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Establishing Shot Indiana University

Varda’s The Young Girls Turn 25 (1993)

Posted on by Jack Miller

From left to right: Catherine Deneuve, Jacques Demy, and Françoise Dorléac on set.
From left to right: Catherine Deneuve, Jacques Demy, and Françoise Dorléac on set.

In most discernible ways, the respective bodies of work of the long-married French Left Bank filmmakers Agnès Varda (1928-2019) and Jacques Demy (1931-1990) have remained quite distinct from one another. Unlike some other notable filmmaking couples (like Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, for instance), Varda and Demy rarely worked on each other’s films in any meaningful capacity, and their differences as artists are compounded by some key distinctions in approach. Despite her singularity, we tend to celebrate Varda’s work for its versatility, rather than for its continuity — she excelled at a wide variety of cinematic forms, emotional tones and disparate subject matters, ranging from adventurous portraiture (Cléo from 5 to 7, Vagabond) to corrosive, feminist satire (Le bonheur) to low-key, personal documentary (Uncle Yanco, Mur Murs). (more…)

Monthly Movie Round-Up: August

Posted on by Establishing Shot

Every month, A Place for Film brings you a selection of films from our group of regular bloggers. Even though these films aren’t currently being screened at the IU Cinema, this series reflects the varied programming that can be found at the Cinema and demonstrates the eclectic tastes of the bloggers. Each contributor has picked one film that they saw this month that they couldn’t wait to share with others. Keep reading to find out what discoveries these cinephiles have made, as well as some of the old friends they’ve revisited.
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State of “Da Movies”: The End of the Paramount Decree and the Decline of Physical Media

Posted on by Aja Essex

Sean Connery grimacing at an awards show

In 2018 I wrote a piece about the death of the streaming service Filmstruck, the burgeoning streaming wars, and ways you could support the tried and true models of continuing to watch films not dictated purely by algorithms or a company’s bottom line. It was my attempt at reminding people that there were easy, affordable, and, most importantly, accessible ways to discover the width and breadth of film history without being tethered to a bunch of subpar options.

Alas, the streaming wars have begun, a pandemic has swept the entire globe bringing theater exhibition to its knees, and people’s capacity to keep their eyes on so many bouncing balls has reached its absolute limit. Needless to say, there’s a lot of bad happening in the world right now so the state of “Da Movies” isn’t exactly high up on people’s lists of things to concern themselves with. But nevertheless things are looking, well… a little grim. The continued splintering of the streaming market has given rise to welcome but bittersweet competitors like HBO Max, which houses a large portion of the TCM catalog in addition to media produced and owned by HBO, Warner Brothers, Crunchyroll, Cartoon Network, and Adult Swim. It has also amusingly given us Quibi (which stands for “quick bites,” which is so silly it’s Hudsucker Proxy-esque), a streaming service devoted to TV shows with runtimes of 10 minutes or less but a higher frequency of release. It hasn’t been doing well since its release but at least director Sam Raimi could deliver moments like this with his show 50 States of Fright: (more…)

Films Conjure Up Memories and Meaning

Posted on by Establishing Shot

Shirley Chisholm
Shirley Chisholm

Guest post by Lisa-Marie Napoli, Director of the Political and Civic Engagement program at Indiana University.

At the end of watching a good film, I like to sit for a few minutes, catch my breath, and reflect on what the film means to me, how it informs my thinking, and how it brings to light values that are important to me.

Through teaching a Suffrage course for the Intensive Freshman Seminar program and a Leadership and Public Policy course in the Political and Civic Engagement program, I had the opportunity to view films such as Iron Jawed Angels, Chisholm ’72, and Suffragette. These films provide substance for educating its audience to learn more about women’s movements and the challenges faced. Whether it was the uphill climb for women’s rights or the recognition of barriers faced by female political candidates, these films center women and recognize them as inspiring, passionate, focused, social justice-oriented individuals who, when collaboratively working together with others, can accomplish remarkable things. (more…)

Adventures in Cinema: Stromboli (1950)

Posted on by Jack Miller

Still from STROMBOLI
Stromboli (1950)

“This film, of astonishing beauty, is a film about the cosmos… STROMBOLI is the poem of creation.” – João Bénard da Costa

When the film historian Tag Gallagher finally completed his long-in-the-making biography, the first to be published in any language, on the great Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini in 1998, he had the good sense to call it The Adventures of Roberto Rossellini. For Rossellini’s career in cinema was itself a series of open-ended adventures: as one of the pioneers of the neorealist cinema in Italy, he forged a new postwar style, working with non-actors in bombed-out cities, that was striking in the way that it dealt forthrightly and courageously with the contemporary atrocities of mid-century Europe. Rossellini then abandoned this early neorealist mode, at least on the surface, instead opting to all but inaugurate a kind of modernism in the cinema through his collaborations with the famous Hollywood actress Ingrid Bergman, whom he eventually married. Though the adulterous relationship between Bergman and Rossellini led to the two of them becoming embroiled in an enormous amount of controversy in the American press, their extended film collaboration — five films made together between 1949 and 1956 — is one of great ethical seriousness, formal adventurousness, and awesome beauty. (more…)

A Different Listen Every Time: Morricone’s Mournful Music for Once Upon a Time in America

Posted on by Jesse Pasternack

Legendary composer Ennio Morricone as he conducts.
Legendary composer Ennio Morricone as he conducts.

Like a lot of people who love music and cinema, I was so sad to hear about the death of legendary composer Ennio Morricone. Even though he died at the age of 91, the idea of the death of someone who had created so many of the scores that I loved still hurt. As I read the tributes to him, I learned that he had composed over 400 scores for film and television in addition to 100 classical works. He was especially famous for his scores for the films of his director and former classmate Sergio Leone. When I heard of Morricone’s death, the first music of his that came to mind was from a Leone film. But it wasn’t the score to one of the famous Spaghetti Westerns that Leone directed. Instead, it was the music for Leone’s last masterpiece, a film that shows the great artistic heights Morricone could reach, but which raises questions of whether you can enjoy something that, despite its great musical and visual beauty, has scenes of violent ugliness that remain hard to watch. The film I thought of was Once Upon a Time in America. (more…)

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