An Archive of Handwritten Traditional Mexican Cookbooks Is Now Online

in Books, Food & Drink, History | February 12th, 2020

“The search for authen­tic Mex­i­can food—or rather, the strug­gle to define what that meant—has been going on for two hun­dred years,” writes Jef­frey Pilch­er at Guer­ni­ca. Argu­ments over nation­al cui­sine first divid­ed into fac­tions along his­tor­i­cal lines of con­quest. Indige­nous, corn-based cuisines were pit­ted against wheat-based Euro­pean foods, while Tex-Mex cook­ing has been “indus­tri­al­ized and car­ried around the world,” its processed com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion pos­ing an offense to both indige­nous peo­ples and Span­ish elites, who them­selves lat­er “sought to ground their nation­al cui­sine in the pre-His­pan­ic past” in order to fend off asso­ci­a­tions with glob­al­ized Mex­i­can food of the chain restau­rant vari­ety.

Stephanie Noell, Spe­cial Col­lec­tions Librar­i­an at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas San Anto­nio (UTSA), explains how these lines were drawn cen­turies ear­li­er dur­ing the “culi­nary cul­tur­al exchange” of the colo­nial peri­od: “[C]onquistador Bernal Diaz del Castil­lo referred to corn dish­es as the ‘mis­ery of maize cakes.’ On the oth­er side, the Nahuas were not impressed by the Spaniards’ wheat bread, describ­ing it as ‘famine food.’” What­ev­er we point to—corn, wheat, etc.—and call “Mex­i­can food,” we are sure to be cor­rect­ed by some­one in the know.

Cook­ing, as every­one knows, is not only region­al and polit­i­cal, but also deeply per­son­al– tied to fam­i­ly gath­er­ings and passed through gen­er­a­tions in hand­writ­ten recipes, some­times jeal­ous­ly guard­ed lest they be stolen and turned into fast food. But thanks to UTSA Libraries, we have access to hun­dreds of such recipes. An ini­tial dona­tion of 550 cook­books has grown to include “over 2,000 titles in Eng­lish and Span­ish,” notes UTSA, “doc­u­ment­ing the his­to­ry of Mex­i­can cui­sine from 1789 to the present, with most books dat­ing from 1940–2000.” Many of the books, like that below from 1960, con­sist of hand­writ­ten con­tent next to cut-and-paste recipes and ideas from mag­a­zines.

The col­lec­tion spans “region­al cook­ing, healthy and veg­e­tar­i­an recipes, cor­po­rate adver­tis­ing cook­books, and man­u­script recipe books.” The old­est cook­book, belong­ing to some­one named “Doña Ignaci­ta,” whom Noell believes to have been the kitchen man­ag­er of a wealthy fam­i­ly, “is a hand­writ­ten recipe col­lec­tion in a note­book,” writes Nils Bern­stein at Atlas Obscu­ra, “com­plete with liq­uid stains, doo­dles, and pages that nat­u­ral­ly fall open to the most-loved recipes.” Like the oth­er man­u­script cook­books in the col­lec­tion, “nev­er intend­ed for pub­lic scruti­ny,” this one “pro­vides essen­tial insight on how real house­holds cooked on a reg­u­lar basis.”

“I’ve had stu­dents in tears going through these,” says Noell, “because it’s so pow­er­ful to see that con­nec­tion with how their fam­i­ly makes cer­tain dish­es and where they orig­i­nat­ed.” On the oth­er hand, we also have gener­ic “Cor­po­rate Cook­books” like Rec­etario Bim­bo, a book of sand­wich recipes from the well-known bread com­pa­ny Bim­bo. Recent pub­li­ca­tions like the ultra-hip, 2017 Fies­ta: Veg­an Mex­i­can Cook­book, which promis­es “over 75 authen­tic veg­an-Mex­i­can food recipes includ­ed,” strain the word “authen­tic” to its break­ing point. (“Want to feel all the great ben­e­fits from the keto­genic diet?” the book’s blurb asks, a ques­tion that prob­a­bly nev­er occurred to either Aztecs or Con­quis­ta­dors.)

The UTSA Mex­i­can Cook­books col­lec­tion is open to the pub­lic and any­one can vis­it it in per­son, but Noell wants “any­body with an inter­net con­nec­tion to be able to see these works.” UTSA has been busy dig­i­tiz­ing the 100 man­u­script cook­books in the col­lec­tion, and has scanned about half so far, with Doña Ignacita’s 1789 note­book com­ing soon. While these aren’t like­ly to resolve debates about what con­sti­tutes authen­tic Mex­i­can cooking—as if such a thing exist­ed in a mono­lith­ic, time­less form—they are sure to be of very keen inter­est to chefs, home cooks, his­to­ri­ans, and enthu­si­asts of the his­to­ry of Mex­i­can food. Enter the dig­i­tal col­lec­tion of man­u­script cook­books here.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Archive of 3,000 Vin­tage Cook­books Lets You Trav­el Back Through Culi­nary Time

