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(Dramatic announcer voice on)
The Union Pacific West Chicago to Troy Grove "turn" (gets its work done in one round-trip shift) has run into trouble! 4 days of remarkable rime icing has trees weighted down, to the point where multiple ones have snapped and fallen onto the tracks in DeKalb, Illinois, completely blocking the train from getting through in multiple locations near Taylor Street. Is this the end of the Troy Grove job today? Will the valuable and needed work get put off for a second day? Will anyone come and rescue our beloved engineer and conductor from this terrible fate?
The Union Pacific signal maintainer has been here, done that numerous times, and he knows exactly what to do. Taking his trusty chainsaw, he slices through the downed tree branches like a hot knife through butter, cuts them up into smaller pieces, and puts them aside. He'll do this for multiple trees along the way, clearing the way for Union Pacific Troy Grove job to proudly perform its duties, as it always does, to help build America!
(Dramatic announcer voice off)
Picture Post - in its day a highly influential British magazine although by this date it was within a year of closure, a victim of several factors including a degree of editiorial instability with the owner attempting unsuccessfully to re-orientate the magazine and readership.
The back cover is a single page advert issued by the world famous Birmingham based chocolate and confectionery makers Cadbury's and is for their Chocolate Biscuit range, more specifically the half-pound packet that retailed for 2/- in old money (10p). Cadbury's had been making chocolate covered or coated biscuits since the 1890s but it doesn't appear to have been until post-WW1 years that they formed a significant part of the business. In 1986, some years after the merger with Schweppes, the beverages and foods division (that included biscuits and cakes) was hived off as Premier Foods who continue (I think) to manufacture and market "Cadbury's Biscuits".
American postcard by Fotofolio, New York, no. RA24. Photo: Richard Avedon, 1972. Caption: Jean Renoir, Director, Beverly Hills, California, 4-11-72
Jean Renoir (1894-1979) was one of the major French film directors before WW II. His films La Grande Illusion/The Great Illusion (1937) and La Règle du Jeu/The Rules of the Game (1939) belong to the masterpieces of French cinema. During the German invasion of France in 1941, he moved to Hollywood where he directed This Land Is Mine (1943), and The Southerner (1945). He later became an American citizen.
Jean Renoir was born in 1894 in Paris, France. He was the son of the famous Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and had a happy childhood. Pierre Renoir was his brother, and Claude Renoir was his nephew. He fought in the French army during World War I and was wounded in battle. His wounds never healed properly and he suffered from it for the rest of his life. He recuperated by watching films with his leg elevated. Later, he was honoured with the Croix de Guerre. After the end of World War I, he moved from scriptwriting to filmmaking. He married his father's last model, Catherine Hessling. Renoir wanted to make a star of her and directed her in Catherine ou Une vie sans Joie/Backbiters (1924). His second feature was the Emile Zola adaptation Nana (1926) starring Hessling, Werner Krauss, and Jean Angelo. The film's extravagances include two magnificent set pieces – a horse race and an open air ball. The film never made a profit, and the commercial failure of the film robbed Renoir of the opportunity to make such an ambitious film again for several years. Renoir gradually sold paintings inherited from his father to finance his films. Renoir and Hessling separated in 1930, although he remained married to her until 1943. His next partner was Marguerite Renoir, whom he never married, although she took his name.
In 1931 Jean Renoir directed his first sound films, the comedy On purge bébé/Baby's Laxative (1931), based upon the play by Georges Feydeau, and La Chienne/The Bitch (1931). with Michel Simon. The following year he made Boudu sauvé des eaux/Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932), a farcical sendup of the pretensions of a middle-class bookseller and his family, who meet with comic, and ultimately disastrous, results when they attempt to reform a vagrant played by Michel Simon. He then directed La Nuit du carrefour/Night at the Crossroads (1932), based on a novel by Georges Simenon and starring Renoir's brother Pierre Renoir as Simenon's popular detective, Inspector Maigret. Partie de campagne/A Day in the Country (1936) was based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant, who was a friend of Renoir's father. It chronicles a love affair over a single summer afternoon in 1860 along the banks of the Seine. Renoir never finished filming due to weather problems, but producer Pierre Braunberger turned the material into a release in 1946, ten years after it was shot. By the middle of the 1930s, Renoir was associated with the Popular Front. Several of his films, such as Le Crime de Monsieur Lange/The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1935) with René Lefèvre, La vie est à nous/Life Belongs to Us (1936) and La Marseillaise (1938), reflect the movement's politics. Erich von Stroheim and Jean Gabin starred in one of his better-known films, the war film La Grande Illusion/The Great Illusion (1937). A film on the theme of brotherhood, relating a series of escape attempts by French POWs during World War I. It won the Best Artistic Ensemble award at the Venice Film Festival and was the first foreign-language film to receive a nomination for the Oscar for Best Picture. He followed it with another success, La Bête Humaine/The Human Beast (1938), a Film Noir based on the novel by Émile Zola and starring Simone Simon and Jean Gabin. With an ensemble cast, Renoir made La Règle du Jeu/The Rules of the Game (1939), a satire on contemporary French society. Renoir played the character Octave, who serves to connect characters from different social strata. The film was his greatest commercial failure. A few weeks after the outbreak of World War II, the film was banned by the government. Renoir was a known pacifist and supporter of the French Communist Party, which made him suspect in the tense weeks before the war began. In July 1939, Renoir went to Rome with Karl Koch and his future second wife Dido Freire to work on the script for a film version of Tosca. He abandoned the project to return to France and make himself available for military service.
Jean Renoir and Dido Freire left France in 1941 during the German invasion and moved to Hollywood. Renoir had difficulty finding projects that suited him. His first American film, Swamp Water (1941), was a drama starring Dana Andrews and Walter Brennan. He co-produced and directed an anti-Nazi film set in France, This Land Is Mine (1943), starring Maureen O'Hara and Charles Laughton. The Southerner (1945) is a film about Texas sharecroppers that is often regarded as his best American film. He was nominated for an Oscar for Directing for this work. Diary of a Chambermaid (1946) is an adaptation of the Octave Mirbeau novel, 'Le Journal d'une femme de chambre', starring Paulette Goddard and Burgess Meredith. His The Woman on the Beach (1947), starring Joan Bennett and Robert Ryan, was heavily reshot and reedited after it fared poorly among preview audiences in California. Both films were poorly received and they were the last films Renoir made in America. At this time, Renoir became a naturalised US citizen. In 1949 Renoir traveled to India to shoot The River (1951), his first colour film. Based on the novel by Rumer Godden, the film is both a meditation on human beings' relationship with nature and a coming of age story of three young girls in colonial India. The film won the International Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1951.
After returning to work in Europe, Jean Renoir made a trilogy of colour musical comedies on the subjects of theatre, politics, and commerce: Le Carrosse d'or/The Golden Coach (1953) with Anna Magnani, French Cancan (1954) with Jean Gabin and María Félix, and Eléna et les hommes/Elena and Her Men (1956) with Ingrid Bergman and Jean Marais. During the same period, Renoir produced Clifford Odets' play 'The Big Knife' in Paris. He also wrote his own play, 'Orvet', and produced it in Paris featuring Leslie Caron. Renoir made his next films with techniques adapted from live television. Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe/Picnic on the Grass (1959), starring Paul Meurisse and Catherine Rouvel, was filmed on the grounds of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's home in Cagnes-sur-Mer, and Le Testament du docteur Cordelier/The Testament of Doctor Cordelier (1959), starring Jean-Louis Barrault, was made in the streets of Paris and its suburbs. Renoir's penultimate film, Le Caporal épinglé/The Elusive Corporal (1962), with Jean-Pierre Cassel and Claude Brasseur, is set among French POWs during their internment in labour camps by the Nazis during World War II. The film explores the twin human needs for freedom, on the one hand, and emotional and economic security, on the other.
Renoir's loving memoir of his father, 'Renoir, My Father' (1962) describes the profound influence his father had on him and his work. As funds for his film projects were becoming harder to obtain, Renoir continued to write screenplays for income. He published a novel, 'The Notebooks of Captain Georges', in 1966. Captain Georges is the nostalgic account of a wealthy young man's sentimental education and love for a peasant girl. Renoir's last film is Le Petit théâtre de Jean Renoir/The Little Theatre of Jean Renoir (1969). The film is a series of three short films made in a variety of styles. It is, in many ways, one of his most challenging, avant-garde, and unconventional works. Unable to obtain financing for his films and suffering declining health, Renoir spent his last years receiving friends at his home in Beverly Hills and writing novels and his memoirs. Renoir's memoir, 'My Life and My Film's, was published in 1974. In 1975, he received a Lifetime Achievement Oscar, and the government of France elevated him to the rank of commander in the Légion d'honneur. Jean Renoir passed away in 1979 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, of a heart attack. Although he was an American citizen, he was buried in France following a state funeral. From 1957 till his death in 1979, he was married to Dido Freire. His son Alain Renoir (1921-2008) became a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and a scholar of medieval English literature.
Sources: Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
French postcard in the Collection Noire by Editions Hazan, Paris, no. 6011, 1988. Photo: Sam Levin. Jean Renoir at the set of La bête humaine/The Human Beast (1938).
Jean Renoir (1894-1979) was one of the major French film directors before WW II. His films La Grande Illusion/The Great Illusion (1937) and La Règle du Jeu/The Rules of the Game (1939) belong to the masterpieces of the French cinema. During the German invasion of France in 1941, he moved to Hollywood where he directed This Land Is Mine (1943), and The Southerner (1945). He later became an American citizen.
Jean Renoir was born in 1894 in Paris, France. He was the son of the famous Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and had a happy childhood. Pierre Renoir was his brother, and Claude Renoir was his nephew. He fought in the French army during World War I and was wounded in battle. His wounds never healed properly and he suffered from it for the rest of his life. He recuperated by watching films with his leg elevated. Later, he was honoured with the Croix de Guerre. After the end of World War I, he moved from scriptwriting to filmmaking. He married his father's last model, Catherine Hessling. Renoir wanted to make a star of her and directed her in Catherine ou Une vie sans Joie/Backbiters (1924). His second feature was the Emile Zola adaptation Nana (1926) starring Hessling, Werner Krauss, and Jean Angelo. The film's extravagances include two magnificent set pieces – a horse race and an open air ball. The film never made a profit, and the commercial failure of the film robbed Renoir of the opportunity to make such an ambitious film again for several years. Renoir gradually sold paintings inherited from his father to finance his films. Renoir and Hessling separated in 1930, although he remained married to her until 1943. His next partner was Marguerite Renoir, whom he never married, although she took his name.
In 1931 Jean Renoir directed his first sound films, the comedy On purge bébé/Baby's Laxative (1931), based upon the play by Georges Feydeau, and La Chienne/The Bitch (1931). with Michel Simon. The following year he made Boudu sauvé des eaux/Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932), a farcical sendup of the pretensions of a middle-class bookseller and his family, who meet with comic, and ultimately disastrous, results when they attempt to reform a vagrant played by Michel Simon. He then directed La Nuit du carrefour/Night at the Crossroads (1932), based on a novel by Georges Simenon and starring Renoir's brother Pierre Renoir as Simenon's popular detective, Inspector Maigret. Partie de campagne/A Day in the Country (1936) was based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant, who was a friend of Renoir's father. It chronicles a love affair over a single summer afternoon in 1860 along the banks of the Seine. Renoir never finished filming due to weather problems, but producer Pierre Braunberger turned the material into a release in 1946, ten years after it was shot. By the middle of the 1930s, Renoir was associated with the Popular Front. Several of his films, such as Le Crime de Monsieur Lange/The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1935) with René Lefèvre, La vie est à nous/Life Belongs to Us (1936) and La Marseillaise (1938), reflect the movement's politics. Erich von Stroheim and Jean Gabin starred in one of his better-known films, the war film La Grande Illusion/The Great Illusion (1937). A film on the theme of brotherhood, relating a series of escape attempts by French POWs during World War I. It won the Best Artistic Ensemble award at the Venice Film Festival and was the first foreign-language film to receive a nomination for the Oscar for Best Picture. He followed it with another success, La Bête Humaine/The Human Beast (1938), a Film Noir based on the novel by Émile Zola and starring Simone Simon and Jean Gabin. With an ensemble cast, Renoir made La Règle du Jeu/The Rules of the Game (1939), a satire on contemporary French society. Renoir played the character Octave, who serves to connect characters from different social strata. The film was his greatest commercial failure. A few weeks after the outbreak of World War II, the film was banned by the government. Renoir was a known pacifist and supporter of the French Communist Party, which made him suspect in the tense weeks before the war began. In July 1939, Renoir went to Rome with Karl Koch and his future second wife Dido Freire to work on the script for a film version of Tosca. He abandoned the project to return to France and make himself available for military service.
Jean Renoir and Dido Freire left France in 1941 during the German invasion and moved to Hollywood. Renoir had difficulty finding projects that suited him. His first American film, Swamp Water (1941), was a drama starring Dana Andrews and Walter Brennan. He co-produced and directed an anti-Nazi film set in France, This Land Is Mine (1943), starring Maureen O'Hara and Charles Laughton. The Southerner (1945) is a film about Texas sharecroppers that is often regarded as his best American film. He was nominated for an Oscar for Directing for this work. Diary of a Chambermaid (1946) is an adaptation of the Octave Mirbeau novel, 'Le Journal d'une femme de chambre', starring Paulette Goddard and Burgess Meredith. His The Woman on the Beach (1947), starring Joan Bennett and Robert Ryan, was heavily reshot and reedited after it fared poorly among preview audiences in California. Both films were poorly received and they were the last films Renoir made in America. At this time, Renoir became a naturalised US citizen. In 1949 Renoir traveled to India to shoot The River (1951), his first colour film. Based on the novel by Rumer Godden, the film is both a meditation on human beings' relationship with nature and a coming of age story of three young girls in colonial India. The film won the International Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1951.
After returning to work in Europe, Jean Renoir made a trilogy of colour musical comedies on the subjects of theatre, politics, and commerce: Le Carrosse d'or/The Golden Coach (1953) with Anna Magnani, French Cancan (1954) with Jean Gabin and María Félix, and Eléna et les hommes/Elena and Her Men (1956) with Ingrid Bergman and Jean Marais. During the same period, Renoir produced Clifford Odets' play 'The Big Knife' in Paris. He also wrote his own play, 'Orvet', and produced it in Paris featuring Leslie Caron. Renoir made his next films with techniques adapted from live television. Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe/Picnic on the Grass (1959), starring Paul Meurisse and Catherine Rouvel, was filmed on the grounds of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's home in Cagnes-sur-Mer, and Le Testament du docteur Cordelier/The Testament of Doctor Cordelier (1959), starring Jean-Louis Barrault, was made in the streets of Paris and its suburbs. Renoir's penultimate film, Le Caporal épinglé/The Elusive Corporal (1962), with Jean-Pierre Cassel and Claude Brasseur, is set among French POWs during their internment in labour camps by the Nazis during World War II. The film explores the twin human needs for freedom, on the one hand, and emotional and economic security, on the other.
Renoir's loving memoir of his father, 'Renoir, My Father' (1962) describes the profound influence his father had on him and his work. As funds for his film projects were becoming harder to obtain, Renoir continued to write screenplays for income. He published a novel, 'The Notebooks of Captain Georges', in 1966. Captain Georges is the nostalgic account of a wealthy young man's sentimental education and love for a peasant girl. Renoir's last film is Le Petit théâtre de Jean Renoir/The Little Theatre of Jean Renoir (1969). The film is a series of three short films made in a variety of styles. It is, in many ways, one of his most challenging, avant-garde, and unconventional works. Unable to obtain financing for his films and suffering declining health, Renoir spent his last years receiving friends at his home in Beverly Hills and writing novels and his memoirs. Renoir's memoir, 'My Life and My Film's, was published in 1974. In 1975, he received a Lifetime Achievement Oscar, and the government of France elevated him to the rank of commander in the Légion d'honneur. Jean Renoir passed away in 1979 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, of a heart attack. Although he was an American citizen, he was buried in France following a state funeral. From 1957 till his death in 1979, he was married to Dido Freire. His son Alain Renoir (1921-2008) became a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and a scholar of medieval English literature.
Sources: Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Picture Post - in its day a highly influential British magazine although by this date it was within a year of closure, a victim of several factors including a degree of editiorial instability with the owner attempting unsuccessfully to re-orientate the magazine and readership.
This page of black and white adverts includes three names, a couple of which are still around as brands today although ownership of them has changed significantly from the 'family' companies that then owned them.
Chiver's of Histon was a long established jam and preserves manufacturer and this is for a famous brand of their marmalade, Olde English. Chiver's became part of Cadbury Schweppes over time and as part of the later spin off, Premier Foods, preserves were marketed under the name of an old rival, Hartley's. The Chiver's name appears to have been sold on to an Irish company who now use it.
7d would buy you a lovely colourful box of Bassett's liquorice allsorts, the quarter-pound size although you could get bigger boxes as well as buying these popular sweets loose over the counter. The advert includes the longstanding figure, made up from allsorts, of Bertie Bassett who first appeared in 1926 when Bassett's was a family concern based in Sheffield. Bassett's merged with fellow company Barrett's in the 1960s and then became part of the Cadbury Schweppes empire until the brand was combined with another confectionery name, Maynards.
Bairns-Wear of Nottingham also produced knitting wool as well as this rug wool seen here. Such home making rug kits and accessories were popular for many years and the brochure you coudl write for would have included details of patterns, etc., the wool fibre bundles could be used to make up. She does look as if she's about to say "step on this rug and you know where this sharp tool is going mate" but hopefully he's just admiring the handiwork and dedication!
British postcard in the Celebrity Autograph Series by Celebrity Publishers London, no. 298. Photo: Rank Organisation. Publicity still for Campbell's Kingdom (Ralph Thomas, 1957).
British actor Michael Craig (1928) is known for his work in theatre, film and television both in the United Kingdom and Australia. He also worked as a scriptwriter, such as for The Angry Silence (1960). In Italy, Luchino Visconti directed him in Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa.../Sandra (1965).
Michael Craig was born Michael Francis Gregson in Poona, British India, in 1928. He was the son of Donald Gregson, a Scottish captain in the 3rd Indian Cavalry. He came to Britain with his family when aged three, and went to Canada when he was ten. He left school for the Merchant Navy at 16, but finally returned to England and the lure of the theater. By 1947, he debuted on stage in The Merchant of Venice. Craig's film career started as an extra in the Ealing comedy Passport to Pimlico (Henry Cornelius, 1949). He gained his first speaking part in 1953 in the British war film Malta Story (Brian Desmond Hurst, 1953). This eventually led to discovery by the Rank Organisation. Craig was groomed for stardom, and leading roles followed in such films as Yield to the Night (J. Lee Thompson, 1956) starring Diana Dors, Campbell's Kingdom (Ralph Thomas, 1957) with Dirk Bogarde, Sea of Sand (Guy Green, 1958) starring Richard Attenborough, The Silent Enemy (William Fairchild, 1958), Upstairs and Downstairs (Ralph Thomas, 1959) with Mylène Demongeot, and the comedy Doctor in Love (Ralph Thomas, 1960). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “As leading man in such films, Craig was required to do little more beyond looking handsome and dependable. One of his few movie roles of substance was in The Angry Silence (1960), which he co-wrote.“ The Angry Silence (Guy Green, 1960) starred Richard Attenborough and Pier Angeli. When Craig’s 7-year contract with Rank ended, Craig was optioned by Columbia Pictures. Yet his American work only remembered in two films, ironically co-American productions with the UK, Mysterious Island (Cy Endfield, 1961), and Australia, the Disney TV installment, Ride a Wild Pony (Don Chaffey, 1975).” He often worked in Italy and his faraway best Italian film is Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa.../Sandra (Luchino Visconti, 1965) with Claudia Cardinale and Jean Sorel. Other interesting films include Modesty Blaise (Joseph Losey, 1966) featuring Monica Vitti, Star! (Robert Wise, 1968) with Julie Andrews, Turkey Shoot (Brian Trenchard-Smith, 1982), and Appointment with Death (Michael Winner, 1988) with Peter Ustinov and Lauren Bacall.
Michael Craig began his career in the theatre — his first job was as an assistant stage manager at the Castle Theatre, Farnham in 1950. In 1953, Sir Peter Hall gave him his first lead stage role. His many later stage credits include A Whistle in the Dark (1961), Wars of the Roses (Season at Stratford 1963–1964), Jule Styne's musical Funny Girl (with Barbra Streisand at the Prince of Wales Theatre 1964), William Shakespeare's play, Richard II (1965), the Homecoming (1966–1967) and the lead role in Trying in 2008. His television credits include appearing in: Arthur of the Britons (1973), The Emigrants (1976), Rush (1976), The Professionals (1980), Shoestring (1980), The Timeless Land (1980), Triangle (1981–1983), Tales of the Unexpected (1982), Robin of Sherwood (1986), and Doctor Who (1986). By the mid-1970s, Craig's TV and film work was heavily concentrated in Australia and composed a depth or roles, both comedic and dramatic, that has included memorable and solid character pieces as he has matured in age. His Australian series include G.P. (1989–1995), Brides of Christ (1991), Grass Roots (2000) and Always Greener (2003). Craig's scriptwriting credits include the highly acclaimed ABC-TV trilogy The Fourth Wish (1974), which starred John Meillon in his award-winning performance as the father of a dying boy. He also wrote the screenplay for the feature film of The Fourth Wish (1976), which was produced following the success of the television series. Alongside his brother, Richard Gregson and co-writer Bryan Forbes, Craig was Academy Award nominated for his screenplay of The Angry Silence (1960). Twice married, his first wife was Babette Collier, second is Susan Walker. He is the father of Michael, Stephen and Jessica Gregson; his brother is film producer Richard Gregson, and from Richard's marriage to Natalie Wood, he is the uncle of actress Natasha Gregson Wagner. In 2005 Michael Craig released his autobiography The Smallest Giant: An Actor's Tale. Michael Craig resides in Australia.
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), William McPeak (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.
For two days in March 2010, VFS presented an immersive 2-day educational experience, exclusively for the most creative and driven high school students in North America.
Find out more at vfs.com/standout
Didn't take as long to finish as I expected 😋. If you want to read it say so and I'll share it with you on Google docs!
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. D 836. Photo: Associated British.
British actor Michael Craig (1928) is known for his work in theatre, film and television both in the United Kingdom and Australia. He also worked as a scriptwriter, such as for The Angry Silence (1960). In Italy, Luchino Visconti directed him in Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa.../Sandra (1965).
Michael Craig was born Michael Francis Gregson in Poona, British India, in 1928. He was the son of Donald Gregson, a Scottish captain in the 3rd Indian Cavalry. He came to Britain with his family when aged three, and went to Canada when he was ten. He left school for the Merchant Navy at 16, but finally returned to England and the lure of the theater. By 1947, he debuted on stage in The Merchant of Venice. Craig's film career started as an extra in the Ealing comedy Passport to Pimlico (Henry Cornelius, 1949). He gained his first speaking part in 1953 in the British war film Malta Story (Brian Desmond Hurst, 1953). This eventually led to discovery by the Rank Organisation. Craig was groomed for stardom, and leading roles followed in such films as Yield to the Night (J. Lee Thompson, 1956) starring Diana Dors, Campbell's Kingdom (Ralph Thomas, 1957) with Dirk Bogarde, Sea of Sand (Guy Green, 1958) starring Richard Attenborough, The Silent Enemy (William Fairchild, 1958), Upstairs and Downstairs (Ralph Thomas, 1959) with Mylène Demongeot, and the comedy Doctor in Love (Ralph Thomas, 1960). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “As leading man in such films, Craig was required to do little more beyond looking handsome and dependable. One of his few movie roles of substance was in The Angry Silence (1960), which he co-wrote.“ The Angry Silence (Guy Green, 1960) starred Richard Attenborough and Pier Angeli. When Craig’s 7-year contract with Rank ended, Craig was optioned by Columbia Pictures. Yet his American work only remembered in two films, ironically co-American productions with the UK, Mysterious Island (Cy Endfield, 1961), and Australia, the Disney TV installment, Ride a Wild Pony (Don Chaffey, 1975).” He often worked in Italy and his faraway best Italian film is Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa.../Sandra (Luchino Visconti, 1965) with Claudia Cardinale and Jean Sorel. Other interesting films include Modesty Blaise (Joseph Losey, 1966) featuring Monica Vitti, Star! (Robert Wise, 1968) with Julie Andrews, Turkey Shoot (Brian Trenchard-Smith, 1982), and Appointment with Death (Michael Winner, 1988) with Peter Ustinov and Lauren Bacall.
Michael Craig began his career in the theatre — his first job was as an assistant stage manager at the Castle Theatre, Farnham in 1950. In 1953, Sir Peter Hall gave him his first lead stage role. His many later stage credits include A Whistle in the Dark (1961), Wars of the Roses (Season at Stratford 1963–1964), Jule Styne's musical Funny Girl (with Barbra Streisand at the Prince of Wales Theatre 1964), William Shakespeare's play, Richard II (1965), the Homecoming (1966–1967) and the lead role in Trying in 2008. His television credits include appearing in: Arthur of the Britons (1973), The Emigrants (1976), Rush (1976), The Professionals (1980), Shoestring (1980), The Timeless Land (1980), Triangle (1981–1983), Tales of the Unexpected (1982), Robin of Sherwood (1986), and Doctor Who (1986). By the mid-1970s, Craig's TV and film work was heavily concentrated in Australia and composed a depth or roles, both comedic and dramatic, that has included memorable and solid character pieces as he has matured in age. His Australian series include G.P. (1989–1995), Brides of Christ (1991), Grass Roots (2000) and Always Greener (2003). Craig's scriptwriting credits include the highly acclaimed ABC-TV trilogy The Fourth Wish (1974), which starred John Meillon in his award-winning performance as the father of a dying boy. He also wrote the screenplay for the feature film of The Fourth Wish (1976), which was produced following the success of the television series. Alongside his brother, Richard Gregson and co-writer Bryan Forbes, Craig was Academy Award nominated for his screenplay of The Angry Silence (1960). Twice married, his first wife was Babette Collier, second is Susan Walker. He is the father of Michael, Stephen and Jessica Gregson; his brother is film producer Richard Gregson, and from Richard's marriage to Natalie Wood, he is the uncle of actress Natasha Gregson Wagner. In 2005 Michael Craig released his autobiography The Smallest Giant: An Actor's Tale. Michael Craig resides in Australia.
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), William McPeak (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.
American postcard by Beulah Roth, Mader, Calif., no. 35-5122, 1980. Photo: Sanford Roth. Caption: Beverly Hills, 1953. Photographed at his home after completing the filming of Rumer Godden's book 'The River', 1953.
Jean Renoir (1894-1979) was one of the major French film directors before WW II. His films La Grande Illusion/The Great Illusion (1937) and La Règle du Jeu/The Rules of the Game (1939) belong to the masterpieces of the French cinema. During the German invasion of France in 1941, he moved to Hollywood where he directed This Land Is Mine (1943), and The Southerner (1945). He later became an American citizen.
Jean Renoir was born in 1894 in Paris, France. He was the son of the famous Impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir and had a happy childhood. Pierre Renoir was his brother, and Claude Renoir was his nephew. He fought in the French army during World War I and was wounded in battle. His wounds never healed properly and he suffered from it for the rest of his life. He recuperated by watching films with his leg elevated. Later, he was honoured with the Croix de Guerre. After the end of World War I, he moved from scriptwriting to filmmaking. He married his father's last model, Catherine Hessling. Renoir wanted to make a star of her and directed her in Catherine ou Une vie sans Joie/Backbiters (1924). His second feature was the Emile Zola adaptation Nana (1926) starring Hessling, Werner Krauss, and Jean Angelo. The film's extravagances include two magnificent set pieces – a horse race and an open air ball. The film never made a profit, and the commercial failure of the film robbed Renoir of the opportunity to make such an ambitious film again for several years. Renoir gradually sold paintings inherited from his father to finance his films. Renoir and Hessling separated in 1930, although he remained married to her until 1943. His next partner was Marguerite Renoir, whom he never married, although she took his name.
In 1931 Jean Renoir directed his first sound films, the comedy On purge bébé/Baby's Laxative (1931), based upon the play by Georges Feydeau, and La Chienne/The Bitch (1931). with Michel Simon. The following year he made Boudu sauvé des eaux/Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932), a farcical sendup of the pretensions of a middle-class bookseller and his family, who meet with comic, and ultimately disastrous, results when they attempt to reform a vagrant played by Michel Simon. He then directed La Nuit du carrefour/Night at the Crossroads (1932), based on a novel by Georges Simenon and starring Renoir's brother Pierre Renoir as Simenon's popular detective, Inspector Maigret. Partie de campagne/A Day in the Country (1936) was based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant, who was a friend of Renoir's father. It chronicles a love affair over a single summer afternoon in 1860 along the banks of the Seine. Renoir never finished filming due to weather problems, but producer Pierre Braunberger turned the material into a release in 1946, ten years after it was shot. By the middle of the 1930s, Renoir was associated with the Popular Front. Several of his films, such as Le Crime de Monsieur Lange/The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1935) with René Lefèvre, La vie est à nous/Life Belongs to Us (1936) and La Marseillaise (1938), reflect the movement's politics. Erich von Stroheim and Jean Gabin starred in one of his better-known films, the war film La Grande Illusion/The Great Illusion (1937). A film on the theme of brotherhood, relating a series of escape attempts by French POWs during World War I. It won the Best Artistic Ensemble award at the Venice Film Festival and was the first foreign-language film to receive a nomination for the Oscar for Best Picture. He followed it with another success, La Bête Humaine/The Human Beast (1938), a Film Noir based on the novel by Émile Zola and starring Simone Simon and Jean Gabin. With an ensemble cast, Renoir made La Règle du Jeu/The Rules of the Game (1939), a satire on contemporary French society. Renoir played the character Octave, who serves to connect characters from different social strata. The film was his greatest commercial failure. A few weeks after the outbreak of World War II, the film was banned by the government. Renoir was a known pacifist and supporter of the French Communist Party, which made him suspect in the tense weeks before the war began. In July 1939, Renoir went to Rome with Karl Koch and his future second wife Dido Freire to work on the script for a film version of Tosca. He abandoned the project to return to France and make himself available for military service.
