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An image of myself as Sonia Marquez, a hot-blooded Latin real estate agent and diva from my comedy screenplay "A New Life".
See a video of Sonia here:
A tribute to Serge Gainsbourg, a smoker and above that a French singer, songwriter, pianist, film composer, poet, painter, screenwriter, writer, actor, and director...
Locations: Rue Serge Gainsbourg, Clermont-Ferrand, Auvergne, France.
Coordinates: 45°47'20" N 3°5'55" E
Reason: Made a three day roadtrip to the city of Clermont-Ferrand in the Auvergne to capture all 31 new space invaders made during the second invasion wave in January 2016. And of course flash all 34 'flashable' invaders in the game FlashInvaders from which 4 from the first invasion wave in 2001 (1 is not flashable due to vandalism with a paintball).
CLR_14: This huge space invader in the Northern outskirts of Clermont-Ferrand is worth 100 points and dedicated to Serge Gainsbourg. Invader must be a fan of Serge as PA_801 in Paris (7ème) was a tribute to Gainsbourg as well. Date of invasion must be around 24 to 26 January 2016.
Other photos of CLR_14 CLR_14 (Zoom-in, April 2016)
Serge Gainsbourg: Serge Gainsbourg (born Lucien Ginsburg; 2 April 1928 – 2 March 1991) was a French singer, songwriter, pianist, film composer, poet, painter, screenwriter, writer, actor, and director. Regarded as one of the most important figures in French popular music, he was renowned for his often provocative and scandalous releases, as well as his diverse artistic output, which embodied genres ranging from jazz, mambo, world, chanson, pop and yé-yé, to rock and roll, progressive rock, reggae, electronic, disco, new wave, and funk. Gainsbourg's varied musical style and individuality make him difficult to categorize although his legacy has been firmly established and he is often regarded as one of the world's most influential popular musicians.
His lyrical work incorporated a vast amount of clever word play to hoodwink the listener, often for humorous, provocative, satirical or subversive reasons. Common types of word play in his songs include mondegreen, onomatopoeia, rhyme, spoonerism, dysphemism, paraprosdokian and pun. Through the course of his career, Gainsbourg wrote over 550 songs, which have been covered more than a thousand times by a wide range of artists. Since his death, Gainsbourg's music has reached legendary stature in France. He has also gained a cult following in the English-speaking world, with numerous artists influenced by his arrangements. [ Wikipedia | Serge Gainsbourg (français) ]
Weather: Sunny, some fluffy clouds, 21° C
Self-portrait technics: Joby portable gorillapod mounted on a street pole, selftimer on 10 seconds.
(L) Agnieszka Holland -polish film and theater director, screenwriter, translator.
(R) Monika Krajewska - Polish artist specializing in Jewish cutouts and Jewish tombstone art. Teacher, lectures on Jewish art at the Center for Yiddish Culture in Warsaw.
An image of myself as Chantal Thierry, a 1960's French secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
Click the links to watch videos of Chantal:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=N06W_3s5TZU
Playwright, screenwriter and actress Carla Scatarelli, in an old bar in Buenos Aires. Shot during a live class of my portrait workshop. We planned it this way together, as she so often writes in bars and cafés.
Lens: Carl Zeiss Distagon T* 2/35 ZF.
Actress stars as Nia Portokalos on the CBS television sitcom "My Big Fat Greek Life." The series is about a woman and her over-the-top Greek family.
My Big Fat Greek Life is an American television sitcom that aired on CBS from February 24 to April 13, 2003. The series is a continuation of the 2002 film My Big Fat Greek Wedding and was produced by Sony Pictures Television and Tom Hanks' Playtone Productions for CBS. The two lead characters' names are changed, from Toula and Ian, to Nia and Thomas. Series star Nia Vardalos also oversaw the show as one of the co-executive producers, along with Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson, who made a guest appearance in one episode as Nia's cousin.
Nia Vardalos - Antonia Eugenia "Nia" Vardalos (born September 24, 1962) is a Canadian actress and screenwriter. She starred in and wrote the romantic comedy film My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), which garnered her nominations for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical, and which went on to spawn a media franchise.
Early life - Vardalos was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, on September 24, 1962. She is the daughter of Greek-Canadian parents Doreen Christakos, a bookkeeper and homemaker, and Constantine "Gus" Vardalos, a land developer who was born in Kalavryta. She attended St. George School and Shaftesbury High School in Winnipeg and Toronto Metropolitan University in Toronto.
She gained fame with her movie about a woman's struggle to find love in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. First performed as a one-woman show of the same name, the film was a critical and commercial success. The film earned Vardalos an Academy Award nomination for Best Writing, a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy and a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination. The sleeper hit quickly became one of the highest-grossing independent films of all time, and the number one romantic comedy of all time. Vardalos hosted Saturday Night Live in the fall of 2002.
Vardalos starred in and wrote My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2, which was released in March 2016. It earned over $60 million domestically from an $18 million budget.
In 2023, Vardalos reprised her role as Toula Portakalos in My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 for which she served as director and screenwriter. That same year, she guest starred in the midseason finale of the first part of season three of the television series Chucky as Evelyn Elliot, a fellow death row inmate in Texas.
LINK to video - Nia Vardalos On George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight: INTERVIEW - www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu2kqPV4Fr4
Screenwriter / Director
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Canon EOS 5D Mark II
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Manoel De Oliveira ( 1908 – 2015)
My special homage to our Manoel De Oliveira, who has recently died.
Portuguese film director and screenwriter, was reported to be the oldest active film director in the world (106 years) and also the only filmmaker whose active career spanned from the silent era to the digital age.
Among his numerous awards were two Career Golden Lions from the Venice and Cannes Film Festival and the French Legion of Honor.
His final film of 2014, The Old Man Of Belem (O Velho do Restelo, title in Portuguese) was premiered at the Venice Film Festival.
________________________________________________
This photo is a painterly composition with a photo of mine with a Swatch Film Clapper (Curta-Metragem) Designed by Manoel de Oliveira and a vintage old Pathex Movie Projector that i take in a antiques fair in Lisbon. The photo of Manoel de Oliveira is a photo of the Director taken in the filming of Magic Mirror (2005) . Source :
images.movieplayer.it/images/2003/09/24/manoel-de-oliveir...
French postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. Star 136. Photo: Air France / Distribution VU. Caption: Federico Fellini, Giulietta Massina and Marcello Mastroianni, 13 April 1960.
Italian film director and screenwriter Federico Fellini (1920-1993) was one of the most influential filmmakers of all time. He was known for his distinct style that blends fantasy and baroque images with earthiness. In a career spanning almost fifty years, Fellini won the Palme d'Or for La Dolce Vita (1960), was nominated for twelve Academy Awards. He won an Oscar for La Strada (1954), Le notti di Cabiria (1957), 8½ (1963) and Amarcord (1973).
Federico Fellini was born in 1920 in Rimini in the Emilia-Romagna region. His native Rimini and characters there like Saraghina (the devil herself said the priests who ran his school) - and the Gambettola farmhouse of his paternal grandmother would later be remembered in several of his films. His traveling salesman father Urbano Fellini showed up in La dolce vita (1960) and 8½ (1963). His mother Ida Barbiani was from Rome and accompanied him there in 1939. Fellini's first passion was the theater, and at the age of 12, he briefly ran away from home to join the circus, later entering college solely to avoid being drafted. He enrolled in the University of Rome. Intrigued by the image of reporters in American films, he tried out the real-life role of a journalist. Additionally, Fellini worked as an artist on fumetti (Italy's illustrated magazines), and occasionally even made his living as a caricaturist at Roman restaurants. He caught the attention of several editors with his caricatures and cartoons and then started submitting articles. Several articles were recycled into a radio series about newlyweds 'Cico and Pallina'. Pallina was played by acting student Giulietta Masina, who became Fellini's real-life wife in 1943. They remained together until his death. The young Fellini loved vaudeville and was befriended in 1939 by leading comedian Aldo Fabrizi. Fabrizi recruited Fellini to supply stories and ideas for his performances; between 1939 and 1944. The two men worked in tandem on a number of largely forgotten comedies, among them No Me Lo Dire, Quarta Pagina, and Campo de Fiori. When young director Roberto Rossellini wanted Fabrizi to play Don Pietro in Roma città aperta (Roberto Rosselini, 1945), he made the contact through Fellini. Fellini worked on that film's script and is on the credits for Rosselini's Paisà (Roberto Rosselini, 1946). Dale O'Connor at IMDb: "On that film, he wandered into the editing room, started observing how Italian films were made (a lot like the old silent films with an emphasis on visual effects, dialogue dubbed in later). Fellini in his mid-20s had found his life's work."
Federico Fellini collaborated on films by Pietro Germi (including In Nomine Della Legge and Il Cammino Della Speranza) and Alberto Lattuda (Il Delitto di Giovanni Episcopo and Il Mulino del Po), among others. In 1948, Fellini completed the screenplay for Il Miracolo, the second and longer section of Rossellini's two-part effort Amore. Here Fellini's utterly original worldview first began to truly take shape in the form of archetypal characters (a simple-minded peasant girl and her male counterpart, a kind of holy simpleton), recurring motifs (show business, parties, the sea), and an ambiguous relationship with religion and spirituality. He further explored this in his script for Rossellini's Francesco, Giullare di Dio (Roberto Rosselini, 1949). In 1950, Fellini made his first attempt at directing one of his own screenplays (with help of Alberto Lattuda), Luci del Varieta (Federico Fellini, Alberto Lattudada, 1950), which further developed his fusion of neorealism with the atmosphere of surrealism. Fellini then directed the romantic satire Lo Sciecco Bianc. The film marked his first work with composer Nino Rota. Fellini's initial masterpiece, I Vitteloni, followed in 1953. The first of his features to receive international distribution, it later won the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival, the first of many similar honours. The brilliant La Strada followed in 1954, also garnering the Silver Lion as well as the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Picture. After helming Il Bidone (1955), Fellini and a group of screenwriters (including a young Pier Paolo Pasolini) began work on Le Notti di Cabiria (1956), which also won an Oscar. Then he mounted La Dolce Vita (1960), the first of his pictures to star actor Marcello Mastroianni. He would become Fellini's cinematic alter ego over the course of several subsequent collaborations, its portrait of sex and death in Rome's high society created a tremendous scandal at its Milan premiere, where the audience booed, insulted, and spat on the director. Regardless, La Dolce Vita won the Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival and remains a landmark in cinematic history.
