The new season at Beykoz Kundura’s interdisciplinary stage Kundura Sahne, whose restoration has captivated audiences, begins on November 3. With a program that brings original projects from stages around the world to Istanbul, Kundura Sahne has become a favorite destination for theater and dance lovers, and it opens its 2023-2024 season with “Never Odd Or Even”, a dance project co-produced by Türkiye and Portugal.
On the evening of Friday, November 3 at Kundura Sahne, the Türkiye premiere of “Never Odd Or Even” brings together on the same stage Filiz Sızanlı and Mustafa Kaplan, whom we know well from Taldans, the company they founded in 2003, and the Portuguese artist duo Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz, who have been working together since 2006.
All four artists share an interest in the relationships between speech, sound, movement and gesture, along with a common curiosity about precision, minimalism, language and abstraction, and they reveal the richness of being able to look at these subjects from different perspectives, individually or as pairs. Created jointly by two duos who for more than a decade have worked almost exclusively with their own partners, “Never Odd Or Even” opens the door to an intimate world while also discovering that creating together over many years is an experience of shared solitude.
Developed over five years in which the artists watched, listened to and observed one another, and sharing this creative process with the audience, the performance also draws on the experience of living in two different countries in seeking to understand the artistic, social and political reflections of duality.
NEVER ODD OR EVEN
Filiz Sızanlı, Mustafa Kaplan, Sofia Dias, Vítor Roriz
In Turkish and English, with Turkish and English surtitles, 70’
NEVER ODD OR EVEN is a collaboration between two choreographic duos from Türkiye and Portugal. Bringing together Filiz Sızanlı and Mustafa Kaplan from Türkiye and Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz from Portugal, the project shows that, for these two couples who have worked almost exclusively with their partners for more than ten years, working together for so long is also an experience of shared solitude. Despite their different creative approaches and experiences, the two couples share the same interest in precision, minimalism, language and abstraction, and a growing interest in the interplay between the spoken word, sound, movement and gesture. In NEVER ODD OR EVEN, while the resemblance between each duo and each body holds a strong attraction, the choreographers are equally interested in what sets them apart and in how to accentuate these differences in a search for distortion. Yet there is still much to be done with the collective energy of the quartet for each of these duos to shift itself into “unknown” territory…
Co-direction and Performance: Filiz Sızanlı, Mustafa Kaplan, Sofia Dias, Vítor Roriz
Lighting Design and Technical Direction: Cárin Geada
Set and Costume Design: Ângela Rocha
Sound: Sofia Dias
Management and Distribution: Vítor Alves Brotas
Production: Agência 25
Co-producers: Théâtre de la Ville, São Luiz Teatro Municipal, Alkantara Festival, La Briqueterie, Teatro Viriato, CCN Nantes, Teatro Municipal do Porto /Festival DDD – Festival Dias da Dança
Support: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Casa-Atelier – Fundação Arpad Szenes – Vieira da Silva, Câmara Municipal de Lisboa, Polo Cultural Gaivotas | Boavista
Thanks to: Leonor Carpinteiro
“How else could we describe her magic, except by showing her films?” The Pioneering Women of Cinema: Asta Nielsen program, screening with live music at Kundura Sinema on Sundays throughout March, is curated by Pamela Hutchinson – here she writes about ‘Die Asta’!
Asta Nielsen on a German postcard.
Asta Nielsen was the greatest actress of the silent film era. She was also hugely famous, one of the very first international film stars. Audiences all over the world adored her as a symbol of glamour, modernity, sophistication, culture and androgyny. But all of this is easy to say. To grasp Asta Nielsen’s groundbreaking film career in all its glory, we need to see the films that turned her into a star, and the films she made because she had become one, among them the most magnificent of all.
Nielsen was born in 1881 in one of Copenhagen’s working-class districts. Although she grew up in real poverty, she always dreamed of going on the stage. She had a child at a very young age but refused to marry the child’s father – she was dreaming of a different life. She found work as an actress, but the Danish stage could not offer her the opportunities she longed for, so when a friend suggested that they make a film together to show the theater world the full extent of her talent, Nielsen seized the chance without a second thought.
The friend in question, the writer and director of The Abyss (1910), the provocative first film that launched Nielsen’s film career when she was 29, was Urban Gad. Gad was the first person Nielsen worked with in cinema, and before long he became her first husband as well. To convey the impact Nielsen made with her very first step into film, we are also showing this emotionally intense drama, in which she performs her notoriously sensual Gaucho dance. Gifted with an untapped talent, Nielsen had no inhibitions whatsoever and could connect instantly with the camera’s gaze. On film she could stir emotions like no one else. It is said that the Danish director Benjamin Christensen, passing through the studio while the film’s heartrending finale was being shot, paused to watch Asta’s performance and declared: “Now cinema has become an art.” Nielsen began her mission to invent modern screen acting with this raw portrayal of a woman caught between duty and desire.
Photograph: DFI Det Danske Filminstitut
The Abyss is paired with another of her first Danish films, the melodrama The Black Dream (1911), which reveals how quickly Nielsen developed a mesmerizing performance style, a distinctive and alluring aesthetic, and a command of melodrama. In it she plays a circus performer courted by two suitors, one young and handsome, the other old, rich and terribly jealous. Asta’s character goes to any lengths to save the man she truly loves.
Photograph: Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung
Nielsen had a mischievous side as well, and to show it we are also screening a few of the cross-dressing comedies she made after moving to Germany, where she shot most of her films – subversive comedies that were nonetheless hugely popular. Zapata’s Gang (1913/14) finds her playing an actress, this time on a location shoot in Italy. When a band of brigands steals the cast’s costumes, Asta is forced to improvise, and she makes such a convincing robber king that she even wins a female admirer.
