"I fell hard for the films, novels, plays, and essays of Marguerite Duras roughly thirty years ago and then spent the decades between then and now resisting the sensuous beauty of their imagery, the tough-minded, spare elegance of their prose, and their rigorous morality." Amy Taubin for Artforum: "When I complied with the ridiculous ritual of drawing up for various publications lists of the greatest films of the twentieth century, her masterpiece, India Song (1975) did not appear. It should have been among the first five."
Marguerite Duras on Film runs at Anthology Film Archives in New York through Thursday. Jonathan Rosenbaum has recently posted an essay on Duras that originally ran in the Chicago Reader in 1995. As for India Song, "This is surely the film in which Duras's colonial erotics gets its fullest and most emotionally complex workout (over half the film takes place at a reception held at Calcutta's French embassy in 1937), and the feeling of camp excruciation is held in perfect equipoise with the glamour and the class guilt by Carlos d'Alessio's haunting 'India Song Blues,' undoubtedly the most memorable tune ever to be heard in an avant-garde movie."
Film @ International House's Joyce Wieland and Friends series wraps this weekend in Philadelphia with films by, yes, Joyce Wieland today and Hollis Frampton tomorrow.
Maren Ade's Everyone Else sees its Toronto premiere this weekend at TIFF Cinematheque. See Kevin Lee's interview with Ade from last February and the NYFF roundup from last fall. Speaking of the NYFF, C Mason Wells passes along news that J Hoberman will no longer serve on the selection committee; he's to be replaced by the former Variety critic (recently laid off) Todd McCarthy.
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