Francis Bacon on the South Bank Show: A Singular Profile of the Singular Painter

in Art, Television | February 17th, 2012

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxiv3OW6wkg&feature=share&list=PL45A8A6F84E5E2A8D

When did you first feel the rush of stealth­ily man­nered grotes­querie that is Fran­cis Bacon’s Study after Velázquez’s Por­trait of Pope Inno­cent X? If you’ve seen the paint­ing in detail, even in repro­duc­tion, you’ll always remem­ber that moment. By the same token, if you watch this Emmy Award-win­ning pro­file of Fran­cis Bacon (above), you’ll always remem­ber these 51 min­utes. A pro­duc­tion of Lon­don Week­end Tele­vi­sion (now ITV Lon­don), The South Bank Show offered doc­u­men­tary por­traits of well-known artists and per­form­ers from Dou­glas Adams to Steve Reich to Ter­ry Gilliam to the Pet Shop Boys. Only nat­ur­al, then, that it would turn its lens toward Bacon in 1985, when his can­vass­es of human fig­ures, often in trip­tych, just abstract­ed enough to cause sub­con­scious trou­ble, reached a peak on the art mar­ket. Rov­ing from gallery to stu­dio to café to bar, the pro­gram reveals an artist, one then held, in the words of host Melvyn Bragg, to be the great­est liv­ing painter in the world.

This episode end­ed up win­ning an Inter­na­tion­al Emmy, and beyond the dose of vig­or for the craft it can still shoot into the veins of doc­u­men­tar­i­ans both fresh-faced and world-weary, it attests to the sharp­ness of the minds Lon­don Week­end Tele­vi­sion employed back then. Dis­play­ing a com­bi­na­tion of casu­al­ness, spon­tane­ity, rig­or, and cin­e­mat­ic pre­sen­ta­tion rare even in the­atri­cal films, the broad­cast fol­lows Bragg (now best known as the pre­sen­ter of BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time) and Bacon in a sin­gle long-form con­ver­sa­tion. It begins, sober­ly enough, in the blue glow of a slide pro­jec­tor and ends, drunk­en­ly enough, in the rud­di­ness of the painter’s favorite “drink­ing club,” carv­ing out spaces in between for Bacon’s imagery as well as its visu­al inspi­ra­tions and ref­er­ents.

The pro­gram finds Bacon ready to dis­cuss his life and work with utter frank­ness: his gam­bling; his homo­sex­u­al­i­ty; his dis­taste for the acad­e­my; his famous paint­ings he’d rather see burned; his habit of not only paint­ing with­out a sketch, but doing so on the “wrong” side of the can­vas. And how often do you see an inter­view over a bot­tle of wine whose par­tic­i­pants have actu­al­ly been drink­ing? “Do you think any­thing exists apart from the moment?” Bragg asks Bacon before the lat­ter stag­gers up to pour anoth­er round. “Are you real?” inter­vie­wee lat­er demands of inter­view­er.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Alfred Hitchcock: A Rare Look Into the Filmmaker’s Creative Mind

in Film, Television | February 17th, 2012

Note: Appar­ent­ly this video is geo-restrict­ed by YouTube, and we had no way of know­ing this before pub­li­ca­tion. Our apolo­gies. To make it up to you, we have pulled togeth­er 21 Hitch­cock films that are freely avail­able online.

Alfred Hitch­cock takes us inside his cre­ative process in this fas­ci­nat­ing 1964 pro­gram from the Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion. “A Talk with Alfred Hitch­cock” is part inter­view, part mas­ter class in the craft of telling sto­ries on film.

