Cinema
is limitless.
And she
isn’t going anywhere
These things
we know
We have
over a century’s worth of bounty from all corners of this globe to savour and
learn from, fresh as the dayThere’s no such thing as a foreign film
There’s
no such thing as an old film
The idea
of any national cinema is missing the point
And the
wide, wide screen can hold every possible thing we throw at it
We have
filmmakers everywhere – of every possible description – with films in their
heads and hearts and fingers
All on
their way
Some of
them are producers’ PAs or cine-passionate stand-by props boys or even film
students
Some of
them just sold us our coffee or bus ticket or insurance
They
have cameras in their back pockets, every one
They
have a wide-eyed intergalactic audience open to and eager for new fellowships
and new horizons
Hooray
for the multiplex and the spandex zam-fests and whoosh- athons, the gargantuan
one-stop big-top bunker-cathedrals, the cardboard nosebag of unspeakably toxic
phosphorescent worms and the quadruple-flavoured American ice cream
We leave
our world and gallivant, ricochet’d with mythic abandon in the deafening
surround-sound pinball playpen
Get a
copy of our April 2020 issue celebrating Tilda Swinton
We love it
From time to
time.
And
Meanwhile
We love
other stuff too, stuff of all shapes and sizes, stuff of the planet and all of
us on it
We want
to see ourselves and others and recognise how magnificently, mind-glowingly
similar/different we are
And
We want
to travel, through time and space and into other people’s shoes and behind
their eyes
And we
like not knowing what’s going to happen
And so
We would
love more screens to see all this on: big rickety ones currently in great old
ramshackle cine-palaces now furniture showrooms, dinky ones in niche rooms with
comfy seats, inflatable ones in parks, sheets tied to two broomsticks in
village halls
We would
love all the above and more
We want
to watch film together in the dark
We want
to watch things we’ve never heard of in languages we cannot understand
We want
new faces, new places, new shapes, new sizes, new stories, new rhythms
We want
to get lost
And
We want
long immersions
We have
the stamina
We have
the lust
Trained
up by the box-set: imagine the
binge
cinema three-day plunge…
We love
all this, too
And
Some time,
imagine this:
We get
to know a film at the end of our bed – even in our hand, even on our wrist on
the Tube – and when it comes to town, we LOVE to see it live large
Like
knowing an album inside out and just craving the band’s live gig
WE WOULD LOVE
THIS
And so
We would
very much love the mighty streaming services to feel galvanised to restore,
support or build great big screens from the beginning to the end of the
territory their reach touches: to make good their stated commitment to
filmmakers interested in making films for the wild, wide screen, the experience
of communal exhibition and the honest diversity of the canon of cinema history.
Wouldn’t that
be grand?
WON’T
that be grand and right?
And
We would
love to stop squabbling over the idea that cinema cannot be more than one thing
Because
then we can also stop whispering and mouthing about cinema as if she is a
fragile invalid that needs quiet, vacant and sterile surroundings lest she
break, an endangered and diminishing ice floe that has any limits whatsoever
When, in
fact, she simply doesn’t. End of
Cinema rocks
and rolls
And bounces
and stretches
We love
cinema for her elasticity, her inventiveness, her resilience, her limber and
undauntable roots and her eternally supersonic evolution
As it
says on the bottom of the studio credit roll: throughout the universe in
perpetuity
Vive la
différence
Film Forever
Onwards.
The View
from Here. By Tilda Swinton. Sight & Sound. March 3, 2020
This
evening, Tilda Swinton received the BFI Fellowship at the annual BFI Chairman’s
dinner, hosted by BFI Chair Josh Berger. The BFI Fellowship was presented to
Tilda at the Rosewood Hotel, London, by Wes Anderson, who has directed her in
many films including The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) and in the hotly
anticipated The French Dispatch (2020). The BFI Fellowship honours and
celebrates Tilda’s daringly eclectic and striking talents as a performer and
filmmaker as well as recognising her great contribution to film culture,
independent film exhibition and philanthropy.
Bong
Joon Ho, Kylie Minogue, Wes Anderson, Hugh Grant, Thom Yorke, Andrea Arnold,
Armando Iannucci, Lynne Ramsay, Tim Walker, Luca Guadagnino, Joanna Hogg,
Jefferson Hack, Haider Ackerman, Simon Fisher Turner, Luc Roeg, Sally Potter,
Sandy Powell and other luminaries were all in attendance to celebrate Tilda’s
award.
Tilda
Swinton said ‘The BFI is a fellowship to me. It is one that I was so proud to
have joined years ago and to still be serving today. My freshest films are BFI
films, my first films were BFI Films. I was a BFI baby and now a BFI
grandmother forever.’