During the 1960s, many films by Federico Fellini were influenced by the work of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung and his ideas on the role of archetypes and the collective unconscious. The women who had both attracted and frightened him in his youth and an Italy dominated in his youth by Mussolini and Pope Pius XII inspired Fellini's dreams. In the 1960s, he started to record them in notebooks, and life and dreams became the raw material for such films as 8½ (1963) or Fellini - Satyricon (1969). With 1965's Giulietta Degli Spiriti, Fellini worked for the first time in color. After experimenting with LSD under the supervision of doctors, he began scripting Il Viaggio di G. Mastorna. Over a year of pre-production followed, hampered by difficulties with producers, actors, and even a jury trial. Finally on April 10th, 1967, Fellini suffered a nervous breakdown, resulting in a month-long nursing homestay. Ultimately, he gave up on ever bringing Il Viaggio di G. Mastorna to the screen, and his new producer, Alberto Grimaldi, was forced to buy out former producer Dino De Laurentis for close to half a billion liras. As the decade drew to a close, Fellini returned to work with a vengeance, first resurfacing with Toby Dammitt, a short feature for the collaborative film Tre Passi nel Delirio. Turning to television, he helmed Fellini: A Director's Notebook, a one-hour special for NBC, followed by the feature effort Fellini Satyricon. I Clown followed in 1970, with Roma bowing in 1972. Amarcord, a childhood reminiscence, won a fourth Academy Award in 1974. It proved to be his final international success. He later shot Il Casanova di Federico Fellini (1976), Prova d'Orchestra (1979), and La Citta delle Donne (1980), which were less successful. Fellini turned to publishing with Fare un Film, an anthology of notes about his life and work. E la Nave Va (1983) and Ginger e Fred (1985) followed, but by the time of L'Intervista (1987), he was facing considerable difficulty finding financing for his projects. His last completed film was La Voce Della Luna (1989). In the early 1990s, Fellini helmed a handful of television commercials, and in 1993 he won his fifth Academy Award for a lifetime of service to the film industry. In 1993, Federico Fellini died the day after his 50th wedding anniversary. He was 73 years old. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "One of the most visionary figures to emerge from the fertile motion picture community of postwar-era Italy, Federico Fellini brought a new level of autobiographical intensity to his craft; more than any other filmmaker of his era, he transformed the realities of his life into the surrealism of his art. Though originally a product of the neorealist school, the eccentricity of Fellini's characterizations and his absurdist sense of comedy set him squarely apart from contemporaries like Vittorio De Sica or Roberto Rossellini, and at the peak of his career his work adopted a distinctively poetic, flamboyant, and influential style so unique that only the term "Felliniesque" could accurately describe it. "
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Dale O' Connor (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Charlie Bewley, Cameron Bright, Jamie Campbell Bower and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg attended today The 4th International Rome Film Festival: “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” Photocall.
No Copyright Infringement Intended.
This car was bought new by American screenwriter Tennessee Williams (1911-1983).
18e Oldtimer Evenement Voorthuizen 2023
Video: youtu.be/7-voa4a6vjQ
An image of myself as Chantal Thierry, a 1960s French secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
"VIDEO KILLED THE RADO STAR?"
Well, just about, I'm a tad knackered at the moment!
G’day, I’ve been a wee bit quiet for the past few weeks as I reviewed movies at this year’s 2007 Melbourne (Australia) International Film Festival. I broadcast the reviews over about two and a half hours all up on my show, Zero-G: Science Fiction, Fantasy & Historical Radio, on 3RRR FM. (rrr.org.au)
The above picture is the sign on the Erwin Rado Theatre at 211 Johnson Street, Fitzroy, where the MIFF has its headquarters. The building's nothing much to look at from outside, really! But the sign...well, THAT has character!
Below the MIFF offices, the theatre, named after the director of the Film Festival from 1957 - 1983, has a charming old 69 seat cinema that can screen 16mm and 35mm film as well as DVD, LaserDisc, VHS, Data and MiniDV.
The MIFF’s access to the theatre expired at the end of 2007 and, ideally, it really should have its own dedicated screening facility, as other major city’s film festivals have. Still, the office itself has now moved to a more central location in Melbourne, which is handy!
To find out more about the MIFF go here:
www.melbournefilmfestival.com.au/
Anyway, I thought I’d post some of reviews here, inspired by films that I particularly enjoyed at this year’s event.
The full transcripts can be found at:
-AACHI & SSIPAK-
SOUTH KOREA
This continuously violent South Korean animated adult feature presents a future where human excrement is an energy source. Citizens have a monitoring chip attached to their arses and particularly productive individuals are rewarded with addictive drug laced munchies called Juicy Bars.
I shit you not.
The story begins with a roadwarrior highway battle as the swarming blue mutant Diaper Gang (!) attempts to truckjack a cargo of Juicy Bars, only to encounter a devastatingly lethal cyborg enforcer who makes Judge Dredd look like a human rights campaigner.
Headshot bodies fall at a rate that would impress Aeon Flux and Samurai Jack combined as the repressive government, assorted roving bands of bandits and con men, including the title characters Aachi and Ssipak (pronounced ‘she-pock’) along with a feisty would-be actress, all compete for the Juicy Bars.
Given the outrageous level of mayhem and the giggling concept that lies at the, er, bottom of the plot, it’s hardly worth noting that the animators cheerfully raid pop culture for many sequences, including the films Aliens and Indiana Jones & The Temple Of Doom. The latter is extensively overmined for one tunnel chase set up.
The animation is quite stylistically vigorous while the off the wall social commentary reminds me a little of the kind of thing that animator Ralph Bakshi attempted in his Fritz The Cat days, well before the likes of South Park and its shock-anime kin. There’s also something to be said for the biting political satire that runs through the narrative, which results in the government and gang leader being merely two opposite sides of the same ruthless coin.
People with kids could have pointless fun banning them from seeing this film, but apparently MTV’s thinking of doing a telly series based on it anyway, so, futile or what?
Subtle it isn’t, but it is a species of wicked fun that will gather bums on seats!
Director Joe Bum-jin
2006/90mins
-A FEW DAYS IN SEPTEMBER-
ITALY/FRANCE/PORTUGAL
The first film directed by screenwriter Santiago Amigorena, A Few Days In September
(Quelques Jours en Septembre), is a laid back but quite charming French spy thriller that makes espionage a family affair...and a realistically bickering family at that.
Elliot, mostly alluded to or played as an off screen voiceover by Nick Nolte until near the film’s conclusion, is an ex-CIA agent with knowledge about the upcoming 911 attacks. He hopes to trade the information for a stake that will enable him to reunite and live with his biological daughter and step-son, legacies of two seperate cover identity marriages in France and the U.S.
Much sought after by various factions, Elliot entrusts his grown up children, Orlando (Sara Forestier) and David (British actor Tom Riley) to the capable care of Irène, a cool, experienced French secret agent who used to be Elliot’s colleague. The potentially overwhelming meta-story takes a back seat to the character relationships, which makes a nice change to the usual breathless adventures that would normally puff up this kind of story into a by-the-numbers action thriller.
Juliette Binoche brings marvelous, stylish depth to her role as world wise spy Irène, providing a wryly sophisticated setting for her charges’ inevitable romance. (What IS it with the French anyway? After Irène’s arm is injured she turns up wearing a chic scarf as a sling, but of course!) Always gorgeous, the actress pitches the character as being adept enough at her deadly trade so that she can afford to enjoy herself while she works. Forestier is all sharp edged, angry eyed angst as she works through father/daughter issues while Riley nervously cooks (his character worked in a restaurant) for the two formidable women who have abruptly complicated his life with their Amazonian expertise with firearms. I also very much enjoyed the arch Franco/American banter between Orlando and David.
Seeking Elliot through the medium of his children is William Pound, a whacko ‘wet work’ assassin who has a penchant for poetry, drives a florist’s delivery van and has a mobile phone plagued by the world’s most annoying ringtone. Pound’s character is tightly wound by John Turturro, who played one of the convicts in O Brother, Where Art Thou? and also an equally obsessive relative of the title character in the television series Monk.
A Few Days In September benefits from first rate cinematography, including some playful soft focus shots that whimsically render Venice and Paris, cheekily explained by Irène’s habit of removing her glasses to ‘see things differently’. There’s also a cracking good shot through the dark framed doorway of a Venetian Chapel which reminded me of a signature frame from a John Ford Western, only instead of Mesas and sagebrush we get the Venice Lagoon and a passing ocean liner.
Although this film lingers perhaps a little too lovingly on the wrangling entanglements of its main characters I still found it pleasant and rewardable viewing. Amigorena certainly knows how to inject off-beat life into his characters.
Director/Screenwriter Santiago Amigorena
2006/115 mins
-BUG-
USA
When down on her luck small town waitress Agnes White (played by Ashley Judd) invites eccentric drifter Peter Evans into her seedy motel room she receives much more than she bug-aned for!
Director William Friedkin (The Exorcist, & The French Connection) gets almost unbearably psychological in this cross genre movie that wisely adds no excess fat to the one set, pressure cooker Tracy Lett’s play that it’s adapted from. As the two main characters’ relationship slowly emerges from a far too tightly spun chrysalis the film builds to one of the most intensely wound paranoic conclusions seen on screen.
