Hungarian-born Bauhaus artist L·zlÛ Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946), known primarily for his influential photographic and design work, brought his formal and aesthetic concerns to the practice of cinema in the 1920s and early 1930s. Tonight’s screening includes his Berlin Still Life (shot mostly in Berlin’s slums), Marseille Vieux Port (a portrait of the city’s harbor), Lightplay: Black/White/Gray (made with his light-space modulator), Gypsies, and the subaqueous documentary The Life of the Lobster. Impassioned French film critic Louis Delluc (1890-1924) began filmmaking by collaborating with Germaine Dulac in 1919. Fever, an impressionist melodrama set in the Marseilles waterfront, is Delluc’s fourth film in a brilliant but brief career.
Thursday, May 19, 2005
Early Avant-Garde
Films by Moholy-Nagy and Delluc
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts