Jose Sarmiento

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NEARSIGHT BY SAUL LEVINE

by José Sarmiento Hinojosa

What if the elements of memory and the subject matter of desire could be condensed in a permanent register of something that slips memory but has inevitably left a permanent watermark in our conscience? To carry a film journal would be a most welcome task, a vital activity where the initial pulsations of the most basic instincts of mankind would be recorded: love, desire, passion, death. Saul Levine, one would say, is one of many filmmakers that have traversed this path of recollection of memories in film, but what seems so particular in his style of experimental filmmaking is the sudden familiarity one reaches before the screen when watching several of his films. Levine’s oeuvre, in this narrative of the glimpses, surrounds us with the warmth of the memory that persists deep in our mind, evoking a plethora of emotions and sensations, an accomplished work if there’s any.

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CARRYING A WEAPON AT A RAVE PARTY: THE “ELECTROCLASH SPAGHETTI WESTERN” OF DAVIDE MANULI FILMS

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

The dance ritual as an identity of a group or an individual is elemental in Manuli’s films: symbolic elements of dialogue or expression of the body against what’s being imposed to them dramatically. As such, the escapist rhythms serve as rhetoric figures of the tale. Kaspar Hauser, the legend, escapes his own transcendence through a mechanism of frantically expressive moves (aptly performed by danseuse Silvia Calderoni) which expresses the sentimental learning of the lead role. If in Herzog’s version of the same film, Hauser (Bruno S.) strived to give significance to his dialogue permeating it with the essential, carefully choosing whatever important thing he perceived after his long captivity, Calderoni (and androgynous, spastic character) responds to the weight of the dramatic with mystical dancing: Hauser is no longer a boy found in an empty room, he’s an extra- terrestrial being sent from space to destroy status quo. Calderoni’s character does not strive to live up to the expectations of society; he’s an alien being, a portrait of the absurd, a messianic character.

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F.J. OSSANG: PUNK CINEMA AND THE SUBVERSION OF FILM NOIR

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

The saying goes “no man is an island” but FJ Ossang could be easily an archipelago on itself: Poet, musician, filmmaker, and actor; the expressive capacity of Ossang has transcended beyond the blurry lines of genres and disciplines, not digressing in each one of his attempts, but achieving a magnificent articulation that projects the identity of his art: a post-apocalyptic sci-fi punk noir universe, a classification that, paradoxically, defies any classification.

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Our Top 50

DESISTFILM: OUR TOP FILMMAKERS

After collecting our Top 50 film lists, we started counting the votes. These are the filmmakers that were most voted for by the desistfilm community: From John Cassevetes to Michael Snow, here’s a little sample of our taste.

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Q&A

Q & A: CHRISTELLE LHEUREUX

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

“Yes, the white disease is eating us everyday. Time is changing everything, everything disappears and fades and it’s ok, that’s life… The question is more to be aware of what we are loosing and what we are getting new. Our spirituality is changing super quickly, even in just one generation. I think cinema has a lot to do with that question of time, because this medium deals mostly with memory”.

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Q&A

Q&A: JOANA PREISS

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

“Sibérie is one of the main characters of the film for all the reasons you describe. It’s like a mirror with of the raw and honest meditation of love, it’s a perfect décor for this “triste geographie des sentiments”, and the train helped us to have this kind of lonely feelings, increased by our “huis clos” inside the Trans cabin, in front of the big window, on the exterior as a big travelling shot with the immensity rugged inhabited landscapes”.

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RED(ISH) IS THE COLOR: ON PINKU EIGA (FIRST WAVE) AND MARXISM

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

Linking Marx with Japanese soft-core pornography may be a long stretch, enclosed in a single framed space of mind, where class social revolts have nothing to do with the human experience of sexuality. But there was a point of intersection between Marx’s ideas and the socialist feminist discussions of the era, and the further exploration of sexuality by obscure Pinku Eiga filmmakers, an equivalent of the American sexploitation film genre, which was in itself a response to decades of repression: The uncovered flesh as an analogy of class uprising. If Marx himself never explained per se the concepts of sexual alienation, he was clear on what “exploitation of the capitalist society” was, and how it operated in the sexual lives and attitudes of people.

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Q&A

Q&a: MONIEK TOEBOSCH

By Max J. Pell

Moniek Toebosch (Breda, 19 august 1948), the famous Frans Zwartjes diva, is the daughter of classical composer Louis Toebosch. A Dutch performance artist and actress, Toebosch has been working as a professor and giving workshops in her foreign country for over 40 years. She was director of Dasarts theatre of the AHK (Amsterdam College of Arts) from 2004 to 2008. Here, Max J. Pell, from Texas, shares pieces of his correspondence with her.

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JE VOUS SALUE, SARAJEVO BY JEAN-LUC GODARD

By José Sarmiento Hinojosa

Je Vous Salue, Sarajevo is a heartfelt lament on the history of mankind, war, and the art of living. Never had Godard been so poetic; never had his poetry been so tragic, as if sadness permeated everything about what’s human. It is about Sarajevo, the Bosnian war, the Srebrenica massacre, at the time. But it is about war, about the true nature of mankind. A tragic truth that is present among us.

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Artículos

EL MOTOR BIOLÓGICO/EL CUERPO MECÁNICO: ANOTACIONES SOBRE FRANS ZWARTJES

por José Sarmiento Hinojosa

Extremadamente visceral, como la ópera, la génesis de la obra del cineasta holandés Frans Zwartjes y su posterior incubación se circunscriben en un periodo post guerra donde la escisión del comportamiento humano frente al materialismo de un neoliberalismo incipiente significaba la búsqueda de nuevas formas de expresión, tanto internas como externas.

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