A Filmmaker's Life: October 2014

Friday, October 3, 2014

Criterion's "All That Jazz: Fosse Time" - Several years of film school in 14 minutes

My buddy George Zaverdas sent me Criterion's excellent appreciation/analysis of Bob Fosse's - and editor Alan Heim's - editing/filmmaking style as realized most fully in their under-appreciated film "All That Jazz" - one of my personal favorites. Check it out. It's several years of film school in 14 minutes.

I remember when I first watched the film, thinking "This is f#@*ing brilliant!!....And Sandahl Bergman might be the sexiest thing I've ever seen!!" :)

The film is out now on Criterion: http://www.criterion.com/films/28561-all-that-jazz. I couldn't recommend it more highly. Oh, and I LOVE Criterion!!!

CineThoughts

The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn't. - Jean-Luc Godard

To have a life as a filmmaker, you must continue to make films. Like filmmaking, being a filmmaker is a process. It demands education, experience and exposure.

The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to. As an artist, I feel that we must try many things, but above all we must dare to fail. You must be willing to risk everything to really express it all. - John Cassavetes

Good is the enemy of great. Look beyond praise to the truth of what you're creating.

Juxtaposing a person with an environment that is boundless, collating him with a countless number of people passing by close to him and far away, relating a person to the whole world, that is the meaning of cinema. - Andrei Tarkovsky

Be a true filmmaker, a true creative being. Not a merchant. Make films from and for your soul.

Some rainy winter Sunday when there's a little boredom, you should carry a gun. Not to shoot yourself, but to know exactly that you're always making a choice. - Lina Wertmuller

To tell you the truth, in my work, love is always in opposition to the elements. It creates dilemmas. It brings in suffering. We can't live with it, and we can't live without it. You'll rarely find a happy ending in my work. - Krzysztof Kieslowski

"I mean simply to say that I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible. I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see them in empty space." - Michelangelo Antonioni

I formulated my own directing style in my own head, proceeding without any unnecessary imitation of others…for me there was no such thing as a teacher. I have relied entirely on my own strength. - Yasujiro Ozu