rite of spring ( film )
dissolving with terror... the rite of spring. photograph: tristram kenton
rite of spring is a very personal short film about the dynamics between young men and the often treacherous domain of developing masculine identity .
conductor tugan sokhiev discusses performing stravinsky' s rite of spring with the philharmonia orchestra ...
a film created by the elbphilharmonie hamburg, documenting a groundbreaking inception of the re - rite ...
rite of spring will be presented without subtitles. the film' s dialogue consists entirely of the text of a passion play, a dramatization of the trial, suffering and death of jesus christ .
in 2013 glen produced stage to screen, an anthology film series to celebrate the 100 th anniversary of the elgin & winter garden theatre at tiff and directed his follow - up film, rite of spring, with the assistance of bravofact, ontario arts council and toronto arts council .
the most influential piece of 20th - century music … a 2002 version of the rite of spring by ballet preljocaj. photograph: tristram kenton for the guardian
in 2007 - 08, glen attended the canadian film centre where he produced adam avenger which was awarded the golden sprocket and the golden kite awards for best short film at sprockets toronto international film festival for children and nueva mirada international film festival in buenos aires, respectively .
, we explore the history surrounding the rite of spring,  its infamous premiere and its tremendous impact on music ever since .
rabble - rousing... the 1913 production of the rite of spring. photograph: keystone - france / gamma - keystone via getty images
film was produced with support of the czech republic state fund for support and development of czech cinematography .
in the spring of 1913, parisian businessman gabriel astruc opens a new theater on the champs elysées. the first performance is the premiere of igor stravinsky' s' the rite of spring', danced... see full summary »
in may 1913, igor stravinsky debuted his ballet the rite of spring. though it is one of stravinsky & apos; s most famous works, his creation was first met with harsh criticism, negative reviews, and... a riot. watch this youtube performance of stravinsky & apos; s rite of spring ballet .
“for me, this film reveals a new cinematographic language. ” – jean rouch
a wonderful short film that examines a series of watercolors of the city of porto painted by portugese artist antónio cruz. in comparing the different modes of representing and experiencing the city, oliveira explores the different representational qualities of film and painting .
a bbc film bringing to life the events leading up to the infamous and riotous first 1913 performance of the rite of spring, with a cast including alex jennings, adam garcia, rachael stirling and griff rhys jones. uk 2005 dir. andy wilson 90mins
the london philharmonic orchestra plays the rite of spring on 17 february at the royal festival hall, london sw1, as part of the rest is noise festival. box office: 0844 875 0073 .
rites of spring is a movie starring aj bowen, anessa ramsey, and sonny marinelli. a ransom scheme turns into a nightmare for a group of kidnappers who become victims of a horrifying secret that must be paid every spring .
i made this film as a love letter of sorts to the ostracized 15 - year - old boy i once was .
as producer, glen recently finished his first feature film the dark stranger which was developed through nsi features first .
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one hundred years ago the ballet provoked a riot and orchestras dreaded playing it. now you can even hear it in pret a manger. the rite of spring is still astounding, despite its familiarity, argues philip hensher
the escola superior thesis film of joão pedro rodrigues (b. 1966) reads as a tribute to his mentor reis with its minimalist portrait of the day in the life of a shepherd .
stravinsky stopped work on the ballet by spring of 1912, and enjoyed a nice break, even taking a trip to bayreuth, germany with sergei diaghilev to attend a performance of richard wagner & apos; s opera, parsifal. stravinsky returned to clarens, switzerland during the fall season to finish the rite of spring - as signed on his orchestral score, he completed it on march 8, 19
bbc movie about stravinsky' s masterpiece' the rite of spring' (le sacre du printemps) (1913). in the spring of 1913, parisian businessman gabriel astruc opens a new theater on the champs elysées. the first performance is the premiere of igor stravinsky' s' the rite of spring', danced by the ballet russes. the rehearsal process is extremely fraught: the orchestra dislike stravinsky' s harsh, atonal music; the dancers dislike the' ugly' choreography of vaslav nijinsky. the volatile, bisexual nijinsky is in a strained relationship with the much older sergei diaghilev, the ballet russes' charismatic but manipulative impresario. public expectation is extremely high after nijinsky' s success in' l' apres - midi d' un faune'. finally,' the rite of spring' premieres to a gossip - loving, febrile, fashion - conscious parisian audience sharply divided as to its merits .
rite of spring is planted firmly in the world of teens struggling with their sexual orientation and the reactions of their surrounding. it explores the viewpoint of young boys for whom this imaginary future in which ‘it gets better’ seems to be impossibly far away – leading them to despair and [ take ] rash action against themselves or others .