Michael Shannon is gauntly convincing as Evans, a role that he pioneered in the original stage play and intially at least, reminds me a little of a young Steve McQueen or perhaps, Joachim Phoenix. Harry Connick Junior has a supporting part in the film as Agne’s ex-convict, ex-husband.
Bug’s maddeningly paced escalating tension is supported by an appropriately chittering score, composed by Brian Tyler, who also gave us soundtracks for the films Constantine, Bubba Ho-Tep, the Children of Dune miniseries, as well as episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise and the upcoming Aliens Versus Predator 2: Survival Of The Fittest. Speaking of Star Trek, Ashley Judd also played Ensign Robin Lefler in Star Trek: Next Generation.
Bug is a film that creeps up on you and by its final scuttling rush will definitely get under your skin...one way or another.
Director- William Friedkin
Screenwriter-Tracy Letts
2006/101mins
-EL TOPO-
(MEXICO)
El Topo (“The Mole”) was director Alejandro Jodorowsky's third film. The infamous Mexican allergorically surreal Eastern/Western is presented at the festival in a very fine new restoration (a bit of a shock for those used to seeing it in its customary raddled grindhouse/cult prints!) along with its natural companion piece, The Holy Mountain.
This comprehensively startling but compelling film begins, not unlike the Lone Wolf And Cub Samurai series, with the black clad, flute playing gunslinger El Topo (played by the director himself) riding across the wastelands in company with a taciturn child companion. After a blood drenched encounter with drunkenly bestial bandits El Topo replaces the boy with a seductively manipulative woman who urges him to become the greatest shootist in the world by seeking out and defeating four master gunfighters.
As with the wuxia martial arts films that this story frequently references the quest for the masters proves dangerous, difficult, baffling and wonderous.
The gunslinger’s odyssey to achieve enlightment and mastery is populated with exotic encounters and inventive, symbolically charged imagery. Deflating balloons signal the start of duels, capering outlaws with shoe fetishes rape feminised sand paintings and carve bananas with sabres, civilised townsfolk prove more depraved and debauched than the wasteland bandits, herds of rabbits mysteriously die at El Topo’s feet, incestuously deformed trogalytes living in oil drums tunnel to escape their underground prison, and live bullets are caught and deflected by butterfly nets.
This visual melange is supported by Jodorowskys and Nacho Méndezs evocative music which, by turns soothing or jarring, echoes across the many desert based sequences and permeates the locations, which frequently read more like artistic installations than sets grounded in any kind of mundane reality. In fact, there is a timeless anachronistic feel to the desert that makes you question whether this is nominally a period Western or indeed set in some kind of post-apocalyptic Stephen King future.
El Topo is rendered even stranger by its renowned mid-film gear change, one of several enigmatic transformations that can be interpreted as Buddhist inspired reincarnations of the title character.
Just imagine what might have been if Jodorowsky had pulled off his mid-70s adaptation of Frank Herbert's Dune, with its intended cast of Salvidor Dali as the Emperor, Mick Jagger playing Feyd Rautha and Orson Welles as Baron Harkonnen? As it is the Acid Western tradition at least got another outing in Jim Jarmusch's more recent film, Dead Man, which, for all its many remarkable charms, by comparison to El Topo is cast into monochrome shade.
A bizarre chimera even by Zero-G's notoriously unhinged standards El Topo is a cult classic given gloriously grotesque new life by its own recent transfiguring restoration.
Director/Screenwriter Alejandro Jodorowsky
1971/125mins
-FIDO-
Canada/USA
Fido fiendishly expands upon the gag featured in Shaun of the Dead (amongst other films) that zombies could be domesticated to perform simple tasks. Zombies helping in the kitchen? Uh-oh, better make sure they keep those rotting fingers are kept hygenically away from food preparation surfaces with a pair of crisp, clean white cotton gloves....
In an alternate 1950s the all encompassing ZomCom, which apparently helped win the Zombie War, protects and serves the walled small towns of America. Now, we all know that the only reason to provide zombies with clever electronic control collars is so that the gadgets can malfunction; cue zombie outbreak! It’s the slyly subversive juxtaposition of wholesome mom and apple-pie Leave It To Beaver sitcom with Zombie killing procedural that lends this consistently bemusing film a wicked Addams Family style where Pop naturally reads Death Magazine and scenes shot in cars are filmed using good old fashioned rear screen projection.
Not that we’re talking Black and White telly, nosirree Bob! Fido is filmed in full, glorious technicolour, complete with ginormous finned automobiles, two toned shoes and compliant Stepford housewives who wait at the front door for their patriarchal hubbies to take the martini from their submissive, manicured hands. Happily, Carrie Anne-Moss in one of the main roles, as Helen Robinson, is more of a buddingly feisty Desperate Housewife after the armed and dangerous example of Bree Hodge. (From The Matrix to a zombie packed Pleasantville is indeed an ironic career path!) It’s not long before Helen kicks over the domestic traces following the example of her young son, Timmy (knowingly played by the intriguingly named K’Sun Ray) and his new pet zombie, the Fido of the title, embodied by Billy Connolly. Connolly plays the long suffering Fido with toothy glee, moaning and groaning and lurching in the throes of what could easily double as a hangover of fatally heroic proportions.
Keep an eye out (easy to do in a zombie film) for Dylan Baker, as the nervously cheerful Bill Robinson. Baker has had the sleeper part of Doctor Curt Connors in the Spider-Man films and, as comic book fans anticipate, should eventually get to mutate into the super-villain, The Lizard.
Fido is my genre pic of the Festival, in the tradition of another year’s shambling B-schlock spoof, The Lost Skeleton Of Cadavra. I ask you, how can I not enjoy sinking my teeth into a film where a pet zombie is addressed with a line like: “What’s that Fido? Timmy’s in trouble?”
It’s enough to make Lassie dig her way out of her grave!
Director- Andrew Currie
Screenwriters- Robert Chomiak, Andrew Currie, Dennis Heaton
2006/91mins
-HANSEL & GRETEL-
GERMANY
If you go down to the woods today.....you’d better take your copy of the Brothers Grimm Cookbook For Baking Independent Elderly Female Cannibal Sorceresses.
German director Anne Wild and screenwriter Peter Schwindt settle for a straightforward retelling of the classic rural ‘stranger danger’ story wherein the devious Gretel proves the most resourceful of two deliberately lost children who end up on the menu of the obligatory member of the local Guild of Almagamated Wicked Witches & Confectioners.
Deliberately lost? How do you think the kids got to be wandering around in Blair Witchburg in the first place? Sometimes tactfully omitted from modern retellings of this familiar story is the neglected element of child abandonment, a practice forced upon starving families in situations of plague, famine, wars and other social upheavals. In this case, it’s the pragmatic step-mother who pushes her more sentimental but nontheless compliant woodcutter husband into cutting loose the kids.
In early versions of the story it’s usually just the natural mother who suggests jettisoning the offspring...a much more useful cautionary tale for parents to use as and Awful Threat when disciplining naughty anklebiters.
Leaving aside observations about how Hansel and Gretel underlines the historical distrust of skilled single women of independent means this is actually a moderately creepily staged film. The woods are suitably threatening, and the witch herself, though certainly not up to Buffy The Vampire Slayer standards is a reasonably nasty albeit dimwitted piece of work...
I never can figure out quite why witchy poo needed to go Hannibal Lector on kiddies when she was capable of whipping up enough food to fatten a small army, not to mention all that square footage of gingerbread real estate. Let’s just assume it’s an alternative lifestyle choice, along the lines of supergenius Wile. E. Coyote yearning after Roadrunner drumsticks in spite of the fact that he had enough credit to order truckloads of expensive gadgets from the ACME Corporation.
(On the subject of ghoulish folks developing a fondness for ‘long pig’ just what DID those darling children do with the oven fired witch after they fried her arse?)
We all know how this ends, after making off with the witch’s portable property the kids, in a remarkable act of forgiveness, share their taxfree windfall with their deadbeat dad...though their step mother has obligingly dropped dead in the meanwhile.
Hmm, did anyone actually see step-mama and Ms Witch in the same room at the same time?
Don’t expect a Post-Modern fractured fairytale from Hansel and Gretel and you won’t be led astray by what’s essentially a traditionally told, moderately unsettling film.
Director- Anne Wild
Screenwriter- Peter Schwindt
2006/76mins
-THE HOLY MOUNTAIN-
MEXICO
If you thought Alejandro Jodorowsky’s third film, El Topo, was weird...well, no caca Sherlock!
Wait until you get a load of this....
His next surreally allegorical outing, 1973’s The Holy Mountain, scales even more whackily experimental heights. Like El Topo, The Holy Mountain has also been recently, lovingly restored, all the better to trip out on the eye bulging psychedelic imagery!
Again, as with El Topo, the nominal protagonist is on a messianic quest to achieve enlightment. Even more ironically symbolic in this case since the central thief character bears a strong and exploitable resemblance to the traditional representation of Jesus Christ.
Horácio Salinas plays the hapless thief, leaving Jodorowsky himself the catalytic role of a tower dwelling alchemist who charges him to accompany seven influential but materialistic powerbrokers to Lotus Island where they will achieve eternal life once they have climbed the eponymous Holy Mountain.
Initially the dialogue is thin on the ground but soon ramps up to cheerfully inexplicable levels where a line like “hypersexed brown native vampires” can pass without comment or indeed comprehension. Politics, art, sexuality, and filmmaking, amongst many other subjects, all cop a satirical hiding in this extraordinary film which relies heavily upon fantasy imagery drawn from tarot cards, astrology and religion.
Just listing a few of the oddball ideas gives you an idea of the unique scope of Jorodowsky’s fevered imagination.