82 Vin­tage Cook­books, Free to Down­load, Offer a Fas­ci­nat­ing Illus­trat­ed Look at Culi­nary and Cul­tur­al His­to­ry

The Futur­ist Cook­book (1930) Tried to Turn Ital­ian Cui­sine into Mod­ern Art

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

36,000 Flash Games Have Been Archived and Saved Before Flash Goes Extinct: Play Them Offline

in Archives, Video Games | February 4th, 2020

Adobe has announced that the Flash Play­er will come to the offi­cial end of its life on the last day of this year, Decem­ber 31, 2020. News of the demise of an obso­lete inter­net mul­ti­me­dia plat­form pre­sum­ably both­ers few of today’s web-surfers, but those of us belong­ing to a cer­tain gen­er­a­tion feel in it the end of an era. First intro­duced by Macro­me­dia in 1996, Flash made pos­si­ble the kind of ani­ma­tion and sound we’d sel­dom seen and heard — assum­ing we could man­age to load it through our slug­gish con­nec­tions at all — on the inter­net before. By the ear­ly 2000s, Flash seemed to pow­er most every­thing fun on the inter­net, espe­cial­ly every­thing fun to the kids then in mid­dle and high school who’d grown up along­side the World Wide Web.

Though now deep into adult­hood, we all remem­ber the hours of the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry we hap­pi­ly whiled away on Flash games, rac­ing cars, solv­ing puz­zles, shoot­ing zom­bies, dodg­ing comets, fir­ing can­nons, and pilot­ing heli­copters on class­room com­put­ers. We could, in the­o­ry, find many of these games and play them still today, but that may become impos­si­ble next year when all major web browsers will dis­con­tin­ue their sup­port for Flash.

“That’s where Flash­point comes in to save a huge chunk of gam­ing his­to­ry,” writes Kotaku’s Zack Zwiezen. “Flash­point uses open-source tech to allow folks to down­load and play a large list of games and ani­ma­tions. The full list con­tains just over 36,000 games and you can sug­gest new games to be added if some­thing you love isn’t on here.”

On Flash­point’s down­load page you’ll find its full 290-giga­byte col­lec­tion of Flash games, as well as a small­er ver­sion that only down­loads games as you play them. “While Flash games might not be as impres­sive today, they are still an impor­tant part of gam­ing his­to­ry,” writes Zwiezen. “These small web games can be direct­ly linked to the lat­er rise of mobile and indie games and helped many cre­ators get their feet wet with build­ing and cre­at­ing video games.” In oth­er words, the sim­ple Flash amuse­ments of our school­days gave rise to the graph­i­cal­ly and son­i­cal­ly intense games that we play so com­pul­sive­ly today. Now we have kids who play those sorts of games too, but who among us will ini­ti­ate the next gen­er­a­tion into the ways of Crush the Cas­tle, Age of War, and Bub­ble Trou­ble?

You can find more infor­ma­tion on the flash video game archive on this FAQ page.

via Kotaku

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Inter­net Archive Makes 2,500 More Clas­sic MS-DOS Video Games Free to Play Online: Alone in the Dark, Doom, Microsoft Adven­ture, and Oth­ers

Run Vin­tage Video Games (From Pac-Man to E.T.) and Soft­ware in Your Web Brows­er, Thanks to Archive.org

1,100 Clas­sic Arcade Machines Added to the Inter­net Arcade: Play Them Free Online

Play a Col­lec­tion of Clas­sic Hand­held Video Games at the Inter­net Archive: Pac-Man, Don­key Kong, Tron and MC Ham­mer

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Why the Soviets Doctored Their Most Iconic World War II Victory Photo, “Raising a Flag Over the Reichstag”

in History, Photography | January 30th, 2020

No pho­to­graph sym­bol­izes Amer­i­can vic­to­ry more rec­og­niz­ably than Joe Rosen­thal’s Pulitzer Prize-win­ning Rais­ing the Flag on Iwo Jima. Tak­en on Feb­ru­ary 23, 1945, it shows six U.S. Marines rais­ing their coun­try’s flag dur­ing the bat­tle — a bloody one even by the stan­dards of the Sec­ond World War — for con­trol of that Japan­ese island. The Sovi­et Union had an equiv­a­lent image: Yevge­ny Khaldei’s Rais­ing a Flag over the Reich­stag, which shows a Russ­ian sol­dier rais­ing the Sovi­et flag on the roof of the for­mer Ger­man par­lia­ment on May 2, 1945, dur­ing the Bat­tle of Berlin. The sim­i­lar­i­ties are obvi­ous, but the dif­fer­ence isn’t: the Sovi­et pho­to was faked.

To be more spe­cif­ic, Khaldei’s pic­ture was “staged,” and “parts of it were altered before it was pub­lished.” So says Vox’s Cole­man Lown­des in the video above, which reveals all the pre-Pho­to­shop image manip­u­la­tion — a spe­cial­ty of Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­dists even then —  per­formed on Rais­ing a Flag over the Reich­stag.