it is one of the great works of the 20th century, a ballet so revolutionary it is said to have caused a riot at its premiere. but is stravinsky' s rite of spring all it was claimed to be? as the work' s centenary is celebrated, tom service separates fact from fiction
but her initial suspicions of the host are well founded and a passionately carnal affair ensues between coco and igor. their first sexual encounter is followed by the opening bars of the rite of spring played over the misty, early‑morning woods around the house, suggesting that what attracts coco is igor' s combination of the atavistic and the ultramodern .
considered the best of the commissioned short films which effectively served as oliveira' s filmmaking apprenticeship, bread follows the birth and life of a loaf, from the wheat fields to the bakery. almost entirely silent, bread is an important transitional work between the montage driven douro, working river and oliveira' s later work. it was during the search for locations for bread that oliveira discovered the local passion play that would become the subject of his breakthrough film, rite of spring .
in the spring of 1913, parisian businessman gabriel astruc opens a new theater on the champs elysées. the first performance is the premiere of igor stravinsky' s' the rite of spring', danced by the ballet russes. the rehearsal process is extremely fraught: the orchestra dislike stravinsky' s harsh, atonal music; the dancers dislike the' ugly' choreography of vaslav nijinsky. the volatile, bisexual nijinsky is in a strained relationship with the much older sergei diaghilev, the ballet russes' charismatic but manipulative impresario. public expectation is extremely high after nijinsky' s success in' l' apres - midi d' un faune'. finally,' the rite of spring' premieres to a gossip - loving, febrile, fashion - conscious parisian audience sharply divided as to its merits .
just like beethoven & apos; s 9th symphony changed the future of symphony composition, stravinsky & apos; s rite of spring changed the future of ballet. up to that point, ballet was beautiful, elegant, and charming. as i mentioned before, audiences were accustomed to seeing and hearing works like swan lake, the nutcracker, and sleeping beauty. stravinsky & apos; s rite of spring introduced new concepts in music, dance, and story. today, it is considered to be a milestone in the history of ballet. it has become a regular work in many ballet companies & apos; repertoires. the music has been used extensively in film, television, and radio, for example, disney & apos; s fantasia. it has also inspired composers like john williams (star wars) and jerry goldsmith (outland) .
we have it on stravinsky' s own authority that the only person in paris who understood, completely and immediately, the rite of spring was the composer maurice ravel. the rest of the audience, apparently, were placed in a position where they could not even recognise a single note, played unaccompanied, by a standard instrument of the symphony orchestra. their confusion proceeded from there .
oliveira' s film debut is a visually stunning documentary poem about life and work along the principal river of the director' s native porto region. greatly admired by critics and artists such as luigi pirandello, douro reveals oliveira' s incredible eye and sense of rhythm. although hollywood had already ushered in the arrival of sound cinema in 1927, portugal' s film industry remained decidedly underdeveloped and continued to produce silent films into the early 1930s .
a few years prior to 1910, stravinsky began flirting with the idea and music of the rite of spring ballet to premiere with sergei diaghilev & apos; s ballets russes company. whether or not the music came before the story / setting or visa versa (there are conflicting statements by stravinsky himself), we do know that by 1910, stravinsky met with russian expert nicholas roerich to discuss ancient pagan rituals. together, they came up with the working title
the great sacrifice .
after taking a year hiatus to finish his ballet petrushka, stravinsky resumed work on the rite of spring with roerich, and by july 1911, the pair had completed a working draft of the ballet & apos; s structure within a few days, changing its title to vesna sviashchennaia (russian) or holy spring. however, the work & apos; s french translation le sacre du printemps (english: the rite of spring) is what stuck. according to stravinsky & apos; s journals, he returned to his home in ukraine and wrote two movements before deciding to move to clarens, switzerland a month later, where he completed the ballet & apos; s first part and drafted the second .
although café müller and the rite of spring are celebrated pieces, each has been seen only once in the uk before (in edinburgh) and this is only tanztheater wuppertal' s fifth visit to london. bausch was billed to perform in café müller, but in the event was indisposed. all of which, as a standing ovation proved, leaves us wanting more .
is a nuanced exploration of first love' s dangerous exhilaration, awakened in the eponymous thirteen - year - old by the release from prison and homecoming of the stationmaster' s older and enigmatic son. a central figure of the portuguese film scene of the 1980s and 1990s, viegas taught alongside reis in the escola superior .
almost no musical work has had such a powerful influence or evoked as much controversy as igor stravinsky' s ballet score the rite of spring. the work' s premiere on may 29, 1913, at the théatre des champs - elysées in paris, was scandalous. in addition to the outrageous costumes, unusual choreography and bizarre story of pagan sacrifice, stravinsky' s musical innovations tested the patience of the audience to the fullest. in this edition of
with 2013 being the centenary year for stravinsky' s rite of spring, principal conductor and artistic advisor of the philharmonia esa - pekka salonen discusses his relationship with this seminal work, and its continuing relevance in a 21st century context. to mark the centenary, esa - pekka salonen is touring the work across europe with the philharmonia orchestra, a tour culminating in a concert at paris' s theatre des champs - elysées, the venue of the work' s infamously riotous première. the london centenary concert will take place on thursday 30th may at 7. 30pm, at the royal festival hall. for more information, please visit urltoken the rite of spring with esa - pekka salonen is also touring hamburg, paris, madrid, dresden, vienna, and ljubljana .