Photograph: DFI Det Danske Filminstitut
The ABC of Love (1916) sees her as a young woman who, dismayed that her sweetheart is not manly enough, dresses as a man in a very elegant tailcoat to show him how a gentleman lover ought to behave – and then has to live with the consequences. Although many actresses in Weimar cinema played characters of the opposite sex, Nielsen, with her impish energy and slender, striking physique, was one of the most successful.
Photograph: DFF Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum e.V.
Nielsen’s boyish quality finds its most dramatic expression in her masterpiece, a lavish, feature-length adaptation of Hamlet (1921). Playing Shakespeare without dialogue was not the greatest liberty this film took with the original text. Nielsen plays a princess who has concealed her true gender all her life, posing as the Prince of Denmark in order to preserve the line of succession to the throne. In this version, Hamlet has a particular reason to feel alone at the Danish court, and her relationships with Ophelia and Horatio in particular are complicated by the secret she keeps.
After this film, we can never look at Nielsen’s magnificent performance in the same way again. As the young heir(ess), she cuts an iconic figure in black tights and a cape – or, in the words of Close-Up magazine, “a white passion flower on a black stalk.” Nielsen seems born to play this role. She offers a portrayal of grief as powerful as any tragedy demands, while drawing on her flair for comedy in the play’s manic scenes.
Photograph: Eye Filmmuseum
We close the program with two very special films by the woman whom German audiences of the 1920s embraced as “Die Asta.” In the surviving fragment of the 1913 feature The Film Primadonna, we watch Nielsen playing a fictionalized version of herself: a great star, producer and lover.
Photograph: DFI Det Danske Filminstitut
And in The Decline (1922), one of her finest works and yet one that has rarely been screened, Nielsen appears as a great, glamorous star who ruins herself for love. In later years, Nielsen rejected the glamour of her early period and appeared on screen as a vulnerable woman of her real age, no longer hiding behind expensive costumes and heavy makeup. In many scenes, such as the tragic climax of The Decline, she reminded us once again of the boundless, undeniable talent that had made her a star. In this film she takes on the roles of film star and actress, of lover and tragic heroine, reversing the improbable rags-to-riches trajectory of her own life. Without a doubt, one of the most powerful performances of her career!
Asta Nielsen, 1966. Photograph: Tage Nielsen-Scanpix
How else could we describe the magic of ‘Die Asta,’ except by showing her films? Words alone cannot do it. According to the Hungarian critic Béla Belász, Nielsen’s film performances created an entirely new language of their own: “Only when advances in cinematography enable us to assemble our first lexicon of gestures will we be in a position to gauge the extent of Asta Nielsen’s vocabulary of gestures.”
Pamela Hutchinson: An independent critic, curator and film historian based on the south coast of England. She writes for publications such as Sight and Sound, Criterion, Indicator, The Guardian and Empire, and regularly contributes commentary to BBC Radio. She is the author of the books “Pandora’s Box” and the forthcoming “BFI Film Classics on The Red Shoes,” and her essays, mostly on silent film, have appeared in many edited collections. For BFI Southbank she curated the film seasons “Marlene Dietrich: Falling in Love Again” and “In the Eyes of a Silent Star: The Films of Asta Nielsen”; together with Christina Newland, she also put together the nationwide touring program “Pre-Code Hollywood: Rules are Made to be Broken.” She currently edits Sight and Sound’s Weekly Film Bulletin and continues to run her website SilentLondon.co.uk, which offers an extensive body of writing on silent cinema.
Inviting audiences to discover and remember the Danish actress and producer Asta Nielsen, the first international star of early cinema, the silent film selection “The First Diva of Cinema: Asta Nielsen” opens with the 1921 film “Hamlet” at Kundura Sinema. The film, in which we will see Nielsen as Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, meets audiences on Saturday, October 21 at 16:30. Screened in the German Film Institute & Film Museum (DFF)’s restored print, this 102-year-old cult film will come back to life on the screen with live music by jazz legend Okay Temiz.
The silver screen’s second ‘female Hamlet’
Co-directed by Svend Gade and Heinz Schall, “Hamlet” is inspired by William Shakespeare’s famous stage character and by Edward P. Vining’s 1881 book “The Mystery of Hamlet.” Telling the story of a princess forced to disguise herself as a man because of her mother’s intrigues over the throne, the film paints an extraordinary portrait of a Hamlet who harbors a secret passion for Horatio and competes with Ophelia for his love. Having gone down in history as the second actress, after Sarah Bernhardt, to play Hamlet on the silver screen, Asta Nielsen captivates with her moving performance and, with her black tights and cape, creates one of cinema’s most iconic characters.
Screened with a live performance by world-renowned jazz musician Okay Temiz on Saturday, October 21 at 16:30, “Hamlet” awaits film and music lovers, as well as theater enthusiasts, at Kundura Sinema.
Asta Nielsen was the greatest actress of the silent film era. She was hugely famous too, one of the first international film stars. Audiences around the adored her as an icon of glamour, modernity, sophistication, culture and androgyny. But it is very easy to say these things. To share the glories of Asta Nielsen’s groundbreaking career on film, we have to show the films that made her a star, and the films that she made because she was a star, the most wonderful of them all.
Asta Nielsen on a German postcard.
Nielsen was born in a working-class district of Copenhagen in 1881. She grew up in serious poverty, but she dreamed of a life on the stage. She had a child when she was very young, but refused to marry the father – she dreamed of a different life. She found work as an actress, but the Danish stage could not offer her the opportunities she craved, so when a friend suggested that they make a film together, to show the theatre world the scale of their talent, Nielsen jumped at the chance.
