How did John Hughes capture the growing pains of adolescence so perfectly? Why do his films resonate with those that grew up with them, and those that have just discovered them? Those and many other questions fueled this documentary.
Don't You Forget About Me is a 2009 Canadian documentary film about screenwriter, director, and producer John Hughes. Directed by Matt Austin, the film was named after the 1985 song of the same name by Simple Minds, which in turn was the theme song for Hughes' film The Breakfast Club. The film specifically focused on Hughes' fade from prominence in the early 1990s.
The documentary details the journey of a group of young filmmakers who go in search of the reclusive icon, documenting their search through interviews of the people with whom Hughes had worked and fans of his films. Those interviewed include Ilan Mitchell-Smith, Ally Sheedy, Judd Nelson, Kelly Le Brock, Mia Sara, Alan Ruck, Kevin Smith, Roger Ebert, and Jim Kerr of the band Simple Minds. Filming began in 2006.
"The people were so enthusiastic. They were completely taken in by all the pomp and grandure"
Recently-discovered color footage tells the story of an extraordinary Munich weekend when Adolf Hitler and nearly the entire Nazi leadership attended a three-day national cultural festival - including concerts, dancing, exhibitions and a five-mile-long parade - titled "2,000 Years of German Culture".
The film was shot in July 1939, just six weeks before the Second World War began, by an amateur film buff who wangled a special pass to shoot the event in close-up on color 16-millimeter Kodachrome. It was first shown only to the film maker's family, then hidden in the family cellar, where it lay for many years before one of his sons retrieved it. English film makers Luke Holland and Paul Yule assembled an audience of elderly Germans, framing them watching themselves in the 1939 footage and reminiscing about their experiences. Among them were sons of the unofficial cameraman who shot the 16-millimeter film and the daughter of the publisher of Hitler's Mein Kampf, who in deference to Hitler's wish for "privacy" on frequent visits to the publisher's home never said "Heil, Mein Führer", but always "Good Morning, Mr. Hitler."
The remarkable color footage presents a rarely-seen view of Adolf Hitler and of the Munich crowds (cast not in the role of anonymous adoring masses, as in Third Reich propaganda films, but as complicit participants, sharing with their leader the excitement of the parade).
The film provides a clear and chilling account of how culture, and in particular art is used to manipulate public opinion and national self-image. Numerous interviewees speak about their pride and joy in how Nazi art was "upliftning" and provided them with strength and happiness through a sense of "order". As the 93 year old artist Günter Grausmann (born 1900) says, artists subordinated themselves to ideology because they believed they would become great because they thought (or were told/ordered) that the ideology was great. But what they produced was actually 'non-art'. They have nothing to do with art. If someone gives you a commission, you must not subordinate yourself to the ideas of the commission. That is not art. That is prostitution.
Late last week the Folkwang University of Arts in Essen said it had “engaged in talks” with Anderson – whose works include the 1981 single O Superman and the 2015 film Heart of a Dog, dedicated to her late husband, Lou Reed – after her name surfaced among the thousands of artists who had backed the open letter, which called for “an immediate and unconditional cessation of Israeli violence against Palestinians”.
The university said it believed that art, culture and science are places “where contentious issues are kept in check”.
Its statement continued: “It has now become apparent that, in 2021, Laurie Anderson publicly supported the Palestinian artists’ ‘Letter Against Apartheid’ appeal, which, among other things, takes up calls for boycotts by the anti-Israel BDS movement,” it said. “In light of the now public question regarding her political stance, Laurie Anderson has decided to withdraw from the professorship.”
The idea "that art, culture and science are places 'where contentious issues are kept in check'" belies a denial of history and the continuation of culture in the service of power.
Robert George "Joe" Meek (5 April 1929 – 3 February 1967) was an English record producer, musician, sound engineer and songwriter who pioneered space age and experimental pop music. He also assisted the development of recording practices like overdubbing, sampling and reverberation. Meek is considered one of the most influential sound engineers of all time, being one of the first to develop ideas such as the recording studio as an instrument, and becoming one of the first producers to be recognized for his individual identity as an artist.
Meek became fascinated with the idea of communicating with the dead. He would set up tape machines in graveyards in an attempt to record voices from beyond the grave, in one instance capturing the meows of a cat he believed was speaking in human tones, asking for help. In particular, he had an obsession with Buddy Holly (saying the late American rocker had communicated with him in dreams). By the end of his career, Meek's fascination with these topics had taken over his life following the deterioration in his mental health, and he started to believe that his flat contained poltergeists, that aliens were substituting his speech by controlling his mind, and that photographs in his studio were trying to communicate with him.