Jean Renoir and Dido Freire left France in 1941 during the German invasion and moved to Hollywood. Renoir had difficulty finding projects that suited him. His first American film, Swamp Water (1941), was a drama starring Dana Andrews and Walter Brennan. He co-produced and directed an anti-Nazi film set in France, This Land Is Mine (1943), starring Maureen O'Hara and Charles Laughton. The Southerner (1945) is a film about Texas sharecroppers that is often regarded as his best American film. He was nominated for an Oscar for Directing for this work. Diary of a Chambermaid (1946) is an adaptation of the Octave Mirbeau novel, 'Le Journal d'une femme de chambre', starring Paulette Goddard and Burgess Meredith. His The Woman on the Beach (1947), starring Joan Bennett and Robert Ryan, was heavily reshot and reedited after it fared poorly among preview audiences in California. Both films were poorly received and they were the last films Renoir made in America. At this time, Renoir became a naturalised US citizen. In 1949 Renoir traveled to India to shoot The River (1951), his first colour film. Based on the novel by Rumer Godden, the film is both a meditation on human beings' relationship with nature and a coming of age story of three young girls in colonial India. The film won the International Prize at the Venice Film Festival in 1951.
After returning to work in Europe, Jean Renoir made a trilogy of colour musical comedies on the subjects of theatre, politics, and commerce: Le Carrosse d'or/The Golden Coach (1953) with Anna Magnani, French Cancan (1954) with Jean Gabin and María Félix, and Eléna et les hommes/Elena and Her Men (1956) with Ingrid Bergman and Jean Marais. During the same period, Renoir produced Clifford Odets' play 'The Big Knife' in Paris. He also wrote his own play, 'Orvet', and produced it in Paris featuring Leslie Caron. Renoir made his next films with techniques adapted from live television. Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe/Picnic on the Grass (1959), starring Paul Meurisse and Catherine Rouvel, was filmed on the grounds of Pierre-Auguste Renoir's home in Cagnes-sur-Mer, and Le Testament du docteur Cordelier/The Testament of Doctor Cordelier (1959), starring Jean-Louis Barrault, was made in the streets of Paris and its suburbs. Renoir's penultimate film, Le Caporal épinglé/The Elusive Corporal (1962), with Jean-Pierre Cassel and Claude Brasseur, is set among French POWs during their internment in labour camps by the Nazis during World War II. The film explores the twin human needs for freedom, on the one hand, and emotional and economic security, on the other.
Renoir's loving memoir of his father, 'Renoir, My Father' (1962) describes the profound influence his father had on him and his work. As funds for his film projects were becoming harder to obtain, Renoir continued to write screenplays for income. He published a novel, 'The Notebooks of Captain Georges', in 1966. Captain Georges is the nostalgic account of a wealthy young man's sentimental education and love for a peasant girl. Renoir's last film is Le Petit théâtre de Jean Renoir/The Little Theatre of Jean Renoir (1969). The film is a series of three short films made in a variety of styles. It is, in many ways, one of his most challenging, avant-garde, and unconventional works. Unable to obtain financing for his films and suffering declining health, Renoir spent his last years receiving friends at his home in Beverly Hills and writing novels and his memoirs. Renoir's memoir, 'My Life and My Film's, was published in 1974. In 1975, he received a Lifetime Achievement Oscar, and the government of France elevated him to the rank of commander in the Légion d'honneur. Jean Renoir passed away in 1979 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, of a heart attack. Although he was an American citizen, he was buried in France following a state funeral. From 1957 till his death in 1979, he was married to Dido Freire. His son Alain Renoir (1921-2008) became a professor of English and comparative literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and a scholar of medieval English literature.
Sources: Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
You can go get it here. You can download a free trial to try first here. It's nice that Adobe allows you a free trial version first before deciding if you want to purchase it.
I think this is the most significant upgrade for Photoshop yet. You can read my review on the new software from a few weeks back here.
More from John Nack on the release here.
Full press release from Adobe on the product below.
Adobe Ships Creative Suite 5
Breakthrough Interactive Design Tools and Innovative Online Services Maximize Impact of Creative Content and Digital Marketing Campaigns
SAN JOSE, Calif., — April 30, 2010 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the availability of the Adobe® Creative Suite® 5 product family, the highly-anticipated release of the industry-leading design and development software for virtually every creative workflow. With more than 250 new product features, the Creative Suite 5 product line brings exciting full-version upgrades of flagship creative tools and workflow enhancements to designers and developers — enabling the creation, delivery and optimization of content across media for greater impact and results.
The Adobe CS5 product family is powering the creation of content and applications for the upcoming releases of Flash® Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR® 2, which are optimized for high performance on mobile screens and designed to take advantage of native device capabilities for a richer, more immersive user experience. Featuring integration with online content and digital marketing measurement and optimization capabilities for the first time, Creative Suite 5 products include access to signature Omniture® technologies, to capture, store and analyze information generated by websites and other sources. Adobe Creative Suite 5 products also integrate with Adobe CS Live*, a set of five innovative online services that accelerate key aspects of the creative workflow and enable designers to focus on creating their best work (CS Live services are complimentary for a limited time).
The Creative Suite 5 line-up includes five new versions: Creative Suite 5 Master Collection, Creative Suite 5 Design Premium, Creative Suite 5 Web Premium, Creative Suite 5 Production Premium, Creative Suite 5 Design Standard, as well as 15 point products and associated technologies. Creative Suite now includes a brand-new component, Adobe Flash® Catalyst™, a professional interaction design tool that allows designers to rapidly create expressive Web application interfaces and design interaction without writing code.
“We’ve seen from early customer reaction that Creative Suite 5 continues to inspire the design and developer world by combining time-saving workflow and productivity features with astonishing new capabilities, such as Content-Aware Fill in Photoshop CS5, that really push the creative envelope,” said John Loiacono, senior vice president of Creative Solutions at Adobe. “Whatever the media, CS5 is ensuring that publishers and creatives can deliver stand-out work and build great businesses around their unique digital assets and content.”
Also available as part of the Creative Suite 5 product family, sold separately or in one of the five Creative Suite editions, are new versions of the Adobe Creative Suite tools, including Photoshop® CS5, Illustrator® CS5, InDesign® CS5, Flash Catalyst CS5, Flash CS5 Professional, Dreamweaver® CS5, Adobe® Premiere® Pro CS5, After Effects® CS5 and more.
The Creative Suite 5 products offer more than 250 new features that embrace interactivity, enhance performance and maximize the impact of creative content and digital marketing campaigns. InDesign CS5 powers the transition to digital publishing with new interactive documents and enhanced electronic reader device support. Image creation and editing get a boost with Truer Edge technology in Photoshop CS5, which offers better edge detecting technology and masking results in less time. Photoshop CS5 also includes the ability to remove an image element and immediately replace the missing pixels with Content-Aware Fill. New stroke options allow Adobe Illustrator CS5 users to create strokes of variable widths and precisely adjust the width at any point along the stroke. New Text Layout Framework in Flash Professional CS5 provides professional-level typography capabilities with functions like kerning, ligatures, tracking, leading, threaded text block and multiple columns. In addition, Dreamweaver CS5 now supports popular content management systems Drupal, Joomla! and WordPress, allowing designers to get accurate views of dynamic Web content from within the product.
Performance improvements abound in the Creative Suite 5 product line with engineering breakthroughs, including native 64-bit support on both Mac and Windows® in Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects, that allows users to work more fluidly on high-resolution projects. The much anticipated NVIDIA® GPU-accelerated Adobe Mercury Playback Engine allows Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 users to open projects faster, refine effects-rich HD sequences in real time and play back complex projects without rendering. The revolutionary timesaving Roto Brush tool in After Effects helps users isolate moving foreground elements in a fraction of the normal time.
Accelerate Creative Workflows with Adobe CS Live
Adobe Creative Suite 5 products integrate with Adobe CS Live*, a set of five online services that accelerate key aspects of the creative workflow and enable designers to focus on creating their best work. CS Live online services are complimentary for a limited time and currently include: Adobe BrowserLab, Adobe CS Review, Acrobat.com, Adobe Story and SiteCatalyst® NetAverages™ from Omniture. Adobe CS Review enables online design reviews from directly in Creative Suite 5 applications, while Adobe BrowserLab is an indispensable tool for testing website content across different browsers and operating systems. NetAverages provides Web usage data that helps reduce the guesswork early in the creative process when designing for Web and mobile. Adobe Story is a collaborative scriptwriting tool that improves production and post-production workflows in CS5 Production Premium. Access to Acrobat.com services, such as Adobe ConnectNow Web conferencing, is also included to enhance discussion and information exchange with colleagues and clients around the globe.
Create and Deliver to More Mobile Platforms
Using Flash Professional CS5, designers and developers can create, test and deliver Web content across a wide range of mobile platforms and devices such as smartphones, tablets, netbooks and other consumer electronics. Users can look forward to deploying content in the browser with Flash Player 10.1 and as a standalone application with AIR 2.
Pricing and Availability
Adobe Creative Suite 5 products and its associated point products will be available through Adobe Authorized Resellers, Adobe Direct Sales and the Adobe Store at www.adobe.com/store. Estimated street price for the suites is US$1899 for CS5 Design Premium, US$1799 for CS5 Web Premium, US$1699 for CS5 Production Premium, US$1299 for CS5 Design Standard and US$2599 for Master Collection CS5. Upgrade pricing, volume licensing and education discounts are available. Adobe CS5 products integrate with Adobe CS Live online services which are complimentary for a limited time. For more detailed information about features, OS support, upgrade policies, pricing and international versions please visit: www.adobe.com/go/creativesuite.
About Adobe Systems Incorporated
Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information – anytime, anywhere and through any medium. For more information, visit www.adobe.com.
Acting for Film & Television Course
Academic Term: January 2016 to June 2016
Actors or performers are the embodiment of a film as they are the ones who appear in the physical form on screen. They interpret the script, bring characters to life and need to be extremely adaptable. They must also have a good voice, a strong sense of expression and be able to transform gestures and emotions. Finally, they should be capable of imitating life and relationships.
While preparing students for films, television, theatre and voice-over, the course teaches script interpretation, characterisation, diction, basic techniques, movement, observation, improvisation, role analysis, technique of make-up and basic ideas about costumes. Students are also guided in auditioning, compiling a portfolio and creating a comprehensive show reel.
This program is designed for individuals who desire to achieve a position in Film & Television, but want to focus exclusively on acting, with a concentration on acting for film. Classes include Scene Study, Meisner Technique, Acting for Film, Voice and Movement, Monologues, Improvisation, Audition Technique and Stage Combat. In addition to the course work, students perform projects, both on-camera and on stage.
A Repertory will be started by Mindscreen Film Institute in which the students of Acting will organize events to showcase their talent on stage regularly among the invitees from Media and public.
Skills learned as a result of successful completion of this program include:
• The ability to work independently and collaboratively in a high-pressure creative environment
• In-depth knowledge of and experience with the art and craft of acting for film and television
• Experience with multiple modern and classical approaches to performance, script interpretation, and character formation
• Understanding of avenues for exposure using new media
• Ability to act confidently in front of the camera
To Apply Contact:
MINDSCREEN FILM INSTITUTE
No: 4, Ranga Lane, Off Dr. Ranga Road,
Mylapore, Chennai – 600 004
Ph: +91 044 4210 8682
Mobile: +91 9841612595
E-mail: mindscreen@mindscreen.co.in
Web:http:// www.mindscreen.co.in
Empowering Children and Youth to Overcome Stigmatization
After several decades of control by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the communities of San Vicente de Caguán, Colombia, have been severely stigmatized. This has affected ex-combatants who are aiming to assimilate back into society and are met with resistance, and for those marginalized in society, including the LGBT community and persons with disabilities. Children and youth are still exposed to violence linked to illegal armed groups. Through an alliance with the Ministry of Culture, the USAID-funded and ACDI/VOCA-implemented Program of Partnerships for Reconciliation empowered children and youth in San Vicente del Caguán through filmmaking projects that promote collective memory construction and peacebuilding -- to promote communities reconciling the past and moving forward. Through filmmaking workshops, 100 children and youth, including Isabel (pictured), aged 8, learned skills for scriptwriting, directing, camerawork, and acting to create their own short films. /Katherine Ko, ACDI/VOCA
This is from Wikipedia and is about all I could find on the Christie Studios From my Aunt Ida's scrapbooks.
Christie Film Company
Christie Film Company was an American pioneer motion picture company founded in Hollywood, California by Al Christie and Charles Christie, two brothers from London, Ontario, Canada.
While Charles served almost exclusively in administration, it was Al Christie who made the films. Al had worked with David Horsley at his Centaur Film Company in Bayonne, New Jersey and moved to California in 1911 to run Nestor Studios, the first-ever motion picture studio in Hollywood.
In June of 1912, Nestor Studios became part of the newly-formed Universal Film Company and Al Christie was put in charge of the comedy companies. He remained with Universal Film until January of 1916 at which time he and his brother, Charles Christie, formed their own movie studio named the Christie Film Company. The two rented facilities from Quality Pictures Corporation at Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street, the place where Al Christie had first started in Hollywood. For the first six months of operations, the new Christie Film Company made comedies under a contract with Universal Film. In July of that year, the company began producing other comedies to sell to the independent distributors and their immediate success was such that they were soon able to finance the acquisition of their studio property. Within a short time, the Christie brothers doubled their stage capacity and constructed a film laboratory equipped with the latest in technology.
Unlike some of the "over the top comedies" being produced at the time, Christie Studios emphasized situational comedy that sometimes featured showgirls in skimpy costumes. As comedy specialists, the Christie Film Company debuted comedy actors Harold Lloyd, Fatty Arbuckle, Anita Garvin, and black actor Spencer Williams, later known for his portrayal of Andy Brown in the "Amos & Andy" CBS television series. The innovative Christie company began issuing Film Follies, a magazine advertising the latest films and events at the studio.
In 1921, Canadian Mary Pickford was a driving force behind the creation of the Motion Picture Relief Fund, an organization designed to help actors who had fallen on hard times. Christie Film Company supported this and Charles Christie played a major role, serving on the first Board of Trustees.
By 1922, the brothers were so successful that they set up Christie Realty Corporation with $1 million in capital stock and at 6724 Hollywood Blvd., built the Christie Hotel. Hollywood's first luxury hotel, it was designed to meet the needs of the many executives and stars of the burgeoning film industry.