“Khaldei super­im­posed some black smoke from anoth­er pho­to and manip­u­lat­ed the con­trast to give the scene a lit­tle more dra­ma,” which in itself may be an under­stand­able choice. But he also erased the wrist­watch of one of the sol­diers brought in to pose with the flag, a detail you might not notice even hold­ing the orig­i­nal and the doc­tored ver­sion side by side. As Lown­des explains, “The sol­dier sup­port­ing the flag-bear­er was wear­ing two watch­es, sug­gest­ing he had been loot­ing, a stain that did­n’t fit the image of Sovi­et hero­ism that Stal­in want­ed.”

A look at the pre­ced­ing few years of the war goes some way to explain­ing this. Ger­many had bru­tal­ly invad­ed Rus­sia in 1941, instill­ing in Rus­sia a thirst for revenge that began to seem satiable when the tables began to turn on Ger­many the fol­low­ing year. In and on their way to Ger­many, the Red Army, too, com­mit­ted crimes against the civil­ians in their path, loot­ing sure­ly being among the least of them. Rais­ing a Flag over the Reich­stag does its job in cap­tur­ing a moment of Sovi­et vic­to­ry, but as Lown­des says, “it also cap­tures, and then con­ceals, a sto­ry of vengeance and mutu­al bru­tal­i­ty, of mur­der, orga­nized destruc­tion, and pil­lag­ing, all cul­mi­nat­ing in this icon­ic moment.” And the more icon­ic the moment, the more poten­tial­ly rev­e­la­to­ry its details — even more so in the case of false ones.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Long Before Pho­to­shop, the Sovi­ets Mas­tered the Art of Eras­ing Peo­ple from Pho­tographs — and His­to­ry Too

Joseph Stal­in, a Life­long Edi­tor, Wield­ed a Big, Blue, Dan­ger­ous Pen­cil

The His­to­ry of Rus­sia in 70,000 Pho­tos: New Pho­to Archive Presents Russ­ian His­to­ry from 1860 to 1999

Down­load 437 Issues of Sovi­et Pho­to Mag­a­zine, the Sovi­et Union’s His­toric Pho­tog­ra­phy Jour­nal (1926–1991)

The First Faked Pho­to­graph (1840)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

How the Psychedelic Mellotron Works: An In-Depth Demonstration

in Music | January 29th, 2020

Record­ed music his­to­ry is filled with instru­ments that appeared for a brief time, then were nev­er heard from again—relegated to the dust­bin of too-quirky, heavy, awk­ward, tonal­ly-unpleas­ant, or impos­si­ble-to-tune-and-main­tain. Then there are instruments—once they assumed their basic shape and form—that have per­sist­ed large­ly unchanged for cen­turies. The Mel­lotron falls into nei­ther of these cat­e­gories. But it may in time tran­scend them both in a strange way.

“Of all of the strange instru­ments that’ve worked the edges of pop­u­lar music,” writes Gareth Bran­wyn at Boing Boing, “the Mel­lotron is prob­a­bly the odd­est. Basi­cal­ly an upright organ cab­i­net filled the tape heads and record­ed tape strips that you trig­ger through the key­board, the Mel­lotron is like some crazy one-off con­trap­tion that caught on and actu­al­ly got man­u­fac­tured.”

First made in Eng­land in 1963, it appeared in var­i­ous mod­els through­out the sev­en­ties and eight­ies. It has reap­peared in the nineties and 2000s in improved and upgrad­ed ver­sions, all lead­ing up to what Sound on Sound called “the most tech­no­log­i­cal­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed Mel­lotron ever,” the 2007 M4000. In the video above Alli­son Stout from Bell Tone Synth Works, a music shop in Philadel­phia, PA, demon­strates a much ear­li­er, far less advanced M400 from 1976.

Not only did the Mel­lotron beat the odds of remain­ing an unwork­able pro­to­type; the pro­to-sam­pler became a psy­che­del­ic sig­na­ture: from “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” to the Moody Blues and David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty.” It pop­u­lat­ed ear­ly prog rock, thanks to Yes’s Rick Wake­man, who played on Bowie’s space rock clas­sic in 1969, and to Ian McDon­ald, who fell for the instru­ment that same year as a found­ing mem­ber of King Crim­son. (See enthu­si­as­tic YouTu­ber “Doc­tor Mix” play Mel­lotron parts from well-known songs above.)

The instrument’s slight­ly cheesy, Lawrence-Welk-orches­tra-like sounds some­how fit per­fect­ly with the loose, spa­cious instru­men­ta­tion of prog and psych rock; its sound will live as long as the music of The Bea­t­les, Bowie, and every­one else who put a micro­phone in front of a Mel­lotron. Yet in most of its iter­a­tions, the Mel­lotron has lacked the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a melod­ic instru­ment that sur­vives the test of time. It is finicky and prone to fre­quent break­downs. It is lim­it­ed in its tonal range to a series of tape record­ings of a lim­it­ed num­ber of instru­ments.

