The great photographer Garry Winogrand took more than a million pictures during his career. Among his preferred subjects was people at airports, especially those saddled with luggage.
“When we talk about people psychologically and having issues we say, ‘Oh, they’ve got baggage,’” notes Geoff Dyer, author of a book on Winogrand. “That’s one of the things that’s so manifested in Winogrand. Yeah, we see the baggage these people are carrying.”
Dyer makes that observation in the documentary Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable, a film in which director Sasha Waters Freyer unpacks the complicated life and remarkable work of a man some consider the greatest American street photographer.
“He was really interested in these public spaces where a certain kind of theater of the street might unfold,” Waters Freyer tells Deadline. “He took this style associated with photojournalism and brought it into the world of the fine arts.
“When we talk about people psychologically and having issues we say, ‘Oh, they’ve got baggage,’” notes Geoff Dyer, author of a book on Winogrand. “That’s one of the things that’s so manifested in Winogrand. Yeah, we see the baggage these people are carrying.”
Dyer makes that observation in the documentary Garry Winogrand: All Things Are Photographable, a film in which director Sasha Waters Freyer unpacks the complicated life and remarkable work of a man some consider the greatest American street photographer.
“He was really interested in these public spaces where a certain kind of theater of the street might unfold,” Waters Freyer tells Deadline. “He took this style associated with photojournalism and brought it into the world of the fine arts.
- 5/31/2019
- by Matthew Carey
- Deadline Film + TV
Some people find travel broadening. Some people travel to relax and get away from it all. When Geoff Dyer travels, the world is like a million hammers, pounding him into himself, creating a strange and wonderful hall of mirrors that, while it can be trying -- even depressing -- is strangely exhilarating. That's the basic story and feel of Yoga For People Who Can't Be Bothered To Do It, Dyer's irrepressible but annoying memoir/travelogue, published in 2003.
Dyer is a thinker/writer. Thankfully, he has a comic's touch; sometimes he can be very funny indeed. Most of the humor comes out of the situations he, pathetic geek that he is, puts himself in. There are a couple of "jokes" which ring out discordantly, but overall, the humor is organic and tinged with some pretty deep, pretty depressing thinking.Nietzsche on the borscht belt. The chapters, culled from various essays, articles,...
Dyer is a thinker/writer. Thankfully, he has a comic's touch; sometimes he can be very funny indeed. Most of the humor comes out of the situations he, pathetic geek that he is, puts himself in. There are a couple of "jokes" which ring out discordantly, but overall, the humor is organic and tinged with some pretty deep, pretty depressing thinking.Nietzsche on the borscht belt. The chapters, culled from various essays, articles,...
- 11/22/2017
- by Ken Krimstein
- www.culturecatch.com
Andrei Tarkovsky’s bizarre philosophical science fiction epic may be his most successful picture overall — every image and word makes its precise desired effect. Three daring men defy the law to penetrate ‘the Zone’ and learn the truth behind the notion that a place called The Room exists where all wishes are granted. Plenty of art films promise profound ideas, but this one delivers.
Stalker
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 888
1979 / Color / 1:37 flat full frame / 161 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 18, 2017 / 39.95
Starring: Aleksandr Kaidanovsky, Anatoly Solonitsyn, Nikolai Grinko, Alisa Freindlikh, Natasha Abramova.
Cinematography: Alexander Knyazhinsky
Film Editor: Lyudmila Feyginova
Original Music: Eduard Artemyev
Written by Andrei Tarkovsky and Arkady Struagtsky, Boris Strugatsky from their novel Roadside Picnic.
Produced by Aleksandra Demidova
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
If the definition of film artist is ‘one who goes his own way,’ Andrei Tarkovsky qualifies mightily. Reportedly cursed with a halting career...
Stalker
Blu-ray
The Criterion Collection 888
1979 / Color / 1:37 flat full frame / 161 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 18, 2017 / 39.95
Starring: Aleksandr Kaidanovsky, Anatoly Solonitsyn, Nikolai Grinko, Alisa Freindlikh, Natasha Abramova.
Cinematography: Alexander Knyazhinsky
Film Editor: Lyudmila Feyginova
Original Music: Eduard Artemyev
Written by Andrei Tarkovsky and Arkady Struagtsky, Boris Strugatsky from their novel Roadside Picnic.
Produced by Aleksandra Demidova
Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
If the definition of film artist is ‘one who goes his own way,’ Andrei Tarkovsky qualifies mightily. Reportedly cursed with a halting career...