The Christie brothers welcomed Canadian talent and stars such as Marie Dressler and Marie Prevost appeared in their films and became personal lifelong friends. Al Christie also hired African-American Spencer Williams as a sound technician but soon recognized Williams' many talents and involved him in scriptwriting. In early 1929, the Christie Film Company began making the first series of talking pictures written and conceived exclusively for African-American performers. They produced a number of comedy-musical shorts that featured an all-black cast from the Lafayette Players Stock Company out of Harlem, New York. The films, based on the popular Saturday Evening Post's Darktown Birmingham stories by Octavus Roy Cohen (1891-1959), were distributed by Paramount Studios.
However, the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression devastated many businesses and in January of 1933, the Christie brothers companies went into receivership and their studio assets were acquired by another large film making company.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMPf56ELTt4&feature=watch_res...
We concepted this June, 2011 & made late August, 2011 at Mercedes Benz Fashion Festival, Sydney, in anticipation of and as a tribute to the latest Duran Duran Girl Panic video directed by the master, Jonas Åckerlund & reuniting 5 of the world’s most famous Super Models. That's all we knew at the time about that one. All we wanted was to tribute it before it happened. The weird old thing about genuine approvals and painstakingly dotting the i’s, t’s and T&C's, is when you really want no personal gain whatsoever and wish to provide undying tribute to the music and the host of parties involved in making fashion happen, is how they all say yes when your views are zilch. But all start changing their minds, if your views start really hitting! The facts here is that everything (and that's everything!) was cleared with Duran Duran from late 2010 onwards & "I came by invitation" to MBFFS, complete with an IMB Fashion letter saying "we must be in that DD clip" - (the not for my profit YouTube Duran Duran Support I had decided to make and try and support various cancer charities with, particularly a Fashion Targets Breast Cancer initiative I knew was happening locally with MBFFS; but more critically around the world with our own Plaque Full of Likes initiatives, still happening now and already having helped build Smart Phone X-Ray. We’re still ‘living’ in hope for a lot more in the future. All was re-cleared and agreed on my birthday & OZ Father's Day, Sept 4, 2011. But between birthdays for two years, we were up against a Google Content Match Algorithm wall & a handful of deceitful flaggers and already proven bogus Flag YouTube Messages, who are somewhat jealous their own catwalk promo videos, photography (or even songs) were not doing, perhaps, as well. DD and their whole Girl Panic Team have always approved & supported us. Indeed, Jonas Åckerlund when shooting at The London Savoy what was going to become the Duran Duran Girl Panic! Viral said “Naomi, (Cambell) Cindy, (Crawford) Helena, (Christensen) Eva, (Herzigova) and Yasmin (Le Bon) all got inspired by that Aussie Mercedes Benz Fashion Clip”. To top that, as I’ve already said, we made it to highlight the work that NBCF were doing with a lot of their initiatives like Fashion Targets Breast Cancer or Runway for Research. Finally I thought, if these phones are so smart, an APP for early detection, must be possible....And it is! At what has always been widely publicised as the best MBFFS ever located at Sydney’s Town Hall, we teamed up with who has been widely tipped as the best ever MBFFS photographer, Elie Nakhell of Proposed Photography, who was sponsored by Miro Door to be there and ProPosed’s Elie signed our release for 6 of his great shots and even acted in our fun Girl Panic! tribute. See ProPosed Elie’s comments in all the blogs and on YouTube and Google: “Proposed Photography Was Very Fortunate to Work with the talented Chris Simon. – Looking Forward to our Next Big Project!” Elie helped us again, this time working entirely under my direction with shots for our special three videos, including “Do You Know Where You Are”, that were sanctioned with remixes of The Man Who Stole A Leopard for the official 2012 Worldwide Duran Duran Appreciation Day that coincided with their exclusive pre London Olympics Performance. The worldwide sound recording administrators were also fantastic with their support, as was local and renowned Google+ musician, Paul Abrahams, who helped me with one of the remixes; and John Taylor of Duran Duran released a special message, remix MP3 and video to all DD fans on YouTube. Our three YouTube Support Videos using the DD The Man Who Stole A Leopard matched sound track are all linked to the same Plaque Full of Likes Cancer Cure Initiatives as all our Duran Duran YouTube Support Videos, starting from 2010. ProPosed’s Elie further stated: “For More info visit fashiontargetsbreastcancer org au is where you can find out more about the great cause!” That local initiative is still linked to the chrisMsimon YouTube “About” Tab, but as said, chrisMsimon YouTube Plaque Full of Likes is very much worldwide. ProPosed’s Elie has been a Godsend in support on this and other DD clips: “Proposed Photography Thinks you Rock Chris! Your So Good!” This FUN video made in 48 hrs of Mercedes Benz Fashion Festival closing has always been 100% cleared and should be able to be seen worldwide and on all devices. According to latest information provided by Google Worldwide, all DD Supports are, as of Sept 4, 2013, cleared. Sadly, we lost the odd few hundred thousand views and app development support for Girl Panic! in the US and Canada during 2012, but it’s gr8 to be back and looking at the beautiful Jen Hawkins again, like a Goddess on a Highway. Meantime, the incredible MBFFS 2013 just finished last month in Sydney and as can be seen in our 2011 viral support video, one of our super high fashion stores, Myer, always put on some amazing shows. Sydney came alive again – the night after my birthday – when the real Panache started with Myer’s rival store David Jones playing wipe out with the ultimate pop-ups, paparazzi, bloggers, dj’s, celebrities, stylists, fashion designers, catwalks and amazing ambassadors like Wonder Woman herself, Megan Gale. This dynamic Super Model who took over Italy is an intelligent whirlwind of a girl and had an exclusive Isola Swimwear edit in David Jones to kick off Vogue Fashion’s Night Out, last Sept 5th 2013. And if Megan’s Swimwear Range didn’t atomize or give you heart attacks or the best birthday present on Earth; there was the Jessika Allen range, Nick Smith hosting Men’s Summer Trends and The #WEARE campaign styled by bloggers’ Harper & Harley’s Sara Donaldson and A Fox That Meows’ Rochelle Fox. And from cats that scratch to some of the bench marques like Camilla Franks’ Summer Range. I chin wagged with her at some show somewhere once and she is certainly or supposedly popular on a worldwide scale. Anyway, even at the worst of times, Sydney is often only ever about exclusive offers, celebrities or VIP parties, but those who got to St James – Hyde Park, just as the sun went down and they were finishing work, really participated with the runways and live shoots and really gr8 charitable institutions like Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, which is all about research to give kids a healthier future and certainly would be supportive of what we have always tried to achieve with our Plaque Full of Likes’ initiatives which have never been only to do with Fashion targeting breast cancer or Runway for Research, but building an app that can early detect in all youngsters and one day cure. There was even the iconic Danish Viking Hip Hop Queen of Avant-Garde, Oh Land. I tried to entice her away from Georg Jensen shop and put Anna WIN-Tour on my Samsung to persuade her to be in Urban Hymn, but she had a plane to catch, Ha-ha, lol. I’m in awe of the iconic Anna Wintour who invented VFNO throughout every Fashion Capital of the World and really puts fashion in the hands of the punter with some incredible interactions. I met a graduate Town Planner the other day, who was really switched on and wanted to travel the world and I started thinking about some of the best or most amazing installations I could inspire her with and Anna Wintour, VFNO and retail displays kept coming into my mind, (along with an interactive rubbish tip I designed for The Fairfax Museum once)…But I love how VFNO does not only stretch the globe, but even driving around the corner from my studio before you hit the City CBD lights, cameras and actions of Vogue Fashion’s Night Out, places like Stockland Merrylands under the hanging shirts artwork have got all the local and Parliament House camera guys posing as paparazzi to red carpet everyone. Face painting becomes far more than just kids’ animal faces, with amazing fashion artists designing a whole range of public face masks, tattoo art and all sorts that I’d kill to have in my next abstract movie. There’s the wonderful McGrath Foundation doing very similar work to the MCRI. There’s pamper lounges and all sorts and its all down to this amazing one worldwide idea of Anna Wintour that’s been innovating for 4 or more years now. We should get her working on some TV-Ad men’s T-Shirts ;) Ha, ha, lol. But seriously, Sydney’s second City, Parramatta should never be under estimated. The local council have come into their own lately…Not so much with the parking outside my studio, but certainly with community artistic stuff and shows at Riverside Theatres, where not long after Vogue Fashion’s Night Out they are showcasing our own Information and Cultural Exchange (ICE) web series Post Life, that was launched in November 2012, training up emerging filmmakers in scriptwriting, directing, editing and cinematography. From there a production team was created and the seven part web series was filmed in Parramatta and went into the editing suite at ICE ready for the launch on 10 September 2013. It has been made by one of the youngest, inventive and most multi-cultural teams on Earth and I’m hoping to dip into ICE on my next project because they are certainly the largest non-government community arts organisation at the forefront of cultural engagement and creative practice in Western Sydney and they’re right on my doorstep. Problem is you may have heard that Sydneysiders have this thing about Melbourne and Melbournians have this thing about Sydneysiders. It’s why a Steven Spielberg Space Craft was symmetrically altered to pave new streets, synthetic fountains and build a new City in nearby NSW/Victoria border bush called Canberra, to become the Capital because Melbournians wanted Melbourne and Sydneysiders wanted Sydney. However, you can go there now to get your Music Videos created and they do rather still have a reputation for watching lots of those other types of videos that apparently Miley Cyrus really likes. In fact, one of those Grrr Nation Ad Men, or was it that Wrecked for Success guy who doesn’t like Campaign Briefs…I get so confused nowadays, because apparently you can only get into the comms business if you are a reality person on ten (?) ;) ;) Ha, ha, lol, as they say. No seriously, one of those, eh, Ad, eh, Gurus was going on about how this year’s Federal Election, (like The General Election in the UK) can only be won by Twerking. Wait a minute. Hey you in the black T-Shirt? Did you not mean Tweeting?
Anyway, I digress….
The Information and Cultural Exchange is way cool and it’s often the case that multicultural creative outposts like this unearth new talent. Talking about Triple J’s Unearthed, they voted local, Meri Amber’s song, “Share My Time”, number one. She, (Meri) is not a Parra lass actually, she’s from nearby Granville, (still Parra, really), but it’s not so much the geography that’s important; unless it’s Google Maps, because she is in fact showcased on the Google + Artist In The Plus Channel and on their compilation download, with her hit song and clip, “The Loveliest Guy I Know”. This rather cool new lady singer – songwriter has that unique thing of being both a superb musician and superb filmmaker who launched into our Google world late September last year with her first really public video and song, “Overtime”. And it looks as though Meri might be doing lots of overtime herself – worldwide – if she keeps churning them out. So before she becomes Empire of the Sun, check her out at her launch of some 5 or 6 new songs she’s themed as Wandering MP and there’s a 7.30pm show at The Newsagency in Marrickville late September, I think…It’ll be all over Google…Oh yeah, she nailed a song about the operating systems war. I love that ‘cos I was penning lyrics recently about exactly the same Android vs. iPhone thing and I’m rather hoping Meri is agnostic, ‘cos that would make her a real Pop Star as far as I’m concerned? But I bet she’s just iPhone, Ha, ha, lol. But I don’t suppose it matters too much with the raging views she’s getting. I wonder if she digs Melbourne or even Andy Warhol…..Samsung Note or S4 anybody?…Now Andy would have loved one of them………for 15 minutes…. But back to the multicultural Parramatta for a moment: Don’t miss on 12 September, the Riverside Theatres opening night premiere of Pharaoh vs. the Egyptians, directed by a very well known Aussie comedian star, known as “Akmal”. Full name Akmal Saleh. Unusual to see his serious side and I guess he’s quite lucky to have the profile of influence he really does have across the TV and Film industries to get a documentary up. At least he’s not a trad-ad-man selling T-s, strange tweets about not holding your daughters’ hands or programming recipes for disaster. No! He’s gr8 actually. Unlike some trad ad man, he actually understands the youth focus pov of oppressed kids on Facebook or why they might try and use Twitter that way. Because in places like Egypt that I worked from in my twenties….the Facebook of the recent now…across Cairo, Syria, Cambodia and, really – throughout the North African and Middle East emirates and states that are often oppressed and war torn – is really and was always – the real social media revolution. Akmal’s film honing Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow has researched the role Facebook played in that and because Akmal was born in Cairo, I’m sure that intrinsic value will come out. If you look at many lifestyle films and documentaries or specials that Akmal compares in his sort of comedic or quirky way…He is very good to camera. But this, with him in the Director’s seat and telling it his way, should be very special. Just from my wondrous experience of co-running a Bahrain based ad agency and all its regions, (during a major Beirut War!) and really experiencing cultural differences and like having to get permission to make advertisements from Sheikhs holding hunting Falcons in a desert oasis…Cairo; the Pyramids and winning a million dollar account there for my boss, is a memory I still have, of a crazy over crowded bustling city with cab drivers riding over cyclists and my one-eyed doorman at the historic and opulent Shepheard Hotel. It was a living breathing Humphrey Bogart movie. I often wished to make a Bahrain-Dubai-Cairo movie and remember when the Cairo troubles were all over the front networks – how it made me very, very sad and really needing to be educated more about how one of the first real Facebook revolutions encouraged young Egyptians to risk their lives to end more than three decades of oppression. I hope so much that Akmal Saleh telling it from the POV of The Protestors gives us a compelling story and I have a sneaky feeling he will achieve this. Break a leg mate! I did not want to get too political – except with a whole movie about democratic crisis, Ha-ha, he-He…But as you all know, we have just welcomed a new PM in Oz and now waiting with baited breath for what happens next. Particularly in areas such as Broadband – because really when you think about it – that’s another revolution that all infrastructure could hang from, such as health, education, jobs and maybe the next and even stronger tiers of 3D social media. But on an extremely down to earth level, I was impressed to see how the outgoing party maintained certain seats. In my own local constituency that had been so heavily gauged by media and T-shirt salesman as going to the winning Liberals; Julie Owens, who has been the staunch and loyal Labor candidate for almost ten years has really been neck-on-neck with the new other guy, who will always remain a bit faceless to me, even if he wins! I think when I last cared, Julie was like almost 52% two-party preferred over the other guy’s almost 50%. I think all of us in Parramatta, no matter what our main ballot persuasion ended up being, have at some stage or other seen Julie grooving with health and education. Indeed through her, I was able to get a good sniff at what was going down with the NSW Teachers Federation and local Teachers Association. It was an eye opener and that other guy never turned up, needless to say. However, Kevin Oh!7 did for a dinner Julie arranged…That was an eye opener too. I remember asking Julie at the Meet The Candidates Education Forum what she thought of his preso, which I found, naturally, pretty dynamic and she said, knowingly: “Kevin is always Kevin” - I think I know what she means now. But she really does deserve applause – no matter what the outcome. If you check the clip of her in one of my YouTube Favourites and Playlists, you’ll see her really ticking off the media and giving huge and much needed exposure for Westmead Hospital Staff, Volunteers and New Medical Research. The other thing I discussed with her was her virtuoso classical piano prowess and I’m still determined to get a film score from her and then dub-step or remix her; but I think that’s somehow, a bit of a pipe dream….Organ; piano pipes…Get it? Ha-ha, lol :-) Actually, she’s pretty switched on and could be quite bossy, I think, in a high powered soap opera sort of way…So I’m sure she’ll become something strategic…Put her on The Project or something….But if she keeps her seat….Stand by Parliament, ‘cos you’re going to be hearing lots more from Parramatta, foreshore….Ha-ha…
German postcard in the Film Sterne Series by Rotophot, no. 501/2. Photo: Decla. Publicity still for Das Mädel von nebenan (Otto Rippert, 1917).
