Născut pe 15 mai 1933, în Bucureşti, Andrei Blaier a absolvit cursurile Institutului Naţional de Artă Teatrală şi Cinematografică în 1956.

Andrei Blaier a regizat filme de fictiune, documentare, dar şi seriale de televiziune, precum “Dimineţile unui băiat cuminte” (1967), “Cireşarii” (serial TV, 1972), “Ilustrate cu flori de câmp” (1975), “Prin cenuşa imperiului” (1976), “Lumini şi umbre” (film TV, 1979 – 1982), “Fapt divers” (1984), “Vacanţa cea mare” (1988), “Divorţ din dragoste” (1991), “Crucea de piatră” (1993), “Terente – regele bălţilor” (1995), “Dulcea saună a morţii” (2003).

A desfăşurat şi o bogată activitate de scenarist, cu filme precum “Ora H” (1956), “Ilustrate cu flori de câmp” (1975) şi “Vacanţa cea mare” (1988).

Pentru “Ilustrate cu flori de cîmp”, considerat de critica de specialitate drept un “film surprinzător, original”, Blaier a primit premiul Asociaţiei Cineaştilor din România (ACIN).

Distincţii de la ACIN au primit şi peliculele “Prin cenuşa imperiului”, în 1976, “Lumini şi umbre”, în 1982, “Bătălia din umbră”, în 1986.

Andrei Blaier a lansat şi colaborat de-a lungul anilor cu nume sonore ale cinematografiei româneşti, precum Gheorghe Dinică, Marin Moraru, Draga Olteanu-Matei, Maia Morgenstern, Oana Pellea.

Despre Andrei Blaier, colegul său de breaslă şi prieten apropiat al regizorului, Dan Piţa spunea, în mai 2008: “Filmele lui sunt filme importante, filme mari. Între mine şi Andrei e o iubire frăţească, iubire colegială şi asta datorită felului său în care ştie să se facă plăcut”.

Cunoscutul regizor nu s-a limitat însă la a-şi realiza propriile producţii, ci s-a implicat şi în educarea şi instruirea unor noi generaţii de regizori de film şi televiziune, Andrei Blaier numărându-se printre fondatorii Facultăţii de Cinematografie din cadrul Universităţii Media din Bucureşti.

“Este un sfârşit de toamnă rău şi urât pentru noi. Acum câteva zile, Toca (Alexandru Tocilescu, n.r.), iată că acum Andrei Blaier, in octombrie, Liviu Ciulei. Ne cam pleacă regizorii”. ( Mircea Albulescu)

| Dileme de altădată

30 Noiembrie 2011

Divanul Dilemei vechi cu Alexandru Tocilescu

Liviu Ciulei era director onorific al Teatrului “Bulandra” si membru de onoare al Ordinului Arhitectilor. Cariera sa spectaculoasa include peste 20 de filme, la care a lucrat in calitate de regizor, actor sau scenarist, precum si numeroase spectacole de teatru.

Cel mai cunoscut film regizat de Ciulei este “Padurea Spanzuratilor”, in 1964, adaptare a romanului omonim scris de Liviu Rebreanu.

Liviu Ciulei a fost si profesor de teatru la doua universitati din America: Columbia University si New York University.

Cele mai importante distinctii obtinute de-a lungul timpului de marele regizor roman sunt premiul pentru regie la Festivalul de la Cannes din 1965, pentru “Padurea spanzuratilor”, Globul de Cristal, la Karlovy Vary, in 1969, pentru filmul “Valurile Dunarii”, Premiul UNITER, in 1996, Premiul de Excelenta UNITER, 2001, Premiul de Excelenta in cinematografia romana in 2002.

Former Guthrie artistic director Liviu Ciulei, May 1981.

Photo: Steve Schluter, Star Tribune

Director of:

2011 Midnight in Paris

2010 You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

2009 Whatever Works

2008 Vicky Cristina Barcelona

2007 Cassandra’s Dream

2006 Scoop

2005 Match Point

2004 Melinda and Melinda

2003 Anything Else

2002 Hollywood Ending

2001 Sounds from a Town I Love (TV short)

2001 The Concert for New York City (TV special documentary) (segment “Sounds from the Town I Love”)

2001 The Curse of the Jade Scorpion

2000 Small Time Crooks

1999 Sweet and Lowdown

1998 Celebrity

1997 Deconstructing Harry

1996 Everyone Says I Love You

1995 Mighty Aphrodite

1994 Don’t Drink the Water (TV movie)

1994 Bullets Over Broadway

1993 Manhattan Murder Mystery

1992 Husbands and Wives

1991 Shadows and Fog

1990 Alice

1989 Crimes and Misdemeanors

1989 New York Stories (segment “Oedipus Wrecks”)

1988 Another Woman

1987 September

1987 Radio Days

1986 Hannah and Her Sisters

1985 The Purple Rose of Cairo

1984 Broadway Danny Rose

1983 Zelig

1982 A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy

1980 Stardust Memories

1979 Manhattan

1978 Interiors

1977 Annie Hall

1975 Love and Death

1973 Sleeper

1972 Every Thing You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask

1971 Bananas

1971 Men of Crisis: The Harvey Wallinger Story (TV short)

1969 Take the Money and Run

1966 What’s Up, Tiger Lily?

Filmography

Director of:

2011 The Skin I Live In

2009 Broken Embraces

2009 The Cannibalistic Councillor (short) (as Mateo Blanco)

2006 Volver

2004 Bad Education

2002 Talk to Her

1999 All About My Mother

1997 Live Flesh

1995 The Flower of My Secret

1993 Kika

1991 High Heels

1990 Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!

1988 Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown

1987 Law of Desire

1986 Matador

1985 Tráiler para amantes de lo prohibido (TV short)

1984 What Have I Done to Deserve This?

1983 Dark Habits

1982 Labyrinth of Passion

1980 Pepi, Luci, Bom and Other Girls Like Mom

1978 Folle… folle… fólleme Tim!

1978 Salomé (short)

1977 Sexo va, sexo viene (short)

1976 Muerte en la carretera (short)

1976 Sea caritativo (short)

1976 Tráiler de ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ (short)

1975 Blancor (short)

1975 El sueño, o la estrella (short)

1975 Homenaje (short)

1975 La caída de Sódoma (short)

1974 Dos putas, o historia de amor que termina en boda (short)

1974 Film político (short)

Werner Herzog (real name Werner H. Stipetic) was born in Munich on September 5, 1942. He grew up in a remote mountain village in Bavaria and never saw any films, television, or telephones as a child.  He made his first phone call at the age of 17. During high school he worked the nightshift as a welder in a steel factory to produce his first films and made his first film in 1961 at the age of 19. Since then he has produced, written, and directed more than fifty films, published more than a dozen books of prose, and directed as many operas.

Herzog is being admired for being the only director who was able to work with the very eccentric Klaus Kinski.

Filmography

Director of:

2009 My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done

2009 La bohème(documentary short)

2009 The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans – the line between good and evil in everyday life is almost a joke. Nicholas Cage, wonderfully playing the part of a tormented policeman, proves that duty is often just a mask covering a grim reality.

2005 The Wild Blue Yonder

2005 Grizzly Man(documentary)

2004 The White Diamond(documentary)

2003 Wheel of Time (documentary)

2001 Invincible

1999 My Best Fiend(documentary)

1999 Christ and Demons in New Spain(documentary short)

1998 Höllenfahrten(TV series documentary)

1998 Little Dieter Needs to Fly(documentary)

1996 Die Verwandlung der Welt in Musik: Bayreuth vor der Premiere(TV documentary)

1995 Death for Five Voices(TV documentary)

1993 Glocken aus der Tiefe – Glaube und Aberglaube in Rußland(documentary)

1992 Lessons of Darkness (documentary)

1989 Giovanna d’Arco (TV movie)

1988 Les Français vus par(TV mini-series documentary)
1988 Les gauloises(short)

1987 Cobra Verde

1986 Portrait Werner Herzog (documentary short)

1982 Fitzcarraldo - a man has a dream and he is doing everything for it, even cross a mountain with a ship. Sounds of opera on water, the image of a red velvet chair and the smoke of a cigar are following you long after the movie has ended.

1979 Woyzeck

1979 Nosferatu the Vampyre

1977 Stroszek

1976 Heart of Glass

1976 No One Will Play with Me(short)

1974 The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

1974 Die große Ekstase des Bildschnitzers Steiner(documentary)

1972 Aguirre: The Wrath of God

1971 Land of Silence and Darkness(documentary)

1971 Fata Morgana

1971 Handicapped Future(TV documentary)

1970 Even Dwarfs Started Small

1969 Massnahmen gegen Fanatiker(short)

1968 Lebenszeichen

1968 Letzte Worte(short)

1967 The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz(short)

1964 Game in the Sand(short)

1962 Herakles (short)

The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001, directed by Joel and Ethan Coen) is an excellent black and white movie, where every shadow has a purpose, where the atmosphere of the 1940′ is completely recreated, where the close-ups tell stories themselves. A rich source for interpretations. Billy Bob Thornton is brilliant in the skin of a man who likes to be an observer of his own life, forced to act by a blind and ironic fate. The images of haircuts, aka. types of personalities or hidden beings inside ourselves, reappear as a central metaphor. The scene in which Ed kills Big Dave is dominated by the constant ticking of a clock, bringing a metaphysical dimension in an otherwise very mundane course of events.

