o som pelo meio

2009

ao andar: vértice ou um relógio

lisboa

ao andar: estrutura

lisboa

Ao andar, dou por mim a registar pormenores das paisagens onde me encontro, como aliás creio que muita gente faz. Por vezes faço-o com desenho, fotografias, filmes, e até com registos sonoros. Como tenho este blogue onde deixo coisas que me interessam, deixo também isto. Inauguro agora este "ao andar: ".

lisboa

cartões - Andrei Tarkovski (incompleto)

"a infância de ivan" (1.37 : 1), 1962

"andrei rubliov" (2.35 : 1), 1966

"solaris" (2.35 : 1), 1972

"o espelho" (1.37 : 1), 1975

"stalker" (1.37 : 1), 1979

cartões - Louis Malle (incompleto)

"calcutta" (1.37 : 1), 1969

"black moon" (1.85 : 1), 1975

"lacombe lucien" (1.66 : 1), 1974

"au revoir les enfants" (1.66 : 1), 1987

"milou en mai" (1.66 : 1), 1990

cartões - John Cassavetes (incompleto)

"shadows" (1.37 : 1), 1959

"faces" (1.66 : 1), 1968

"husbands" (1.50 : 1), 1970

"a woman under the influence" (1.33 : 1), 1974

"the killing of a chinese bookie" (1.85 : 1), 1976

"opening night" (1.85 : 1), 1977

cartões - Robert Bresson (incompleto)

"pickpocket" (1.37 : 1), 1959

"procés de leanne d´arc" (1.66 : 1), 1962

"l´argent" (1.66 : 1),1983

cartões - Alfred Hitchcock (incompleto)

"saboteur" (1.37 : 1), 1942

"shadow of a doupt" (1.37 : 1), 1943

"rope" (1.37 : 1), 1948

"rear window" (1.66 : 1), 1954

"the trouble with harry" (1.50 : 1), 1954

"the man who knew too much" (1.50 : 1), 1955

"vertigo" (1.50 : 1), 1958

«"north by north west" (1.85 : 1), 1959

"psycho" (1.85 : 1), 1960

cartões - Mikhail Kalatozov (incompleto)

soy cuba (1.37 : 1), 1964

no rasto

2009

low rem

O que interessa é o videoclip de cima, o original.

Problema:
A faixa audio não foi autorizada pela WMG juntamente com o vídeo original. Mas a mesma faixa audio foi autorizada em videoclips de admiradores.

Resolução neste blogue:
Para ver o videoclip original (o de cima) com música, há que accionar o play do videoclip do admirador (em baixo) e imediatamente a seguir accionar o play do videoclip original.

A prova de sincronia é dada pelos lábios de uma das personagens quando segreda no ouvido da outra: "low(1:56), low(1:57), low(1:58)" com a voz de Michael Stipe.

to my danish friends

These photos were taken in the round tower. When inside, one is inspired to move, but is also defied to be still.

I dedicate this photo-article to Miguel, Rene, Mads, Jonathan, Søren and Mia. (And they are the reason why these words are written in english, although some would understand it in portuguese)

copenhaga

1994

F-i-l-m-e realizado para o 4º e último Festival de Metragem Intermitente Daqui.

"1994" teve como suporte original diapositivos de 35mm em que registei a totalidade ou parte das fotografias.

2005

1

A preceder a realização do festival - Sala de Projecção, foram enviados aos convidados pequenos filmes promocionais - os promos, feitos com telemóveis ou máquinas fotográficas digitais compactas e montados em programas de edição de simples manuseamento. Programas nativos como o windows movie maker do windows ou o imovie nos macs.

Em baixo um promo da Sala de Projecção de 2007, intitulado "1" - pensado, realizado e montado em 1h52m (cronometrado).

2007

júlio

2007

do fundo da escada

2007

minuto: zero

2008

minuto: zero+

2008

pai

Filme realizado exclusivamente para a Sala de Projecção, em Novembro de 2008.

Este filme foi feito de recurso 3 dias antes do festival, pois o projecto que estava para ser apresentado não atingiu o nível de percepção desejado. Sendo assim, peguei na primeira ideia que me veio à cabeça: o último minuto na vida de uma criança (ou minuto e tal). Aproveitei o facto de ainda ter a lembradura formatada pelo workshop de filmes de um minuto em que realizei "minuto: zero" e minuto: zero+".   

2008

54

2009

uma outra coisa

2009

cartões - Martin Scorcese (incompleto)

"taxi driver" (1.85 : 1), 1976

"raging bull" (1.85 : 1), 1980

"goodfellas" (1.85 : 1), 1990

"cape fear" (2.35 : 1), 1991

sequência de título por Saul Bass

"the age of innocence" (2.35 : 1), 1991

sequência de título por Saul Bass

"casino"  (2.35 : 1), 1995

a palavra casino aparece 2 vezes

"bringing out the dead" (2.35 : 1), 1999

ir

barreiras

árvore

lisboa

o jardim e o vaso

copenhaga

lisboa

curva

lisboa

largo

 lisboa

corvo

lisboa

inverno em lisboa

lisboa

buffalo 66

O áudio foi desativado devido a questões legais.

