DC's

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‘Though “happening” is a common and recognizable term in contemporary art discourse, it is lesser known that it was coined by American artist Allan Kaprow—another artist associated with Fluxus—in the 1950s. Of the numerous happenings Kaprow staged throughout his career, which nearly always involved audience participation, Household (1964) has become one of the most iconic of his oeuvre. A multi-part happening, the work involved covering a wrecked car with fruit jam, and some participants wiped up the jam with bread and ate it, while others licked the jam up directly from the car.’

 

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Argentinian artist Eduardo Navarro’s latest series of drawings, inspired by quantum physics, is entirely edible. They are displayed under red heat lamps, like chicken eggs about to hatch. He’ll be cooking three nights during the exhibition, serving up three artworks each time. Each of the images illustrates the “holographic principle,” a concept in physics postulating that “information in the universe can only be scrambled but never destroyed”.

 

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September Split Edible Ephemera (Year of the Horse Snack) (2014)
Dry-salted horse meat, bitter rowan jelly (rowan berries, water, sugar), Norwegian birch, silkscreen print, CNC engraving, vacuum sealed storage bag, jar with lid, felt garment.

 

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Artist Dimitri Tsykalov produces raw meat representations of guns, some of which come with vegetable or fungi bullets.

 

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Researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have designed and demonstrated a small, ingestible voltaic cell that is sustained by the acidic fluids in the stomach. The system can generate enough power to run small sensors or drug delivery devices that can reside in the gastrointestinal tract for extended periods of time.

 

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‘Multidisciplinary artist Alison Knowles was an active participant of Fluxus—an international art movement defined largely by its emphasis on process over object—and of the vibrant and experimental New York art scene of the 1960s. In 1962, she performed one of her most notable works, Make a Salad, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. In the piece, Knowles chopped vegetables to live music, dramatically tossed them in the air, and, once mixed into a salad, served it to the audience in equal portions. The work was revolutionary in its time, as it brought fresh, green food and the quotidian act of eating into the gallery space.’

 

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Using individually wrapped pieces of candy and fish-shaped soy sauce packets, an anonymous trio of artists known simply as three have constructed a number of works that invite viewers to interact with them. Their installation titled Tokyo Electric displays a 3 meter-tall box designed in the scale of the Fukushima nuclear power plant. The structure deliberately includes 151,503 colorful fish-shaped soy sauce containers, which is the exact number of displaced citizens in the aftermath.

 

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ÉCAL student Erika Marthins has combined a series of different technologies with food to create an interactive dessert that moves, makes noise and refracts light. Aiming to offer interesting alternatives to the average sweet treat, Marthins used edible robotics, light-shaping technology, and digital data information in the making of the dish.

 

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Filioppo Ioco Untitled (2010)

 

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‘In Terreform One’s Edible Puffed Rice Clusters (2022), the work’s pixelated-looking panels are formed from puffed rice. They are intended as a low-cost building material that can be used as a building facade that small mammals, insects and birds can consume.’

 

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Nora Silva Sourdough Jacket (2020)

 

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Scottish artist Anya Gallaccio has created Stroke, which involves an entire room coated in chocolate which visitors are allowed to touch and taste. “The idea of a chocolate room is one thing and the reality of a chocolate room is very much something else,” says Gallaccio.

 

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‘For An Edible Family in a Mobile Home (1976), Bobby Baker transformed the Acme Housing Association prefab that she was living in into a week-long sculptural installation that housed an edible family of five: mother, father, teenage daughter, son, and baby. Assembled from cake and adorned with icing, biscuits and other baked goods, the family members could be encountered in rooms throughout the house: the baby asleep in her cot, the son in the bath, the teenage daughter listening to the radio in her parents’ bedroom, the father slumped in an armchair in front of the television. The mother was the only mobile member of the family who moved throughout the house but was more often found in the kitchen, where visitors could enjoy a cup of tea from her head, or other soft drinks, and have fresh snacks from compartments in her abdomen. Against a backdrop of walls and surfaces covered in newsprint and magazines, and decorated with icing sugar, Baker performed as hostess. She offered food and encouraged visitors to consume, and thereby dismantle, the family.’

 

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‘Precipitazioni Sparse (Scattered Precipitations, 2005) is a work of art by the Italian artist Bruna Esposito (b. 1960) composed of white, golden, and red onion peels placed randomly on a marble slab. There is no additional material applied to secure the peels to the marble. The artist calls this work an “impermanent sculpture,” since the onion peels can shift with the slightest air movements, creating continuous changes in the work’s composition.’

 

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Joseph Marr Vania Vs Vania (2013)
Medium: Strawberry Flavoured Sugar

 

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Artist Jennifer Rubell created a cell padded with edible cotton candy.

 

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Gameboy Mania & Jami Behrends Super Mario Cake (2014)

 

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Sarah Lucas’ ‘Nud Cycladic 14’ reimagined as a vegan lemon sponge cake.

 

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Natacha Lesueur Untitled (1995)

 

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It took 56 hours to complete, was made from 4,640 chocolate sticks and 10kg of Belgian chocolate, measures 120cm by 120cm and contains 143,840 calories – but this edible labyrinth will only take a few hours to eat. The maze is the brainchild of YouTube vlogger Doug Armstrong, from London, and food artist Prudence Staite, from Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, who created their chocolate warren in homage to the Maze Runner film.