Two women are ‘cleansed’ of clothing, make-up, jewellery, false nails, and hair by a black robed priest who himself has ebony varnished fingernails. A screaming man lies covered in tarantulas...no big acting stretch there! The Invasion of Mexico is renacted by lizards dressed in Mezoamerican costumes battling frogs wearing Conquistador armour and missionary robes. (I have my doubts about this sequence, it sure looks like the poor frogs are really being blown up by explosives?) A mulitple amputee writes cryptic messages in the dirt with a severed animal leg. Parading prostitutes turn out to be just as holy as priests. Roman soldiers cast the thief in plaster and create a line of life-sized crucifiction merchandise. Art factory paint coated nude backsides stamp out images on a production line while live body painted nudes are built into installations so they can be fondled by gallery patrons. Gas masked soldiers attend dances and machine guns and hand grenades are painted in rainbow colours. Spartan like warriors pursue a cunning plan to emasculate 1000 heroes to create a shrine of 1000 testicles....and nevermind what they did with the other 1000! Eviscerated victims spill chicken guts....and I mean they literally pull chickens from their wounds’ while Liederhosen wearing Teutonics trip on drugs and strongmen are able to turn intangible and teleport through entire mountains.
Distantly reminiscent of Fellini’s Satyricon, and to some extent Roma, The Holy Mountain also boasts the most startling Orgasmatron machine since the erotic cult film Barbarella, in the form of a Giant mechanical vagina that’s manipulated like a theramin.... well, if a theramin was played by a giant dildo!
Is it any surprise, really, in the wake of the cult success of El Topo, that The Holy Mountain’s producer Allen Klein also managed The Beatles and that those fans of all things psychedelic, John Lennon and Yoko Ono helped fund the movie?
Landmark or landfill experimental film? The Holy Mountain remains an obvious precursor to movies like Eraserhead, The Cremaster Cycle, and The Qatsi Trilogy.
Climb it at your own peril. (You know you want to!)
Director/Screenwriter Alejandro Jodorowsky
1973/114mins
-lLS-
France
Clementine (Olivia Bonamy) and Lucas (Michael Cohen) live happily in pastoral rural isolation in a rundown chalet in the Romanian woods, until one night they are attacked by....THEM! No, not by lurching giant ants from a 1950s horror film but by...well, that would be telling. Some horror films take their time building suspense but Moreau and Palud’s shiversome first feature nails you straight to the wall and keeps you hanging there for the economical just-over-an-hour’s running time. And I do mean ‘running’.
The adept direction and unrelating pace set within the atmospheric confines of the old chalet (a dream of a location to create nightmares in) is ramped up by genuinely unnerving sound effects design, an evocatively tense soundtrack, solid if necessarilly Spartan performances by the two leads, and the teasing revelation of the nature of the besiegers.
There’s nothing particularly new about the ingredients stirred into this terrifying mix. In fact, you could, after the credits have rolled and the lights come up again, sit back and tick off the horror cliches one by one, starting with the usually tiresome pronouncement, “Based On A True Story”. Commentators seem uncertain about the veracity of that, but in this case it adds to the overall feel of unease that permeates the ending of this film. I found myself thinking, “Y’know, I can see how that could actually happen....brrrr!”
Ils...it took me a while to realise that the title is merely the French word for “Them”... is one of the most disturbing horror films I’ve seen in some time, and all without buckets of blood or lashings of sickly inventive torture porn. With its efficient minimalist approach it’s very close in tone to the best of the New Wave of Japanese horror that burst upon the West several years ago now.
Directors/ Screenwriters- David Moreau and Xavier Palud
2006/70 mins
-ISLAND OF LOST SOULS-
DENMARK
A big budget supernatural fantasy for young adults that's part Spielberg, part Lucas, with an added dash of Harry Potter, but which ultimately wears its ample CGI well to create an enjoyable and in a few places reasonably scary film.
When two children move to a quiet country town the last thing they expect to find is a haunted island plagued by a supernatural confluence of kidnapped souls. When a young girl taps into the mystic mayhem it results in her brother being possessed by the spirit of a centuries dead member of an ancient order of sorcerous crimefighters.
The film's young actors are capable and ‘self possessed’ in the face of some quite formidable magical opposition, including a new and nasty take on that familiar player from Central Horror Casting, the living Scarecrow, along with a necromancer who could be brother to both Nosferatu and the Star Wars Emperor, right down to the cadaverous features and handy ability to cast Sith lightning from his fingies! I especialy liked the offbeat character of the trainspotting psychic investigator who inevitably comes to the kid’s aid in their hour of dire peril.
A fun little romp that’s no longer than it should be at an economical 100 minutes.
Director- Nikolaj Arcel
Screenwriter- Ramsus Heisterberg
2007/100mins
Sessions
Sun, 12th of August, 1:00 PM
ACMI
-KHADAK-
Belgium/Germany/The Netherlands
Bagi, played by Batzul Khayankhyarvaa, is a young nomad, who, along with his family are wrenched from their nomadic existence by the Mongolian government who want to consolidate people in towns, villages and cities as the fledgling democracy gears up to enter the 21st century’s global economy. After rescuing Zolzaya (Tsetsegee Byamba), a beautiful female coal thief, Bagi boldly goes where nomad has gone before on a shamanistic quest that culminates in fantastical revelations about Mongolia’s future relation with the environment.
Khadak is underpinned by a hypnotically compelling narrative fascination with magic realism that often contrasts the shabby reality of the concrete high rises with the colourfully organic traditional nomadic traditional yurt dwellings.
The film overflows with powerful imagery, including a simple but effective camera roll that causes an iconistic prayer-scarf draped tree to turn upside down as the land itself is inverted by mineral exploitation and pollution. A deserted town, in reality an abandoned former Soviet barracks, stands in for one potential future. Tractors, used to haul the disassembled yurts, are started and allowed to run aimlessly free across the steppes as the government agents burn the nomads’ links to their former lifestyle behind them.
Khadak doesn’t always offer too nostalgic a view of the nomadic struggle; many of the former rural folk cheerfully adapt to their new circumstances and some seem to pragmatically thrive, especially Bagi’s mother, who ends up running heavy machinery at the coal mine where immense draglines swing with saurian grace across the screen.
The film’s reverberating score resonates across the wind blown, echoing steppes, giving way to some moments of pure musical bliss, especially when some of the newly urbanised young people get together for astonishing ‘jam’ sessions.
Both lyrical and hard edged Khadak is a film, like Martin Scorsese’s Kundan, whose exotic sights and sounds will be welcome guests in my yurt for as long as they choose to stay.
Directors/Screenwriters- Peter Brosens, Jessica Hope Woodworth
2006/105mins
-LAST WINTER, THE-
USA/Iceland
It’s damn cold in Northern Alaska but not cold enough, as tough but soft centered Ron Perlman’s advance oil drilling preparation crew discover when they set out to re-open an isolated test drilling site that may be viable in the face of looming energy shortages. The arctic circle tundra is thawing rapidly, unleashing the kind of environmental horror movie that used to be in vogue back in the 1970s and which is all too timely now as global warming makes its presence felt in the real world.
Perlman, as usual, is excellent, giving the kind of inflected performance that graced Hellboy, Cronos, City Of Lost Children and his impressive work in the television fantasy series Beauty & The Beast. The ensemble players are also deftly sketched in, often in a low key fashion that adds realism.
Director Larry Fessenden successfully follows up and even references in one brief bit of dialogue, Wendigo, one of his earlier, not entirely disimilar horror outings. As with some other genre films in this year’s festival the horror elements are timeless; from the simmering sexual and tensions and hostility between the boffins and the bluecollars to the classic scenario of the besieged ice station. The latter is a character in itself, in the ‘Thingy’ tradition of both Howard Hawks and John Carpenter’s seperate adaptations of John W. Campbell’s seminal very Cold War science fiction novella, Who Goes There? Best possible use is made of this stunning location, as the screen often becomes an overwhelmingly vast white or dark canvas to trap and diminish the hapless blue collar workers.
Crystal clear sound design helps ‘sell’ the visuals and the impressive CGI special effects are first rate, without ever detracting from the practical drama of the sheer dangers of living and working in such an extreme environment.
The Last Winter is a cunningly ambiguous chiller that cleverly maintains a plausible alternative explanation for the film’s lethal events up to and possibly including the final admirably restrained frame which begs teasingly to be opened out into a wider shot but leaves the audience wanting more, leaving room for a possible but unecessary sequel.
Oil be back!
Director- Larry Fessenden
Screenwriters- Larry Fessenden, Robert Leaver
2006/107mins
-MEN AT WORK-
IRAN
A carload of Iranian buddies on their way down the mountains from a skiing holiday stop for a toilet break at a precipitous roadside layover and discover a monolithic rock
that just HAS to be tumbled down the slopes.
If you’re a bloke, you automatically know how it is.
If you’re a woman, equally, you KNOW how we are!
An amusing exploration of male bonding and stubborness this happily crazy film is guaranteed to contain no sociopolitical allegory whatsoever (really!) and the Iranian writer/director has asked that the U.S please refrain from invading his leg of the Axis of Evil until he has finished his next project.
Director/Screenwriter- Mani Haghighi
2006/75mins
-SEVERANCE-
UK
When completely politically incorrect arms merchant Palisade Defence rewards its crack Euro Sales division with a team-building weeked in the woods of Eastern Europe the mismatched but archtypal bickering office workers soon find that they’re not quite the ‘gun’ group that they thought they were.
Yes, the comparison of choice is The Office meets Deliverance and that’s fair enough because what makes this movie so gormlessly funny is the inept Brits Abroad schtick combined with an equally knowing, wickedly timed take on the horror slasher genre that puts most inept Hollywood fun with fear spoofs to more shame than ever. The only time this film ever really fumbles is when it takes the horror too seriously, which is not all that frequently, though more noticably and perhaps inevitably, in the apocalyptic last reel.