Meek was affected by bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, and, upon receiving an apparently innocent phone call from American record producer Phil Spector, Meek immediately accused Spector of stealing his ideas before hanging up angrily. His professional efforts were often hindered by his paranoia (Meek was convinced that Decca Records would put hidden microphones behind his wallpaper to steal his ideas), depression, and extreme mood swings. In later years, Meek started experiencing psychotic delusions, culminating in him refusing to use the studio telephone for important communications due to his beliefs that his landlady was eavesdropping on his calls through the chimney, that he could control the minds of others with his recording equipment, and that he could monitor his acts while away from the studio through supernatural means.
Meek was also a frequent recreational drug user, with his barbiturate abuse further worsening his depressive episodes. In addition, his heavy consumption of amphetamines caused him to fly into volatile rages with little or no provocation, at one point leading him to hold a gun to the head of drummer Mitch Mitchell to 'inspire' a high-quality performance.
Meek's homosexuality – at a time when homosexual acts were illegal in the UK – put him under further pressure and he was particularly afraid that his mother would find out about his sexual orientation. In 1963 he was convicted and fined £15 (equivalent to £316 in 2019) for "importuning for immoral purposes" in a London public toilet, and was consequently subject to blackmail. In January 1967, police in Tattingstone, Suffolk, discovered two suitcases containing mutilated body parts of Bernard Oliver. According to some accounts, Meek was afraid of being questioned by the Metropolitan Police, as it was known they were intending to interview all of the gay men in London. This was enough for him to lose his self-control.
Meek always walked everywhere outside the studio wearing sunglasses, fearing recognition by local gangsters such as the Kray twins, who he feared would attempt to steal his acts or blackmail him regarding his homosexuality.
Meek's depression deepened as his financial position became increasingly desperate. French composer Jean Ledrut accused him of plagiarism, claiming that the melody of "Telstar" had been copied from "La Marche d'Austerlitz", a piece from a score Ledrut had written for the film Austerlitz (1960). The lawsuit meant that Meek did not receive royalties from the record during his lifetime, and the issue was not resolved in his favour until three weeks after his death in 1967.
On 3 February 1967, Meek killed his landlady Violet Shenton and then himself with a single-barrelled shotgun that he had confiscated from his protégé, former Tornados bassist and solo star Heinz Burt, at his Holloway Road home/studio. Meek had flown into a rage and taken the gun from Burt when he informed Meek that he had used it while on tour to shoot birds. Meek had kept the gun under his bed, along with some cartridges. As the shotgun had been owned by Burt, he was questioned intensively by police before being eliminated from their enquiries
Adam Curtis tries to revive the Grand Narrative as a way for understanding history. Using conspiracy as a structure for truth, Curtis pieces together a large number of events in attempt to explain 'the fake world' we live in. However, he avoids many elements that do not fit in with the premise, such as the anti-globalisation movement of the 1990s and 2000s and the power of money. This is despite establishing early in the film that the power of corporations now extends to dominating politics. This idea is abandoned when the film focuses mostly on the deceptions and violence of international politics. The other major failing of this film is the reliance on the images from news and popular media, from the Internet and mobile cameras, in other words the visual regime that creates what Curtis calls 'the fake world'.
The 90s concept of 'cyberspace' is confused by Curtis with Artificial Intelligence, algorithmic capitalism and digital cultures. Surveillance and data mining are largely ignored. There is no 'fake world' - the symbolic visual and spatial system we are creating through technology is the world we live in and also the means by which we understand this world. Whether that is a positive thing is of course very debatable. As recently as last week I read an essay by Hossein Derakhshan on how the visual dependency upon video for news is feeding the extreme ideas of the far right;
"The emerging illiterate class, hooked onto their old television sets or to their Facebook-centred mobile personal televisions (i.e. smart phones), is good news for demagogues. Look at how Donald Trump has mastered the formula of television to turn it into his free-of-charge public relations machine. His capture of the spirit of television has helped him transform all threats into opportunities, garbage into gold, and waste into energy – like a perfect incineration plant."
Curtis is part of this same visual regime and contributes to the creating of non-critical thought. He adds to this lack of critique by always introducing a sense of panic into his narrative by using such phrases as:
We live in a time of great uncertainty and confusion. The endless migrant crisis
those who are supposed to be in power are paralysed - they have no idea what to do. Chaotic events are happening, all of us in the West have retreated into a simplified, and often completely fake version of the world. Forces that politicians tried to forget are now turning on us with a vengeful fury. Piercing though the wall of our fake world.