 

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Was chosen to take part in an amazing art piece done by the artist Brandon McGill titled DUALITY. Was along with seven other young guys painted from head to toe very imaginatively with edible paint. This was followed by an art auction where invited guests bid on the artworks, meaning the edible painting not us. Those with the top bids could take us into private rooms and remove the artwork, which, yes, meant licking the painting off of our bodies. I was bought by a group of five men who had me back to a sticky version of my old self in what seemed like no time at all.

 

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‘Song Dong’s participatory Eating the City (2017) after the audience began to consume (and apparently smash!) the biscuits layered to build the urban structures (leading to its collapse). The edible city is an amalgamation of a number cities, identified by a few iconic structures from Chinese cities, that the artist has created to represent the rapid growth, particularly in Asia, that has created urban areas, indistinguishable from one another, blending into sameness. The blandness and uniformity of the building blocks dangerously obscure their sweetness, and the artist warns against indulging in what the city has to offer. “If you eat too much then you could die.” In the end, the city is in ruins.’

 

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A lumpy mound of a black rock-like substance dominated the space during He Xiangyu’s Cola Project. The substance was boiled down cola drink, a process developed by Xiangyu in 2008. With his team of factory workers, he “cooked” thousands of litres over a span of a year to create the crystal forms resembling coal. The work focuses on the materiality of Coca-Cola rather than the pervasiveness of the corporate identity of the product.

 

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The Real Cookbook from German design agency Korefe is a delicious creation made of 100% fresh pasta. Flip it open for some inspiration, and tear out the pages to use as sheets of lasagna. For both the seasoned chef and the novice cook, just bake the book and eat!

 

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Maurizio Savini is an Italian sculptor known for making art out of chewing gum.

 

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‘Swiss artist Daniel Spoerri, who died on November 6 at the age of 94, the chaotic mess of stained cloths, crumpled napkins, and food-smeared plates was rich material for art making. He began his “Snare Picture” assemblages in the 1960s, preserving the remains of meals consumed by friends, lovers, and strangers, before hanging them vertically on the wall.’

 

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1. Put 5 Peeps in a microwave-safe bowl and microwave on high for 30 seconds. 2. Using a spoon, stir in about 1 teaspoon neutral oil until the mixture is stringy and combined. 3. Slowly stir in confectioners’ sugar until you’ve reached your desired consistency (we used about ¼ to ⅓ cup sugar). 4. Transfer the slime to a work surface lightly dusted with more sugar. Cover your hands with sugar to prevent sticking. Knead gently until the slime is smooth.

 

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Highlights from the Texas State Fair 2011 Butter Sculpture Show

 

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Jasmine Rae Cake (2017)

 

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A London-based patisserie is selling edible tampon, soaked in blood. Luxury macron brand, OhLaLa, are selling this one-of-a-kind ‘bloody’ delicacy for a good cause. The boutique bakers created the “world’s first Bloody Good tampon macarons to highlight a real issue for women around the world,” as stated on their website. They joined hands with Bloody Good Period (BGP), a charity organisation that aims to create a sustainable flow of sanitary protection for those who can’t afford to buy them. Thus, people who end up buying these gory tampon boxes will be contributing for the noble cause. Ten pounds from every box will be donated to “help the fight against period poverty that affects 1 in 10 women in the UK alone, with proceeds raised going toward buying period packs for asylum seekers, refugees and women with low income,” the website added. The artists made the tampon as real-looking as possible and even added a blue string, which the makers say is also edible and are made of raspberry.

 

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“The domestic landscape reflects our culture, our taste and our habits,” say the designers Lanzavecchia + Wai. “Ostensibly living intact through good times and also adverse ones, the domestic objects become invisible to us over time with their familiarity. How can furniture react to times of crisis? The decorative elements that were once appreciated, suddenly become superfluous and should evolve to reflect a new era of austerity; the objects become edible and offer themselves to be consumed when needed.”

 

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‘Bread is an on-going series by Anatoly Osmolovsky started in 2007 which comprises individual hand carved panels using rye bread. Works from this series have been widely exhibited both in Russia and abroad. First at Documenta XII in Kassel, and most recently in Venice at the Parallel Convergences at the Casa dei Tre Oci in Giudecca.’

 

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‘Plastic water bottles might soon be a thing of the past thanks to these edible water bubbles created by an innovative sustainable packaging start-up based in London, UK. The bubbles, called the Ooho!, are created by encasing a blob of drinking water within an edible membrane.’

