Here we have another video essay, but this time it’s one of a particularly different tone than most. Creator Nikki Martin utilizes familiar techniques such as clips, photos, text, and narration but also includes herself delivering a fourth-wall-breaking address to the camera/viewer. These self-aware segments lend the piece a lighthearted and humorous character as she takes to defending three Stanley Kubrick films on the basis of feminist film theory. By way of Laura Mulvey and the psychoanalytic concepts found in her seminal essay “Visual Pleasure And Narrative Cinema”, Martin argues for Lolita (1962), Eyes Wide Shut (1999), and Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb (1964) as Kubrick works that contain evidence in opposition to criticisms of the director as a misogynist.
| Videos / Live Directors Series / Directory / About / Main |  |
|
Thomas Vinterberg(The Hunt, The Celebration) |
2013 Canadian Screen Awards(Live Show Highlights) |
William Vega & Oscar Ruiz Navia(La Sirga) |
Le Mepris (Contempt) & Diva(Video Essay) |
Matías Piñeiro(Viola, They All Lie, Rosalinda) |
 João Pedro Rodrigues & João Rui Guerra da Mata (The Last Time I Saw Macao) |
 Pinewood Toronto Studios (Film & TV Production Complex) |
 Man Who Left His Will on Film (Video Essay) |
| View All Videos |
|
Latest Posts
The Coen Brothers Discuss Beginning Films with Noah Baumbach
The latest Coen Brothers film, Inside Llewyn Davis, has just premiered at Cannes, which offers a good opportunity to take a look back at one of their more interesting interviews.
In the summer of 2011, the Film Society of the Lincoln Center invited the Coen Brothers to discuss their entire career over the course of an hour – with a bit of a twist. Joel and Ethan had just released True Grit in December of 2010 when they were asked to sit down with filmmaker Noah Baumbach. The conversation surrounds the question of ‘How do you begin a movie?’ The subject was the idea of the Coens, who brought five openings to their films to share alongside three of Baumbach’s. The conversation begins with the interesting comparison of Blood Simple and No Country for Old Men before Ethan describes the beginning of Baumbach’s Margot at the Wedding as ‘diametrically opposed’ to the Coen’s opening style – and that’s just the beginning of the analysis…
The three go on to discuss The Big Lebowski alongside Greenberg, Burn After Reading as atypical for the Coens, and A Serious Man with The Squid and the Whale.
Agnès Varda’s Portrait Film of Chris Marker
The video embedded above is a portion of French filmmaker Agnès Varda‘s television documentary series Agnès de ci de là Varda. This excerpt showcases a friendly profile of her longtime friend Chris Marker. Varda explores Marker’s “magnificent mess” of a home studio, talks to the notoriously secretive artist about a number of topics, and even showcases the virtual life that Marker has created for himself in the game Second Life.
Don’t forget that TIFF Cinematheque’s film series Remembrance of Things to Come: Works By Chris Marker keeps on going strong later today with a screening of Marker’s essential 1977 work A Grin Without a Cat.
The program will conclude tomorrow evening with two of Marker’s highly-regarded late period films: One Day in the Life of Andrei Arsenevich (1999) and The Case of the Grinning Cat (2004).
Chris Marker’s 1997 visual essay film Level Five
Level Five (1997) is a feature-length experimental work in which writer/director Chris Marker. The film utilizes a fictional narrative device, a computer programmer using the internet to research The Battle of Okinawa for a game that’s production she is assisting, in order to craft a visual essay that explores the very real implications of such historical information as it relates to technology, war, history, personaly identity, time, and memory.
The TIFF Cinematheque’s film series, Films in Remembrance of Things to Come: Works by Chris Marker, explores these very same themes through Marker’s wide body of work, including this evening’s formidable triple-movie event: Remembrance of Things to Come (2003), La Jetée (1962), and The Sixth Side of the Pentagon (1968).
The program’s third screening will take place tomorrow with A Grin Without a Cat, Marker’s epic 1977 essay film focusing on the worldwide ramifications of the political turmoil that took place during May 1968. This film stands as one of Marker’s most recognized achievements and cannot be missed. For more information, click here.