During the First World War and the following years Hella Moja (1890-1951) was one of the most popular stars of the German silent cinema. There was even a Hella Moja serial and in 1918 she founded her own film company.
According to the Deutsches Filminstitut and Wikipedia Hella Moja was born Helene Schwerdtfeger in 1890 in Ciemin-Zab.in Russia, but the sources differ about her origins. The BFI mentions as her birth name Gertrud Muyzysczyck and IMDb states that she was born as Helena Mojzewska in 1896 in Königsberg in Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia]), and that she appeared early in her career in the Teatr Artystyczny in Warsaw. However, she went to Berlin and worked as a translator Polish and Russian, and as a writer for the Deutsche Presse-Korrespondenz in Hannover, the Ullstein-Verlag and the Scherl-Verlag. She followed acting classes with Emmanuel Reicher and Frieda Richard and debuted on the Berlin stage in 1913 at the Lessingtheater. She was spotted for the German silent cinema by film star Alwin Neuss, who at the time worked as a director for the Decla Studio. She appeared in his Der Weg der Tränen/The Way of the Tears (1916, Alwin Neuss) based on a script by Ruth Goetz. She also worked for Messter, Union and Terra-Film, and excelled in short silent melodramas like Die weiße Rose/The White Rose (1915, Franz Hofer) opposite Erna Morena, Der Schwur der Renate Rabenau/The Vow of Renate Rabenau (1916, Otto Rippert), Der Fremde/The Stranger (1917, Otto Rippert) with Werner Krauss and Das verwunschene Schloss/The Enchanted Castle (1918, Otto Rippert) again with Krauss, often playing a countess or a damsel.
In1918 Hella Moja founded her own film company, the Hella Moja Filmgesellschaft, which would produce 16 films. Her first production was Wundersam ist das Märchen der Liebe/Wondrous is the Fairy Tale (1918, Leo Connard) with Ernst Hofmann, for which the critics especially praised her acting. Another successful production was Die Augen von Jade/The Eyes of Jade (1918, Iwa Raffay). In Figaros Hochzeit/The Marriage of Figaro (1920, Max Mack) based on the play by Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, she was also impressive as Cherubino - Figaros page opposite Alexander Moissi as Figaro. Other films in which she appeared were Abgrund der Seele/The Abyss of Souls (1920, Urban Gad), Gräfin Walewska/Countess Walewska (1920, Otto Rippert) and Der Mann um Mitternacht (1924, Holger Madsen) with Olaf Fjord. From the mid-1920’s on her theatrical acting style in films like U 9 Weddigen (1927, Heinz Paul) was deemed old fashioned and Moja quit acting and focussed on script writing. During the Nazi period she got additional problems while she could not prove to be Aryan. In 1934 she changed her name in Helka Moroff, and co-wrote the script for Die Vier Musketiere/The Four Musketeers (1934, Heinz Paul) starring Hans Brausewetter and Käthe Haack. In 1938 she was expelled from the Reichsschrifttumskammer (RSK) with the excuse that she did odd jobs next to scriptwriting. From 1942 till 1951 the former silent film star worked as a prompter at the Stadttheater Kiel under the name Hella Sewa. In 1951 Hella Moja committed suicide. She had been married to Erich Morawsky and film director Heinz Paul.
Sources: GabrieleHansch/Gerlinde Waz (Filmportal.de); Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Deutsches Filminstitut, Wikipedia, BFI Film & TV Database, and IMDb.
For two days in March 2010, VFS presented an immersive 2-day educational experience, exclusively for the most creative and driven high school students in North America.
Find out more at vfs.com/standout
This has been edited to correct some misinformation taken Wikipedia to be sure to check Wikipedia's facts and is about all I could find on the Christie Studios From my Aunt Ida's scrapbooks.
Christie Film Company
Christie Film Company was an American pioneer motion picture company founded in Hollywood, California by Al Christie and Charles Christie, two brothers from London, Ontario, Canada.
While Charles served almost exclusively in administration, it was Al Christie who made the films. Al had worked with David Horsley at his Centaur Film Company in Bayonne, New Jersey and moved to California in 1911 to run Nestor Studios, the first-ever motion picture studio in Hollywood.
In June of 1912, Nestor Studios became part of the newly-formed Universal Film Company and Al Christie was put in charge of the comedy companies. He remained with Universal Film until January of 1916 at which time he and his brother, Charles Christie, formed their own movie studio named the Christie Film Company. The two rented facilities from Quality Pictures Corporation at Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street, the place where Al Christie had first started in Hollywood. For the first six months of operations, the new Christie Film Company made comedies under a contract with Universal Film. In July of that year, the company began producing other comedies to sell to the independent distributors and their immediate success was such that they were soon able to finance the acquisition of their studio property. Within a short time, the Christie brothers doubled their stage capacity and constructed a film laboratory equipped with the latest in technology.
Unlike some of the "over the top comedies" being produced at the time, Christie Studios emphasized situational comedy that sometimes featured showgirls in skimpy costumes. As comedy specialists, the Christie Film Company debuted comedy actors Harold Lloyd, Fatty Arbuckle, Anita Garvin, and black actor Spencer Williams, later known for his portrayal of Andy Brown in the "Amos & Andy" CBS television series. The innovative Christie company began issuing Film Follies, a magazine advertising the latest films and events at the studio.
In 1921, Canadian Mary Pickford was a driving force behind the creation of the Motion Picture Relief Fund, an organization designed to help actors who had fallen on hard times. Christie Film Company supported this and Charles Christie played a major role, serving on the first Board of Trustees.
The Christie brothers welcomed Canadian talent and stars such as Marie Dressler and Marie Prevost appeared in their films and became personal lifelong friends. Al Christie also hired African-American Spencer Williams as a sound technician but soon recognized Williams' many talents and involved him in scriptwriting. In early 1929, the Christie Film Company began making the first series of talking pictures written and conceived exclusively for African-American performers. They produced a number of comedy-musical shorts that featured an all-black cast from the Lafayette Players Stock Company out of Harlem, New York. The films, based on the popular Saturday Evening Post's Darktown Birmingham stories by Octavus Roy Cohen (1891-1959), were distributed by Paramount Studios.
However, the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the ensuing Great Depression devastated many businesses and in January of 1933, the Christie brothers companies went into receivership and their studio assets were acquired by another large film making company.
P.S. The Christie brothers did not build or own any hotels in Hollywood this information has been taken for a fact for years, even by the city of Hollywood. Please check this out.
www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-name-mixup-20110620,0,63...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMPf56ELTt4&feature=watch_res...
We concepted this June, 2011 & made late August, 2011 at Mercedes Benz Fashion Festival, Sydney, in anticipation of and as a tribute to the latest Duran Duran Girl Panic! video directed by the master, Jonas Åckerlund & reuniting 5 of the world’s most famous Super Models. That's all we knew at the time about that one! All we wanted was to tribute it before it happened! The weird old thing about genuine approvals and painstakingly dotting the i’s, t’s and T&C's, is when you really want no personal gain whatsoever and wish to provide undying tribute to the music and the host of parties involved in making fashion happen, is how they all say yes when your views are zilch. But all start changing their minds, if your views start really hitting! The facts here is that everything (and that's everything!) was cleared with Duran Duran from late 2010 onwards & "I came by invitation" to MBFFS, complete with an IMB Fashion letter saying "we must be in that DD clip" - (the not for my profit YouTube Duran Duran Support I had decided to make and try and support various cancer charities with, particularly a Fashion Targets Breast Cancer initiative I knew was happening locally with MBFFS; but more critically around the world with our own Plaque Full of Likes initiatives, still happening now and already having helped build Smart Phone X-Ray. We’re still ‘living’ in hope for a lot more in the future). All was re-cleared and agreed on my birthday & OZ Father's Day, Sept 4, 2011. Ever since, I've been up against a Google Content Match Algorithm wall & a handful of deceitful flaggers and already proven bogus Flag YouTube Messages, who are somewhat jealous their own catwalk promo videos, photography (or even songs) were not doing, perhaps, as well. DD and their whole Girl Panic! team have always approved & supported us. Indeed, Jonas Åckerlund when shooting at The London Savoy what was going to become the Duran Duran Girl Panic! Viral said “Naomi, (Cambell) Cindy, (Crawford) Helena, (Christensen) Eva, (Herzigova) and Yasmin (Le Bon) all got inspired by that Aussie Mercedes Benz Fashion Clip”. To top that, as I’ve already said, we made it to highlight the work that NBCF were doing with a lot of their initiatives like Fashion Targets Breast Cancer or Runway for Research. Finally I thought, if these phones are so smart, an APP for early detection, must be possible....And it is! At what has always been widely publicised as the best MBFFS ever located at Sydney’s Town Hall, we teamed up with who has been widely tipped as the best ever MBFFS photographer, Elie Nakhell of ProPosed Photography, who was sponsored by Miro Door to be there and ProPosed’s Elie signed our release for 6 of his great shots and even acted in our fun Girl Panic! tribute. See ProPosed Elie’s comments in all the blogs and on YouTube and Google: “Proposed Photography Was Very Fortunate to Work with the talented Chris Simon. – Looking Forward to our Next Big Project!” Elie helped us again, this time working entirely under my direction with shots for our special three videos, including “Do You Know Where You Are”, that were sanctioned with remixes of The Man Who Stole A Leopard for the official 2012 Worldwide Duran Duran Appreciation Day that coincided with their exclusive pre London Olympics Performance. The worldwide sound recording administrators were also fantastic with their support and John Taylor of Duran Duran released a special message, remix MP3 and video to all DD fans on YouTube. Our three YouTube Support Videos using the DD The Man Who Stole A Leopard matched sound track are all linked to the same Plaque Full of Likes Cancer Cure Initiatives as all our Duran Duran YouTube Support Videos, starting from 2010. ProPosed’s Elie further stated: “For More info visit fashiontargetsbreastcancer org au is where you can find out more about the great cause!” That local initiative is still linked to the chrisMsimon YouTube “About” Tab, but as said, chrisMsimon YouTube Plaque Full of Likes is very much worldwide. ProPosed’s Elie has been a Godsend in support on this and other DD clips: “Proposed Photography Thinks you Rock Chris! Your So Good!” This FUN video made in 48 hrs of Mercedes Benz Fashion Festival closing has always been 100% cleared and should be able to be seen worldwide and on all devices. Meantime, the incredible MBFFS 2013 just finished last month in Sydney and as can be seen in our 2011 viral support video, one of our super high fashion stores, Myer, always put on some amazing shows. Sydney comes alive again – the night after my birthday – when the real Panache starts with Myer’s rival store David Jones playing wipe out with the ultimate pop-ups, paparazzi, bloggers, dj’s, celebrities, stylists, fashion designers, catwalks and amazing ambassadors like Wonder Woman herself, Megan Gale. This dynamic Super Model who took over Italy is an intelligent whirlwind of a girl and has an exclusive Isola Swimwear edit in David Jones to kick off Vogue Fashion’s Night Out, on Sept 5th 2013. And if Megan’s Swimwear Range doesn’t atomize or give you heart attacks or the best birthday present on Earth; check out Jessika Allen range, Nick Smith hosting Men’s Summer Trends, The #WEARE campaign styled by bloggers’ Harper & Harley’s Sara Donaldson and A Fox That Meows’ Rochelle Fox. And from cats that scratch to some of the bench marques like Camilla Franks’ Summer Range. I chin wagged with her at some show somewhere once and she is certainly or supposedly popular on a worldwide scale. Anyway, even at the worst of times, Sydney is often only about exclusive offers, celebrities or VIP parties, but you should really try to get to St James – Hyde Park, just as the sun goes down on September 5 and you’re finishing work and you can really participate with the runways and live shoots and really gr8 charitable institutions like Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, which is all about research to give kids a healthier future and certainly would be supportive of what we have always tried to achieve with our Plaque Full of Likes’ initiatives which have never been only to do with Fashion Targeting Breast Cancer or Runway for Research, but building an app that can early detect in all youngsters for both breast and other forms and one day cure. I’m in awe of the iconic Anna Wintour who invented VFNO throughout every Fashion Capital of the World and really puts fashion in the hands of the punter with some incredible interactions. I met a graduate Town Planner the other day, who was really switched on and wanted to travel the world and I started thinking about some of the best or most amazing installations I could inspire her with and Anna Wintour, VFNO and retail displays kept coming into my mind, (along with an interactive rubbish tip I designed for The Fairfax Museum once)…But I love how VFNO does not only stretch the globe, but even driving around the corner from my studio before you hit the City CBD lights, cameras and actions of Vogue Fashion’s Night Out, places like Stockland Merrylands under the hanging shirts artwork have got all the local and Parliament House camera guys posing as paparazzi to red carpet everyone. Face painting becomes far more than just kids’ animal faces, with amazing fashion artists designing a whole range of public face masks, tattoo art and all sorts that I’d kill to have in my next abstract movie. There’s the wonderful McGrath Foundation doing very similar work to the MCRI. There’s pamper lounges and all sorts and its all down to this amazing one worldwide idea of Anna Wintour that’s been innovating for 4 or more years now. We should get her working on some TV-Ad men’s T-Shirts ;) Ha, ha, lol. But seriously, Sydney’s second City, Parramatta should never be under estimated. The local council have come into their own lately…Not so much with the parking outside my studio, but certainly with community artistic stuff and shows at Riverside Theatres, where not long after Vogue Fashion’s Night Out they are showcasing our own Information and Cultural Exchange (ICE) web series Post Life, that was launched in November 2012, training up emerging filmmakers in scriptwriting, directing, editing and cinematography. From there a production team was created and the seven part web series was filmed in Parramatta and went into the editing suite at ICE ready for the launch on 10 September 2013. It has been made by one of the youngest, most inventive and most multi-cultural teams on Earth and I’m hoping to dip into ICE on my next project because they are certainly the largest non-government community arts organisation at the forefront of cultural engagement and creative practice in Western Sydney and they’re right on my doorstep. Problem is you may have heard that Sydneysiders have this thing about Melbourne and Melbournians have this thing about Sydneysiders. It’s why a Steven Spielberg Space Craft was symmetrically altered to pave new streets, synthetic fountains and build a new City in nearby NSW/Victoria border bush called Canberra, to become the Capital because Melbournians wanted Melbourne and Sydneysiders wanted Sydney. However, you can go there now to get your Music Videos created and they do rather still have a reputation for watching lots of those other types of videos that apparently Miley Cyrus really likes. In fact, one of those Grrr Nation Ad Men, or was it that Wrecked for Success guy who doesn’t like Campaign Briefs…I get so confused nowadays, because apparently you can only get into the comms business if you are a reality person on ten (?) ;) ;) Ha, ha, lol, as they say. No seriously, one of those, eh, Ad, eh, Gurus was going on about how this year’s Federal Election, (like The General Election in the UK) can only be won by Twerking. Wait a minute. Hey you in the black T-Shirt? Did you not mean Tweeting? Anyway, I digress, the Information and Cultural Exchange is way cool and it’s often the case that multicultural creative outposts like this unearth new talent. Talking about Triple J’s Unearthed, they voted local, Meri Amber’s song, “Share My Time”, number one. She, (Meri) is not a Parra lass actually, she’s from nearby Granville, (still Parra, really), but it’s not so much the geography that’s important; unless it’s Google Maps, because she is in fact showcased on the Google + Artist In The Plus Channel and on their compilation download, with her hit song and clip, “The Loveliest Guy I Know”. This rather cool new lady singer – songwriter has that unique thing of being both a superb musician and superb filmmaker who launched into our Google world late September last year with her first really public video and song, “Overtime”. And it looks as though Meri might be doing lots of overtime herself – worldwide – if she keeps churning them out. So before she becomes Empire of the Sun, check her out at her launch of some 5 or 6 new songs she’s themed as Wandering MP and there’s a 7.30pm show at The Newsagency in Marrickville late September, I think…It’ll be all over Google…Oh yeah, she nailed a song about the operating systems war. I love that ‘cos I was penning lyrics recently about exactly the same Android vs. iPhone thing and I’m rather hoping Meri is agnostic, ‘cos that would make her a real Pop Star as far as I’m concerned? But I bet she’s just iPhone, Ha, ha, lol. But I don’t suppose it matters too much with the raging views she’s getting. I wonder if she digs Melbourne or even Andy Warhol…..Samsung Note or S4 anybody?…Now Andy would have loved one of them………for 15 minutes….