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Cool, my pleasure. I’m too much of a nervous klutz for automatic checkout. I always fuck it up. So I stick with the real people, which is weirdly calming to me, I guess because that interacting is so pre-organised or something. It must be interesting to get physical abuse without emotional consequences. Quite a trick. Love making your favorite thing in your apartment not only edible but very delicious, G. ** Steeqhen, Well, yeah, be careful then. I alway see food as fuel that coincidentally tastes good. Saving 500 a month is a lure, but I guess so is a job you like? Tough choice. That’s not a bad premise for an actual real world story. ** _Black_Acrylic, What does your bro say about Dubai? I see it as one of the least appealing to visit places on earth. Except, wait, it does have the world’s longest log ride, so maybe never mind. But I am curious what it’s actually like. ** Hugo, I won’t push myself. I let my self push me. Much luck with the internship. The rebirth of Dalkey Archive is one of the happiest occurrences of late. ** Darby🐈‍⬛🪱, Worm, right, duh. I think I need to change the prescription on my reading glasses. Sorry about the misgendering. Old patriarchal kneejerk habits die hard sometimes. Las Vegas! Wow, that’s something. What an insane and horrible and fascinating and kind of fun place. Are you staying in a theme hotel on the Strip? Take a look at the Sphere and tell me if it’s as trippy as it looks in photos. It does sound like your mom has a good soul. Obviously she makes mistakes like vis-a-vis you, but it is good that she seems to mean well? I don’t know. Complicated. Anyway Las Vegas! That’s wild! My eyes are constructing that banana split excitedly, and my stomach is so jealous. ‘Try’ is the emotional book in the Cycle. ‘Frisk’ is the libido one. ‘Guide’ is the brain one. Or so I planned at least. Have so much fun out west if I don’t speak with you before! ** julian, Watching more Bresson is an excellent idea in any case. I think I always read the slave posts as both real and fantasy simultaneously. Or I guess I try to approach them innocently and with belief and then realise they’re implausible and then wonder if they really want what they say and are just scared or whether they’re making their profiles cynically or … They’re very complicated to me. Amphetamine Sulphate occasionally publishes a new Peter Sotos book, but you have to jump on it when they do because they’re always limited editions. Peter’s choice, I assume. ** Charalampos, If I ever see ‘Weapons’ I’ll try to remember to let you know. A friend whose taste I totally trust said ‘Bring Her Back’ was bad and obnoxious, so I’ve put seeing it on the way back burner. ‘Le rebelle’ is a good one. ** jay, Hey, jay! ‘Les Amis’ seems to be the only film that people have seen of his. You were airborne. And, just as importantly, writing on your laptop. Like me! So technically we were even more in sync than usual even though I couldn’t see any difference in your comment’s build. Anyway, blabla. Very good, about your intended writing diligence. Yeah, it’s weird to get locked out of your childhood home. Sometimes when I’m in LA I drive by our old house, and it’s very weird and melancholy to know I can’t just go inside. Thanks, thanks about my writing’s help. That means so much, really. I watched a plane fly over Paris when I was smoking at the window yesterday, and maybe it was yours. ** Carsten, You’re home, man. Pretty sweet. Those first days in a new home are so lustrous. Enjoy the newness and mysteries because they don’t last long. No, they don’t let you name the festival until they announce their line-up. It should be pretty soon. ** HaRpEr //, Hi. I’ve never been particularly drawn into Chabrol’s films when I’ve seen them. I can’t remember why. They seemed kind of second tier or something? You’ve joined the substack world. Cool. Everyone, the mighty HaRpEr // has started a substack thing, and let’s all go over there and read the first entry and hit ‘bookmark’. What do you say? Here. Awesome, pal! ** Steve, I actually haven’t visited Solidarity Cinema in the past two weeks, but I’ll check today. The weather is dreamy here too. I don’t know that Sebastien Marnier film. How has it evaded me? I’ll investigate, thank you. ** Dev, Back when I was doing journalism for a living, it was pretty hard to turn assignments down, but sometimes I did. Like one time Spin Magazine wanted to me to fly from LA to London then immediately take a train to Manchester and interview Blur after some gig they were doing there and then train back to London and immediately fly back to LA, and I said no fucking way. Oh, no, that’s so stressful about losing your writing. One time before computers I lost a whole novel I was writing by hand. I accidentally left it at a bus stop. Oh my god, that was awful, and I just decided to assume it sucked. What I do now is email myself the current draft of whatever I’m working as soon as I’ve made significant changes to it. You might try that? ** Uday, Ah, Gregg, interesting. I still have unpacked boxes in my apartment even though I moved here eight years ago. I don’t think I have any feelings about Janet Jackson one way or another. I guess liked ‘Rhythm Nation’. Is she big for you? ** Mari, Hi, Mari! I will, I will check out ‘The Summer Hikaru Died.’ Thank you! My weekend was okay. Enjoy creating things you want to talk about, and, of course, things that aren’t worth talking about too. xo. ** Right. Food for thought today. See you tomorrow.

 

‘It comes as a surprise when the cinema of a quite well known actor like Gérard Blain (a darling of the Nouvelle Vague, acting in short films by Truffaut and Godard, in Chabrol‘s Le Beau Serge and Les Cousins, in Un homme de trop for Costa-Gavras and even Hatari! for Howard Hawks) from a country like France is almost invisible abroad. How those disappearances come into place is out of my understanding. Especially when one happens to find out that Blain‘s films easily rank among the more interesting works French cinema has produced. And that means a lot. But whose responsibility is it to discover? Today almost any viewer has the possibility to search for unknown cinema. But we also live in an age where there are too many things flying around disguised as cinema when in reality there is too little cinema.