- 8/19/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
I have seen every Tarkovsky film, and there is little doubt in my mind they gain infinitely in a theater, where the scope and beauty of them can be most fully appreciated. His wide, glacial shots are too enveloping to be shoved into a screen that never ventures into one’s peripheral vision. Questioning the necessity of a home video release is absurd – old films are predominantly viewed at this point in time on televisions. To not send his work there would be to condemn it to near nonexistence. It is unfortunate, but it is. The issue is how to do it responsibly, to present the work with a nod towards the theatrical experience and an understanding between disc and viewer that the transfer may be insufficient, but the film certainly isn’t.
And if this all sounds terribly esoteric, so be it, but given my transformative experience seeing Mirror,...
And if this all sounds terribly esoteric, so be it, but given my transformative experience seeing Mirror,...
- 7/28/2017
- by Scott Nye
- CriterionCast
Stars: Alexander Kaidanovsky, Anatoli Solonitsyn, Nikolai Grinko, Alisa Freindlich | Written by Boris Strugatsky, Arkadi Strugatsky | Directed by Andrei Tarkovsky
Based on Boris and Arkadi Strugatsky’s novel Roadside Picnic (not to mention the inspiration behind a famous video game series), this 1979 epic is a typically challenging work from Russian auteur Andrei Tarkovsky, but it is worth the effort.
Stalker is ponderous and bleak; demanding without being impenetrable; and guilty of navel-gazing, certainly, but far too intriguing and unsettling to be turned off. Plus, it’s split neatly into two bite-sized parts, so no excuses. The barebones plot involves three men – a Writer and a Professor, led by the titular Stalker – departing the dilapidated city for the forbidden “Zone”, a rural wasteland littered with industrial junk and devoid of people. The Zone is also, perhaps, a sentient entity. The men are searching for the meaning of life. Kinda.
Stalker is true...
Based on Boris and Arkadi Strugatsky’s novel Roadside Picnic (not to mention the inspiration behind a famous video game series), this 1979 epic is a typically challenging work from Russian auteur Andrei Tarkovsky, but it is worth the effort.
Stalker is ponderous and bleak; demanding without being impenetrable; and guilty of navel-gazing, certainly, but far too intriguing and unsettling to be turned off. Plus, it’s split neatly into two bite-sized parts, so no excuses. The barebones plot involves three men – a Writer and a Professor, led by the titular Stalker – departing the dilapidated city for the forbidden “Zone”, a rural wasteland littered with industrial junk and devoid of people. The Zone is also, perhaps, a sentient entity. The men are searching for the meaning of life. Kinda.
Stalker is true...
- 7/25/2017
- by Rupert Harvey
- Nerdly
July 18th Blu-ray & DVD Releases Include Kong: Skull Island, Resident Evil: Vendetta, The Bat People
For the brand new Blu-ray and DVD offerings coming out on Tuesday, July 18th, we have an eclectic assortment of titles, both new and old. As far as cult classics go, The Bat People, Freeway, Stalker, and Stormy Monday are all making their HD debuts on Blu this week, and if you missed Kong: Skull Island, Free Fire or Buster’s Mal Heart during their theatrical runs, now you’ll have a chance to catch up with these films on their home entertainment releases.
Other notable release for July 18th include Resident Evil: Vendetta, Another Evil, Lake Alice, and The Expanse: Season Two.
The Bat People (Scream Factory, Blu-ray)
Half Man, Half Bat, All Terror!
From director Jerry Jameson (Airport 77, Raise The Titanic) comes a high-flying horror from the darkest corner of the drive-in: The Bat People!
When Dr. John Beck and his wife Cathy fall into an underground cave,...
Other notable release for July 18th include Resident Evil: Vendetta, Another Evil, Lake Alice, and The Expanse: Season Two.
The Bat People (Scream Factory, Blu-ray)
Half Man, Half Bat, All Terror!
From director Jerry Jameson (Airport 77, Raise The Titanic) comes a high-flying horror from the darkest corner of the drive-in: The Bat People!
When Dr. John Beck and his wife Cathy fall into an underground cave,...
- 7/18/2017
- by Heather Wixson
- DailyDead
My nightly blood sacrifices seem to have finally paid off — or perhaps the world has finally wised up — for Criterion just announced that Russian slow-cinema maestro Andrei Tarkovsky‘s euphoric, perplexing masterpiece Stalker will be getting the 2K restoration treatment it so clearly deserves. (The same restored version will be screening at the Film Society of Lincoln Center for a one-week run starting on May 5, immediately followed by Solaris.)
With this news comes a new trailer, coated in glorious HD that brings tears of unspeakable joy to my eyes. The definition is so crisp, bringing to life Tarkvosky’s singular vision in such vivid presentation, that even a car blasting T.I.’s “Whatever You Like” out the window in full anachronistic fashion cannot stop me from being transported to a dark, strange place known as The Zone.
