The director's new film is an elegy for pit workers, while up in the north-east the theme of this year's Av is 'extraction'. Together they explore the legacy of a hammer blow to workers' power
Film-maker Bill Morrison is feeling a little rueful. "Striking was once an effective means of leveraging power. Today's striking worker may feel fortunate to wake up and still have a job." He's reflecting on his film The Miners' Hymns, a collaboration with Icelandic musician Jóhann Jóhannsson, which trawls through hundreds of hours of archival footage of mines in the north-east of England to fashion an elegy for the workers, brass bands, local communities and unions that sustained the region throughout much of the 20th century. This month there will be many articles, radio programmes and TV documentaries marking the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the miners' strike: few will be as beautiful or as...
Film-maker Bill Morrison is feeling a little rueful. "Striking was once an effective means of leveraging power. Today's striking worker may feel fortunate to wake up and still have a job." He's reflecting on his film The Miners' Hymns, a collaboration with Icelandic musician Jóhann Jóhannsson, which trawls through hundreds of hours of archival footage of mines in the north-east of England to fashion an elegy for the workers, brass bands, local communities and unions that sustained the region throughout much of the 20th century. This month there will be many articles, radio programmes and TV documentaries marking the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the miners' strike: few will be as beautiful or as...
- 3/8/2014
- by Sukhdev Sandhu
- The Guardian - Film News
★★★☆☆ In Decasia (2002), experimental American filmmaker Bill Morrison explored the fragility of film by looking at decomposing celluloid. In The Miners' Hymns (2010), the director does something very similar but on a grander scale. By slowing down archive footage of the mining communities in the North West of England, and pairing them neatly with a melancholic score from Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, Morrison throws some light on the fragility of history, and the importance of its industrial communities.
Read more »...
Read more »...
- 6/19/2012
- by CineVue
- CineVue
Bertrand Chamayou Liszt: Anneés de Pèlerinage (Naïve)
The musical harvest of last year’s Liszt bicentennial continues even now; this young French pianist (who already, six years ago, gave us an excellent cycle of the Transcendental Etudes) celebrated it by presenting this mighty collection, which amounts to three cycles, in single concerts and then recording this three-cd set. For decades Lazar Berman’s set for Deutsche Grammophon has set the standard in this repertoire for an integral set, but Chamayou equals it.
Berman’s primary assets, besides his sterling technical skills, are the fiery drama and monumental breadth with which he infused these mighty works. His total time for all three cycles is nearly 26 minutes longer than Chamayou's. The Frenchman by contrast leans towards the music's poetic side and plays with a lighter touch, though when the occasion demands power (the climaxes of "Sposalizio" and "Apres une lecture du Dante...
The musical harvest of last year’s Liszt bicentennial continues even now; this young French pianist (who already, six years ago, gave us an excellent cycle of the Transcendental Etudes) celebrated it by presenting this mighty collection, which amounts to three cycles, in single concerts and then recording this three-cd set. For decades Lazar Berman’s set for Deutsche Grammophon has set the standard in this repertoire for an integral set, but Chamayou equals it.
Berman’s primary assets, besides his sterling technical skills, are the fiery drama and monumental breadth with which he infused these mighty works. His total time for all three cycles is nearly 26 minutes longer than Chamayou's. The Frenchman by contrast leans towards the music's poetic side and plays with a lighter touch, though when the occasion demands power (the climaxes of "Sposalizio" and "Apres une lecture du Dante...
- 4/23/2012
- by SteveHoltje
- www.culturecatch.com
First things first. There's an announcement from last week to catch up with: "Aldo Tambellini's Black Films and pioneering experimental works by four other filmmakers — Ian Hugo, the international banker-turned-artist who worked with Anaïs Nin; Mike Kuchar; Gregory Markopoulos; and Jud Yalkut — will soon be saved through the 2012 Avant-Garde Masters Grants from the National Film Preservation Foundation and The Film Foundation." Martin Scorsese, who began the initiative in 2003 through seed money from The Film Foundation: "There's no other program of its kind. I'm thrilled that the work of such artists as George Kuchar, Shirley Clark, and Kenneth Anger has been preserved and — equally important — made available so audiences can actually see these extraordinary films."
On a somewhat related note, Marilyn Ferdinand has put out a call regarding For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon, taking place in just a couple of weeks now: "Bloggers, we need to...
On a somewhat related note, Marilyn Ferdinand has put out a call regarding For the Love of Film: The Film Preservation Blogathon, taking place in just a couple of weeks now: "Bloggers, we need to...
- 4/23/2012
- MUBI
The Miners' Hymns (2011) is "an elegant, elegiac found-footage work from Bill Morrison, best known for his silent-film reverie Decasia," writes Manohla Dargis in the New York Times. "A miner himself of a type, Mr Morrison has dug into the archives of the likes of the British Film Institute to cull primarily black-and-white images so rich, so alive with dirty faces, shadows and the occasional pit pony that they resurrect a world that for many has long been lost to history." It screens from today through Tuesday at Film Forum with three of Morrison's shorts, previewed by Cinespect's Ryan Wells. Release (2010) "uses found footage of the 1930 release of Al Capone from Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary," while Outerborough (2005) "gorgeously catches a ride on a trolley making its voyage across the Brooklyn Bridge from Manhattan. Morrison gives us a split screen with two perspectives: a camera facing Brooklyn, another looking back at Manhattan.