‘But now, who is Blain? Of course, we cannot tell. But we could see his films. His cinema often deals with personal experiences and memories of childhood and past. The most obvious formal influence seems to be Robert Bresson but this leads to wrong expectations. Of course, Blain like Bresson is very interested in the concept of minimalism. He tries to show only what is absolutely necessary. A good example for this can be found in the stunning beginning of Le Pélican. We see the birth of a son, his father, the child sleeps, grows up, just images like a dream, the moments father and son spend together in a zoo, in a tram for children. In retrospective we recognize these moments as a memory of harmony. Blain who plays the father himself really loves in those scenes with his actual son(s). But the filmmaker never strips down his images like Bresson did. He is more interested in the personal aspects of cinema which makes him a perfect combination with Eustache and Pialat. He will always choose the emotion before the image, his perception before form. There are some strong and some weak points about this, in general it creates an individual point-of-view and this rare feeling of having a human being behind (and in the case of Blain also before) the camera. Nevertheless sometimes it seems strange that we encounter with Blain a quasi formalistic approach that is ready at any second to throw itself overboard in favor of a certain scene or an emotion that the filmmaker wants to stress. A good example for such a lack of consequence can be found at the end of Le rebelle when Blain cannot stop cutting to the crying face of the abandonned sister of the protagonist. Unlike Bresson tenderness is not a question between the images, it is an obvious answer in them. Due to that it is not really Bresson who Blain is in relation with, it is Truffaut. That might seem strange in the beginning but thinking about it I came to realize that both directors are not only concerned with visions from the past, a strong faith in humanity, insecurities, moments where cinema and memories merge, but they also are both obsessed with the beauty and cruelty of dependencies.

‘Blain‘s characters struggle for freedom but their way to achieve it always brings them into situations in which they depend on the lust and money of other people. In Les Amis it is 16-year old Paul who struggles and who meets Philippe, an elderly business man who offers him in unbearable ambivalences a friendship and a little bit more. Paul like his namesake in Un enfant dans la foule goes for it but soon he will fall in love with a girl. The opposite is true for an amazing Patrick Norbert in Le rebelle. He denies the much more obvious seduction of money and does not prostitute himself so easily. But this leads to other problems. It is clear that in relationships like that lies a metaphorical potential for many injustices of the world, including what Blain, who always thought of himself as an outsider, must have encountered when making cinema. But those patrons have always something vulnerable and honest about them which makes their egoism and desire even more dangerous. Especially since Blain shows both sides in his filmography: The seducer and the seduced. What is a violent abduction from one perspective might be desperate love from the other perspective. Age difference and deformed tenderness play a huge role in Blain‘s cinema. We often see people kiss or embrace and freezing in a Fassbinder-like pose. Suddenly movement stops and something seems wrong. It is too close, too long, too wanted. But the wrongness is not a question of a calculated crime, it is one of human weakness. In Un second souffle Blain turns around the dependency and focuses on an aging man (played by Robert Stack who grew up part of his life in Paris and spoke fluently French, therefore acted in several French films) and his fight to stay young. He takes himself a much younger girlfriend and Blain does not shy away from irritating our gaze as sometimes we take his lover for his possible daughter. The naturalness of this kind of relationship presented in Fin août, début septembre by Olivier Assayas gets an existentialist alienation with Blain. Among those who visited the screenings of Blain I seem to hold an exclusive opinion on this, but for me Un second souffle is the best of the five films. Part of this owes to the amazing camera work of Emmanuel Machuel (who worked with Bresson, Pialat and Mr. Costa among others). Machuel also photographed stunningly Un enfant dans la foule and Le rebelle but in Un second souffle the way he connects movement with expectation and finally disappointment is on top of his game. The film opens and closes with the character of Stack running through the streets, a park and a forest. The camera travels with him and pans as he moves towards or away from us. In the beginning we see someone who comes out of the forest, there is a time he takes, a way he looks, an insecurity, a hunger whereas the almost same images in the end carry death and discouragement but also acceptance. It is a huge quality of Machuel to keep the right distance, one that makes us feel the movement of the camera as something that takes power, tenderness and time as opposed to many of those camera movements nowadays which more or less fly through the air. The emotions of this camera movement mirror in the protagonist. Stack‘s attempts to become young again carry the kind of hypocritical embarrassment we know from a filmmaker like Pialat. But there is an honesty about it that keeps us and the films moving. In a vibrantly delivered scene Stack talks to his younger girlfriend about another boy her age she knows. They lie in bed together, it is something uncomfortable but nobody would want to leave. There is sexual dependency and a constant impotence that forces the protagonists of Blain to stay viewers and listeners.

‘In Le Pélican a very long sequence just observes the family life the protagonist will never have again, in Un second souffle the protagonist observes the naked body he will never have like he wants to, in Un enfant dans la foule the young child looks at a photo of his mother he will never see like this again. Music gets repeated, records played and even a Jacques Tati-like music player gets used in Le Pélican. People disappear in Blain‘s films and they leave a gap. Blain makes us feel this gap with music or with a neutral observation. Even if a body still exists something other might disappear in the body. Sometimes the protagonists try to ignore other people and sometimes they try to remember them. Both attempts fail.

