The devil, probably

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Some links: the excellent programme 'The Devil, Probably' (curated by Robert Snowden & Lucas Quigley and presented at Yale Union & Northwest Film Center between 4 January – 11 February) is accompanied online by a thoughtful archive of readings, including texts for Allan Sekula's class on globalisation at CalArts (in two parts: I, II). Other programmes of note: Courtisane 2014, 'Vengeance is Hers' at BAMcinématek (also: an interview with Thomas Beard & Nellie Killian) and 'Art of the Real' at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, which opens with Raya Martin & Mark Peranson’s La última película, one of the finest films of last year. AV Festival 14 (theme: Extraction) opens next month, and features a rare screening of La région centrale; a Wang Bing programme (inc. an installation of Crude Oil at Stephenson Works in Newcastle); Nikolaus Geyrhalter's Pripyat; two films by The Otolith Group; Xu Ruotao, J.P. Sniadecki & Huang Xiangs's Yumen; and performances by Akio Suzuki and Richard Skelton & Elysian Quartet.

Also: Anat Pick on Rose Lowder; a new film by Nathaniel Dorsky, December, which premieres as part of a four film cycle in SF in April; Éliane Radigue at the RFH; 'HYPNOSIS DISPLAY', a Grouper & Paul Clipson collaboration touring in June. And a late discovery: the early works on Jodie Mack's Vimeo channel, which is best worked through backwards (see also: Michael Sicinski on Mack's Yard Work is Hard Work and Persian Pickles, the former of which can be viewed in full here).

Illuminations #21

Vendredi soir - Claire Denis, 2002, 35mm

Illuminations #20

For Zoohky - Isiah Medina, 2013, digital video

Realism(s) #38

New Orleans - Lee Friedlander, 1969

History Lesson(s) #25

Museum Hours - Jem Cohen, 2012, HD video & Super 16mm

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I asked why he always used the term 'late capitalism,' and how people knew it was so late, and if it wasn't perhaps more troublesome if what existed now was early. He knew a lot more than me, but he didn't seem to have an answer for that...

At sea #13

Prayer ceremony for victims of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami - Arun Sankar K., 2013, for AP

Realism(s) #37, or: on déplace le problème

Les salauds - Claire Denis, 2013, HD video

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I think I focus on fathers. To be a father, like Marco is a father. And what happens when this kind of thing occurs between a daughter and a father. Because the daughter is not completely a victim of her father, she is accepting it too. In a way—maybe I'm about to be completely crazy—when I was the age of a daughter I thought if I had a bad experience with sex, even though the man was brutal or ignorant or whatever, I always took it for granted that this was my problem. That this was the problem of women, to keep it for ourselves. On déplace le problème. [We shift the blame.] I remember when I was very young and coming home and thinking: "Well, this is my problem. There is nowhere I can go and complain." There's not a guiltiness of being a woman, but women deal with their bodies in a very complex way, a total way, a global way. Not like men. Men, they have a hard-on or not. The feeling of a woman is so much more complex, because she can pretend, she can fake, she can also be terrified and hate and not show it. I think to be a woman is a complete sexual experience in a way. And this makes everything more complex.

--Claire Denis, interviewed by Kiva Reardon in cléo 1.3.

History Lesson(s) #24

Vers Madrid (The Burning Bright!) - Sylvain George, 2012-13, digital video