Alicia Keys arrives a bit late to our interview, sporting gym clothes, large Dior glasses on her nose and a small tube of hand cream which she applies generously every few minutes, just to keep them soft and supple for her piano keys. The 26-year-old pianist, who was working out at the gym, is the essence of the maxim “a healthy body breeds a healthy mind.” Two nights ago, at an exclusive showcase for the press, she mentions how difficult 2007 has been and how she’s made a new resolution: Don’t spread yourself too thin. She has spent the last couple of years playing, performing and making movies. Now more focused on just one thing at a time, the singer has passed on to a more mature phase in her life as she talks about her new aptly-titled album “As I Am” (JiveEpic/Sony BMG) where she tackles herself and… some rock-sounding vibes.
You said you wanted to explore new genres. Why did you take this particular direction on this album?
You know, it’s funny because everybody has a different opinion as to what it sounds like. I don’t say, “I’m going to make a pop record and I’m going to mix in some rock.” I don’t think that hard about the way the music is going to sound. It’s something that happens naturally. I think that I’ve been listening to a lot of Beatles. To me, it’s very soulful, very passionate and genuine. Even though pop just means popular, every time I think of pop I think of shallow for some reason. I guess I have my own interpretation of what pop means. But, you know, pop just means popular and then if it’s going to be popular, then I’m very happy about that. So it wasn’t ever intentional to be more pop or anything like that. It’s just because of the things I’ve been listening to and experiencing, and the way that it’s all come together has been more of a mixture than ever before, so it has a lot of elements in it that are new and fresh for me.
You mentioned new sounds. What else did you listen to besides the Beatles?
I’ve been getting into Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker. To me, they have very classic chord changes that are just huge. When you think of them, you think of really big songs. And always I listen to Nina Simone, just her rebellious spirit. I’ve been listening to a lot of U2. So a big mixture of styles of music and just really getting into the way that they make their songs sound, and what is it about it that makes it sound the way it does.
When I was listening to “Go Ahead”, to me it sounded more like a rock song.
Wow, I love that! And I thought that if you replaced the keyboards with an electric guitar, it would be a rock song.
Right! YEAH! I just love that! I love the attitude behind it and I love, as I’ve been discovering, that there are so many personalities that keyboards have. As a piano player, you would think that I would kind of know that, but I think I’ve discovered more than ever the personalities of different keyboards. Each one. In the studio, I have a Wurlitzer, a Rose, a Yamaha CP80, an organ. On “Go Ahead”, we used a lot of clavinet sounds. You put the Wurlitzer through a delay and all of a sudden it sounds like a mixture between a sound you never heard and some of those great Isley Brothers guitar echoes, and it’s a keyboard! So it’s very exciting for me personally to be able to explore the way that keyboards, instruments that I play with my own two hands can have these different personalities and create these different feelings.
Is it a more ambitious record?
Today. I’m sure I’ll get more ambitious! (Laughs)
Do you see the progression from your first album to this one?
Oh my Gosh, I totally see the progression! It’s very exciting to feel that. I love all of my albums. They all represent a different point in my life, a different time, where I was and who I was and who I am, as I am. But whenever you create something… I’m sure when you’ve written something, you look back at it three years later and you’re like, “I could’ve probably written that a little bit…” You know?! (Laughs) It’s the same thing with music. You look at it years later and you’re like, “Oh man, wow! If I was doing that now, I would do it a little bit differently.” But that’s what makes it great – being able to grow like that and that’s what makes it so exciting. And that’s why I’m so excited about the record. I feel my growth. I feel like you’ll hear it and I feel like I’m proud of the way that I’ve been able to learn as I’ve grown and learn how to shape music and put it together and produce in a way that I hear it in my head and the way I want it to sound, be it very intimate and small or be it bigger and grand. So it’s definitely fun.
Some of the more surprising collaborations on this album are the tracks you did with Linda Perry. What brought you together? Did the fact that she’s one of the rare woman producers make it more of a challenge?
Yeah. I think that definitely brought us together and the fact that we’re both very independent women, we’re both writers and we’re both musicians. We’re very much alike in a lot of ways. Her background is slightly different than mine but it’s not that far removed when we both admire people like Carol Kane, the Beatles, the styling of Aretha Franklin, the way that they arrange her music. What else brought us together was the spirit of our energies. She’s the sweetest person, but she also comes up pretty clear on what she wants to do, and that’s who I am as well. It was very easy to work together and that’s not often the case when you’re working with people for the first time.
She’s worked with Pink, Courtney Love, Gwen Stefani who said that Linda helped her release what was inside her, things she didn’t know she carried within. Is that what happened with you?
I think that at the point that we got together I had already gone through such a transition through myself and I was already very adamant about being a lot more vocal and just direct. I just didn’t want to hold anything back anymore. And so I came to her already with this mindset: This is where I’m at, this is who I am and I’m tired of the things that I’ve been dealing with before and I want to change that. So she kind of got me right at that moment. I probably might have shocked her a little bit because I was extremely fed up. I think it was just the right time because her nature is to make you feel at ease and not to really explore. Because that’s the thing about music. You can do music with anyone but you can’t get your purest and best, your most honest thoughts with everybody because there has to be a comfort level. I think that was something that was really, really just perfect timing. I don’t know if she necessarily brought something out of me that wasn’t ready to come out anyway, but I think that she definitely encouraged it gently, which was a good thing.
You said during your showcase that you’d like to work with the White Stripes on your next album. You’re already thinking of the next album?
Yes! Actually I’ really thinking of the next album ‘cos obviously I’ve been gone for a little bit and I have such a large collection of music at this point – maybe 60 or 70 songs – and naturally I already see: “OK, these songs are going here with this album and it looks like these songs are heading for the next album.” So that’s really a nice feeling to have already the vision of what I want the next album to be and to know that that won’t take really too much time because of the amount of songs that I’ve collected. Honestly, the way that the next album after this was in my mind, this album felt very big and I want the next album to feel very small. But thinking about the White Stripes, I don’t’ know if that’ll sound very small! (Laughs) We’ll see. You never know how it all works out, and that’s the other thing I really learned this time: to just let it be, let it flow. In my mind, of course, I have a vision of what I want the next album to be. In reality, who knows how it’ll end up.
Lyrically, you also seem to just let it flow. Is it more personal than your previous stuff?
I think all of the records that I’ve done have been very personal and based on personal experience. I think maybe at this point I may have transitioned more than ever before. I think it might happen all the time, especially in your mid-20’s where just you can get knocked over the head by everything that can possibly knock you over the head. I don’t know if that’s just a phase, but I feel like, wow, this has been such a huge growing time for me. Between 19 and 26, I just feel like I’ve been flipped around, upside down, turned around, and then landed back on my feel. And I’m like, OK, wow, this is who I am now. I think because of the things that I’ve learned, especially this year and that has gone to this album, it’s been a lot more variety and more intensity, and because of that, the music is more strong, I think.
You also said that you had a tough year. So toughness breeds creativity?
Yeah, it does. I never wanted to be one of those people that have to make themselves miserable in order to write. I never wanted to be one of those people. I don’t believe I’m one of those people. Bu it’s interesting that when you’re forced to look at yourself, you’re forced to see what’s going on and really pay attention to it, it’s incredible the things you discover that you’re feeling.
So it’s a cathartic album.
It’s definitely a cathartic album. It’s definitely my shrink! (Laughs) This album is my shrink. Thank god ness for it. I really am thankful for that. I’m thankful for being able to have had that outlet and to have this outlet to talk about things that are going on.
You mentioned doing some self-destructive things. But we can’t imagine you as a self-destructive person! What happened?
That’s the thing. I don’t imagine myself as a self-destructive person either. That’s what I mean. It’s funny the things that you’ll discover about yourself that you don’t even realize you’re doing. I’ve always looked at myself as a level-headed person. I’ve never been very up and down. Since a young, young age, I’ve always been extremely responsible, focused. I’m very driven. I’m social, I like talking about people, I like hearing about peoples’ lives. I like having conversation. I like rambling to people on the street walking up to me, and I love asking them about themselves. But I discovered that as open that I always thought that I was, I was actually very closed. I would always avoid the topic of myself. I would be great at asking people about them and giving people great advice about other people’s life. I’m blessed with the ability to speak in the way that sometimes surprises even me because a person can walk in a room and I can know what they need ot hear and what I should say to them. I don’t think about it, I say it, and they say, “How did you know that?” I’ve always been like that. So I can do so well with other people that sometimes I think I got so caught up with other people that I was really not paying attention to what I was thinking or feeling. And then on top of that, having a life where people are constantly asking you questions, you go as far a certain place. If the real answer’s over here, you’ll go right here. You don’t go totally into it because there are things you can’t explain to a person in such a short time.
So I got very used to going right there to what I meant. And I think what happened to me is that I got disconnected with my feelings and I became this painted mask that would be this person that I figured would be the easiest person to be, and if people were asking very serious questions, I would definitely give the answer but I wouldn’t be giving all of who I was and what I felt. And so it became like this wall that I was putting up that I thought was protecting me from giving away too much or being too vulnerable or whatever. But in actuality, the wall was destroying me because when it would come time for me to really be able to say what I feel to my friends, to my family, I would give them the same answer, those same answers that were halfway: “Yes, everything’s good. I’m great! Yesterday was amazing. We did a show. So I’m good, I’m great.” But I wasn’t great, but for some reason, I wasn’t able to say I wasn’t great. I wasn’t even able to understand that I wasn’t great ‘cos I was so used to putting on the happy face. I didn’t think I was hurting, but it was really, really hurting me because it was disconnecting me from my real emotions. And as a writer, that’s dangerous ‘cos my emotions are my art and that’s my job, that’s my work. And if I can’t understand what I’m thinking I can’t write what I’m thinking, and I definitely can’t be a happy person if I don’t know what I’m thinking. It’s very complex and it’s very complicated, and it wasn’t until way a long time later, more recently, that I was able to realize what I was doing and the way that that was bad for me in a lot of ways.
So I just promised myself to be more honest and to be more direct. I was never not honest, I just wasn’t fully honest, you know what I mean? So I just wanted to be more fully honest just for me so that I can be aware of what I’m feeling. If I’m exhausted, I’m going to say I’m exhausted. That’s it. You get so used to just playing up the good part that you don’t get a chance to honor the other sides of yourself. So that’s some of the way that I was being self-destructive and I didn’t quite realize that that was affecting me in any way.
You’ve also embarked on an acting career. Do you feel more complete as an artist when you touch on different mediums of expression?
Yes, I think that as an artist, it’s inspiring to take yourself out of your element a little bit and be able to explore other sides of yourself, ‘cos it’s all very creative but it’s creativity in a different way. It’s a little bit of freedom, I think, because you’re free in that set amount of time to be totally different. No one’s asking you about you, no one’s even really concerned with you, just that you’re this particular character and you making sure that you’re really representing that world. It’s a good feeling to be able to do that, immerse yourself in another world. And, for me, I realized that the way I’m able to connect to the characters is to identify the parts in them that are like me. And so, in that way, it’s really interesting because there’s some digging that has to be done to find those correlations. You find out a lot about yourself through that and it’s a very interesting way, in a way that maybe you wouldn’t look any other time. So it does balance things off in a couple of ways and I really enjoy it. It’s something that I’ve always been surrounded by, so I always knew that it was going to happen and was just waiting for the right time and the right moment to move into that.
Are there plans for Halle Berry’s movie to go through? (“Compositions in Black and White, a biopic of Philippa Schuyler)
I am really, really hoping so. So far, we’re good. I’ve been involved since the very beginning, and it takes so long to create a movie. It really does – five plus years just to make a movie happen. At this point, we’re in the second or third phase of scriptwriting and we’re just trying to make sure the script is perfect. And then it’ll go to the next stage. So it’s still in that area. There’ll still be at least another year.
What else do you want to achieve?
There are other dreams that I have. I want to really bring other fantastic artists on the scene. I want to help to expose so many talents and people out there that are really special. So I want to help them that way. I want to definitely be one that owns ways of communication, like radio stations and television stations. I think that there’s so much power in those areas in regards to what people hear and what people see, all of that. That really influences our society. I think that television is more influential than any one person. So I really would like to own things like that and be able to decide what influences people. And I would also like to build schools. I want to be build charter schools, especially in America. I’m sure all over the world there’s a need, but in America, I just feel that the kids in certain areas are treated so much like criminals. They go in and they have metal detectors and they get padded down for weapons. They’re just trying to go to school. And the system is so cruel that any teacher that has a big dream or a great idea on how to inspire us to be better, they can’t. They’re forced to do this broken curriculum that doesn’t even really teach us anything the right way. So I want to create schools and environments where we can start to influence our own curriculum and the way that it really works for people to become their best.
