The censured novel Conversazione in Sicilia, by Elio Vittorini, published in four episodes in 1918/1939, is the basis for this account of a man returning to Sicily for a visit to his mother. This is a journey of initiation, “a voyage in fourth dimension through his infancy”, he says. Not only to re-live words, people, places, sounds, sensation, and odor of his seven years, but mainly to understand himself. He re-encounters his mother whom he has not seen for 15 years, ever since she left for the North of Italy. Through her, he attempts to glean answers to questions and facts that still trouble his memories, such as the image of his dead father. In this return, he also comes face to face with reality, corruption, and treachery, that differ from his memories as a child with a mother, lost between abstract fury and an awareness of his incapacity to comprehend the human condition.Read More »
Danièle Huillet
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Jean-Charles Fitoussi – Sicilia! Si gira (2001)
Jean-Charles Fitoussi2001-2010DocumentaryFrance -
Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub – Trop tôt/Trop tard AKA Too Early, Too Late (1981) (HD)
1981-1990ArthouseDanièle HuilletDocumentaryGermanyJean-Marie StraubSynopsis
Featuring a justly infamous, even startling opening sequence with a tilted camera pointed out the window of a moving car that keeps driving and driving around a famous traffic circle (forget the name) in Paris for 10 odd minute – a continual 360 that never catches a glimpse of its axis, too perfect – TOO EARLY, TOO LATE is a singular meditation and extended visual metaphor on the theme of revolution (get it??) shot in a variety of locations and cities with a Marxist voice-over reading from famous selections on the subject. Quite unlike anything else you’ll see and while obviously not what you’d call entertainment, some of the shooting once you get outside the city is breathtakingly beautiful. Are they trying to implicate us in this collective indifference to social ills by growing absorbed in the natural beauty of the surroundings? I’m not sure, but certainly Straub/Huillet’s subtle avant-garde combo filmwork is among the most underappreciated in German and, indeed, international cinema.Read More » -
Alain Fleischer – Morceaux de conversations avec Jean-Luc Godard AKA Fragments of Conversations with Jean-Luc Godard (2007)
2001-2010Alain FleischerDocumentaryExperimentalFranceIn his meetings with various different people, Jean-Luc Godard develops his thinking about history, politics, the cinema, images and time, and this will lead to his exhibition as an artist at the Pompidou Centre. Jean-Luc Godard’s conversations with Dominique Païni, Jean Narboni, André S. Labarthe, Jean-Marie Straub, Danielle Huillet and Christophe Kantcheff were filmed at his home in Rolle, in his study, at the Fresnoy National Studio for the Contemporary Arts (in front of students) and in the exhibition rooms of the Pompidou Centre.Read More »
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Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub – Europa 2005 – 27 octobre (2006)
2001-2010Danièle HuilletItalyJean-Marie StraubPoliticsShort FilmEuropa 2005 – 27 octobre
Shot in Clichy Sous Bois, cauldron of the suburban riots that burned the winter of 2005, and composed of two panoramic shots of the substantion where Bouna and Zyed were killed whilst being pursued by the police. There is no voiceover and only one title to be translated for entire duration of this short: :Chambre a Gaz, Chaise Electrique” or “Gas Chamber, Electric Chair”. These shots and movements are repeated five times.Read More »
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Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub – Il viandante (2001)
2001-2010Danièle HuilletDramaItalyJean-Marie StraubShort FilmThis short movie came out of the alternative takes of a scene of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub’s previous film, Gente da Sicília (1999) and consists of a dialogue between an old woman and a man.Read More »
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Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub – L’arrotino (2001)
Drama2001-2010Danièle HuilletItalyJean-Marie StraubShort FilmThis short movie came out of the alternative takes of a scene of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub’s previous film, Gente da Sicília (1999) and consists of a dialogue between a grinder and a foreigner.Read More »
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Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub – Die Antigone des Sophokles (1992)
1991-2000ArthouseDanièle Huillet and Jean-Marie StraubDramaGermanyfull title: Die Antigone des Sophokles nach der Hölderlinschen Übertragung für die Bühne bearbeitet von Brecht 1948 (Suhrkamp Verlag)
A teenage girl is executed for going against a king’s wishes and honoring her brother’s death.Read More »
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Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub – Von heute auf morgen aka From Today Until Tomorrow (1997)
1991-2000Danièle HuilletGermanyJean-Marie StraubMusicalQuote:
Based on an unknown Schönberg opera from 1929, From Today Until Tomorrow explores one night in a not-quite loveless marriage. A husband and wife return from a party where she has flirted with another man, while he has cast an appraising eye toward an attractive, fashionably dressed acquaintance of his wife’s. Though each dreams, briefly, of leaving the marriage for the excitement and mystery of a new lover, in the end they decide stability and comfort are more important than the fleeting thrill of new romance. Read More » -
Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub – Machorka-Muff (1963) (HD)
1961-1970ArthouseDanièle HuilletGermanyJean-Marie StraubShort FilmQuote:
The caustic, satirical tone of Machorka-Muff is immediately evident, but successive viewings will reward spectators as they become more familiar with the nuances of Böll’s text—to which the film owes a great deal of its incisiveness—and will be more able to appreciate the precise orchestration executed by Straub and Huillet of the relations between sound and image, of tensions between voice, gesture, tempo, and action. The film’s opening—combining, in barely 48 seconds, extreme concision, lucid insight, and brutal parody—offers us an excellent example of this.— Cristina Álvarez López, MubiRead More »