the evening' s second piece is bausch' s 1975 version of the rite of spring. stark and grim, set on a blank stage carpeted in soil, it shows the selection and death of a sacrificial victim. the circumstances are enigmatic, but there is a pointed contrast between the muscled phalanx of men who make the selection and the cowering ranks of women who provide the victim. there is an implicit sense of rape and, interlaced with the pounding fury and self - hatred, a whisper of the nightmare worlds of belsen and treblinka. ruth amarante, the victim, almost seems to dissolve with terror .
one of stravinsky' s most significant collaborators was serge diaghilev, director of the ballets russes. the two were close working partners for some twenty years, until diaghilev' s death in 1929. much of stravinsky' s most exceptional music, including the score for the rite of spring,  was composed for the productions of diaghilev. the first collaboration between the two russians involved the ballet les sylphides,  in which diaghilev called upon various russian composers to orchestrate several of frédéric chopin' s compositions for piano. les sylphides is musically innocuous and foretells but little of the coming storm .
harvard university professor thomas kelly suggests that one of the reasons that the paris premiere of
the rite of spring
created such a furor was that it shattered everyone' s expectations. the evening' s program began innocently with a performance of les sylphides.  however, as the follow - up piece, the rite of spring turned out to be anything but spring - like. one of the dancers recalled that vaslav nijinsky' s shocking choreography was physically unnatural to perform .
with every leap we landed heavily enough to jar every organ in us .
the music itself was angular, dissonant and totally unpredictable. in the introduction, stravinksy called for a bassoon to play higher in its range than anyone else had ever done. in fact, the instrument was virtually unrecognizable as a bassoon. when the curtain rose and the dancing began, there appeared a musical theme without a melody, only a loud, pulsating, dissonant chord with jarring, irregular accents. the audience responded to the ballet with such a din of hisses and catcalls that the performers could barely hear each other .
when the young and eccentric benilde becomes unexpectedly pregnant, her deeply religious family and inquisitive townsfolk fixate upon immaculate conception. a new formal complexity entered into oliveira' s cinema in this second part of his celebrated tetralogy, which focuses an unflattering spotlight on the absurd hypocrisies of religion and public displays of piety. one of oliveira' s breakthrough films, benilde was his first to interweave theatrical and cinematic language into an overt questioning of the limits of the art film .
the paradox of the primitivism in the rite is that it can be heard as both a horrifying vision of the pitilessness of nature – and as an expression of the inhumanity of the machine age. the fate of the
chosen one
in the sacrificial dance is particularly chilling. she is caught in an unstoppable rhythmic vortex from which there is only one way out: through the terrible dissonance that ends the piece, and the single chord that kills her. this is music that manages to sound both mechanistic and elemental, making the rite as radical in 2013 as it was 100 years ago .
and what about the revolutionary irregular metres of the ballet? richard taruskin, in an astonishing and enormous study of stravinsky' s debt to the russian traditions, points out that the irregular 7 / 4 metre of the end of the firebird, stravinsky' s first major piece for diaghilev in 1910, is foreshadowed by any number of finales in rimsky - korsakov, such as the 11 / 4 finale of his 1880 opera snegurochka. russian music had long enjoyed eccentric metres, such as the 5 / 4 waltz movement in tchaikovsky' s pathétique, and shifting metres, as in the alternation of fives and sixes in the first movement of moussorgsky' s pictures from an exhibition. the terrifying speed of metre change in the rite of spring is extreme, but has small precedents .
still, for all its modernity, for all stravinsky' s insistence that the whole thing came from
what i heard
( and for all that puccini would later call it
the work of a madman
), the rite is rooted in musical traditions. as bela bartók intuited, and as musicologist richard taruskin has shown, many of the rite' s melodies come from folk tunes – including that opening bassoon solo, which is actually a lithuanian wedding song. scholars have identified more than a dozen folk references so far, but there' s an even more significant tradition behind the rite .
backstage at the premiere, nijinsky shouted at the dancers while diaghilev tried to suppress a possible riot by flashing the house lights. stravinsky himself fumed at the audience' s response to his music. if nothing else, the ballet' s premiere managed to instill in the audience the true spirit of the music. as thomas kelly states ,
the pagans on - stage made pagans of the audience .
despite its inauspicious debut, stravinsky' s score for the rite of spring today stands as a magnificent musical masterpiece of the twentieth century .
