Month: March, 2009

Sun 29 Mar 2009

The 400 Blows

Category: Janus Challenge
3 Comments

Director: François Truffaut Country: France Year: 1959 BACKGROUND François Truffaut was born in 1932. He never met his biological father, and was shuttled around between his grandmother and various nannies for the first years of his life. His grandmother, seemingly the only welcoming adult in his world, instilled in François a profound love of books [...]

Sun 22 Mar 2009

Forbidden Games

Category: Janus Challenge
4 Comments

Director: René Clément Country: France Year: 1952 BACKGROUND René Clément was born in 1913, in Bordeaux, France. He first studied architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and eventually gravitated to film-making. In 1936, he directed his first film, a 20-minute Jacques Tati short (we’ll be watching Tati’s M. Hulot’s Holiday later in this series). Apart [...]

Sun 15 Mar 2009

Floating Weeds

Category: Janus Challenge
2 Comments

Director: Yasujiro Ozu Country: Japan Year: 1959 BACKGROUND I’m going away for the weekend, and thus trying to write a shorter article, but I keep getting sidetracked with peripheral stuff I want to include, like this cool series of 80’s-metal-themed director’s t-shirts offered by MondoTees. They make a nice Ozzy/Ozu shirt that you might want [...]

Sun 8 Mar 2009

Fists in the Pocket

Category: Janus Challenge
7 Comments

Director: Marco Bellocchio Country: Italy Year: 1965 BACKGROUND Marco Bellocchio was born in 1939, studied philosophy in Milan, and studied film at the Centro sperimentale di cinematografia (I’m betting that translates roughly as “Center for Experimental Filmmaking”). After graduating, Bellocchio rang up Michelangelo Antonioni, and asked for a job as an assistant director. Antonioni refused. [...]

Sun 1 Mar 2009

Fires on the Plain

Category: Janus Challenge
2 Comments

Director: Kon Ichikawa Country: Japan Year: 1959 “Ichikawa surely stands alongside Akira Kurosawa and Keisuke Miyashita as one of Japan’s great directors. He made not just art films, but also melodramas, documentaries, mysteries and others… and he brought to all of them a technique and craft that showed he took the works seriously, no matter [...]