Note the visual catalog of vhs and dvd consistency is constantly updated.
Legend dur. = running time – coll. = position – ST = subtitled – VO = Original Version TS = Simultaneous Translation
14. MOMIX
Momix is a theatre company of dancer-acrobats, created and directed by the american Moses Pendleton. The name of the group comes from a cow feed. In addition to their annual appearances at the Joyce Theatre in New York, the company performs regularly on highly successful international tours. Some of Pendleton’s choreographies, with a clear New Age flavour, suggest different sacred symbologies but Pendleton makes clear that his source of inspiration is first of all Nature, the Bible of plants, animals, minerals. His inspiration is in fact linked, as the dancer reveals to the press, to his garden much more than to the urban environment. dur. 60′ – coll. DA8MOM/1
16. CHANGING STEPS
Cunnigham Merce
dance / 1989
To be performed in any order, in any space and in any combination, Changing Steps consists of ten solos, five duets, three trios, two quartets and two quintets. The dances can be performed sequentially, one after the other, or superimposed, with as many individual dances as possible taking place simultaneously. The 1989 film version of Elliot Caplan lasts 35 minutes. Changing Steps was first performed on March 22, 1973 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as part of Event No. 65, with music by David Behrman, John Cage, Gordon Mumma and David Tudor and costumes designed by Charles Atlas. Changing Steps was first performed as a repertory dance on March 7, 1975 at Detroit Music Hall, with Cartridge Music by John Cage and new costumes by Mark Lancaster. The dance was presented in combination with Cunningham’s solo “Loops” and entitled “Changing Steps / Loops“. (taken from mercecunnighamtrust)
dur. 36 ‘ – coll. DA8MOM/3
17. DANCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Kaplan Eliott / Merce Cunnigham
dance / 1996
Mercier Philip Cunningham, born in Centralia, his first artistic and theatrical training took place at the age of twenty at the current Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle. It was here in 1939 that Martha Graham saw him dance and invited him to join her all-female ensemble as the first man, along with another great talent, Herik Hawkins. In New York City he began his brilliant career as a solo dancer with the prestigious Martha Graham Dance Company, which lasted about six years. In ’44 Merce presented his first choreographic work, which also formed the partnership with the well-known avant-garde composer John Cage, his future life companion. In 1953, Cunningham founded the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, in residence at Black Mountain College in North Carolina, the starting point of his stylistic research. Cunningham was the first who, in addition to creating danced works for the theater (about two hundred), staged a series of works that today we could call site specific. He produced the first happening in history, an event where things happen hic et nunc, without a predefined structure. The classical notion of performance was then replaced by that of “laboratory”, “improvisation” and performance, all performed in residences in historical and cultural places. If Graham is considered the “great mother” of modern dance, Cunningham has laid the foundations of the post-modern trend. (from ilpickwick) dur. 53′ – coll. DA8MOM/4
25. NO MORE PLAY
Netherlands Dance Company
Jiri Kylian‘s inspiration for this piece comes from a small sculpture by Alberto Giacometti: a simple shapeless board game with small wooden shavings and recesses, as well as two pieces of wood reminiscent of human beings. The highly dynamic tension that this work of art has produced in the choreographer and a feeling of inevitability determine the character of the ballet No More Play. The viewer sees himself as a participant in a difficult and hard game whose rules were forgotten long ago. Only gradually and one by one he discovers the forgotten rules, but always when it is already too late, when he has already fallen into the trap. Music is such an important basis for the choreographer’s work that the serial random choreography of the piece No More Play immediately makes it clear that the music could not have been written by anyone other than Anton Webern. The music and movement merge into such a suitable unit that it is difficult to separate the individual components again. The Rococo costumes appear here only in passing, as if they didn’t want to distract attention from the stage lighting, which can hardly be described as more than fragmentary… (taken from numeridanse)
dur. 15′ – coll. DA8MOM/2
46. THE CAMP
Teatro Radeau La Baraque Le Tonneau La Menagerie
Theater Biennale Venice DTM I 1999 ST
The theatre, you know, has more value in exceptions than in rules. In this sense, the Théâtre du Radeau belongs to research groups such as Carmelo Bene to the great European acting tradition. That is: they have something in common with others, a general conception of the art of theatre that distinguishes them, and polemically, from those who understand theatre as entertainment, profession or didactics, but they represent cases and results so high and original as to make theatre in itself. Yet Radeau was born, in the 1970s and 1980s, within a movement, that of groups, of young professionals who escaped the destiny of writing to be authors of their own theatre and their own lives. Radeau means “raft”, this was the name of the group even before François Tanguy arrived, but it is with him that the adventure of the shipwrecked of the scene begins, the human wandering in search of a theatre that should be an encounter between a deep thought and a motivated, or at least alive, not habitual audience. With François Tanguy at the helm, and the port of refuge established at Le Mans – thus far from that omnivorous and ruthlessly worldly Paris where the public has long been only a decoration of the media salon. (taken from Il pensiero pensato con la scena di Antonio Attisani)
dur. 51′ . coll. TE23PUN/2
54. THEATRUM MUNDI
by Eugenio Barba
Giuliano Capani
theatre/anthropology ITA 1987
Theatrum Mundi Ensemble since 1980, presents performances with a permanent nucleus of artists from many professional traditions. The Odin Teatret has so far created 76 performances, performed in 63 countries and in different social contexts. In the course of these experiences, a specific Odin culture has grown, based on cultural diversity and the practice of “bartering“: Odin actors present themselves with their work in a particular environment which, in return, responds with songs, music and dances of their own local culture. Barter is an exchange of cultural manifestations and not only offers an overview of other forms of expression, but is also a social interaction that challenges prejudices, linguistic difficulties and differences in the way of thinking, judging and behaving (Nicola Savarese)
dur. 45′ – coll. TE28BAR/1
55. THEATRICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
FROM TEXT TO ACTION
lessons of Eugenio Barba
Giuliano Capani
theatre/anthropology ITA 1987
Eugenio Barba, 1936, grew up in Gallipoli and attended classical high school at the Nunziatella military college in Naples. In 1954, he emigrated to Norway where he worked in Oslo as a tinsmith and welder and, for two years, as a sailor on a Norwegian cargo ship. He graduated from the University of Oslo in French and Norwegian literature and history of religions, continuing his work as a worker. In 1960 he lived six months in a kibbutz in Israel. He was awarded a scholarship to the Warsaw Theatre School of Direction. He abandoned it in January 1961 to work with a small experimental theatre in the town of Opole, directed by the young and unknown director Jerzy Grotowsky and the well-known critic Ludwik Flaszen. He remained there until April 1964, alternating his work as assistant director with trips to Europe to spread the news about Grotowsky‘s activity, and a six-month stay in southern India to study Kathakali. In October 1964 he founded Odin Teatret in Oslo. Two years later, with his theatre he emigrated to Denmark, to the small town of Holstebro. In almost fifty years of activity, Odin Teatret and Eugenio Barba have become a legend of contemporary theatre. a handful of people who have earned the influence of an independent theatre tradition. They create their own way of transmitting their experiences both in practice (with an intense activity of seminars and internships) and by publishing books and filmed documents.
dur. 30′ – coll. TE29BAR/1
57. SHAKTI THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL THEATRE
by Eugenio Barba
Giuliano Capani
theatre/anthropology ITA 1990
The term, śakti (devanāgarī शक्ति, IAST śakti, energy, power) indicates, in Hinduism, the power of a God to give rise to the phenomenal world and the conscious plane of creation, His immanent creative capacity; as its proper name, Śakti indicates the personified Divine Energy. dur. 29′ – coll. TE31BAR/2
89. MOVEMENT FROM THE SOUL
Isadora Duncan
dance 1987
This non-sentimental portrait of the complex and charismatic “Mother of Modern Dance” traces the life and artistic development of Isadora Duncan, born in San Francisco (1877-1927). Duncan raised dance from the simple entertainment of vaudeville to a legitimate art form, laying the foundation for modern dance today. The first American artist to succeed worldwide, she dared to use her medium for political purposes: to create the first choreography to call people to arms, to express the plight of repressed workers and to agitate the masses for women’s freedom. Movement From the Soul is a study of a revolutionary and iconoclast, a woman who dared to challenge Victorian customs through her art and the way she lived. Gracefully made, the documentary weaves the details of Isadora Duncan‘s tumultuous life with the re-creations of twelve of her dances.
dur. 58′ – coll. DA55DUN/1
90. ANGELS FALL
Jiri Kilian – Nederlands Dans Theater
dance 1996
The Nederlands Dans Theater (NDT) is one of the most incredible, virtuoso, sensual and exuberant contemporary dance companies in the world capable of collecting sold outs wherever it goes. Nederlands Dans Theater has stood out since its foundation in 1959, when 22 exceptional “rebel” dancers left the Netherlands National Ballet to find their own expressive voice in the dance world. Although all of its dancers are rigorously classically trained – whose technical mastery and expressiveness are unparalleled – the NDT is always striving to find new dance paths at the highest artistic level. dur. 17′ – coll. DA55DUN/1
102. TERSICORE PRISONERS
Reznikov Efim
dance RUS 1995 ST
Tersicore (in greek Τερψιχόρη, Terpsichórē; ; Latin Terpsichŏre). The name comes from the greek τερπέω ( I like) and χoρός, (dance). She is one of the nine muses of Greek mythology, protector of dance and choral opera and mother of mermaids. She is usually depicted with clothes similar to those of the aedi and crowned with laurel leaves always intent on drawing chords with her tapered fingers in her instrument. From Tersicore comes the word tersicoreo which means linked to dance. She is usually represented sitting, playing a lyre, accompanying the dancers with her music.
