Untitled - Austin Fisher
Transcription
Untitled - Austin Fisher
CREDITS Welcome festival & conference director Dr. Austin Fisher / University of Bedfordshire On behalf of everybody involved in organising this event, I extend a warm welcome to the inaugural Spaghetti Cinema festival: an annual celebration of the weird and wonderful world of Italian genre cinema. festival programmer Neil Fox / University of Falmouth conference committee Prof. Luke Hockley / University of Bedfordshire Dr. Gavin Stewart / University of Bedfordshire Dr. Carlota Larrea / University of Bedfordshire DESIGN Monika Ciapala / logo, branding + art direction BA (Hons.) Graphic Design / Uni of Bedfordshire SCREEN PRINTING technicians Nelda Karklina, Vilja Karhi, Janet Adesanya & Julianna Jagielska / A&D / University of Bedfordshire huge thanks to Viv Cherry, Noel Douglas and Janet Emmanuel at the Division of Art and Design, University of Bedfordshire. press officers Sarah Clayton and Miles Lawton BA (Hons.) Media Production / University of Bedfordshire event journalist Tabitha Langley BA (Hons.) Magazine Journalism University of Bedfordshire distribution Park Circus / Eureka Entertainment inspiration Spaghetti Cinema magazine, edited by William Connolly sponsorship The Research Institute for Media Art and Design / The Division of Media Arts & Production / The Faculty of Creative Arts, Technologies and Science University of Bedfordshire / Luton Culture This year our focus is on the Spaghetti Western. With its roots in the chaotic, often raucous Italian studio system of the 1960s, the Western all’italiana is now widely appreciated as a pivotal moment in cinematic history: an object of fascination and affection for fans, filmmakers and scholars alike, and one whose influence upon global popular culture grows ever more tangible by the year. By running a film festival and an academic conference as parallel and interlocking events, it is therefore a key purpose of our endeavours to bring together diverse perspectives on the Italian Western, both to revisit its cultural significance and to consider its on-going influence on international film industries in the era of Django Unchained. We are deeply honoured to welcome Professor Sir Christopher Frayling to this year’s event. The undisputed father of scholarly enquiry into the genre, Sir Christopher is also a public intellectual of global esteem whose stewardship of such august institutions as the Royal College of Art and Arts Council England have made him a fixture in our nation’s cultural fabric. Fans of the Spaghetti Western will be equally excited to hear the reminiscences of cult icon Dan van Husen, who appeared in a total of twenty-three of the genre’s most treasured films. Furthermore, and as if these star appearances were not enough, we have gathered the leading scholars currently researching the genre from around the world to address our conference. Thank you for supporting this event. I hope to be able to talk all things “spaghetti cinema” with you over the coming days. Austin Fisher Senior Lecturer in Media Arts at the University of Bedfordshire, and Director of the Spaghetti Cinema festival. timetable thursday 11 april 17.00-18.40 Screening : Navajo Joe 19.15-21.30 Screening : For a Few Dollars More 22:00-23:50 Screening : The Mercenary friday 12 april 09:30-10:00 Day 1 : Registration for “Spaghetti Westerns in Transit” Conference 10:00-10:15 Welcome by Professor James Crabbe University of Bedfordshire 10:15-11:45 Panel A – Lee Broughton, Peter Falconer, Mikel J. Koven 11:45-12:00 Coffee 12:00-13:30 Panel B – Giovanni Memola, Andrea Mariani, Xavier Mendik 13:30-14:30 Lunch 14:30-16:30 Panel C – Aliza Wong, Mark Wheeler, Eleanor Andrews, Ivo Ritzer 16:30-16:45 Coffee 16:45-17:45 Keynote Lecture by Prof. Sir Christopher Frayling: “The Quiet Man Gets Noisy: Sergio Leone, the Italian Western and Ireland” 17:45-18:45 Drinks 18:45-21:35 Screening: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly introduced by Prof. Sir Christopher Frayling 