Mesmo sem som, este trailer é foda.

buffalo 66 -a cena da Christina

metropolitano

lisboa

carro

lisboa

claustro

tomar

Olímpio

a 04/02/2008 no jornal Público

jogo

lisboa

embrulho

lisboa

praia por uma lomo LC-A

costa da caparica

cão

No cartão de "Nora Inu" (com o título português de "cão danado"), os caractéres do título estão embebidos na imagem de um cão que arfa. Ao ver esta respiração no écran, lembrei-me do meu cão. E lembrei-me desta fotografia em que ele se encontra no sítio onde o seu coração bateu pela última vez.

cartões de título - Akira Kurosawa (incompleto)

"nora inu" (1.37 : 1), 1949

"ikiru" (1.37:1), 1952

"shichinin no samurai" (1.37:1), 1954

"kumonosu jo" (1.37:1), 1954

"yojimbo" (2.35:1), 1961

"dersu uzala" (2.20:1), 1975

"kagemusha" (1.85:1), 1980

"ran" (1.85:1), 1985

cartões de título - Jacques Tati (incompleto)

"les vacances de monsieur hulot" (1.37 : 1), 1953

"mon oncle" (1.37 : 1), 1958

"play time" (1.85 : 1), 1967

1º lugar

Não me lembro de o Benfica recuperar o primeiro lugar do campeonato depois de o ter perdido para o Porto. Por isso mesmo e até esta 14ª jornada tem sido dificil olhar para a página das classificações. Esta semana soube bem. Mais que bem, li todos os pormenores de todas as ligas menores inclusivé da Série Açores. Li esta página com o deleite de saber que no primeiro lugar da primeira tabela está o meu grande Benfica.

a 12/01/2009 no jornal Público

cartões de título - François Truffaut (incompleto)

"les quatre cents coups" (2.35 : 1), 1959

"tirez sur le pianiste" (2.35 : 1), 1960

"fahrenheit 451" (1.85 : 1), 1966

título dito por voz (último frame do zoom in)

"la mariée était en noir" (1.66 : 1), 1968

"baisers volés" (1.78 : 1), 1968

"l´enfant sauvage" (1.66 : 1), 1970

"domicile conjugal" (1.66 : 1), 1970

"l´amour en fuite" (1.66 : 1), 1979

cartões de título - Jean Vigo

"a propos de nice" (1.37 : 1), 1930

o primeiro cartão dissolve para o segundo e por aí a diante

"la natation par jean taris" (1.37 : 1), 1931

neste caso são 3 cartões "dissolventes"

"zéro de conduite" (1.37 : 1), 1933

"l´atalante" (1.37 : 1), 1934 - em cartão

"l´atalante" (1.37 : 1), 1934

na imagem, a confirmação do título onde tudo ou quase tudo acontece

cartões de título - Paul Thomas Anderson

"hard eight" / "sydney" (2.35 : 1), 1996

"boogie nights" (2.35 : 1), 1997

P.T. Anderson decidiu incluir o título no cenário e não em cartão. Isto deveu-se ao facto de no primeiro filme o título por si 

escolhido ter sido "sydney", mas os produtores exigiram que outro título ficasse no cartão... "hard eight" 

"magnolia" (2.35 : 1), 1999

"punch-drunk love" (2.35 : 1), 2002

"there will be blood" (2.35 : 1), 2007

cartões de título - Stanley Kubrick (falta o 1º, "fear and desire")

"killer´s kiss" (1.37 : 1), 1955

"the killing" (1.37 : 1), 1956

"paths of glory" (1.33 : 1), 1957

"spartacus" (2.20 : 1), 1960

sequência incial desenhada por saul bass

"lolita" (1.37 : 1), 1961

"dr. strangelove or: how i learned to stop worrying and love the bomb" (1.37 : 1), 1963

"2001: a space odyssey" (2.35 : 1), 1968

"a clockwork orange" (1.37 : 1), 1971

"barry lyndon" (1.37 : 1), 1975

"the shining" (1.37 : 1), 1980

rolling card ascendente, embebido na imagem

"full metal jacket" (1.37 : 1), 1987

"eyes wide shut" (1.66 : 1), 1999

cartões de título - João César Monteiro

"veredas", 1977

"silvestre", 1981

"à flor do mar", 1986

"recordações da casa amarela", 1989

"o último mergulho", 1992

"a comédia de deus", 1995

(título dito por voz)

"le bassin de j.w.", 1997

"as bodas de deus", 1998

(título dito por voz)

                                                                                                 "branca de neve", 2000 (1º cartão de título)

"branca de neve", 2000

(2º cartão de título)

"vai-e-vem", 2003

cartões de título

Há cartões de título com letra branca sobre cartão preto, há-os com letra preta sobre cartão branco, existem também cartões de título embebidos em imagens em movimento, em imagens "paradas", em desenhos e por aí fora.

É meu crer que um bom cartão de título pode tornar qualquer filme um bocadinho melhor. Muitas vezes acontece um cartão de título ser melhor que o seu filme, logo inadequado a ele.

Começo a publicar hoje neste blogue, uma compilação de cartões de título (com o formato original) que me interessam, seja pelo filme que anunciam, seja pelo seu autor, seja pelo desenhador do título ou sequência inicial, enfim seja pelo próprio cartão de título.

"the night of the hunter" (1.66 : 1), 1955

realizado por Charles Laughton  (o único filme que realizou)

confronto...

Agora sim... as mesas de Washington Square, Nova Iorque. (ver o artigo publicado em baixo a 25 de Outbro de 2008)

fotografia por João Paulo Oliveira

confronto

Stanley Kubrick era um chess hustler. Numa das raras entrevistas disponíveis afirma que de todos os que se juntavam em torno daquelas mesas em Washington Square ele estava entre os 4 melhores. Havia mesmo outro tipo que estaria ao seu nível. Quando ouvi essa gravação senti-me defraudado - Aquele que foi durante grande parte da minha adolescência o meu realizador preferido, não era perfeito. Pensei que ele era o melhor jogador. Queria que ele fosse o melhor jogador. Hoje já nada disso me interessa.

