Films byTexts by 1971
Article NL EN
6.09.2023

It is a film that entices one to take endlessly long detours and twists and steps forward and backward in an atmosphere of uncertainty about its value and meaning. Every now and then, there are films that fall right into the pipeline of the critic’s letter stream: films on an (almost physically) identifiable “important” theme, in this case “Fascism”, but which have also built in a series of ambiguous shadows and mirror images, so that everyone is left searching for the filmmaker’s final “statement” on his subject. Quite strikingly, importance and vagueness go hand in hand.

Article NL EN
6.09.2023

Het is een film die ertoe verleidt eindeloos lange omwegen en kronkels en stapjes vooruit en achteruit te maken in een sfeer van ongewisheid over zijn waarde en betekenis. Zo nu en dan zijn er films die recht in de pipeline van de letterstroom van de criticus zitten: films over een (bijna fysiek) aanwijsbaar “belangrijk” thema, in dit geval “Het Fascisme”, maar die tegelijk een reeks dubbelzinnige en ambigue schaduwen en spiegelbeelden inbouwden, zodat iedereen naar de uiteindelijke “uitspraak” van de cineast over zijn onderwerp zit te zoeken. Belangrijkheid en onduidelijkheid gaan treffend genoeg samen.

Article NL EN
31.05.2023

People claim that, in Modern Times, Chaplin is criticising our society, and many people will no doubt have the impression that he is saying interesting things even for our times. But if you look closely, he is talking about a society as abstract, about a technique as abstract and decorative as Fritz Lang in Metropolis

Article NL EN
31.05.2023

Men beweert dat Chaplin in Modern Times kritiek levert op onze samenleving en veel mensen zullen wel weer de indruk hebben dat hij ook voor deze tijd nog belangwekkende dingen zegt. Maar als je goed kijkt, heeft hij het over een even abstracte maatschappij, over een even abstracte en decoratieve techniek als Fritz Lang in Metropolis.

FILM
Peter Bogdanovich, 1971, 118’

Life through the eyes of three aimless teenagers in small-town Texas during the 1950s. Unable to make decisions about the future, they continue drifting between boyhood and adulthood as the end of high school approaches.

 

FILM
Hal Ashby, 1971, 91’

Harold is a social misfit in his early twenties and obsessed with death. When he meets Maude, an eccentric septuagenarian widow who thinks life should be lived to the fullest, his views are shaken and his desire to die fades.

Article EN
10.02.2021

As part of its 1971–1972 programme, the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven has planned an exhibition on the street as a form of visual environment. The museum thus becomes part of an international trend that manifests a renewed interest in the street as a living environment.

FILM
Robert Bresson, 1971, 87’

The “dreamer” is Jacques, a young painter, who by chance runs into Marthe as she's contemplating suicide on the Pont-Neuf in Paris. They talk, and agree to see each other again the next night.

FILM
Robbe De Hert, 1971, 98’

The first part of the film contains footage of the first day of school for small children, the Belgian National Holiday, the anti-nuclear protests, the beer festivals in Wieze, the De Scheldeprijs cycling race in Schoten and the IJzerbedevaart in Diksmuide.

FILM
Bruce Baillie, 1971, 56’

Part Eastern philosophy, part gunslinger Western, Quick Billy plays as a “horse opera in four reels” and meditation on the transformation of life to death, conceived for viewing with a single projector to allow the natural pauses between reels.

 

FILM
Peter Watkins, 1971, 91’

1970. THE WAR in Vietnam is escalating. President Nixon has decided on a secret bombing campaign of Cambodia. There is massive public protest in the United States and elsewhere.

FILM
Agnus Dei
Miklós Jancsó, 1971, 84’

Égi bárány, or Agnus Dei, deals with the period in Hungary's history immediately following the overthrow of the Bela Kun Commune in 1919.

FILM
Roberto Rossellini, 1971, 120’

“Socrates was a guy just like Roberto [Rossellini]... He pissed everyone off, just by simply expanding on things, by going a little further. He had nothing of his own: he took from others and adapted things.”

FILM
Michael Snow, 1971, 190’

“The camera of La Region Centrale, instructed and controlled by the machine, turns in a wild and isolated Canadian landscape in a series of circular variations whose multiplicity of speed, direction, focus is the function of a ‘liberated’ eye.

FILM
Minamata – The Victims and Their World
Noriaki Tsuchimoto, 1971, 105’

“On the other side of the bay from Minamata, on the islands off the coast of Amakusa and Kagoshima, I spent over a hundred some days going around showing Minamata films with my staff with a simple intention: I knew that although there were many Minamata victims there, through pressure from either

FILM
William Greaves, 1971, 75’

“Symbiopsychotaxiplasm is neither a documentary nor a traditional feature. At least I don’t feel that it is. It is more of a happening. Instead of being a form of conventional art it is apiece of abstract art. Abstract in the sense that it does not obey the language of convention.

FILM
Sanrizuka – Peasants of the Second Fortress
Shinsuke Ogawa, 1971, 143’

“Amid this cinematic spectacle, familiar from previous films but now considerably larger and more violent, something very different is going on. In Peasants of the Second Fortress there are occasional moments when the action of the film grinds to a halt and people simply talk.

FILM
Nicolas Roeg, 1971, 100’

“The script was fourteen or fifteen pages long. It was nothing of it, I had to do a lot on the script before presenting it to some money-people.

FILM
The Long Farewell
Kira Muratova, 1971, 97’

A single mother is confused by the changes in her teenage son, who has become distant since spending summer vacation with his father.

 

FILM
Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1971, 111’

Pasolini’s obsession was with finding a world outside of all the commodifications of capitalism, including, prominently, the bodily.

FILM
Jacques Tati, 1971, 96’

“Comedians are often our best historians of the present because they are at once intensely invested in and poorly adapted to their moment, at one and yet out of sync with their surroundings and situation.