22:10-23:40 Screening: The Hills Run Red saturday 13 april 10:00-10:30 Day 2 : Registration for “Spaghetti Westerns in Transit” Conference 10:30-12:30 Panel D – Pasquale Iannone, David Hyman, Patrick Wynne, Thomas Klein, William Grady 12:30-13:30 Lunch 13:30-15:30 Panel E – Rosemary Stott, Iain Robert Smith, Drehli Robnik, Orhun Yakin 15:30-15:45 Coffee 15:45-16:45 Q&A with Dan van Husen 16:45-17:00 Coffee 17:00-18:55 Screening: Death Rides a Horse 19:30-21:15 Screening: The Great Silence 21:45-23:30 Screening: The Big Gundown I am delighted to welcome all delegates and guests to this important and exciting conference on Spaghetti Cinema. The Research Institute of Media, Art and Design, part of the Faculty of Creative Arts, Technologies and Science in the University of Bedfordshire, is hosting this event, and undertakes teaching, learning and research in many areas of the Arts: from English Literature, theatre, contemporary dance through art and design to multi-platform journalism, television broadcasting and contemporary film. We are very grateful to many colleagues for their organisation of this event, Professor Sir Christopher Frayling particularly to Dr. Austin Fisher, Senior Lecturer in Media Arts. Film continues to be an important vehicle for expressing commentaries on politics and cultures throughout the world, and I am sure this conference will provide an important analysis of this special genre of film. Professor James Crabbe Dean of the Faculty of Creative Arts, Technologies and Science, University of Bedfordshire Dan Van Husen Guest of honour Guest of honour Professor Frayling was until recently Rector of the Royal College of Art and Chair of Arts Council England. An historian, critic and award-winning broadcaster, he has published eighteen books on popular culture, art and design and film, including Spaghetti Westerns, Sergio Leone: Something to do With Death, and Once Upon a Time in Italy. In 2004, he guest-curated a major exhibition on Leone’s Westerns at the Museum of Western Heritage in Los Angeles. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Cultural History at the Royal College of Art and a Fellow of Churchill College Cambridge. In 2000, he was knighted for “services to art and design education”, and chose as the Latin motto on his shield “Perge, scelus, fecit mihi diem perficias”, which roughly translates as “Go ahead, punk, make my day”. Professor Frayling’s keynote address is entitled “The Quiet Man Gets Noisy: Sergio Leone, the Italian Western and Ireland”, and will take place at 16:45 on Friday 12th April. One of the genre’s most recognisable faces, Dan van Husen appeared in twenty three Italian Westerns between 1968 and 1975, working under the giants of “Spaghetti” cinema: Sergio Corbucci, Sergio Martino, Enzo G. Castellari, Duccio Tessari, Giuliano Carnimeo, Eugenio Martin, John Guillermin, Sam Wanamaker, Frank Perry, Alex Singer and many more. He has since worked in about 135 films, with Werner Herzog, Federico Fellini, Tinto Brass, Jess Franco, Steven Spielberg, Jean Jaques Annaud, Gregory Hoblits and Martin Koolhoven among other directors. He was given a lifetime achievement award for his contribution to the Western genre at the 2011 Almeria Western Film Festival. Dan van Husen will be discussing his experiences of working in the Spaghetti Western genre in a Q&A session at 15:45 on Saturday 13th of April. festival running order Notes by Austin Fisher. thursday 11 april thursday 11 april friday 12 april The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Navajo Joe For a Few Dollars More The Mercenary Un dollaro a testa Per qualche dollaro in più Il mercenario Time Director Music Starring Time Director Screenplay Time Director Sctory Year 17:00 - 18:40 Sergio Corbucci Ennio Morricone Burt Reynolds Aldo Sambrell 1966 A mysterious Native American pursues a band of ruthless scalp-hunting outlaws. When the townsfolk of Esperanza reluctantly hire him for protection, various hidden motives become clear. Spaghetti Westerns were