Her friend was Urban Gad, writer-director of Afgrunden/The Abyss, Nielsen’s incendiary debut, which launched her film career when she was 29 years old. He was her first collaborator in the cinema and he would become her first husband too. We are showing this emotionally intense drama, in which Nielsen performs her notoriously sensual Gaucho dance, to show the impact she made in her first film. Nielsen has a reserve of untapped talent, a lack of inhibitions and an instant connection with the camera’s gaze. She could evoke emotion on film like no one else. Walking through the film studio as Asta shot this film’s heartrending finale, the Danish director Benjamin Christensen is said to have paused to watch her perform and say: “Now, cinema is an art.” Nielsen began her mission to invent modern screen acting with this raw portrayal of a woman caught between duty and desire.
Den sorte Drøm (The Black Dream), 1911. Photograph: DFI Det Danske Filminstitut
We are pairing Afgrunden with another of her first Danish films, the melodrama The Black Dream, which shows how Nielsen so immediately cultivated a mesmerising performance style, a distinctly glamorous aesthetic and a mastery of melodrama. Here she plays a circus performer courted by two suitors, one young and handsome, one old, rich and terribly jealous. Asta’s character goes to extreme lengths to save the man she truly loves.
Zapatas Bande (Zapata’s Gang), 1913/14. Photograph: Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung
There was a mischievous side to Nielsen too, so we are showing a couple of the subversive, though very popular, cross-dressing comedies that she made after moving to Germany, where she made most of her films. In Zapatas Bande (1913/4) she, as she often did, played an actress – this time on a location shoot in Italy. When bandits steal the cast’s costumes, Asta is forced to improvise and she makes such a convincing robber king that she gains a female admirer.
Das Liebes ABC (The ABC of Love), 1916. Photograph: DFI Det Danske Filminstitut
In The ABC of Love (1916), she plays a young woman so dismayed by her unmanly beau that she dons male drag, a very handsome dress suit in fact, to show him how a gentleman lover should behave, with unruly consequences. Many actresses in Weimar cinema played with cross-dressing; Nielsen, with her puckish energy and slim, striking physique, was one of the most successful.
Hamlet, 1921. Photograph: DFF Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum e.V.
Nielsen’s boyish side found its fullest dramatic expression in her masterpiece, a lavish, feature-length adaptation of Hamlet. Playing Shakespeare without the dialogue is not the greatest liberty that this film takes with the original text. Nielsen plays the Danish prince as a princess, who has been concealing her true gender her entire life to maintain the line of succession. In this version, Hamlet has a special reason to feel isolated within the Danish court, and her relationships with Ophelia and Horatio, in particular, are complicated by her secret. You’ll never look at the Nielsen’s performance is magnificent. She cuts an iconic figure in black leggings and a cloak as the young heir(ess): Close-Up magazine decribed her appearance as “a white passion flower on a black stalk”. Nielsen appears born to play this part. She offers a moving portrayal of grief that befits the tragedy as well as leaning on her comic talents for the play’s manic scenes.
Die Film-Primadonna (The Film Primadonna), 1913. Photograph: Eye Filmmuseum
To conclude our month with the woman that German audiences in the 1920s embraced as “Die Asta”, a very special double-bill. In a fragment of a film from 1913, The Film Primadonna, we see Nielsen playing a fictionalised version of herself: the great star, producer and lover.
Der Absturz (The Decline), 1923. Photograph: DFI Det Danske Filminstitut
Then in a feature film from 1922, one of Nielsen’s best, but still rarely screened films, we see Nielsen playing a great and glamorous star who destroys herself for love. In later years Nielsen rejected the glamour of her early years and appeared on screen as an older woman, vulnerable, not hiding behind an expensive wardrobe and heavy makeup. In scenes such as the tragic climax of Der Absturz she reminds us of the immense, and undeniable talent that created her stardom. In this film she embodies both movie star and actress, lover and tragedienne, and she reverses the impossible rags-to-riches trajectory of her own life. It is one of the most powerful performances of her career.
Asta Nielsen, 1966. Photograph: Tage Nielsen-Scanpix
How else can we describe the magic of Die Asta, except by showing her films? Words alone cannot do it. For Hungarian critic Béla Belász, Nielsen’s film performances spoke an entirely new language: “Only when advances in cinematography enable us to assemble our first gesture lexicon will we be in a position to gauge the extent of Asta Nielsen’s thesaurus of gestures.” I hope you can join us to learn your ABC of Asta Nielsen.
Pamela Hutchinson: She is a freelance critic, curator and film historian, based on the south coast of England. She writes for Sight and Sound, Criterion, Indicator, the Guardian and Empire and she regularly appears on BBC radio. Her publications include BFI Film Classics on The Red Shoes (forthcoming) and Pandora’s Box, as well as essays in several edited collections, mostly on silent film. She has curated film seasons including Marlene Dietrich: Falling in Love Again and In the Eyes of a Silent Star: The Films of Asta Nielsen for the BFI Southbank and the nationwide touring programme Pre-Code Hollywood: Rules are Made to be Broken, with Christina Newland. She also edits Sight and Sound’s Weekly Film Bulletin and her website SilentLondon.co.uk is devoted to silent cinema.
The 1960 thriller classic “Purple Noon” (Plein Soleil, 1960), whose admirers include directors such as Akira Kurosawa, Martin Scorsese and Roman Polanski, comes to A Summer Night Festival in a restored print. We take a close look at the film in which Alain Delon brings to life Tom Ripley, one of the most unsettling characters in literary history.
KUNDURA BLOG | LENS
Adapted from the novel by the queen of contemporary crime fiction Patricia Highsmith, “The Talented Mr. Ripley” (published in Turkish as Yetenekli Bay Ripley by Can Yayınları), “Purple Noon” is a thriller classic that keeps audiences on the edge of their seats with its clever editing and a screenplay full of surprises.
A French-Italian co-production, the film bears the signature of French director René Clément, who also made such classics as “The Battle of the Rails” (1946), “Forbidden Games” (1952), “Gervaise” (1956) and “Paris Burning” (1966). Co-writing the screenplay with Paul Gégauff, known to us from “Les biches,” Clément masterfully brings the novel’s eerie atmosphere to the screen.