during the dog days of summer, a group of teenage boys inhabits a makeshift bike park in a secluded wooded area of toronto .
a meditative study of loneliness and longing, the latest film by joaquim sapinho (b. 1964) tells the story of a brother and sister coming to terms with the dissolution of their family. a former champion surfer who spends his days in pursuit of the most dangerous waves, the young man is torn between the estoril beaches and the nearby monastery where he has recently taken his first vows. with
the first in oliveira' s celebrated
tetrology of thwarted love ,
the past and the present offers both a dark vision of amour fou and an excoriating satire of the idle rich. driven by a necrophilic passion for her dead husband, vanda performs strange rituals of devotion and tortures her second husband for his inadequacies. the revelation of strange secrets about her first husband unfolds a dizzying game of shifting identities and loyalties. oliveira' s wickedly funny and disturbing satire of portuguese class structure and the corruption of public mores was, ironically, his first film to receive state funding .
marking a stylistically and philosophically turn away from the earlier features, the sand rose is reis and cordeiro’s most abstract, conceptual and literary work. the film’s collage structure gathers texts from multiple sources – including kafka and montaigne – and crafts a world of theatrical artifice far from the documentary inspired naturalism of ana and trás - os - montes. reis and cordeiro’s least known film has lingered in obscurity and never recovered from the unfairly negative reviews that resulted in its severely limited release. reis died less than two years later, just as he and cordeiro were about to begin an ambitious adaptation of juan rulfo’s pedro parámo .
the rite of spring' s violations were more fundamental than that. some of them were merely apparent, rooted in traditions that were relatively unfamiliar to a 1913 paris audience. the designer and co - author, with stravinsky, of the scenario, nikolai roerich, was a faithful student of archaeology. his long journey, from diaghilev' s sumptuous, nationalist magazine of art, mir iskusstva, to a deracinated mysticism can be traced in the beautiful museum devoted to his life on west 107th street in new york. some aspects of the score, even, can be traced back to established russian traditions. it has long been known that many of its themes, including the famous bassoon opening, are versions of lithuanian folk tunes taken from a krakow anthology published in 1900 .
oliveira' s first feature is a remarkable proto - neorealist film, notable for its use of child non - actors and actual locations in oliveira' s native porto. aniki - bóbó, whose title derives from a child' s game, fully adopts the children' s perspective to tell a surprisingly adult story of friendship and betrayal between two boys and the girl who is the object of their rival affection. the perceived radicalism of aniki - bóbó, with its barely restrained critique of institutional authority, was responsible for oliveira' s persecution and brief imprisonment by the conservative salazar dictatorship and, even worse, resulted in a devastating twenty year hiatus during which he was effectively blacklisted and had almost every film project thwarted .
this is a beautiful, intelligent, shallow film, like a pane of plate glass that at first glance looks like a deep lake. the picture jumps forward from the early 20s to a coda some 50 years later when the elderly igor and coco, who died within weeks of each other in 1971, are seen contemplating the past on either side of the atlantic. it is oddly unmoving and not only because of the makeup .
, the annual passion play enacted in a village in the same remote northern region of portugal that would inspire reis’ most important work. intrigued by the ritualistic and incantatory qualities of the vernacular production, oliveira returned with reis and set about directing the villagers in a re - enactment of the passion play, adding a rich performative layer to the film. a fascinating meta - ethnographic study of local tradition and history that folds in on itself ,
in his final role, marcello mastrioanni is wonderfully cast as an aging film director, modeled on oliveira himself, traveling with three young actors through northern portugal and past places he had known in his youth. the leisurely pace, sensuous beauty of the passing landscapes, and mastrioanni' s touching performance all contribute to the film' s rich evocation of place and time. a brilliant and emotionally rich road movie that deserves comparison to bergman' s wild strawberries, voyage marks a high point in oliveira' s late career and remains deservedly among his best - known and most beloved works .
' mild protests against the music ,
wrote stravinsky ,
could be heard from the beginning .
the composer was remembering the night of 29 may 1913 at the théâtre des champs - elysées in paris. the event was the premiere of a new ballet called the rite of spring – and, if you believe all the stories about what happened that celebrated evening, not least the one about the riot that ensued, it' s as if the 20th century only really got going when the audience in that gilded art - nouveau auditorium started kicking off .
while working at lisbon’s famed miguel bombarda sanatorium, psychologist margarida cordeiro discovered a series of arresting drawings by the subject of her first film with reis, a recently deceased former patient and paranoid schizophrenic named jaime fernandes. keeping a deeply respectful yet never tentative distance from the asylum world as a realm of unfathomable mystery, reis and cordeiro linger over fernandes’ remarkably expressive drawings, assembling a profoundly moving and hypnotic portrait of a gifted artist and powerful emblem of portugal’s virtual imprisonment during the repressive salazar regime .