apt to jettison the ideological and racial imperatives that were so firmly attached to the Hollywood genre. Corbucci’s film is therefore an oddity for placing a Native American centre-stage. The resulting hero figure – a subaltern angel of death – has been cited by Quentin Tarantino as one of the key inspirations for his recent slave-revenge blockbuster Django Unchained (2012). Corbucci himself was quick to claim political significance for many of his films: this one included. Whether we wish to take him at his word and interpret the violence of the racially oppressed in a wider allegorical sense in the Vietnam era is another matter, but the film offers plenty for the genre aficionado too: not least an early leading role for Burt Reynolds. Music Starring Year 19:15 - 21:30 Sergio Leone Luciano Vincenzoni Sergio Leone Ennio Morricone Clint Eastwood Lee Van Cleef Gian Maria Volonté 1965 Two bounty hunters, both seeking the reward on the head of the feared bandit Indio, form an uneasy alliance to achieve their goal. Their prey, however, proves elusive. After the phenomenal success of A Fistful of Dollars (1964), Sergio Leone was offered an increased budget for this, his second foray into the Italian Western. The deserted ghost town of the first film is replaced by bustling saloons, while Clint Eastwood’s taciturn persona is given an equally deadly rival. Thus, For a Few Dollars More introduced the distinctive visage of Lee Van Cleef to Italian audiences, and revived his career internationally as he became an icon of the Spaghetti Western thereafter. The focus on the bounty hunter figure owes much to Hollywood precedents such as The Naked Spur (Anthony Mann, 1952) and Ride Lonesome (Budd Boetticher, 1959), but the tone is unmistakably Spaghetti. Perhaps most memorably, Gian Maria Volonté delivers an even more deranged performance than in the first film. This was to be Volonté’s last dalliance with Leone’s Westerns, since he subsequently turned down the role of Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly to steer his career towards political commitment (firstly, in Damiano Damiani’s Mexican Revolution parable A Bullet for the General (1966)). Screenplay Music Starring Year 22:00 – 23:50 Sergio Corbucci Franco Solinas Giorgio Arlorio Luciano Vincenzoni Ennio Morricone Tony Musante Franco Nero Jack Palance 1968 A Polish mercenary joins a band of Mexican outlaws, and aids them as they seek to support the revolution. As the army closes in, loyalties become strained. When Gillo Pontecorvo asked Franco Solinas to write a film for him set in the Mexican Revolution, these two giants of Italian political cinema were set to add to their previous collaboration, The Battle of Algiers (1966). The resulting allegory for Western imperialism told the story of a North American criminal entering Mexico, being hired by peasant revolutionaries to train them in techniques of modern warfare and then betraying them to the army. Traces of the original project (such as the peasant miners’ strike) remain, but Sergio Corbucci turns it into a considerably more light-hearted appeal to modish political sentiment at the height of the international student movement: one of many attempts within the Spaghetti Western genre to use revolutionary Mexico for radical late-1960s polemic. Musante and Nero provide the customary Spaghetti partnership of entertaining distrust, but it is Jack Palance who steals the show with his deliciously camp performance as their sworn enemy Curly. Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo Time Director Sctory Music Starring Year 18:45 – 21:35 with an introduction by Professor Sir Christopher Frayling Sergio Leone Luciano Vincenzoni Sergio Leone Ennio Morricone Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach Lee Van Cleef 1966 Three rival outlaws embark on a hunt for buried treasure in the midst of the American Civil War. As their paths cross time and again, their goal draws ever nearer. Clint Eastwood’s impassive gunslinger and Lee Van Cleef’s cold-blooded killer make this a compelling watch, but it is Eli Wallach’s remarkably exuberant performance as Tuco that has made Leone’s film a perennial favourite in the annals of the Spaghetti Western. From the very first wail of Ennio Morricone’s iconic score, this is a film epic in scale and brazen in tone. The episodic treasure hunt and the succession of back-stabbing partnerships that form along the way offer humour and spectacle in equal measure, cementing the director’s reputation as the maestro of the genre. The film is also notable for its irreverent treatment of the American Civil War: so often framed as a traumatic yet necessary step towards modernity, but here shown to be a foolhardy and wasteful enterprise, as its political complexities are literally consumed by a cloud of dust. friday 12 april saturday 13 april saturday 13 april The Hills Run Red Death Rides a Horse The Great Silence The Big Gundown Un fiume di dollari Da uomo a uomo Il grande Silenzio La resa dei conti Time Director Music Starring Time Director Story Screenplay Music Starring Time Director Music Starring Time Director Story Year 22:10 - 23:40 Carlo Lizzani Ennio Morricone Thomas Hunter Henry Silva Nando Gazzolo 1966 Upon his release from prison, former Confederate renegade Jerry Brewster discovers that his erstwhile partner in crime has betrayed him. Determined to have his revenge, Brewster realises that his old friend has become powerful in his absence. Director Carlo Lizzani began his career as a radical film critic and pioneer of the internationally lauded neorealist movement, writing the screenplays for Germania anno zero (Roberto Rossellini, 1948) and Riso amaro (Giuseppe de Santis, 1949). By turning to the Italian Western, therefore, he demonstrated the extent to which the boundary lines between so-called “high” and “low” culture in Italy were increasingly blurred in this period (in his other Western, Requiescant (1967), he even gave a cameo to cinematic intellectual par excellence Pier Paolo Pasolini). The Hills Run Red displays many features characteristic of the genre by the mid- to late-1960s: notably through its plot revolving around an ex-criminal pursuing his former associate. It is also one of a string of Spaghettis that follow the American narrative tradition of depicting Confederates faced with the death of their way of life, bewildered by the rapidity of change (the “Lost Cause” motif): a trope with clear relevance to audiences in the Italian South by the 1960s. Year 17:00 – 18:55 Giulio Petroni Luciano Vincenzoni Luciano Vincenzoni Ennio Morricone Lee Van Cleef John Phillip Law Luigi Pistilli 1967 Bill and Ryan pursue the same outlaw gang to settle different scores: Bill to avenge his murdered family; Ryan to pay them back for a double-cross. The two gunslingers form an uneasy alliance, as secrets from the past come back to haunt them. One of the most common narrative devices in the Spaghetti Western by the late 1960s was that of a society in which murderers, psychopaths and megalomaniacs have risen to positions of power and respectability. This goes beyond the ambivalence towards industrial modernity evident in many Hollywood Westerns, and registers a noticeably Italian attitude towards those who govern. Death Rides a Horse is one of the most entertaining and rewarding such films, with Lee Van Cleef reprising his “senior partner” persona from For a Few Dollars More and hunting down his former associates, for whom Western boom-towns provide a veneer of propriety. The arresting opening scene owes a debt to Raoul Walsh’s Pursued (1947) in which a hero witnesses a gang butchering his family, then grows up to hunt the perpetrators down. Year 19:30 – 21:15 Sergio Corbucci Ennio Morricone Jean-Louis Trintignant Klaus Kinski Frank Wolff Luigi Pistilli 1968 The remote mountain settlement of Snow Hill has been torn apart by its cruel master Pollicut, its populace driven to outlawry and hunted by malevolent bounty hunters. A mysterious, mute gunslinger is their only