By Chloë Penman

John Akomfrah is a black-British filmmaker, coming out of a tradition of politically engaged and aesthetically minded experimental art cinema. In her Guardian article, John Akomfrah: Migration and Memory, Sukhdev Sanhu states that “John Akomfrah (is) widely recognised as one of Britain’s most expansive and intellectually rewarding film makers”. Akomfrah was part of the Black Audio Film Collective (BAFC), a group of filmmakers who made films and gallery installations between the years of 1982-1998. InA Statement by the Black Audio Film Collective John Akomfrah focuses his, and the collective’s, inquiry around the specificity of black independent filmmaking. “What does ‘black independent filmmaking mean’?” he asks. He has spent his career answering that question, using theoretical insights to shape his particular brand of politically, ethically and socially engaged cinema. While researching this article it has become clear that Akomfrah cannot be separated from the BAFC legacy, nor can that legacy exist without Akomfrah. I tried to separate the two, toying with the idea of writing about the BAFC in a separate piece. But the truth is that Akomfrah’s oeuvre and links with the BAFC are an evolutionary story, his works and collaborations are enmeshed. Colin Prescod remarks on this: “I’m struck with the fact that I’m seeing images in Mnemosyne (2010) that began to emerge in Handsworth Songs (1986), I’m struck with the wholeness of your artistic effort”. Akomfrah follows a poetic logic that has seen his work evolve and link over time.

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Using technology developed for the military, the flow of illegal immigration into San Diego has been stemmed. But for the desperate, there are still the dangerous deserts of Arizona, where Chantal Akerman shifts her focus.

See it on Amazon here

Alex Needham
guardian.co.uk

The Swiss artist David Weiss has died aged 66. Weiss earned an international reputation in partnership with fellow artist Peter Fischli, with whom he started working in 1979. The pair had a retrospective at London’s Tate Modern in 2006 and were recently ranked 26th in a list of the world’s 100 most important artists by the German publication Manager Magazin.

Based in Zurich, Fischli and Weiss’s work took in sculpture, installation, film and photography, exploring what critics called “the poetics of banality” with a deadpan wit. Their first work was a series of photographs ranging from a fashion show to a car crash in which sausages took the roles of people. Their most famous piece was a half-hour film made in 1987 called Der Lauf der Dinge (The Way Things Go), which set household objects such as kettles and stepladders in a chain reaction of increasingly manic slapstick scenes. A subsequent advert by Honda borrowed from it heavily.

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For more details on the screenings, visit the UCLA GSA website here.

Event Date: May 8, 2012 – 7:30pm

Location: The James Bridges Theater, Melnitz Hall 1409, UCLA

Featuring: ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF ANDREI ARSENEVICH (Chris Marker, 1999) and TO CHRIS MARKER, AN UNSENT LETTER (Emiko Omori, 2012)

Co-Curated by Marina Goldovskaya and Samuel B. Prime
A Melnitz Movies and Documentary Salon Co-Presentation

Co-sponsored by the French Film & TV Office, Consulate General of France in Los Angeles, join us for a post-show Q&A with director Emiko Omori moderated by Marina Goldovskaya!

BY EUGENE HERNANDEZ

The leading figure of modern American film culture, a rebellious champion of independent and international cinema and the co-founder of the New York Film Festival, Amos Vogel died yesterday in New York, the city where – in 1947 – he created the landmark film society Cinema 16.

From basement screenings in the 1940s to the grand halls of Lincoln Center in the 1960s, Amos Vogel shepherded alternative cinema to increasingly ravenous audiences at a time when discerning moviegoers were discovering influential auteurs. “The man was a giant,” Martin Scorsese told the Film Society of Lincoln Center last night, summing up the life of Vogel, who died Tuesday morning at the age of 91.

Born Amos Vogelbaum in Vienna on April 18, 1921, he fled Austria in 1938 and came to America, fully intending to ultimately head to Israel. However, Vogel quickly fell for New York. He enrolled in The New School and eventually developed a curiosity for alternative cinema. He wanted to see political, experiment and documentary films, but they weren’t available on New York City movie screens. Moved by the work of Maya Deren, Amos Vogel and his wife Marcia, a key co-conspirator, formed Cinema 16. They planned early programs at the small Provincetown Playhouse downtown because Deren had screened her own work there. The two ran the organization together through the early 1960s, working closely with Jack Goelman.

A pioneer of presenting what would eventually be called “independent film,” Amos Vogel embraced non-mainstream cinema. 16mm documentary, educational, scientific and experimental films were eventually screened for thousands of people weekly at venues in New York City as Cinema 16 outgrew the Playhouse.

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To celebrate its 50th issue, Cinema Scope has compiled a list of fifty directors under 50 who represent “the future of cinema.” Much to the pride and delight of all those who champion Chinese voices in contemporary cinema, Cinema Scope has chosen to honor several significant Chinese filmmakers: Liu Jiayin, director of Oxhide and Oxhide II, Zhao Liang, director of Petition and Crime and Punishment, Pema Tseden the Tibetan director of Old Dog, Jia Zhangke, director of such films as Unknown Pleasures and The World, as well as the 2008 documentary Dong, and Wang Bing, director of Coal Money and Man With No Name.

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By Kurt Orzeck

“The Loving Story,” first-time director Nancy Buirski’s documentary about interracial marriage, has been acquired by Icarus Films, TheWrap has learned.

The movie — which is on the Oscar short list for Documentary Feature — will air Feb. 14 on HBO. Three months later, New York-based documentary-film distributor Icarus Films will distribute “The Loving Story” to a yet-undetermined number of theaters.

“We’re very fortunate that a distributor wanted to take it,” Buirski told TheWrap at a Tuesday screening of “The Loving Story” at Los Angeles’ Museum of Tolerance. “They think it will play well on a big screen and go beyond the HBO audience.”

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“every day a different camera from a different film”

including:

Si j’avais quatre dromedaires (Chris Marker 1966): Rolleiflex

Jonathan Miller, President of the film distribution company Icarus Films — www.IcarusFilms.com—announced today that Icarus Films has acquired Program Development Associates —www.DisabilityTraining.com — a leading distributor of DVDs, multimedia training and educational resources on disability related topics.

Following Icarus Films’ acquisition two years ago of the FANLIGHT PRODUCTIONS COLLECTION — www.Fanlight.com — of 400 health care-related films and DVDs, the addition of the Program Development Associates collection of over 600 DVD titles and other resources, will enable the customers of both companies to access the best and most suitable films and DVDs to meet their different (and often specific) needs, while also helping the titles distributed by both companies to reach wider audiences.

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