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Sex, Music, and Death: Why The Hunger is the Definitive David Bowie Film

Posted on by Jesse Pasternack

Still image from film The Hunger
The Hunger (1983) | Photo Credit: [ MGM/UA / The Kobal Collection ]

“I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.”  David Bowie

1983 was a pretty good year to be a Bowie fan. It was the year Let’s Dance came out and brought Bowie unprecedented levels of commercial success and mainstream acceptance. For those of his fans who worried that he was selling out, his latest movie would show that he was still the same adventurous artist he had been since he encouraged people to “face the strange.” It was called The Hunger, and his performance as a vampire named John would become both his greatest and the most representative of his life.

Bowie had always been fascinated with acting. A good portion of his career as a musical icon found him inventing and playing characters, such as Ziggy Stardust and The Thin White Duke. The sleeve of his third album, Hunky Dory, refers to him as “the actor.” He had formally launched a movie career with The Man Who Fell to Earth as the alien Thomas Jerome Newton, but had appeared on an episode of Theatre 625 and in a short film called The Image before that. He had a particular talent for playing historical figures or more fantastical people. He gave the same depth of feeling and complexity to Nikola Tesla in The Prestige as he did to the extraterrestrial Newton. The pathos and intelligence that he brought to every performance reached a particularly high expression in The Hunger. (more…)

The Weary World of Escape From New York

Posted on by Aja Essex

ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK
ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK Credit: [ AVCO EMBASSY / THE KOBAL COLLECTION ]
“Ford to City: Drop Dead”

That was the headline printed on the front page of the October 30th, 1975 issue of the New York Daily News. In reality, President Gerald Ford never spoke those words, but a citizen of New York City could see that the sentiment was still there. In 1975 New York was on the brink of bankruptcy and President Ford vowed to veto any bill that would give New York the bailout it needed to stay on its feet. He likened New York’s spending to an “insidious disease.” While Ford claimed that if the city defaulted he would see that “essential public services” would continue, his top economic adviser, L. William Seidman, stated that public schooling was not on this list of essentials.

You can see why a journalist would take that as “Drop Dead.”

Escape From New York
Escape From New York (1981) Photo Credit: [ Avco Embassy / The Kobal Collection ]
If you were to paint a portrait of New York in the 1970’s, it would be a portrait of a city crumbling before your very eyes: one overrun with images of poverty, crime, and corruption. Films such as Taxi Driver, Dirty Harry, Serpico, and The Warriors would show us the city from different perspectives, but each perspective was always coated in a layer of grime threatening to overtake the view. Who could blame the filmmakers? Between bankruptcy, soaring crime rates, rampant police corruption, the Son of Sam murders, and The Blackout of ’77 (which led to mass looting, vandalism, arson and approximately 3,700 people being arrested) filmmakers were projecting what they saw onto the big screen, and what they saw was the urban decay of New York. (more…)

Experimental Film and Fostering Creativity: An Interview with Filmmaker and IU Student Russell Sheaffer

Posted on by Katherine Johnson

Russell Sheaffer
Russell Sheaffer

I’ve been a student here at IU for going on three years now, and I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Russell Sheaffer as a fellow Communication and Culture (CMCL) PhD student. It didn’t take long for me to discover how willing Russell is to help others experiment with media and explore interesting issues using it. What I didn’t realize was the extent to which he would go to do that. While at IU, Russell has been very involved with media and the Indiana University Cinema in particular. Some of his involvements include being an organizer for the Underground Film Series, a programmer for the Iris Film Festival, partaking in experimental performance pieces with filmmakers like Josephine Decker, and screening several of his own films, works that have gone on to be shown at prestigious venues like the Tribeca Film Festival, Inside Out Film Festival in Toronto, and more. (more…)

Collaged Gluttony in Vera Chytilová’s Daisies

Posted on by Laura Ivins

Still image from film Daisies

Daisies (Sedmikrásky; Věra Chytilová, 1966) celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, somewhat older and wiser now than its unruly protagonists. And although the sociopolitical context of Daisies‘ audience has changed over the years, its themes continually resonate, and the film’s inventive style retains its vigor.

In this video essay, I examine collage as an organizing framework in Daisies, one which creates ambiguities in the film’s meaning.

 

Daisies was screened at the IU Cinema in January 2014 as part of the Underground Film Series. Curated in partnership with The Media School, Underground promotes experimental, avant-garde, and off-beat cinema.

See upcoming films in the Underground Film Series on the IU Cinema website.

Laura IvinsLaura Ivins loves stop motion, home movies, imperfect films, nature hikes, and Stephen Crane’s poetry. She has a PhD from Indiana University and an MFA from Boston University. In addition to watching and writing about movies, sometimes she also makes them.

A place for film…

Posted on by Jon Vickers

Still image from film Fitzcarraldo
Still from Fitzcarraldo directed by Werner Herzog, who visited IU Cinema in 2012.

Well, after six years, we finally did it! Back in 2010 we thought that it would be a good idea to create an online venue for dialogue between IU Cinema programs, devoted cinephiles who attend, and a broader public who might be interested.

The goal of IU Cinema’s blog, A PLACE FOR FILM, is to help develop the Cinema’s online audience by engaging them through quality, relevant, interesting, and sometimes provocative writing on subjects linked to its program. The blog is an extension of IU Cinema’s website and has more of a literary or journalistic presence than its social media pages, while hopefully maintaining the sense of dialogue that social media platforms have democratized. (more…)

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