In the case of the Mel­lotron M400 at the top, those instru­ments are vio­lin, flute, and cel­lo. Do the sounds com­ing from the Mel­lotron in any way improve upon or even approx­i­mate the qual­i­ties of their orig­i­nals? Of course not. Why would musi­cians choose to record with a Mel­lotron at a time when ana­logue syn­the­siz­ers were becom­ing afford­able, portable, and capa­ble of an expres­sive range of tones? The answer is sim­ple. Noth­ing else makes the weird, warm, war­bly, whirring, and entire­ly oth­er­world­ly sound of a Mel­lotron, and noth­ing ever will.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­ing the Mel­lotron: A Groovy 1965 Demon­stra­tion of the “Musi­cal Com­put­er” Used by The Bea­t­les, Moody Blues & Oth­er Psy­che­del­ic Pop Artists

Rick Wake­man Tells the Sto­ry of the Mel­lotron, the Odd­ball Pro­to-Syn­the­siz­er Pio­neered by the Bea­t­les

Vis­it an Online Col­lec­tion of 61,761 Musi­cal Instru­ments from Across the World

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

The e‑Book Imagined in 1935

in Books, History, Technology | January 29th, 2020

What is the future of the book? Will it retain more or less the same basic paper-between-cov­ers form as it has since the days of the Guten­berg Bible? Will it go entire­ly dig­i­tal, becom­ing read­able only with com­pat­i­ble elec­tron­ic devices? Or will we, in the com­fort of our arm­chairs, read them on glass-screened micro­film pro­jec­tors? That last is the bet made, and illus­trat­ed as above, by the April 1935 issue of Every­day Sci­ence and Mechan­ics mag­a­zine. “It has proved pos­si­ble to pho­to­graph books, and throw them on a screen for exam­i­na­tion,” says the arti­cle envi­sion­ing “a device for apply­ing this for home use and instruc­tion,” exhumed by Matt Novak at Smithsonian.com.

As The Atlantic’s Megan Gar­ber writes, “The whole thing, to our TV-and-tablet-jad­ed eyes, looks won­der­ful­ly quaint. (The pro­jec­tor! The knobs! The semi-redun­dant read­ing lamp! The smok­ing jack­et!)” But then, “what speaks to our cur­rent, hazy dreams of con­ver­gence more elo­quent­ly than the abil­i­ty to sit back, relax, and turn books into tele­vi­sion?”

And indeed, the orig­i­nal illus­tra­tion includes a cap­tion telling us how such a device will allow you to “read a ‘book’ (which is a roll of minia­ture film), music, etc., at your ease.” That may sound famil­iar to those of us who think noth­ing of flip­ping back and forth between books, web sites, movies, tele­vi­sion shows, and social media — all to our cus­tomized music-and-pod­cast sound­track of choice — on our com­put­ers, tablets, and phones today.

Every­day Sci­ence and Mechan­ics was­n’t look­ing into the dis­tant future. As Novak notes, micro­film had been patent­ed in 1895 and first prac­ti­cal­ly used in 1925; the New York Times began copy­ing its every edi­tion onto micro­film in 1935, the same year this arti­cle appeared. As imprac­ti­cal as it may look now, this home “e‑reader” could the­o­ret­i­cal­ly have been put into use not long there­after. As it hap­pened, the first e‑readers — the hand­held dig­i­tal ones of the kind we know today — would­n’t come on the mar­ket for anoth­er 70 years, and their wide­spread adop­tion has only occurred in the past decade. But for many, good old Guten­berg-style paper-between-cov­ers remains the way to read. It may be that the book has no one future form, but a vari­ety that will exist at once — a vari­ety that, absent a much stronger retro­fu­tur­ism revival, will prob­a­bly not include micro­film, ground-glass screens, and smok­ing jack­ets.

via Smithsonian.com

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read­ers Pre­dict in 1936 Which Nov­el­ists Would Still Be Wide­ly Read in the Year 2000

1930s Fash­ion Design­ers Pre­dict How Peo­ple Would Dress in the Year 2000

Did Stan­ley Kubrick Invent the iPad in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

9 Sci­ence-Fic­tion Authors Pre­dict the Future: How Jules Verne, Isaac Asi­mov, William Gib­son, Philip K. Dick & More Imag­ined the World Ahead

Napoleon’s Kin­dle: See the Minia­tur­ized Trav­el­ing Library He Took on Mil­i­tary Cam­paigns

Behold the “Book Wheel”: The Renais­sance Inven­tion Cre­at­ed to Make Books Portable & Help Schol­ars Study (1588)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Secret of the “Perfect Montage” at the Heart of Parasite, the Korean Film Now Sweeping World Cinema

in Film | January 28th, 2020

For near­ly as long as mankind has tried to com­mit the per­fect crime, mankind has tried to tell sto­ries of the per­fect crime. Both endeav­ors demand inten­sive plan­ning, the sto­ry of the crime per­haps even more rig­or­ous­ly so than the crime itself. No less obses­sive a teller and reteller of “per­fect crime” sto­ries than Alfred Hitch­cock knew that well, and so he remains an icon of such sto­ry­telling in cin­e­ma. Hence the visu­al ref­er­ence, albeit a van­ish­ing­ly brief one, to the mas­ter of sus­pense in Kore­an block­buster auteur Bong Joon-ho’s Par­a­site, which has run vic­to­ry laps around the world ever since win­ning the Palme d’Or last year. Or so Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer, tells it in his new video essay on Par­a­site’s “per­fect mon­tage.”