Oddly, Severence’s particularly grungy baddies who get to fold, spindle and mutilate our heroic twonks remind me very much of the “Stalkers” from the recent popular video game, which itself references the Tarkovsky film and the less well known science fiction novel that classic is itself based on, Boris and Arkady Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic.
The heavyweight British ensemble cast is a real corker here, and one of the most enjoyable in the festival films I’ve seen this year, including at least one former Bond villain (Toby Stephens who was Gustav Graves in Die Another Day) and the always wetly amusing Tim McInnerny who plays to his well known Blackadder type (He was both Lord Percy and Captain Darling) as the incompetent boss of the Palisade’s party.
I won’t be the last reviewer to note that Eastern Europe has become destination of choice for horror filmmakers of late. Attracted by threatening woodlands, abandoned buildings and low cost production facilities the exotic locales also perhaps wallow in a degree of smug and possibly premature Western superiority in the wake of the economic collapse of former Eastern Bloc foes. For the moment, these once hard to access countries are providing filmmakers with a place to set their stories ‘beyond the glow of the streetlights’. Again, as with other festival genre films, Severence does benefit from a marvelously decrepit Old Dark house of a location.
Severence is laced with joyfully understated sight gags, dialogue to listen for, and a good deal of well meaning irony regarding corporate responsibility. The icing on the cake is a musical score that fiddles with both ominous gypsy curses, pop tunes and even riffs off We’ll Meet Again as featured in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove, to which black comedy there’s more than one reference.
Severance gives awful new meaning to the term, “You’e fired!”
Director- Christopher Smith
Screenwriters- James Moran, Christopher Smith
2006/90mins
-STILL LIFE-
HONG KONG/CHINA
An intimate but involving look at the disapora of displaced persons produced by China's Three Gorges Dam mega-engineering project as seen through the eyes of two people.
In the first part of the film coal miner Han Sanming (played by Sanming Han) returns after 16 years absence to his former home town of Fengjie, only to find its 2000 years of history submerged beneath the waters of the dam. Taking a temporary job in demolition, he searches for news of his ex wife, whom he hasn’t seen for 16 years.
Still Life never wanders far from the dominating horizontal visuals of the mighty Yangtze River and the monolithic concrete and steel dam. The apocalyptic rubble of the yet-to-be flooded part of the town forms another powerful metaphor, a full stop to the flow of linear time represented by the River, which itself has been given pause by the immense project.
It’s a hard life for Han, though undoubtedly far less dangerous than the notoriously hazardous Chinese coal mining industry, and it provides some extraordinary imagery.
Men in supposedly protective suits with sanitising back pack sprayers wander through gutted homes. Friends are made amongst workmates to the jaunty ringtones of their mobile phones as they exchange numbers...a socialising ritual that later prompts one of the film’s most poignant moments when a mobile ‘s unanswered ringing signals a tragic accident. Condemned buildings collapse with tired grace in the distant background as they receive explosive coup de grâces.
The second half of the film segues into another quest for closure, as Nurse Shen Hong (Tao Zhao) journeys to the town looking for her own estranged husband.
Again, the dam is another defining presence in the story, providing a backdrop for the final resolution of Shen Hong’s search.
One baffling scene (and I’d welcome any light that anyone can shed on this!) sees Shen staring at a large monument in the distance. It appears to be a Chinese alphabetical character, rendered in concrete. As she turns away, rocket motors ignite at its base and the whole giant structure lifts off into the skies. I assume this is some kind of reference to the recent successes of the Chinese manned space programme but am not sure as to why it’s relevant to the story? Unless it’s just a bit of triumphalism? Or indeed, because Shen does ignore the startling sight, perhaps it’s meant to be ironic? Enquiring minds need to know!
Actually, the overall philosophical conclusion drawn at the end of Still Life does read a little bit like some kind of inspirational tract to me....but that may just reflect my own bias, or again it could be ironic, and I won’t spoil the ending by going further into detail. (Well, cross cultural puzzles have always attracted me to World Cinema!)
Still Life is a beautifully visualised, thoughtful film with a measured pace that aptly reflects the larger elements that form the canvas that its smaller, but no less important, human dramas are played out against.
Director/Screenwriter- Jia Zhang-ke
2006/108mins
-THE WAR TAPES-
USA
Rather than be 'embedded' in a U.S military unit in Iraq filmmaker Deborah Scranton chose to give cameras to three National Guardsmen to record their own experiences deployed with Charlie Company, 3rd of the 172nd New Hampshire Mountain Infantry. Scranton provided additional remote directorial aid via text messaging and email to the three soldiers, Sgts. Stephen Pink and Zack Bazzi, and Specialist Michael Moriarty, whose stories were chosen from an overall pool of 1000 hours of footage.
The soldiers’ personal and professional accounts are sobering and revelatory and never less than enlightening.
Though it does this remarkably cohesive documentary something of a disservice to cherry pick material out of its sturdily engineered overall context it’s necessary to give some idea of the range of material included in the film.
We see several ambush eye views of the destructive force of roadside Improvised Explosive Devices which, though initiated and responded to with varying degrees of control by both combatant forces, usually result in chaos and confusion, death and destruction, for bystanders. One soldier matter-of-factly tours a vast graveyard of combat lossed vehicles, shattered and gutted by I.E.Ds, casting in an increasingly ironic light President Bush’s triumphantly naive 2003 announcement that “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended...”
The complexity of night operations are mirrored in the silvered eyed stare of soldiers seen through the eerie but tactically invaluable lenses of night vision equipment , rendering one formation of troops strikingly like a formation of stolid Terracotta Warriors. The detached professionalism of the soldiers understandably falters when a night time convoy kills a woman who was then struck repeatedly by each truck in turn.
The irony of soldiers and hired civilians (drivers and security guards) risking and losing their lives to protect re-supply cargos of, for example, cheese for hamburgers, is not lost on the troopers who wonder loudly if the complex and highly profitable logistical tail is wagging the policy dog? In fact, they’re refreshingly unguarded in their speculations about what they see, from their perspective as boots on the ground, as the reasons behind the ongoing war. Their observations are pithy, and to the point...or, rather, multiple points, as the individual opinions cover the entire spectrum of current controversy, from oil driven conspiracy to patriotic war on terror.
Soldiers will always enthusiastically relish the opportunity to grouse about their lot, reserving special venom for the shortcomings of their equipment, training, rations and orders. One complaint amongst many was that these soldiers received little or no cultural instruction to help prepare them for operating in the Iraq theatre, which ommission makes it hard to both know the enemy or understand your friends. Even a simple misunderstanding over a commonly used hand gesture for ‘Stop’ can, in the local environment, be fatally mistaken for ‘Hello!”
The fact that the Iraq conflict is, in reality, fought amongst peoples homes rather than some spiffily titled combat theatre, warzone or neutrally termed area of operations is thoughtfully underlined by frequent segues to the soldiers’ American homes, either when the troops have returned or during their absence. Surface impressions notwithstanding there doesn’t seem to be a great deal of difference between U.S and Iraqi civilians; folks, it seems, are alike all over. Stateside sequences touch upon the complicated effects that the deployment had on civilian family members, the problems of post traumatic stress disorder suffered by the veterans, and the more obvious physical injuries. For example, one of the soldiers has carpal tunnel syndrome in his hands, the result of vibration transmitted through the grips of his vehicle mounted machine gun on patrol. He also has to cope with back pain from wearing body armour in a confined space.
Crammed with ‘real time’ feedback from ongoing conflict The War Tapes makes a provocative companion piece with the 2005 documentary Gunner Palace. For balance I would also add to the recommended viewing list: Control Room (2004), Baghdad ER (2006), and My Country, My Country (2006)
Director- Deborah Scranton
2006/97mins
-WELCOME TO NOLLYWOOD-
USA/NIGERIA
Never heard of the Nigerian film industry? This inspiringly cheeky doco will rectify that and should be seen by all budding filmmakers seeking new ways to practice their art.
Something like 2400 movies per year are produced in Nigeria, making it the third most prolific film industry in the world. Film? Well, that’s a nostalgically generic term to describe the Nigerians’ enthusiastic bypassing of conventional film stock and its complex and expensive infrastructure in favour of digital video distributed directly and cheaply at local marketplaces on DVD or VCD.
The 300 or so Nigerian directors have an already rich tradition of oral storytelling to draw upon, and have embraced multiple genres usually lensing them through an action adventure filter, which has fostered a support industry of movie fight Action Camps where actors can learn the stunt fight business. Although one director claims “We don’t do science fiction” Nollywood nevertheless loves fantasy, especially religious based melodramas with plenty of demons and angels, sorcererors and witches.
Period films set in Nigeria often have a luridly portrayed but understandably anti-slavery element, which alongside with the witchcraft angle concerns some commentators who argue that focusing on these aspects promotes stereotypes.
A visit to the set of a film grounded in the recent Liberian war shows the Nigerian director, who at least partly funded the movie himself, putting his actors through boot camps to learn how to fill out their soldierly roles, including veteran advisors from both sides of the original conflict. The actors go through production hell but ironically are brought low by a botched contract with the caterers...
Nollywood; not entirely different from Hollywood!
Director- Jamie Meltzer
2007/58mins
-U-
FRANCE
A lyrical French animated feature with fluidly drawn artwork and an equally languid, but elegant plot as a Princess Mona is faced with choosing between new love and a beloved friend, who happens to be a unicorn. The charming, anthropomorphic animal cast could have been drawn by Dr Seuss, and the story is a souffle of flirtatious love with a playful musical topping.
Directors- Grégoire Solotareff, Serge Elissalde
Screenwriter- Grégoire Solotareff
2006/71mins
During the production of my one-man showcase, I often shot extra footage of both male and female characters after finishing their scenes to create posed publicity shots. Here's the footage I shot of Sherry Foster and Lorna Harper, the two characters in the scene NewLife03, showing me trying different poses to choose from.