On
presenting the BFI Fellowship to Tilda, Wes Anderson said ‘Tilda can perfectly
embody the woman behind the bar, an especially well-read vampire, a Russian who
speaks Italian, or a lawyer for a corrupt American agricultural conglomerate; I
see her miraculously channel a non-existent being into being. Tilda has already
crossed into the territory of being universally admired, legendary, iconic and
a national treasure. Tilda loves the cinema, and she loves the world of cinema,
and the community of cinema and British cinema, so I’m very happy to be the one
to hand her this prize.’
BFI
Chair Josh Berger said ‘I am delighted that Tilda has accepted the BFI
Fellowship. Tilda is enjoying the broadest of careers, stretching from her
earliest acclaimed work with Derek Jarman through to her dazzling involvement
in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It is a career full of courageous artistic
choices that has earned her the deep respect of her peers, our industry and the
admiration and enjoyment of audiences all over the world. Tilda inhabits the
characters she portrays in the most compelling way. Her work is powerful and
far-ranging and as such occupies a unique place in our collective film history;
it captivates young filmmakers and actors, inspiring them to make bolder,
braver and more profound work.’
The BFI
Fellowship is presented alongside a Tilda Swinton season at BFI Southbank
throughout March, curated in collaboration with Tilda herself and featuring her
work and her inspirations. The season includes a special Tilda in Conversation
event on Tuesday 3 March and has welcomed her collaborators Academy
Award-winning Bong Joon Ho, Wes Anderson and Sally Potter.
Sight
& Sound magazine will feature Tilda Swinton on the cover of their April
2020 issue. On sale 5 March and via www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound
Tilda
will be joining the distinguished ranks of other BFI Fellows including Derek
Jarman, Vanessa Redgrave, Akira Kurosawa, David Lean, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith,
Martin Scorsese, Jeanne Moreau, Stephen Frears, Steve McQueen, Peter Morgan,
John Hurt and Jeanne Moreau.
Tilda
Swinton receives BFI Fellowship at BFI Chairman’s Dinner. Film News , March 2,
2020
Tilda
Swinton has said the UK needs more small cinemas to enable the film industry to
make a broader range of movies that can be shown “outside of the multiplex”.
Speaking
before a dinner where she was presented with British Film Institute’s most
prestigious accolade, the BFI Fellowship, the actress said there is a “limit”
to how much people are willing to see the types of films shown in large,
multi-screen cinemas.
She told
the PA news agency: “We need a lot of cinemas. Little cinemas, refurbished old
cinemas that have been turned into Tescos and can be turned back into cinemas.
“We need
blow up cinemas in the park. We need spaces to show a range of films outside of
the multiplex.”
The Oscar-winner
added: “We all love going to the multiplex but there is a limit to how many
times you can see something that you only see there.
“The
more cinemas we have the more we’re going to remember that however much we like
watching something on the end of our bed, we really love going to the pictures
and we love sitting in the dark with a bunch of strangers.”
Swinton
added that despite the rise of streaming, cinemas will remain relevant to film
fans.
She
said: “I’m a great believer in the moment that I do believe is coming.
“We all
buy a CD and we get to know that music really well and if that band comes to
town we’ll go and see them live.
“I think
that will start to happen with cinema.
“We will
get to know something really well because we’ve watched it on Netflix and then
when it comes to a big screen near us, we will still go and see it live.”
Swinton
was chosen for the award in recognition of her “daringly eclectic and striking
talents as a performer and film-maker” and for her “great contribution to film
culture, independent film exhibition and philanthropy”, according to the BFI.
She said
it was a “little embarrassing” to be given the accolade, adding: “I’m just
super honoured and don’t really know what to say about it. I’m just very
happy.”
Ben
Roberts, chief executive of the BFI, said the accolade was given to Swinton
because she is at a high point in her career.
He told
PA: “It’s not a lifetime achievement award. We want to make it for someone at
the peak of their powers. We think Tilda Swinton is absolutely that person.
“She is
a performer of unrivalled range. She is one of our greatest actresses.”
Swinton
follows in the footsteps of the likes of Dame Judi Dench, Hugh Grant, Al
Pacino, Tim Burton, Cate Blanchett, Martin Scorsese and Vanessa Redgrave in
receiving the honour.
Olivia
Colman was the recipient last year.
Tilda
Swinton: The UK needs more small cinemas ‘outside the multiplex’. By Tom Horton. The Independent , March 2 , 2020
Peter
Wollen, film theorist and filmmaker, has died at the age of 81. Wollen is best
known for writing the 1969 film theory book “Signs and Meaning in the Cinema,”
which became famous for approaching film studies through structuralism and
semiotics. “Signs and Meaning” was one of over two dozen film theory books
Wollen wrote or contributed to over nearly four decades.