                                        Ed Crane: Time slows down right before an accident, and I had time to think about things. I thought about what an undertaker had told me once – that your hair keeps growing, for a while anyway, after you die, and then it stops. I thought, “What keeps it growing? Is it like a plant in soil? What goes out of the soil? The soul? And when does the hair realize that it’s gone?”

“The Man Who Wasn’t There is a modern film in black and white, falling somewhere in between the works of Raymond Chandler and Albert Camus. It has all the trappings of noir: a deadpan, sardonic protagonist, a heavily shadowed atmosphere, and a crime of both money and passion. But its idea, the question it poses over and over, is undeniably modern. “What kind of man are you?” Ed is asked, repeatedly. But being just another gear in the machinery of society, it’s a question he’s hard-pressed to find an answer to.

Many moviegoers would ask why anyone would willingly film a movie in black and white. It’s often been seen as the restriction of an era and medium. After all, as history has shown us, if directors could film in color, they did. Well, not quite. (…)

 In fact, The Man Who Wasn’t There is a working experiment that shows black and white cinematography can often be essential to the story itself. With their obsessive attention to detail, the Coens didn’t just set out to create a homage to the noir genre, they created a film that from all appearances could have existed nearly sixty years ago. Much of the movie is made with black and white in mind. The drabness of Ed’s life is well-suited to the medium. The interplay of light and shadow create contrasts between characters and settings. Seeing Ed walk with half of his face obscured is a telling indication of his nature. Cigarette smoke becomes an integral prop–Ed chain smokes through nearly every scene in the movie. The curling wisps of smoke in the light create a surrealism to an otherwise hard reality. With slight adjustments to the lighting and exposure, the cinematographer, Roger Deakins, effortlessly creates scenes of banality, mystery, and drama.

The film, however, does more than showcase style. The story of Ed Crane’s fall is carefully balanced between personalities and the circumstances driving them. There are many characters woven into the plot, some of them more important than others. Yet all of them have distinct traits and mannerisms that make them stand out on their own. Ed is perhaps the most paradoxical of them all.  He could be called an “everyman,” except that there’s not an ounce of variety in him. There’s little that he reacts to. His low, dispassionate voice rarely betrays any emotion. All in all, he makes a brick wall look lively. So what’s his appeal?

 Something is writhing underneath the surface of Ed. His expression lies somewhere in between discontent and disgust. He finds out that his wife is sleeping with her boss, Big Dave Brewster. Does he care? It’s hard to tell where he stands with it all.

 Then one day at the barber shop, a sleazy entrepreneur is looking for venture capital for a business he wants to start. It’s the future of the service industry. It’s called dry-cleaning. At first Ed barely pays him any mind, but the thought of becoming something more than a barber at his brother-in-law’s shop begins to eat at him. He decides to put up the $10,000 capital. How is he getting the money? He’s going to blackmail Big Dave, threatening to expose his affair with Mrs. Crane. Maybe he doesn’t care all that much.

 The plot spirals out from there with key characters dying and people you wouldn’t expect to be accused of the crimes ending up in jail. Along the way, there are some illuminating performances by Frances McDormand, Tony Shalhoub, and Scarlett Johansson.

 Does Ed ever find out what kind of man he is? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps what he finds out in the end is that the search for our identity in this brave new world becomes our identity. And by the time that search comes to its inevitable end, we’ve stop caring about what we were looking for in the first place.”

 REVIEW from http://www.silverscreenings.net/crime/review-of-the-man-who-wasnt-there

Spanish director Alejandro Amenabar (n. 31 martie 1972, Santiago de Chile, Chile):

(2009) Agora  – a historical drama set in Roman Egypt, 391 A.D., mixing science, religious wars and the story of a female philosophy professor and atheist Hypatia of Alexandria. The movie fails to be what it could have been. A clean performance, but not impressive in any way. Dull. None of the characters has real life. Just puppets. The director seems to have been in a hurry when making this movie. A pleasant film for the masses, nonetheless. For me, unsatisfying.

(2004) The Sea Inside  (Mar adentro) – the movie that made Amenabar widely known as a promising director. His best work. Not mindblowing, but definitely worthy to see and with a very touching plot.  The real-life story of Spaniard Ramon Sampedro, who fought a 30 year campaign in favor of euthanasia and his own right to die.

(2001) The Others  – It may be the best thriller in a long long time. Witty, perfectly engineered. It follows the American cinematic cliches, but it does it with maximum effect. Nicole Kidman’s interpretation is flawless. In its genre, the movie excels.

(1997) Open Your Eyes  (Abre los ojos) – Compared to its remake – Vanilla Sky – Abre los ojos is neither better, nor worse. They’re on the same level. One with the touches of the European taste for twisted psychologies, the other with Hollywoodian curiosity for complicated situations. Both tell the same story, but with different strong points. Movies to be consumed and slowly forgotten.