This mon­tage comes at the end of the film’s first act, about 40 min­utes in, at which point Bong has clear­ly estab­lished the plot, both in the sense of the sequence of events that sets the sto­ry in motion, and of the devi­ous plan devised by the main char­ac­ters. Those main char­ac­ters are the Kims, a poor fam­i­ly in Seoul who, one by one, ingra­ti­ate them­selves with and obtain employ­ment with­in the house­hold of a rich fam­i­ly, the Parks — all while pre­tend­ing not to be relat­ed. After the father becomes the Parks’ chauf­feur, the son becomes their Eng­lish tutor, the daugh­ter becomes their art ther­a­pist, the Kims all work togeth­er to get the moth­er hired as the house­keep­er. But this requires the dis­place­ment of the rich fam­i­ly’s exist­ing house­keep­er, who’s worked in the home ever since it was first built.

That dis­place­ment is the sub­ject of the mon­tage, which over five min­utes relays to the view­er both how the Kims devise their plan — which involves turn­ing the old house­keep­er’s peach aller­gy into a seem­ing case of tuber­cu­lo­sis — and how they pull it off. Puschak under­scores “how bal­let­ic every­thing is, helped along by a clas­si­cal piece from Han­del’s Rodelin­da,” as well as the “mes­mer­ic” qual­i­ty enriched by Bong’s use of “both slow-motion and lin­ear cam­era moves.” Pre­sent­ing new infor­ma­tion in each and every one of its 60 shots, the mon­tage also fore­shad­ows com­ing events and ref­er­ences pre­vi­ous ones with­in itself, inspir­ing Puschak to com­pare it to a con­ver­sa­tion, and lat­er to “an organ­ism all its own.”

All well and good as a demon­stra­tion of cin­e­mat­ic tech­nique, and indeed “a tes­ta­ment to Bong Joon-ho’s con­trol of his craft.” But unless form aligns with sub­stance, no art can attain great­ness; what makes this a “per­fect mon­tage” is how its very per­fec­tion reflects that of the Kim fam­i­ly’s machi­na­tions — at least at the point in the film at which it arrives. As with most sto­ries of the per­fect crime, things start to fall apart there­after, though even as they do, Bong’s hand (as well as that of his edi­tor Yang Jin-mo) nev­er fal­ters. This sequence, and Par­a­site as a whole, would sure­ly com­mand the respect of Alfred Hitch­cock. But Hitch­cock would also rec­og­nize, as Bong him­self must, that a mon­tage can always be more fine­ly tuned. There may be no such thing as the per­fect crime, but it remains a promis­ing the­mat­ic vehi­cle for get­ting ever clos­er to per­fec­tion in cin­e­ma.

Below, as an added bonus, you can watch the direc­tor him­self break down Par­a­site’s open­ing scene:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Ser­gio Leone Made Music an Actor in His Spaghet­ti West­erns, Cre­at­ing a Per­fect Har­mo­ny of Sound & Image

How David Lynch Manip­u­lates You: A Close Read­ing of Mul­hol­land Dri­ve

Mar­tin Scors­ese Intro­duces Film­mak­er Hong Sang­soo, “The Woody Allen of Korea”

The Five Best North Kore­an Movies: Watch Them Free Online

A Crash Course on Sovi­et Mon­tage, the Russ­ian Approach to Film­mak­ing That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Cin­e­ma

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Fellini’s Fantastic TV Commercials for Barilla, Campari & More: The Italian Filmmaker Was Born 100 Years Ago Today

in Film, Television | January 20th, 2020

To help cel­e­brate the 100th anniver­sary of the birth of the great Ital­ian film­mak­er Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, we present a series of lyri­cal tele­vi­sion adver­tise­ments made dur­ing the final decade of his life.

In 1984, when he was 64 years old, Felli­ni agreed to make a minia­ture film fea­tur­ing Cam­pari, the famous Ital­ian apéri­tif. The result, Oh, che bel pae­sag­gio! (“Oh, what a beau­ti­ful land­scape!”), shown above, fea­tures a man and a woman seat­ed across from one anoth­er on a long-dis­tance train.

The man (played by Vic­tor Polet­ti) smiles, but the woman (Sil­via Dion­i­sio) averts her eyes, star­ing sul­len­ly out the win­dow and pick­ing up a remote con­trol to switch the scenery. She grows increas­ing­ly exas­per­at­ed as a sequence of desert and medieval land­scapes pass by. Still smil­ing, the man takes the remote con­trol, clicks it, and the beau­ti­ful Cam­po di Mira­coli (“Field of Mir­a­cles”) of Pisa appears in the win­dow, embell­ished by a tow­er­ing bot­tle of Cam­pari.