Gostaria de ver essa praça em 1947 pejada de jogadores e admiradores de xadrez e de confronto.
Gostaria de ver essa praça hoje.

mesas de xadrez em central park, n.y.

fotografia por João Paulo Oliveira

atenção

Às vezes, mesmo sem procurar, encontro algo. Há que estar com atenção, pois todas as coisas falam. Dizem: - "Olha para mim". Olho e por vezes vislumbro.

gato

Porque é que os gatos ficam tão bem no cinema? Creio nunca ter visto uma má aparição cinematográfica por parte de um gato.

no visionamento de "the life aquatic, with steve zissou", alcochete

escada

Esta escada é minha? Esta escada é minha.

desenho por g.r. 2004

fantasma

O pesadelo já lá estava. O fantasma foi doce. O fantasma foi amargo. O fantasma sumiu-se e ficou uma pessoa inteira.

desenho por g.r. 2004

ver

Até onde se pode ver? O que é preciso fazer para se conseguir ver? É só estar, esperar? Ou é necessário incutir pressão para vergar a barreira do aparente? Será que ajuda imaginar, criar? Isto é: adicionar um bocadinho de mentira, de ficção para se chegar à verdade que se quer? E a verdade que se quer, é verdade? E quando finalmente se vê, é visão ou sonho?

quadradrinho de storyboard por t.f.

conversa entre lars von trier e paul thomas anderson

Europe's celebrated director of The Idiots and Dancer in the Dark talks with the precociously talented director of Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and Punch-Drunk Love, on ways of seeing America, the egos of actors, and his controversial new film, Dogville.

Ok, let's cut to the chase: An interview between Lars von Trier and Paul Thomas Anderson is a cinephile's wet dream. As two of cinema's most distinctive directors, they have created some of the most searing movie experiences in recent memory. Despite their vastly different approach, both men, are united by a concern with the outsider in society: The awkward and misbegotten lonely hearts of Anderson's Magnolia and Punch-Drunk Love find their counterparts in the small-town American of von Trier's Dancer in the Dark and the upcoming Dogville. Both bring a precise, focused discipline to their movies that leaves little to chance. Von Trier, in particular, has developed a reputation for his combative relationship with his actors, most notably with Bjork during the making of Dancer in the Dark, but his severe approach typically results in career-defining performances. Anderson, too, has wrung brilliance from his ensemble productions, especially from Philip Seymour Hoffman, who has appeared in all of his movies, and Adam Sandler, whose layered, tormented turn in Punch-Drunk Love was one of last year's great surprises. The two directors convened at von Trier's film studio, Zentropa, on the outskirts of Copenhagen, to gossip about actors, trade views on America, and nominate some of their favorite movies.

LVT: What I would like to talk about is this actor business, because, as I've told you, I was very fond of Magnolia and felt that there was a kind of familiiar feeling about the results that you get out of the actors, and you told me that it was because you love them.

PTA: Uh-huh.

LVT: Which was a shock. If you love them--let's just say this is true--how do you work with them?

PTA: Well, they say the lines. And then--

LVT: --You say, ready?

PTA: Go.

LVT: Go? And then they say the lines?

PTA: Well, here's the thing. When I wrote Magnolia, I was writing for the actors, so I could hear it my head how they might do it, and I was writing it with that advantage. But actors don't scare me -- you know what scares me? Bad actors scare me. A good actor is like watching a great musician, but having a bad actor terrifies me, because it means I've got to find something to say or something to do. And that's really frustrating, because you want to be concentrating on everything, and instead you find yourself bogged down with helping someone know their lines or not bump into the furniture, and that's when you want to strangle them. I got really lucky that the first real actor that I worked with was Philip Baker Hall. Coming out of the gate, that was like somebody who, instantly, is right there for you, who wants to work with you and certainly not against you. And so I think I got a bit spoiled sense that this is the way that it should go, and then I'm shocked when Burt Reynolds shows up, or someone like that... I think you secretly love actors.

LVT: [laughs]

BB: Do you not think it works for you to love your actors too much, Lars? Do you keep a distance?

LVT: I try not to, but actors are the only tin that stands between you and a good film. That's how it is. But we're talking about control. It's a little bit like filming animals--they are uncontrollable.

PTA: But not all of them.

LVT: No, and they should be uncontrollable. If you want to have something from anybody, you have to give them some trust, of course, and that's why I've turned the whole thing into more of a game than direction. But there are actors and there are actors. Stellan [Skårsgard] is not an actor.

PTA: But I feel the same way about Philip [Seymour Hoffman] or John C. Reilly: They're not actors--they're family.

LVT: Yeah, but because they're family you also know what they can do and what they can't do. It's like your uncle--you know what he's good at, and what he is not. Of course, they can be so familiar that you don't give your uncle a chance, which is unfair also.

PTA: Is the relationship that you have with your assistant director or editor or photographer or costume designer something like that, one that you can count on more than you can count on with an actor?

LVT: Right now I'm filming with CinemaScope, so I'm running around with this ridiculously enormous camera, with sound equipment, light equipment, you know. And then there are a hundred people around me who just kind of say "good luck," and they leave, and we're alone for four hours, the actors and me. So really, all my fears lie in this technique, because I have a lot of claustrophobia. If I don't do anything, nothing happens. I can't tell you--for these last four months I've been going through my all-time low, and my psychich health is extremely low right now.

PTA: Why? Is it something that happens after you make a film or after it is released? Is there a pattern to it, or do you recognize why?

LVT: Well, there is a pattern to it, of course. When you produce a film, all your power goes into it, so you can't use your power to imagine that you're dying all the time. And also you have this kind of Baden-Powell [founder of the Boy Scouts movement] feeling, that you just have to go marching on for these eight weeks or ten weeks or however long it is, which is good, of course, this masochistic feeling that you just have to go on and hurt yourself, and if you hurt yourself enough then it doesn't matter--you die for a reason.

PTA: Can you curb that feeling, though, when you're writing? Are you writing right now?

LVT: No. No. I think the reason why I'm really, really nuts right now is all this waiting for Nicole [Kidman]. Because normally I write a script, I do rah, rah, rah, rah, and since we've been waiting for her, for one-and-a-half years, it stalled, I feel rotten, I feel terrible. Not about the film--if you're afraid you're going to die, you don't give a shit about a film or how it's received or who is in it, but it's just the fact that the film work is a way to get in a positive mood to get a lot of stuff out of your system.

BB: What do you mean by waiting for Nicole?

