Monthly Archive for February, 2011

Spomenik—Jan Kempenaers and “The End of History”

February 28, 2011 in John’s Bailiwick
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Podgaric

There are hundreds of them scattered throughout villages and rural landscapes in the former Yugoslavia. Once the site of pilgrimages by schoolchildren, military veterans, patriots, and mourners who had lost family in WWII, these Spomeniks (monuments) are today rarely visited. Often built out of concrete in a style dubbed Brutalism, these secular totems were meant to endure, impervious to the mere march of time—a testament and continuous witness to the new unity of the historically fractious Balkan states—the unity of all the Slavs, YUGOSLAVIA.

But the wounds of history never fully heal; they continue to suppurate, bleeding in many directions. A country held together (as they often are) by a charismatic and feared leader, President for Life, Marshall Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslavia tried to forget the centuries old enmities and religious and ethnic conflicts exacerbated by WWII— by unfurling the banner of a homegrown brand of communism that defined itself on the world stage as “non-aligned.” Somehow, an ersatz nation that seemed at first only a tenuous alignment of many languages, ethnicities and religions, stuck together for more than 35 years after the end of the war. During this time, the Spomeniks were commissioned and built. Continue reading ‘Spomenik—Jan Kempenaers and “The End of History”’

Jehad Nga in Barrow: A Winter Desert

February 21, 2011 in John’s Bailiwick
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A downtown Barrow street.

ONE

The northernmost city on the North American continent (more than 300 miles inside the Arctic Circle) has freezing temperatures over 320 days a year; it also gets less than five inches annually of “equivalent rainfall.” In metrological terms, Barrow, Alaska, is a desert.

When I cited these statistics to photojournalist Jehad Nga, we were standing on a man-made ice field just above the high tide line of Anchorage’s deep-water port. Our movie company was several months into production on a feature film about the real-life rescue of three California grey whales trapped in early winter sea ice. This incident occurred above Barrow in October 1988; it captured the attention of international media for several weeks in the final days of the Bush/Dukakis campaign.

Jehad was in Alaska on special assignment with our second unit crew, directed by Peter Collister, ASC; they were all due to fly up to Barrow within a few days. I didn’t envy them, especially Jehad, who seemed woefully underdressed in a light jacket and conventional leather boots. Jehad is also rail thin, with a body fat index that wouldn’t insulate a flea.

“Where do you live, anyway?” I asked him. “Mainly in Kenya, but with an apartment in New York,” he said. As we continued talking, waves of frosted breath blocked our view of each other, but I could still make out his dark beard and Arab features. I was soon to discover that he is a photographer for the New York Times, often working the arid, dusty plains of hellholes like Iraq, Somalia and the Horn of Africa. The year-end issue of the Times “Week in Review”  (an essay here from several weeks ago) reproduced his well-known photograph of Somali pirates.

Somali pirates, NY Times, 2010.

Continue reading ‘Jehad Nga in Barrow: A Winter Desert’

A Cauchetier Valentine: Romanesque to New Wave

February 14, 2011 in John’s Bailiwick
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ONE

A Noir-esque Adam and Eve, Belmondo and Seburg, “Breathless.”

It is one of the most famous images in all of cinema, this Breathless kiss by Jean Seberg bestowed on Jean Paul Belmondo. If much of film history can be circumscribed by the simple idea of “boy meets girl,” this film by Jean Luc Godard is not only the first and seminal film of the French New Wave, it also refracts back onto the whole tradition of American film noir that inspired it. The trope of two lovers alone against the world is the single most told-tale in all of cinema. It transcends any passing moment that tries to frame it; this simple theme stands out against the surrounding cultural persiflage like hewn stone sculpture. But this cinematic buss is not taken from a scene in Breathless; it was set up by photographe de plateau Raymond Cauchetier

Over the past year, I have written a number of essays about this extraordinary French photographer, an intensely focused man who even now, in his early nineties, radiates the youthful enthusiasm that itself was the essence of the French films of the 60s, movies on which he worked as set photographer. Last March, I wrote a three-part essay about his work on those films.

John’s Bailiwick—“Raymond Cauchetier’s ‘New Wave’–Part One” link

Continue reading ‘A Cauchetier Valentine: Romanesque to New Wave’

Owen Roizman, ASC at AMPAS

February 7, 2011 in John’s Bailiwick
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On the evening of January 19, 2011, five-time Oscar nominated cinematographer Owen Roizman hosted a party for his fellow American Society of Cinematographers colleagues. The venue was the grand lobby gallery of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Wilshire Blvd. offices. Many of the hundred plus “lensers” attending had been there for several days—at least their photo likenesses had been, lining the lobby’s walls and pillars. Dozens more showed up that evening, in the flesh, to mix in the festivities, to celebrate Roizman, and to possibly glance surreptitiously at their ink-jet likenesses on display. Others, such as Conrad Hall, William Fraker, Laszlo Kovacs and Jim Glennon, were there in spirit—and in Roizman’s loving portraits. The occasion was the opening of his one-person photography show: Masters of the Close-up, Up Close.

Owen Roizman, ASC at AMPAS opening, photo by Matt Pettit.

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