality!

This is also a fantastic chance to see Soviet archival footage of First World Festival of Negro Arts from 1966.

See you there!