And I definitely want to continue to explore and get more into social and political issues and figure out my place in there. How can I motivate people? How can we work together?
Are you thinking of the 2008 election?
I am thinking of the election. It’s an extremely interesting election period for America. I was just saying today that this is the only country that’s still resisting having a female leader. But it is an interesting election for us having finally some variety.
And getting rid of George Bush.
Please, there’s not been a worse president.
Do you also want include more political views in your songs?
Yeah, I do. The way that I did it this time was that I took issues that I wanted to talk about and I personified them, so maybe I made them sound like a relationship. But when I wrote it, it was really about a bigger issue or a social situation. That was a less obvious way ton talk about the things that I wanted to talk about. I just find that people respond when they’re able to interpret it as they wish. I know what I meant, but if it happens to hit you in a different way, it’s OK. That’s fine. But I like to personify social issues. And then I think as I keep going, when I took my pilgrimage to Africa, I met this boy – he was 16 but he looked like 9! He had Aids and not able to start the medicine early enough. You can have the medicine but if you don’t have any food. So he was one of the people that we were trying to get to the most because it just represented how important what we do is and to get it to the kids at a young age so they can be strong. We revisited him in his home and he was really sad, just really down. You could tell that he was just so sick of everything. How must that feel? He live din Kenya and we then left to South Africa. When we left, he passed away. It really drove home the point of how important this is. That was a death in vain. It didn’t have to be like that for him. So I went home and I wrote a song for him, but it didn’t make this album because it wasn’t right for this.
As I see more things, it naturally influences the things that I talk about.
You’re starting your world tour in Europe.
Most of the time, we really want to be in Europe longer than we actually can be, but this time we’re really making the point to be in Europe. So that’s a nice way to start it. I also have another project that I really quite can’t talk about but I’m really excited!
Does the track “Superwoman” have anything to do with your advice the other night: Don’t spread yourself too thin?
Yeah!
Who’s superwoman for you?
Both my mom and my grandmother. Both of them are such strong examples of what a superwoman is. And that’s not to say that a superwoman can’t be weak. That’s the point of the song. You’re still strong even when you’re weak. At times that’s just how it is and that’s OK. We are still beautiful and we can still be great, wonderful supreme people. My mother raised me in the middle of the madness all by herself, helping to keep me on track and helping to really shape my world when it could’ve easily been not that way. She also showed me how to be very strong-minded, how to respect myself and how to demand respect from other people. My grandmother showed me benevolent, gracious; kind and think about others, want to help people in need and not just be all about yourself. So those two women in my life have been a major influence on the way that I am now.
German postcard in the Moderne Künstler series by MMB, no. 460. Photo: F.J. Wesselsky.
During the First World War and the following years Hella Moja (1890-1951) was one of the most popular stars of the German silent cinema. There was even a Hella Moja serial and in 1918 she founded her own film company.
According to IMDb, Hella Moja was born Helene Schwerdtfeger in Königsberg in Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia), in 1890. However, the sources differ about her origins. Wikipedia and Thomas Staedeli at Cyranos write that she was born either as Helene Morawski or as Helene Schwerdtfeger, in Ciemin-Zab., Russia. Filmportal.de gives her full birth name, Helene Gertrud Schwerdtfeger. Hella appeared early in her career in the Teatr Artystyczny in Warsaw. Then she went to Berlin and worked as a translator in Polish and Russian and as a writer for the Deutsche Presse-Korrespondenz in Hannover, the Ullstein-Verlag, and the Scherl-Verlag. She followed acting classes with Emmanuel Reicher and Frieda Richard and debuted on the Berlin stage in 1913 at the Lessingtheater. She was spotted for the cinema by film star Alwin Neuss, who at the time worked as a director for the Decla-Film studio. Hella Moja appeared in his silent film Der Weg der Tränen/The Way of the Tears (Alwin Neuss, 1916) based on a script by Ruth Goetz. She also worked for pioneer studios like Messter, Union and Terra-Film, and excelled in short silent melodramas like Die weiße Rose/The White Rose (Franz Hofer, 1915) opposite Erna Morena, Der Schwur der Renate Rabenau/The Vow of Renate Rabenau (Otto Rippert, 1916), Der Fremde/The Stranger (Otto Rippert, 1917) with Werner Krauss and Das verwunschene Schloss/The Enchanted Castle (Otto Rippert, 1918) again with Krauss, often playing a countess or a damsel.
In 1918 Hella Moja founded her own film company, the Hella Moja Filmgesellschaft, which would produce 16 films. Her first production was Wundersam ist das Märchen der Liebe/Wondrous is the Fairy Tale of Love (Leo Connard, 1918) with Ernst Hofmann, for which the critics especially praised her acting. Another successful production was Die Augen von Jade/The Eyes of Jade (Iwa Raffay, 1918). In Figaros Hochzeit/The Marriage of Figaro (Max Mack, 1920) based on the play by Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, she was again impressive as Cherubino - Figaros page opposite Alexander Moissi as Figaro. Other films in which she appeared were Abgrund der Seele/The Abyss of Souls (Urban Gad, 1920), Gräfin Walewska/Countess Walewska (Otto Rippert, 1920) and Der Mann um Mitternacht/The Man at Midnight (Holger Madsen, 1924) with Olaf Fjord. From the mid-1920s on, her theatrical acting style in films like U 9 Weddigen/U Boat 9 (Heinz Paul, 1927) with Gerd Briese was deemed old-fashioned. Moja quit acting and focused on scriptwriting. During the Nazi period, she got additional problems while she could not prove to be Aryan. In 1934 she changed her name in Helka Moroff, and co-wrote the script for Die Vier Musketiere/The Four Musketeers (Heinz Paul, 1934) starring Hans Brausewetter and Käthe Haack. In 1938 she was expelled from the Reichsschrifttumskammer (RSK) with the excuse that she did odd jobs next to scriptwriting. From 1942 till 1951 the former silent film star worked as a prompter at the Stadttheater Kiel under the name Hella Sewa. In 1951 Hella Moja committed suicide. She had been married to Erich Morawsky and film director Heinz Paul.
Sources: Gabriele Hansch/Gerlinde Waz (Filmportal.de - German); Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Deutsches Filminstitut (German), Wikipedia (German), BFI Film & TV Database, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Combating Stigmatization Through Peacebuilding and Filmmaking
Young participants in San Vicente de Caguán speak to a local radio program about how children and youth are appropriating historical memory of their community through arts and communications. After several decades of control by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia in the region, the communities of San Vicente de Caguán, Colombia, have been severely stigmatized. This has pertained to ex-combatants who are aiming to assimilate back into society and are met with resistance, and for those marginalized in society, including the LGBT community and persons with disabilities. Children and youth are also still exposed to violence linked to illegal armed groups. Through an alliance with the Ministry of Culture, the USAID-funded and ACDI/VOCA-implemented Program of Alliances for Reconciliation empowered children and youth in San Vicente del Caguán through filmmaking projects that promote collective memory construction and peacebuilding -- to promote communities reconciling the past and moving forward. Through filmmaking workshops, 100 children and youth learned skills for scriptwriting, directing, camerawork, and acting to create their own short films. /Katherine Ko, ACDI/VOCA
Ein Maskenball. Der verhüllt um zu enthüllen. 04.08.2012 | 16.00 | MS DOCKVILLE Kunstcamp
VOGELBALL | 4 August | 16:00 | MS Dockville Kunstcamp | Reiherstieghauptdeich/Alte Schleuse
JUSTUS KÖHNCKE (LIVE), TAMA SUMO, RSS DISCO, LOVEGANG, MIS-SHAPES, HEDDA.
Performance: FRAU KRAUSHAAR, JEREMY WADE, OCÉAN LEROY
Schminke: PATRICK MAI, PAULIN POSPISCHIL mit Team
Eintritt 8€
Bunt. Gefedert. Wo Zebrafinken flitzen, weiche Tauben sich reiben, Federbärte Großschnäbel küssen und Pfauenaugen sich zuzwinkern. Ein Maskenball. Der verhüllt um zu enthüllen, dass alle Vögel in der Nacht schillern. Und auch bei Tag. Bis die Eisvögel schmelzen, Pieptoes im Gras versinken und Goldkehlchen gekrault werden. Märchen einer Wirklichkeit. Die einen Vogel hat. Oder zwei oder drei?
Der VOGELBALL, der im letzten Jahr seine eindrucksvolle Premiere feierte, wird auch dieses Jahr wieder seinem Namen alle Ehre machen und einen Maskenball mit prächtigem Gefieder zaubern. Dazu gibt es neben einem diskoiden musikalischen Lineup, zu dem man alle Schwänzchen in die Höhe hält, wieder eine besondere Rauminstallation zum Spielen, Fliegen und Verkriechen. Es gibt besondere Performances und Aktionen, außerdem wird das MISSY MAGAZIN und HUGS AND KISSES das Nest mit Musik und Lesestoff gestalten.
In Kooperation mit: HUGS AND KISSES, MISSY MAGAZIN, LOVEGANG u.v.m.!
***
JUSTUS KÖHNCKE (LIVE) |
Als Produzent, in den 1990ern als ein Drittel von Whirlpool Productions („From: Disco To: Disco“, vier LPs) und ab 1997 auch unter eigenem Namen sowie verschiedenen Deckmänteln (Kinky Justice, SCIENCE, Division By Zero, Egan/Bottin/Köhncke) auf KOMPAKT, iCi, NANG, Eskimo u.a. veröffentlichend, machte sich Justus Köhncke einen Namen als genrebendendende Dance-Diva mit starken Deephouse-, Disco- und auch Deutschpop-Affinitäten. Tracks wie „From: Disco To: Disco“ von Whirlpool als auch die KOMPAKT-Clubhits „2 After 909“, „Timecode“ oder „Elan“ wurden zu Meilensteinen der Disco-Nouveau-Geschichte. Als Produzent von Andreas Dorau oder Subtle Tease zeigte er auch seine poppigeren und experimentelleren Seiten. Unzählige Remixe für u.a. Depeche Mode, Hot Chip, Zero 7, Bozzwell oder auch Dorau und Stereo Total wurden 2011 endlich in einer CD-Kompilation zusammengestellt („Fussmaschine“). Als so versierter wie Genregrenzen missachtender DJ und begnadeter Live-Performer ist er seit den Anfängen im Köln der frühen 90er weltweit tätig und gefragt. Und dieses Jahr im Rahmen des Kunstcamps LIVE auf dem Vogelball!!
TAMA SUMO
„Music is pure communication – stay in contact and follow your heart!“ Herz, Emotion & Leidenschaft statt reiner Funktionalität geben am treffendsten wieder, was Tama Sumos DJ Sets ausmachen. Nach etlichen Bookings in renommierten Bars und Clubs Berlins Anfang der 00er Jahre spielte sie ab 2001 spielte Tama Sumo regelmäßig bei „Dance With The Aliens“ im Vorgänger-Club des Berghains, OstGut, und ist seit der Eröffnung 2004 als Resident in der Panorama Bar und dem Berghain mit dabei. Inzwischen spielt sie hauptsächlich House in verschiedenen Facetten, kombiniert mit reduziertem Techno, altem Electro, Disco- und Pop. Alles in allem: viel Bass, auch Melodie und das Ganze äußerst deep, sexy, dirty, jacking, rough & funky. "Musik und vor allem Bässe machen glücklich!“ Euch auch?
RSS DISCO
Tja, was sollen wir sagen!? Pure love und happiness! Seit dem ersten Dockville Jahr haben sie schon in verschiedenen Konstellationen auf dem Festival gastiert - mittlerweile sind sie Residents auf unserer Fläche. Deeper Slow-House mit flamingischem Pop-Disco-Appeal. Musik von Hernzensmenschen für Herzensmenschen!
LOVEGANG
"Vor 5 Jahren haben wir unsere LOVEGANG ins Leben gerufen, um Hamburgs Partyszene gehörig aufzumischen. Das Motto war und ist seit damals musikalische und modische Trends aufzuspüren, bevor sie Mainstream werden und uns kreativ und ohne Grenzen auszuleben und vor allem diese Leidenschaft mit allen zu teilen. Ihre Vorbilder sind unter anderem die LOFT Parties von David Mancuso in New York sowie der damaligen Kult-Club HACIENDA in Manchester und die offene Art dort mit unterschiedlichen Musikstilen umzugehen. Jetzt ist die Zeit gekommen, um mit Euch gebührend beim Vogelball 2012 zu feiern."
JEREMY WADE
Jeremy Wade is an American dancer/choreographer based in Berlin. He graduated from the School For New Dance Development, Amsterdam in the year 2000. Wade premiered his first evening length work titled “Glory” at Dance Theater Workshop, New York City in February of 2006, for which he received a New York Bessie Award. Since then Wade has been living in Berlin, working closely with the Hebbel Theater and Dramaturge Eike Wittrock. His most recent performance works include ”…and pulled out their hair” (2007), “Throwing Rainbows Up” (2008), “I Offer My Self To Thee” (2009), “There Is No End To More” (2010). In 2011 Wade embarked on a six month research phase titled “identity and transgression” from which he created the solo “Fountain” and a new trio titled “To The Mountain.”
OCÉAN LEROY
Océan was born and raised in France, before living in London and studying in Paris, Oxford and Berlin. First contact with the arts with Music (award-winner of the Madeleine de Valmalète Piano Competition), then Dance (Tanzfabrik Berlin), and underground Theater (Theater Westöstlicher
Divan, Berliner Ground Theater), Océan had his/her stage debut as a drag performer at the Go Drag! Festival with Diane Torr and Bridge Markland in 2002. Having taken acting, singing and scriptwriting classes, Océan is famous for his multimedia-performances involving video-clips and dia-show projections, choregraphy, live singing and poetry slam. He was nominated as “most influent personality” at Mix! FilmFestival in Brazil, won the international Kings VILLAGE Contest in Rome, Italy, convincing a professional jury of journalists, film makers, singers and actors, as well as the Drag Contest of the “Trav’Academy” in Nice, France.
Schminke: PATRICK MAI, PAULIN POSPISCHIL mit Team
www.patrick-mai.com/pages/portfolio/vogelwerk_01.html
Plakat: Tim Kaiser
Digital photos from the anime convention Taiyoucon 2011 in Mesa, Arizona.
Voice actor Chris Cason... From the Taiyoucon website:
For over ten years, Chris Cason has participated in almost every facet of anime production. He has been associated with numerous projects (exclusively for FUNimation Entertainment) in a voice acting, ADR directing, or scriptwriting capacity.
Some of Chris’s voice credits include: “Gluttony” in Fullmetal Alchemist, “Tien Shinhan” and “Mr. Popo” in Dragonball Z (and returning as “Mr. Popo” in Dragonball Z Kai), “Holy Roman Empire” in Hetalia Axis Powers, “Jack the Ripper” in Soul Eater, “Boo” and “Whitey” in Shin-Chan, “Miyamoto” and “M1” in Yu Yu Hakusho, “Fumihiro” in Initial D, “Chamo” in Negima, “Hanai” in School Rumble, “Babbit” in Kodocha, and “Taruru” in Sgt. Frog.