the third installment of the tetralogy is a brilliant and devastating portrait of young lovers tragically separated by a bitter feud between their aristocratic families. in doomed love oliveira tested his belief in a creative merging of theatrical, literary and cinematic narrative traditions. his radical approach to adaptation captures the multilayered language of camilo castelo branco' s eponymous epic novel to offer a virtual phenomenology of life and love in 18th century portugal. after a disastrous premiere on portuguese television, the theatrical release of oliveira' s re - edited version was quickly hailed as a landmark in the history of the european art film .
min tanaka with his group maj - juku is a distinctive personality of japanese theatre. theatre in which the mind requestens the tongue and so the body becomes the tongue. the rite of spring was born on a farm in the village of hokušu, the home of min tanaka. every year n - people from all over the world travel here to participate with min tanaka’s summer workshops. he says: “ people from all over the world dance with me and they are entirely different from one another. not only physically but also in their unique stories. they are a sort of history of the body. i expect each dancer to draw the theme from his own personal experience. each one of us is standing at the end of the very long line of development, that leads us back to our childhood, to our parents, right back to our animal essence” .
adapted by the british writer chris greenhalgh from his speculative novel, coco chanel & igor stravinsky takes us back to the second decade of the 20th century, when the basis of the stravinsky legend was being laid and more or less to the point where last year' s coco before chanel ends. the movie begins with one of the epic moments of cultural modernism, the notorious first night of the ballet russe production of stravinsky' s the rite of spring on 29 may 1913 in paris. stravinsky was 31, the son of a well - off, middle - class, russian family, firmly established as a composer with the firebird and petrushka behind him. coco chanel, a year his junior, was the product of a provincial french orphanage and had worked as a dressmaker and singer before creating her own innovative fashion house in paris under the patronage of a rich french playboy and the british industrialist arthur
boy
capel .
a grindhouse slasher pic that swings from dull to ridiculous without finding any pulpy pleasure in between, padraig reynolds' rites of spring is as anonymous as its burlap - wrapped boogeyman. themes of pagan sacrifice and double - cross kidnapping combined don' t generate enough exploitable novelty to make it a promising gamble, even on vod .
oliveira' s brilliant meditation on war, history and empire takes as its background and point of departure colonial war in western africa in the 1970s, in which guerrilla fighters ultimately defeated portugal' s superior military forces. mired in the angolan jungle, a group of portuguese soldiers begin to openly question the meaning of the war and, in turn, speculate about their country' s imperial history. luís miguel cintra returns as the wise commander who narrates the film' s brilliant flashbacks to portugal' s most spectacular military follies and defeats. from the film' s mysterious opening – a rapturous tracking shot that glides around an ancient african tree – to the stunning battle sequences, non is one of oliveira' s great late films and one of his most politically charged and outspoken works .
the riot that followed is amusing, including the man who was so seized with excitement that he started to
beat rhythmically on the top of [ carl van vechten' s ] head with his fists
, and the argument between inhabitants of two adjacent boxes which turned, the next morning, into a duel. there had been other riots in parisian theatres over the years, such as at the premiere of victor hugo' s hernani in 1830 and at the paris premiere of wagner' s tannhäuser in 1861. as with the rite of spring debacle, what interests us in these ancient battles are the limitations that gave birth to the outrage; in the case of hugo, the violation of classical rules of unity of time and place, in wagner' s, the outrageous suggestion that the ballet which must take place in every opera might, on this occasion, be placed in the first act rather than the second .
) is a stylish coming of age tale and a moving portrait of the slow death of a rural portuguese town. co - written by viegas and joaquim sapinho ,
like many of diaghilev' s commissions, the rite of spring made its way easily in the concert hall – it is a technical challenge that few professionally virtuoso orchestras could ever resist. the ballets russes themselves were never the same after the extreme experience of 29 may 1913. the rite was performed only six more times, in paris and london. nijinsky, and the rest of the company, minus diaghilev, left in august for a tour of south america. on the boat was also an aspiring dancer only loosely attached to the troupe, romola de pulszky. the boat departed on 15 august. on 25 august, nijinsky and de pulszky first spoke to each other, inadequately – they hardly had a language in common. on 30 august, nijinsky sent an emissary who actually spoke french to ask de pulszky to marry him. once she established that it was a genuine offer, she accepted, and they married on 10 september in buenos aires .
robin o' neill, principal bassoon of the philharmonia orchestra, knows the famous opening notes of the ...
after an uncertain start – in her first wuppertal production, the audience threw fruit at the stage and banged the doors – europeans came to regard her work with awe and respect. with their more dark - accustomed eyes, they were sympathetic to her baroque theatricality and to the brooding sense of the past with which her productions were infused. bausch' s 1975 rite of spring, which saw a terrified female victim sacrificed by her tribe on a stage spread with black soil, made a particularly forceful impression. by the end of the piece, the dancers are streaked with sweat and dirt and audibly panting. never had the war of the sexes been so graphically depicted .
