Alain Resnais and Chris Marker's: Les Statues meurent aussi
"Les Statues meurent aussi, co-directed with Alain Resnais. This 30 minute short film has a chequered history of censorship that at one time elevated it to a somewhat mythical status (2), and which prevented it from being brought into the wider public eye until some 16 years after it was completed. After its first screening at the Cannes Film Festival in 1953, and in spite of winning the Prix Jean Vigo in 1954, Les Statues meurent aussi was banned in France by the Centre National de la Cinématographie between 1953 and 1963 owing to its controversial anti-colonialist stance (3). While a truncated version was made available in 1963, the unabridged film only became available in 1968.
Les Statues meurent aussi was commissioned by the literary review and publishing house, Présence Africaine, which was set up in 1947 in Paris as a quarterly literary review for emerging and important African writers. Founded by the Senegalese thinker Alioune Diop, it housed the writings of some of the most important francophone thinkers in the latter half of the 20th century, such as Aimé Césaire, Ousmane Sembene, Léopold Sédar Senghor, in addition to French metropolitan writers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. The journal also translated groundbreaking works by Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka into French for the first time. Having emerged so soon after the new French Constitution of 1946 had declared a 'French Union', Présence Africaine’s publications signalled a new, post-colonial status for French and francophone thought, embracing what was then a key notion: that of négritude (4). It is this notion that the second half of Les Statues meurent aussi engages with most deeply, and perhaps most controversially, especially as it strives to connect the death of the statue with the rise in the commercialisation of African art for the pleasure of the colonial classes. Indeed, it is against the backdrop of a France that had so recently lost its colonial power, but which still retained many of the quasi-Manichean distinctions between white, Western culture and black, African culture, that (and in spite of their claims to the contrary) Resnais and Marker’s film projected its passionately anti-colonial, anti-racist, even anti-capitalist audio-visual collage. It is little wonder then that such a film should have been censored until the late 1960s, by which time it might have lost some of its topicality, but none of its political vigour."
(Jenny Chamarette, 14 September 2009, Senses of Cinema)
[1] Sarah Cooper, Chris Marker, Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 2008. As Cooper points out, Les Statues meurent aussi is available as an extra on the French DVD release of Resnais’ Hiroshima mon amour, Arte France and Argos Films, 2004.
[2] See Roy Armes’ entry on Les Statues meurent aussi in his The Cinema of Alain Resnais, A. Zwemmer/A.S. Barnes, London and New York, 1968, p. 34.
[3] This is heavily documented in scholarship on Marker and Resnais. In particular, see Cooper, p. 12; Emma Wilson, Alain Resnais, Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 2006, pp. 22-4; Nora M. Alter, Chris Marker, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Chicago, 2006, pp. 58-9.
[4] For further details see V.Y. Mudimbe (ed.), The Surreptitious Speech: “Présence Africaine” and the Politics of Otherness, 1947-87, Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1992, pp. 3-4.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Fahrenheit 451: illustrations replace text in newspapers
Montag (Oskar Werner) 'reads' his illustrated newspaper in bed. The scene is from François Truffaut's classic film treatment of Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel about a dystopian world where written books have been outlawed.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
NeverSeconds blogger Martha Payne school dinner photo ban lifted
"A controversial ban preventing a nine-year-old girl from photographing her school meals has been lifted following a storm of protest on the internet. Martha Payne, from Argyll, has now recorded more than three million hits on her NeverSeconds blog. Argyll and Bute Council said press coverage of the blog had led catering staff to fear for their jobs. But council leader Roddy McCuish later told the BBC he had instructed senior officials to lift the ban immediately. The schoolgirl's father, David Payne, who helped her set up the blog, welcomed the decision. Martha began publishing photographs of her Lochgilphead Primary School lunches on 30 April. Martha Payne's father, David: ''It (the ban) was disappointing''. She gave each meal a 'food-o-meter' and health rating, and counted the number of mouthfuls it took her to eat it."
(BBC News, 15 June 2012)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Rare Archival Footage of Marshall McLuhan
"This rare archival footage of McLuhan speaking to an ABC journalist on his visit to Australia was recorded on 19 June 1977 in Sydney.
ABC Archive notes: 'Canadian expert on electronic media, Marshall McLuhan, arrives in Australia to address a seminar on Australian radio. He advocates shortening of TV transmission time and better balance between TV, radio and press. McLuhan speaks about the effect of TV on children.'
From other sources we know that he was brought to Australia by Sydney radio station 2SM.
Sadly no record of the interviewer has been kept, though we think she has a New Zealand accent."
(ABC Radio National, Australia)
Fig.1 This rare archival footage of McLuhan speaking to an ABC [Australian Broadcasting Corporation] journalist on his visit to Australia was recorded on 19 June 1977 in Sydney.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
PROTECT IP / SOPA Act Breaks the Internet
This video "discusses the Senate version of the PROTECT IP Act, but the House bill that was introduced TODAY is much much worse.
It'll give the government new powers to block Americans' access websites that corporations don't like. The bill would criminalize posting all sorts of standard web content -- music playing in the background of videos, footage of people dancing, kids playing video games, and posting video of people playing cover songs.
This legislation will stifle free speech and innovation, and even threaten popular web services like Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.
The bill was just introduced: We need to act now to let our lawmakers know just how terrible it is. Will you fill out the form above to ask your lawmakers to oppose the legislation?"
(Fight for the Future, 2011)
[Another naive effort by government & big media to re-conceptualise their economic models in the face of profound change.]
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