(1996) Tesis

Alejandro Amenabar is still very young and could offer much to the future art of cinematography. We’re waiting to see what comes next on his list. We should yet keep in mind that his favourite directors are Steven Spielberg, James Cameron and Stanley Kubrick.

When I first saw Kieslowski’s trilogy – Blue, Blanc, Rouge – I was impressed about the extraordianary power this film director has. Power to make the invisible appear, power to detect  the most delicate feelings, power to play with emotions and music. Thanks to him, I fell in love with Zbigniew Preisner’s art and I have been listening to it ever since.

Blue, Blanc and Rouge must be seen one after the other,  the same day if possible. They are not separate  movies. The way Kieslowski makes connections between them draws the viewer even deeper. I found the same game in Wong Kar Wai’s movies and I absolutely liked it.

Even if the trilogy cannot be described, but only seen and felt, this review might catch your interest:

“Polish director Krzysztof Kieślowski began his Trois Couleurs trilogy with a series of questions: Taking the motto of the French Republic — liberté, égalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, brotherhood), which he associated with the colors of the tricolore, the French flag — Kieślowski and his longtime co-writer Krzysztof Piesiewicz, a prominent Polish attorney, set out to examine those abstract ideals in a contemporary context. Beginning work on the trilogy in 1992, just as the Maastricht Treaty created the European Union and only a year after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Kieślowski and Piesiewicz wanted to inquire into the role those revolutionary ideals might play in those changing times.

Beginning with explicit references to the unification of Europe, the trilogy often refers, however obliquely, to the idea of interdependency, of existing ties between characters and indeed, by implication, among all humanity. Throughout his career, Kieślowski constantly questioned the roles that chance, destiny, and free will play in our lives, examining the way that we may unknowingly be socially connected to others and the degree to which we are innately connected by simple virtue of our humanity and simultaneous coexistence. He was a moralist — not a proscriptive moralist trying to force a set of values down an audience’s throat, but a kind of moral inquisitor seeking to discover what values might be considered universal.

The first film in the trilogy, Bleu, asks if a person can ever be truly free, truly independent. Its protagonist, Julie de Courcy (Juliette Binoche), is the wife of a famous composer and mother to a beautiful little girl, both of whom die in the film’s opening minutes, when their car hits a tree on an almost treeless stretch of rural highway. The nature of the accident opens the door to Kieślowski’s ongoing questioning of causality — was it chance or fate that brought them there? And to what degree can Julie determine what her own life will be in the aftermath of such an event?

Along with Piesiewicz, the trilogy also continued Kieślowski’s collaboration with composer Zbigniew Preisner, who actually wrote all the music contained within Bleu in advance of its production, a reversal of the usual practice. Preisner’s music in many ways drives the film’s plot, as it is his composition that the film introduces as being written by Julie’s husband Patrice, an unfinished concerto for the ceremonies celebrating the unification of Europe. In a fury of abnegation, Julie tries to destroy Patrice’s work rather than deal with it, but it is inescapable. She hears the concerto in her head in moments of grief, and even the homeless musician outside her favorite café plays the tune on his little recorder. Patrice’s music is everywhere: It is memory itself. At moments, as emotion assails her, the concerto rises and the image suddenly fades out to black (or, when the feeling is most intense, blue) before fading back in for the scene to continue. It’s a brilliant tactic, using a piece of film vocabulary that usually signals the end of a scene as a way of conveying a character’s subjective experience. It’s as though her pain is so great that the film itself can’t bear it.

Her loss too great to comprehend, let alone endure, Julie seeks to move on by cutting all ties to her former life. She returns to her maiden name, Vignon, and tries to lose herself in Paris’ bustling fifth arrondissement. She furnishes her small apartment spartanly, with few chairs — she’s not expecting guests — and her daughter’s mobile of blue glass beads, which serves as her only reminder of her family.

Julie hardens herself, attempting to cultivate an indifference to life, to separate herself not merely from her loss but from all emotion. By refusing all ties and obligations, she thinks she can live in total freedom — liberté — from connections that might cause her further pain. “I don’t want any belongings, any memories. No friends, no love. Those are all traps,” she says, but she cannot escape her feelings any more than she can her connections to others. As a counterpoint to Julie’s futile quest, we see that her mother truly lives without connections — lost in the fog of Alzheimer’s, she mistakes Julie for her aunt Marie-France, who has apparently been dead for some years. This, Kieślowski implies, is the nightmare of a life absent connections — without them, how would we find meaning?

