La Vie En Rose

Photograph: Emil Cadoo/PR


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iM945FbjDOE

From the film...

Journalist: Hello, they said you were on the beach. Thank you for granting this interview.
Edith Piaf: My pleasure.
Journalist: It’s odd to see you so far from Paris.
Edith Piaf: I’m never far from Paris.
Journalist: I’ve a list of questions. Answer whatever comes to mind. Well…what’s you favorite color?
Edith Piaf: Blue
Journalist: What’s your favorite dish?
Edith Piaf: Pot Roast.
American Journalist: Would you agree to live a sensible life?
Edith Piaf: It is already the case
American Journalist: Who are your most faithful friends?
Edith Piaf: My true friends are my most faithful.
American Journalist: If you could no longer sing…?
Edith Piaf: …I could no longer live.
American Journalist: Are you afraid of death?
Edith Piaf: Less than solitude.
American Journalist: Do you pray?
Edith Piaf: Yes, because I believe in love.
American Journalist: What is your fondest career memory?
Edith Piaf: Every time the curtain goes up
American Journalist: Your fondest memory as a woman?
Edith Piaf: The first kiss
American Journalist: Do you like night time?
Edith Piaf: Yes, with lots of light.
American Journalist: Dawn?
Edith Piaf: With a piano and friends.
American Journalist: The evening?
Edith Piaf: For us, it’s dawn.
American Journalist: If you were to give advice to a woman, what would it be?
Edith Piaf: Love
American Journalist: To a young girl?
Edith Piaf: Love
American Journalist: To a child?
Edith Piaf: Love.
American Journalist: Who are you knitting for?
Edith Piaf: Whoever will wear my sweater.

Directed/Screenplay by Olivier Dahan
(excerpts from Ion Cinema interview)

Q: Did you map out how you wanted to structure it?
OD: No, no I wrote straight from the first page to the last. I didn’t have any plan, I just wrote. The structure came naturally. The first ten pages I wrote in Los Angeles over two years ago. I really didn’t want to write the film myself, I wanted the producer to hire a scriptwriter, but he wanted me to do it and I just wrote the first ten pages and went from there.

Q: Why Edith Piaf?
OD: At first it was a photograph, a not well-known photograph so I don’t think you’ll know what I’m talking about. I often go into bookstore just to flip through books, I’m not an avid reader but I keep buying books. I was just looking through this photography book and I just fell on this special photo of Edith in her early years. She was about seventeen and looked like a punk rocker! It was so different then this iconic image most people have of her. The next page had a more traditional picture of her in a black dress and everything. It was the mix of the two pictures that really struck me as powerful.

Q: You say you don’t like to rehearse, how do you prepare for shooting?
OD: I don’t prepare really because I trust my intuition for a lot of things and I don’t have the actors rehearse because I don’t like to use the actors minds before we film. I don’t know, when I’m on the set I don’t have a sense of abstraction, I point the camera and its either right or wrong. I don’t use any storyboards for that reason, I don’t think about what I’m going to shoot the day before. When everything comes together, it just works.

Q: What interests you the most about filmmaking?
OD: I don’t think it’s an interest in one thing or another. It’s my way of talking; it’s just a question of communication. I don’t like to talk so much in life, I’m more comfortable with pictures. When I’m on the set I don’t feel like I’m working, I just feel natural.

Marion Cotillard
(The New York Times)

Darren Aronofsky

Interview - Darren Aronofsky

STOCKHOLM INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

...on The Fountain
"The Film is more of an experience than it is a movie. [...] It's about one man's search for eternal life and to hold on to eternal love."

"When you make a movie you can make a cohesive universe, its own world."

"I always describe what I do as I'm very much a tapestry maker in the sense that I take all these ideas from different places that I think are interesting and cool and I kinda weave them together into its own new thing."

Q: Your films really evoke strong emotions for the viewer, how do you get inspired to instill this?
A: ...That's why we go to the movies, it's to feel...

"In Hollywood, anytime you try to do something different, it's very difficult. We were persistent, we stuck with it, it took a long time, and we're all proud."

Re: the aesthetics of The Fountain
"The entire film, when you watch it, you'll see it's an entire movement from darkness into light and for us that was a movement from fear into acceptance. And so everything is positioned that way, so visually it was a very very specific film and we made...every shot was just framed and lit with a lot of care."

