Film and Video

An Evening with Greil Marcus featuring a screening of I’m Not There

Saturday, November 1, 7 pm

$8 ($6 Walker and IFP members)

Cinema, Walker Art Center, 1750 Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis

“[Greil Marcus'] kind of creative imagination, and the way he’s converted his own medium into something you can’t even categorize, is something I do feel inspired by, and something I hope I can do as a filmmaker.”-Todd Haynes

Renowned music writer Greil Marcus will introduce a screening of I’m Not There, Todd Haynes’ film inspired by the life of Bob Dylan and the work of Marcus, including his books The Old Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes and Like a Rolling Stone: Bob Dylan at the Crossroads. Following the screening, Marcus and film curator Sheryl Mousley will engage in conversation about the film and the life and work of Bob Dylan.

I’m Not There Film Description:

Inspired by the life of Bob Dylan, Todd Haynes’ stunning directorial achievement brings together six actors playing characters who craft a unique response to the elusive artist in different phases of his life, career, and persona. Cate Blanchett, in an Academy-Award nominated performance, and Christian Bale (the literal Dylan), Richard Gere (Dylan and Billy the Kid), Heath Ledger (an actor haunted by the legacy of Dylan), Marcus Carl Franklin (Dylan in Woody Guthrie mode), and Ben Whishaw (Rimbaud as Dylan) are set in the political and cultural reality of the era, and filmed in the cinematic styles of the 1960s. Award-winning I’m Not There is “a profoundly, movingly personal film, passionate in its engagement with the mysteries of the recent past.” (New York Times) 2007, 35mm, 135 minutes.

Greil Marcus Bio

“Greil Marcus’ work is very likely the most imaginative criticism being done, but it’s more than that: it’s a light in dark times.”-New York Magazine

In 1968, Greil Marcus began publishing criticism in Rolling Stone, becoming the magazine’s first record review editor. Best known for being a pop music critic, Marcus has also written extensively on literature, art movies, and politics in such publications as Artforum, Interview, the New York Times, Esquire, Salon.com, and Village Voice.

Marcus’s first book redefined rock criticism. Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music (1975), was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and is widely considered one of the finest and most scholarly studies of rock music ever published.

Other books authored by Marcus include: Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20^th Century (1989); Dead Elvis: A Chronicle of A Cultural Obsession (1991); Ranters & Crowd Pleasers: Punk in Pop Music, 1997-1992 (1993); The Dustbin of History (1995); Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes (1997); Double Trouble: Bill Clinton and Elvis Presley in a Land of No Alternatives (2000); The Manchurian Candidate (2002); and The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice (2006).

Marcus served on the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle Award (1983-1989). He has taught at the University of California at Berkeley, Princeton and the New School, has lectured throughout the United States and Europe, and is currently the Winton Chair Fellow at the University of Minnesota, teaching the seminar “The Old Weird America.”

Every so often we like to take a survey of our readers to see what you think. Our last survey was in March of 2007, so it’s time for a new one. The questions are focused on the blogs and a little demographic information, which you can skip if you like.

We’re sweetening the deal this time. If you take the survey, you can enter your name into the pool and we’ll select one person to win a 1GB iPod Shuffle.

Take the survey.

Photo by bluetsunami.

Some incredible and unique things happen in the twin cities, and the annual Sound Unseen film festival is among my favorites. A film festival dedicated to music movies (not to be confused with musicals) is right up my alley. The 9th iteration of the festival got underway last night with a pair of screenings at the Riverview Theater. Tonight, the festival moves over to the St. Anthony Main theater, and there’s no shortage of excellent programming.

Here are a few recommendations:

Sonic Youth: Sleeping Nights Awake - I’ve been waiting for this one for quite a while, and finally caught up with it last night. It’s showing again this evening. It’s basically a SY concert film interspresed with interviews with the band. The project came out of a program in Reno, Nevada called Project Moonshine that basically teaches teens how to make moves. Sleeping Nights Awake was entirely shot by the kids in the program, and they put together a pretty great film. It caught up with the band on the Rather Ripped tour, and they sound fantastic. There’s an amazing performance of “Shaking Hell” that shouldn’t be missed.

Sigur Ros: Heima - If you’re a fan of the band, this one is a bit of a no-brainer. This documentary follows the band on a tour of their native Iceland in which they played free shows as a thank you to their homeland and fans. They set up in deserted factories, expansive fields, and
virtually anywhere they could be had. The music is sublime, and the film paints a beautiful portrait of the Iceland that roots Sigur Ros’ sound. It’s as much about the landscape as the music. It’s incredibly well done from all perspectives.

Low: You May Need a Murderer - I think I’ve seen three different docs on Low at this point, and this one is clearly the best. Low’s music is there, but the real interest here is that the filmmaker caught the normally introverted Alan Sparhawk at his most open and generous. It gets into the core of what Low’s music comes out of. Sparhawk offers insight to own battles with mental illness and addiction, and goes deeper into their family life and religion. Its honesty is refreshing and goes to really heartbreaking places.

Dead Man - This one’s not necessarily a music film, but the movie is forever connected to the score by Neil Young, thus fits in very nicely with the festival. That said, who cares. Any reason to bring this film back to a cinema screen is fine with me. It’s easily my favortite Jarmusch film, and the experience of seeing it projected on a big screen from a 35mm print is unparalelled. Do not miss this chance.