The pro­gram was pro­duced in two seg­ments for the doc­u­men­tary series Tele­scope. It fea­tures scenes from Hitch­cock­’s movies, inter­views with his long-time col­lab­o­ra­tors, and glimpses of Hitch­cock at work on the set of his 1964 film Marnie. The inter­view, con­duct­ed by Fletch­er Markle, cov­ers a lot of ground. In episode one (above), Hitch­cock talks about the nature of art and the meth­ods he uses as a film­mak­er to manip­u­late the audi­ence’s emo­tions. The dis­cus­sion con­tin­ues in episode two (below) with more on Hitch­cock­’s career, along with insights into his rela­tion­ship with the pub­lic and his out­look on life. “A Talk with Alfred Hitch­cock” is a must-see for cin­e­ma lovers.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Alfred Hitch­cock: The Secret Sauce for Cre­at­ing Sus­pense

Alfred Hitch­cock Recalls Work­ing with Sal­vador Dali on Spell­bound

François Truf­faut’s Big Inter­view with Alfred Hitch­cock (Free Audio)

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Everything is a Remix: An Exploration of Remixing as a Form of Creativity

in Film, Literature, Technology | February 16th, 2012

In a series of short films, direc­tor Kir­by Fer­gu­son has been grad­u­al­ly mak­ing the case that “Every­thing is a Remix” — that great art does­n’t come out of nowhere. Artists inevitably bor­row from one anoth­er, draw­ing on past ideas and con­ven­tions, then turn­ing these mate­ri­als into some­thing beau­ti­ful and new. The first film high­light­ed the role of remix­ing in lit­er­a­ture and music. The sec­ond install­ment shift­ed the focus to film­mak­ing, while the third turned to tech­nol­o­gy, com­put­ers and user inter­faces. Today, Fer­gu­son released the fourth and final install­ment — “Sys­tem Fail­ure” — which makes the argu­ment that ever-expand­ing copy­right laws, despite what our Found­ing Fathers intend­ed, now tilt in favor of cor­po­rate inter­ests rather than the social good. And, more omi­nous­ly, they threat­en to put the brakes on an essen­tial part of the cre­ative process. If you’ve enjoyed this series, which you can watch in full above, you can sup­port Fer­gu­son’s next project, This is Not a Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ry, on Kick­Starter.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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Suzanne Vega, “The Mother of the MP3,” Records “Tom’s Diner” with the Edison Cylinder

in Music, Technology | February 16th, 2012

An oft-repeat­ed piece of sound engi­neer­ing apoc­rypha holds that the cre­ators of the MP3 for­mat geared it specif­i­cal­ly to repro­duce, as faith­ful­ly as pos­si­ble, Suzanne Veg­a’s “Tom’s Din­er.” You might know the song in the orig­i­nal; you prob­a­bly know the song in its DNA remix; you could even know the song in that ver­sion Bil­ly Bragg and R.E.M. put togeth­er, or in any of the count­less trib­utes, falling in unusu­al places on the spec­trum between remix­es and cov­ers, that oth­er artists have paid. Alas, that sto­ry isn’t quite true: when we lis­ten to MP3s, we aren’t lis­ten­ing to music com­pressed by a pre­ci­sion-tuned “Tom’s Din­er” deliv­ery sys­tem. But the song did influ­ence the tech­ni­cal­i­ties of what MP3s do to turn songs into small, man­age­able dig­i­tal files. Karl­heinz Bran­den­burg, a key con­trib­u­tor to the MP3 com­pres­sion algo­rithm, did indeed put MP3 tech­nol­o­gy to the test ear­ly in its devel­op­ment by using it to com­press Veg­a’s hit. Upon play­back, he heard enough dis­tor­tion in the singing to per­form some seri­ous tweak­ing.

Evi­dent­ly such a “warm a capel­la voice,” in Bran­den­burg’s words, does­n’t take com­pres­sion well. So how does it stand up to the brute rig­ors of one of the old­est record­ing media in exis­tence? In this video Vega sings “Tom’s Din­er,” with­out ampli­fi­ca­tion, into the horn of a vin­tage Thomas Edi­son phono­graph machine as its nee­dle digs the song straight into wax. Not “wax” as in the vinyl we’ve all played music on — wax as in wax. The tech­ni­cian then read­ies the cylin­der for play­back, winds the crank, and releas­es “Tom’s Din­er 1890”: a speed- and pitch-incon­stant war­ble beneath a car­pet of sur­face noise, but unmis­tak­ably the same stark, haunt­ing­ly jaun­ty melody that worked its way into our col­lec­tive con­scious­ness for decades, touch­ing even those who lack the audio-geek enthu­si­asm to get excit­ed by this bridge between the first era of imper­fect son­ic repro­duc­tion and our own era of imper­fect son­ic repro­duc­tion. h/t Radio.com