You can watch the full scene here:
www.flickr.com/photos/47629856@N02/48949722131/in/photost...
More scenes from my showcase can be viewed here on Flickr or on my YouTube channel:
Swiss postcard by News Productions / CVB Publishers / Filmwelt, no. 57283. Photo: Collection Cinémathèque Suisse, Lausanne. Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg in Romance of a Horsethief (Abraham Polonsky, 1972).
On 16 July 2023, British actress Jane Birkin (1946) was found dead in her Paris home by her personal nurse. In the Swinging Sixties, the shy, awkward-looking Birkin made a huge international splash as one of the nude models in Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966). In France, she became the muse of singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, who wrote several of her albums, plus their explicitly erotic duet 'Je t'aime... moi non plus'. Later she worked with such respected film directors as Jacques Rivette, Agnès Varda, and Jacques Doillon, and won several acting awards. She was 76 years old.
Jane Mallory Birkin was born in London in 1946. Her mother, Judy Campbell, was an English stage actress, and her father, David Birkin, was a Royal Navy lieutenant-commander, who had worked on clandestine operations as a navigator with the French Resistance. Her brother is the screenwriter and director Andrew Birkin. She was educated at Upper Chine School, Isle of Wight, and then went to Kensington Academy in London. At 17, she first went on stage in Graham Greene's 1964 production 'Carving a Statue'. A year later, she was chosen to play in the musical comedy 'Passion Flower Hotel' with music by John Barry, the composer of the James Bond theme. They met and married shortly afterwards. Their daughter Kate Barry, now a photographer, was born in 1967. Jane emerged in the Swinging London scene of the 1960s. First, she appeared uncredited as a girl on a motorbike in the comedy The Knack …and How to Get It (Richard Lester, 1965) starring Rita Tushingham. Then she attracted attention with a brief scene as a nude, blonde model in Blowup (1966), Michelangelo Antonioni's scandalous masterpiece that received the Palme d'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1968, Birkin played a fantasy-like model in the psychedelic picture Wonderwall (Joe Massot, 1968). That same year, she auditioned in France for the lead female role in Slogan (Pierre Grimblat, 1969) with pop star Serge Gainsbourg, who was still grieving after his break up with Brigitte Bardot. Jane barely spoke French, and Gainsbourg gave her a rough time. When she burst into tears, mixing private sadness about John Barry and the film part, he disapproved, but he recognised that she cried well in front of the camera. Jane got the part, and a mythical and passionate Paris love story began. Birkin performed with Gainsbourg on the film's theme song, 'La chanson de slogan' - the first of many collaborations between the two. They became inseparable and a living legend when they recorded the duet 'Je t'aime... moi non plus' (I love you... me neither), a song Gainsbourg originally had written for Brigitte Bardot. The song's fame is partly a result of its salacious lyrics, sung by Gainsbourg and Birkin to a background of passionate whispering and moaning from Birkin, concluding in her simulated orgasm. Censorship in several countries went wild, the Vatican condemned the immoral nature of the song, and in Great Britain, the BBC refused to play the original and did their own orchestral version. The record benefitted from all the free publicity and rocketed straight to the top of the charts, selling a million copies in a matter of months.
At the Côte d'Azur, Jane Birkin played in the thriller La Piscine/The Swimming Pool (Jacques Deray, 1969) in which she was seduced by Alain Delon. Then she went with Serge Gainsbourg to Yugoslavia to play in the adventure film Romansa konjokradice/Romance of a horse thief (Abraham Polonsky, 1971) starring Yul Brynner. In 1971, her daughter, the actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg was born. Birkin took a break from acting, but returned as the lover of Brigitte Bardot (in her final film role) in Don Juan ou Si Don Juan était une femme.../Don Juan 73 (Roger Vadim, 1973). Her first solo album, 'Di Doo Dah', was also released in 1973. The title song became another chart hit. In the cinema, Birkin played 'cute but stupid' roles in such box office hits as La moutarde me monte au nez/Lucky Pierre (Claude Zidi, 1974) and La course à l’échalotte/The Wild Goose Chase (Claude Zidi, 1975), two popular comedies starring Pierre Richard. She proved herself as a film actress in Le Mouton enragé/Love at the Top (Michel Deville, 1974) starring Romy Schneider, and the highly dramatic Sept morts sur ordonnance/Seven Deaths by Prescription (Jacques Rouffio, 1975) opposite Michel Piccoli. In 1975, she also appeared as an androgynous-looking teenager opposite Joe Dallesandro in Gainsbourg's daring directorial début Je t'aime... moi non plus (Serge Gainsbourg, 1976). The film created a stir for its frank examination of sexual ambiguity and controversial sex scenes. In the following year, she had a cameo as herself in the blockbuster L'Animal/Stuntwoman (Claude Zidi, 1977) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. In the meantime, her second album 'Lolita go home' (1975) came out, on which she sang Philippe Labro's lyrics set to Gainsbourg's music. Three years later, her 'Ex-fan des sixties' (1978) was released. Birkin appeared in a series of mainstream films such as the Agatha Christie films Death on the Nile (John Guillermin, 1978) and Evil Under the Sun (Guy Hamilton, 1982), with Peter Ustinov as Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. In the arthouse production Egon Schiele Exzess und Bestrafung/Egon Schiele: Excess and Punishment (Herbert Vesely, 1980), she appeared as the mistress of Austrian artist Egon Schiele, played by Mathieu Carrière.
Serge Gainsbourg had plunged into several major bouts of alcoholism and depression, resulting in all-night partying and scandals, and in 1980 Jane Birkin left him. The couple remained on good terms though. Birkin starred as Anne in La fille prodigue/The Prodigal Daughter (Jacques Doillon, 1981). Jacques Doillon proved to be her dream of a director, who imposed his own personal style of drama and brought out the very best of her. She went to live with him, and in 1982 she had her third daughter Lou Doillon. She also appeared as Alma opposite Maruschka Detmers in his film La pirate/The Pirate (Jacques Doillon, 1984), for which she was nominated for a César Award. This work led to an invitation from theatre director Patrice Chéreau to star on stage in 'La Fausse suivante' (The False Servant) by Pierre de Marivaux. Gainsbourg, suffering from the separation, wrote 'Baby alone in Babylone' for her. The record won the Charles Cross award and became a gold record. Jane Birkin began to appear frequently on stage in plays and concerts in France, Japan, the U.K., and then the U.S. In the cinema, she received another César Award nomination for her role in La femme de ma vie/The Woman of My Life (Régis Wargnier, 1986). Film director Jacques Rivette collaborated with her in L'amour par terre/Love on the Ground (Jacques Rivette, 1983) starring Geraldine Chaplin, and La Belle Noiseuse/The Beautiful Troublemaker (Jacques Rivette, 1991) with Michel Piccoli and Emmanuelle Béart. For the latter film, Birkin was nominated for the César for best supporting actress. She created a sensation as the star and screenwriter of director Agnès Varda's Kung Fu Master (1987), in which she played a 40-year-old woman carrying on a torrid affair with a 15-year-old boy, played by Mathieu Demy, Varda's son. The following year, Varda expressed her admiration for Birkin with the feature-length documentary Jane B. par Agnes V (Agnès Varda, 1988). Birkin’s work in Dust (Marion Hänsel, 1985) with Trevor Howard and Daddy Nostalgie (Bertrand Tavernier, 1990) opposite Dirk Bogarde also earned her the praise and respect of international critics. Additionally, she appeared in Merchant-Ivory's A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (James Ivory, 1998) and Merci Docteur Rey (Andrew Litvack, 2002) with Dianne Wiest, while the end title song of Le Divorce (James Ivory, 2003) featured her singing 'L'Anamour', composed by Serge Gainsbourg. In 1990 Serge Gainsbourg dedicated a new album to her: 'Amours des feintes'. It was to be his last. He died in 1991. A year later Birkin won the Female Artist of the Year award at the 1992 Victoires de la Musique. In 1993 she separated from Jacques Doillon. In the following years, she devoted herself to her family and to her humanitarian work with Amnesty International on immigrant welfare and AIDS issues. Birkin visited Bosnia, Rwanda, and Palestine, often working with children. In 2001, she was awarded the OBE in Great Britain. She has also been awarded the French Ordre National du Mérite in 2004. Jane Birkin continues to make films, theatre, and music. She collaborated with such artists as Bryan Ferry, Manu Chao, Françoise Hardy, Rufus Wainwright, and Les Negresses Vertes on albums such as 'Rendez-Vous' (2004) and 'Fictions' (2006). The self-penned 'Enfants d'Hiver' arrived in 2008. In 2006, Birkin played the title role in 'Elektra', directed by Philippe Calvario in France. At the Cannes Film Festival 2007, she presented a film, both as a director and actor: Boxes (2007) with Michel Piccoli, Geraldine Chaplin, and her daughter Lou Doillon. She also appeared in Si tu meurs, je te tue/If you die, I’ll kill you (Hiner Saleem, 2011) with Jonathan Zaccaï, and La femme et le TGV/The Railroad Lady (2016), a short film directed by Swiss filmmaker Timo von Gunten. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live-Action Short Film. In a 2017 interview, Birkin stated that La femme et le TGV would be her final acting performance and that she had no plans to return to acting. In March 2017, Jane Birkin released 'Birkin/Gainsbourg: Le Symphonique', a collection of songs Serge Gainsbourg had written for her during and after their relationship, reworked with full orchestral arrangements. In 2021, she suffered a stroke. Her declining health forced her to cancel performances frequently. Birkin was found dead in her Paris home by her personal nurse on 16 July 2023. She was 76 years old. In January 2022, an intimate and touching documentary about her has been released in French cinemas Jane par Charlotte. It was directed by her daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg.