The film, which also achieved cult status thanks to the seductive performance of Alain Delon, centers on Tom Ripley, an ambitious and cunning young man. Hired by a wealthy American family, Ripley is to persuade their dissolute son Dickie, who is living for the moment in Italy, to come home. Watching with envy the life of abundance led by this young man, whom he gets close to through intrigue, Ripley comes to want, with an obsessive desire, to become Dickie, and will not shrink from taking the next step to make it happen.
As Tom makes his way through a world full of lies, intrigue and danger, he takes the audience along on a suspense-filled journey. Revolving around themes such as crime, jealousy, betrayal and assumed identity, the film also offers a compelling character study that explores the effects of crime on the human psyche and how far a person is willing to go.
Alain Delon, one of the sex symbols of the ’60s and ’70s, was just 25 when he made the film, and his performance as Ripley gave him the first big breakthrough of his career. The depth he brought to one of the most unsettling characters in literary history also inspired the actors who would later play Ripley, such as Dennis Hopper, John Malkovich and Matt Damon.
Marie Laforêt, one of the popular French singers of the day, plays Marge Duval in the film that launched her screen career. At the height of her fame in the 1960s and remembered especially for songs such as “Ivan, Boris et moi”, “Mon amour, mon ami” and “Manchester et Liverpool,” Laforêt went on, thanks to the film’s success, to sustain a film career until the late ’90s.
Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Foreign Film Screenplay from the Mystery Writers of America in 1962, the film was also met with praise from critics. Roger Ebert, who gave “Purple Noon” three stars, commented that it was “a fascinating film that masterfully captures the suspense of Patricia Highsmith’s novel,” while Peter Travers said, “Astonishing both visually and narratively. While steadily building suspense, it also enchants with its beautiful Italian scenery.” James Berardinelli, who included it in his list of the 100 Best Films of All Time, gave the film four stars and praised René Clément for his “expert camerawork and sharp direction.”
Another point on which critics agreed was the masterful performance Alain Delon gave at such a young age. David Ansen of Newsweek described Delon as “charismatic and unsettling,” while Vincent Canby of The New York Times found the words “striking and magnetic” fitting for the actor.
The film’s cinematography by Henri Decaë is also superb. Opening with sunny, ‘dolce vita’ scenes of Italy and evolving into claustrophobic, suspense-filled moments, the cinematography successfully carries the novel’s atmosphere onto the screen. The colors, lighting and shadows effectively heighten the emotional and suspenseful feel of the scenes. Add to all this the clever editing of César winner Françoise Javet, and “Purple Noon” becomes one of the unshakable classics of the thriller genre.
Another element that makes “Purple Noon” unforgettable is, without a doubt, the score by Nino Rota, which heightens its emotional tone. Although we do not hear it as often as in Fellini’s films, Rota’s music, slipping in quietly and almost unnoticed, adds to the film’s eeriness.
After Delon, Ripley was played by four more actors. The third novel, “Ripley’s Game”, was adapted in 1977 as Wim Wenders’s neo-noir take “The American Friend”, and in 2022 it became the source for Liliana Cavani’s film “Ripley’s Game” (2022). Ripley is played by Dennis Hopper in the first and by John Malkovich in 2022.
In 1999, British director Anthony Minghella adapted the first novel in a film that invited comparison with “Purple Noon”: in “The Talented Mr. Ripley”, Ripley is played by Matt Damon, Dickie by Jude Law and Marge by Gwyneth Paltrow.
Based on the second novel and starring Barry Pepper as Ripley, the 2005 film “Ripley Under Ground” is, for now, cinema’s most recent Ripley adaptation.
Film critic Nandini Ramnath, in a piece written for scroll.in, compares the Ripley actors and writes, “While Damon and Hopper succeed in conveying Tom Ripley’s ruthlessness and ambition, Delon effortlessly captures his charm.”
As for Patricia Highsmith… her feelings about the film were mixed. While she considered Alain Delon “excellent” as Tom Ripley, she described the film overall as “very beautiful to the eye and interesting to the mind.”
The film was restored in 2012 at the Immagine Ritrovata laboratory with funding from StudioCanal, and the restored print was first screened at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival as a tribute to the career of Alain Delon, the festival’s Guest of Honor.
Still beloved by a devoted fan base today, the film appears on the lists of favorite films of directors such as Akira Kurosawa, Billy Wilder, Roman Polanski and Martin Scorsese. Polanski has said that in “Knife in the Water,” his first feature, made in 1962, he was influenced by “Purple Noon”, while Martin Scorsese provided financial support for the film’s restoration.
And let us end with the film’s delightful surprise: the scene in which Romy Schneider makes a brief appearance.
On the evening of Sunday, August 7 at A Summer Night Festival, you can watch “Purple Noon” in its restored print; for details and tickets, follow the link here.
The last film by Max Linder, cinema’s first international star and the unforgettable French actor of slapstick comedy, “King of the Circus” (1924) comes to A Summer Night Festival in a comprehensive restoration. Screened with a live performance by Islandman, the film is also considered a forerunner of Charlie Chaplin’s comedy classic “The Circus”, made four years later.
Pamela Hutchinson – silentfilm.org*
In “King of the Circus”, which he completed before his suicide, Max Linder fulfills a childhood dream. From a very young age, he had been expected to take over the family business and become a winegrower. Years later he would write, “Nothing could have been sadder to me than the idea of a life full of vineyards.” What fired his imagination was the thrill of performance. He adored the big-top circuses and traveling theater troupes that only rarely came to town. He especially loved the gruesome Grand Guignol shows at the annual festival. And finally, at the age of 40 and in a film studio in Austria, Linder got his chance to run away from home and join the circus.