That one can simply turn off the computer, not take out credit cards, and instead read books and attend events seems to have alluded Curtis. At one point in the film, (around the 2 hour mark - the film is unnecessarily long), when talking about the Occupy movement, Curtis announces that it was an attempt to 'organise people without the exercise of power' - like 150 years of Anarchist philosophy does not exist. Trying to make sense of chaos is difficult when the argument is that "We live in a time of great uncertainty and confusion". Either the uncertainty and confusion are real, and therefore there is a real world, or the world is fake and therefore so is the uncertainty and confusion. Which is it? Furthermore, Curtis's obsession with the idea that Hafez al-Assad invented suicide bombing as a tactic against a more powerful enemy is not correct. Suicide bombing goes at least back to the kamikaze ('Divine Wind') pilots of Imperial Japan in World War Two, and possibly further back to the 1880s
The idea that 'the Internet had played a key role in organising the groups' is far from established. As one research site states "It is important to understand that new platforms of social media didn’t cause Arab Spring but played a role of communication that aids the revolutions in the long run." The use of the Internet for organising social change is important. But it also seems to contradict the premise that we live in a 'fake world' mediated by technology, if it can in fact bring about real change. It is amazing that the full film of 2 hours and 40 minutes never uses the word 'propaganda'. If there are journalists who seriously believe, as Curtis says, their job is to 'expose lies and assert the truth' they are not working on 90% of the newspapers that have been in circulation since Watergate. Journalism and Public Relations are taught together at universities, they are practiced and produced on a daily basis everywhere.
The film ends on xenophobic fear, and this connects the long, at times rambling, and fear-filled history from Adam Curtis up to the point we are at now, with Trump about to assume office in the White House. What lies at the heart of this drama is not a failure of politics, as it has been the politics of the last 40 years that has been driving a globalized, neo-liberal agenda, and that seems to be perfectly on track. If the values of those neo-liberal globalists are threatened by the socialist and nationalist tendencies of Islam, or the loss of cultural identity through a decline in white middle class Christian values, we can expect to see more hate, more violence and more suffering. The desire to 'change the system' and believe the contradictory and contrived rhetoric of Donald J. Trump supplies the conservative elements of the Republican Party with a new opportunity to keep the global capitalist project on track, no matter what the cost.
Critically reading hip hop in this 2006 documentary film written, produced, and directed by Byron Hurt. The documentary explores the issues of masculinity, violence, homophobia and sexism in hip hop music and culture, through interviews with artists, academics and fans. Hurt's activism in gender issues and his love of hip-hop caused him to feel what he described as a sense of hypocrisy, and began working on the film.
Ash Ra Tempel, Kluster, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream and many more musicians met and played together in The Zodiak Free Arts Lab. The club was initiated by Conrad Schnitzler (1937-2011). He was a prominent experimental musician who had before coming to Berlin studied sculpture with Joseph Beuys in Düsseldorf. The Zodiak became as he intented a scene wheremusicians, artists could improvise with psychedelic rock, experimental jazz and electronics. The stage had equipment and were used freely by the performers. There were two halls, one black and the other white. In this milieu visions met and expanded into new music that would arise. The Zodiak Free Arts Lab was short lived, between 1968-69, and still made a huge influence on music and art.
Episode Eight: The Future that Was
Shock of the New is a 1980 documentary television series by Robert Hughes (28 July 1938 – 6 August 2012) produced by the BBC in association with Time-Life Films and RM Productions. It was broadcast by the BBC in 1980 in the United Kingdom and by PBS in 1981 in the United States. It addressed the development of modern art since the Impressionists and was accompanied by a book of the same name; its combination of insight, wit and accessibility are still widely praised.
Watching it today it is a bit of a 'sausage fest' with male attitudes and artists seeming to be the only people who made any contribution to Modern Art. In the words of Hughes, when discussing the painting of Georges Braque, The Castle of La Roche-Guyon, "a big strong cylinder on top". A revision of the 'new art' could do with some of the many female artists that worked within the frame.
Tara Browne (4 March 1945 -- 18 December 1966) was a young London socialite. He is perhaps most famous today for serving as an inspiration of the Beatles song "A Day in the Life".
This short film, with simple French dialogue, also provides a good glimpse into the high end social world of London in 1966. My parents lived in Richmond in 1966.
À propos de Nice is a 1930 silent short documentary film directed by Jean Vigo and photographed by Boris Kaufman. The film depicts life in Nice, France by documenting the people in the city, their daily routines, a carnival and social inequalities. Vigo described the film in an address to the Groupement des Spectateurs d'Avant-Garde: "In this film, by showing certain basic aspects of a city, a way of life is put on trial... the last gasps of a society so lost in its escapism that it sickens you and makes you sympathetic to a revolutionary solution."
I showed this to some of my students today in order to illustrate what a meme is:
Zorba the Greek (originally titled Alexis Zorbas) is a 1964 film based on the novel Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis.
"The Chooky Dancers" at the Ramingining Festival, East Arnhem Shire Australia on the 30th September 2007
Britain's Got Talent 2009, Stavros Flatley AKA Dimitri and Lagi
A meme (pronounced /ˈmiːm/, rhyming with "cream") is a unit of cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. (The etymology of the term relates to the Greek word μιμητισμός (/mɪmetɪsmos/) for "something imitated".) Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes, in that they self-replicate and respond to selective pressures.
