Grape Lights

After several years of searching, I finally learned the name of the painter and the title of the work I noticed in The Limits of Control . Very little is available in English on Cristóbal Ruiz Pulido, but it was his painting, a portrait of his daughter in a hallway, that triggered a need to know more about his work. A substantial article in Spanish can be found here . Cristóbal Ruiz Pulido, painter and poet, was born in 1881 in Villacarrillo, a city in the south-central province Jaén in Spain. He studied at the School of Fine Arts, Cordoba with Rafael Romero Barros and then in San Fernando in Madrid with Alejandro Ferrant. From 1902 to 1914 he lived in France, Belgium and Holland, studying under Jean-Paul Laurens at the Académie Julian in Paris. In 1910 he participated in the National Exhibition of Fine Arts. In 1917 he won third prize, and in 1920 Tierras de labor won second prize. In 1925 he participated in the exhibition and in the manifesto of the Iberian Artists Hall, ...

A w oodcut by Aoki Shukuya (1737-1802) 青木夙夜  from 解屍編 / 河口信任子遠著 (Complete notes on the dissection of cadavers) More can be found HERE

Yuri Illienko's White Bird with Black Mark (Білий птах з чорною ознакою) -Film Society Lincoln Center's Capturing the Marvelous: Ukrainian Poetic Cinema September 7-12 going on now! Also screening are Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, Earth, The Eve of St. John among many more... an incredible film series

From Chris Marker's " Passengers " Chris Marker, born 29 July 1921; died 30 July 2012 Cocteau used to say that at night, statues escape from museums and go walking in the streets. During my peregrinations in the Paris Metro, I sometimes made such unusual encounters. Models of famous painters were still among us, and I was lucky enough to have them sitting in front of me. —Chris Marker Statues Also Die...

Sergei Paradjanov's Hagop Hovnatanian

From Nicolas Rey describing the impetus behind anders, Molussien I start by associating the texts with the sound recordings I have. I focus on the recordings that last a bit, developing in time, almost musically. And at the same time, but in a separate operation, I begin to make suites of images; hypothetical progressions in the imaginary country. Sketches of the film come through. The moment of truth comes when the soundtracks have to be confronted with the images. Curious combinations are born. Sound and image have to “chafe”, without destroying each other. Curiously, there doesn’t appear to be many possibilities. Little by little, however, the number of parts and the images that will remain in the film become evident. From the beginning, I believed that each part could be placed anywhere in the film. But that constraint of a random order made the exercise of editing a bit particular. Eventually it becomes clear that only one excerpt from the book will be present in each part...

Robert Warshow on the Rosenbergs (1953): On July 4, 1951, Julius clipped a copy of the Declaration of Independence from the New York Times and taped it to the wall of his cell. "It is interesting," he writes to Ethel, "to read these words concerning free speech, freedom of the press and of religion in this setting. These rights our country's patriots died for can't be taken from the people even by Congress or the courts." Does it matter that the Declaration of Independence says nothing about free speech, freedom of the press, or freedom of religion, and that Julius therefore could not have found it "interesting" to read "these words" in that particular document? It does not matter. Julius knew that America is supposed to have freedom of expression and that the Declaration of Independence "stands for" America. Since, therefore, he already "knew" the Declaration, there was no need for him to actually read it in or...