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), John Bush (AllMusic), RFI Musique (now defunct), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
An image of myself as Sonia Marquez, a hot-blooded Latin real estate agent and diva from my comedy screenplay "A New Life".
See a video of Sonia here:
Mock magazine cover from 1947 with an image of myself as Lola Parker, a 1940s Hollywood B-movie starlet from my drama screenplay "Till We Meet Again".
Playwright, screenwriter and actress Carla Scatarelli, in an old bar in Buenos Aires. Shot during a live class of my portrait workshop. We planned it this way together, as she so often writes in bars and cafés.
Lens: Carl Zeiss Distagon T* 2/35 ZF.
Mock publicity photo with an image of myself as Tatiana Veranova, a 1960s Ukrainian ballerina, cellist, and KGB spy from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
Images of myself as one of the characters I played in my one-man showcase -- a production written, directed, produced, and edited entirely by me and in which I portray over 100 different characters in more than 50 scenes.
The showcase can be viewed in its entirety at:
or
Screenwriter and film producer Charlie Chaplin – the Tramp in "Modern Times" - settled in Manoir de Ban in Vevey. His statue on the lakeside promenade recalls his 25-year stay in the region.
An image of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960s British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
Sylvester Enzio Stallone (/stəˈloʊn/; born Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone, July 6, 1946) is an American actor, screenwriter, director, and producer.[1] After his beginnings as a struggling actor for a number of years upon arriving to New York City in 1969 and later Hollywood in 1974, he won his first critical acclaim as an actor for his co-starring role as Stanley Rosiello in The Lords of Flatbush. Stallone subsequently found gradual work as an extra or side character in films with a sizable budget until he achieved his greatest critical and commercial success as an actor and screenwriter, starting in 1976 with his role as boxer Rocky Balboa, in the first film of the successful Rocky series (1976–present), for which he also wrote the screenplays.[2] In the films, Rocky is portrayed as an underdog boxer who fights numerous brutal opponents, and wins the world heavyweight championship twice.. wikipedia
Mock advertisement with an image of myself as Chantal Thierry, a 1960s French secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
Pencil drawing done on heavy Bristol paper. Size 11x14. A Steven Chateauneuf Creation.
PLEASE do NOT post this image on other websites without my permission.
I spotted this statue by chance while staying in Montmartre. The French actor and sculptor Jean Marais (1913-1998) created this unusual bronze patina sculpture in 1989 to pay tribute to Marcel Aymé (1902-1967), a popular French novelist, screenwriter and playwright.
Mock magazine cover from 1965 with an image of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960s British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
An image of myself as Chantal Thierry, a 1960's French secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
Watch videos of Chantal here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5AF7vWmsMk
Images of myself as one of the characters I played in my one-man showcase -- a production written, directed, produced, and edited entirely by me and in which I portray over 100 different characters in more than 50 scenes.
The showcase can be viewed in its entirety at:
or
Mock advertisement with an image of myself as Chantal Thierry, a 1960s French secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
Nov. 15, 2012
"We had just watched the movie 'Lincoln' in the White House theatre with the director, screenwriter and many of the actors attending. Later, the President invited Daniel Day-Lewis upstairs to see the Lincoln Bedroom in the private residence. Here is Day-Lewis, who had just come to life as Abraham Lincoln, viewing the Gettysburg Address." (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)
This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.
Mock publicity photo with an image of myself as Tatiana Veranova, a 1960s Ukrainian ballerina, cellist, and KGB spy from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
A composite image of myself as three of the characters I played in my one-man showcase -- a production written, directed, produced, and edited entirely by me and in which I portray over 100 different characters in more than 50 scenes.
The showcase can be viewed in its entirety at:
or
Image of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960's British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
An image of myself as Chantal Thierry, a 1960s French secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
See videos of Chantal and other "Absolutely Smashing" characters here:
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTv55UM19WdGqjz_6nZGU-4FpW...
Image of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960's British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
Watch videos of Darla here:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt3FiYKXI9s
www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqduiIZDjfI
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdm5_6AFJ0o
www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWEjfTX2gIM
French postcard by Mercury / Polygram. Photo: Laurent Seroussi. Caption: (à la légère). The album 'À la Légère' was released in 1998.
On 16 July 2023, British actress Jane Birkin (1946) was found dead in her Paris home by her nurse. In the Swinging Sixties, the shy, awkward-looking Birkin made a huge international splash as one of the nude models in Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966). In France, she became the muse of singer-songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, who wrote several of her albums, plus their explicitly erotic duet 'Je t'aime... moi non plus'. Later she worked with such respected film directors as Jacques Rivette, Agnès Varda, and Jacques Doillon, and won several acting awards. She was 76 years old.
Jane Mallory Birkin was born in London in 1946. Her mother, Judy Campbell, was an English stage actress, and her father, David Birkin, was a Royal Navy lieutenant-commander, who had worked on clandestine operations as a navigator with the French Resistance. Her brother is the screenwriter and director Andrew Birkin. She was educated at Upper Chine School, Isle of Wight, and then went to Kensington Academy in London. At 17, she first went on stage in Graham Greene's 1964 production 'Carving a Statue'. A year later, she was chosen to play in the musical comedy 'Passion Flower Hotel' with music by John Barry, the composer of the James Bond theme. They met and married shortly afterwards. Their daughter Kate Barry, now a photographer, was born in 1967. Jane emerged in the Swinging London scene of the 1960s. First, she appeared uncredited as a girl on a motorbike in the comedy The Knack …and How to Get It (Richard Lester, 1965) starring Rita Tushingham. Then she attracted attention with a brief scene as a nude, blonde model in Blowup (1966), Michelangelo Antonioni's scandalous masterpiece that received the Palme d'Or award at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1968, Birkin played a fantasy-like model in the psychedelic picture Wonderwall (Joe Massot, 1968). That same year, she auditioned in France for the lead female role in Slogan (Pierre Grimblat, 1969) with pop star Serge Gainsbourg, who was still grieving after his break up with Brigitte Bardot. Jane barely spoke French, and Gainsbourg gave her a rough time. When she burst into tears, mixing private sadness about John Barry and the film part, he disapproved, but he recognised that she cried well in front of the camera. Jane got the part, and a mythical and passionate Paris love story began. Birkin performed with Gainsbourg on the film's theme song, 'La chanson de slogan' - the first of many collaborations between the two. They became inseparable and a living legend when they recorded the duet 'Je t'aime... moi non plus' (I love you... me neither), a song Gainsbourg originally had written for Brigitte Bardot. The song's fame is partly a result of its salacious lyrics, sung by Gainsbourg and Birkin to a background of passionate whispering and moaning from Birkin, concluding in her simulated orgasm. Censorship in several countries went wild, the Vatican condemned the immoral nature of the song, and in Great Britain, the BBC refused to play the original and did their own orchestral version. The record benefitted from all the free publicity and rocketed straight to the top of the charts, selling a million copies in a matter of months.
At the Côte d'Azur, Jane Birkin played in the thriller La Piscine/The Swimming Pool (Jacques Deray, 1969) in which she was seduced by Alain Delon. Then she went with Serge Gainsbourg to Yugoslavia to play in the adventure film Romansa konjokradice/Romance of a horse thief (Abraham Polonsky, 1971) starring Yul Brynner. In 1971, her daughter, the actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg was born. Birkin took a break from acting, but returned as the lover of Brigitte Bardot (in her final film role) in Don Juan ou Si Don Juan était une femme.../Don Juan 73 (Roger Vadim, 1973). Her first solo album, 'Di Doo Dah', was also released in 1973. The title song became another chart hit. In the cinema, Birkin played 'cute but stupid' roles in such box office hits as La moutarde me monte au nez/Lucky Pierre (Claude Zidi, 1974) and La course à l’échalotte/The Wild Goose Chase (Claude Zidi, 1975), two popular comedies starring Pierre Richard. She proved herself as a film actress in Le Mouton enragé/Love at the Top (Michel Deville, 1974) starring Romy Schneider, and the highly dramatic Sept morts sur ordonnance/Seven Deaths by Prescription (Jacques Rouffio, 1975) opposite Michel Piccoli. In 1975, she also appeared as an androgynous-looking teenager opposite Joe Dallesandro in Gainsbourg's daring directorial début Je t'aime... moi non plus (Serge Gainsbourg, 1976). The film created a stir for its frank examination of sexual ambiguity and controversial sex scenes. In the following year, she had a cameo as herself in the blockbuster L'Animal/Stuntwoman (Claude Zidi, 1977) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. In the meantime, her second album 'Lolita go home' (1975) came out, on which she sang Philippe Labro's lyrics set to Gainsbourg's music. Three years later, her 'Ex-fan des sixties' (1978) was released. Birkin appeared in a series of mainstream films such as the Agatha Christie films Death on the Nile (John Guillermin, 1978) and Evil Under the Sun (Guy Hamilton, 1982), with Peter Ustinov as Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. In the arthouse production Egon Schiele Exzess und Bestrafung/Egon Schiele: Excess and Punishment (Herbert Vesely, 1980), she appeared as the mistress of Austrian artist Egon Schiele, played by Mathieu Carrière.