Shooting on “King of the Circus” began in December 1923 at the Vita-Film studios in Vienna, the Austrian capital. In the film, Linder plays a young aristocrat who falls in love with a trapeze artist, but in order to win the chance to marry her, he must master the skills of the circus. He devises an elaborate trick to impress the crowds with a heroic stunt, but at the last minute circumstances require him to do it for real.
At this point, comparisons with Charlie Chaplin’s later film “The Circus” (1928) are inevitable – swap Linder’s drunken count for the Little Tramp and you will find that the stories have a great deal in common. The films, however, are very different from each other in tone and in action. Where these two big-top films really invite comparison is in the behind-the-scenes turmoil and the delays during their production. While Chaplin’s film was overshadowed by a highly complicated and very public divorce, Linder’s troubles foreshadowed a far darker fate.
Linder had married Hélène “Ninette” Peters that summer, and Ninette was pregnant before the couple arrived in Vienna for the shoot. Although the news seemed to soothe Linder’s fits of jealousy, neither their relationship nor work at the studio was going smoothly. Toward the end of January 1924, a local newspaper reported that not a single scene of the film had yet been shot, and wrote that the delays were caused by Linder disliking the apartment he was staying in and refusing to work in a studio that was a degree colder than he had expected – which may well have been a necessity stemming from an accident he had suffered the previous year. Another concrete reason was that the original director had suffered a heart attack and returned to Paris, and was replaced by Édouard-Émile Violet. There was also a report that the leading lady, Vilma Bánky, had been pushed through so many retakes that her arms went into spasm. The reporter in question would later have to retract the claim that Linder had resorted to “trickery” to delay the film, but more serious troubles lay ahead.
On February 23, 1924, the press reported that Max and Ninette had attempted suicide by taking an overdose of barbiturates. Both were taken to a local sanatorium for treatment and survived, and the police did not even consider it necessary to file a report on the incident. Twenty months later, the couple attempted suicide in a similar way, leaving their infant daughter Maud an orphan.
That is why “King of the Circus” is Linder’s last completed feature film. His previous film had been somewhat different. Directed by Abel Gance, “Au Secours!” (1924) is unusual in many respects, not least in that it is not, strictly speaking, a comedy. This two-reeler is essentially built around horror-film elements combined with a few comic and spine-chilling touches. In it, Linder plays a newlywed who takes a bet that he can stay in a haunted house from 11 p.m. until midnight. It was also the project with which Linder chose to return to France after his second, and somewhat disappointing, stint in Hollywood.
“King of the Circus”, on the other hand, is a longer film that promises, and delivers, a more straightforward script. It gives Linder ample opportunity to slip into his famous “Max” persona and show off his slapstick skills. Linder plays the playboy aristocrat Comte de Pompadour, the “hopeless nephew” of the domineering uncle whose ward he is. The young count defies his uncle, who insists that he marry, and tricks him so that he can slip away to a party, which leads us into the first long comic sequence as Linder wreaks havoc in a nightclub. The jokes are usually at Pompadour’s expense. Even before he leaves his hotel room, he is in trouble with a coat hanger caught inside his dinner jacket, and at the end of the scene he exits by sliding off a hanger from which that same jacket is hanging. The implication is clear: Linder will not be playing an elegant gentleman in this film.
At the end of the night, Linder, very drunk and disoriented, tries to get into bed, or launches into a hilarious routine in which he cannot manage to hang up his hat. The final joke on Pompadour is one we have been in on all along – he is not in a bedroom at all, but in the display window of a furniture store. Pompadour wakes up hungover to find a crowd on the other side of the glass looking at him with contempt. Fortunately, the moment of humiliation is brief, because the count is too drunk to grasp his situation. With this scene, Linder’s discomfort with being in front of an audience, or with becoming part of one, emerges as a theme.
The count’s first encounter with the trapeze artist Ketty is one of Linder’s dark jokes – and he was known for them. Struggling to choose among three prospective brides selected by his uncle, Pompadour decides to fire his pistol at their photographs, and whoever’s photo he hits will become his wife. Instead, he shoots Ketty, who happens to be passing by, and the bullet grazes the young woman’s arm. Once Pompadour’s romantic mission has been established, the film shifts into a more conventional comic mode. The comic highlights include Pompadour’s bashfulness among the crowd at the circus, his mishandling of a flea circus (an accidental act of revenge on the audience?), his run-in with a troublesome troupe of clowns and, best of all, the circus training camp he improvises in his hotel room.
This last consists of a rope, some precariously balanced furniture, a stepladder and the deft assistance of his tall manservant. Every move seems to carry great risk yet is executed with deceptive skill. This is pure clowning, only without an audience. The place where Pompadour performs his final feat, meanwhile, is behind the scenes – by “defeating” the lion, he earns the respect of the ringmaster and finds the courage he needs to impress the girl of his dreams. Greeted with applause by the audience, he will take his bow under the lights and, at last, feel that the spectators are firmly on his side.
But the film ends in silence. Left alone together in the circus ring, the lovers sit absorbed in each other, sawdust running through their fingers, unaware even that the audience has left. The film is telling us that after Max’s moment of triumph, after the courtship and the wedding, life must go on, and two people must move forward by spending time together in private. In this final scene there is a melancholy that offers a moment of reflection: on the film, on Linder’s screen career and – with the dubious benefit of hindsight – on his marriage. It is an unexpected deep breath from one of the kings of silent slapstick, after an hour of elastic comedy.
This article was originally published on silentfilm.org.
Blending reality and fantasy, Federico Fellini’s masterpiece “8½” is practically a love letter to the freedom of cinema and the boundlessness of creativity. Marcello Mastroianni, Claudia Cardinale and other iconic actors, Nino Rota‘s masterful music and a singular design have kept this one-of-a-kind classic shining for 60 years, and it screens on August 5 in a restored print at A Summer Night Festival.