Julie’s experiment fails: She finds that life demands engagement. Even her deliberate attempts not to involve herself in the lives of others backfire, as when her refusal to sign a petition to force out her downstairs neighbor for moral turpitude causes the neighbor to see her as a friend. Later, as will also happen in Rouge, Julie finds out important information pertaining to her life through a news report — another sign of interconnectedness — that was deliberately arranged to provoke her response. Old acquaintances and new obligations continue to force themselves upon her, driving her to confront her past, her loss, and the hold that its legacy will continue to have over her.

Kieślowski wrote Bleu with Binoche in mind — he told her agent he wouldn’t make the film if she couldn’t star — and it’s easy to see why. Binoche is among the most beautiful actresses in the world, yet she has a quality that is almost unique among their number: It’s rare that the faces of beautiful women are truly expressive, but Binoche, who speaks as little as possible in Bleu and never about her feelings, is able to make herself entirely transparent, to communicate everything that Julie is trying so hard to deny and to hide, as well as her struggle to do so. Not having familiarized us with her or her family prior to their accident, Kieślowski depends entirely on Binoche’s performance to draw us in emotionally, and she does so with heartbreaking restraint.

(taste it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HCvyJvqpqY&feature=related)

Blanc, the trilogy’s second and slightest film, addresses the concept of equality by examining a romantic relationship in which it is entirely lacking, one in which the scales must be balanced. Equality here isn’t some noble ideal: It means revenge. The film opens with the arrival of its protagonist Karol Karol (Zbigniew Zamachowski) at a Parisian courthouse; his younger, more attractive wife, Dominique Vidal (Julie Delpy), has requested a divorce because he’s impotent — theirs is an unconsummated or “white” marriage. In the courtroom, Karol specifically invokes the notion of égalité, asking if the court is giving Dominique preferential treatment because he’s a foreigner and doesn’t speak the language. The reason for his impotence is never specified, but it appears that Karol is impaired by his feelings of inferiority to Dominique and to the French in general.

Initially, Karol is a pathetic figure, emasculated and likely cuckolded by Dominique, without money or friends in a foreign city where he cannot speak the language, yet our pity for him is leavened with humor. The short, squat Zamachowski has a childlike quality that dimly recalls Chaplin’s Little Tramp (“Karol” is the Polish equivalent of “Charlie”), and his situation, even at its bleakest, plays as black comedy. The film’s humor emerges more fully as Karol’s fortunes change: In the film’s first half, its tone, as set by Preisner’s score, often retains a hint of melancholy even when events are comical; in the second half, Preisner introduces the lighter, more cheerful rhythms of a tango, which reoccur throughout the remainder of the film.

Blanc begins in Paris, but the bulk of its story takes place in Warsaw, home to both Karol and Kieślowski himself. A chance meeting with another Pole gives Karol an opportunity to travel home, and as Julie did, he takes a single emblem of his life before, a plaster bust of an 18th-century maiden that reminds him of Dominique. Once back in Warsaw, he embarks on a series of schemes intended to improve his fortunes and win back Dominique. In the newly capitalist Poland, criminal enterprise abounds, and soon the unprepossessing little man is involved in money laundering and shady land deals, competing with and — shockingly — outsmarting the local gangsters. He uses his ill-gotten loot to build a minor import/export empire, all the while developing his complex and highly unorthodox scheme to balance the scales with Dominique. Initially a hapless putz, Karol gradually becomes the master of his fate.

In an interview, Kieślowski said the film’s real subject was humiliation, and indeed the first appearance of the color white comes when a pigeon shits on Karol’s overcoat. His situation can be read as an allegory of Poland’s impotence in Western Europe at the time: In the early 1990s, Poland was just beginning to rebuild its government and economy after decades of Soviet rule, and it could not yet compete with the powerhouse economies of the West, nor would Poland be welcomed into the then-nascent European Union for another decade. Blanc is suffused with the feeling of change within Poland and with outward signs of both new freedom and new corruption and violence. “These days you can buy anything,” is a regular refrain.

The trilogy’s final film, Rouge, opens with a phone call, traced from its inception in England through the wires running under the Channel and all the way to Geneva, where we see that the line is busy at the other end. Rouge is all about connections, both those that are missed and those that are inevitable, so phones are symbolic of both communication and frustration, and throughout the film, electronic devices, especially phones, often betray the characters.

In Rouge, Kieślowski gives us a parallel woman and man — the neighbors Valentine Dussaut (Iréne Jacob) and Auguste Bruner (Jean-Pierre Lorit), both of whom are in moribund relationships with unreliable partners — and a parallel of youth and age — in judicial student Auguste and the retired judge Joseph Kern (Jean-Louis Trintignant), who may be intended as the same man at different points in his life or simply as two men with many commonalities who display the different paths a life can take. In looking at those paths, Kieślowski suggests that any is potentially changeable, that a second chance is always possible. As Kieślowski scholar Annette Insdorf observes in her DVD commentary, throughout the trilogy, Kieślowski posits a compensatory universe in which negative events are balanced by positive ones.