“In just one minute,” writes Tul­lio Kezich in Fed­eri­co Felli­ni: His Life and Work, “Felli­ni gives us a chap­ter of the sto­ry of the bat­tle between men and women, and makes ref­er­ence to the neu­ro­sis of TV, insin­u­ates that we’re dis­parag­ing the mirac­u­lous gifts of nature and his­to­ry, and offers the hope that there might be a screen that will bring the joy back. The lit­tle tale is as quick as a train and has a remark­ably light touch.”

Also in 1984, Felli­ni made a com­mer­cial titled Alta Soci­eta (“High Soci­ety”) for Bar­il­la riga­toni pas­ta (above). As with the Cam­pari com­mer­cial, Felli­ni wrote the script him­self and col­lab­o­rat­ed with cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Ennio Guarnieri and musi­cal direc­tor Nico­la Pio­vani. The cou­ple in the restau­rant were played by Gre­ta Vaian and Mau­r­izio Mau­ri. The Bar­il­la spot is per­haps the least inspired of Fellini’s com­mer­cials. Bet­ter things were yet to come.

In 1991 Felli­ni made a series of three com­mer­cials for the Bank of Rome called Che Brutte Not­ti or “The Bad Nights.” “These com­mer­cials, aired the fol­low­ing year,” writes Peter Bon­danel­la in The Films of Fed­eri­co Felli­ni, “are par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing, since they find their inspi­ra­tion in var­i­ous dreams Felli­ni had sketched out in his dream note­books dur­ing his career.”

In the episode above, titled “The Pic­nic Lunch Dream,” the clas­sic damsel-in-dis­tress sce­nario is turned upside down when a man (played by Pao­lo Vil­lag­gio) finds him­self trapped on the rail­road tracks with a train bear­ing down on him while the beau­ti­ful woman he was din­ing with (Anna Falchi) climbs out of reach and taunts him. But it’s all a dream, which the man tells to his psy­cho­an­a­lyst (Fer­nan­do Rey). The ana­lyst inter­prets the dream and assures the man that his nights will be rest­ful if he puts his mon­ey in the Ban­co di Roma.

The oth­er com­mer­cials (watch here) are called “The Tun­nel Dream” and “The Dream of the Lion in the Cel­lar.” (You can watch Rober­to Di Vito’s short, untrans­lat­ed film of Felli­ni and his crew work­ing on the project here.)

The bank com­mer­cials were the last films Felli­ni ever made. He died a year after they aired, at age 73. In Kezich’s view, the deeply per­son­al and imag­i­na­tive ads amount to Fellini’s last tes­ta­ment, a brief but won­drous return to form. “In Fed­eri­co’s life,” he writes, “these three com­mer­cial spots are a kind of Indi­an sum­mer, the gold­en autumn of a patri­arch of cin­e­ma who, for a moment, holds again the reins of cre­ation.”

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2012.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fellini’s Three Bank of Rome Com­mer­cials, the Last Thing He Did Behind a Cam­era (1992)

Watch All of the Com­mer­cials That David Lynch Has Direct­ed: A Big 30-Minute Com­pi­la­tion

Wim Wen­ders Cre­ates Ads to Sell Beer (Stel­la Artois), Pas­ta (Bar­il­la), and More Beer (Car­ling)

Ing­mar Bergman’s 1950s Soap Com­mer­cials Wash Away the Exis­ten­tial Despair

All of Wes Anderson’s Cin­e­mat­ic Com­mer­cials: Watch His Spots for Pra­da, Amer­i­can Express, H&M & More

Hear Christopher Tolkien (RIP) Read the Work of His Father J.R.R. Tolkien, Which He Tirelessly Worked to Preserve

in Books, Literature | January 17th, 2020

J.R.R. Tolkien is respon­si­ble for the exis­tence of Mid­dle-earth, the rich­ly real­ized fic­tion­al set­ting of the Lord of the Rings nov­els. But he also did his bit for the exis­tence of the much less fic­tion­al Christo­pher Tolkien, his third son as well as, in J.R.R.‘s own words, his “chief crit­ic and col­lab­o­ra­tor.” Christo­pher spent much of his life return­ing the favor, ded­i­cat­ing him­self to the orga­ni­za­tion, preser­va­tion, and pub­li­ca­tion of his father’s notes on Mid­dle-earth­’s elab­o­rate geog­ra­phy, his­to­ry, and mythol­o­gy until his own death this past Wednes­day at the age of 95.

Most fans of Tolkien père came to know the work of Tolkien fils through The Sil­mar­il­lion, the col­lec­tion of the for­mer’s pre­vi­ous­ly unpub­lished mythopoe­ic writ­ings on Mid­dle-Earth and the uni­verse that con­tains it. That book came out in 1977, four years after J.R.R. Tolkien’s death, and for a time there­after, write The New York Times’ Katharine Q. Seelye and Alan Yuhas, “Tolkien fans and schol­ars won­dered how much of The Sil­mar­il­lion was the work of the father and how much was the work of the son.”