LVT: We decided a long time ago that we should do more films together, Nicole and I, but that was not possible, it turns out, after one-and-a-half years of suffering [waiting for Kidman's schedule to clear], and I can't do other films in between. It's a trilogy that I wrote with the same main female.

PTA: When did that come to you, when you were writing Dogville? Did you know that there was going to be--

LVT: --No. I finished it, and I liked the project very much, and I liked Nicole very much, or anyway, I liked her character, Grace, very much, because she's a little more aggressive, a little more human than the other characters I've worked with.

PTA: Wait, is that because she's a more human character or a more human actor?

LVT: [long pause] It's because she's a more human character and a less human actress, but the mixture with Nicole and Grace was a very good one, and I liked that, and then I suddenly saw that I had an obligation to carry on with Grace, to carry on this way of filmmaking, because it's very, very easy to invent new things all the time, but it's not very mature, I feel. So if I really meant something with this film, they I felt I should underline it by going on. Because there are, as I see it, two kinds of directors: there are the ones that, every time, set a new standard, like Kubrick. And then there are the directors that keep on doing the same stuff over and over, again and again. Of course, there are mixtures between these types, but somehow, the mature one is the one that does the same, again and again and again.

PTA: You'll say something different in a few years.

LVT: Let me come back to--I like the inhuman nature of Nicole. I don't know if inhuman is the right word; I know it sounds negative, but it's not really meant to be. She's kind of this larger-than-life star that has a discipline and a skill that is remarkable. To take this kind of size, and force it to break a little bit, was a very good thing to do...but also to take her ability and her professionalism and her willingness to work, which are all very positive things, and to try to break it up a little bit for the sake of the product, which she was very happy to do, which also shows.

BB: She wants to expand.

LVT: Oh yes, she wants to--she is very, very brave in that sense, as the good actors are. Very, very brave. And then came my idea of going on to make three films, but also to make three films that take place in America--

PTA: --Lars, what do I have to do to get you to come to America?

LVT: You have to nuke all of Europe. [laughs]

PTA: Okay, I can do that. I'll do anything.

LVT: But listen, I am an American.

PTA: How do you mean?

LVT: I am there already. I'm taking part in the American life.

PTA: [laughs] You are?

LVT: I know exactly how it is. It's like here, more or less, but you know, the Americans used to be European, or the ones that I can easily relate to, and they are maybe not the--no, I'm not going to say that--

PTA: Say it! Say it! Go on.

LVT: The ones that went to America were not the brighest ones. [they laugh] No, listen, please erase that. No, but you have a lot of stories from people who went to American, because they were starving. And in the liberal society, you go where you are not starving--that's the whole idea--but people are not allowed to do that anymore, for some strange reason. It's not considered to be a good idea to go where the food is anymore. America is closing its borders also, right? Which was a big, big quality, I always felt, about the American idea, as I see it: to let everybody in. In Scandinavia, integration is such a big thing--whenever you come they say, "Will you become Danish?" "Yes, yes, yes," they say. "of course," but somebody is shooting at them from behind, right? And then, to be integrated is very, very important, to learn the language, to learn the customs, to not slaughter your animals in a painful way, all this. To say that you can only come to visit us if you learn the language, if you do this, if you do this... Come on! That's a Scandinavian model because they want to integrate them into society so they can--

BB: --Raise them up.

LVT: Absolutely. But that is so arrogant! And having not been to New York, I love the idea of a Chinatown and all these things, that's fantastic, I really think that's a beautiful idea. But I'm sure that's not how American is. But it is, somehow, I feel part of the idea.

PTA: You know, Lars, when I saw Dogville, it wasn't about America to me. It was about any small-town, small-minded mentality, and it wasn't about America until the end.

LVT: No. I agree completely. The only thing that I've done about America, or that should connect with America, is a kind of positive feeling that I'm trying to create, some things that I remember from Steinbeck or Mark Twain--feelings, or settings--

PTA: --Go back, I can't believe this, 'cause Steinbeck has been an obsession of mine for the past year. Did you read him a lot?

LVT: When I was young, yeah.

PTA: There's a collection of short stories called America and Americans, which is amazing, and I wanted to give it to you. Thee's a bit in it straight from Dogville, and it's meant so much to me over the past year, because he fought in World War II, he wrote about Vietnam, he wrote from the McCarthy hearings, and he saw it all. He was really a great novelist, but he was a journalist as well, and one of the great American writers.

LVT: I haven't read so much, but the narration in the movie, I thought, was very American, and I was told later on that it was not at all.

PTA: The narration? It's very British!

LVT: It's not British. I talked to John Hurt about it, he said, "This is not British." So it's kind of Danish-British trying to be American.

PTA: But you know, if I didn't know you, I would have no idea where the hell this movie, or many of your movies, came from.

LVT: That, I think, is actually quite good, because that's almost like David Bowie, you know--we were sure he was from Mars actually.

PTA: How did you come up with the idea of ending Dogville with "Young Americans"?

LVT: Paul Bettany and I were great David Bowie fans, and at a certain point when the spirit was quite low on the set, we were playing it over loudspeakers so everybody was dancing to it. I always loved that melody very much, but I didn't understand the lyrics. I still don't understand them. [laughs]

PTA: Absolutely. I understand "Young Americans!"

LVT: But I thought the lyric was, "All night she was the young American," but it is not. It is "All night she wants a young American," which is different. [laughs]

[The conversation is interrupted by a phone call for PTA, warning of his imminent flight to New York]

LVT: Don't worry.

PTA: I'm not worried. Do I look worried? Lars, I'm sitting here with you--you're my hero. I can't be worried.

LVT: Like sitting with Bush, you can't be worried?

PTA: If Bush invited you to the White House, would you go?

LVT: It wouldn't make it easier for me to sit in a plane.

PTA: But we knock you out, give you a couple of pills, everything's over, we wheel you into the car.

LVT: I'm sure Bush has the power to bring me to the White House if he really wants to.

