Acclaimed film of Jerzy Kosinski's Painted Bird

Cover of The Painted Bird (1976)

In 1976, I was asked by Polish-American writer Jerzy Kosinski to illustrate the dust jacket for the special tenth-year edition of his celebrated novel The Painted Bird. We have only recently learned that a much-acclaimed film version of his book has been completed, and is now on tour for screening. Produced and directed by Václav Marhoul, it will be released in the near future. more>>>

Film Review | Herbert Matter

The Visual Language of Herbert Matter
by Reto Caduff, Director and Writer
PiXiu Films, Zurich, Switzerland, 2011
DVD. 79 mins. Sales, $29.95
Distributor’s website: http://www.herbertmatter.net/home.htm.
 
 ...

In 1927, a twenty-five-year-old American aviator named Charles Lindbergh successfully crossed the Atlantic in a single-engine monoplane, the Spirit of St. Louis. Flying non-stop from New York to Paris, Lindbergh was met on his arrival by 150,000 spectators. As revealed in this film biography, in the enormous, frenzied crowd that day was a young Swiss graphic designer (five years younger than Lindbergh) named Herbert Matter.

Matter (1907-1984) was born and raised in Engelberg, Switzerland, an Alpine village and mountain resort where his family owned a bakery and tearoom. Initially, he studied art in Geneva, but in 1927 (the year of Lindbergh’s famous flight) he moved to Paris, where he studied with French artists Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant, and worked with architect Le Corbusier (who was Ozenfant’s associate in their quasi-cubist movement called Purism).

Of greater consequence, Matter also worked with graphic designer A.M. Cassandre. It was during those same years in Paris that he was lastingly influenced by Russian Constructivism, DeStijl, the Bauhaus, and Surrealism. To some extent, his later achievements as a designer, illustrator, photographer and filmmaker can be seen as an individualized blend of selected aspects and attitudes from these earlier, once precarious styles. more>>>

Film Review | Linotype: The Film

Linotype type casting machine

Linotype: The Film
by Douglas Wilson, Director and Producer
Onpaperwings Productions
Springfield, MO, 2012
 DVD, 1 hours 17 mins.
Distributor's website:
http://www.linotypefilm.com

•••

I have had “printing” in my blood since I was ten or eleven. One summer at about that age, having read The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, I sped downtown on my 20-inch Hiawatha bicycle, strolled into the local “job printing” firm, and inquired of the aging (and greatly amused) owner if he might be willing to take me on as a “printer’s devil.” Kindly, he responded “no” (I was far too young) but he did talk to me for awhile and gave me a tour of the “tools of the trade.” This was about fifty-five years ago, yet, even now, I still remember the moment that day when I saw a linotype type casting machine for the first time. 

I myself don’t know a way to describe how it feels to stand next to a functioning linotype (much less to actually operate one, which can be hazardous at times because of the hot molten metal it spurts). In general, one could simply say that it is a huge complex mechanism for casting metal type that was invented in 1884 by Ottmar Mergenthaler (1854-1899), a U.S. German immigrant. Amazingly, it revolutionized printing to such an extent that its inventor is sometimes said to have been “the second Gutenberg.” But that is at best an inadequate way to convey the feeling of standing in the presence of this clackety, stinky, hot, intimidating, almost room-sized monster that casts lines of hot lead type—one line at a time, hence its quaint historic name “line-o’-type.” more>>>

Les Coleman's Doors

Above An ominous drawing by British artist/writer Les Coleman, titled Shadow (c2007). Copyright © Les Coleman, all rights reserved.

Film Review  |  The Architecture of Doom a film by Peter Cohen, 1991. VHS video. 119 minutes. Color. Available from First Run / Icarus Films, 32 Court Street, 21st Floor, Brooklyn NY 11201.