As in the other films, Preisner’s music sets the tone — for the tragedy of Bleu, he wrote a grand concerto; for Blanc’s dark comedy, a tango; for the complexly layered Rouge it’s a bolero, which Insdorf describes as “basically the development of a theme … that keeps repeating and accumulating,” a parallel of the film’s visual and thematic construction.

The issue here is fraternité, or brotherhood, and what Kieślowski is examining is a continuation of what he explored in Bleu — having seen that it is impossible to live a life totally free of obligations to others, he’s looking at just what those obligations might be. He begins with a character who feels obligation very heavily: When Valentine accidentally hits a dog with her car, she picks up the bloody, limp body and places it in her back seat, then sets out to find the owner. He turns out to be Kern, an elderly man who lives alone and has no interest in the dog’s injury, so she takes it to a veterinarian herself and later returns to try to convince Kern to take his dog back. In doing so, the open, guileless young woman enters his misanthropic world.

Kern is a retired judge, so sick of seeing the worst of humanity that he has removed himself from the world entirely. In outline, he’s a combination of Julie’s isolation and Karol’s impotence, sitting in his comfortable suburban home with no company but his neighbors’ private conversations, which he eavesdrops on via an electronic surveillance system. Horrified at his invasion of their privacy, Valentine tells him he must stop, but she doesn’t judge him for his voyeurism (which, not incidentally, mirrors the voyeurism of a movie audience); rather she pities him for having arrived at such a sad state. Over time, an unexpected filial intimacy builds between the judge and Valentine, and the films’ isolated figures are revealed to be inextricably linked.

One of Kern’s neighbors, it turns out, is the girlfriend of Valentine’s neighbor Auguste, whom Valentine has never met, though they are constantly just missing each other. Auguste himself, it happens, is studying to be a judge, and many of his experiences, both as a student and as a lover, are gradually shown to parallel events in Kern’s life.

Kern explains that all of life is guided by chance, that had he been born into other circumstances he certainly would have become a criminal. It is this sense of the contingent, of the myriad possibilities of life, that gives Kieślowski’s work a particular dramatic frisson and maintains the credibility of his films even when coincidences pile up in a way that seems improbable — Kieślowski sees the universe as working this way, and he’s able to make us believe in it as well, at least for the length of a film.

The situations in Rouge are exaggerated versions of experiences we’ve all had — how often have we been surprised to learn that a new friend or lover had attended the same concert or frequented the same bakery, that their lives had come within an inch of touching ours, perhaps many times, before finally we knew them? — and they point to one of the trilogy’s central motifs. Call it fate or mere coincidence, it hardly matters. There is a connection that we all share, whether we’re aware of it or not, as much with the other concertgoers or bakery patrons as with the one we eventually became close to. It could have been any of them who became part of our lives, and perhaps some of them have in ways we don’t even realize. In Bleu, Julie visits a courthouse in search of a woman she’s never met, though they are connected intimately, and she opens the door to a courtroom, finds it’s the wrong one, and walks away. The courtroom is the one where Dominique and Karol’s divorce is being adjudicated, and we see the scene again, from Karol’s point of view in Blanc.

There is a minor figure that reoccurs throughout the trilogy in different forms: a black-clad person, stooped with age, who reaches up to insert a bottle into a recycling bin. In Bleu, Julie sees the old woman but doesn’t really notice her, so focused is she on achieving detachment from the world. In Blanc, Karol laughs at the old man, amused by his persistence at such an insignificant task. But in Rouge, when Valentine sees the woman, she walks over, takes her hand, and guides the bottle into the bin. She recognizes, as the others do not, at least at those points in their stories, the obligations of interconnectedness.

Upon the release of Rouge, Kieślowski, only 53 years old, announced his retirement from directing (sadly, he died less than two years later). He declared that he had said what he had to say and didn’t want to repeat himself. He called the film a summation of his work, but it’s more, even, than that. In all his films, Kieślowski acted as a moral philosopher, seeking out basic truths in complex, harsh, and often dehumanizing situations. What he sought, what drove him on, was nothing less than the desire to find a design for ethical living. What he found was the same basic value that many thinkers have arrived at: Be kind. As a philosophy, it is no more than fragmentary, but its essential validity is difficult to argue, and the diligence of Kieślowski’s lifelong inquiry gives it the weight of a truth hard-won.”

(article by Jeremy C. Fox, link: http://www.pajiba.com/guides/kiealowskis-trois-couleurs-trilogy.php)

The words in which critics describe this movie are:

“masterpiece”,

“medieval epic, based on the life of the Russian monk and icon painter”,

“an unflinching gaze at medieval Russia during the first quarter of the 15th century, a period of Mongol-Tartar invasion and growing Christian influence”,

“one of the most important Russian films over the past two or three decades”,

“One of cinema’s stunning achievements. If God ever watched a movie, he might as well pick this one.”

