Leonie Brandt was an interesting historical character but a lack of curiosity and reliance on re-enactment obfuscates rather than illuminates
How do you make a film about someone of whom there exists no moving images? Diving into the mysteries surrounding Leonie Brandt, an actor turned double-agent for the Dutch intelligence service during the second world war, Annette Apon’s documentary enlists the extensive archive of the Eye Film Museum, an approach that unfortunately obfuscates rather than illuminates a historical enigma.
Depicting the “greatest hits” of Brandt’s life, from her brief acting career to her daring exploits in Nazi Germany, the film utilises a wide range of clips mostly from silent movies, the images edited together as literal illustrations of the events recounted by the voiceover. There’s little stylistic purpose here, as the film oscillates between the first-person Pov of Brandt and Apon’s third-person perspective. For cinephiles who know their film history,...
How do you make a film about someone of whom there exists no moving images? Diving into the mysteries surrounding Leonie Brandt, an actor turned double-agent for the Dutch intelligence service during the second world war, Annette Apon’s documentary enlists the extensive archive of the Eye Film Museum, an approach that unfortunately obfuscates rather than illuminates a historical enigma.
Depicting the “greatest hits” of Brandt’s life, from her brief acting career to her daring exploits in Nazi Germany, the film utilises a wide range of clips mostly from silent movies, the images edited together as literal illustrations of the events recounted by the voiceover. There’s little stylistic purpose here, as the film oscillates between the first-person Pov of Brandt and Apon’s third-person perspective. For cinephiles who know their film history,...
- 6/5/2023
- by Phuong Le
- The Guardian - Film News
The radical post-apocalyptic sci-fi lesbian fantasy you need this season, A. Hans Scheirl, and Dietmar Schipek’s Austrian odyssey Flaming Ears has been newly restored in 4K and is arriving next month. Released in 1991 and set in 2700, Kino Lorber will release the “cyberdyke” avant-garde science fiction film at Metrograph beginning November `18 and we’re delighted to premiere the exclusive new trailer.
Set in the burnt-out, all-lesbian city of Asche, the overlapping tales of three women unfold: comic book artist Spy (Susana Helmayr); pyromaniac pervert performance artist Volly (co-director Pürrer); and utterly amoral, reptile revering alien Nun (co-director Scheirl). With comparisons to Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames, B. Ruby Rich put it best: “Imagine the film that J.G. Ballard might have made if he’d been born an Austrian dyke, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The 4K restoration was performed in 2020 by Kinothek Asta Nielsen e.
Set in the burnt-out, all-lesbian city of Asche, the overlapping tales of three women unfold: comic book artist Spy (Susana Helmayr); pyromaniac pervert performance artist Volly (co-director Pürrer); and utterly amoral, reptile revering alien Nun (co-director Scheirl). With comparisons to Lizzie Borden’s Born in Flames, B. Ruby Rich put it best: “Imagine the film that J.G. Ballard might have made if he’d been born an Austrian dyke, and don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The 4K restoration was performed in 2020 by Kinothek Asta Nielsen e.
- 10/26/2022
- by Jordan Raup
- The Film Stage
The Danish actor was a cinema pioneer and wildly popular all over the world. She is largely forgotten – discover her in a BFI season dedicated to her extraordinary talent
Asta Nielsen’s career started with a bang. The Danish diva’s first step on the path to becoming perhaps the greatest actress of the silent era, and one of the cinema’s first truly international film stars, was a hot romance and an overnight sensation. In her first film, The Abyss, 1910, she played a music teacher torn between two lovers: a sensible vicar’s son, and a circus performer who treats her terribly but has captivated her sexually. Nielsen delivers a compelling performance as a young woman riven by the conflicting demands of duty and desire, which culminates in the film’s most infamous scene, a lascivious dance. She circles her tyrannous lover, swaying her hips, before taking a rope...
Asta Nielsen’s career started with a bang. The Danish diva’s first step on the path to becoming perhaps the greatest actress of the silent era, and one of the cinema’s first truly international film stars, was a hot romance and an overnight sensation. In her first film, The Abyss, 1910, she played a music teacher torn between two lovers: a sensible vicar’s son, and a circus performer who treats her terribly but has captivated her sexually. Nielsen delivers a compelling performance as a young woman riven by the conflicting demands of duty and desire, which culminates in the film’s most infamous scene, a lascivious dance. She circles her tyrannous lover, swaying her hips, before taking a rope...
- 1/27/2022
- by Pamela Hutchinson
- The Guardian - Film News
Danish actor Asta Nielsen battled powerful men to become an early superstar famous across Europe
She was the embodiment of the freedom that suffragettes fought for. Asta Nielsen battled against convention, scandal and powerful men to become the original international film star – a siren of the silent movie.
Her extraordinary life is being rediscovered through one of her movies, The Suffragette – the only surviving example of a film that supported the women who campaigned for the right to vote.
She was the embodiment of the freedom that suffragettes fought for. Asta Nielsen battled against convention, scandal and powerful men to become the original international film star – a siren of the silent movie.
Her extraordinary life is being rediscovered through one of her movies, The Suffragette – the only surviving example of a film that supported the women who campaigned for the right to vote.
- 5/12/2018
- by James Tapper and Vanessa Thorpe
- The Guardian - Film News
Honorary Award: Gloria Swanson, Rita Hayworth among dozens of women bypassed by the Academy (photo: Honorary Award non-winner Gloria Swanson in 'Sunset Blvd.') (See previous post: "Honorary Oscars: Doris Day, Danielle Darrieux Snubbed.") Part three of this four-part article about the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Honorary Award bypassing women basically consists of a long, long — and for the most part quite prestigious — list of deceased women who, some way or other, left their mark on the film world. Some of the names found below are still well known; others were huge in their day, but are now all but forgotten. Yet, just because most people (and the media) suffer from long-term — and even medium-term — memory loss, that doesn't mean these women were any less deserving of an Honorary Oscar. So, among the distinguished female film professionals in Hollywood and elsewhere who have passed away without...