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Young on the Trav­es­ty of MP3s

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A Brief, Animated Introduction to Thomas Edison (and Nikola Tesla)

in Animation, History, Technology | February 15th, 2012

Last year, Jere­mi­ah War­ren cel­e­brat­ed the 154th birth­day of Niko­la Tes­la by cre­at­ing (in less than 36 hours) a short, ani­mat­ed intro­duc­tion to Tes­la’s work, which con­tributed to the birth of com­mer­cial elec­tric­i­ty. Now War­ren turns to Thomas Edi­son, the great inven­tor, who gave us the phono­graph, the motion pic­ture cam­era, the long-last­ing elec­tric light bulb, among oth­er inven­tions. Hold­ing 1,093 US patents in his name, Edi­son is appar­ent­ly the fourth most pro­lif­ic inven­tor in his­to­ry. And, it’s worth not­ing, he once employed Tes­la before lat­er becom­ing his rival.

In times past, we have high­light­ed Edis­on’s tech­nol­o­gy in action. Don’t miss Mark Twain Cap­tured on Film by Thomas Edi­son (1909), Edi­son him­self recit­ing “Mary Had a Lit­tle Lamb” in an Ear­ly Voice Record­ing, Bike Tricks Caught on Film Cour­tesy of Mr. Edi­son, and The World’s First (and Slight­ly Scan­dalous) Hand-Tint­ed Motion Pic­ture, anoth­er Edi­son cre­ation.

Want to share intel­li­gent media with friends? Sim­ply fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus and we’ll make it a cinch.

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Trotsky, Russian Revolutionary, Makes Debut Performance Before Microphone (1932)

in History, Politics | February 15th, 2012

Many moons ago, we fea­tured a speech by Leon Trot­sky giv­en in his Mex­i­can exile in 1937. Turns out record­ings of his tele­vi­sion address­es go back even fur­ther. The short clip above was record­ed in Den­mark in 1932 and is titled “Trotzky makes debut per­for­mance before micro­phone”. (A lit­tle aside: The clip was pro­duced by Fox Movi­etone News, a news­reel that ran in the U.S. from 1928 to 1963. Would Fox still show some­thing like this today?) In Novem­ber 1932, Trot­sky left his exile in Turkey to accept an invi­ta­tion by the Dan­ish Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic Stu­dents’ Asso­ci­a­tion to come to Copen­hagen and speak about the Russ­ian Rev­o­lu­tion. You can read the text of the speech called “In Defence of Octo­ber” held on Novem­ber 27 here. There are also two impres­sive pho­tos secret­ly tak­en by a pho­to­jour­nal­ist. There was a lot of com­mo­tion sur­round­ing Trot­sky’s trip to Den­mark: the Dan­ish Com­mu­nist Par­ty, con­trolled by Stal­in, staged demon­stra­tions and the Roy­al Fam­i­ly protest­ed against his vis­it — they held Trot­sky respon­si­ble for the vio­lent deaths of their rel­a­tives, the Tsar and his fam­i­ly. Nev­er­the­less, Trot­sky deliv­ered his speech before an audi­ence of about 2,500. The video address was record­ed in Eng­lish two weeks lat­er, on Decem­ber 10, 1932.

To see oth­er famous lead­ers mak­ing their debut per­for­mances, check out Mahat­ma Gand­hi in his First Record­ed Video and Nel­son Mandela’s First-Ever Inter­view.

By pro­fes­sion, Matthias Rasch­er teach­es Eng­lish and His­to­ry at a High School in north­ern Bavaria, Ger­many. In his free time he scours the web for good links and posts the best finds on Twit­ter.