“One of the best films about an artist, if not the best.”

“A strange and most challenging film, Andrei Rublev is a dreamy, sooty, black-and-white chronicle set against early 15th century Russian history. Tarkovsky is fascinated with images of nature, animals, natural processes, and he allows them to add another layer of meaning to the human strife playing out in the foreground. I’m not sure what Rublev is completely about but the trick is to ride along with it, as it soon becomes a beautiful and wondrous sort of cinematic experience, played out against the rhythms of galloping horses or the falling rain, and the veil-like shrouds of rain and snow. Tarkovsky’s parable concerns the titular monk-painter struggling with reconciling his relationship with the church and his own personal morality, with the purpose of art in the midst of so much injustice and turmoil. Intimate and grittily shot, this isn’t so much a biopic (Rublev sometimes isn’t even directly involved in much of the action, rather just an observer swept up in the tide of historical events), so much as a philosophical tract as pondered by its director over its long but always hypnotic telling.” (by Jay Antani)

“it also stuns with the sort of unexpected poetic explosions we’ve come to expect from Tarkovsky”

“It’s Tarkovsky’s lighter touches, coupled with his majestic vision, that makes Andrei Rublev such compulsive viewing some 25 years after its original release.”

Filmography:

2009 Das weisse Band – Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte - alb-negru, concis, foarte bine jucat si filmat, dar rece. Gradatie perfecta a suspansului si totusi prea lung. Unele scene par sa nu aiba legatura cu povestea. Actiunea are loc intr-un sat german cu putin inainte de Primul Razboi Mondial si se termina in momentul cand Austro-Ungaria declara razboi Serbiei. Conform regizorului, filmul vorbeste despre “originea oricarui tip de terorism, fie el de natura politica sau religioasa”. Funda alba este un indemn sa ne amintim de puritatea la care ar trebui sa aspiram.
Ma urmareste privirea actorului Leonard Proxauf (Martin). Restul ramane in umbra.

Ca atmosfera si tematica, se inrudeste cu cartea lui GUNTER GRASS – Pisica si soarecele.

2007 Funny Games U.S.

2005 Caché - genial, perfect construit, cadre statice lungi, cateva secunde care socheaza prin violenta a tot ceea ce implica mai mult decat toate filmele horror la un loc. Trateaza tema vinei si responsabilitatii. Dialoguri cu substanta. Joc actoricesc fara greseala. Trairi profunde.

2003 Le temps du loup – o distopie post-apocaliptica care-si ia titlul de la Völuspá, un poem norvegian care descrie timpul dinainte de Ragnarök, sfarsitul lumii. Printre personaje, un grup de polonezi, care de fapt vorbesc romana. Tema favorita a regizorului: etica, amoralitate, imoralitate, bine si rau, inocenta, uman in fata fricii. Include mai multe elemente de mitologie si folclor. Un bocet romanesc. Imaginea care persista: un copil gol, pregatit sa se arunce in foc ca sa salveze lumea.

“My films are intended as polemical statements against the American ‘barrel down’ cinema and its dis-empowerment of the spectator. They are an appeal for a cinema of insistent questions instead of false (because too quick) answers, for clarifying distance in place of violating closeness, for provocation and dialogue instead of consumption and consensus.”

“Pornography, it seems to me, is no different from war films or propaganda films in that it tries to make the visceral, horrific, or transgressive elements of life consumable.”

“Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth.”

“My favourite film-maker of the decade is Abbas Kiarostami. He achieves a simplicity that’s so difficult to attain.”

Niciunul dintre filmele lui Haneke nu ofera solutii.

Toi mon amour, mon ami
Quand je rêve c’est de toi
Mon amour, mon ami
Quand je chante c’est pour toi
Mon amour, mon ami
Je ne peux vivre sans toi
Mon amour, mon ami
Et je ne sais pas pourquoi

Je n’ai pas connu d’autre garçon que toi
Si j’en ai connu je ne m’en souviens pas
A quoi bon chercher faire des comparaisons
J’ai un cœur qui sait quand il a raison
Et puisqu’il a pris ton nom

Toi mon amour, mon ami
Quand je rêve c’est de toi
Mon amour, mon ami
Quand je chante c’est pour toi
Mon amour, mon ami
Je ne peux vivre sans toi
Mon amour, mon ami
Et je sais très bien pourquoi

On ne sait jamais jusqu’où ira l’amour
Et moi qui croyais pouvoir t’aimer toujours
Oui je t’ai quitté et j’ai beau résister
Je chante parfois à d’autres que toi
Un peu moins bien chaque fois

Toi mon amour, mon ami
Quand je rêve c’est de toi
Mon amour, mon ami
Quand je chante c’est pour toi
Mon amour, mon ami
Je ne peux vivre sans toi
Mon amour, mon ami
Et je ne sais pas pourquoi.

