News #011: "When I write, I am sober. I can direct drunk. I can't edit or write drunk."

This week's rep report, a few forthcoming books, news from the archives and gems from Aki Kaurismäki

Hello and welcome to Rep Cinema International. This week’s newsletter focuses on events, jobs and other miscellanea related to repertory cinema around the world. An inspiring smear of cinematic excellence is what I’m aiming for. If you’re in the United States (like me), Happy Thanksgiving! And wherever you are, thanks for reading!

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This week’s rep cinema highlights

Two by Șerban Creangă at Cinemateca Eforie (Bucharest)

I noticed an interesting listing on this week’s calendar at Cinemateca Eforie, the cinema of the Arhiva Nationala de Filme in Bucharest, Romania. Two Romanian films from 1969/70 which I never heard of before and presumably are screening from the archive’s own copies. Both are films by Șerban Creangă (1944–2012), indeed his first two features after graduating from film school in 1968. Căldura (1969) seems to be a star-crossed romance of young lovers while Așteptarea (1970) deals with the twilight of its protagonist’s life. Wikipedia quotes a reliable document saying that each film was seen by around one million viewers over the course of its exhibition history. A figure like that really puts things in perspective when confronted with such “unknown” films… unknown to whom?

Yvonne Rainer: Dansa i cinema at Filmoteca de Catalunya (Barcelona)

The Filmoteca de Catalunya gives Barcelona audiences a rare chance to see Yvonne Rainer’s early dance films, as conceptual and rigorous as they are beautiful. With the exception of Trio A (1978), the films were directed before Rainer’s cycle of 7 feature-length films which stretched from Lives of Performers (1972) to Murder and Murder (1996).

Maria do Mar at Porto/Post/Doc: Film & Media Festival

The Porto/Post/Doc Festival made an interesting choice in Maria do Mar (José Leitão de Barros, 1930) as its opening night film. The film is a landmark for its modernist style and social realism which place it on the border between ethnography, documentary and fiction. Presented as a live cine-concert with performance by the Lisbon Orquestra Sinfonietta and pianist Pedro Burmester, Maria do Mar was restored by the Cinemateca Portuguesa. The restoration was also shown this summer as part of the Association of European Cinematheques’ project A Season of Classic Films, a project that necessarily had to adapt to the hybrid, changing situation of screenings in different countries over the past months, but nonetheless introduced some very exciting films to international viewers.

Cha-Cha at Eye Filmmuseum (Amsterdam)

The much lusted-after (by me) Amsterdam punk film Cha-Cha has finally been restored by Eye! The dust-sniffing, bank-robbing, punk-gigging film—which sees Dutch punker Herman Brood, East Berlin’s chanteuse-in-exile Nina Hagen and the beguiling Lene Lovich playing lightly fictionalized versions of themselves—has traditionally been more accessible through its soundtrack than the film itself. Will any programmers notice that this rarity has been restored by Eye? Fingers crossed, I’d love to see it on the big screen.

Shiro Toyoda restrospective at Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow)

This looks great and is really the kind of thing I know almost nothing about, which is why I wanted to include it. Moscow’s Tretyakov Gallery presents a 13-film retrospective of Shiro Toyoda (1906–1977), taken from the filmmakers 65-film career. The booklet for the retrospective is available digitally but is of course in Russian. I will point to two films by Toyoda that are available via the Criterion Channel: Wild Geese (1953) and Shozo, a Cat and Two Women (1956), enticingly described as such: “Shozo is plagued by the needs of his ex-wife and his current one, but prefers the company of his cat”.

Dunderklumpen at Panora (Malmö)

You may have noticed by now that a topic I’m fascinated with is children’s films from different parts of the world. Dunderklumpen is a Swedish animated/live action film from 1974, directed by Per Åhlin. I enjoyed watching this Swedish Youtuber and a screaming goat talking us through the ridiculousness of the movie. It looks great.

Anyab at Gasworks (London)

Anyab (aka Fangs, Mohammed Shebl, 1981) is an Egyptian film I keep seeing talk of in different corners of the internet. The queer musical is a loose remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, transposing the story to the sociopolitical context of Egypt. (I’m always game for any film that mixes class struggle and sexual politics, but for a Middle Eastern disco pastiche to do so is quite a unique thing.) Programmer Róisín Tapponi introduces the screening at the London gallery Gasworks, which is hosting it in conjunction with Adam Khalil & Bayley Sweitzer’s exhibition/film Nosferasta. Tapponi is the founder of Shasha, a streaming site focusing on Southwest Asian and North African cinema, where Anyab can currently be viewed.

Finally, thought it worth giving a shout-out for the title of Metrograph’s current series Punks Don’t Go Home for Thanksgiving, which I’ve seen both positive and negative comments on (haters) but I’m going to say is pretty great.

A few forthcoming books

In December, Brooklyn-based Ugly Duckling Presse will publish The Wayland Rudd Collection, an anthology around the archive of “Post-Soviet” artist Yevgeniy Fiks who collects Soviet media images of Africans and African-Americans. The collection is named after Wayland Rudd, an African-American actor who emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1932 and would appear in films directed by Lev Kuleshov and Grigori Aleksandrov, as well as a number of theater productions.