He can also be heard in: Case Closed, Gunslinger Girl, Basilisk, Ouran High School Host Club, Suzuka, Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles, Black Cat, Darker Than Black, Bamboo Blade, Kaze no Stigma, Aquarion, One Piece, D. Gray-Man, and Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad.
Some of his ADR directing and assistant ADR directing credits include: DBZ Uncut, Dragonball, Dragonball GT, Yu Yu Hakusho, Negima, Kodocha, Galaxy Railways, Baki the Grappler, School Rumble, Hell Girl, Kaze no Stigma, Bamboo Blade, and Initial D.
He has also had the opportunity to be a part of many popular video games. His two favorites were: voicing random ghouls and specters for Ghostbusters: The Video Game, and as one of the contributing guitarists in Guitar Hero 3.
These are all my writing resources, books that inspire me or give me pointers on how to write. Joseph Campbell's Hero With a Thousand Faces, Roberts Rules in Plain English, Robert's Rules of Order, The Actor's Audition Checklist by my friend and acting coach Doug Warhit, Pocket World in Figures, 2009 Edition, Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, Ben Hogan's Five Lessons, The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky (so far, not much writing resources, but we're getting there!), David Allen's Getting Things Done and Ready for Anything, How to Write a Movie in 21 Days by Viki King, Book the Job by Doug Warhit, Making a Good Script Great by Linda Seger, Screenwriting for Narrative Film and Television by William Miller, Lew Hunter's Screenwriting 434 (now we're getting into the meaty stuff), Getting into Character by Brandilyn Collins, Writing Screenplays that Sell by Michael Hauge, Baby Names by Globe Communications Corp (great for character names & etimology), John Berger, Ways of Seeing, American Cinematographer Manual, MLA Handbook, Screenwriting 101 by Neill D. Hicks, Strunk and White's Elements of Style Fourth Edition, The Complete Plain Words by Sir Ernest Gowers (revised by Sir Bruce Fraser), Simple & Direct by Jacques Barzun, Wajda on Film by Andrzej Wajda, Screenplay by Syd Field, Aristotle's Poetics, The Brief English Handbook, third edition, by Edward A. Dornan and Charles W. Dawe, Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day by Joan Bolker, which is just as good as Anne Lamotte's Bird by Bird for getting you going... The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri (I think I like unique names, or unique names are common in author's circles, or at least the authors who write about writing), Strangers To Ourselves by Timothy D. Wilson, Simple But Not Easy by Richard Oldfield (actually about investing), What a Producer Does by Buck Houghton, The Order of Things by Barbara Ann Kipfer, The Hollywood Standard by Christopher Riley, Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder (most of these books I've purchased years ago in college, except for these two), Standard Script Formats Part I and II, and Technical Analysis Using Multiple Timeframes by Brian Shannon (another book on stock investing-- hey, you have to get money somewhere).
I tell Louise that the photos will probably come out best if she tries to forget that I'm here and just carry on as normal.
She begins typing.
I ask her what she's studying and tell her that I think it must be something very creative.
'Oh, then you'd be right!', she exclaims, looking pleased. 'I'm taking an MA in Scriptwriting. I find people fascinating and love to create my own little worlds for them.'
German postcard. Photo A. Binder, Berlin. Photochemie, Berlin, K 1592.
Rosa Porten (1884-1972) was the lesser known sister of actress Henny Porten. Just like for her sister, Rosa Porten' s first film performance was in the early sound film Meissner Porzellan (1906). In contrast to Henny Porten, Rosa Porten was more active as screenwriter than as an actress. From 1910 she started this job with Das Liebesglück der Blinden, in which her sister Henny had her first part in a fiction film. In the 1910s Rosa Porten was extremely active as screenwriter for companies like Messter. Under the pseudonym of Dr. R. Portegg her husband Franz Eckstein and she wrote many scripts in the late 1910s and also directed these, for the Treumann-Larsen company. In some of these she played the female lead too, such as Die Wäscher-Resl (1916), Die Erzkokette (1917), Die Landpommeranze (1917), Die Augen der Schwester (1918), and Themis (1918). In other examples of these Treumann-Larsen productions like Das Opfer der Yella Rogesius (1917) and Wanda's Trick (1918), actress Wanda Treumann had the lead. Probably the last film the couple Eckstein-Porten directed together was Der nicht vom Weibe geborene (1918), in which Conrad Veidt played Satan. After the couple continued to collaborate, now for National-Film, but with Porten only scriptwriting and with Eckstein only directing. Examples are Lotte Lore (1921) and Hedda Gabler (1924), starring Asta Nielsen. Mid-1920s Eckstein and Porten stopped at National Film, but still did three more films: Das Mädchen aus der Fremde (1926/27), Fahrendes Volk (1927), and Die Heiratsfalle (1927). From 1931 to 1945 Rosa Porten lived in Pommern with Eckstein. Her husband died two months before the Russians and Poles invaded Pommern, forcing her to flee and ending up in Munich, where she wrote for newspapers, radio and cinema. Rosa Porten died in Munich in 1972. She had a small part in the 1950 Italo-German coproduction Land der Sehnsucht (Erich Engel/ Camillo Mastrocinque).
Source: www.filmportal.de
From cowgirl to a pin-up secretary... Oh well, I was going to a scriptwriting meeting...
Dress: Zara
Tights: Gatta from Poland
Belt: Came with a dress, Poland
Boots: Shanghai market
Mark Herman was born in Bridlington in 1954. After leaving school, he worked in the wholesale bacon trade and then as a trainee manager for the supermarket chain Wm Jackson’s before deciding, at 25, to follow an artistic path.
He studied at Hull College of Art then at Leeds Polytechnic, where he gained a first-class degree in graphic design (which included a thesis on Alan Plater, a fellow University of Hull honoris causa).
From Leeds Mark progressed to the National Film School in Beaconsfield, initially studying animation but soon transferring to scriptwriting and live-action direction. His 1986 graduation film, a comedy featuring the travails of a Hull City supporter, won him an Oscar for best student film.
He then entered the film industry as a writer and director. His debut feature was the 1992 Disney comedy Blame it on the Bellboy, starring Dudley Moore. This was followed by the critically acclaimed Brassed Off and then Little Voice, which was shot largely on location in Scarborough. Three further feature films followed: Purely Belter, Hope Springs and, most recently, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. Mark has won several prestigious awards for his screenwriting, and his films have garnered a host of Oscars, BAFTAs and Golden Globes.
He now lives in York, but his links with Hull remain strong – largely due to his long-standing passion for Hull City.
Anyone remember this?
I finally did something with it.
I recently produced this video for NBBJ's Qingdao Campus Masterplan competition entry. The project was a 10,000,000 SF campus plan in Eastern China.
The design team had already nearly completed concept design when I joined the team for the express purpose of creating the required "multimedia" component. I wanted to do something that combined the conceptual clarity of 3d animation with the theatricality of live-action performance.
I found a lot of inspiration in BIG's 8 House video. Though I have many more ambitions for architectural representation, I was given an insanely short time frame to complete the entire project (4 weeks from concept to delivery), and I had a steep learning curve ahead of me, so I chose to go with proven techniques rather than risk complete failure with untested innovations. So this is more of a process exercise than anything else.
As it turns out, 4 weeks was far too short of a production schedule, and it was a nearly inhuman effort to complete in time for the competition submission. There are some problems with the production but overall I'm pretty happy with it for a first effort. Next time there will be higher production value and opportunities to innovate in the narrative and add richness and detail, incorporating new graphic elements and investigating new hybrids of media. In the meantime, enjoy, and let me know what you think...
Note: The title is a bit of a misnomer; this is technically not an augmented reality presentation, as it is not done in real time. The video was created with good old choreography, 3d motion tracking, timed 3d animation, rotoscoping, and compositing in After Effects.
CREDITS
Project Team (abbreviated)
AJ Montero, Kevin Herrick, Andy Snyder, Mike Suriano, Brett Egbert, Megha Sinha, Earl Lee, Meredith Doppelt
Video Production
Marc Syp – Scriptwriting, Acting, 3D Animation, Rendering, Special Effects, Editing, Narration (English Version), Sound Design
Andy Snyder – Cinematography
Yi-Chang Chung – Narration (Chinese Version)
REBUS Farm – Render farm service
Rotofactory – Rotoscoping
LiFANG – Final rendered animation sequence
TECH
Panasonic FZ28, 3DS Max 2011, Mental Ray, Matchmover 2011, After Effects CS5, NeoScape, VirtualDub, Deshaker
The Postcard
A Collotype Series postcard that was published by Raphael Tuck & Sons, Art Publishers to Their Majesties the King and Queen.
All the people in the photograph (as well as the dog!) have been posed by the photographer.
The card was posted in Bala on Monday the 28th. July 1913 to:
Miss Lloyd,
Grocery Stores,
Brymbo.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"We are enjoying the
fresh air and feel much
better.
Coming back soon.
From
M. D. and Norma".
Brymbo
Brymbo is a large village in Wrexham County Borough, Wales. It lies in the hilly country to the west of Wrexham town, largely surrounded by farmland. At the 2011 Census, the population of the community area was 4,836.
The area was formerly heavily dependent on coal mining and steelmaking, and the Brymbo Steelworks, which operated between 1794 and 1990, was a prominent feature of the village and much of the surrounding area.
Bala
Bala is a town in Gwynedd, Wales. It lies in the historic county of Merionethshire, at the north end of Bala Lake. At the 2011 Census, it had a population of 1,974, 78.5% of whom spoke Welsh.
Duncan Carse
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, the 28th. July 1913 marked the birth of Duncan Carse. Verner Duncan Carse was an English explorer and actor known for surveying South Georgia and for his portrayal of Special Agent Dick Barton on BBC Radio.
Duncan Carse's Personal Life
Carse was born in Fulham, London, the son of the artist A. Duncan Carse. He attended school at Sherborne School in Dorset, and in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Carse married Bertha Sylvia Hadfield in 1938, with whom he had two daughters. He had a son - Peter Carse - with his second wife Elizabeth Wilen.
Carse married Venetia Kempe, his third wife, in December 1962. They lived in Fittleworth, West Sussex, and the marriage lasted until Carse's death at the age of 90.
Exploration
Carse joined the Merchant Navy and sailed for the Southern Ocean aboard the RRS Discovery II in 1933. While in Port Stanley, Falkland Islands, Carse encountered the British Graham Land Expedition, which was on its way to Antarctica on the yacht Penola.
Carse secured permission to transfer to the expedition, serving as a seaman and wireless operator and helping to lay depots on the Antarctic Peninsula. Carse returned to England in 1937, and in 1939 he was awarded the silver Polar Medal and Clasp for his part in the Graham Land expedition.
After the Second World War, Carse was determined to resume exploration of the far south. At the suggestion of the Royal Geographical Society and the Scott Polar Institute, he decided to focus his attention on the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia.
His efforts over the next several decades won him a pre-eminent place in South Georgia's history. He organised and led the South Georgia Survey of 1951–57, surveying much of the interior of the island. Mount Carse and Carse Point are named after him.
The comprehensive survey of the island resulted in the classic 1:200000 topographic map of South Georgia, occasionally updated but never superseded since its first publication in 1958. A full account of the four South Georgia Survey expeditions led by Duncan Carse was written by the geologist on the 1951–52 and 1953–54 surveys, Alec Trendall.
In 1961, Duncan decided to become a modern day Robinson Crusoe, and lived as a hermit in a remote part of South Georgia. Carse built a house at Ducloz Head on the southern coast of the island, intending to live there through the winter.
However, in May, three months into the experiment, surge waves destroyed his camp. He managed to salvage enough gear to survive the winter until making contact with a ship 116 days later.
Carse maintained a long interest in the expeditions of Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton, and wrote the Introduction and Notes to the 1974 Folio Society Edition of Shackleton's Boat Journey by Frank Worsley.
A second Polar Medal clasp was awarded to Duncan in 1982 for his leadership of the later survey work – this mapping being of particular value in the period of conflict in the Falklands.
Duncan Carse's Radio Work
After his return from the Antarctic, Carse began working in radio for the BBC. He was a presenter and announcer from 1939 to 1942, when he rejoined the Royal Navy for service in the Second World War.
At the end of the war, he returned to radio, and in 1949 secured his best-known role: he was the voice of Special Agent Dick Barton for 265 of the 711 episodes of the very popular BBC Radio serial.
He continued in this role until leaving for the South Georgia Survey in 1951. Carse worked as a presenter through the mid-1980's, and participated in producing BBC documentaries about South Georgia and the Antarctic.
Television and Film Work
(a) Television
Proud Canvas (BBC, 1947) Narrator: Duncan Carse
The Goshawk (David Cobham/BBC, 1968) Lead role (Falconer): Duncan Carse
Survival in Limbo (David Cobham/BBC, 1976)
Between 1981 and 1983 Carse presented three series of the programme "Travellers in Time" on BBC2. These presented archive films from the early 20th. century, including those from Antarctic expeditions and early attempts to climb Mount Everest.
(b) Film
The BFI Filmography record for Carse lists over 140 roles from Presenter/Commentator/Narrator to scriptwriting, music and acting through his near-50-year career. The listing suggests that an alternative name J. York Scarlett or Yorke Scarlett was used for Sound Recording work.
Death and Legacy of Duncan Carse
Duncan Carse died on the 2nd. May 2004, shortly after finally agreeing to a portrait sitting. In discussion with his wife Venetia, it was agreed that it would be fitting to work on the sculpture with reference to visual memories, a photographic archive of 60 years of images.
Bronze portrait busts of Carse by the sculptor Jon Edgar are now held in public collections at the South Georgia Museum, and the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge University. The terracotta original is held in the collection of the artist.
A number of expedition images of Carse from 1934 to 1937 are now in the Scott Polar Research Institute on line archive, Freeze Frame.
The Falkland Islands Philatelic bureau issued postage stamps to commemorate Carse's life.
One photographic portrait of Duncan Carse exists in the National Portrait Gallery; it is by Howard Coster.
One of the driving forces behind The Simpsons believes Manchester has the potential to eclipse Los Angeles as a worldwide hub for the media industries.
During an ‘in conversation’ session with Manchester music legend Clint Boon at the Salford Media Festival, Josh Weinstein, former writer and executive producer for the American animated sitcom, told delegates that Manchester had all the infrastructure and talent to claim its place as the new centre for animation and scriptwriting excellence.
For two days in March 2010, VFS presented an immersive 2-day educational experience, exclusively for the most creative and driven high school students in North America.
Find out more at vfs.com/standout
For two days in March 2010, VFS presented an immersive 2-day educational experience, exclusively for the most creative and driven high school students in North America.
Find out more at vfs.com/standout