(Marie Laforet)

“Literatura, chiar dacă scriitorul nu este conștient, e un act de nesupunere, nu neapărat politică, dar un act de nesupunere în fața vieții și a istoriei. Dacă inventezi lumi, este pentru că lumea așa cum este nu-ți este suficientă. E ceva revoluționar în ficțiune: îți dă dorințe, apetit pentru lucrurile pe care nu le ai în lumea reală. Cînd ieși dintr-o lectură și treci prin experiența unei cărți mari, ești sensibil la toate imperfecțiunile și la toate mediocritățile lumii reale. Romanul este sursa tuturor criticilor față de lume și societate. Dacă n-ar fi așa, de ce toate regimurile dictatoriale din istorie au stabilit sisteme de cenzură pentru literatură? Pentru că se temeau. Și aveau dreptate să se teamă. Fără cărțile bune pe care le-am citit, aș fi avut o viziune mult mai strîmtă asupra lumii.”

(in “Dilema veche”, nr. 347, 13 octombrie 2010)

“Una strada è un luogo in continua trasformazione e come tale – dice l’artista bolognese- imprevedibile, cioè irrazionale, che sfugge per sua natura a qualsiasi capacità meramente interpretativa”. Ma anche “un luogo di relazioni,  cioè di incroci, di contaminazioni e attraversamenti, un luogo vivo che, per sua natura, porta a far incontrare le persone”.

Ecco, dunque, il significato di 86 scatti ottenuti con due macchine fotografiche contrapposte: una orientata in avanti, sede della ragione e dell’interpretazione, attraverso la quale il fotografo esercita il suo ruolo di selezionatore dell’immagine ritratta. E una orientata di spalle, quindi irrazionale, non governata dall’autore, dove il fotografo non può fare altro che subire gli effetti di questo autonomo pulsare di vita propria di una strada come la via Emilia.

“Eu construiesc linii și combinații de culori pe suprafețe plate, ca să exprim frumusețea generală cu conștiență maximă. Natura (sau ceea ce văd) mă inspiră și mă pune, ca orice alt pictor, într-o stare emoțională, facilitând venirea unei dorințe puternice care mă indeamnă să fac ceva, dar veau să ajung cât de aproape e posibil de adevăr și să fac totul abstract de la acel punct, până când ajung la fundația (încă tot o fundație externă!) lucrurilor.

Eu cred că este posibil ca, prin liniile orizontale și verticale construite cu conștiență, dar nu cu calculare, îndrumate de înalta intuiție și aduse la armonie și ritm, aceste forme de bază a frumuseții, suplimentate dacă este necesar cu alte linii sau curbe directe, pot să devină o lucrare de artă, atât puternică cât și adevărată.”

Hakuin Ekaku (1685-1768):

“At the bottom of great doubt lies great awakening. If you doubt fully, you will awaken fully”.

“You know the sound of two hands clapping; tell me, what is the sound of one hand?”

“Meditation in the midst of activity is a thousand times superior to meditation in stillness”.

A Koan about Hakuin:

A beautiful Japanese girl whose parents owned a food store lived near Hakuin. One day, without any warning, her parents discovered she was with child. This made her parents angry. She would not confess who the man was, but after much harassment at last named Hakuin.

In great anger the parent went to the master. “Is that so?” was all he would say.

After the child was born it was brought to Hakuin. By this time he had lost his reputation, which did not trouble him, but he took very good care of the child. He obtained milk from his neighbors and everything else the child needed.

A year later the girl could stand it no longer. She told her parents the truth – the real father of the child was a young man who worked in the fish market.

The mother and father of the girl at once went to Hakuin to ask forgiveness, to apologize at length, and to get the child back.

Hakuin willingly yielded the child, saying only: “Is that so?”

“Cranes”

Text: Rasul Gamzatov

Sometimes it seems to me  that our soldiers,

That were not to return from fields of gore,

Did not lie down into our ground

But turned into white cranes.

And now they’re flying and calling out to us

From that old time that passed.

Maybe this is the reason why we often stop talking

When we look up in sky.

The weary wedge of cranes is flying in sky,

It flies at the end of the day.

And there is a small space inside this wedge

Maybe it is a place for me.

Maybe it will come a day when I shall fly

With the flock of cranes in the same blue sky

And I shall call for everyone, whom I left on the ground,

From the sky, in the language of birds.

Sometimes it seems to me  that our soldiers,

That were not to return from fields of gore,

Did not lie down into our ground

But turned into white cranes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yB1J7JBszys&feature=fvw

And she left in the fall

That’s her picture on the wall

She always had that little drop of poison

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