dur. 53′ – coll. DA55DUN/2
103. SILENT CRIES (1986)
Jiri Kilian Nederlands Dans Theater
Gianni Di Capua
dance ITA VeniceBiennaleDance ST 1999
In a touching and exceptional solo by Sabine Kupferberg, half darkened and obviously trapped behind a dirty and stained window, Kylián and the dancer met in search of an inner state in their show Silent Cries, performed for the first time at the NDT in 1986. Typically, Kylián here uses an orchestral work by Debussy, dominated by the sound of flutes and harp. Already in 1912, Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune (1894) had aroused intense interest in the world of dance, following the fury caused by Vaslav Nijinsky‘s original choreography entitled L’après-midi d’un faune. dur. 29′ – coll. DA68JKI/1
104. ORPHEUS AND THE RAFT
Theatre du Radeau
BiennaleTheatreVenice 1999 ST
The Théâtre du Radeau has been based in Le Mans since the late 1970s, with François Tanguy joining the group gathered around Laurence Chable in 1982 to become its director. At the beginning of the 1990s they built a former garage in the city centre that would become La Fonderie, a place of work open to artists in residence and to militant and associative events. With a creation every two or four years and with the support of the Théâtre National de Bretagne in Rennes, the Festival d’Automne in Paris or the Théâtre-Garonne in Toulouse, the Théâtre du Radeau has regularly presented its shows in France and abroad since the late 1980s (taken from Éric Vautrin’s Public Theatre “Radeau Variations” n° 214, October 2014) dur. 53′ – coll. DA68JKI/2
116. WHITE BIRD FEATHERLESS
The Siobhan Davies Dance Company
Mumford Peter
dance BBC GBR 1994
Choreographed the same year as Make-Make, White Bird Featherless has an equally enigmatic quality. The 18th century riddle is played in dance through complex games and courtship rituals. Fruit is exchanged between dancers and disappears and then reappears, a reference to the 18th century courtship ritual of giving fruit as a symbol of sexual favors. Just as pieces of fruit change hands, phrases of movement are exchanged between the dancers. The dancers need to find or keep a place both on the chessboard floor and within the complex music. Their actions are limited or pushed by the squares of light and the speed at which the pianos shake. The chessboard on the floor is a theme that continues in the white costumes, which are placed on a black background. The score is composed of three separate pieces by Gerald Barry, all for piano, the third with countertenor, Nicholas Clapton. The work was performed live and filmed for the BBC (taken from Siobhan Davies Dance) dur. 27′ – coll. DA55DUN/3
117. EULOGY
Mui Cheuk Yin
danza R. M.
Eulogy is inspired by Li Qingzhao, Song Dynasty‘s poetess of the “ci” genre, who occupies a significant place in the history of Chinese literature. Mui Cheuk-yin – choreographer, dancer, artistic director – has been at the forefront of dance in Hong Kong for over thirty years. After an initial training in classical and ethnic Chinese dance, she joined the Hong Kong Dance Company in 1981, where she was a leading dancer until 1990, excelling in leading roles in productions such as The Yellow Earth, Jade Love and Rouge. Her choreographic career began in 1985 when she won the Hong Kong Young Choreographer Competition which brought her to New York to study modern dance. dur. 7’ – coll. DA55DUN/4
137. ODISSI
Madhavi Mudgal
dance BiennaleDanceVenice ITA 1999 ST
Madhavi Mudgal is the daughter of Professor Vinay Chandra Maudgalya, founder of Gandharva Mahavidyalaya; one of the most famous dance schools for Hindustani music and ballet in New Delhi. She inherited a deep love for art and dance from her family and under the appropriate guidance of her guru Shri Harekrishna Behera, the world soon learned of her extraordinary abilities. He gave his first public performance at the age of only four. Initially he learned Bharatnatyam and Kathak, but in the end he chose Odissi as his means of expression. Odissi‘s artistic skills were better perfected under the guidance of the legendary Guru Kelucharan Mohapatra.