All personal digressions aside, Criterion’s restoration is a stunning achievement that...
With this news comes a new trailer, coated in glorious HD that brings tears of unspeakable joy to my eyes. The definition is so crisp, bringing to life Tarkvosky’s singular vision in such vivid presentation, that even a car blasting T.I.’s “Whatever You Like” out the window in full anachronistic fashion cannot stop me from being transported to a dark, strange place known as The Zone.
All personal digressions aside, Criterion’s restoration is a stunning achievement that...
- 4/19/2017
- by Mike Mazzanti
- The Film Stage
The Criterion Collection will venture to the Zone this July, and much more, as they’ve announced their new titles for the month. Andrei Tarkovsky‘s long-rumored sci-fi masterpiece Stalker will arrive with a new 2K restoration. The release will also include a new interview with author Geoff Dyer and newly translated English subtitles. Also arriving in July is Albert Brooks‘ satirical comedy Lost in America, featuring a new conversation with the director and Robert Weide, as well as interviews with the cast and crew.
One of the most notable releases of the month is Robert Bresson‘s masterful final film L’argent, which tracks a counterfeit bill through Paris, and the people it touches. Lastly, Roberto Rossellini‘s powerful War Trilogy is getting a much-deserved Blu-ray upgrade with new versions of Rome Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero. Check out the high-resolution cover art below and full release details.
One of the most notable releases of the month is Robert Bresson‘s masterful final film L’argent, which tracks a counterfeit bill through Paris, and the people it touches. Lastly, Roberto Rossellini‘s powerful War Trilogy is getting a much-deserved Blu-ray upgrade with new versions of Rome Open City, Paisan, and Germany Year Zero. Check out the high-resolution cover art below and full release details.
- 4/17/2017
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
As a film student, I, like many before me, found myself caught under the mesmerizing spell of Russian auteur Andrei Tarkovsky soon after I watched the opening shot of his seminal Stalker in class. I rushed to find a copy and, sitting on my dorm room bed — laptop open, headphones blasting — I watched, mouth agape, as the sheer poeticism and beauty of his work washed over me. For some, Russian slow cinema is a sleep-inducing slog better left on the dusty shelves of film history. For others (myself included), it proves a rapturous experience through its challenges and subsequent rewards. Steeped in philosophy, dread, and beauty, Tarkovsky’s picture is a staple and lasting example of the medium’s particular powers. With each revisit, Stalker continually unfolds new layers to the attentive viewer: though it was released in 1979, essayists and scholars (not to mention teachers and students) are still having a field day.
- 2/2/2017
- by Mike Mazzanti
- The Film Stage
For the fifth year, IndieWire is co-hosting the Locarno Critics Academy, giving a group of talented up-and-coming critics a chance to help their role in the current climate for film criticism and journalism at the Locarno International Film Festival. With assistance from Penske Media, the Swiss Alliance of Film Journalists and the Film Society of Lincoln Center, participants will engage in a series of activities and then get to work. They will spend the first half of the festival which begins today, in roundtable discussions with working critics and industry figures; beginning next week, they’ll write about films at this year’s festival, as well as topics ranging from television to digital media.
Before then, take a minute to get to know them, and find out what they’re looking forward to checking out. Keep up with their dispatches from this year’s festival here and follow them on Twitter.
Before then, take a minute to get to know them, and find out what they’re looking forward to checking out. Keep up with their dispatches from this year’s festival here and follow them on Twitter.
- 8/3/2016
- by Eric Kohn
- Indiewire
“There’s a line in Tarkovsky’s Solaris: we never know when we’re going to die and because of that we are, at any given moment, immortal. So at this moment it feels pretty good, being where I’ve always longed to be, perched on the farthest edge of the western world. There’s a wild sunset brewing up over the Pacific. The water is glowing turquoise, the sky is turning crazy pink, the lights of the Santa Monica Ferris wheel are starting to pulse and spin in the twilight. Life is so interesting I’d like to stick around for ever, just to see what happens, how it all turns out.”—Geoff Dyer, London Review of Books“As wars will be fought, and great loves found.”—Narrator, It’s Such a Beautiful DayPsycholinguists call the opening gag of It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2012), Don Hertzfeldt’s delightful hour-long feature,...
