Month: July 2018

Calendar: July 14

A Year: Day to Day Men: 14th of July

Black Pants and Gray Cap

Ingmar Bergman, the Swedish director and writer, was born on July 14, 1918.

Ingmar Bergman’s film career began in 1941 with his work rewriting scripts. His first major accomplishment was in 1944 when he wrote the screenplay for “Torment”, a film directed by Alf Sjöberg. Along with writing the screenplay, he was also appointed assistant director of the film. The international success of this film led to Bergman’s first opportunity to direct a year later. During the next ten years he wrote and directed more than a dozen films, including “Prison” in 1949, as well as “Sawdust and Tinsel” and “Summer with Monika”, both from 1953.

Bergman first achieved worldwide success with his 1955 “Smiles of a Summer Night”, which won for “Best Poetic Humor” and was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes the following year. This was followed by “The Seventh Seal” and “Wild Strawberries” released in Sweden ten months apart in 1957. “The Seventh Seal” won a special jury prize and was nominated for the Palme d’Or at Cannes, and “Wild Strawberries” won numerous awards for Bergman and its star, Victor Sjöström. Bergman continued to be productive for the next two decades.

Bergman usually wrote his films’ screenplays, thinking about them for months or years before starting the actual process of writing, which he viewed as somewhat tedious. His earlier films are carefully constructed and are either based on his plays or written in collaboration with other authors. Bergman stated that in his later works, when on occasion his actors would want to do things differently from his own intention, he would let them. As his career progressed, Bergman increasingly let his actors improvise their dialogue. In his latest films, he wrote just the ideas informing the scene and allowed his actors to determine the exact dialogue.

Bergman’s films usually deal with existential  questions of mortality, loneliness, and religious faith. In addition to these cerebral topics, however, sexual desire features in the foreground of most of his films, whether the central event is a medieval plague as in “The Seventh Seal”, the upper-class family activity of early twentieth century Sweden in “Fanny and Alexander”, or contemporary alienation in 1963’s “The Silence”. His female characters are usually more in touch with their sexuality than the men, and unafraid to proclaim it, sometimes with breathtaking overtness.

Ingmar Bergman retired from filmmaking in December 2003. He had a hip surgery in October of 2006 and was making a difficult recovery. He died in his sleep at the age of 89; his body was found at his home on the island of Fårö, on July 30, 2007. (It was the same day another renowned film director, Michelangelo Antonioni, also died.) The interment was private, at the Fårö Church on Fårö Island, Sweden, on August 18, 2007.

Yoshida Brothers, “Storm”

The Yoshida Brothers, “Storm”

The Yoshida Brothes, 吉田兄弟 , Ryōichirō Yoshida and Kenichi Yoshida are performers of the traditional Japanese music style of Tsugaru-jamisen which originated in northern Japan. Their music has been a fusion of the rapid and percussive Tsugaru-jamisen style along with Western and other regional musical infuences. In additin to performing songs that are only on the shamisen, they also use drums and synthesizers.

Both Yoshida brothers began to study and play the shamisen at the age of five under the tutelage of Koka Adachi, learning the Minyo-shamisen style. Starting in 1989 they began studying the Tsugaru-jamisen style under teacher Takashi Sasaki.

Buster Keaton, “The Bell Boy”: Film History Series

Buster Keaton: “The Bell Boy”, 1918, Silent Film

“The Bell Boy” is a 1918 American two-reel silent comedy film produced by the Comique Film Company. It was written by actor and director Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle with starring roles by Arbuckle and Buster Keaton as bell boys in the Elk’s Head Hotel. The cinematography was done by Elgin Lessley, an American hand-crank cameramen of the silent film era,  and cameraman George Peters. “The Bell Boy” was released by Paramount Pictures on March 18, 1918 with a running length of thirty-three minutes. 

Much of the material in the film was later re-used by Buster Keaton in his 1937 “Love Nest On Wheels”, one of the rare films in which Keaton appeared onscreen with his family, with whom he had performed on the vaudeville stage. The mop sequence in the film was reused by Keaton in his last film appearance in the 1966 comedy short “The Scribe”, filmed shortly before his death from lung cancer on February 1, 1966. 

Buster Keaton was recognized as the seventh-greatest film director by Entertainment Weekly in 1996 and the American Film Institute ranked him in 1999 as the 21st greatest male star of the classic Hollywood cinema. Keaton was presented in 1959 with an Academy Honorary Award to celebrate his achievements in the film industry. 