dur. 17′ – coll. TE80DIS/1
144. PETER BROOK
biografia
Thomas David
theatre 1989 ST
Peter Brook, born in London in 1925 to parents of Russian origin, after a brilliant degree in comparative literature at Oxford, began to work in the theatre, feeling more by chance and economic necessity than by deep interest: his declared passion was in fact cinema. This did not prevent him from having, at only 24 years of age, the position of artistic director at Covent Garden in London, a commitment he would soon abandon to return to prose, working with the greatest English actors of the time (John Gielgud, Lawrence Olivier and especially Paul Scofield) and dealing with both Elizabethan theatre and contemporary authors. Tito Andronico’s European tour in 1955 revealed Peter Brook, already well known in Great Britain, to the rest of Europe. During this period he was interested in Shakespeare’s works considered minor, of which he appreciated the cinematographic fluidity, but he also dealt with the major texts: Hamlet (1955) and The Tempest (1957). In the late ’50s and early ’60s he made two films inspired by novels: Moderato cantabile by Marguerite Duras and Sua Maestà delle mosche by William Golding; in ’62 he returned to Shakespeare with a memorable King Lear. The show, which passes through the rejection of all useless scenic decoration, marks a fundamental stage in his artistic career and in that of contemporary Western theatre: the stage space becomes empty, it will be the words, bodies and energy of the actors that fill it with images; the comparison with some great non-European theatrical traditions could be said to have already begun, dur. 79′ – coll. TE83BRO/1
149. ANDY WARHOL
Evans K.
art /ST
Andy Warhol, pseudonym of Andrew Warhol Jr. (Pittsburgh, 6 August 1928 – New York, 22 February 1987), was a painter, sculptor, screenwriter, film producer, director, cinematographer, cinematographer, editor and actor in the United States, a predominant figure in the Pop art movement and one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. dur. 87′ – coll. AR85MAT/2
153. H2O PENTHESILEA PING
Linke S., Haardt K.
dance BiennaleDanceVenice ITA 1999
The Biennale Danza directed by Carolyn Carlson dedicates to Susanne Linke, chosen to close the exhibition Solo Donna, the women’s dance troupe wanted and organized by Carlson. It is composed of three extracts for very young dancers that anticipate Linke’s next work, H2O Penthesilea Ping (to debut in Bremen in December), and a solo performed by Linke herself, cut out by Uber Krenz, a wider and more ambitious creation (recently seen also in Ferrara), choreographed by Susanne with Hoffmann, as in the late recognition of an ideal twinning. It’s strange, and even disturbing, the sense of dated that emanates from the whole thing. So is Linke with her very long blonde hair, sad face, monastic tunic, oblique, nervous, irregular crossings of the scene and her final, anguished rolling on the ground, suffocated by her own hair. So are his solitary amazons, immersed in dark climates and howling wolves (to the letter), ready to fall to the ground in an extreme fight against materials, or to toil in sudden marches and angular movements. “To the enormous exuberance and randomness of our age I can only react with subtraction”, Linke writes. The minimalist aspiration is plausible, but here the effect is too punitive and post-war to be spectacularly acceptable. (Leonetta Bentivoglio)
dur. 40′ – coll. DA68JKI/3
154. THE MARX BROTHERS
What you don’t know about them
part one
Leaf D. / Scheinfeld J.
documentary film/theatre 1993 VO/ENG/ST/IT
The Marx brothers are the most famous family in the history of cinema composed of: Arthur called Harpo (1893-1964), Milton called Gummo (1894-1977), Julius called Groucho (1895-1977), Herbert called Zeppo (1901-1979) Marx. With their mother Minnie Palmer, their manager, they all performed together in the ’10’s, remaining in four (after Gummo’s retirement) in the ’20s to make their surreal and destructive comedy triumph on Broadway, especially in the musical comedies The Cocoanuts (1925) and Animal Crackers (1928), brought to the screen in 1929 and 1930 respectively. Armed with Harpo with a harp, Chico with a piano, Groucho with a guitar and Zeppo with a saxophone, they made the nonsense and the anarchist saraband the motifs of a “commedia dell’arte” unleashed, loud and harmonious… dur. 59′ – coll. CN86MXR/1
455. COSTAKIS THE COLLECTOR
Gavin Barrie
Portraits – Art Stories
art 1981 IT/ENG/ST/ITA
One public housing flat in Moscow stood out above all others: the home of George Costakis, the foremost collector of early 20th century Russian avant-garde art. Its walls were crowded with banned and forgotten works by artists such as Malevich, Tatlin, Kandinsky, Chagall, Lissitzky, Rodchenko, and Kliun; public figures such as Edward Kennedy, Stravinsky, and Alfred Barr visited. Barrie Gavin met the collector in 1982 at his home in Athens. Costakis, a greek born in Russia, passionately shares his story and those of the great Russian avant-garde artists. Their works are his legacy – without him, they would not have survived the political upheavals in Russia. (tratto da arthaus-musik)
dur. 54′ – coll. AR199DAL/2
457.SAMUEL BECKETT
as the story was told
Mordha S.