- 2/9/2012
- MUBI
Updated through 4/30.
"At first it was about neighborhood," begins Eric Hynes in the Voice. "Then it was about stars, parties, and supersizing. But finally, for its 10th incarnation, the Tribeca Film Festival (April 20-May 1) seems to be about movies. Gone are the superfluous, attention-sucking Hollywood premieres (Tom Cruise on a Jet Ski, anyone?), and few are the big-name, low-quality vanity projects. Several years into a vital slimming of the slate — the fest topped out at 176 films in 2005; this year, it's a manageable 93 — Tff remains New York's largest film survey."
To celebrate Tribeca's 10th, we're running a retrospective of some of the best films the festival's shown over the past decade here at Mubi. Happy viewing.
"A notoriously uneven assemblage of titles, Tribeca aspires toward something like a mini Toronto, but despite, in recent years, bringing such important films as Jia Zhangke's Still Life and Mohammad Rasoulof's The White Meadows...
"At first it was about neighborhood," begins Eric Hynes in the Voice. "Then it was about stars, parties, and supersizing. But finally, for its 10th incarnation, the Tribeca Film Festival (April 20-May 1) seems to be about movies. Gone are the superfluous, attention-sucking Hollywood premieres (Tom Cruise on a Jet Ski, anyone?), and few are the big-name, low-quality vanity projects. Several years into a vital slimming of the slate — the fest topped out at 176 films in 2005; this year, it's a manageable 93 — Tff remains New York's largest film survey."
To celebrate Tribeca's 10th, we're running a retrospective of some of the best films the festival's shown over the past decade here at Mubi. Happy viewing.
"A notoriously uneven assemblage of titles, Tribeca aspires toward something like a mini Toronto, but despite, in recent years, bringing such important films as Jia Zhangke's Still Life and Mohammad Rasoulof's The White Meadows...
- 4/30/2011
- MUBI
Ahead of the 10th Tribeca Film Festival starting April 20th, indieWIRE is again spotlighting emerging (and some veteran) filmmakers screening new work at this year's event. Thursday's new director interviews include profiles from Lisa Aschan's "She Monkeys" (World Narrative Competition); Maggie Betts' "The Carrier" (World Documentary Competition); and Bill Morrison's "The Miners' Hymns" (Viewpoints). In the days leading up to the festival, iW is focusing on directors with work in ...
- 4/14/2011
- Indiewire
Ahead of the 10th Tribeca Film Festival starting April 20th, indieWIRE is again spotlighting emerging (and some veteran) filmmakers screening new work at this year's event. Thursday's new director interviews include profiles from Lisa Aschan's "She Monkeys" (World Narrative Competition); Maggie Betts' "The Carrier" (World Documentary Competition); and Bill Morrison's "The Miners' Hymns" (Viewpoints). In the days leading up to the festival, iW is focusing on directors with work in ...
- 4/14/2011
- indieWIRE - People
Filmmaker Bill Morrison is one of the leading international artists working within the genre of found footage filmmaking. In his previous work, like "The Highwater Trilogy" (Tff '06) and Release (Tff '10), he often uses shots replete with signs of chemical deterioration and decay. He then refashions these images via digital processing techniques into meditations on the fragility of human existence. In "The Miners' Hymns," Morrison shifts his emphasis from ...
- 4/14/2011
- Indiewire
Filmmaker Bill Morrison is one of the leading international artists working within the genre of found footage filmmaking. In his previous work, like "The Highwater Trilogy" (Tff '06) and Release (Tff '10), he often uses shots replete with signs of chemical deterioration and decay. He then refashions these images via digital processing techniques into meditations on the fragility of human existence. In "The Miners' Hymns," Morrison shifts his emphasis from ...
- 4/14/2011
- indieWIRE - People
A 'ballet who?' ballyhoo flares up over Portman's Oscar-winning Black Swan performance, just as the DVD comes out in the Us
The big story
Our journalistic colleagues in home news and business are used to juggling with conflicting sets of figures: crime statistics that arrive in the morning and are turned on their head by mid-afternoon; rival measures of inflation, house price indices and the like. We on the film desk don't feel quite so at home in these number-flinging fact fights, especially when half of the argument seems to be taking place in French. Our heads hurt. What's it to be? First of all we had Benjamin Millepied, Natalie Portman's choreographer partner for her Oscar-winning performance in the weird ballet film Black Swan, responding to accusations that she had taken undue credit for her dance double's work: "Honestly, 85% of that movie is Natalie." The double, according to Millepied,...
The big story
Our journalistic colleagues in home news and business are used to juggling with conflicting sets of figures: crime statistics that arrive in the morning and are turned on their head by mid-afternoon; rival measures of inflation, house price indices and the like. We on the film desk don't feel quite so at home in these number-flinging fact fights, especially when half of the argument seems to be taking place in French. Our heads hurt. What's it to be? First of all we had Benjamin Millepied, Natalie Portman's choreographer partner for her Oscar-winning performance in the weird ballet film Black Swan, responding to accusations that she had taken undue credit for her dance double's work: "Honestly, 85% of that movie is Natalie." The double, according to Millepied,...
- 3/31/2011
- The Guardian - Film News
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.