- 7/25/2016
- MUBI
Mubi is celebrating Canadian National Film Day, in partnership with Reel Canada, by exclusively showing Atom Egoyan's Calendar (1993). It is playing on Mubi from April 20 - May 19, 2016. Many thanks to the director, who generously has shared this new introduction to his film.Calendar. Photo © Ego Film Arts.It started with a very simple urge: to go there. Though both my parents are Armenian, I was born in Cairo, raised in Canada, and had never visited my “mother country.” In 1991 my fourth feature, The Adjuster, had been invited to the Moscow Film Festival. It won a prize, which included one million rubles (a fortune back then) to make a film somewhere in the Soviet Union. At the time, Armenia was part of the Soviet Union, and this would be my opportunity to go there.Over the next year, as I began to formulate an idea for a film, fate would work against me.
- 4/18/2016
- by Atom Egoyan
- MUBI
It might be missing the industry saturated Park City fervor, but the smaller, shorter, and more intimate Columbia, Missouri based True/False Film Festival is the Rolls-Royce (by way of John Deere) of doc focused cinema. Filmmaker Laura Poitras is not alone in stating that her “love for True/False runs deep – from the smart programming, passionate audiences, inspired buskers, and fabulous venues.” Time and time again, selected filmmakers throughout this year’s edition expressed their love of the fest, while plenty of filmmaker personalities from prior editions could be spotted milling around town as casual filmgoers happy to pay to relive the experience.
With a highly curated program just shy of 50 films shown on 9 different screens (each of which are walkable in just 5-10 minutes of one another) over just 4 days, True/False centers its attention on quality and community, both locally and cinematically. For a city with a...
With a highly curated program just shy of 50 films shown on 9 different screens (each of which are walkable in just 5-10 minutes of one another) over just 4 days, True/False centers its attention on quality and community, both locally and cinematically. For a city with a...
- 3/15/2016
- by Jordan M. Smith
- IONCINEMA.com
Set in a school for deaf children, this film without speech features a superb non-professional cast, but in places is too cruel to watch
Set in an insular deaf community in Kiev, Ukrainian writer/director Miroslav Slaboshpitsky’s highly praised debut feature is told entirely through unsubtitled sign language. His singularly unsentimental portrayal of the protagonists has an air of empowering authenticity. Yet the voyeuristic grimness of the world depicted in this “homage to silent film” offers a greater barrier than language ever could, forcing the audience to look away – a peculiarly perverse response to provoke given the film’s immersive achievements.
Related: If you can create a new lexicon, why then resort to genre cliches? | Geoff Dyer
Continue reading...
Set in an insular deaf community in Kiev, Ukrainian writer/director Miroslav Slaboshpitsky’s highly praised debut feature is told entirely through unsubtitled sign language. His singularly unsentimental portrayal of the protagonists has an air of empowering authenticity. Yet the voyeuristic grimness of the world depicted in this “homage to silent film” offers a greater barrier than language ever could, forcing the audience to look away – a peculiarly perverse response to provoke given the film’s immersive achievements.
Related: If you can create a new lexicon, why then resort to genre cliches? | Geoff Dyer
Continue reading...
- 5/17/2015
- by Mark Kermode, Observer film critic
- The Guardian - Film News
Consider an F18 fighter jet: 60 feet from nose to tail, 45 feet from wing to wing, capable at full throttle of Mach 1.8—just a notch below 1,200 miles per hour—and currently aimed at the deck of an aircraft carrier, coming in to land. From its tail hangs a hook designed to catch a wire stretched across the landing area. The hook is six inches wide. The wire is an inch and a half thick. The plane will touch down at 234 feet per second. The runway is 780 feet long. If all goes well, the jet hits the deck, the hook hits the wire, and the plane stops dead in under three seconds. If all does not go well, it can go, as you would imagine, rather badly. I have no evidence that Geoff Dyer opted to spend two weeks on an aircraft carrier out of a sense of...
- 5/19/2014
- by Kathryn Schulz
- Vulture
The Nine Network has reshuffled its acquisitions and programming teams in the lead-up to the launch of its subscription Video-on-Demand service.
The streaming service offering TV series and library movies is expected to debut in September. Nine Entertainment Co. and Seven West Media are negotiating. to become partners in the venture, If understands.
The price has not been disclosed but Nine Entertainment Co. CEO David Gyngell hinted at a fee of $9.95 per month at NEC.s half-year presentation, which would position the service as Australia's equivalent of Netflix.
That.s far cheaper than Foxtel.s movie service Presto, which charges $19.99 per month, and would give it an advantage over Quickflix, which costs $14.99 per month for unlimited streaming plus one DVD rental at a time. Quickflix has been trialling a $9.99 streaming-only offer.
Gyngell told shareholders he is aiming for 300,000-400,000 subscribers within five years. The appeal of internet-delivered services such as...