theatre/literature B/w ST
Biography of playwright Samuel Beckett. The first part covers his formative years, his ill-fated romance with his first cousin, the death of his father, and his service with the French Resistance. Beckett settled in France before the Second World War, met James Joyce and began writing. Includes Patrick Magee’s television performance in ‘Krapp’s Last Tape’, interwoven with landscapes and characters from Beckett’s life.
dur. 52′ – coll. TE222BRE/2
480. LE SIECLE STANISLAVSKI
les batisseurs d’utopie (part I°)
Hercombe Peter
Union des Gens de Theatre de Russie – La Sept
theatre FRA 1993 b/w VO/FRA/ST/ITA
The exceptional fate of Konstantin Stanislavski as told by Peter Hercombe. Director, actor and creator revolutionised theatre. His story, told in the style of a historical documentary through period images, traces his extraordinary career. He is the creator of the Moscow Dramatic Theatre, which radiated from Brazil to Paris via the Actors Studio in New York. He created the first dramatic method: the Stanislavski system. The builders of utopia: Konstantin Sergeyevich Alekseev (Stanislavsky) was born in 1863. His family devoted themselves entirely to the preservation of Russian art. The children grew up in an atmosphere of high culture: ballet, opera, theatre. In this world, Constantine could flash. He organised family shows, repeated circus performances, but all this was nothing but entertainment for the children, until Konstantin Sergeyevich’s father built a real theatre for them (taken from tvtorrentru)
dur. 59′ – coll. TE186STR/2
481. EJZENSTEJN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Kovalov Oleg
cinema RUS CTB 1995 b/w ST
To worthily celebrate the centenary of the Seventh Art through the stories of one of its greatest exponents, Sergei M. Ejzenstejn, the director of this documentary traces the “stream of consciousness” of the great filmmaker’s reflections and memories, captured during a trip abroad in 1929.
dur. 88′ – coll. CN217EJZ/1
483. LE SIECLE STANISLAVSKI
les annee sismiques (part II°)
Hercombe Peter
Union des Gens de Theatre de Russie – La Sept
theatre FRA 1993 b/w VO/FRA/ST/ITA
In Europe, the actor Stanislavsky became an idol. He was also seen as the director of the future, a prophet who came from the mysterious Russian land to bring light and truth to European theatre. But this glory brought him no joy: he was haunted by dark thoughts of losing his creative power. In Moscow, Stanislavsky was the object of critical attention; he had become the subject of satirical drawings. And at the age of 43, he hid from everyone, isolated himself on the shores of the Gulf of Finland to critically review his life and assess the strengths and weaknesses of his art
dur. 56′ – coll. TE209DEF/2
484. LE SIECLE STANISLAVSKI
les années de glace et de feu (part III°)
Hercombe Peter
Union des Gens de Theatre de Russie – La Sept
theatre FRA 1993 b/w VO/FRA/ST/ITA
The years of ice and flame: the theatre troupe toured extensively abroad, performances in New York were a great success. Stanislavsky’s system attracted followers in many countries around the world. And in his homeland, Stanislavsky was faced with the fact that Art Theatre completely lost its creative independence. Stanislavsky, who at the turn of the century envisioned changing the world with a revolution in theatre, now lived a prisoner in Stalinist purgatory.
dur. 53′ – coll. CN217EJZ/2
485. BUTHO PIERCING THE MASK
Moore R.
dance A.K.A. AUSTRALIA 1991 ST
This documentary traverses the mystery and mystique of a dance movement adored by the West and largely ignored by the Japanese. It uses archival and modern footage of prominent Butoh artists and interviews with Butoh specialists to shed light on the essential themes of Butoh: darkness, violence and eroticism to get to the heart of the nature of Butoh. In the early 1960s, Butoh dance exploded onto the Japanese stage. The shockwave destroyed the Japanese dance community and stereotypical images of the Japanese people. Sexy, violent, humorous and nihilistic, Butoh confronts Japanese society, ridiculing and mocking traditional conventions of beauty and behaviour. It uses archival and modern footage of the main performers of Butoh – Dairakudakan, Hakutobo, Kazuo Ono; going beyond the examination of Butoh as dance, Butoh Piercing the Mask explores the relationship between culture and society. It portrays Butoh as a primal scream, uttered at a time when the invasion of post-war Japan by Western cultural and social conventions forced artists to reinvent their identity. It raises questions about the Japanese people by revealing the connections between some of the more obscure aspects of Butoh and Japanese culture, and examines the relationship of dance to contemporary life against the backdrop of modern Tokyo.
dur. 49′ – coll. DA198CUN/2
486. BATSHEVA DANCE COMPANY Israel
conversation with Ohad Naharin
Di Capua G.
