Tokyo Monogatari – Yasujiro Ozu
Tokyo Monogatari – Yasujiro Ozu
Tokyo Monogatari – Yasujiro Ozu
Tokyo Monogatari – Yasujiro Ozu
Tokyo Monogatari – Yasujiro Ozu
Tokyo Monogatari – Yasujiro Ozu
Tokyo Monogatari – Yasujiro Ozu
Tokyo Monogatari – Yasujiro Ozu
“Ozu’s method, like all poetic methods, is oblique. He does not confront emotion, he surprises it. Precisely, he restricts his vision in order to see more; he limits his world in order to transcend these limitations. His cinema is formal and the formality is that of poetry, the creation of an ordered context that destroys habit and familiarity, returning to each word, to each image, its original freshness and urgency.”
Richie, Donald. Ozu / Donald Richie. Berkeley: University of California, 1974. Print.
Tokyo Monogatari. Dir. Yasujirō Ozu. By Kogo Noda and Yuharu Atsuta. Perf. Chishu Ryu, Chieko Higashiyama, and Setsuko Hara. Ciné Vidéo Film, 1990.
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Bill Cunningham New York
Bill Cunningham New York, Richard Press
Bill Cunningham, photographed by Craig Arend
Bill Cunningham, photographed by Kelly Stuart
Bill Cunningham, photographed by Kelly Stuart
Bill Cunningham, photographed by Kelly Stuart
Richard Press’ documentary of Bill Cunningham describes a man who has devoted his life to fashion; not simply to the photography of clothing, but as a anthropological historian, examining the relationship between people and their clothes.
At 81, he is still full of vitality and to this day retains a genuine, youthful curiosity for the way people dress themselves, cycling up and down the streets of New York, rain, hail or sunshine, watching and waiting for the city and its people to reveal themselves. As well as a tireless photographer, he is also his own layout man, spending endless hours piecing together precise photographic montages for his two columns “On the Street” and “Evening Hours”.
For a man so well known in the world of fashion (and recognisable in his signature blue worker jacket) he is surprisingly ascetic. He lives and eats very frugally, refusing to be wined and dined by the movers and shakers he photographs. He also resided for decades in in Carnegie Hall Studios on 57th St. in a tiny apartment crammed to the ceiling with a lifetime’s worth of files and file cabinets, permitting himself only a spartan single bed in one corner of a work area in which to sleep.
Yet what is most poignant in Press’ documentary is Cunningham’s clear passion for garments and how people wear them. He dismisses the typical media hunger for celebrity and simply focuses upon the clothes themselves; the fabric, the cut, the color, the line. And more importantly he makes it clear he is not an arbiter of fashion. “It isn’t what I think, it’s what I see,” he says. “I let the street speak to me. You’ve got to stay on the street and let the street tell you what it is.”
Bill Cunningham New York. Dir. Richard Press. 2010. Film.
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My Decisive Moment
How it began.
“I had bought a shirt and a jacket. You know the sensation you feel when you put on a new garment: you look in the mirror, happy and a bit excited in your new skin. But wearing that shirt and jacket I was different; they were old and new at the same time. In the mirror I was myself, undoubtedly, only I was more myself than before. I had a strange sensation…yes, I was wearing the shirt par excellence and the perfect jacket, and beneath them I was myself. I felt protected, like a knight in his armor.”
Notebook on Cities and Clothes. Dir. Wim Wenders. Produced by Road Movies Filmproduktion in Cooperation with the Centre National D’Art Et De Culture Georges Pompidou, 1989. DVD.
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