We live in remarkable times, us film aficionados. Across the country it seems as though repertory theaters and art houses are opening at a never-before-seen rate and streaming services are seemingly even more prevalent. And with this comes the great honor of being part of a generation of rediscovery. Maybe you’re in middle America just now discovering Jean Renoir, or happen to be living in The Big Apple, and now have the chance to discover the work of an underrated titan of world cinema.
Starting earlier this week (and ending on 7/23), The Metrograph in New York City is introducing a new generation of film fans to the work of Geneva-born auteur Alain Tanner. Launching his career with 1969’s Charles, Dead or Alive, Tanner would go on to create an oeuvre full of outsiders, leftist politics and some of the most singular works of the golden age of world cinema.
Starting earlier this week (and ending on 7/23), The Metrograph in New York City is introducing a new generation of film fans to the work of Geneva-born auteur Alain Tanner. Launching his career with 1969’s Charles, Dead or Alive, Tanner would go on to create an oeuvre full of outsiders, leftist politics and some of the most singular works of the golden age of world cinema.
- 7/13/2017
- by Joshua Brunsting
- CriterionCast
I used to believe, like Wenders or Godard, in the death of cinema. I accepted it as fact but never believed in it. The movies, that’s what I believed in—a dark room, shadows on a surface, a bunch of lonely people sitting down, looking up.
Like Leos Carax to Serge Daney, Abel Ferrara showed me there’d be cinema ‘til the end of the world.
***
At first I thought Abel Ferrara’s films were badly acted; I soon realized Ferrara would take bad acting with truth in it over a masterpiece of falsehoods. (Later I found out that Ferrara would, in Dangerous Game and New Rose Hotel, use one to create the other.)
I thought his films were too commercial. “Already captivated by cinema, I didn’t need to be seduced as well,” as Serge Daney put it. Hollywood in the 21st century is a highly sophisticated marketing ploy.
Like Leos Carax to Serge Daney, Abel Ferrara showed me there’d be cinema ‘til the end of the world.
***
At first I thought Abel Ferrara’s films were badly acted; I soon realized Ferrara would take bad acting with truth in it over a masterpiece of falsehoods. (Later I found out that Ferrara would, in Dangerous Game and New Rose Hotel, use one to create the other.)
I thought his films were too commercial. “Already captivated by cinema, I didn’t need to be seduced as well,” as Serge Daney put it. Hollywood in the 21st century is a highly sophisticated marketing ploy.
- 3/19/2012
- MUBI
Swiss director Alain Tanner, who turned 80 last December, is one of the forgotten men of European art cinema. Though his films were regularly distributed in the Us in the 1970s and ’80s, Tanner has not had a film released here since 1987’s A Flame in My Heart, though he's made 10 films since (his last, Paul s'en va, was made in 2004) and not a single one of his films is available on Region 1 DVD. But, in a nice piece of serendipity, Anthology Film Archives in New York is hosting a Tanner retrospective this week, the same week that his longtime distributor, New Yorker Films, is opening for business once again. A double cause for celebration.
La salamandre (which plays on Sunday evening and I urge all New York film lovers to see it) was Tanner’s breakthrough hit in 1971. Written with English art critic and novelist John Berger (the first of...
La salamandre (which plays on Sunday evening and I urge all New York film lovers to see it) was Tanner’s breakthrough hit in 1971. Written with English art critic and novelist John Berger (the first of...
- 4/16/2010
- MUBI
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