BiennaleDanzaVenice
dance ITA 2000 ST
Ohad Naharin is the choreographer of Batsheva Dance Company and the creator of the movement language ‘GAGA’. Born in 1952 in Mizra, Israel, he began his career as a dancer with Batsheva in 1974 and presented his first choreographic creation in New York in 1980. In 1990, he was appointed artistic director of Batsheva Dance Company and founded the youth company Batsheva – The Young Ensemble. He has created over thirty new works for the two ensembles and has re-mounted his choreographies for numerous companies, including Nederlands Dans Theater, Ballet National de l’Opéra de Paris, Les Grand Ballets Canadiens de Montréal. Alongside his creative work, Naharin developed an innovative movement language known as GAGA, which was developed in the context of daily training with the Batsheva dancers, and which has spread throughout the world among both professional and amateur dancers. After almost 30 years at the helm of the company, Naharin stepped down as director in 2018, maintaining his position as resident choreographer within Batsheva, which continues to be for him the creative, research and teaching laboratory of the GAGA method.
dur. 29′ – coll. DA218BIE/1
487. ROTATING DERVISCI CEREMONIES
Turkey KUDSI ERGUNER ENSEMBLE
Di Capua G.
BiennaleDanzaVenice
dance ITA 2000 ST
They spin hypnotically to the sound of melodious flutes and rhythmic drums, pivoting on the tip of their left foot. Their arms are spread like wings with one hand pointing to the sky and the other to the earth. This is the dance of the whirling dervishes, Islamic Sufi monks who dance in a sacred, ancient ceremony of rapid spins and mystical leaps. They spin counterclockwise on themselves, slowly at first and then faster and faster until they complete 30 revolutions per minute with tiny steps. The dance, declared an intangible asset of humanity by Unesco, symbolises the spinning movement of the stars and begins when the master intones a verse from the Koran and leads the dervishes in the dance. After three rounds, the dancers shed their black cloaks and remain in white wool robes, wide skirts and a red felt cone on their heads. The dervishes belong to the Mevlevi brotherhood, founded by Mevlana, a poet and mystic who was born in Afghanistan in 1203 and later settled in Turkey, in Konya, a city sacred to the dancers. Here it was his son Rûmî who founded the order of dervishes and gave birth to dance as a mystical, spiritual ceremony.
dur. 57′ – coll. DA218BIE/1
488. U THEATRE Taiwan
The Sound of The Ocean
(Listening to the Sound of the Ocean)
Di Capua G.
BiennaleDanzaVenice
dance ITA 2000 ST
Sound of the Ocean, a monumental work about water; it was originally created in 1998 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of U Theatre for a performance at the famous Festival d’Avignon in France. Sound of the Ocean tells of the water of life, which nourishes our souls. Music, drums and movement simulate the extraordinarily diverse and distinctive sounds of water in its five sections: Collapse, Flowing Water, Breakers, Listening to the Heart of the Ocean and The Sound of the Ocean, when individual drops come together to form a stream and the currents create a river that eventually flows into the ocean. Sound of the Ocean is not a narrative drama. There is no plot, no dialogue. It simply and abstractly expresses the concept of water. The audience does not need to find a plot from it, but to feel the flow of water. The flow of water represents the journey of life. Sound of the Ocean is a sharing, between performers and audience, sharing life, continuous moments and the present.
dur. 22′ – coll. DA218BIE/2
489. UNETSU SAUKA JUKU BUTOH
starting from the experience of putting up an egg
Di Capua G.
BiennaleDanzaVenice
dance ITA 2000 ST
Calligraphic performance by Sauka Juku, the most refined Butoh group on the Japanese scene, all inspired by the primordial theme of the egg in its colours and shapes. Sankai Juku is one of the most famous Butoh groups. Founded in 1975, the company has toured the world under the leadership of Ushio Amagatsu. “…we start from an empty body…we seek an answer to the question of who we are…”
dur. 53′ – coll. DA198CUN/3
490. LIGHT BRINGERS
Carolyn Carson
Di Capua G.
BiennaleDanzaVenice
dance ITA 2000 ST
Evocative creation-symbol of the 2000 Venice Dance Biennale, signed by Carolyn Carson, to the music of Philip Glass and with the contribution of laser technology, with the students of her Academy Isola Danza. Laser beams and virtual dancers, high-tech experimentation, changing the relationship between dance and theatre at the dawn of the new millennium to discover new creative energies. Carolyn Carson, one of the leading choreographers and dancers on the contemporary scene, launches her spectacular challenge. Light Bringers/ Araba Fenice, mega creation to a hypnotic and minimalist score by Philip Glass.
dur. 53′ – coll. DA218BIE/3
495. PINA BAUSCH AND THE WUPPERTAL TANZTHEATER
Beddini A.
dance ITA 2000 ST
Pina Bausch through her performances presented in Italy. The voice of a great protagonist of 20th century dance-theatre.