‘One could write a lot more about Blain but for now we have to stick with a last observation concerning the beauty of adidas-tracksuits employed by Blain‘s films. Yes, that‘s right. Adidas is even thanked for in the beginning of Robert Stack‘s-Wes-Anderson-would-just-love-it-and-make-him-a-Tenenbaum fashion-show during Un second souffle and I found many other incidents where characters were wearing old school adidas stuff. First it seemed rather unfitting for a self-proclaimed outsider to have deals with capitalism itself but on the other hand this way of clothing just perfectly talks with the way his protagonist and his films are: There is a certain style we can easily recognize but underneath is something different, something that needs this style, that is dependent on it. You feel younger, you feel like belonging when you look like it. By stressing clothing in such a colorful way Blain brings it in our conscience. He shows that there is a lie behind it, but also a necessity. The cruelty and beauty of dependency, the pain and joy of prostitution, the appearance of love in disappearance. The cinema of Blain brings up the painful subject of not being able to live like we want. Thus it lives.’ — Patrick Holzapfel

 

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Stills

 

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Further

Gérard Blain @ IMDb
Rediscovering Gérard Blain
RADICALEMENT BLAIN. RENCONTRE AVEC L’ACHARNÉ GÉRARD BLAIN
JUSQU’AU BOUT DE LA NUIT DE GÉRARD BLAIN
Gérard Blain coupe le monde en deux
Adidas and Dependencies: Gérard Blain As Director
gerard blain, une oeuvre exemplaire par son authenticité
Gerard Blain obit @ Variety

 

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Extras

Trailer: Gerard Blain Retrospective

Spécial Cannes : Gérard BLAIN

Gérard Blain (1999) by Gérard Courant

 

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Interview
from MUBI

 

NOTEBOOK: When did you first encounter the work of Gérard Blain?

BRAD DEANE: It’s funny. I knew him as an actor from the Olivier Assayas films as well as [Chabrol’s] Les cousins [1959] and Le beau serge [1958]. I didn’t really know he made films. Then seven years ago, me and Mia Hansen-Løve were talking. She was like, “Do you know the films of Gérard Blain?” I’m like, “No, not really. I don’t know his films, really. I know him as an actor, but I didn’t know he made films.” She was, “Oh, he’s the most amazing filmmaker,” and she went on and on, and was like, “Oh, you have to see his films. He’s this amazing filmmaker.”

I said, “Great. Hopefully, I can see these,” but, of course, none of them are on DVD. It’s impossible to see his work. Then I did a retrospective of Mia’s work with the TIFF Cinematheque and for her carte blanche selection, she chose A Child in the Crowd. So I got see that one, and I was of course blown away by it.

Then we talked about the idea of a retrospective, but it just seemed kind of complicated. I’d done research, trying to find elements from prints, and things like that, but it just seemed like a longer-term thing. Then last summer Olivier Assayas came, and for one of his carte blanche selections he chose Le pélican, and through that, I got in touch with Paul Blain, who’s in Mia’s first film, Tout est pardonné.

I got in touch to clear the [rights for the] film and I just started asking him a bit more in an e-mail: “How many of the films do you have?” He said, “Yeah, I have all of the films. I have 35mm prints of all of them. The problem is, most of them never have been subtitled before. They haven’t been translated.” I thought, “Okay, well, I need to figure out a way of doing this series.”

Luckily, I was talking with Samuel La France, who worked with me, and fortunately he speaks French, and he said, “You know, I’ve only seen Le pélican, but I love that film. I would love to see the rest of his films. For that alone, I’ll help translate some of the films.” Paul had some subtitles for some of them, but Sam helped. He translated the remaining films, so a handful of them will be translated for the first time with English subtitles. We’ve created subtitles, and hopefully now we can bring these amazing films to audiences.

I think that’s one of the main reasons why they’ve been out of circulation in North America, at least, was the subtitles. But I think there’s many other reasons, too, why his films are probably not known.

NOTEBOOK: The 1970s, when Blain was most active as a director, was certainly a very tumultuous period for French cinema. The government really cut off funding for films because they were kind of ashamed of the culture they represented, post-May ’68. This was also a period when Cahiers du cinéma was barely even writing about cinema, but rather about politics. I wonder if that’s a reason for maybe, his work falling through the cracks.

DEANE: I don’t know if it was that was so much. I think Gérard’s personality maybe played into it somewhat. He’s such an uncompromising figure as an actor. He didn’t like compromise as a director, and he just really liked pushing the boundaries and pushing people’s buttons.

He is a real rebel, and his films are about that. From everyone I’ve talked to who knew him, he liked to cause trouble. He really was dissatisfied with a lot of aspects of society, and he had his own kind of morality in a way. I think he probably upset a lot of people at the time and was not the easiest person, necessarily, to work with.

I think he also falls into a strange generation; the post-New Wave. I think we see that with [Jean] Eustache, [Maurice] Pialat, and Blain. I think the three of them work very interestingly together. Actually, the Austrian Film Museum did a series with the three filmmakers, focusing on all three, and I think there’s this interesting link, in a way, between the French New Wave, and the following generations. But it’s funny, because those three filmmakers are probably the least well-known. Pialat finally has received the attention he deserves, but they were all these very kind of uncompromising, difficult characters.