In the
film industry itself, Wollen got his start by sharing a screenwriting credit on
Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1975 drama “The Passenger,” starring Jack Nicholson
and Maria Schneider. Wollen made his directorial debut with “Penthesilea: Queen
of the Amazons,” which he directed alongside his wife, legendary film scholar
Laura Mulvey. The two made several films together. The only film to be
solo-directed by Wollen was the 1987 science-fiction romance “Friendship’s
Death,” starring Bill Paxton and Tilda Swinton. The latter played a female
extraterrestrial robot who crash lands on earth and meets a British war
correspondent.
Swinton
not only starred in Wollen’s “Friendship’s Death,” but she also was greatly
affected by his film theory work. In a tribute to Wollen, the Oscar-winning
actress credits “Signs and Meaning in the Cinema” as being “the first seminal
book I read about film that actually made sense while bopping you to bits with
its braininess and taking the engine of cinema completely apart in front of
you.”
Read
Swinton’s full tribute to Wollen in the post below.
Peter
Wollen was a sort of saint to me when I was a student.
His
“Signs and Meanings in the Cinema” was the first seminal book I read about film
that actually made sense while bopping you to bits with its braininess and
taking the engine of cinema completely apart in front of you while making you
even more excited to jump in and go racing about in it just as soon as you
possibly could.
A couple
of years later, I was working with him, on the second film I ever made, the
pocket masterpiece that is “Friendship’s Death.” Based on a short story by
Peter which he used to refer to as autobiographical, I would describe this film
— an encounter and four-day conversation between a journalist and an
extra-terrestrial peace envoy in Amman, Jordan — as a romance about humanity,
and it is certainly full of love, while remaining bright-minded and unashamedly
political to its boots.
The fact
that this extraordinary piece of work — which ran for a year straight at the
Bleecker Street cinema on its release — has become all but entirely lost has
long been kicking a painful bruise for those of us close to it and to Peter:
Peter had been caught in the limbo of dementia for a very long time and was
unable to speak up for his work himself. The news of his eventual departure
today is sad, indeed, but, honestly, maybe no sadder than it has been for us
all to be missing him already for so long.
As life
would have it, I am proud to say that we have been working with the BFI over
the past year to secure a new print of “Friendship’s Death,” which we hope very
much to be able to screen in 2020. A righteous honor to dear, white-hot
brilliant, Peter, whose delicacy of spirit, sense of imaginative rhapsody and
somewhat dazzling prophetic genius lives on within it forever.
Tilda
Swinton Honors Late Film Theorist and Filmmaker Peter Wollen, Dead at 81. By
Zack Sharf. IndieWire , December 19,
2019.
Tilda
Swinton can boast of many achievements, having performed in more than 70 films,
including “Michael Clayton,” for which she won an Oscar in 2008.
In a way
hers is the broadest of careers, stretching from her salad days of the 1980s
working with the acclaimed independent director Derek Jarman to her appearance
in this year’s “Avengers: Endgame,” which is already one of the
highest-grossing movies of all time.
But
until now Ms. Swinton, 58, has never organized an art exhibition.
The
show, “Orlando,” which opens Friday at the Aperture Foundation and features
nearly five dozen photographs by 11 artists, is Ms. Swinton’s first foray into
art curation.
The works,
some commissioned especially for the project, tackle the themes of identity and
transformation explored in Virginia Woolf’s 1928 novel, “Orlando” and Sally
Potter’s 1992 film adaptation, whose lead role was a breakthrough for Ms.
Swinton.
The list
of artists includes established names like Mickalene Thomas, Lynn Hershman
Leeson and Ms. Potter, as well as up-and-coming talents like Elle Pérez. The
summer issue of Aperture magazine is also devoted to the project, with Ms.
Swinton serving as guest editor. She worked with the publication’s editor,
Michael Famighetti.
“She has
a great eye,” said Ms. Thomas, who photographed two subjects — her partner and
muse, Racquel Chevremont, and the performance artist Zachary Tye Richardson —
and then corresponded with Ms. Swinton via email to select images for the show.
Ms.
Swinton spoke energetically about her work during a visit to New York last
month. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
How did
this get started?
I had
been in conversation with Aperture for a while about doing something, and we
came around to this idea of “Orlando.”
Curating
is new for you, yes?
I
curated an exhibition of experimental film at the ICA London a long time ago.
I’ve also curated film festivals quite regularly. But nothing on the walls
until this.
Discussions
of gender are so prevalent now, more so than when you did the film “Orlando.”
Did that naturally lead you back to this story?
I think
that’s the Trojan horse of “Orlando”-ness — both the film, but more important
the book — is that it’s all about gender-bending. And it really isn’t.
So
what’s it about?
