My best italian friend’s name is Leo (careful to pronounce it Lay-Oh, not Lee-Ho). Anyway.

I recently discovered the works of Jiří Trnka (1912-1969), a Czech artist mostly known for his puppet animations films. In 1965, he created “The Hand” to denounce Soviet control over the arts and freedom of speech.
By association of ideas, it made me realize that one of my most lasting and vivid childhood memories is dated from December 25th 1989 when I watched on TV the execution Nicolae and Elena Ceauşescu.
Far be it from me to compare Czechoslovakia and Romania that goes without saying…

Designer: Úna Burke
Director: Andreas Waldschuetz & Adia Trischler
Cinematography: Volkmar Geiblinger, Andreas Waldschuetz
Creative Director: Adia Trischler
Story/Script: Adia Trischler
Make-up Artist/SFX Make-up/Naildesign: Steffi Lamm
Hairstylist/Colorist: Patrick Glatthaar
Stylist: Adia Trischler
Styling Assistance: Asta Krejci-Sebesta
Gaffer/Assistant of Photography: Marlena Koenig
Best Boy: Thomas Rath
Set Design: Andreas Waldschuetz
Production Manager: Steffi Lamm
Locationscout: Steffi Lamm
Catering: Hansi Lamm
Technician: Fredi Lamm
Editor: Andreas Waldschuetz
Video-&Postproduction: Thomas Rath
Digital Imaging & Retouching: Christian Friedrich
Sound Design & Music Production: Zanshin (Gregor Ladenhauf)
Assistant Sound Design: Stefan Trischler
Making-of: Volkmar Geiblinger/Marlena Koenig
Head of Photography: Andreas Waldschuetz
Collodion Wetplate Photography: Stefan Sappert

Cast: Kamila Baczyk @ lookmodels international inc.
The Group of 5: Leonhard Lass/Alex Rath/Daniela Zacherl @ AMT Wien, Gregor Ladenhauf/Adia Trischler

April 2nd, from 9 to 11.30pm

The British film director Peter Greenaway has been arguing for some 20 years now that cinema is dead and we are simply waiting for the dinosaur to roll over. In retaliation to this impending crisis Hollywood pumps more and more money into their productions in the vain hope that they can survive with their old fashioned formulas which are clearly biting the dust. Peter Gr…eenaway, lucid as ever, has a new vision of what cinema could become, which he calls ZINEMA. On Saturday March 2nd at the Kriterion he will give a live two hour illustrated lecture about this new approach of re-creating cinema. This event is being curated by Jeffrey Babcock under the theme of Cinema Degree Zero, a series of lectures/performances that pronounce the death of cinema in order to make space for new possibilities of filmmaking. This specific event is being realized in collaboration with cinema Kriterion.

Painter, novelist, critic, VJ, curator and one of the most daring and innovative filmmakers alive, Peter Greenaway is internationally famous for an oeuvre of films such as A Zed & Two Noughts (1985), Drowning by Numbers (1988) and The Cook the Thief His Wife & Her Lover (1989). His visionary fusion of art and film is incomparable to any other filmmaker today. More recently he has completed the ambitious three-part multimedia installation “The Tulse Luper Suitcases”. Ceaselessly creative, Peter Greenway is always pushing film forward as a progressive and provocative art, in both form and content. He is currently a professor of cinema studies at the European Graduate School in Switzerland.

Text by EGS.

Reservations: +31 206231708

Location: Kriterion Cinema, Roetersstraat 170, Amsterdam, Netherlands

“The Pillow Book”, 1997 (quoted in details by Mireille Berton’s article for Sang Bleu 3&4)

Early opera by Gluck, Iphigenie en Tauride, live from the Metropolitan Opera tonight 18.00 at Picture House Clapham (with Susan Graham and Plácido Domingo). In case you’re in the mood for music and mythology, like I.