Serge Gainsbourg had plunged into several major bouts of alcoholism and depression, resulting in all-night partying and scandals, and in 1980 Jane Birkin left him. The couple remained on good terms though. Birkin starred as Anne in La fille prodigue/The Prodigal Daughter (Jacques Doillon, 1981). Jacques Doillon proved to be her dream of a director, who imposed his own personal style of drama and brought out the very best of her. She went to live with him, and in 1982 she had her third daughter Lou Doillon. She also appeared as Alma opposite Maruschka Detmers in his film La pirate/The Pirate (Jacques Doillon, 1984), for which she was nominated for a César Award. This work led to an invitation from theatre director Patrice Chéreau to star on stage in 'La Fausse suivante' (The False Servant) by Pierre de Marivaux. Gainsbourg, suffering from the separation, wrote 'Baby alone in Babylone' for her. The record won the Charles Cross award and became a gold record. Jane Birkin began to appear frequently on stage in plays and concerts in France, Japan, the U.K., and then the U.S. In the cinema, she received another César Award nomination for her role in La femme de ma vie/The Woman of My Life (Régis Wargnier, 1986). Film director Jacques Rivette collaborated with her in L'amour par terre/Love on the Ground (Jacques Rivette, 1983) starring Geraldine Chaplin, and La Belle Noiseuse/The Beautiful Troublemaker (Jacques Rivette, 1991) with Michel Piccoli and Emmanuelle Béart. For the latter film, Birkin was nominated for the César for best supporting actress. She created a sensation as the star and screenwriter of director Agnès Varda's Kung Fu Master (1987), in which she played a 40-year-old woman carrying on a torrid affair with a 15-year-old boy, played by Mathieu Demy, Varda's son. The following year, Varda expressed her admiration for Birkin with the feature-length documentary Jane B. par Agnes V (Agnès Varda, 1988). Birkin’s work in Dust (Marion Hänsel, 1985) with Trevor Howard and Daddy Nostalgie (Bertrand Tavernier, 1990) opposite Dirk Bogarde also earned her the praise and respect of international critics. Additionally, she appeared in Merchant-Ivory's A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries (James Ivory, 1998) and Merci Docteur Rey (Andrew Litvack, 2002) with Dianne Wiest, while the end title song of Le Divorce (James Ivory, 2003) featured her singing 'L'Anamour', composed by Serge Gainsbourg. In 1990 Serge Gainsbourg dedicated a new album to her: 'Amours des feintes'. It was to be his last. He died in 1991. A year later Birkin won the Female Artist of the Year award at the 1992 Victoires de la Musique. In 1993 she separated from Jacques Doillon. In the following years, she devoted herself to her family and to her humanitarian work with Amnesty International on immigrant welfare and AIDS issues. Birkin visited Bosnia, Rwanda, and Palestine, often working with children. In 2001, she was awarded the OBE in Great Britain. She has also been awarded the French Ordre National du Mérite in 2004. Jane Birkin continues to make films, theatre, and music. She collaborated with such artists as Bryan Ferry, Manu Chao, Françoise Hardy, Rufus Wainwright, and Les Negresses Vertes on albums such as 'Rendez-Vous' (2004) and 'Fictions' (2006). The self-penned 'Enfants d'Hiver' arrived in 2008. In 2006, Birkin played the title role in 'Elektra', directed by Philippe Calvario in France. At the Cannes Film Festival 2007, she presented a film, both as a director and actor: Boxes (2007) with Michel Piccoli, Geraldine Chaplin, and her daughter Lou Doillon. She also appeared in Si tu meurs, je te tue/If you die, I’ll kill you (Hiner Saleem, 2011) with Jonathan Zaccaï, and La femme et le TGV/The Railroad Lady (2016), a short film directed by Swiss filmmaker Timo von Gunten. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live-Action Short Film. In a 2017 interview, Birkin stated that La femme et le TGV would be her final acting performance and that she had no plans to return to acting. In March 2017, Jane Birkin released 'Birkin/Gainsbourg: Le Symphonique', a collection of songs Serge Gainsbourg had written for her during and after their relationship, reworked with full orchestral arrangements. In 2021, she suffered a stroke. Her declining health forced her to cancel performances frequently. Birkin was found dead in her Paris home by her personal nurse on 16 July 2023. She was 76 years old. In January 2022, an intimate and touching documentary about her has been released in French cinemas Jane par Charlotte. It was directed by her daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg.
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), John Bush (AllMusic), RFI Musique (now defunct), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
An image of myself as Darla Chandler, a 1960s British pop singer/secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
An image of myself as one of the characters I played in my one-man showcase -- a production written, directed, produced, and edited entirely by me and in which I portray over 100 different characters in more than 50 scenes.
The showcase can be viewed in its entirety at:
or
An image of myself as Chantal Thierry, a 1960's French secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
Click the links to watch videos of Chantal:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=N06W_3s5TZU
British postcard by De Reszke Cigarettes, no. 37. Photo: United Artists.
Eddie Cantor (1892-1964) was an American actor, screenwriter, producer and songwriter. After a rich Broadway career in the late 1910s and 1920s, he became a popular Hollywood star in pleasant and fast-paced musical film comedies in the early 1930s.
Eddie Cantor was born Edward Israel Iskowitz in 1892 in New York City, New York, USA. He was the son of amateur violinist Mechel Iskowitz (also Michael) and his wife Meta Kantrowitz Iskowitz (also Maite), a young Jewish couple from Russia. Both his parents died when he was still very young, and he was adopted and raised by his maternal grandmother, Esther Lazarowitz Kantrowitz. She called him Izzy and Itchik, both diminutives for Isidor. She supported herself and her grandson as a door-to-door peddler. The boy was educated in public schools. "Kantrowitz" was the name mistakenly assigned to the boy instead of his actual name, Iskowitz, by a public school registrar. It was shortened to Cantor. Eddie was the nickname given to him by his girlfriend, Ida Tobias, whom he later married. After winning $5 at a Bowery Theatre Amateur Night, the teenage Cantor knew where his destiny lay. One of his earliest paying jobs was a double position as a waiter and performer. He sang for tips at Carey Walsh's Coney Island saloon, where a young Jimmy Durante accompanied him on piano. He made his first public appearance in Vaudeville in 1907 at New York's Clinton Music Hall, then became a member of the Gus Edwards Gang, later touring Vaudeville with Al Lee as the team Cantor & Lee. His grandmother, Esther Kantrowitz, died on 29 January 1917, two days before he signed a long-term contract with Broadway's top producer Florenz Ziegfeld, to appear in his "Follies". Eddie starred in the Ziegfeld rooftop post-show Midnight Frolic (1917) and in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1917, 1918, 1919 and 1927. He also made Broadway stage appearances in 'Broadway Brevities of 1920', 'Make It Snappy' (1922), 'Kid Boots' (1923), 'Whoopee' (1928) and 'Banjo Eyes' (1941). For several years, Cantor starred in an act with pioneering comedian Bert Williams, both in blackface. Cantor played Williams' son. Other co-stars with Cantor during his time in the Follies included Will Rogers, Marilyn Miller, Fanny Brice and W.C. Fields. The successful Broadway series of 'Banjo eyes' in 1941 was cut short when Cantor suffered a major heart attack, the first of several that would dominate his later years.
Eddie Cantor also made numerous film appearances. He had previously appeared in a number of short films in the 1920s, performing his Follies songs and comedy routines, and in two silent feature films, Kid Boots (Frank Tuttle, 1926) with Clara Bow and Special Delivery (Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, 1927). He was offered the lead role in The Jazz Singer (Alan Crosland, 1927) after it was turned down by George Jessel, but Cantor also turned down the role so it went to Al Jolson. His best Hollywood years were spent under contract to Samuel Goldwyn, where Eddie turned out one big-budget musical comedy per year between 1930 and 1936. Eddie became a leading Hollywood star with the film version of Whoopee! (Thornton Freeland, 1930), shot in two-colour Technicolour. He continued to make films for the next two decades, including such hits as Palmy Days (A. Edward Sutherland, 1931), The Kid from Spain (Leo McCarey, 1932), Roman Scandals (Frank Tuttle, 1933) with Gloria Stuart, Kid Millions (Roy Del Ruth, Willy Pogany, 1934) co-starring Ann Sothern and Ethel Merman, Strike Me Pink (Norman Taurog, 1936) and Ali Baba Goes to Town (David Butler, 1937). His last leading role was in If You Knew Susie (Gordon Douglas, 1948) with Joan Davis. In the Warner Bros. biopic The Eddie Cantor Story (Alfred E. Green, 1953) he did a cameo appearance. He was the President of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) from 1933-1935. Cantor turned to radio with The Chase and Sanborn Hour in 1931. Performing as a standup comedian, he used his vaudeville experience to outstanding effect and combined the expression of patriotism and personal values with humour; audiences responded enthusiastically. With changes of name, the show continued for 18 years on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and the Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) networks. He also served as host of The Eddie Cantor Variety Theater, a half-hour television variety show that was syndicated in 1955. Cantor also made many records. His theme song was 'One Hour With You'. His other popular-song compositions include 'Get a Little Fun Out of Life', 'It's Great to Be Alive' and 'The Old Stage Door'. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "The offstage Cantor was not perfect, but most of the man's character flaws have been forgotten in the light of his inexhaustible work on behalf of dozens of charities, most prominently the March of Dimes. He also regularly put his career on the line through his union activities with Actors Equity, the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Radio Artists, and flew in the face of bigotry and anti-Semitics through his work with the B'nai Brith and Jewish Relief." Eddie Cantor wrote the books 'Ziegfeld, the Great Glorifier' and 'As I Remember Them', and the autobiographies 'My Life Is In Your Hands' and 'Take My Life'. He received a Special Academy Award in 1956 for distinguished service to the film industry. Eddie Cantor died of a heart attack in 1964 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA. His wife Ida had passed away two years earlier. They had five daughters, Marilyn Cantor Baker, Marjorie Cantor, Natalie Cantor, Edna Cantor McHugh and Janet Cantor Gari. Eddie Cantor is interred in Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery, a Jewish cemetery in Culver City, California.
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Britannica, Wikipedia (English and Dutch) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
An image of myself as Chantal Thierry, a 1960s French secret agent from my "Absolutely Smashing" franchise.
See videos of Chantal and other "Absolutely Smashing" characters here:
www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTv55UM19WdGqjz_6nZGU-4FpW...