PTA: But if Bush called you and said, "I want you to come to the White House, talk to me about what you're saying," would you go?

LVT: Uh, no. [laughs] You?

PTA: Absolutely. I heard that Clinton loved Boogie Nights, and that really made me excited. It made me like him very much. And then they actually requested a print of Magnolia.

LVT: We sent Breaking the Waves, I think.

PTA: To the White House?

LVT: For Clinton, or his daughter, whatever. They just can't go down to a video store; it's just impossible--it's too far from the White House.

PTA: I don't know though. Clinton used to like to get out of the White House a lot. He would take night trips to McDonald's, and stuff like that. I think he wanted to get out of the house.

LVT: Compared to Bush, Clinton seemed like a good guy, right? He was playing saxophone.

PTA: He was playing saxophone, he was chasing pussy, I mean that's the kind of president you'd like.

BB: I want to ask the question, Paul: As an American, what does America mean to you?

LVT: That's very good. Come on! No, what does Denmark mean to you? Oh, you have such a beautiful country, you have no big guns--

PTA: --I love it, I love it, but there's not a whole lot of places I don't love. I'm pretty free with my love of the place. I grew up in California, and I love California, and for a long time it actually had a sensible sense of itself, until recently, with Arnold Schwarzenegger. And New York is remarkable in that, when I step off the plane, the first thing I notice is--yes, how fat everybody is--but I also notice that everybody is there, everybody is there.

LVT: And what does that mean?

PTA: It feels exciting, and it feels comfortable. I don't get a sense of American pride. I just get a sense that everyone is here, battling the same thing--that around the world everybody's after the same thing, just some minor piece of happiness each day.

LVT: We can't disagree on that, of course, that's how it is.

PTA: I was just in Croatia, and they have this great saying, "There's a different government on every street down here, there's 87 political parties." I feel the same thing about America. I'll rebel against powers and principalities, all the time. Always, I will.

LVT: I am representing all the good things that American should be.

PTA: [laughs]

LVT: But saying that I know how your country could be a better place, as somebody who is not American, is the most provocative thing you can say, and why is that? It doesn't have so much to do with nationalism or borders; it has to do with politics and your basic idea of what you should do with human beings.

PTA: Where did you get the title for Dogville?

LVT: I spoke to Thomas Winterberg, to one of his colleagues, actually, and we were talking about concentration camps, and then it became America straight away [they laugh]. No, we were talking about how they managed to keep discipline and life going on in the concentration camp, and his theory, which I believe, is that they transformed people into animals. If they are animals, then they are much easier to control. It's very easy to make human beings into animals: let them be cruel, let them be anything--it's such a thin layer, and that was part of the strategy in the concentration camps. And then we talked about dogs, and I said the film had to be called "something-ville."

PTA: So there are a few things.

LVT: [laughs] Actually, quite a lot of things. But the strange thing is, in my situation--which you cannot put yourself in--I know so much about America. Eighty percent of my media, the media I see, has to do with America, 80 percent of the paper has to do with America in some way or another, 80 percent of the television, can you imagine that?

PTA: Isn't it that way in most of the world?

LVT: Yes it is, but that puts me in a situation where America is a part of me also, whether I want it or not or whether you want it or not--it is a part of me. And that's why I'm completely entitled to say whatever I want, because I've heard more about America than I've heard about Denmark, for Christ's sake!

PTA: Beautiful.

LVT: I watched Magnolia--actually to cast my own movie--but I liked it very much. It was kind of European, although now I don't like European films, either, because they are too American. It's very much a matter of taste, but it's very fulfilling when somebody dares to do what he thinks is most interesting, and I believe that is what happened with Magnolia. I think it is extremely important to please yourself.

PTA: I can count on one hand, maybe both hands, people that I trust, and I feel that if I make a movie, I make it for myself, absolutely first. But there are people that I want to show it to, that I want to like it, but it's also okay if they don't like it, because they'll let me know why, and how, and for what reasons. And that feels good; that is in no way debilitating or hurtful--but if you can hold them in the palm of your hand--

LVT: --To me it was very, very important to show the first film I did to Andrei Tarkovsky, and he hated it. [laughs] He thought it was a load of crap. The film was Element of Crime. He hated it, I tell you.

BB: How did you feel?

LVT: It was kind of like growing up. But you wouldn't respect him if he had said anything else. The problem about seeing films is that you have some very good directors that you admire very much, but everybody runs out of talent, everybody does. Or they die. Or both.

PTA: Do you remember movies well? I never remember movies well, but I can remember the ones I love, and which meant something to me. I remember Breaking the Waves--I was in the middle of editing Boogie Nights, and I was by myself and it was a Sunday night, and when I saw it, it was really like the clouds opening up--suddenly the sun started to shine, as gray as that movie was. But I don't remember details of that movie.

LVT: That is because what you like and what I like in a film is not a whole. We look at films differently than most people, and that's why we don't remember the whole thing properly. But I like, very much, some of the films that I didn't like when I saw them the first time.

PTA: Like what?

LVT: [Kubrick's] Barry Lyndon is still one of my favorite films, you know. It's a very strange film, but it's still monumental.

PTA: When I saw it, I thought it was very serious, and then I saw it the second time, and I said, "This is fucking hilarious!" And I actually felt that way about Dogville, you know, "This is a fucking comedy, this is insane!" But it was almost like, that sort of bizarre relationship to a movie, when you completely don't understand it at first.

LVT: I was talking to Nicole [Kidman] who had talked to Kubrick about it, and he didn't like Barry Lyndon at all. Of course. He told her it was too long.

BB: He thought it was too long?

LVT: Yeah, I mean come on--this last scene, where she's writing her name on this piece of paper, and it takes, I would say, half an hour, right? To write her name. So if he thought the film was too long, I could find one or two frames that could be cut out.