It’s
about inevitable, perpetual change being the only thing that we can rely on,
and it’s about identity being positively negligible. It’s a properly
revolutionary book. I propose hypothetically that had Virginia Woolf continued
this book for another thousand pages, Orlando could easily have turned into a
mouse.
And yet
the story is so poignant in the way it deals with the male-to-female
transformation:our protagonist waking up one day as a woman and carrying on.
Gender
identity is one aspect of it. And [Woolf] deals with it so beautifully and
wittily and playfully and profoundly. But it’s so importantly about class, too,
and that’s a taboo that nobody talks about, ever.
You seem
to inspire gender-fluidity — in “Suspiria” last year, you played both male and
female roles. Why do directors think of you for that?
Well, I
very often instigate it. So I have to take a certain amount of responsibility.
Don’t blame them! [laughs]
Where
does that come from?
I’m
really interested in transformation — especially what I call the precipice of
transformation. And for me it’s very often just as exotic to play a bourgeoise
housewife, as in “The Deep End,” who is looking after her family and suddenly
finds herself being drawn to this gambling blackmailer. Or for that matter in
“Julia,” playing a totally avowed alcoholic becoming a mother, in a way.
So what
were the nuts and bolts of the putting the exhibition and the issue together?
It was
an invitation that I sent out to some people that I thought might respond. And
very gratifyingly, every single person was able to respond, except for one
person who was just too busy.
Who
dared to be too busy?
Hilton
Als, my friend. We’ll get him next time. For the others, I sort of set this
trail of bread crumbs through the forest, and they picked them up and sent in
their portfolios. And then we curated them together.
What
were the responses like?
In a way
it was a validation of the project because no one said, “‘Orlando’ what?”
Everybody said, not only, “Oh, yeah,” but, “Oh, my God, that’s my favorite
book. That’s the book that inspired me.”
You know
a bunch of these artists, but especially Lynn Hershman Leeson.
She’s an
old collaborator and friend. We met when she wrote to ask me to work with her.
I immediately said yes. And we’ve made five films together. The first was
“Conceiving Ada,” about Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, who is now
recognized as the first ever computer programmer.
Leeson
is famous for having a whole other identity, correct?
I don’t
think Cindy Sherman would mind me saying, Lynn did it a long time before [Ms.
Sherman’s early photographic series] “Untitled Film Stills.” Her alter ego,
Roberta Breitmore, was a very living thing. She had a public life, she had a
P.O. Box and Social Security number and I think even a passport. But she didn’t
exist.
What
surprised you in terms of the art that resulted?
I love
what Paul [Mpagi Sepuya] did. And I’m so grateful because he shows there’s more
than just the gender aspect to the book — there’s race, too. And for him to
say, “Yeah, there’s this barbaric racism, too” was meaningful.
There’s
a particularly fraught moment related to race in the novel but not in the
movie, right?
He’s
referring to the gesture that Orlando does early on — this so-called innocent
noble child. And he’s just bored, like playing with a punch ball, which happens
to be the wizened head of a Moor that some ancestors brought back from the
Crusades.
Do you
collect art?
I’m not
really rich enough to collect what I’d like to collect.
What
would that be?
Paul
Strand.
Good
segue — you’ve also curated a sidebar show of his modernist photography, since
Aperture controls the Paul Strand Archive.
I said
to Aperture originally: Paul Strand is my way of indicating to people that I’m
interested in the landscape of the spirit. And it so happens that Strand, apart
from being a great artist, did this Hebridean series, and I half-live in the
Hebrides. I know that landscape very well, and I don’t know of any other artist
who comes close to seeing the Hebrides in the way that I see it.
Did you
grow up there?
More or
less. We’ve been there every single year of my entire life at least once, and I
go there as often as I can, maybe four times a year.
Maybe
identity is a canard, as you’ve suggested, but aren’t we all just looking for
ourselves in art?
Look at
Mickalene’s work. She got to the bottom line: Everyone is Orlando, that’s the
thing.
It
sounds as if the book has as much meaning for you as the film you starred in.
I think
I felt a bit sheepish about liking the book because I thought maybe it was for
very boring, literal reasons, like the fact that I also had been brought up in
a big house with lots of paintings on the wall of people who look rather like
me, with mustaches or ruffs. But millions of other people who’ve read that book
feel the same way. It doesn’t really matter where you grew up or what your
gender identification is or what your life is like.
Inspired
by Virginia Woolf, Curated by Tilda Swinton. By
Ted Loos. The New York Times , May 22, 2019.
From
Okja to Orlando to The Grand Budapest Hotel, we assess every film role of the
dazzlingly versatile British actor.
All Tilda Swinton's films – ranked! By Andrew Pulver. The Guardian , January 16, 2020.
No comments:
Post a Comment