dur. 24′ – coll. DA160KYL/4
497. BERTOLT BRECHT (1898 – 1956)
Lang J. / Andreani G.
theatre FRA 1997 ST
German writer and theatre man (Augsburg 1898 – Berlin 1956). Born to well-to-do middle-class parents, he frequented the artistic avant-garde circles in Munich and Berlin, abandoning his medical studies without finishing them and turning to literary activity. Towards the end of the 1920s, the decisive theoretical and political encounter with Marxism matured. He went into exile in 1933, was successively in Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and the USA, from where he returned to Europe in 1948, settling in East Berlin. Here, together with his wife Helene Weigel, he founded the Berliner Ensemble in 1949, to which he devoted almost the entirety of his last years. Trained in the climate of pathetic and humanitarian expressionism as well as the paradoxical and provocative games of Dadaism, he was able to find an autonomous poetic space in it from his first original experiments, such as The Threepenny Opera.
dur. 48′ – coll. TE222BRE/1
501. KAGUYAIME – THE MOONPRINCESS
Nederland Dans Theater – Jiri Kilian
Hulscher H.
dance NL 1994
The story of the moon princess who descends to earth and is cared for by the family of a bamboo cutter is one of Japan’s oldest fairy tales. Her luminous beauty is meant to spread peace and happiness, but instead the rivalry of her celestial presence causes results in war. Jiri Kylian, artistic director of the Nederlands Dans Theater and one of Europe’s most acclaimed choreographers, was inspired by the musical composition of Kaguyahime by Maki Ishii. Using Ishii’s music and combining Western and Oriental sound elements, Kylian focused on the philosophical message behind the story of Kaguyahime and created a performance in which dance, music and theatrical images have equal importance.
dur.70′ – coll. AR215BRU/1
502. UN SIECLE DE TANGO
Fleoter C.
with Astor Piazzolla / C. Gardel
dance FRA 1995 ST
The adventure of the tango from the legendary Carlos Gardel to Astor Piazzolla and Osvaldo Pugliese.
dur. 52′ – coll. AR215BRU/4
514. JAMES DEAN AND ME
Strout B.
cinema USA 1996 ST
On 30 September 1955 James Dean died. The young rebel was only twenty-four and had his whole life ahead of him. Unfortunately, it was not to be. That day James was on his way to Salinas, California, for a car race in his Porsche 550 Spyder. Suddenly, on entering a curve, he crashed into Donald Turnupseed’s Ford and died instantly. And to think that in his last interview with Warner Bros, talking about safety on the road, he said: ‘Be careful driving. The life you save could be mine’. White T-shirt, red leather jacket and cigarette in mouth. This is how we remember James Dean in Burnt Youth, the 1955 film in which he played the famous Jim Stark, in love with Judy aka Natalie Wood, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in 1981 while off Santa Catalina Island. Death did not spare the other protagonist of Rebel without a cause (this was the original title) either: Sal Mineo i.e. Plato Crawford, murdered with a knife on 12 February 1976 at the age of 37. Not surprisingly, Nicholas Ray’s film was labelled as cursed. Rebel Without a Cause consecrated James Dean as a film star, but his fame had already arrived with The Valley of Eden, in which he played Cal Trask, a young man looking for his mother, who his father pretended was dead but was in fact alive, and the owner of a seedy nightclub in Monterey, a town not far from Salinas. The film directed by Elia Kazan was the only release with the actor still alive. The last film of his short career was The Giant, a fresco of oil-rich Texas. He starred alongside such sacred monsters as Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson, to whom he had nothing to envy. Not surprisingly, he was nominated for two Oscars, albeit posthumously, as the car accident in which he lost his life prevented him from finishing filming. Dean portrayed the malaise of a generation. He was the rebel par excellence, the non-conformist and at the same time the simple boy next door, a suffering and insecure twenty-something. It took him just three films to achieve worldwide success. His death made him a pop myth, an icon of the 20th century; it transformed him from shy star to myth.
dur. 50′ – coll. F155BER/2
521. RENAUD-BARRAULT
the builders of the theatre
Trefouel J.
teatro FRA ST 1992
From 1932 Madeleine Renaud and Jean Louis Barrault have built the most creative group of actors of the French inter ‘900 teatrale. “To tell the story of the Renaud Barraults is to tell the story of half a century of theatre. Jean-Louis Barrault, actor, writer, company director, architect and discoverer of authors and plays, has staged more than 90 shows and hosted nearly 100 plays in his various theatres. Madeleine Renaud, who is inseparable from him, discreetly rules over the choice of the company’s repertoire and the development of its productions. At the same time, she leads a personal career in the company of authors she inspires, such as Samuel Beckett and Marguerite Duras. For the first time, a documentary film reconstructs the dazzling adventure of this mythical couple.”