hope. Klaus Kinski’s mesmerising portrayal of pure evil lies at the heart of this, one of the most uncompromisingly bleak Westerns ever made. Though Sergio Corbucci has become famous for the riotousness of his Westerns, this film is testament to his often overlooked finesse. Desolate snowscapes (the Veneto region of northern Italy standing in for the Utah Rockies) and Jean-Louis Trintignant’s mute gunslinger contribute to an eerie stillness that permeates large parts of the film, only to be broken by moments of explosive violence. This depiction of an insane, cruel and utterly malevolent Wild West also plugs into modish countercultural sentiments of the late 1960s concerning the brutality lying barely concealed beneath the surface of Western civilisation. Screenplay Music Starring Year 21:45 – 23:35 Sergio Sollima Franco Solinas Fernando Morandi Sergio Donati Sergio Sollima Ennio Morricone Lee Van Cleef Tomas Milian 1966 A Mexican peasant, accused of rape and murder, flees from his relentless pursuer: the feared lawman Jonathan Corbett. As the chase progresses, however, Corbett begins to question his own moral code. This film began life as a political parable from the pen of famed Marxist screenwriter Franco Solinas about the oppression of Sardinian peasantry at the hands of corrupt institutions. By transposing the story to the Wild West, Sergios Sollima and Donati arguably uncover revealing parallels between conventional representations of Mexico and those of the Italian South, but Solinas disowned the project, protesting that his political vision had been tainted. Accordingly, Sollima’s film is either a dramatisation of Vietnam-era anti-Western radicalism (the director’s professed intention), or a rip-roaring pursuit Western, depending on your point of view. Either way, the cat-andmouse dynamic between Lee Van Cleef’s taciturn ex-sheriff and Tomas Milian’s guileful peasant, along with one of Ennio Morricone’s most rousing scores, makes this a must-see for fans of the genre. Spaghetti Westerns in Transit: an International Film Conference on Transculturation and Liminality friday 12 april saturday 13 april 09:30 – 10:00 Conference Registration 10:00 – 10:30 Conference Registration 10:00 – 10:15 Welcome address from Professor James Crabbe Dean of the Faculty of Creative Arts, Technologies & Science, University of Bedfordshire 10:30 – 12:30 10:00 – 10:15 Welcome address from Professor James Crabbe Dean of the Faculty of Creative Arts, Technologies & Science, University of Bedfordshire 10:15 – 11:45 Panel A - Spaghetti Dialogues with American Cinema Chair: Professor Garry Whannel, University of Bedfordshire, UK • Dr. Lee Broughton (University of Leeds, UK): ‘Emancipation all’Italiana: Giuseppe Colizzi and the representation of African Americans in Italian Westerns’ • Dr. Peter Falconer (University of Bristol, UK): ‘Spaghetti Westerns and the “Afterlife” of a Hollywood Genre’ • Dr. Mikel J. Koven (University of Worcester, UK): ‘Corbucci Unchained: Tarantino and the Discursivity of Exploitation Cinema’ Panel D – Bandits across Genres Chair: Dr. Agnieszka Piotrowska, Uni of Bedfordshire, UK • Dr. Pasquale Iannone (University of Edinburgh, UK): ‘Pietro Germi, Hybridity and the Roots of the Italo-Western’ • Professor David Hyman (Lehman College, CUNY, USA) and Patrick Wynne (Independent Scholar): ‘Spectacles of Insurgency: Blurring the Border between Passive Audience and Revolutionary Witness’ • Dr. Thomas Klein (University of Mainz, Germany): ‘Outlaws, Mercenaries and Ronins: Intercultural Transformations between the Spaghetti Western and the Japanese Chambara in the 1960s’ • William Grady (University of Dundee, UK): ‘Lieutenant Blueberry and the Impact of the Spaghetti Western upon the Comic Book Frontier’ 12:30 – 13:30 Lunch 13:30 – 15:30 Panel E – Reception Tails and Legacies Chair: Dr. Johnny Walker, De Montfort University, UK • Dr. Rosemary Stott (Ravensbourne, UK): ‘Transit to East Germany: The Distribution and Reception of Once Upon a Time in the West in the