Rust Never Sleeps - Following Dead Man, this is an excellent second half to a rare Neil Young double feature. I was able to preview this print, what might be the only 35mm print left of this film, with Sound Unseen director Rick Hansen, and it’s a treat. They don’t make concert films (or live records) like this anymore, and it’s a shame. It captures a full Neil Young show from a stop on his 1978 tour. The set is half solo acoustic and half electric with Crazy Horse and features a crew of dancing jawa stagehands.

There are a bunch of other great programs as well. The festival covers a wide musical spectrum and offers something for everyone. Check it out, and support one of the most unique and innovative film festivals around.

Enjoy some sneak peeks of the upcoming retrospective, In the Realm of Oshima: The Films of Japanese Master Nagisa Oshima

Boy (Shonen)

Cruel Story of Youth (Seishun zankoku monogatari)

The Sun’s Burial (Taiyo no hakaba)

In the Realm of the Senses (Ai no corrida)

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (Furyo)

Diary of a Shinjuku Thief (Shinjuku dorobo nikki)

Violence At Noon (Hakuchu no torima)

Like Mike Leigh, it seems that Lance Hammer and his directorial debut Ballast are getting coverage an praise from all directions.

• Manohla Dargis wrote a glowing review in the New York Times.
• Accompanying the review is another excellent multimedia feature in the vein of the clip of Happy-Go-Lucky last week. It’s an audio slide show narrated by Lance about the inspriation and aesthetic of Ballast.
• Ballast was nominated for four IFP Gotham awards.
• David Bordwell also has some interesting observations and analyses on the film as well.
• Also, if you haven’t had the chance to look at the trailer yet, you must. The YouTube version is below, but you can see it in a much higher resolution on the Ballast site. It is one of the most compelling trailers I’ve ever seen. I can only imagine seeing the fantastic Cinematography on the screen in the Cinema next week. I know there is hopes of a run of Ballast in the Twin Cities down the road, but there’s no saying when that will be. I hope you can join us and Lance Hammer for the screening next week.

It seems that Mike Leigh is popping up everywhere these days. Our local premiere of Happy-Go-Lucky this weekend happens to coincide with the film’s opening in New York and Los Angeles. To mark the occasion, Manohla Dargis has offered up an excellent review of the film. What’s more interesting though is the Anatomy of a Scene feature from Happy-Go-Lucky. In it, they extract a scene from the film, and Mike Leigh discusses how it was made. It actually gives a great deal of inight into his general practice and filmmaking process, and perhaps a sneak preview of the conversation at next week’s Regis Dialogue.

Mike Leigh on the set of Happy-Go-Lucky

Our Mike Leigh Regis Retrospective kicked off last week with Bleak Moments and High Hopes. This week brings us Life is Sweet, Naked, and the premiere of Happy-Go-Lucky. I’ve got some links to whet your appetite:

• Our trusty intern, Evan Cook, popped into work one day having put toghether a fantastic trailer for the Mike Leigh program. You can find it in the image bar at the top of the page.
• Tickets for the Regis Dialogue have sold out, but tickets remain for the premiere of Happy-Go-Lucky. Take a look at the trailer.
• indieWire posted an interview with Mr. Leigh this morning. If you haven’t had the chance to give it a read yet, take a look at Rob Nelson’s interview for this blog as well.

Ballast, which screens here on October 29, opens in New York City today. This is a critical juncture for any filmmaker, but the pressure is extreme for those distributing films themselves, as director Lance Hammer is.

Easing the pressure somewhat is the virtual consensus that Ballast is a true work of art - you can read the critical hosannas in Variety , the New York Post (!), and the New York Times (be sure to check out the beautiful audio slide show that accompanies that review) - but Hammer is also getting considerable press coverage related to his distribution decision. Going the DIY route means signing on for a huge amount of work that normally would have been done by others (for a price, of course - not just in terms of dollars, but also creative control).

As Manohla Dargis wrote recently, also in the New York Times, “With the support of some publicists, Mr. Hammer and Mr. Raphael will attempt to do what usually takes an army of handlers and entire studio departments to pull off. Mr. Hammer is creating the poster artwork and making the trailer, and together they are booking mainstream theaters and also taking “ Ballast” around the country to universities, film clubs and art centers, just the way many independents have sought and found audiences for decades.”

In that same article, Dargis offers an excellent and concise history on the rise and decline of independent filmmaking since the 1980s; for her part, she doesn’t believe that the recent closings of a number of small film companies is necessarily a bad thing - not, at any rate, for “those who think films have worth beyond their box office returns” or for filmmakers whose “aesthetic sensibility and worldview are of no economic use and interest to the studios or to most audiences either.” Ballast seems to fit on both those counts.

Incidentally, the Times really seems to love this film, not just for itself, but for the larger story it tells about independent, highly personal filmmaking. It figures into this Times story from last summer about DIY distribution, which is geared more to the layperson, and this story from critic Dennis Lim, which traces the story of how Ballast came about - a long, circuitous process that involved an extensive road trip through the Mississippi Delta. Lim also notes that when it comes to techniques, the filmmaker took inspiration from Robert Bresson and Wong Kar-wai, as well as Mike Leigh, the subject of a Walker film retrospective, Mike Leigh: Moments, screening October 3 - 25, as well as a Regis dialogue on October 15.

In the article, Hammer also makes another connection, one worth considering while walking through galleries of Eero Saarinen’s work here and at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Having graduated from USC’s architecture school, he believes what he learned there prepared him for filmmaking - perhaps even better than film school would have. “ Architecture’s about having faith in something unformed,” he points out, “which you then have to manifest materially.”

(By the way, here’s a more in-depth, industry-oriented story about Hammer’s decision to self-distribute Ballast, from indiewire.)