KUNDURA BLOG | LENS
Inspired by Fellini’s own life and considered his most personal film, “8½” takes us on a dream-filled journey alongside Guido Anselmi, a world-famous director who has lost his muse. Struggling to finish his new film, Anselmi tries to cope with the expectations of those around him while drifting between reality, memories and fantasies.
Guido, played by Marcello Mastroianni, is in fact Fellini’s alter ego, and the film also invites readings as a story of the director’s struggles with the challenges of his own career.
“8½” is actually Fellini’s ninth film. The title points to the moment when Fellini, tallying up his previous work—features and shorts alike—lost count.
“8½” carries an experimental spirit that questions the conventional film structure of its time and pushes the boundaries of Italian Neorealism. Moving back and forth between reality and the world of dreams, Fellini manipulates the flow of time and space and invites the audience into a singular experience.
“8½” is also a cinematic feast that dazzles through its cast. Marcello Mastroianni delivers one of his most iconic performances as Guido. With his flawless acting skills and charismatic presence, Mastroianni masterfully conveys his character’s artistic crises and the difficulties of his personal life.
Cinema legend Claudia Cardinale, in the role of Claudia, stands out as a presence that adds to the film’s allure. The actress’s beauty, grace and charisma successfully convey the character’s mystery and appeal.
The film’s music bears the signature of the master Italian composer Nino Rota. Having scored numerous Fellini films, beginning with Fellini’s first solo directorial effort, “Lo sceicco bianco” (The White Sheik, 1952), Rota creates a soundscape that carries the viewer into the characters’ world. Rich in musical variety as well, “8½” brings together many different musical styles, including jazz, tango, classical and operatic pieces. The theme heard at the film’s opening, “La Passerella di Otto e Mezzo”, and the one used at key turning points, “La Passerella di Addio”, are especially unforgettable.
The film’s art direction and costume design by Piero Gherardi are an impressive part of the striking, eye-catching visual elements that complete Fellini’s vision. After “La Dolce Vita” (1960), Gherardi won his second Oscar once again with a Fellini film. He had also designed Fellini classics starting with the director’s very first film, “Luci del varietà” (1950), including “La Strada” (1954), “Nights of Cabiria” (1957), “Amarcord” (1973), among others.
Winner of the Special Jury Prize at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival, the film also won the Academy Awards for Best Costume Design (Black-and-White) and Best Foreign Language Film. Collecting the awards for Best Director, Best Producer, Best Screenplay, Best Original Story, Best Score and Best Cinematography from the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists, the film was also named Best Foreign Film at the BAFTA Awards.
“8½” is among the films critics cannot praise highly enough. Renowned critic Roger Ebert described the film as ‘full of the enchanting power of art’ and praised Fellini with the words “He dives into the depths of creativity and creates a cinematic masterpiece”. Rolling Stone’s Peter Travers said, “Fellini’s directorial skill, combined with his imagination, reaches its peak in this film. It offers a visual feast and an intellectual journey,” while another renowned critic, Pauline Kael, wrote in The New Yorker: “8½ is one of the peaks of creativity in cinema. Fellini’s in-depth character studies and visual aesthetics push the boundaries of cinematic art.”
“8½” also had a profound influence on many directors. “All That Jazz” (1979), “Synecdoche, New York” (2008), “The Science of Sleep” (2006), “I’m Not There” (2007) and “Holy Motors” (2012) are just a few of the films it inspired.
Regarded as an avant-garde classic that has left a significant mark, the film ranked third in the BFI’s 2002 directors’ poll of the “Top 50 Films of All Time.” Frequently cited among the greatest films ever made, it was also included in the Vatican’s list of the “45 Best Films of All Time,” compiled in 1995, the year marking cinema’s 100th anniversary.
Fellini’s Palme d’Or–winning masterpiece “La Dolce Vita” (1960) is, as audiences and critics alike agree, “Not just a film, but a true work of art.” Pushing the boundaries of cinematic art with its filming techniques, dream sequences and extraordinary characters, the film screens in a restored print on August 4 and 20 at A Summer Night Festival.
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Federico Fellini’s characteristic magical realism finds an unforgettable example in “La Dolce Vita”, which takes us on a 7-day journey through the city’s nightlife in the footsteps of Roman journalist Marcello Rubini. Encountering people from all walks of life—artists, aristocrats, journalists, models and sex workers—Marcello soon begins to question both his own values and the complexity of human nature.
The term “La Dolce Vita” means ‘the sweet life’ in Italian and refers to a lifestyle that emerged in Italy in the mid-1950s. Taking viewers on a journey through Roman nightlife and hedonistic passions, the film criticizes the decadence and emptiness of modern society, while not mincing words about the worlds of media and art either.
Capturing the social and moral transformation of 1960s Italy with a bold eye, Fellini—through long tracking shots, striking compositions and inventive editing—also heralds a new aesthetic sensibility and an experimental approach in cinema. Combining visual richness, powerful scenes and symbolic storytelling, the film offers viewers a visual feast.
Causing a major scandal on its release in 1960, the film, with its critique of Roman nightlife and the luxurious life, was accused by some conservative groups of undermining moral values. The Catholic Church condemned the film and its director, claiming that it mocked the coming of the Messiah, and branded it “La sconcia vita” (the filthy life). Facing censorship, the film was shown in cut versions in some countries.
The film is also famous for shoots that were quite lengthy for the time; some of its scenes were filmed over weeks and planned with great care. In particular, the scene in which Anita Ekberg frolics in the water of the Trevi Fountain, also known as Rome’s Fountain of Love, took 7 days to shoot.
Its star-studded cast is unforgettable, too. Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni reaches the peak of his career in the role of Marcello Rubini, while the film’s magic is heightened by Anita Ekberg as the seductive film star Sylvia, Anouk Aimée as Maddalena and Yvonne Furneaux as Marcello’s former lover Emma.