In response, “Christo­pher pro­duced the 12-vol­ume The His­to­ry of Mid­dle-Earth (1996), a com­pi­la­tion of drafts, frag­ments, rewrites, mar­gin­al notes and oth­er writ­ings culled from 70 box­es of unpub­lished mate­r­i­al.”

Christo­pher Tolkien did­n’t just take over J.R.R. Tolkien’s duties as the stew­ard of Mid­dle-earth; he more or less grew up in the place, and even pro­vid­ed com­ments, at his father’s request, on the work that would become The Lord of the Rings. The pow­er of J.R.R. Tolkien’s sto­ry­telling, one often hears, owes in part to the writer’s thor­ough ground­ing in lit­er­ary and lin­guis­tic sub­jects like Eng­lish and Ger­man­ic philol­o­gy, hero­ic verse, Old Norse, Old Ice­landic, and medieval Welsh. Christo­pher Tolkien, in turn, made him­self into what Seelye and Yhuas call “an author­i­ty, above all, on the reams of writ­ing that his father pro­duced.” You can hear Christo­pher Tolkien read author­i­ta­tive­ly from the work of J.R.R. Tolkien in the videos pre­sent­ed here.

The first three clips from the top come two vinyl LPs released in 1977 and 1988 by Caed­mon Records (the pro­to-audio­book label that also put out Edgar Allan Poe read by Vin­cent Price and Basil Rath­bone as well as Hem­ing­way and Faulkn­er read by Hem­ing­way and Faulkn­er). All of their selec­tions come from The Sil­mar­il­lion, the Tolkien text that would nev­er have seen the light of day if not for Christo­pher’s efforts (and those of Guy Gavriel Kay, who would lat­er become a fan­ta­sy nov­el­ist him­self). But as a trib­ute to the man’s life so rig­or­ous­ly devot­ed to a body of work that has fas­ci­nat­ed so many, what could be more suit­able than the video above, his read­ing of the very end of the final book in the Lord of the Rings tril­o­gy, The Return of the King. Christo­pher Tolkien kept his father’s flame alive, and thanks to his work that flame will sur­vive him — and gen­er­a­tions of Tolkien read­ers to come.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear J.R.R. Tolkien Read from The Lord of the Rings and The Hob­bit in Vin­tage Record­ings from the Ear­ly 1950s

110 Draw­ings and Paint­ings by J.R.R. Tolkien: Of Mid­dle-Earth and Beyond

Map of Mid­dle-Earth Anno­tat­ed by Tolkien Found in a Copy of Lord of the Rings

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

How Sam Mendes’ WWI Film 1917 Was Made to Look Like One Long, Harrowing Shot

in Film | January 15th, 2020

Film edit­ing goes back to the late 1890s. The decades upon decades of tech­no­log­i­cal improve­ment and artis­tic refine­ment of the craft since then have tempt­ed cer­tain film­mak­ers to see if they can do with­out it entire­ly, or at least to look as if they can. Alfred Hitch­cock gave it a try in 1948 with Rope, a film typ­i­cal of his work in that it fit into the genre of the psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller, but quite atyp­i­cal in that its main action played out as a sin­gle long shot. But as we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, Rope actu­al­ly con­tained ten art­ful­ly hid­den cuts. Last year saw the release of Sam Mendes’ 1917, which did more or less the same thing, but at a much greater length — and across the bat­tle­fields and through the trench­es of World War I.

As por­trayed in the Insid­er video above, the shoot­ing of 1917 must rank among the most for­mi­da­ble logis­ti­cal achieve­ments in film his­to­ry. It also had the good for­tune to be over­seen by Roger Deakins, one of the most for­mi­da­ble cin­e­matog­ra­phers in film his­to­ry. But even before cap­tur­ing the first frame, Mendes, Deakins, and their many col­lab­o­ra­tors had to plan every detail of the har­row­ing jour­ney tak­en by the pic­ture’s pro­tag­o­nists, two British sol­diers sent across the West­ern Front to deliv­er a mes­sage to anoth­er bat­tal­ion.

This entailed first build­ing and light­ing mod­els of every sin­gle set, and when con­struct­ing the real thing mak­ing sure to include paths (and strate­gi­cal­ly remov­able obsta­cles) for the con­stant­ly for­ward-mov­ing cam­era and its crew as well as for the char­ac­ters.

The war movie is among the old­est of film gen­res, but a “one-shot” war movie like 1917 entered the realm of pos­si­bil­i­ty thanks to recent tech­no­log­i­cal advances. These include cam­eras light enough to be detached from one crane, run across a field, and attached to anoth­er all while shoot­ing; drones to cap­ture mov­ing aer­i­al shots impos­si­ble by more tra­di­tion­al cin­e­mato­graph­ic means; and advanced dig­i­tal effects to smooth — and indeed con­ceal — the tran­si­tions between one shot and the next. The Insid­er video shows an actor tak­ing a run­ning leap off a bridge and onto a mat below, fol­lowed by the seam­less-look­ing final sequence in which he plunges into a riv­er instead, and the cam­era unhesi­tat­ing­ly fol­lows him right into the water. This sort of visu­al wiz­ardry reminds even the most jad­ed view­er that movie mag­ic is alive and well, but also makes one won­der: what could Hitch­cock have done with it?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Sounds of World War I: A Gas Attack Record­ed on the Front Line, and the Moment the Armistice End­ed the War

Peter Jackson’s New Film on World War I Fea­tures Incred­i­ble Dig­i­tal­ly-Restored Footage From the Front Lines: Get a Glimpse

Watch World War I Unfold in a 6 Minute Time-Lapse Film: Every Day From 1914 to 1918

The Great War: Video Series Will Doc­u­ment How WWI Unfold­ed, Week-by-Week, for the Next 4 Years

The First Col­or Pho­tos From World War I: The Ger­man Front

The 10 Hid­den Cuts in Rope (1948), Alfred Hitchcock’s Famous “One-Shot” Fea­ture Film

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

How a Philip Glass Opera Gets Made: An Inside Look

in Design, Fashion, Music, Opera | January 15th, 2020

Most fever dreams require very lit­tle pre-plan­ning and coor­di­na­tion. All it takes is the flu and a pil­low, and per­haps a shot of Ny-Quil.

A fever dream on the order of com­pos­er Philip Glass’ 1984 opera, Akhnat­en, is a horse of an entire­ly dif­fer­ent col­or, as “How An Opera Gets Made,” above, makes clear.

For those in the per­form­ing arts, the rev­e­la­tions of this eye­pop­ping Vox video will come as no sur­prise, though the for­mi­da­ble resources of New York City’s Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera, where the piece was recent­ly restaged by direc­tor Phe­lim McDer­mott, may be cause for envy.

The cos­tumes!

The wigs!

The set!

The orches­tra!

The jug­glers!

… wait, jug­glers?

Yes, a dozen, whose care­ful­ly coor­di­nat­ed efforts pro­vide a coun­ter­point to the styl­ized slow motion pace the rest of the cast main­tains for the dura­tion of the three and half hour long show.

This max­i­mal­ist approach to min­i­mal­ist mod­ern opera has proved a hit, though the New York Times’ crit­ic Antho­ny Tom­masi­ni opined that he could have done with less jug­gling…

We pre­sume every­one gets that bring­ing an opera to the stage involves many more depart­ments, steps, and heavy labor than can be squeezed into a 10-minute video.

Per­haps the biggest sur­prise await­ing the unini­ti­at­ed is the play­ful off­stage man­ner of Antho­ny Roth Costan­zo, the supreme­ly gift­ed coun­tertenor in the title role. As the pharaoh who reduced ancient Egypt’s pan­theon to a sin­gle god, Aten, aka the sun, he makes his first entrance com­plete­ly nude, head shaved, flecked in gold, fac­ing the audi­ence for the entire­ty of his four-minute descent down a 12-step stair­case.

(One step the video does­n’t touch on is the work­out reg­i­men he embarked on in prepa­ra­tion for his nude debut, a 6‑day-a-week com­mit­ment that inspired him to found one of the first Amer­i­can busi­ness­es to offer fit­ness buffs train­ing ses­sions using Elec­tri­cal Mus­cle Stim­u­la­tion.)

His ded­i­ca­tion to his craft is obvi­ous­ly extra­or­di­nary. It has to be for him to han­dle the score’s demand­ing arpeg­gios and intri­cate rep­e­ti­tions, notably the six-minute seg­ment whose only lyric is “ah.” His breath con­trol on that sec­tion earns high praise from his long­time vocal coach Joan Pate­naude-Yarnell.

But—and this will come as a shock to those of us whose con­cept of male opera stars is informed near­ly exclu­sive­ly by Bugs Bun­ny car­toons and the late Luciano Pavarot­ti—his out­sized tal­ent does not seem to be reflect­ed in out­sized self-regard.

He treats view­ers to a self-dep­re­cat­ing peek inside the Met’s wig room while clad in a decid­ed­ly anti-pri­mo uomo sweat­shirt, game­ly dons his sty­ro­foam khep­resh for close range inspec­tion, and cracks him­self up by high-fiv­ing his own pharaon­ic image in the lob­by.

There’s incred­i­ble light­ness to this being.

As such, he may be more effec­tive at attract­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of admir­ers to the art form than any dis­counts or pre-show mix­er for patrons 35-and-under.

For fur­ther insights into how this musi­cal sausage got made, have a gan­der at the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera’s pre-pro­duc­tion videos and read star Antho­ny Roth Costanzo’s essay in the Guardian.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Is Opera Part of Pop Cul­ture? Pret­ty Much Pop #15 with Sean Spyres

Watch Klaus Nomi Debut His New Wave Vaude­ville Show: The Birth of the Opera-Singing Space Alien (1978)

Hear the High­est Note Sung in the 137-Year His­to­ry of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera

Hear Singers from the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Opera Record Their Voic­es on Tra­di­tion­al Wax Cylin­ders

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 6 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates New York: The Nation’s Metrop­o­lis (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.