Who would have guessed 25 years ago that Beat Takeshi, masochist comic of the Japanese TV network, eccentric costumes disciple, supporter of goofy humour and self-humiliation specialist in front of million of viewers in shows each more regressive than the last, would become recognized as an international master of the 7th art, and would be in 2010 the center of attention of prestigious French cultural institutions such as the Centre Pompidou and the Fondation Cartier ? Not him for sure, of whom the artistic path, in his early years of fame, looks more like a chain reaction than a real ambition. An unpredictability became the true determination of his films.
Before the chance he was given by Nagisa Oshima in 1983 with Furyo, the appearances of Kitano in movies can be summarized in a few extra parts here and there, his comic status keeping him from the possibility of blossoming anywhere else than in the craziness of his TV shows. With his role of an alcoholic and silly guard, and the support of Oshima, he begins to have a taste for characters going in the opposite direction of what people expects from him and starts a real acting career through some movies mostly unseen out of Japan. 6 years later, Kitano sneaks into Oshima’s skin and holds the camera in his own hands for the first time with Violent Cop, a nihilist thriller which already show through the will of the newborn filmmaker to break some cinematographic conventions. From yakuza film with Sonatine and Brother, chambara with his singular vision of Zatoichi, the famous blind swordsman, or comedy with Getting Any?, Kitano hasn’t ceased to mistreat not only the codified side of these genres but also the expectations viewers could put in him. As he says himself, the worst that could happen to him would be to make the same film again and again and stagnate in his art. In order to avoid it, director Kitano and actor Takeshi affords to go out on a limb, as Takeshi’s, Glory to the Filmmaker! and Achilles and the Tortoise demonstrate it, a self-reflexive trilogy about creation and the status of artist. Intenable autosatisfaction for a few (apparently the majority being given their complete failure in Japan), incontestable genius for others, they mostly reveal the state of mind of a film director who constantly call himself into question. With Achilles and the Tortoise, Kitano seems to finally have found the answers and come back to a more classical and appeased cinema. After a short animated sequence giving his meaning to the title, the film draws the cruel and moving portrait of Machisu, failed artist searching for the perfect piece of art but only copying what others, from Matisse to Pollock, have created before him. More and more absurd sequences follow then one another where Machisu is ready for anything to achieve his purpose, and if it often implies black humour and bad taste, Achilles and the Tortoise is above all the most poetic film of Kitano since Dolls, imbued with a rather scarce optimism for him to be emphasized.
These three films must be seen as a transitional phase which have allowed the filmmaker to be at peace with himself, at peace with his art, and to be more free than ever as for his future wishes.
Thus, the protean work of Takeshi Kitano can be seen throughout two Siamese events : a retrospective of his career in cinema and television at the Centre Pompidou from march 11th to june 26th, with 40 films whose almost half of them stays unseen, and an installation entitled “Beat Takeshi Kitano, Gosse de peintre”, visible from march 11th to September 12th at the Fondation Cartier, where the artist unveils his child soul by means of sets, paintings, videos along with unusual objects. A windfall for fans and the ones who have always wanted to know more about Kitano the iconoclast.
Mathieu Col
Since the mid 90s, we know well Takeshi Kitano as a successful director, acclaimed around the world. But his activities as a star television shows host and producer in Japan are still a mystery. How can the subtle director commit himself in these trash TV things ? Invited by the French Fondation Cartier to settle an exhibition, Kitano opens up the doors of his universe, not as schizophrenic as one could think.
“The film is the testimony of a boxer addicted to morphine shot by Holywood veteran André de Toth. It is, of course, a boxing film, but we really follow him in his life. At one point, he is a soldier in the pacific and there are fantastic war scenes with Japanese snipers up in trees, shooting American soldiers without ever being seen. The soldiers fall one after the other, shot by these invisible killers, a great scene, under the rain. It’s an excellent film. The character heals his wounds and he is treated with morphine which makes him addicted. It messes up his life even if it ends happily. It’s really modern, it’s never moralizing and with a real empathy for the character. It’s an extraordinary film, very sharp, and the actor, Cameron Mitchell, is amazing.”
Two ageing actresses share a Parisian flat. On their walls, pictures of actresses of movie stars of the Thirties. One still play small parts, the other does small works to live. They act. They re-act their faded glory, they re-act their parts, they act their lives, makingfrom each small event a source of games.
Anne Benhaïem studied cinema at French cinema school Fémis, in the directors section. She wrote, directed and edited a dozen of short films (Solo tù, co-directed with Arnaud Dommerc, Families Theater starring Helene Lapiower, Humphrey Bogart and the Invisible Woman) and co-wrote with Sophie Fillières (Ouch, Pardon My French) or Marc Cholodenko (writer for Philippe Garrel). We invite you to visit the Facebook page (in French) where she launches a subscription to finance her 
“The body is comparable to a sentence which demands to be disarticulated so that its true contents can be recomposed through an endless series of signs.”It’s with this quote from Hans Bellmer, a major artist of the surrealistic movement, that the movie opens. As a true treatment, in both substance and form, of a unique documentary of which the narrative progression based on ideas and images is not the least of its qualities.
“Larry Clark has this very special talent to make those young men so comfortable that they show themselves with all their kindness and naivety. He manages to get things many documentary makers can’t get. I don’t know how he does that, he must put them in condition, i don’t know if he cheats, but he manages to reach a complicity which makes them forget everything and open up. It’s a sociological document about nowadays sexuality which is quite unique and which says a lot about the standardization of young Americans sexual lives -totally biased by what they see on the internet. What they say about the way the girls must be is crazy. And they -the girls- comply with that. It’s not a male chauvinist problem, they all play the game!”
From industrial music in the 1980s (with the band Nox) to an exploration of electronic and digital cultures in our day, Cécile Babioleʼs artistic trajectory has evolved laterally, cutting across the realms of music and the visual arts. Far from de rigueur interdisciplinarianism, her works move back and forth between one language and another, bleeding each code into the other in an ongoing reinterpretation of the relationship between image and sound.
2010! Dissidenz is back from its maternity leave (just in time for the Year of the Tiger)! The end of the year was the occasion to fill up the site with new DTR (Download-To-Rent) films (or films you can watch on video on demand) and we had to organize the life of all of them: fictions or documentaries, we couldn’t just make them available in the worldwide web vast ocean without guiding you to each one of them and highlight them all. From the iconoclastic Ten Easy Pieces to the frightening reality of The Camorra School by Nico Di Biase, through the hilarious Death’s Glamour by Luc Moullet or the exquisite Dark Room by Marie-Christine Questerbert (which will be available on DVD on February 16), we are happy to introduce little gems of a different cinema to be discovered since December 23.