Filed under: aristea, cinema, gender | Tags: gender, katharina blum, media, new german cinema, paternalistic state, terrorism, whore virgin dualism
I am here referring to the Volker Schloendorff and Margarehthe von Trotta film and not the 1974 novelle by Heinrich Böll. Katharina, a woman that leads a quiet life, meets an anarchist -evidently linked to the Red Army Faction- and takes him to her house where they make love. After he escapes, her life is completely destroyed by the journalists and the police investigations.
Part of the New German Cinema of the 1960s, the film is the work of German filmmakers from the left who “challenged the Establishment history of the terrorist movement” (Hoerschelmann, 2001 : 86). I will not go into the theme of the imagined terrorism and the hysterical reaction of the state. I am more interested in the dualism ‘virgin-whore’ as that is represented in the film and the ideas of gender in general.
On Friday (9th May) I went to see Control at the Duke of York’s cinema in Brighton. I went with a keen movie-going friend of mine. My interest in the film was piqued by the fact that I’ve been impressed with some photography I’ve seen by the director Anton Corbijn. I’ve also seen one video by Anton Corbijn which I really liked. This was not a music video but rather an artistic video build around an interview with the alternative pop/rock icon Captain Beefheart. Anyway this was Anton Corbijn’s first feature film and is focussed on the short life of Ian Curtis, lead singer with the late seventies group Joy Division. Continue reading
Filed under: anne, cinema, film, music | Tags: Martin Scorsese, Rolling Stones, Shine a Light
Lately, the Rolling Stones are reviving their (hi)story the grand way – right there on the cinema screen, supported by Martin Scorsese, director of films like The Departed or – perhaps most famously – Goodfellas. Intrigued by seeing the story of such an epic rock group depicted through the eyes and ears of Scorsese, I went along to watch one and a half hours of the New York concert of the Stones, called “Shine a Light”.
in media res 