The interesting thing about Blain though, is that he actually is a product of the French New Wave in a weird way. That’s how he got his start. He became famous as an actor in the French New Wave films. He knew Godard, Truffaut and he worked with all of these people.
But he did make films very differently. He didn’t make New Wave films, and if anything, the films he makes are probably closer to Bresson, who always kind of had his own way of making films too.

I think those were some major factors in why he’s not as well known, because we’ve seen the same with Pialat. Pialat’s a genius, as well, and only recently Pialat has been discovered. And Eustache didn’t make that many films, either. Of course, he made two masterpiece feature films, and a bunch of shorts, but, yeah—you wonder why these filmmakers didn’t make more.

NOTEBOOK: I think with Pialat and if you want to count Luc Moullet, the comparison’s interesting, too, because all three of these people, they intermittently put themselves in their own films, as well. You’d think that it would almost make them more recognizable, the fact that they’re presences within their own films.

DEANE: Yeah, and he was friends with Pialat, too. He knew Pialat quite well, Paul told me.

NOTEBOOK: How much is really known about his life?

DEANE: With Gérard, not a lot. I just recently interviewed his son in Paris, and got to learn a lot more, and also from talking to Olivier Assayas, who was also friends with him. I’ve gotten to learn a lot more about his life, recently. When you do a series like this and you’re trying to research it, it’s like, well, what do you find? There’s barely anything on him in English, and then, even in French, there’s not a whole lot written about him. There have been retrospectives in France, in Paris. I know, talking to Olivier, that’s how he discovered him.

Olivier cast him in his own film, Winter’s Child [1989] which was, as Olivier describes, a homage to Gérard’s films, because he was such a huge fan and he told me he went and presented the films when they would show in Paris. But even he was kind of baffled as to why he’s not better known, because they have shown in France, at least, and even in France, they’re not as well-known as they should be. But North America, it’s nonexistent, really, until now. We’re going to change that though.

NOTEBOOK: One of the quotes going around for this retrospective is that “he’s the real inheritor to Bresson.” It’s interesting, because I think Bresson really haunts this whole building and organization, what with the giant posters for his films hung up here and how he always pops up almost every season in the Cinematheque Special Screenings. Is this retrospective partly a realization of that?

DEANE: We have a long history at the Cinematheque with Bresson. James Quandt has put together these large Bresson retrospectives many times over the years, back when people weren’t doing this, and he’s done two books on Bresson. So, James has built this really great audience in Toronto for Bresson, and it’s funny, because we even get this from distributors in the US sometimes, when we want to show the films and they’re like, “Wow, you guys draw so much better for Bresson than almost anywhere else.”

I think we’ve built an audience, but I think Bresson’s reputation has increased over the years, too. I think it’s become much more widely recognized for what a genius and what a great filmmaker he is, and how genuinely unique he is in the history of cinema.
Gérard was friends with Bresson and I think his films very much follow in that Bressonian way of filmmaking. I don’t think they’re copies in any way. I don’t think he’s imitating him. I don’t think that would be very interesting. But I think, when you read something like Notes on the Cinematograph by Bresson, I feel like Blain is very much in line with that, philosophically, about the way he approached cinema, something that was about precision. It was very concise. The editing, the performances, were more subdued, which is all extremely cinematic, too.

 

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8 of Gérard Blain’s 9 films
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Les amis (1971)
‘The first film directed by the actor Gérard Blain has a touchy subject : an old-fashioned pederastic relation between a mature married man and minor of 16 (in France, then, the majority was of 21). It is filmed in very sober, minimalist style (Blain was a Bresson admirer), there is nothing shocking in sight, but plenty of delicate situations. And the boy is also in love with a blonde society girl. It seems that it is a near auto-biographical film : Blain had a tough childhood and found help and affection with older men. Later he married and had children, but directed this film and then others on this subject without shame or anything negative. And “Les amis” went to Cannes festival, got a prize at Locarno … So the past could be more tolerant than our present. It is an old-fashioned film with a daring content, which surprises because most of the time we see the opposite. As I thought, it is a bit disturbing : we know such things exist, but we never see them, usually. It is bold and courageous. Blain was not an easy character in life, and not a lot of people would dare to direct such a film, a film which never blinks, never give place to conventions and common moral, but is in its way, because of all this, gives a moral lesson : never judge, consider only facts and how people are inside. The last scene is the key and the morality of the whole film. Finally, it was worthy to watch it.’ — chrismass61

Excerpt

Yann Favre Epstein – hommage – “les Amis” (1971)

 

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Le pélican (1974)
‘Blain’s achingly moving portrait of paternal love focuses on jazz musician and new father Paul (Blain), who, seeking to satisfy his wife’s upwardly mobile desires, takes part in an illegal scheme that promptly lands him in prison. Released many years later, Paul discovers that his wife has remarried to a wealthy man. Tracing them to their luxurious summer house in Switzerland, Paul spies on the new family, hoping to one day reunite with his young son. “Using a minimum of means with a maximum of precision, [Blain’s] portrait of Paul’s obsessive desperation in the face of inevitability emerges with shattering clarity.’ — Christoph Huber

the entire film

 