Lucas Murnaghan

Lucas Murnaghan, “You Are My Own Private Storm”, Date Unknown, Silver Gelatin Print

Lucas Murnaghan is a Toronto-based photographer focusing on images that involve water and its surroundings. His early work focused primarily on surf and adventure photography, and he has always preferred to immerse himself in his environment leading to shooting from within the water. Murnaghan has now traveled to four continents, shooting in major breaks around the globe. Surf brand sponsorships brought opportunities to shoot in-water photographic coverage for major international competitions, including the Rip Curl Pro Tofino and WSL Soup Bowl Pro. He has published his work in numerous publications and has staged two gallery shows.

Murnaghan’s love of photography has further evolved into fine art and editorial work in the underwater realm. An accomplished triathlete and free diver himself, he works without additional SCUBA equipment, allowing him a deeper connection to his subject. This personal and organic approach allows for greater versatility in his shoots and a heightened level of intimacy to the finished product.

The artist’s site: https://www.lucasmurnaghan.com

Source: hoscos.com

Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David, “The Death of Marat”, 1793, Oil on Canvas, 65 x 50 Inches, Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium

Jacques-Louis David promised his peers in the National Convention that he would later depict Marat, their murdered friend, invocatively as ‘erivant pour le bonheur du peuple’ or writing for the good of the people. “The Death of Marat” is designed to commemorate a personable hero. Although the name of Chalottte Corday, the assassin, can be seen on the paper held in Marat’s left hand, she herself is not visible. Close inspection of this painting shows Marat at his last breath, when Corday and many others were still nearby.

In this sense, for realistic as it is in its details, the painting, as a whole, from its start, is a methodical construction focusing on the victim, a striking set up regarded today by several critics as an “awful beautiful lie”— certainly not a photograph in the forensic scientific sense and barely the simple image it may seem. For instance, in the painting, the knife is not to be seen where Corday had left it impaled in Marat’s chest, but on the ground, beside the bathtub.

“The Death of Marat” has often been compared to Michelangelo’s “Pieta”, particularly  the elongated arm hanging down in both works. Jacques-Louis David admired the work of Caravaggio, especially his “Entombment of Christ” which mirrors David’s painting in drama and light. David sought to transfer the sacred qualities long associated with the monarchy and the Catholic Church to the new French Republic.

Jacques-Louis David painted Marat, martyr of the Revolution, in a style reminiscent of a Christian martyr, with the face and body bathed in a soft, glowing light. As Christian art had done from its beginning, David also played with multileveled references to classical art. Suggestions that Paris could compete with Rome as capital and mother city of the Arts and the idea of forming a kind of new Roman Empire appealed to French Revolutionaries, who often formed David’s audience.

Calendar: July 13

A Year: Day to Day Men: 13th of July

Shades

July 13, 1793 marks the murder of French political theorist, scientist, and radical journalist, Jean-Paul Marat.

The first of Jean-Paul Marat’s large-scale publications detailing his experiments was “Research into the Physics of Fire”. It described 166 experiments conducted to show that fire was not, as widely held, a material element but an “igneous fluid”. The Academy of Sciences appraised his work and endorsed Marat’s methods but did not agree with its conclusions. This marked the beginning of worsening relations between Marat and many of the Academy’s members.

Jean-Paul Marat’s second biggest work was “Discoveries on Light”, focusing on an error in Newton’s light theory. Marat showed through experiments that white light was broken down into colors by diffraction, and not by refraction as Newton proposed. Once again Marat asked the Academy of Sciences to review his work. From June 1779 to January of 1780, Marat performed experiments in the presence of the Academy’s commissioners showing his conclusions. Their repost was only three paragraphs stating that while there were a lot of experiments, the commission did not believe that Marat proved his theory. Goethe described Marat’s rejection by the Academy as a glaring example of scientific despotism.

On the eve of the French Revolution , Jean=Paul Marat left his career as a doctor and scientist and took up his pen on behalf of the Third Estate, devoting himself entirely to politics. On September 12, 1789, Marat began his own newspaper, “The People’s Friend”, attacking influential groups in Paris, the Constituent Assembly, and Louis XVI’s Finance Minister, Jacques Necker. Between 1790 and 1792, Marat was often forced into hiding, sometimes in the Paris sewers. He only emerged publicly on the August 10 Insurrection, when the Palace was invaded and the royal family was forced to shelter in the Legislative Assembly.

Forced to retire from the French Convention as a result of a worsening skin disease, Marat continued to work at home, where he soaked in a medicinal bath. Marat was in his bathtub on July 13, 1793, when a young woman, named Charlotte Corday, appeared at his flat claiming to have vital information for Marat. Their interview lasted about fifteen minutes, with him writing details on an improvised desk of a board across the tub. After he finished his writing, Corday rose from her chair, drawing out a five inch knife, driving it hard into Marat.s chest. It opened the carotid artery, close to his heart; the massive bleeding was fatal within seconds. Charlotte Corday was guillotined on July 17, 1793 for the murder.