AKI KAURISMAKI - THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST [KINEMATOGRAF, FINLAND] // 'PAHA VAANII' (OST BY MARKO HAAVISTO)

"If you ever find me face down in the gutter, turn me around to my back..."
 

The Man Without A Past occupies the nebulous realms between emotions and moods. It's deadpan-comic and entropic-tragic, ironic and optimistic, detached and intimate...

A kind of movie that can wholly lack a plot yet still unfold with a sense of internal logic that makes every diversion inexplicably inevitable. That's no mean feat for a film where even the dialogue routinely floats out of comprehension, with the lead character suddenly going off on a tangent about visiting the moon as another humors him. When asked whether he met someone, the man replies, "Not really, it was a Sunday."

JESSICA BACKHAUS - ONE DAY IN NOVEMBER [FOTOGRAF, GERMANY]

LUIGI GHIRRI - THINKING IMAGES. [FOTOGRAF, ITALY]

Luigi Ghirri revolutionized Italian photography in the 1970s with his fresh color snap-shot style observations of Italian contemporary culture.

His small delicately colored prints were conceived in series to create visual poems, gentle, but direct.
The small scale and modest demeanor of his prints belie their power...

ITALO CALVINO AND INVISIBLE CITIES [BOOK, 1972]

  

“The hell of the living is not something that will be. If there is one, it is what is already here, the hell we live in every day, that we make by being together.

There are two ways to escape suffering it.

The first is easy for many: accept the hell, and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it.

The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of hell, are not hell, then make them endure, give them space.”

HAFSIA HERZI BELLYDANCE SCENE - [THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN, KINEMATOGRAFI 2007]

When and why did you decide to become an actress?
I’ve always wanted to do this, it really was my childhood dream. I tried my luck by working as an extra when I was very young. I lived in Marseilles and there wasn’t much of a film scene at the time.
A casting director who’d hired me as an extra three years previously called me about the role in The Secret of the Grain. I was also lucky that the director held major auditions in Paris, Marseilles and Sète. When I went along to the audition, I didn’t even know whether it was for a feature, an advert or a TV drama, and I didn’t know who the director was either.

You didn’t hesitate in gaining 15kg for Secret of the Grain.

What is your method for preparing your roles?
It depends. Every actor makes a role their own and there’s always a bit of your own personality in there.

For Française, I did a lot of sport because the character is dynamic and determined. When I made Iraqi director Abbas Fahdel’s Dawn of the World (released in 2009), in which I play a widow, I focused more on wisdom and gentleness.
In general, I don’t think about it too much in advance. I don’t improvise when the time comes, but I prepare myself three weeks before the film shoot, not six months. But if I’m playing a physical character – a dancer or sportswoman for example – I have to prepare intensively well in advance.

[from an interview to Hafsia Herzi]

JELLYFISH [KINEMATOGRAFI, 2007]

MARGALIT TZANANI - 'AZ MA' (SO WHAT)' [JELLYFISH OST, 2007]

"What I want most all
is a little love

Don't buy me more gifts
I am just looking for a warm corner
by you, inside your soul..."

TOMORROW IN THE BATTLE THINK ON ME [JAVIER MARIAS, 1994]

"There are four or five people in everybody's life who must be informed immediately of what is happening to us, we can't bare them to go on believing what is no longer true, not for a minute; for them to believe that we are married when we have just been widowed or that we still have parents when we have suddenly become orphans, that we have company when that company has just left, or are in good health when we have suddenly fallen ill.

That they should think us alive when we are dead."
[Javier Marias, 1994]

DARKSIDE - 'PAPER TRAILS' [PSYCHIC, 2013]

“What do I look like to you?

What did you want me to be?”

"Where are you when I need you?
Where did you go?
How can I find you when I need to?
Where should I go?"

While Jaar leans closer to creature comforts, lyrically composing a Van Gogh-replica of a wooden house ("A wooden house to live in") on a mountain paired with “fruit on the table” and “a baby to care for.”

In the end, both want fleeting pleasure to burn up in flames, cued by the “fire outside/ it’s burning up the place...”

 

FIRE FLOWER REVUE - 'CLIGNANCOURT' [ON VA TOUS MURIR, 2010]

Fire Flower Revue.

I wasn’t really sure what it was I was listening to.

The vocals (for the songs that had vocals) were often distorted and there were all kinds of weird electronic pulses and random percussion.

After two more listens I realized I dug this album quite a bit once I started figuring out what was going on...

DE ROUILLE ET D'OS [KINEMATOGRAFI, 2012]

MULATU ASTATKE DHE ETHIO-JAZZ ME NGJYRA TE BUTA

'The ideal way  to explore multiple forms of music is through jazz...'

Nje qe ia doli mbane vetem. Studjoi ne Londer ne vitet '60 dhe qe me fat se ato ishin vitet me te bujshme ne Londren-qender-te-muzikes-boterore! Luajti me John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington e Miles Davis (heronj e rinise) dhe u be me shume vonese i famshem nga regjizori Jim Jarmush dhe filmi i tij Broken Flowers (2005).

I pari afrikan qe u regjistrua ne Berklee College of Music dhe mbeti menjehere i terhequr nga muzika jazz dhe improvizimet e llojit. 

Qe ne fillim perzien prejardhjen e ritmet afro me latino-n duke i dhene ngjyra multitonalitetesh muzikes ne dy albumet e para. 

Shpirti etiop del ne pah kur melodi (gati) fetare afrikane (pjesa lindore e kontinentit) luhen me dymbedhjete tonet e jazz-it afroamerikan (albumi Sketches From Ethiopia). Shkrirje e shume tingujve, ku natyrisht instrumente rurale nga folku (si flauti prej kallamit te bambu-s) i japin ngjyre tjeter muzikes se maestros.

Jarmush njehere ka thene: "Ishte si te degjoje hip-hop-in per here te pare; dicka komplet e re, por njekohesisht te dukej familjar..."

Behet keshtu babai i ethio-jazz-it; ajo forme e strapelqyeshme e jazz-it qe duket kolone zanore e nje filmi modern/ekletik bardhe e zi sot (shto ketu faktin se sherben si frymezim edhe per Nicolas Jaar).
Gjithnje ne levizje, dinamik, i mbyllur si sound, por funky, ciklik e i embel nga tastierat e instrumentet paemer per ne; babai i ethio-jazz-it me ne fund luajti muzikat qe pelqente me shume!

Ka shume per te folur per kete artist, por eshte me e shpejte te degjojme dicka ne sfondin e pikturuar plot me ngjyra te buta.

Njeqind dite te tjera keshtu!

LOLA RENNT [KINEMATOGRAFI, 1998]

 

SMOOTH FOCUS

BEFORE SUNRISE [KINEMATOGRAFI, 1995]