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A Child in the Crowd (1976)
‘Considered one of the great lost masterpieces of 1970s French cinema, Un enfant dans la foule takes place in Nazi-occupied France, where young Paul (César Chaveau) is forced to fend for himself after being abandoned by his parents. Struggling to survive and yearning for affection and acceptance, Paul is picked up by men on the street and performs small jobs for German soldiers, his emotional rootlessness leading him from collaboration into the Resistance. Partially based on the director’s own wartime childhood, Blain’s cruel story of youth employs Bressonian restraint in its vision of a world whose unremitting harshness places the film’s fleeting moments of compassion and connection in powerful relief; watch for Blain’s moving cameo in the final shot, a fusion of art and life that seems to promise a transcendence of trauma through the medium of film.’ — TIFF

Watch the film here

 

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Un second souffle (1978)
‘Fiftysomething dental surgeon François (Robert Stack) leaves his loving wife and three children in order to enjoy a life free of responsibility, beginning a relationship with a much younger woman, Catherine (Anicée Alvina), who confesses that she is also having an affair with Marc (Frédéric Meisner), a motorcycle-riding man her own age. Undeterred, François befriends Marc and gets his own motorcycle, but when he suffers an accident, he is forced to confront the limitations of his aging body and the reality of his waning youth, harsh realities counterposed to undying hope in this frank, human film.’ — Metrograph

Excerpt

Excerpt

 

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Le rebelle (1980)
‘After the death of his parents, Pierre (Patrick Norbert) is forced to care for his younger sister Nathalie by committing petty crimes. In a recurring motif of Blain’s cinema, Pierre is taken under the wing of an older gay man, Hubert (Michel Subor), who offers him work and financial security; but when Hubert makes advances to him, Pierre robs him and takes up with a group of radical leftists who are planning terrorist attacks. Without employment, Pierre loses Nathalie to child services and spirals into desperation, finally erupting in an act of horrific violence. “This sinister portrait of rebelliousness in times of economic and social hardship may betray some of Blain’s frustration — but it reveals even more about the true inner life of his era.’ — Christoph Huber

Excerpt

Watch the film here

 

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Pierre et Djemila (1987)
‘Set in a housing project in the northern French town of Roubaix, Blain’s Romeo and Juliet redux chronicles the star-crossed love affair between sensitive French teen Pierre (Jean-Pierre André) and Djemila (Nadja Reski), the daughter of Algerian immigrants. Separated by both cultural barriers and racially charged bitterness — Pierre’s father is an Algerian War veteran, while Djemila’s older brother despises the French for their brutal repression in his homeland — the young lovers see each other in secret, until the intervention of a family member leads to tragedy. Co-written by Mohamed Bouchibi, a former member of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN), Pierre et Djemila became a lightning rod for controversy when it premiered at the 1987 Festival de Cannes, where Blain’s recognition of cultural divides within French society (“I am not making films to find solutions,” he said in an interview) led some commentators to accuse the film of being anti-immigrant and serving the cause of the right-wing Front National.’ — TIFF

the entire film

 

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Jusqu’au bout de la nuit (1995)
‘Following an eight-year hiatus as a director, Blain returned with this subversive thriller that, like Maurice Pialat’s Police, uses the genre format to create something much more: “not a gangster film, but a love story and a relentless tragedy,” as Blain described it. The director stars as François, a career criminal who is released after serving a 12-year prison sentence. He begins a relationship with a younger woman, Maria (Anicée Alvina), but his need for cash — and his uncompromising opposition to a “normal” society he detests — leads him back to his outlaw ways, and towards an explosive denouement. Employing Bressonian ellipses to enhance the emotional impact of its “action” scenes, Jusqu’au bout de la nuit is “halfway between an ultra-brooding polar [crime film] and Scarface [as] filmed by Jean-Marie Straub.’ — Olivier Père

Excerpt

the entire film

 

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Ainsi soit-il (1999)
‘Doggedly uncommercial, and paying not a whit of heed to changing fashion, former thesp Gerard Blain climbs behind the camera again for his eighth feature, “Ainsi soit-il,” another austere, Bressonian exercise shot through with implacable logic. Though Blain sets himself up for a fall each time with his undisguised admiration for the Gallic maestro of minimalism, he generally succeeds in bringing it off — not least here, in a drama about a son solving the mystery of his father’s death that has a genuine power and spirituality for those attuned to reductive cinema. All the Bressonian hallmarks are there: fixed camera, simple but precise cutting, slightly stilted, formal dialogue, and dispassionate exteriors hiding grand emotions. As Regis, Paul Blain even possesses the same wounded-deer look of some of Bresson’s classic heroes (“Diary of a Country Priest,” “Pickpocket,” “A Man Escaped”), a moral martyr to a cause that’s higher than the law — represented here by a sympathetic but by-the-book cop — can ever understand.’ — Variety

Excerpt

 

 