“Bringing together post-colonial and post-Soviet perspectives, the book maps the complicated and often contradictory intersection of race and Communism in the Soviet context, exposing the interweaving of internationalism, solidarity, humanism, and Communist ideals with practices of othering and exoticization.” It’s interesting to think about what role cinema might have played in this, and it makes me think about films like Chyornoye solntse (Black Sun, Aleksei Speshnyov, 1971). The book also includes a foreword by Lewis Gordon, a personal hero of mine whose presentation of Charles Burnett’s Killer of Sheep (1978) in an undergraduate philosophy course made a huge impact on me.

The Cinémathèque Tunisienne in Tunis has produced a small publication on Mounir Baaziz, whose director and assistant director credits stretch back to 1975. Mounir Baaziz : Parcours cinématographique militant (Militant Cinematographic Journey) was launched with a gallery exhibition of photographs and a signing by the filmmaker last weekend, as well as two sessions of projections. Here’s some photos from the event last weekend.

On November 30, the CMFDC will host a launch event for the book Moments of Perception: Experimental Film in Canada. “Featuring a major essay on the history of the movement by Michael Zryd and profiles of key filmmakers by Stephen Broomer and editors Jim Shedden and Barbara Sternberg, Moments of Perception offers a fresh perspective on the ever-evolving history of Canada’s experimental film and moving image media arts.” It looks like an excellent (and much-needed) publication from some very well-respected voices in the field. Kudos!

From the archives

At the National Film Preservation Foundation, one can read details of the current round of Avant-Garde Masters grants that the NFPF and The Film Foundation are making available to four American archives. Anthology Film Archives will preserve Ron Rice’s 1962 film Senseless, continuing their diligence with this incredible filmmaker’s work. (In 2019, I programmed a double retrospective of Jean Vigo & Ron Rice, on the heels of AFA’s preservations of two of Rice’s films.) SUNY Binghamton will preserve Ken Jacobs’ Binghampton, My India (1969), The Film-Makers’ Cooperative will preserve a rare feminist film by Cathy Cook (The Match That Started My Fire, 1992) and BAMPFA will work on four films made by Roger Jacoby between 1973–82.

From Non-Fiction, this stimulating conversation between Annabelle Aventurin and Léa Morin focuses on Non-Aligned Film Archives, the visibility or invisibility of physical materials and models of practice encountered in the restoration of films by Med Hondo, Mostafa Derkaoui, Moustapha Alassane, Jocelyne Saab and others. It’s a wonderfully precise conversation that I’m looking forward to reading a second time.

Aki Kaurismäki via YouTube

I’ve been enjoying some trawls lately through all the interviews of Aki Kaurismäki that I can find on YouTube. I could listen to him talk for ages. And in case you didn’t recognize the quote that titles this post, now you know who is responsible for it.

“Could you tell us about the soundtrack?”
“…Very normal… some dialogue and then music over it.”

I am patiently waiting for the next (final?) Kaurismäki film, which we all deserve after the trauma of the past two years. And I have hope that we will get it… as long as Dirk De Jonghe doesn’t retire yet.

Job listings

Anthology Film Archives (New York), Head Projectionist, full time
BAVC Media (San Francisco), Development Director, full time
Boston Globe Media, Film Critic, full time
Center for Asian American Media (San Francisco), Festival and Exhibitions Director, full time
Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (Rome), Senior Colorist, Senior Digital Restoration Operator (x2), Junior Scanner Operator, Junior Conforming & Quality Control Operator
Cinémas Beaubien, du Parc et du Musée (Montreal), Directeur / Directrice de Cinéma, full time
Concordia University (Montreal), Assistant Professor in Narrative and Sequential Art Practices in Black Cultural Production
Cousin (United States), Assistant, part time
DocLands Film Festival (San Rafael, US), Documentary Film Programmer
Film Streams (Omaha), Community Programming Manager, full time
Georgia Gwinnett College, Film Studies Professor, full time
Independent Cinema Office (London), Film Programmer, full time
MUBI (London), International Programming Operations Manager, full time
MUBI GO Manager, UK, full time
Subtitle Director, full time
National Library of Scotland (Edinburgh), Video Preservation Technician, part time
New York Public Library, Media Preservation Services Intern (paid), part time
Northwest Film Forum (Seattle), Executive Director, full time
Open City Documentary Festival (London), Pre-Selection Panel
Sam Houston State University, Assistant Professor of Mass Communication (Film & Media Studies), full time
U.C Santa Cruz, Assistant Professor of Indigenous Media, Cultural Sovereignty and Decolonization
Università della svizzera italiana/Locarno Film Festival, Post-Doc position for the Future of Cinema and the Audiovisual Arts
University of St. Andrews (Scotland), Lecturer in Film Studies, full time
VideoDataBank (Chicago), Director, full time
WITNESS (Brooklyn), Program Associate – Archives

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Endnotes

• Featured images: Căldura (Șerban Creangă, 1969) // Cha-Cha (Herbert Curiel, 1979) // Mounir Baaziz as part of the exhibition on his work at Cinémathèque Tunisienne

• Lots more coming very soon!

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