dur. 58′ – coll. TE3BRE/2
529. EDIPO KING
The horrific discovery of a parricide (part two)
The Theban works of Sophocles.
new translation by Don Taylor
BBC Theatre GBR 1986 VO/ENG/ST/ITA
Plagues are ravaging Thebes and the blind soothsayer Tieresia tells Oedipus, the king, that the gods are unhappy. The assassination of the previous king is without consequence and Oedipus sets out to find the murderer.
running time 57′ – coll. TE222BRE/3
536. NIETZSCHE HUMAN ALL TOO HUMAN
Chu Simon
RM ATRS CO
art/literature BBC GBR 1999 VO/ENG-DEU/ST/ITA
Human, All Too Human is a three-part 1999 documentary television series co-produced by the BBC and RM Arts. It follows the lives of three prominent European philosophers: Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre. The theme revolves heavily around the school of philosophical thought known as Existentialism, although the term had not been coined at the time of Nietzsche‘s writing and Heidegger declaimed the label. Episode 1: Beyond Good and Evil describes the life of Friedrich Nietzsche and his gradual shift from religion to nihilism, and finally, to insanity. Towards the end of his life, his sister Elizabeth is depicted as a Nazi sympathizer who took advantage of his mental condition by falsifying his works and letters and attempted to portray him as proto-Fascist thinker.
dur. 50’ – coll. AR229FUT/2
544. CINEMA EUROPE THE OTHER HOLLYWOOD
Where It All Began (part I)
Gill D.
narrated by Kenneth Branagh
cinema BBC GBR 1995 ST
Cinema Europe: The Other Hollywood (1995) is a documentary series produced by David Gill and silent film historian Kevin Brownlow. It chronicles the birth of European cinema, from the Lumiere brothers to World War I, and then the early golden age of Swedish cinema, from the formation of Svenska Bio to Stiller and Sjöström’s departure for Hollywood. The French built the first studio, invented travel and experimented with sound. Max Linder becomes the first comedy star. The Italians make spectacle and primitive realism. The Germans invent film propaganda and have Lubitsch. Danish cinema is rich before the war. An affectionate portrait of Swedish cinema appreciates its cinematography, led by Jaenzon, its conversion of novels into films and the emergence of a production company that owned its own theatres. This is a wonderful documentary series and demands viewing for film enthusiasts.
dur. 58′ – coll. F78BAR/2
549. HAROLD LLOYD THE THIRD GENIUS
Brolow K.
cinema BBC GBR 1989 ST
Charlie Chaplin made audiences laugh; his films often delicately balanced, as the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti observes, on a fine line between sentiment and sentimentality. Buster Keaton may not have elicited as many laughs or emotions as Chaplin, but his comedy was at least as creative – particularly during the 1920s when he took great risks both physically and financially. Harold Lloyd lacked the vaudeville training and natural comedy of Chaplin and Keaton, yet he could make us laugh as much as we did when we watched Chaplin, and he could elicit as much sympathy and suspense as Keaton; but he had to work harder to be funny. And he did the work, churning out more films over the course of his very prolific film career than Chaplin and Keaton combined. But although Harold Lloyd rivaled Chaplin’s successes and box-office receipts, his place in film history is sometimes ignored by critics.
dur. 25′ – coll. CN75TOT/3
557. LET’S GET LOST – CHET BAKER
Bruce Weber
music ITA 1989 b/w ST
Let’s Get Lost is a 1988 documentary film, written and directed by Bruce Weber, based on the life of jazz musician Chet Baker. Bruce Weber first paid attention to Chet Baker when in a record shop in Pittsburgh he saw the musician’s photograph on the front of the 1955 vinyl LP Chet Baker Sings and Plays (with Bud Shank, Russ Freeman and Strings), at the age of 9. Weber first met Baker in the winter of 1986 in a New York club and convinced him to take some photos, which later became a three-minute video. Weber was eager to shoot a short film from an Oscar Levant song called Blame It on My Youth, and after spending some time together, convinced Baker to make a feature film about him. Filming began in January 1987. According to Weber, interviewing Baker was a feat as he recalls: ‘Sometimes we had to stop for one reason or another, because Chet was a junkie and couldn’t repeat a scene, so we had to start all over again. But we liked him more and more’… In May 1987, when Weber presented his documentary Broken Noses at the Cannes Film Festival, he had Baker shoot more scenes from the film. Weber spent millions of dollars of his own money on the making of the film, shooting and stopping it at times of major income or expenditure, which he described as ‘a very ad hoc film’. The film’s title comes from a song performed by Baker and recorded on the album Chet Baker Sings and Plays, which was also the album Weber bought in the Pittsburgh record shop when he was 9 years old.
dur. 116′ – coll. – M567BAK/1
nanaqui 