PTA: Dee, dee dee dee dee, dee dee dee, dee dee dee [imitating music from Barry Lyndon]. Did you ever meet him? I ask that because I got to meet him. It was the first time that I met Nicole, actually. He really didn't like me very much until he realized that I had written the movie that I directed. And that's what made him go, okay, now I'll be nice to you. Like, if you're a director, get the fuck outta here, but if you're a writer, ahhhh.

LVT: Another film that is very dear to me is The Deer Hunter.

PTA: When did you see it? When it came out?

LVT: I've seen it ten times.

PTA: Really. What are the others? What else?

LVT: There's a lot of old Italian films. Pasolini. Antonioni, of course. It all depends on when you become aware of film. I was ready around the time of this German period, with Werner Herzog and Wim Wenders, but I was too late to be fascinated by the New French Wave. But it's very interesting, this question of when you are open to this--I don't think it's very many years, five years or something.

BB: Do you have your Deer Hunter, Paul?

PTA: Yeah, the first thing that comes to my mind is Jaws.

LVT: Jaws! I've never seen that.

PTA: Jaws was a big, big, big, big, big deal to me. My dad was in television in Los Angeles--he did voice-overs, so he was friends with all these technical guys, and really when it was possible to get a 3/4 inch VCR machine in your home, he taped The Wizard of Oz, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and he had a bootlet copy of Jaws. So those were the three movies that I was able to watch over and over. And the VCR was as big as this room, it was like a tank, and the tape was as big as a truck--and I would come home and watch every night, every day, Jaws, Monty Python, The Wizard of Oz. Then later, things happened here and there--like I was saying when I saw Breaking the Waves. And it was interesting because I felt confident enough that I didn't want to copy Breaking the Waves--I just felt, like, I'm allowed to do that. It was almost like it was OK to be that honest.

LVT: You think Breaking the Waves was that honest?

PTA: Don't tell me that! I don't need to know that, I don't want to know that! Shhh!

LVT: No, it was made with good intentions, but honest, I wouldn't call it-- To me the story is very complicated because all these themes that are--as Baden-Powell was--forbidden in my home, all the things that were considered to be bad taste.

PTA: What was forbidden in your home?

LVT: Baden-Powell was forbidden in my home. He was the guy who decided that if soldiers could be disciplined, why not children? So this whole thing about religion and miracles, and blah, blah, blah--it was a boost of freedom to be able to be able to write this stuff. But I thought it was a very American film. [laughs] But I always do.

PTA: That's why I liked it. Lars, have you finished writing this movie?

LVT: Yes, it was written a long time ago.

PTA: How long does it take you to write?

LVT: Three weeks.

BB: Wow, how long does it take you to write?

PTA: Three years.

LVT: Yeah, but I just don't look back. If you want to read the script, you're welcome. If you should cast it maybe you should read it. Because you love actors and have a better relationship with them, maybe.

PTA: I think you secretly love actors.

lars von trier / paul thomas anderson 
blackbook magazine, winter 2004

sucesso

O que é o sucesso? É atingido somente com resultados públicos? É possível ter sucesso não o tendo no ponto de vista dos amigos, familiares, conhecidos ou mesmo de um público? O sucesso é uma palavra que aparece somente no fim de um percurso e não ao longo dele - fazer e ter sucesso. Mas o sucesso também pode ser íntimo e constante, não?

Henry David Thoreau escreveu: "Se um homem avançar com confiança na direcção dos seus sonhos, empenhando-se em viver a vida tal como a imaginou, deparar-se-á com um sucesso inesperado nas horas vulgares".

naide gomes nos jogos olímpicos em pequim, 2008

fotografia por kim kyung-hoon da agência reuters

capa

Há capas de jornais que vale a pena catalogar, mesmo tratando-se de cadernos secundários.

Gostava de ter estado assistido a todo o processo que levou a este resultado final. Será que houve reticências por parte de elementos do corpo editorial do jornal? Terão havido propostas ainda mais ousadas e recusadas? Foi dada liberdade total a quem compôs esta capa? Terão havido versões em que "P2" se apresentava a encarnado? E antes de "P2" ficar definitivamente a preto, terá sido ainda verde ou azul? Houve discussão? Grupos de pessoas contra e a favor? Ou nada disso:  Fotografia - total da página;  Título e texto - na zona da moça com menos referências de cariz erógeno (mais carne lisa);  Cor das letras - a preto, dentro do mesmo registo cromático da fotografia. Está feito!

a 2/10/2008 no jornal Público

texto

Entre São Petesburgo e Frankfurt li um artigo que se destacou pela sua clareza e estrutura. Um tema, sub-temas e o regresso aos sub-temas solidificando ideias e transportando informação. Isto também se pode fazer com ficção. E que início...

a 1/10/2008 no wall street journal

são petesburgo

t.f. emprestou-me a sua máquina fotográfica digital para lhe trazer umas imagens de São Petesburgo. Escolhi 6 para exibir aqui mais um um pequeno pormenor de uma delas.

 

rua

hermitage

da janela do hotel

a olhar o neva

zelo

cúpulas

pormenor de cúpulas

fotografias tiradas entre 25 de setembro e 1 de outubro de de 2008

mesa

casa (polaroid)

eloquência

hermés

fotografia por Robert Mapplethorpe

"15 minutes"

"15 minutes" por paul thomas anderson

hands (and faces) across the table

DB here:

In books and blogs, I’ve expressed the wish that today’s American filmmakers would widen their range of creative choices. From the 1910s to the 1960s (and sometimes beyond), US filmmakers cultivated a range of expressive options—not only cutting and camera movement but other possibilities too. Studio directors were particularly adept at ensemble staging, shifting the actors around the set as the scene develops.

You can still find this technique in movies from Europe and Asia, as I try to show in Figures Traced in Light and elsewhere on this site. But it’s rare to find an American ready to keep the camera still and steady and to let the actors sculpt the action in continuous time, saving the cuts to underscore a pivot or heightening of the drama. Now nearly every American filmmaker is inclined to frame close, cut fast, and track that camera endlessly. I’ve called this stylistic paradigm intensified continuity.