i am terrified of violence, but i wanted to understand the person doing violence ,
bausch explained .
there were other innovations in the rite of spring to startle the audience – nijinsky' s choreography offended even the dancers, with its insistence on turning the toes in, and landing flatly (and painfully) after leaps. but the core of the piece is, and has remained, stravinsky' s great score. at the ballets russes' s first 1909 season, french critics had issued a warning; the first offerings had been visually and theatrically spectacular, but the music had been
insignificant
,
woven out of any old remnants
,
unspeakably vile
.
the young russian composers had better get to work seriously ,
the mercure de france had said .
jermaine fowler and omari hardwick of sorry to bother you take us back in time to the worst jobs of their careers .
journey with us from the glamour of paris to the sun - kissed hills of hollywood and discover how igor ...
oliveira' s delightful new film proposes and attempts to solve a historical mystery – was christopher columbus actually portuguese? oliveira offers a typically multifaceted approach to this puzzle, interweaving the story of manuel luciano da silva, a medical doctor and autodidact historian obsessed with columbus, with visits to historical sites by oliveira himself and his wife. christopher columbus offers a playful return to the subjects of empire, myth and history so dear to oliveira .
in the decades that followed, many choreographers created their own versions, including pina bausch, kenneth macmillan, maurice béjart and michael clark. this year, for the centenary, sadler' s wells is hosting a two - month season of rite - inspired works, including contributions by akram khan, michael keegan - dolan and mafalda deville. the original choreography is no longer, as buckle thought, lost. the scholar millicent hodson pieced it together over years of analysis of prompt books, sketches and photographs and detailed recollection, and in 1987, the los angeles joffrey ballet gave a performance of the reconstruction – it has since been taken up by the kirov. speaking in the 1950s, stravinsky said he would not conduct the rite in the soviet union, since years of cultural restriction had left orchestras technically incapable of mastering its demands. in recent decades, the score and the ballet has returned in grand style to the place of origin .
reis and cordeiro’s undisputable masterpiece exploded the meaning and possibilities of ethnographic cinema with its lyrical exploration of the still resonant myths and legends embodied in the people and landscapes of portugal’s remote trás - os - montes region. evoking a kind of geologically bergsonian time, with past and present layered upon one another, trás - os - montes interweaves evocative recreations of the ancient worlds and encounters with atavistic peasantry, following the pilgrim’s path traced by reis and cordeiro as they led their skeletal crew from village to village in search of the poetic essence of the portuguese language and imagination. painstakingly researched and shot over the course of one year, reis and cordeiro became intimate with every person included in their ambitious film, carefully selecting the different voices, faces and gestures that would together provide an extraordinary composite, associative and mythological response to the question of how to define a “national cinema. ”
the final film in oliveira' s tetralogy is its darkest, a fascinating journey to the dangerous extremes of obsessive love. a simultaneous homage to the silent cinema and the original novel by bessa - luís, francisca' s evocative literary intertitles add a further layer of commentary and complexity to the tragic love affair that slowly destroys the bewitching fanny owens and her ne' er - do - well lover. diffused with an aura of death and the supernatural, francisca makes striking use of masks and shadows. francisca marked the start of the remarkable collaboration between oliveira and maverick producer paolo branco who would produce oliveira' s next twenty films .
check out highlights from some of the best recent trailers including mandy, the predator, zoe, and the king of thieves .
set during the dog days of summer, a group of teenage boys inhabit a makeshift bike part in a secluded wooded area of toronto. david (14) craves the attention of peter (17), an older boy... see full summary »
a ransom scheme turns into a nightmare for a group of kidnappers who become victims of a horrifying secret that must be paid every spring. horror fans will instantly recognize aj bowen, the current independent horror go - to actor. beyond that, many faces appear on screen that we may never see again. there is particularly terrible acting from the father character, which might take some viewers out of the movie. this might appeal to some people, but it never seems to quite capture what it was going for. while it starts as a kidnapping film, it turns into something like a poor man' s
jeepers creepers
. and even then, there is an undercurrent that is not far removed from
it
. at no point does anything seem quite original enough to merit respect .
in may 1913, even well - informed members of the audience had no idea what they were experiencing. afterwards, the critic of the french periodical gil blas recorded a conversation about the beginning of
among oliveira’s most radical films, mon cas is based upon a well known play by the renown portuguese playwright jose regio in which actors subvert a play by abandoning their rehearsed dialogue to speak directly to the audience, and the camera, about themselves. a dazzling evocation of the transformative power of spectacle and performance, oliveira returns three times to this disruptive scene, each time offering a totally different film. bulle ogier and luís miguel cintra lead the outstanding cast .
when diaghilev heard of the marriage, in remote venice, he took the first opportunity to sack nijinsky. nijinsky' s career was more or less over: his biographer richard buckle points out that
by the time of his marriage nijinsky had created all his famous roles, bar one
. diaghilev tried to replace him in the ballets russes with a new star / lover, léonide massine, and to lure back the creator of the spectre de la rose and the
polovtsian dances
, michel fokine. fokine' s condition, after a four - hour telephone call, was that none of nijinsky' s ballets should be staged under him .
when diaghilev wanted to revive [ the rite of spring ] seven years later ,
richard buckle, writing in 1971, said ,
no one could remember the choreography and massine had to start again from scratch .
within the splendor of her country estate, alfreda attempts to decipher the source of the virgin mary' s reported wealth, debating with a bible scholar about the limits of sainthood and the material world. meanwhile, a team of crooks plans to fleece alfreda through an elaborate fabricated miracle that goes strangely awry. the magic mirror is one of oliveira' s several adaptations of the work of his close friend agustina bessa - luis, one of portugal' s foremost modernist novelists. here he turns her eponymous novel into a mysterious satire of religion and the idle rich in the tradition of buñuel' s late films. a sophisticated comedy and a deeply philosophical work, the magic mirror boasts a cast of oliveira regulars as well as the great marisa paredes .
that' s not the least plausible coincidence rites of spring has in store, but even at its dopiest the movie fails to generate chuckles. more damningly, reynolds can' t imagine interesting ways for his monster to kill people: he picks the kidnappers off routinely, sans suspenseful foreplay; reynolds' s gore is half - hearted, too, though the pic' s lack of mpaa rating might attract sadists hoping for something depraved .
so there' s nothing so old as a musical revolution. but even if it' s true that stravinsky plundered traditions both ancient and modern to create the rite, there' s something that, finally, can' t be explained away, something you should feel in your gut when you experience the piece. a century on, the truly shocking thing about the rite is still with us, right there at its climax. a good performance will merely pulverise you. but a great one will make you feel that it' s you – that it' s all of us – being sacrificed by stravinsky' s spellbinding and savagely cruel music .
the film brings back vividly the initial response: an audience divided between the affronted and the partisan; nijinsky shouting instructions to the dancers; diaghilev switching the house lights on and off (supposedly to calm spectators though the effect was to heighten the tension); stravinsky denouncing everyone; the police called in to restore order. the rest is history, or legend .
, who died of cancer last june. since 1973, she had been based in the westphalian city of wuppertal, surrounded by a tight - knit troupe of performers who, for more than three decades in some cases, followed wherever her vision led, into ghostly territories of memory and loss (
the folkloric aspects must have been difficult to follow or understand after the cultural journey to a paris premiere. few people, even now, would guess that in the successive dances
rondes printanières
and
jeux des cités rivales
– or as they are sometimes garbled in english ,
spring rounds
and
games of the rival tribes
– the
rounds
and the
tribes
or
cités
are actually the same thing. they are renderings of the ancient russian ritual display of khorovod, sometimes but not always round dances, that fascinated roerich .
on this historic night, coco, played by the regal chanel model anna mouglalis, is in the fashionable haut - bourgeois audience, as is an extremely agitated stravinsky (the formidable danish actor mads mikkelsen). what we witness is a magnificent recreation of the ballet, a pagan rite accompanied by a dissonant modern score, that diaghilev produced, nijinsky choreographed, nicholas roerich designed and pierre monteux conducted .
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before bausch, modern dance had taken its lead from america, from george balanchine and martha graham, for whom the expressiveness of the moving body was paramount. tending to plotlessness and abstraction, their work offered a severe form of joy, and when bausch' s company toured the us in 1984, the tenders of the sacred flame were unimpressed. the village voice dismissed her work as
a crock
, alan kriegsman of the washington post wrote of her
specifically teutonic attraction to the powers of darkness, to an alliance of art, disease and malevolence
, while arlene croce of the new yorker described bausch as
an entrepreneuse who fills theatres with projections of herself and her self - pity
.
only a very foolhardy film - maker would contemplate a crescendo after such a spectacular start and jan kounen doesn' t attempt this. the big night is followed by dramatic, silent newsreel footage of the first world war and the russian revolution, which brings the story to paris in 1920, at which point the movie becomes an elegant chamber piece. there are no walk - on roles for cocteau, picasso et al, no end credits telling us what happened to everyone later .
the piece is set in a school hall where the boys, spiky - haired and coltish in suits and ties, face a contingent of girls in pastel satin evening gowns. hopeful of connection, but unable to effect it, they stalk one another to a soundtrack of schmaltzy 1930s songs. tentatively they essay the roles and attitudes that seem to be expected of them: the mating rituals and the desperate objectifications of self .