The streaming service offering TV series and library movies is expected to debut in September. Nine Entertainment Co. and Seven West Media are negotiating. to become partners in the venture, If understands.
The price has not been disclosed but Nine Entertainment Co. CEO David Gyngell hinted at a fee of $9.95 per month at NEC.s half-year presentation, which would position the service as Australia's equivalent of Netflix.
That.s far cheaper than Foxtel.s movie service Presto, which charges $19.99 per month, and would give it an advantage over Quickflix, which costs $14.99 per month for unlimited streaming plus one DVD rental at a time. Quickflix has been trialling a $9.99 streaming-only offer.
Gyngell told shareholders he is aiming for 300,000-400,000 subscribers within five years. The appeal of internet-delivered services such as...
- 4/23/2014
- by Don Groves
- IF.com.au
Telluride, Colo. -- Ralph Fiennes' The Invisible Woman, about Ellen Ternan (Felicity Jones), the failed actress and secret mistress that Victorian novelist Charles Dickens hid from the public for seven years, got a very proper reception at its world premiere Saturday at the Telluride Film Festival. The film, which Sony Pictures Classics will launch with a limited opening Dec. 25, received 25 seconds of sustained applause, followed by a Q&A with Fiennes and 2011 National Book Critics Circle Criticism Award winner Geoff Dyer, for which virtually every audience member stayed in their seats. Dyer compared the film to The French Lieutenant's Woman
read more...
read more...
- 9/1/2013
- by Tim Appelo
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
For years the essay film has been a neglected form, but now its unorthodox approach to constructing reality is winning over a younger, tech-savvy crowd
For a brief, almost unreal couple of hours last July, in amid the kittens and One Direction-mania trending on Twitter, there appeared a very surprising name – that of semi-reclusive French film-maker Chris Marker, whose innovative short feature La Jetée (1962) was remade in 1995 as Twelve Monkeys by Terry Gilliam. A few months earlier, art journal e-flux staged The Desperate Edge of Now, a retrospective of Adam Curtis's TV films, to large audiences on New York's Lower East Side. The previous summer, Handsworth Songs (1986), an experimental feature by the Black Audio Film Collective Salman Rushdie had once attacked as obscurantist and politically irrelevant, attracted a huge crowd at Tate Modern when it was screened shortly after the London riots.
Marker, Curtis, Black Audio: all have...
For a brief, almost unreal couple of hours last July, in amid the kittens and One Direction-mania trending on Twitter, there appeared a very surprising name – that of semi-reclusive French film-maker Chris Marker, whose innovative short feature La Jetée (1962) was remade in 1995 as Twelve Monkeys by Terry Gilliam. A few months earlier, art journal e-flux staged The Desperate Edge of Now, a retrospective of Adam Curtis's TV films, to large audiences on New York's Lower East Side. The previous summer, Handsworth Songs (1986), an experimental feature by the Black Audio Film Collective Salman Rushdie had once attacked as obscurantist and politically irrelevant, attracted a huge crowd at Tate Modern when it was screened shortly after the London riots.
Marker, Curtis, Black Audio: all have...
- 8/3/2013
- by Sukhdev Sandhu
- The Guardian - Film News
Is Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker about the gulags? Chernobyl? EU immigration? Geoff Dyer hunts down the meaning of a film so demanding that it may even have claimed the life of its director
Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker (1980) came second, behind Blade Runner, in a recent BFI poll of its members' top movies. In outline, it's one of the simplest films ever made: a guide, or Stalker, takes two people, Writer and Professor, into a forbidden area called the Zone, at the heart of which is the Room, where your deepest wish will come true. It is this simplicity that gives the film its fathomless resonance. If Tarkovsky's previous film, Solaris, seemed like a Soviet 2001, was Stalker Tarkovsky's take on The Wizard of Oz?
The starkness of its conception did not prevent the production traumas that seem integral to the creation myths of other favourites: the likes of Apocalypse Now and Fitzcarraldo.
Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker (1980) came second, behind Blade Runner, in a recent BFI poll of its members' top movies. In outline, it's one of the simplest films ever made: a guide, or Stalker, takes two people, Writer and Professor, into a forbidden area called the Zone, at the heart of which is the Room, where your deepest wish will come true. It is this simplicity that gives the film its fathomless resonance. If Tarkovsky's previous film, Solaris, seemed like a Soviet 2001, was Stalker Tarkovsky's take on The Wizard of Oz?
The starkness of its conception did not prevent the production traumas that seem integral to the creation myths of other favourites: the likes of Apocalypse Now and Fitzcarraldo.
- 2/6/2009
- by Geoff Dyer
- The Guardian - Film News
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.