Tarsem Singh & Eiko Ishioka

The Cell
Director: Tarsem Singh
Costume Design: Eiko Ishioka
Cinematography: Paul Laufer


Eiko Ishioka Interview

What kind of design research is involved in preparing to design for a film like The Cell?

A: When I began designing these costumes, I did not consult a single visual reference. I let my mind roam free and after a repeated process of trial and error, came up with some basic ideas.

Is there any project that you wish to do or particular person you wish to work with?

A. If the request is from a director with the talent and courage to experiment and take risks with visual expression–people like Francis Ford Coppola, Paul Schrader and Tarsem–I’d like to continue doing production design and costume design. I’ve always been careful about choosing projects, and have only accepted ones that I truly wanted to do. In the future, I’d love to be able to strike a 50/50 balance between projects that I’m asked to do and those that I initiate myself. If I had the opportunity to direct and design films like "The Red Shoes" and "Kwaidan," I’d be very interested.

(source: Fata Morgana-communitylivejournal.com)

tribute to "after-school"

DJ Shadow, DJ Krush, DJ Cam

rounded w. a sleep

(image source: rosalieee.files.wordpress.com)

"We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep."
Shakespeare's The Tempest
Act 4, scene 1, 148–158


In his book Religion and Science, Albert Einstein (1879-1955) wrote: "Individual existence impresses man as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole." To Einstein this mysterious, "cosmic religious feeling" was "[t]he most beautiful experience we can have. ... It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science."

Bruno Aveillan

becoming

"This is the account of how
all was in suspense,
all calm,
in silence;
all motionless,
all pulsating,
and empty was the expanse of the sky"

- Popol Vuh, Part 1

Haruki Murakami

"The first book [A Wild Sheep Chase] where I could feel a kind of sensation, the joy of telling a story. When you read a good story, you just keep reading. When I write a good story, I just keep writing."

sufism: the religion of the heart

Hazrat Inayat Khan

There are three ways of seeking God in the human heart. The first way is to recognize God the divine in every person, and to care for every person with whom we come in contact, in our thought, speech, and action. Human personality is very delicate. The more living the heart the more sensitive it is; that which causes sensitivity is the love element in the heart, and love is God. The person whose heart is not sensitive is without feeling; his heart is not living, but dead. In that case the divine spirit is buried in his heart.

A person who is always concerned with his own feelings is so absorbed in himself that he has no time to think of another. His whole attention is taken up with his own feelings: he pities himself, worries about his own pain, and is never open to sympathize with others. He who takes notice of the feeling of another person with whom he comes in contact practices the first essential moral of Sufism.

The next way of practicing this religion is to think of the feeling of the person who is not at the moment before us. One feels for a person who is present, but one often neglects to feel for someone who is out of sight. One speaks well of someone to his face, but if one speaks well of someone when he is absent, that is greater. One sympathizes with the trouble of someone who is before one at the moment, but it is greater to sympathize with one who is far away.

The third way of realizing the Sufi principle is to recognize in one's own feeling the feeling of God, and to realize every impulse that rises in one's heart as a direction from God. Realizing that love is a divine spark in one's heart, one blows that spark until a flame may rise to illuminate the path of one's life.

(Source: Jivanta-Dharmashaiva.blogspot.com)

Hubert Selby Jr. (Cubby)

"I would replace 'the american dream' with a quest for the VISION of life...and a vision transcends dreams. Dreams can come from the ego. Vision comes from the spirit. And instead of striving to 'get', to believe that you can achieve anything through 'getting', I would stress that fact that life is not getting, life is GIVING and you never know what you have to give until you're in the process of giving it away and when you make that commitment, you will find within yourself all the infinite resources necessary to fulfill your commitment to life and you can end up making money doing it and get all the 'stuff' and everything, But as a result, not a goal."

"Sometimes we have the absolute certainty that there's something inside us that's so hideous and monstrous that if we ever search it out we won't be able to stand looking at it. But it's when we're willing to come face to face with that demon that we face the angel."

"Being an artist doesn't take much, just everything you got. Which means, of course, that as the process is giving you life, it is also bringing you closer to death. But it's no big deal. They are one and the same and cannot be avoided or denied. So when I totally embrace this process, this life/death, and abandon myself to it, I transcend all this meaningless gibberish and hang out with the gods. It seems to me that that is worth the price of admission."

