Author: Doug Cummings

Friday, September 5, 2003
Day One

by J. Robert Parks

I arrived in Toronto about noon. The weather was gorgeous, low 70s (Fahrenheit) and sunny. I’m struck as we fly into Pearson airport that Toronto occupies the same position on Lake Ontario as Chicago does on Lake Michigan. And as I walk around downtown, I notice other similarities: the congested sidewalks, the streets with high-end stores not far from streets with cheap Thai and Indian restaurants, the wonderfully diverse mix of people. I’ve heard so many people mention how clean Toronto is, but it doesn’t seem any cleaner than Chicago–except …

Not a lot of updates this week, but I’m building steam for next week. Tonight, I’ll be attending the Chris Marker retrospective at the American Cinematheque with my friend and fellow cinephile, Jonathan, who’s driving all the way up from San Diego to see Remembrance of Things to Come (2001), Marker’s latest essay film. Stay tuned for reviews of the films in this series.

And in the spirit of AngËs Varda, Chris Marker, and the Left Bank filmmakers appearing in my blog of late, I just received the French Region 2 DVD box set of Alain Resnais’ Eighties films: …

I’m late to the blogging game, but I still recognize a good one when I see it. Having enjoyed David Hudson’s blog entries for the excellent online DVD rental company, GreenCine.com, for some time now, I was especially pleased by his entry today regarding the Pentagon’s recent screening of Gillo Pontecorvo‘s classic The Battle of Algiers (1965). This blistering Italian film (initially banned in France) was made only two short years after the French colonialists lost to Algerian independence. It was filmed using nonprofessional actors in the city streets which had only so recently soaked up the blood …

Last weekend marked the latest Cinema Legacy (“how great filmmakers inspire great filmmakers”) event sponsored by the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Holland (Europa Europa, The Secret Garden) presented French filmmaker AgnËs Varda’s provocative Le Bonheur (1964). Not only do both filmmakers share the same first name, but they’re among the most famous women filmmakers in their respective countries. (Holland also includes the Czech Republic’s Vera Chytilov· in their company.) Although Le Bonheur was made several years after the birth of the French New Wave, Varda’s first film pre-dated (or even initiated) the movement …

Just a quick, exhilerating announcement this morning. According to DVDFile, Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray‘s masterful Apu Trilogy is coming to North American DVD on October 28:

From the [Columbia] vaults come a handful of classic catalog titles: Pather Panchali, Aparajito, The World of Apu,…. All are presented in 4:3 full screen only. The only extras are trailers and filmographies, and retail is $29.95.

This is wonderful news for those of us who have been waiting for some Ray films on Region 1 DVD for the last few years. (A Region 2 box set already exists.) I …

Last night, our campus film club screened Ermanno Olmi‘s 1978 Cannes-winning “peasant epic,” The Tree of Wooden Clogs. Shot in the Italian countryside with non-professional actors (neo-neorealism?), the film recreates a palpable sense of the daily life of turn-of-the-century sharecroppers in its lyrical, leisurely-paced imagery of muddy fields and tired faces. But it’s also an uplifting account of rural comaraderie and the inner faith of the workers. The narrative is loosely structured around four families who toil together and it accentuates their difficulties (a sick cow, a broken clog, financial scarcity, a harsh winter) while juxtaposing their attitudes, …