*

p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. And there it is. I’ve only quickly skimmed through an issue or two of Viz ages back, but it kind of reminded me of the great, now defunct US satirical mag National Lampoon, but wittier and less dark maybe. I can see the hat, and it’s a keeper and very, very you, I think. ** Aaron, Hi, Aaron. Thanks for coming in. No, all of the texts (profiles, comments) are real/found although I do edit them a little sometimes, and I mix them and the photos and info around to disguise the actual profile makers. The photos all come from the S/M hook up sites where I find the slaves, but given that I feel pretty confident in guessing that the vast majority of the profile makers and commenters are just typing fantasists, it makes sense that they swipe fake photos from other contexts. Hope that explains it. Thanks. ** jay, Hi, j. There was a short period some years ago where wanting all one’s limbs amputated or wanting to do that to someone was kind of popular and trending amongst those guys. They called it ‘worming’. I love the sound of that voice you’re constructing. Keep at it, obviously. There’s always a way. I hope the antiques guy emptied the apartment, if that was the goal, and that you’re waiting for your Uber to the airport as I type. ** adrian, Hey, adrian. Happy about the timing. Your partner’s and your book project sounds quite exciting, needless to say. How are you constructing it, if that’s possible to say? Summer seems to be a dead duck here, and life is sailing smoothly forward once again. Take care! ** julian, The religious guy actually seemed to possibly be a real person unlike most of the commenters. Except for the fact that he was on that site, of course. Yeah, with Sotos it’s pretty much pdf world. I have some books, but I scored them back in the day. I’ve decided to delay ‘Eddington’ until possibly never. ** Darby🐈‍⬛🪱, I’m going to believe that dog could beat that snake preparing its attack. Somewhere in Frankie’s brain he’s thanking god for your kind assistance. Cats are so strange, so forever strange. Shit, I typed ‘tomorrow’? Habits die hard. No banana split yet, but I haven’t given up. What book are you going to read for the club, or do you know yet? The stuff you already told me was plenty good and not gross at all. I can handle it. Somehow I was able to mis-define desecrate as befouled without your prompting. Mind meld. ** Steeqhen, It’s starting to seem like I should see ‘Weapons’ after all. But I have a long plane flight coming up. I think the idea that going vegetarian is a problem re: nutrition is a myth as long as you get your proteins. I’ve been vegetarian since age 15, and I’ve never had any problems like that at all. Well, I think most of those slaves are guys that just live in their heads too and type what’s in their heads. ** Carsten, You made it to Spain lickety split. Welcome, welcome! Southern France can be quite pretty. Northern France not so much. I’m fine. The festival stress will be around for quite a while, but we got into another good festival yesterday, so things look positive at the moment. Thanks! Hope you make it all the way home today. ** Dev, Hi. Weekend wasn’t bad here. Well, if you’re going to be sleep deprived, at least you’re using your spacey time well, it sounds like. The Huppert turn-down, honestly, was a lot because I would have needed to catch way up on her work first, and she has a shitload of films out in the world. What a workaholic. Naturally I encourage you to write that book. Possible? ** Connie, Hi, Connie! They are very clever, aren’t they? I will admit that I edit their texts to bring out the cleverness and deepsix the less interesting and rambling parts. But, yes, they’re capable of being total riots. Good to see you. Excellent Monday to you and yours. ** horatio, Fire-Cracker was a standout, for sure. No, I lost all my musical abilities decades ago, and I wouldn’t know where to put my fingers if I had a guitar or piano in reach. But I don’t miss it at all. Singing! Well, you can certainly revive that talent in yourself very easily, no? Mousy bass-baritone vocalists are always highly needed if you ask me. Free treats, excellent start. The Sotos spotlight post will be here on Wednesday. A week of waking dreams to you. ** Steve, Helpful too in trying to understand who could be a Lady Gaga fan. Maybe just leave them in the boxes? I don’t know, yikes. How’s the new Bros. Quay? All I’ve read about it is that them using digital is very odd. ** Dominik, Hi!! Dark times, even for the slaves. Nope, the scale model store is still in the offing. This week probably. Mm, Sundays aren’t too bad here. For me the only problem is supermarkets are only automatic/machine check out on Sundays, and I refuse to use that option. I find it eerie. There are times where love’s shrieks and groans turn into sounds from a whale mating documentary….🤣, G. ** Corey, I think I’d choose ‘Berlin Alexanderplatz’ so I wouldn’t have to get up and change the DVD. Ooh, nice apartment, your friend’s, clearly. If I could get away with writing fragmented and weird nonfiction and get paid for that I might just go back to it. ** trannyfujoshi, Hello!! Nice to meet you! I don’t know ‘The Summer Hikaru Died’. This is the first I’ve heard of it. Thank you, I will go try to find and see what in the world it is. How are you? ** Hugo, Hey. The Ghent thing isn’t for sure yet, but it won’t be in October if it happens. I will re: 764. Just have to get some work and crap done. I hope your September is starting as pleasantly as ours is. ** HaRpEr //, Good. You can sort of wash your hands of that for a while hopefully. I’ve never had a landlord who didn’t do that or try hard to. I was disappointed when Jason Pierce lost interest in dense dark trippy textures and got into gospel. I’m just not interested in the gospel form. But if he has decided that revisiting ‘Pure Phase’ is a good idea, that’s hopeful. I haven’t read that Notley yet, but I will. ** Nicholas., Can one simultaneously be stranded and loving it? I guess so. You’re proof positive. I’ll keep my eyes out for Joey. Well, you do indeed seem like you have the ecstasy that you imagined Fire Island could provide, so you or it deserve some kind of prize. Happy gay art would be most welcome. ** Okay. Today the blog presents to you the beautiful and sadly under known films of Gérard Blain. Check him out. See you tomorrow.