"What I have done is put all the energy I possibly can into the perfection of my art and so when you do that you're involved with creation and the eternal now of life, so it would have to be pertinent to any period of life."

"I understood that the primary responsibility of the artist is to be free of the human ego. And I don't have the right to impose myself between the work and the reader, so I worked very hard to get me out of the book. And I write by ear. So music is very important to me, so I have to develop a style of writing, a typography, that reflects what I hear and I have to find the right words to describe what I see and what I feel. And what I want to do is put the reader through an emotional experience which means that I have to experience every emotion that I put into the book."

Duncan Elkinson] Q: The book [Requiem for a Dream] is very cinemaesque in the way that it's laid out ad the way that it reads; were there any difficulties in translating the words into action the action back into words?
"Well that's always a task, especially with a good book because what makes a book different than an ordinary book is an ineffable quality that can't really pinpoint necessarily and to retain that while translating it or transposing it into another medium that can be a very difficult task, but Darren [Aronofsky] is a real vision, he's a real filmmaker, he's not just a hollywood moviemaker, this guy's a real filmmaker and he found ways of bringing this, not only bringing that element to the screen, but of bringing it in a contemporary way...really extraordinary."

"What happens in my work is there is no catharsis [...] it's just such intense suffering and darkness that the reader finds within themselves the ability to love the unlovable and I...I didn't figure out that oh this is what I'm going to do--of course not--but if that's the result I think it's absolutely wonderful and magnificent...I mean if I can do that I can't think of a greater goal to work for and towards than than to help another human being find out that the light they're seeking is just within them and it's always there."

"I don't think the word "service" really describes what he [Albert Schweitzer] and Robeson and Gandhi and people like that do--it is so much beyond that, it's total surrender of self to something divine and not like divine in the sense of a church or a religious god but the divinity in man, the divinity in each and every one of us...seems to me that that's what they were worshipping in their way and dedicated their lives to, and they have helped make the world a little more comfortable for all of us."

"As a kid I couldn't understand why we were always hurting each other...it baffled me...and when I was 8 years old I decided I was going to be a bacteriologist and find a way to heal all the pain in the world [laughs warmly]."


-Hubert Selby Jr. (Cubby)

"kinetic sculptures"

You've Got the Love

Florence and the Machine
(The XX; cover)

Jennifer Connelly

ashes and snow

Vision: "In exploring the shared language and poetic sensibilities of all animals, I am working towards rediscovering the common ground that once existed when people lived in harmony with animals. The images depict a world that is without beginning or end, here or there, past or present." Gregory Colbert, creator of Ashes and Snow (from ashesandsnow.org)

Frida Kahlo

Director: Julie Taymor
Writers: Hayden Herrera (book)/ Clancy Sigal (screenplay)
Salma Hayek (Frida Kahlo)
Alfred Molina (Diego Rivera)



Frida: You've got a crowd out there. Half of them think you're the devil, half think you're a hero.
Diego: Tell me honestly what you think.
F: If you lie down with dogs you get fleas.
D: No seriously, this is really frightening me.
F: Why?
D: 'Cause I'm actually wondering if he's right, if perhaps I'm being foolish, risking too much.
F: Diego, you can't loose. Forget about artistic integrity. You've done better ones and you'll do more. But whatever happens you've aroused people. You've made them get passionate about their ideals. There's not a lot of painters in the world who can say that. He could walk in here tommorrow and tear it down and you'd still have won.
[...]
D: I will not compromise my vision.

suspension

Salvador Dalí and photographer Phillipe Halsman: Dalí Atomicus, an image which took 28shots to capture; each shot involving the throwing of cats, water, a chair, and the jumping of Dalí.

"mine's a garden," she said.

"Y'all didn't think I'd be making Solomon's garden."
the artistry of Ms. [ ] at the elderly home, NC.





















Song of Solomon 4:16
"Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out."

live with animals

AGAINST NATURE Sebastian Mlynarski

Against Nature revisits Romantic notions of the search for one's true self through a connection with nature. These photographs serve as an investigation into the basic human need for an interventionist force that might offer comfort and guidance.
Nature is indifferent and confronts us with who we really are. It strips us of our persona,we are left with our mere essence; flesh, blood and bone.

Edition of 3 + 2 AP $750

color of pomegranates

Sayat Nova (Цвет граната)
Sergei Parajanov, Director