LAFF 2013: LEVITATED MASS

A scene from Levitated Mass: The Story of Michael Heizer's Monolithic Sculpture.

Rock and road

By Miranda Inganni

Energetic and highly enjoyable, director Doug Pray’s Levitated Mass: The Story of Michael Heizer’s Monolithic Sculpture brings to life the 2012 journey of a giant piece of granite through darkened city streets that caught the attention of mainstream media and sleepy communities alike.

In the late 1960s artist Michael Heizer envisioned the idea for “Levitated Mass,” a hulking rock balanced on top a long walkway. Decades later, Heizer received a call from his friends at Stone Valley Quarry in Riverside, CA saying that they had found Heizer his rock. Blasted out of the ground, the enormous mass sat where it was until a suitable location was found and the money raised to attempt to move it. No small feat, indeed. Step in Los Angeles County Museum of Art director Michael Govan and the art-loving donors who helped fund the $10 million transportation project.

Pray’s film does not try to explain Heizer’s vision, though Pray includes many clips from previously recorded interviews and shows a number of Heizer’s other installations and exhibits. And though it took over a year to figure out the engineering and logistics, the rock only traveled for 11 nights. Along the way, something seemingly magical happened, wherever the rock went, people followed. The public’s response was overwhelming. Some folks were bewildered, others saw a conspiracy, but mostly people were impressed at the largesse of it all.

With cinematography by Christopher Chomyn, Edwin Stevens and Pray that expertly captures the scale of the rock and the undertaking and a score by Akron/Family which highlights the drama and suspense (literal and figurative) of the film, Levitated Mass is a movie that will be sure to get audiences discussing the meaning of art and the amazing feats that humans continue to accomplish.

 

FILM REVIEW: L'AMOUR FOU

Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé in L'Amour Fou.

Collaboration and collection

By John Esther 

When Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé first met it was in October 1957 at the funeral of couturier Christian Dior. Laurent was succeeding Dior but that did not last long. What did last long was the relationship between Laurent and Bergé. Six months after their first encounter until Laurent's death on June 1, 2008, the two collaborated and collided to wonderful, dizzying heights.

Over those years the couple amassed a formidable collection of 20th century art. Now that Laurent had passed, Bergé felt it was time to sell of the collections. 

Reminiscing through the ages late 20th century high fashion, art and the devotion they felt for each other during their time together, Bergé offers a behind-the-scenes look at the world behind all the glossy fashion magazines. 

Capturing Bergé's tale of wonder and woe, Pierre Thoretton's documentary L'Amour Fou, plays it smart and cool.

SFIFF 2011: CHILDREN OF THE PRINCESS OF CLEVES

A scene from Children of the Princess of Cleves.

Text-ing times

By Miranda Inganni

In director Régis Sauder’s documentary, The Children of the Princess of Clèves (Nous, Princesses De Clèves), teenagers from a Marseilles high school learn about life and love from the classic French novel, The Princess of Clèves. Using the students to read excerpts from the book, reenact selections and discuss the subject matter with their friends and families, Sauder brings the 17^th century book to life in the 21^st century.

Proving some things are timeless, this documentary is an age-old story of children growing up – testing their boundaries and their parents patience and exploring their own emotions. Instead of the 16^th century royal court of Henri II, the backdrop is a contemporary working class community, but the themes are the same: love, passion, duty, disappointment, jealousy, betrayal, angst, et cetera.

And when the parents get involved in the discussion, it is clear that the kids, being teenagers, are not used to having these issues talked about at home. It’s quite laudable that Sauder gets the conversation going between parent and child during a time when the child is less like to talk and more likely to walk away. There are raw and revealing scenes where it’s clear that some of these young adults still want their parents’ affection and attention, all the while reaching out on their own and rebuking their elders.

Enriched by the ensemble of students featured in the film, The Children of the Princess of Clèves, culminates in the results of their baccalaureate exams. Some pass, some fail, some skip the exam entirely (without his or her parent’s consent or knowledge). In the end, the mobile texting kids seem to have learned a little more about themselves through the exploration of this text -- disproving what French President Nicholas Sarkozy said about it.

FILM REVIEW: THE DESERT OF FORBIDDEN ART

Directors Amanda Pope and Tchavdar Georgiev, and cinematographer Gennadi Balitski during the shooting of The Desert of Forbidden Art. Photograph by Ernest Kurtveliev.

Art thou Igor Savitsky 

By Allan Heifetz

In Western Uzbekistan, also known as Karakalpakstan, in the town of Nukus, there is a remarkable museum that holds the second largest collection of 20th century Russian Avant Garde art in the world. How did this remote desert village acquire such a great and vital museum? It’s all due to one man, Igor Savitsky, who started up the Nukus Museum in the late 1950’s as a safe house for beautiful and endangered Karakalpakstanian cultural artifacts such as carpets, jewelry and costumes.

Born into an aristocratic Russian family in 1915, Savitsky’s family barely survived the 1917 Bolshevik uprising. Growing up under communist rule, Savitsky trained as an artist. In 1950, while working as an illustrator for an archaeological expedition in Central Asia, he fell in love with the Karakalpakstan region and its people. He made a vow to save important remnants of the culture from potential destruction by the Soviets. Savitsky was officially named curator of the Nukus in 1966 and went on to discover the amazing work of an unknown school of artists who settled in Uzbekistan after the revolution. For the rest of his life Savitsky was driven to unearth stunning art from cutting edge Russian artists who were banned during the Joseph Stalin era for refusing to paint Soviet-positive propaganda.

Savitsky spent his life tracking down these treasures, traveling all over Russia and pleading with the often bewildered families of the artists to hand over their bounty. Imagine giving up your mother or father’s genius artwork with only a stranger’s promise of financial reimbursement down the line. Savitsky always made good on his promise, miraculously getting ignorant Soviet higher-ups to foot the bill for the museum’s expenses. Because the Nukus was so far from Moscow, Savitsky was able to bamboozle a clueless regime into funding a museum consisting solely of forbidden works. Due to his tireless efforts, the Nukus museum now holds over 40,000 pieces worth totaling millions of dollars.

Opening this Friday, The Desert of Forbidden Art tells Savitsky’s amazing story, and tells it well enough. However, like most documentaries nowadays, the film does not warrant a trip to the theater. Art lovers will hopefully be able to catch it on DVD, or better yet, watch it on April 5th on PBS, where it will be featured on Independent Lens.