[1]
Photo by Marc Vernet.
DB here:
Over the last few weeks we’ve added a fair amount of material to this site. As Kristin and I pack for our annual trip to Cinema Ritrovato (Ford! Godard! Donen! Capellani! 1910!) [2], in what we Americans know as Yurrp, I thought I’d mention them. All can be found in the left column, but I’ll link to them too.
First, more on the Danish cinema of Dreyer’s earliest days. As background to my recent essay on Dreyer’s first film [3], I’ve revised and updated an essay on style in Nordisk films of the 1910s [4]. Even if you don’t want to read it, I think you’ll find it pretty to look at, and most of the (many) illustrations come from rare 35mm prints. Thanks to Dan Nissen and Lisbeth Richter Larsen, who edited the first version and gave me permission to publish this new one here. Thanks as well to archivists extraordinaire Thomas Christensen and Mikael Brae for their help during my visits to Copenhagen.
Second, I’ve added pdf extracts from two of my books. There’s the introduction to The Way Hollywood Tells It, already kindly flagged by Catherine Grant of Film Studies for Free [5]. I’ve also added two bits from Poetics of Cinema. There’s the somewhat polemical introduction [6], and there’s the piece I wrote on eye behavior in film performance [7]. Yes, I’m already known as Professor Blinky [8]. But read before you condemn. Maybe you’ll even be enticed to read the rest of the books. I can dream, can’t I?
Most quietly, we’ve added a facile Print command so you can make hard copies of any of our entries, including our most ancient ones.
One of our many summer tasks is to go back through our early entries and clean them up, fixing photos, restoring what broken links we can, etc. Mark Minett has been diligently combing our blogs and we’ll try to shape them up….after we get done watching movies at Bologna, and then Brussels. From there I hope to file a report on my visit to the Musée Hergé [9], which is holding a Joost Swarte exhibition [10]. (Swarte is one of my favorite [11] cartoon artists.) Of course Brussels also boasts the remarkable annual festival Cinédécouvertes [12], which is showing many new titles, including Godard’s Film Socialisme. I am so there.
Thanks as usual to our web tsarina Meg Hamel for her efforts in putting up all this stuff, not to mention putting up with me. Next week, some observations from Bologna.
[13]