“La Dolce Vita” also marks the beginning of one of the most famous director–actor partnerships in film history. The chemistry between Fellini and Mastroianni worked so well that the duo went on to work together on “8½” (1963), “Juliet of the Spirits” (1965), “Fellini Satyricon” (1969), “Roma” (1972), “Amarcord” (1973), “City of Women” (1980), “Ginger and Fred” (1986) and “Intervista” (1987).
Its visual storytelling and Otello Martelli’s luminous black-and-white widescreen cinematography are among the film’s most striking elements. Demonstrating the power of cinematic art through its images, compositions and symbolic imagery, the film holds an important place in film history thanks to its aesthetic visuals, profound characters, social critique and inventive storytelling.
Regarded as a national treasure of Italy, “La Dolce Vita” is home to many unforgettable scenes and cultural icons. The statue of Christ suspended above Rome and, above all, the scenes at the Trevi Fountain are considered among the most iconic and powerful moments in cinema history.
“La Dolce Vita” is a classic remembered not only for its visual splendor but also for the enchanting music of Italian composer Nino Rota. As the film explores the nightlife and bohemian existence of Rome’s high society, Rota’s compositions perfectly capture this atmosphere. Imbued with melancholy, romance and a spellbinding mood, his music accompanies Marcello’s complex emotions and the inner worlds of the characters. The famous theme that shares the film’s title captures an enchanting melody and draws viewers into the magical world of Rome. Evoking the film with just a few notes, this iconic theme showcases the genius of Nino Rota.
Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival, the film also won the Academy Award for Best Costume Design (Black-and-White). At the David di Donatello Awards it was named Best Italian Film and won Best Director, and it took home the awards for Best Actor, Best Original Story and Best Production Design from the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists.
Critics, too, have showered praise on “La Dolce Vita”. Here are a few…
“‘La Dolce Vita’ represents the beginning of a new era in cinema. Fellini’s creativity and visual aesthetics make the film unforgettable.” – The Guardian
“The world Fellini created with ‘La Dolce Vita’ is both mesmerizing and disturbing. The film explores in depth the emptiness and spiritual collapse of modern society.” – The New York Times
“‘La Dolce Vita’ offers a mesmerizing dreamlike experience. Fellini’s visual storytelling and Marcello Mastroianni’s performance place the film among the unforgettable works of cinema history.” – Empire
“Fellini’s ‘La Dolce Vita’ is not just a film, but a work of art. The visual compositions, symbolic storytelling and depth of character in this film push the boundaries of cinematic art.” – Sight & Sound
“La Dolce Vita” is also one of the emblems of the dawn of a new era in cinema. It is cited as one of the leading examples of the Neorealist movement, and it has inspired many classics, from “Blow-Up” (1966) to “Midnight Cowboy” (1969), and from “The Passenger” (1975) to “In the Mood for Love” (2000).
Held for the first time this year, Kundura DocLab brought together cinema and theater practice, offering participants the opportunity to carry out collaborative research over the course of a week with a contemporary, interdisciplinary approach. Let’s look back together at how the week went.
Kundura DocLab began with mentors and participants getting to know one another, followed by a tour of Beykoz Kundura. The day’s first event was with the SEİBA International Storytelling Center. In the session, presented by Maral Perk, participants experienced how, while our senses take us on a journey through the outside world, the place we ultimately arrive at is our inner source of imagination.
On the second day of Kundura DocLab, participants shared their projects at a meeting moderated by one of our jury members, producer Dilek Aydın. This was followed by an artist talk with architect, artist and researcher Yelta Köm and documentary filmmaker, video artist and film curator Beyza Boyacıoğlu. That same day, participants attended an online artist talk by Mexican actor and director Lázaro Gabino Rodríguez and had the chance to hear about his documentary theater experiences through the work of the art collective he founded in 2003, Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol. The day ended with a roundtable at which participants opened their practices and ideas up for discussion, taking as their starting point a letter written by Aljoscha Begrich.
We began the third day with a workshop by French journalist, actress and documentary filmmaker Nino Kirtadze. Kirtadze, who also presents and leads the documentary cinema section of Kundura DocLab, shared her experiences in a daylong workshop. In the evening, participants moved on to Kundura Sahne to watch the performance by Brussels-based artists Silke Huysmans and Hannes Dereere, who came to Türkiye as part of Kundura DocLab: “Pleasant Island”.
The first event of the day was a workshop led jointly by Medipol University Visual Communication Design lecturer Kıvılcım Zafer and Beykoz Kundura Director of Culture and Arts S. Buse Yıldırım. Having drawn great interest from audiences the previous evening with their performance “Pleasant Island,” artists Silke Huysmans and Hannes Dereere, who have been developing their award-winning Mining Trilogy—an interpretation of the past and present of mining—since 2016, shared their experiences in documentary theater through this work. At the end of the day, at Kundura Sinema, “Phases of Matter” was screened for all of us, followed by a talk moderated by Yelta Köm, in which we joined a conversation with the film’s director Deniz Tortum.
Kundura DocLab was at Postane today. We watched the film selection prepared by Doclisboa, one of the world’s leading documentary film festivals, together with festival director Miguel Ribeiro. We then joined a talk on “Forms of Screening in Documentary Cinema,” which brought together film curators from Lisbon and Istanbul. Altyazı Cinema Magazine writer Aslı Ildır moderated the talk, whose speakers were Beykoz Kundura’s S. Buse Yıldırım, Doclisboa’s Miguel Ribeiro and İstanbul Modern Sinema’s Müge Turan, who discussed the finer points of film programming, drawing on the freshest forms of documentary screening. And the day came to a close with a farewell reception on Postane’s terrace.
Kundura DocLab’s final day began with an evaluation session joined by our mentors and jury members, and continued with the SEİBA International Storytelling Center’s workshop on Aesthetic Memory. The closing event was a conversation about the impact of the letter from Aljoscha Begrich that had been opened on the second day.