 

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In Search of Haruki Murakami: A Documentary Introduction to Japan’s Great Postmodernist Novelist

in Books, Literature | February 15th, 2012

Haru­ki Muraka­mi holds the titles of both the most pop­u­lar nov­el­ist in Japan and the most pop­u­lar Japan­ese nov­el­ist in the wider world. After pub­lish­ing Nor­we­gian Wood in 1987, a book often called “the Japan­ese Catch­er in the Rye,” Murakami’s noto­ri­ety explod­ed to such an extent that he felt forced out of his home­land, a coun­try whose tra­di­tion­al ways and — to his mind — con­formist mind­set nev­er sat right with him in the first place. Though he returned to Japan in the after­math of the Kobe earth­quake and the Tokyo under­ground gas attacks, he remained an author shaped by his favorite for­eign cul­tures — espe­cial­ly Amer­i­ca’s. This, com­bined with his yearn­ing to break from estab­lished Japan­ese lit­er­ary norms, has gen­er­at­ed enough inter­na­tion­al demand for his work to sell briskly in almost every lan­guage in which peo­ple read nov­els.

I myself once spent a month doing noth­ing but read­ing Murakami’s work, and this BBC doc­u­men­tary Haru­ki Muraka­mi: In Search of this Elu­sive Writer makes a valiant attempt to cap­ture what about it could raise such a com­pul­sion. Rupert Edwards’ cam­era fol­lows vet­er­an pre­sen­ter Alan Yen­tob through Japan, from the mid­night Tokyo of After Hours to the snowed-in Hokkai­do of A Wild Sheep Chase, in a quest to find arti­facts of the supreme­ly famous yet media-shy novelist’s imag­i­nary world. Built around inter­views with fans and trans­la­tors but thick with such Murakami­ana as laid-back jazz stan­dards, grim school hall­ways, six­ties pop hits, women’s ears, vinyl records, marathon run­ners, and talk­ing cats, the broad­cast strives less to explain Murakami’s sub­stance than to sim­ply reflect it. If you find your curios­i­ty piqued by all the fuss over 1Q84, Murakami’s lat­est, you might watch it as some­thing of an aes­thet­ic primer.

Relat­ed con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to the World of Haru­ki Muraka­mi Through Doc­u­men­taries, Sto­ries, Ani­ma­tion, Music Playlists & More

A 96-Song Playlist of Music in Haru­ki Murakami’s Nov­els: Miles Davis, Glenn Gould, the Beach Boys & More

Read 5 Sto­ries By Haru­ki Muraka­mi Free Online (For a Lim­it­ed Time)

A Pho­to­graph­ic Tour of Haru­ki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Mem­o­ry, and Real­i­ty Meet

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Weird World of Vintage Sports

in Film, History | February 15th, 2012

British Pathé has released an inter­est­ing col­lec­tion of vin­tage news­reel clips high­light­ing ear­ly exper­i­ments in hybrid sports. Some of the feats are dar­ing, oth­ers mere­ly sil­ly. All are fun to watch.

News­reels of this type were an impor­tant part of the movie-going expe­ri­ence in the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry, often fea­tur­ing cov­er­age of news, enter­tain­ment, cul­ture and sports. Some reels were pack­aged into reg­u­lar­ly appear­ing “cin­emagazines” like Pathé Pic­to­r­i­al, a mov­ing-pic­ture ana­logue of the illus­trat­ed mag­a­zines of the day.

The reel above, shot in Bavaria in 1955, expos­es the “Most Dan­ger­ous Sport in the World.” Motor ski­ing, also known as “motor­ized ski­jor­ing,” involves ski­iers being pulled at high speeds over ice and snow by cars or motor­cy­cles. You can scroll down to watch a few more of our favorites, or access the whole col­lec­tion on YouTube, at the British Pathé Sport­ing His­to­ry chan­nel.

Cycle Skat­ing, Paris, 1923:

Ten­nis on Ice, Amer­i­ca, 1931:

Sum­mer Ski­ing on the Boule­vards, Paris, 1930:

Blimp Water Ski­ing, 1932:

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