As Los Angeles agent and former editor Larry Mirisch once put it in conversation with me: “They used to move their actors; now they move the camera.” Most of today’s prominent directors prefer kinetic camerawork and machine-gun cutting. This tends to make their staging rather simple and static: we get stand-and-deliver or walk-and-talk (subject of a blog entry here).

The result is a split in contemporary American style. Action scenes are often gracefully and forcefully choreographed (though sometimes the editing fuzzes up character position and overall geography). By contrast, conversation scenes, which could be choreographed as well, are handled either as a Steadicam walk-and-talk or simply as seated actors talking to one another, with cuts breaking up the lines and the camera on the prowl. (I discuss some examples in The Way Hollywood Tells It, pp. 128-173.) (1) You sometimes suspect that today’s directors are most at home shooting lots of people hunched over workstations, making the principal form of suspense a LOADING command.

Don’t get me wrong. Like all styles, intensified continuity isn’t a bankrupt option; many fine directors, from the Coens to Michael Mann, have worked vigorous variants on it. What I’m arguing for is more plurality, more tones in the director’s palette. I’ve revived these cranky ideas in discussing a single shot, this time in Variety. Today’s blog entry expands on that brief piece, so you may want to hop over to it here before reading what follows.

Directing us

One task facing any director is to direct—not only actors but us. The filmmaker must direct our attention to what’s important for responding to the drama at any moment. Since the late 1910s, we’ve known that close-ups and frequent cutting do just that. Tight framings and rapid cuts can steer the audience’s attention through a scene. So the question becomes: How can you direct attention without using close views and fast cutting?

Well, for one thing you can place the main action in the center of the picture format. If there are several points of interest in the shot, which is usually the case, you can arrange them symmetrically around the central zone of the shot—in film, usually an zone just above the geometrical center of the picture format. You can also position your main players so that the most important ones are closer and/or facing toward the camera. By turning a character away from the camera, you can drive the audience’s eye to someone else. There are other pictorial cues worth mentioning (lighting, color combinations, patterns in the set design), but these will hold us for now. Add in movement—characters shifting their position, especially coming closer to the camera—and you have a suite of cues that a film shot can provide.

Apart from these purely compositional factors, you the director can exploit some cues that are part of our social proclivities. When we watch other people, we’re attracted to areas of high information—which, for creatures like us, are faces and hands. Faces send signals about what people are thinking and feeling, with the areas around the eyes and mouth telling us most. Hands are the source of gestures, as well as potential threats. And of course if someone is speaking and others are listening, we are likely, all other things being equal, to look at the speaker.

The crucial fact is that in ensemble staging all these cues, and more, are at work at the same time. The director’s skill is orchestrating them so that they support one another, guiding us to see this or that. (On rare occasions, the director will use them to misguide us, but let’s stick with the default for the moment.) For a long time, filmmakers knew intuitively how to coordinate these cues to create rich and intricate shots; I fear that they no longer know how. (2)

That’s what makes one passage in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood of interest to me. The scene presents Paul Sunday explaining to Daniel Plainview that there’s oil on his family’s property. Daniel and Paul are bent over a map on a tabletop, with Daniel’s assistant Fletcher Hamilton and Daniel’s son HW watching. The scene is presented in a single shot, with a slight camera movement forward at the start.

The composition could hardly be simpler: four people lined up, three at the edge of the table. The heads cluster around the center of the format, with HW lower and off-center; no surprise that he’s the least important character in the scene (though his question to Paul foreshadows action in the film to come). Paul is explaining where the oil is, and the two men’s faces and hands command our attention as they speak.

 

Many directors would have cut in to a close-up of the map, showing us the details of the layout, but that isn’t important for what Anderson is interested in. The actual geography of Plainview’s territorial imperative isn’t explored much in the movie, which is more centrally about physical effort and commercial stratagems.

Questioning Paul about his family, Daniel turns slightly away. This clears a moment for HW to ask about the girls in Paul’s family, and for a moment our attention is steered to the right, to pick up their interchange.

 

Then Fletcher asks about the farm, and as Paul and Daniel tilt their faces to him, he earns his place in the center of the frame. Before, when we could see the faces of the two men closest to the camera, he was subsidiary, but now he becomes salient. On the left, Daniel shifts away uneasily, turning almost completely away from the camera. In answering Fletcher, Paul turns away in the opposite direction, as if shy or guilty; his awkward gesture of stroking his hat seems to confirm Daniel’s doubts about him.

 

During a pause, Paul turns back to stare directly at Daniel, saying quietly, “The oil is there.” At the same time, Daniel, still turned away, is exchanging a glance with Fletcher. At this point, Anderson’s training of us pays off: we’re ready to detect the slight shift in Fletcher’s eyes, which confirms that Daniel’s looking at him. “Watch their eyes,” as John Ford liked to say.

Paul sets out to leave, and he refuses the invitation to stay the night. At this point comes the scene’s biggest gesture. Daniel raises his hand, in the dead center of the frame.

Spreading his long, thin fingers, Daniel commands our attention. He seems at once to be halting the young man and threatening him. But the gesture becomes the prelude to a handshake. Daniel’s characteristic blend of bluff assurance, friendliness, and aggressiveness are packed into this single gesture. (At the climax, other gestures will recall this one.)
Daniel steps closer to Paul, blocking out Fletcher, to make his threat: If he travels so far and doesn’t find oil, he’ll find Paul and “take more than my money back.” Paul agrees and moves away. “Nice luck to you, and God bless.”

 

The men watch Paul leave the building. End of scene.