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the work is the apotheosis of a way of thinking about music that began in the 1830s with mikhail glinka, the first important russian composer, and an inpiration to stravinsky, whose music he loved. the way the rite moves, with its blocks of music juxtaposed next to and on top of one another like a mosaic, is prefigured not just by stravinsky' s previous ballets for diaghilev (the firebird and petrushka), but in music by his teacher rimsky - korsakov and even tchaikovsky. those
new
sounds with all those dagger - like dissonances? if you look at them closely, you' ll find they' re all versions either of common chords stacked up on top of each other, or are built from the scales and harmonies that rimsky - korsakov, mussorgsky and debussy had already discovered. and all those jerky, jolting rhythms? they' re derived, albeit distantly, from the way some of those folk tunes work .
diaghilev had responded, and had laboured to find a russian composer to create a startling new score for the next season the following year. diaghilev first tried and lost the composers cherepnin, lyadov, glazunov and perhaps even the little - known sokolov. unsuccessful, diaghilev unwillingly turned to an untried product of the rimsky - korsakov circle, a world he disliked, for the proposed firebird ballet. stravinsky was initially
one of the korsakovtsi, is he? but they' re all alike .
after a huge success, stravinsky cut his links with his former teacher' s family and pupils, and was placed at the centre of diaghilev' s world. with successive commissions of petrushka and the rite, and commissions for french composers of the level of ravel' s daphnis and chloe and debussy' s jeux, nobody ever complained about the trivial music at the ballets russes again .
is also a fascinating portrait of post - salazar youth culture. a senior professor at the
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many of these tropes are evident in café müller (1978), the first of two pieces shown at sadler' s wells. the half - hour work, set to snatches of music by henry purcell, sees a series of characters sleepwalking in and out of a deserted cafe. characteristically, there is a sense that they are refugees from some long - terminated event. trapped in an existential tape loop, they endlessly reprise their actions and interactions .
sapinho offers a minimalist and elemental fable about faith, using poetic montage to boldly juxtapose the surging drama of the sea with the cloistered worlds of the monastery. a former student of reis, sapinho reveals the influence of his mentor in the innate communication between his characters and their environment, between the surfer and the seascapes that both inspire and threaten to destroy him .
if you know how stravinsky' s music begins, you may not be too surprised by the audience' s reaction to the rite, which was choreographed by the young dancer vaslav nijinsky and performed by serge diaghilev' s ballets russes. after the strangest, highest and most terrifyingly exposed bassoon solo ever to open an orchestral work, the music becomes a sinewy braid of teeming, complex woodwind lines .
then ,
stravinsky told his biographer ,
when the curtain opened on the group of knock - kneed and long - braided lolitas jumping up and down, the storm broke .
lakeith stanfield and his sorry to bother you director boots riley discuss the stress of filming sex scenes .
bottom - of - the barrel slasher pic pairs a mysterious boogeyman with a kidnapping gone wrong. twitter
in the aftermath of the hunt for a serial killer, an ancient curse consumes a city, causing a series of brutal murders and pitting a detective against the clock to save his daughter' s life .
immediately announced vítor gonçalves (b. 1951) as the foremost director of his generation. a moody and atmospheric portrait of a young woman unable to make the crucial decisions needed to move forward with her life ,
in 2015 glen was one of seven producers from across canada selected for bell media’s executive producer accelerator program .
this movie is about rachel and her friend who are taken by someone while in a car park while changing a tire. they wake up in a strange barn tied up and frightened. they know that things are going to get worse. the reason why they are abducted becomes clear as there is a horrible secret in the town where girls have gone missing each spring for many years, and this year is no different. meanwhile a group of kidnappers are plotting to take the child of a prominent business man and his wife. they take the child and go to a farm where they wait to get their ransom. the two groups collide when rachel escapes but is chased by a stranger wearing a mask of some sort. she runs to the farm where the kidnappers are and all hell breaks loose.
rite of spring ( portuguese : acto da primavera ) is a 1963 portuguese film directed by manoel de oliveira , his second feature . the poet and director antónio reis was the film 's assistant director , and his influence can be felt deeply throughout it . ( the film was included in the film program the school of reis in 2012 . )
rite of spring (portuguese: acto da primavera) is a 1963 portuguese film directed by manoel de oliveira, his second feature. the poet and director antónio reis was the film's assistant director, and his influence can be felt deeply throughout it. ( the film was included in the film program the school of reis in 2012. )
rite of spring (portuguese: acto da primavera) is a 1963 portuguese film directed by manoel de oliveira, his second feature. the poet and director antónio reis was the film's assistant director, and his influence can be felt deeply throughout it. ( the film was included in the film program the school of reis in 2012. )