Held from May 8 to 14, 2023, at Beykoz Kundura, Kundura DocLab brought together cinema and theater practice, creating an original and creative platform for the industry while giving directors the chance to carry out collaborative research with a contemporary, interdisciplinary approach.
The jury, made up of producer Dilek Aydın, researcher, academic and curator Gurur Ertem, director and curator S. Buse Yıldırım and architect, artist and researcher Yelta Köm, evaluated 30 projects from 11 countries. The projects of Iran’s Sahand Sarhaddi, Israel’s Bat-Dor Ojalvo, Lebanon’s Niam Itani, Romania’s David Schwartz and Türkiye’s Can Eskinazi, Rıza Efe Reis, Tuğba Baykal and Zinnure Türe were developed and enriched with the guidance of experts in their fields.
This year’s program of Kundura DocLab, which brings together film and theater directors from Türkiye and neighboring countries in Istanbul, was prepared with the guidance of dramaturg Aljoscha Begrich and creative producer Bruni Burres. The program, which included special project and capacity-building workshops for the selected directors, also featured events open to the public at Kundura Sahne and Postane.
We thank everyone who was part of Kundura DocLab.
Taking its title from Andrei Platonov’s dystopian novel, “The Foundation Pit” is a work that imagines Russian culture as building its own mass grave. Editing together YouTube videos in which Russian citizens rebel against and plead with Putin, the film is practically an angry, funny and harrowing manifestation of contemporary Russia. The film premiered in the Panorama Dokumente section of the Berlin Film Festival, and its director Andrey Gryazev spoke about the film’s sources of inspiration and the current political situation in Russia.
Redmond Bacon – Directorsnotes.com
Where did the idea for the film come from, and why did you decide to make a film composed solely of YouTube videos?
I finished my last film, “Tomorrow” (Zavtra), in 2012, and it had its world premiere in Berlin. But I always ran into problems with my subsequent projects. Russian producers advised me not to speak openly about certain subjects; on other projects we couldn’t get official permission, or we couldn’t raise enough money through crowdfunding. At one point, I had a script I had written together with Oleg Negin, the screenwriter of “Leviathan,” and we put together a big co-production with 5 countries, but we couldn’t find a Russian investor.
At some point, I wanted to find a universal and simple form of expression. I felt like someone who visits a contemporary art exhibition and says, “It’s that easy—I could do it too.” And this subject was always hanging in the air. The project came back onto the agenda because of the meaningless summer elections to the Moscow City Duma. When opposition representatives were not allowed to run as candidates, people took to the streets to convey their demands directly to Putin. These events created a unifying theme, and I wanted to understand these people’s motivation. Since I wanted to create a simple form, I had to remove myself as the director. I turned to YouTube channels and started searching for video messages addressed to Putin.
How did you find all these videos, and how does the search process work?
I started with a simple search query: “video message to Putin.” After a few days, I reached the end of the list and concluded that there were no more videos of this kind on YouTube. So I capitalized the first letter of the word “President,” and hundreds of new videos appeared. Even a single period in a search query can matter. I began to see the differences between truly honest messages and the scripted recordings broadcast on TV channels.
How many videos did you use, and what happened to the ones you didn’t use?
It was quite a long process. It took several months. It’s hard to say exactly how much footage there was, but the raw recordings ran to roughly 80-90 hours. Some videos were less than a minute long, while others could run as long as 10-20 minutes. In the end, I had thousands of messages. The first cut was three hours long. It was exciting, but it felt like standing still at the same spot on a Ferris wheel. It was interesting, but it wasn’t going anywhere. The final version contains around 130-140 videos from individual accounts.
The credits list you as writer, editor and producer. Would you say this is a personal project of yours?
We could describe the film as material “made” by the authorities in Russia. It was actually Russian citizens who shot it. I simply wrapped it in nice packaging and translated the messages into the language of cinema. I always make sure to give the name of each video, the date it was uploaded to YouTube and its number of views. This is a tribute to these people. Without them, this film wouldn’t exist. 90% of all the videos contained a message that anyone could pass on to everyone as soon as they saw it, and distribute in any way they liked.
Why doesn’t your film include LGBT perspectives?
These issues didn’t come up in the messages to the president. The LGBT community has long been intimidated, fragmented and erased from the internet, so it is afraid to enter any public space. An organized community doesn’t exist in the media sphere. As they used to say: “There is no sex in the USSR!”
Did you go through any emotional changes while making the film? Did your views on the structural problems in Russia change? Do you feel worse now, or did a new sense of hope emerge after you finished the film?
When I took up this subject, I already knew well the functions of the power structure and the structure of the language the authorities use to address the public. The authorities have long been calling things by their proper names. The slogan “We are building a strong state,” for example, says that the authorities have no need for weak people. It’s a kind of natural selection. Only the strongest survive, and only the strongest are included in the concept of a strong state, it says. We already live in a different country from the one of the ’90s, or of the period from 2000 to 2020.
Do you agree with Platonov’s ideas in the novel about the essence of the USSR / Russia? Or do you see Russia’s future in a more positive light?
I don’t just agree with them; I sympathize with them too. The more we believe in a brighter future, the deeper the pit we dig beneath it. We are at the bottom of this pit. The horizon is receding from us, and it’s no longer possible to reach it.
Finally, how do you see the future of independent documentary film in Russia?
In Russia, independent cinema survives only thanks to co-productions with Western countries. But this trend may change. In my view, the future will be different—especially the speed at which films are made, because the textures of our time are rapidly changing and disappearing. In a country where independent journalism barely exists, documentary films must fill this gap, recording and reflecting life here and now. That is the main condition for its development: the uniqueness of the subjects and the perspective on the problems. This is our advantage and what most sets us apart in the world.
On June 11, “Love, Rebellion, Freedom” will feature “The Foundation Pit”; ticket information is available at this link.
*This interview was published in March 2020 on Directorsnotes.com.
