A new collection of postcards in the shop
Photos: Classiq Journal
”The only real thing is right now. Now. Now.
And every now becomes a then and you have to train hard
to be present. I have learnt that when I am only here,
only now, I can do anything, overcome anything.”
Hanli Prinsloo
Viewing
Pickup on South Street, 1953
Samuel Fuller
One of Samuel Fuller’s best. I also like to refer to it as one of the films with the great Thelma Ritter in one of the best character roles in cinema. Fuller was going to call the film Pick-Pocket, as he writes in his book, A Third Face, and this was years before Robert Bresson would make his film with that title in 1959. When the executives disapproved – “it was too European, whatever the hell that meant” – Fuller came up with Pickup on South Street, because of the New York street that reminded the director of his newsboy days. A realistic portrayal and a gritty visual story of petty thieves, criminal and informers that were interested in just getting by (Fuller’s brilliant way to “take a poke at the idiocy of the Cold War climate of the fifties”) and their dilapidated, predatory world, with the murky bars, the flop houses, the out-of-the-way streets, the tattoo parlors, the subway stations. “I needed the noise, the traffic, the towering buildings, the elevators, the alleys, the things that make a big city feel like a big city.” The dingiest and edgiest side of the big city. And he got it.
Donnie Darko, 2001
Richard Kelly
Mind-blowing yet strangely personal, that’s what Donnie Darko feels to me. Defying easy categorisation, the film exists in its own space. And what it does with the music, it’s simply transportive.
Playtime, 1967
Jacques Tati
A never-ending visual play. It’s like a celluloid puzzle and its pieces keep moving. What’s happening on screen is more dynamic than in a 3D film – Jacques Tati was uncompromising in his artistic freedom. It’s play time, with no concern for realism, creating a unique universe, always calling on the viewer’s imagination and presence. “Tati began where we finished.” – Buster Keaton
Sherlock Jr., 1924
Buster Keaton
My 9-year old is discovering the films of Buster Keaton and he’s loving them. And I love going on this ride with him.
Right: New surprises soon in the shop. Photo: Catherine Deneuve, 1960s, Reporters Associes
Reading
Only someone who loves the mountain and understands human life could write about the mountain the way Paolo Cognetti does in Le Otto Montagne (The Eight Mountains). Only those know that the mountain is knowledge, a way to breathe, a way of life.
“This collection of stories shows the close connection between what I write, what I film and what I live.” El último sueño (the English edition, The Last Dream, will be released in September) is Pedro Almodóvar’s somewhat of an autobiography, but not quite so, bringing together for the first time twelve unpublished stories from the filmmaker’s personal archive, written between the late sixties and the present day. They are wildly fictional or profoundly intimate or both. “I have learned something fundamental from my mother,” writes Almodóvar, who confesses he has always refused to write his autobiography or let someone else write an entire book about him as an individual, “the difference between fiction and reality, and that reality must be completed by fiction to make life more pleasant, easier to live. For a narrator, this is an essential lesson. I have learned it in time.”
The official poster of this year’s Cannes festival, which began this week, evokes once again cinematic history, this time paying homage to Akira Kurosawa’s penultimate film, Rhapsody in August, which premiered at Cannes in 1991, out of competition. The festival will also celebrate Japanese cinema with awarding Studio Ghibli an honorary Palme d’Or. That said, I am avoiding the celebrity news and the glamour inevitably associated with the festival, and am travelling to its origins, with the book Cannes 1939 (Cannes 1939: le festival qui n’a pas eu lieu at its second edition, released this April), by Olivier Loubes. It’s a view on what should have been the first edition of the festival, in 1939, and which never happened from obvious reasons. It’s Cannes in a wider context, both geo-political and cultural. Olivier Loubes brings the history of a lost event, but also the history of what would become a road opener for world cinema.
My latest interviews are with artist Heather Chontos – we discuss her journey in life and in art, Peter Lindbergh and a different vision on visual storytelling, light as an essential, departing element in her creative process, the gift of giving, and building a house, a studio and a garden in rural Portugal – and with photographer Clément Vayssieres – we talk about the thing that led him to photography, the filmmaker he would like to go on a journey with pretty much anywhere in the world, why a photographer needs to remain humble, and the story behind the New York City Chinatown photo that inspired our conversation.
Listening
The podcast: The Adventure Podcast, the episode with Hanli Prinsloo, freediver, writer and ocean conservationist. Host Matt Pycroft talks to Hanli about her early life growing up on a farm in South Africa, how she got into free diving and what drives her to the ocean. They discuss why she left the competition circuit, motherhood, why children today can’t have the same childhood we had and why she’s ok with it. It’s one of those conversations that does you good and should be listened to regularly.
The soundtrack: Donnie Darko
The album: Green River, Creedence Clearwater Revival
Making
For more than 35 years, L’Affices Françaises have been restoring old posters and engravings. A know-how passed down from Father to Son. The idea is to preserve an image, bring back to life the images that are dear to us, beautify and highlight posters, and preserve our heritage. Their collection is impressive: from official Roland Garros posters (Valerio Adami, Günther Förg, Gérard Titus Carmel, Gilles Aillaud, all the great ones) to film posters (Playtime official poster among them, created by René Féracci’s, and Steve McQueen’s Le Mans, too, by the same Férracci).
Makers who maintain culture.
On an end note:
In the latest newsletter of Racquet magazine, that reflects on the career of Dominic Thiem, after he announced earlier this month that he would retire at the end of this year, his coach Günter Bresnik, who has been training him since he was 9, comes with the most blunt and honest explanation for the huge gap that there is between the Nadal-Federer generation and this younger generation of players. I believe Mats Wilander has made similar comments on several occasions.
This is what Racquet says, quoting Bresnik:
“If you have one goal, and you put all the other goals and wishes aside, I’m very convinced that you’re going to reach it, no matter what it is. But most of the people, they downgrade the word ‘goal’ to a wish. Dominic, for me, is the kind of person who is prepared to do whatever it takes. The other guys as well: Federer, Nadal, Djokovic, Murray — who are much better tennis players than Dominic — they also have this mentality. They’re thinking 24 hours a day, for many, many years, only about tennis.”
The four players named by Bresnik belong to a generation or two ahead of Thiem’s, and no one younger has been able to mount a significant breakthrough to join them. Bresnik thinks the distractions of technology may have played a role in holding back this younger cohort.
“To be nonstop on the phone even in a changeover at a practice?” Bresnik said, incredulously. “This is, for me, unbelievably disturbing for them to always have to consider if the girlfriend sent a photo from holidays or whatever. It’s nonstop. And at breakfast, they don’t talk with each other anymore.”
”Jacques Tati began where we finished.”
Buster Keaton
The regulars: The interviews, newsletters and podcasts I turn to every week and/or every month because they are that good. Craig Mod’s newsletters: Roden and Ridgeline. Soundtracking, with Edith Bowman. Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter. Racquet’s Rennae Stubbs tennis podcast. Gone to Timbuktu, Sophy Robert’s podcast on the art of travel. Wachstumsversuche, with Sarah Schill. Sirene and Racquet, in print.