There are countless historical videos on Adolf Hitler, the Third Reich, and the circumstances of the death camps, but this is undoubtedly one of the best. From its beginning moments, which consist of a drawn-out, completely mute flight over a tranquil German village, this film demands our attention, then holds us firmly by the throat for a full two hours. Its power in part is undoubtedly due to the night-marish subject matter (I couldn't sleep after watching it). Yet, few accounts of World War II Germany are as memorable, which I think is mostly attributable to the images used (photographs, revealing documents, artworks, and rare and often shocking film footage, especially that made by the Nazis), the artfully insistent pace of the editing, and the persuasive clarity of the narration. It is not a film that is summarized easily, but its underlying premise is that Hitler (who had initially wanted to be an artist, then an architect) was not entirely irrational, but rather that the things he did, while outrageous and revolting, were seemingly logical methods by which he could "art direct" or "design" society. A devotee of Darwinian natural selection, he believed that the natural process by which the weak (or unfit) are self-exterminating was being subverted by permissive social practices, which he also perceived as analogous to the threat of contagious diseases. Like many of his contemporaries, he was a great admirer of the composer Richard Wagner, especially his elaborate operas, which combined different arts (music , theatre, literature and visual art) into a harmonious single event, for which Wagner used the term Gesamtkunstwerk (German for "total work of art"). Surprisingly, this film does not mention that famous word, although it was widely and commonly used by turn-of-the-century architects and designers, among them Henry van de Velde, Peter Behrens, Josef Hoffmann, and Frank Lloyd Wright (who called it "organic form"). In those days, when the finest architects were asked to design a building, they were likely to refuse to make only the rudiementary shape or shell. Instead, they tended to design the entire building (much as William Morris did with (at least) the interior of his own residence, Red House), to make it consistent by also designing the furniture, the fittings, the dinnerware, and, in some cases, even the ideal clothes to be worn by the building's residents. This was taken one step further in 1899 when Josef Maria Olbrich was invited to design (as a deliberate Gesamtkunstwerk) the setting and most of the houses for an artists' colony in Darmstadt, Germany. This film does not mention that colony, but it does say that, as Chancellor, Hitler began to imagine himself as the set designer, director and leading actor (or perhaps what designers now commonly call the "corporate designer") of a colossal Wagnerian opera called the Third Reich, for which he really did design certain uniforms, flags, standards and buildings. It also claims that, in addition to Hitler, at least half of his leading officials had direct and significant links to the arts. Those artistic involvements were not incidental, the film argues, because the Third Reich was in certain ways an aesthetic movement—a perversely misguided attempt to improve the world for the German Volk, and to reunite art with everyday life.—RB more>>>

See also: Roy R. Behrens, FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT and Mason City: Architectural Heart of the Prairie (2016).  

Ballast Reviews | Forever

Forever. A film by Heddy Honigmann. 97 mins, DVD, Color, 2006. Available through Icarus Films.

This is a thoughtful, informative film about one of the most interesting places on Earth: A centuries-old, 118-acre cemetery, the largest burial area in the City of Paris. More…

Ballast Reviews | Objectified

Objectified. A film by Gary Hustwit. 75 mins. DVD, color, 2009.

As I watched this film, I remembered that Susanne K. Langer once wrote "Art is the objectification of feeling." No doubt this came to mind because of the title, but also—as producer Gary Hustwit explains (in a preface that comes in the case with the disk)—because one of the purposes of the film is to question our attitudes toward standardized, mass-produced objects…More…

Ballast Reviews | Secret Museums

Secret Museums. A film by Peter Woditsch. DVD, color, 77 mins, 2008. Available from Icarus Films.

One of the things that I learned from this film is that the wily Michelangelo, in painting the ceiling of Sistine Chapel, included a view of the buttocks of God Almighty. More…

Ballast Reviews | Mind In Motion

Mind in Motion. A film by Philippe Baylaucq, Francoise Linderman and Veronique Maison. DVD, color, 52 mins, 2008. Available from Icarus Films.

This is a superb overview of how the scientific view of the human brain has changed in recent years as a result of brain imaging—using scanning technology to track which areas of the brain are activated in response to this or that event. More…