- 9/4/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Each week we ask readers to tell us about where they go to watch films. Today, the home of Denmark's national agency for film and cinema culture, in the heart of its capital city
This week's Clip joint is from Luke Richardson, contributor for culture blog The Frame Loop. Follow him on Twitter @luke_richardson
Location
Filmhuset (The Filmhouse), part of the Danish Film Institute, is located in the very heart of Copenhagen: a stone's throw from the Rosenborg Castle Gardens, Round Tower observatory and the colourful Nyhavn harbour.
The building
The Dfi may not look much from the cycle lane but inside the drab, five-storey office building is a space brimming with film enthusiasm. Designed with industrial structures that could have been borrowed from The Crystal Maze set, Filmhuset (The Filmhouse) has three cinema screens, each named after a leading figure in the Danish film industry: Asta (after silent...
This week's Clip joint is from Luke Richardson, contributor for culture blog The Frame Loop. Follow him on Twitter @luke_richardson
Location
Filmhuset (The Filmhouse), part of the Danish Film Institute, is located in the very heart of Copenhagen: a stone's throw from the Rosenborg Castle Gardens, Round Tower observatory and the colourful Nyhavn harbour.
The building
The Dfi may not look much from the cycle lane but inside the drab, five-storey office building is a space brimming with film enthusiasm. Designed with industrial structures that could have been borrowed from The Crystal Maze set, Filmhuset (The Filmhouse) has three cinema screens, each named after a leading figure in the Danish film industry: Asta (after silent...
- 3/5/2013
- by Guardian readers
- The Guardian - Film News
Tuesday, DVD roundup day, is a fine day for taking a look at the new Summer 2011 issue of Cineaste, particularly since, among the online samplings this time around, DVD reviews outnumber all other types of articles combined.
To begin, Darragh O'Donoghue on Harun Farocki's Still Life (1997): "Five aphoristic essays on 17th-century Dutch still-life painting, of about three minutes each, bracket four documentary sequences of photographers creating modern still lifes for magazine advertisements. These two levels, though defined by opposites — stasis/motion, tell/show — are linked by visual motifs and rhymes, just as the modern products echo the subjects of the paintings. The documentary sequences have no commentary, mostly last ten to fifteen minutes, and take their cue from Farocki's earlier An Image (Ein bild, 1983). In that short, he recorded the shooting of a German Playboy centerfold spread, from the building of sets and the arrangement of props (including...
To begin, Darragh O'Donoghue on Harun Farocki's Still Life (1997): "Five aphoristic essays on 17th-century Dutch still-life painting, of about three minutes each, bracket four documentary sequences of photographers creating modern still lifes for magazine advertisements. These two levels, though defined by opposites — stasis/motion, tell/show — are linked by visual motifs and rhymes, just as the modern products echo the subjects of the paintings. The documentary sequences have no commentary, mostly last ten to fifteen minutes, and take their cue from Farocki's earlier An Image (Ein bild, 1983). In that short, he recorded the shooting of a German Playboy centerfold spread, from the building of sets and the arrangement of props (including...
- 6/7/2011
- MUBI
There is a terrific little movie poster exhibition on view right now at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, running in conjunction with the Film Department’s essential retrospective Weimar Cinema, 1919-1933: Daydreams and Nightmares. Curated by Ron Magliozzi, the exhibition “attests to the German film industry’s distinguished application of design and graphics to the promotion of the medium in the period.”
The highlight of the exhibition for me is this stunning 10 foot tall poster for Leontine Sagan’s 1931 Mädchen in Uniform, designed by Austrian artist Emmerich Weninger [1907-77], who is also known for a similarly skyscraper dimensioned poster for Greta Garbo in The Painted Veil. The exhibition has some familiar posters for Weimar classics like M, Berlin Symphony of a Great City, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and The Last Laugh, but it's a blast to see the originals (the Metropolis alone must be worth a small...
The highlight of the exhibition for me is this stunning 10 foot tall poster for Leontine Sagan’s 1931 Mädchen in Uniform, designed by Austrian artist Emmerich Weninger [1907-77], who is also known for a similarly skyscraper dimensioned poster for Greta Garbo in The Painted Veil. The exhibition has some familiar posters for Weimar classics like M, Berlin Symphony of a Great City, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and The Last Laugh, but it's a blast to see the originals (the Metropolis alone must be worth a small...
- 12/10/2010
- MUBI
By modern standards, Quentin Tarantino would be considered an auteur; a director whose films reflect that his personal creative vision. But what exactly is that vision, and how is it reflected in his work? One major observation that one can make about Tarantino’s films is that he often incorporates a number of references, many of which refer to cinema, specific films, or pop culture. His films are laced with this intertextuality were the relationship between texts (or films) is constantly being redefined. This method of pastiche is one way that he draws attention to the fact that his film is a constructed piece of fiction, or a “simulation.”
His rational behind this is heavily influenced by French theorist Jean Baudrillard’s notion of “hyperreality.” Hyperreality in this case refers to the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy, as the two become blurred into one. Baudrillard argues that...
His rational behind this is heavily influenced by French theorist Jean Baudrillard’s notion of “hyperreality.” Hyperreality in this case refers to the inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from fantasy, as the two become blurred into one. Baudrillard argues that...
- 6/26/2010
- by Kristen Coates
- The Film Stage
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.