German Democratic Republic’ • Dr. Iain Robert Smith (University of Roehampton, UK): ‘Cowboys and Indians: Transnational Borrowings in the Indian “Curry” Western from Sholay (1975) to Wanted: Dead or Alive (1983)’ • Dr. Drehli Robnik (Ludwig Boltzmann-Institute for History and Society, Vienna, Austria): ‘Italian Westerns and Austrian Experimental Film: Politics of Miscounts, Historicities of Misfits, Constellations of Appropriation’ • Dr. Orhun Yakin (Hacettepe University, Turkey): ‘Once Upon a Time in Anatolia as a Reverse-Frontier Experience in Neo-Western Genre’ 15:30 – 15:45 Coffee break 15:45 – 16:45 Q&A with Dan van Husen 16:45 – 17:00 Coffee break 11:45 – 12:00 Coffee break 12:00 – 13:30 Panel B - Italian Filoni in Dialogue Chair: Dr. Paul Rowinski, University of Bedfordshire, UK • Giovanni Memola (Uni of Winchester, UK): ‘The Importance of Degenerating: Gicca Palli’s Price of Death (1971) and Italy’s Own Way to Film Genres’ • Andrea Mariani (Uni of Udine, Italy): ‘Genre Entropy: Dissemination and Colonization of the Western in Italian Exploitation Cinema (1970-1980)’ • Dr. Xavier Mendik (Uni of Brighton, UK): ‘A Bullet for the Genitals: The Cult Career of Tomas Milian’ 13:30 – 14:30 Lunch 14:30 – 16:30 Panel C - Transcultural Genealogies Chair: Dr. Gavin Stewart, University of Bedfordshire, UK • Dr. Aliza Wong (Texas Tech University, USA): ‘Italian D.O.C. – American Cowboys, Malaysian Pirates, and the Italian Construction of Other-ed Adventurers in Film’ • Professor Mark Wheeler (London Metropolitan University, UK): ‘Spaghetti Westerns; the International Film Trade and Cultural Exchange’ • Dr. Eleanor Andrews (Uni of Wolverhampton, UK): ‘How Ercole Became Ringo: or did Maciste Learn to Tote a Gun?’ • Dr. Ivo Ritzer (University of Mainz, Germany): ‘West Meets East. Spaghetti Westerns and Asian Cinema’ 16:30 – 16:45 Coffee break 16:45 – 17:45 Keynote Lecture by Prof. Sir Christopher Frayling: ‘The Quiet Man Gets Noisy: Sergio Leone, the Italian Western and Ireland’ 17:45 – 18:45 Drinks reception postgraduate film at university of bedfordshire Spaghetti Western books Here at the University of Bedfordshire, we offer a range of Master’s degrees in film, offering you the chance to pursue a diversity of approaches to film production and analysis. Designed to stimulate a critically informed understanding of the ways in which film operates across both national borders and technological platforms, our postgraduate film qualifications are of tangible value in the rapidly changing media industries. MA Creative Digital Film Production MSC digital film technologies AND production This Master of Arts degree trains you to make a film to a professional standard, from scripting through to postproduction, while providing firm critical underpinnings within contemporary scholarly debates. You will meet leading filmmakers and industry executives to help you launch your career. This Master of Science degree equips you with the technological skills to both make a film to a professional standard and to innovate future models of filmmaking practice. You will be well placed to engage with the rapidly changing film industry and its related technologies. Contact: Dr. Austin Fisher [email protected] Contact: Dr. Austin Fisher [email protected] MA international cinema MA documentary This degree gives you the opportunity to study cinema in its global context and to interrogate the complex relationships between national film industries. It allows for a critical and analytical understanding of production and marketing processes, as well as patterns of consumption, in an evolving cultural landscape. Our MA Documentary trains you to produce a major documentary project informed by contemporary debates and historical perspectives. You will gain practical skills with a firm grounding in digital video production, meet leading filmmakers and industry executives, and be given opportunities to visit and screen at international film festivals. 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