When I chose the Cinematique theme, it was to show my appreciation for those film-makers who went/go against the grain to bring us some of the best experimental films available to the audience today. Directors like Welles, a genius with a string of failures behind him who didn't ever stop creating; Ed Wood who found a way around every obstacle and gave us, in return, some of the best cult b-movies ever; the director in Derek John's The Archivist, who would stop at nothing to complete his masterpiece.
This issue is also a thank you to those who opened their cinema doors to the public in order that we might get to see the films thought unfit for public viewing by the censors; those who saved reels of film from Nazi destruction; those who dare to play us out with those indie/art-house/foreign films that come with, god forbid, subtitles.
From Peter Lang's 'Imagining the City':
"In Vienna in the 1990s, groups like Kinoki (named after the famous Russian revolutionary cinema collective around Dziga Vertov) squatted spaces with cinema events and in this way entered into a struggle concerning city spaces and people's fantasies. Kinoki was founded in 1994 in a squatted house in Vienna and organized events there like Laughing About Hitler, Punk films and Truant Cinema.
In Paris September 2004 the police discovered a fully equipped cinema-cum-restaurant in Les Catacombes, the miles of tunnels under the city which are mostly closed to the public. Little is known about the activists who squatted this space and also managed to 'furnish' it, as well as with beer, whisky and films, with electricity and a music-station - only that they call themselves 'urban explorers' and are pursuing a mission to 'reclaim and transform disused city spaces for the creation of zones of expression for free and independent art.'"
Within this issue you will find an exceptional collection of material that celebrates and creatively imitates the masters of cinema and their genre, and in so doing, brings about a whole new expression of film literature. This was not an easy theme to work towards and I was amazed by the skill and creativity employed by these writers and artists in their adaptations. This is a very special issue for me, as a film fan, and I hope that you will be as entertained by this collection as I was.
And don't forget to check out Cinematique in print, which has at its celluloid core
Coppola, Herzog, Carry On films, Bunuel, Tarkovsky, Lynch, Cronenberg, Ken Russell, Peter Weir, post-modern science fiction, Hitchcock, Cocteau and Alain Resnais.
Some interesting film links:
http://www.film-philosophy.com/
http://www.allmovie.com/essays/40
http://www.miracosta.cc.ca.us/home/gfloren/F-avant.htm
http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/deren.html
http://www.darkstrider.net/gallery2a.html
http://www.ubu.com/film/
Read some reviews of Sein und Werden here:
http://www.kissthewitch.co.uk/seinundwerden/reviews.html