Without any close-ups or cutting, Anderson has skillfully steered us to the main points of the scene, which are carried by the performers. The drama builds through small changes of position, shifts of weight, and facial expressions that accompany the dialogue. (The somber, plaintive music adds an uneasy edge.) Daniel seems more threatening when we don’t see his reaction, and Anderson’s camera forces us to scrutinize Paul’s expressions and body language for signs that this is a scam. It takes confidence to make a raised hand the climax of a scene, but the gesture gains its force by being the most aggressive moment in an arc of quietly accumulating tension.

All the principles involved here—frontality, spacing of figures, slight shifts of compositional focus, actors’ body language—are simple in themselves, but they gain a strong impact by cooperating with one another. The scene’s quiet obliqueness is characteristic of the film, which, at least until the last few minutes, carries us along with hints about where the action might go and what drives its characters.

Yet simplicity shouldn’t imply simplification. Anderson’s willingness to give the shot several points of interest, some more stressed than others, creates an understated tension. The shot’s gravity stems from its conciseness, a quality that Anderson admires in 1940s studio films like The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

Two more tabletops

The staging strategies Anderson uses aren’t new, as I’ve suggested. They’re part of the history of film as an art form, and many directors have continually relied on them. I don’t think that this is always a matter of influence, although surely filmmakers learned from watching earlier films. Often, directors working within similar constraints intuitively rediscover what other directors have already done.

Consider this scene from Kurosawa Akira’s The Most Beautiful (1944). The setting is a plant where Japanese workers, mostly girls and women, are manufacturing bombsights. The workers have vowed to increase production for the war effort, and they are working to the point of exhaustion. The plant supervisors are worried that the pace will take its toll on the girls.

The scene starts with the eldest supervisor studying the output chart, lying on a table below the frame edge. His colleagues are turned away, at the window. He is the one who must decide how to keep the girls healthy and the output steady. The table and the window will be the two poles of the action, and the actors will oscillate between them. The process starts when the eldest retreats to the window, and one comes forward to study the report.

 

He’s followed by his opposite number, and they echo one other in rubbing their necks. They’re as tired as the assembly-line girls. Their superior turns and says that there’s no point in lowering the quota because the girls are so devoted that they’d push harder anyway.

 

The men have turned to listen to him, driving our attention to his centered, frontal figure. After the elder has turned away again, the man on the right says that this might be the critical juncture. Remarkably, all three men remain turned from us, creating a slight pictorial tension.

This tension is extended when the supervisor on the left states his confidence in the children, their team leader, and their teacher. This makes the eldest turn around.

 

The speaker walks to the window, arguing that the girls will succeed, but the leader turns away again dubiously. He doesn’t offer a decision because an offscreen voice announces that a teacher has come to see them, and they all turn to look.

 

The factory’s problem isn’t solved; the seesawing of the staging has presented that irresolution dynamically. In a single shot, the difficulty of the administrative decision has been expressed in counterweighted movements in and out, by the figures’ frontality and dorsality. Again, it can seem simple, but where a contemporary American director would have given us a prolonged passage of stand and deliver, with intercut close-ups, Kurosawa has created a little ballet out of the men’s uncertainties. Like Daniel’s raised hand, but with even less emphasis, the assistant’s plea on behalf of the girls’ commitment has gained a subtle prominence. Yet all he has done is walk to the window.

I’m not saying, of course, that Anderson took the idea from Kurosawa. Given the initial choice to stage the scene behind a table, and the inclination to present the action in one shot, both directors spontaneously drew on basic staging principles. This is what film directors have always done. So as a finisher, here’s one last tabletop interlude from Cecil B. DeMille’s Kindling (1915). The entire scene is a dense and intricate affair, but let’s pick just one moment. Maggie has become a servant to a rich woman, Mrs. Burke-Smith, and she’s about to be arrested for theft. Detective Rafferty is ready to handcuff her, but Mrs. Burke-Smith changes her mind.

 

DeMille arranges his actors so that we can’t miss the rich woman’s moment of decision. She is in the foreground, and her face is in the upper center of the frame. The other actors are blocked, so that her expression is the only one we can see clearly at the crucial moment. Her hand gesture, stretching across the central axis of the frame, confirms that she won’t charge Maggie. (For a similar use of “blossoming” actors’ movements in 1910s cinema, go here and look at Figs. 2A10-2A11.) What DeMille knew, Kurosawa discovered afresh, and Anderson hit upon it again.

Strategies of staging, like other principles shaping how films tell stories, lie behind each concrete creative decision the film artist makes. They run as undercurrents through film history, almost never discussed by critics. They form a body of tacit knowledge, flowing across our usual distinctions of period, genre, director, national cinema. We can trace continuities and changes, examining how the strategies are revived, revised, or rejected. They can provide us with subtle but powerful experiences. They constitute a skill set that is available to filmmakers today. . . if any will, like Anderson, seize the chance.

(1) True, Wes Anderson keeps the camera still, but in his frontal, family-portrait framings the cutting and line readings do all the work; dynamic staging isn’t on his menu.

(2) I survey the development of these and other tactics in Chapter 6 of On the History of Film Style. On this site, for one example gohere and scroll down to the Bauer material.

david bordwell sobre "there will be blood", fevereiro de 2008 - http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/?p=1944

renascimento

"titânia"

mário cesariny

1994

rosto

 pesquisa para storyboard por t.f. 2008

Esta gente cujo rosto

às vezes luminoso

e outras vezes tosco

Ora me lembra escravos

Ora me lembra reis

Faz renascer meu gosto

De luta e de combate                 

Contra o abutre e a cobra                     

O porco e o milhafre

Pois gente que tem

O rosto desenhado

Por paciência e fome

É gente em quem

Um país ocupado

Escreve o seu nome

E em frente desta gente

Ignorada e pisada

Como a pedra do chão

E mais do que a pedra

Humilhada e calcada

Meu canto se renova

E recomeço a busca

De um país liberto

De uma vida limpa

De um tempo justo

"esta gente" de sophia de mello breyner andersen

em geografia de 1967

a força das coisas

imagens do filme "F." 2007

encontro

imagem do filme "ao anoitecer um sonhador" 2006