Sunday, September 30, 2012

Louise Brooks - Without Bangs

This YouTube video is a little unusual. It is mostly composed of images of Louise Brooks without her trademark bangs and bob. What do you think?

Saturday, September 29, 2012

Louise Brooks: The New Woman in Film


Join Vanessa Rocco, former
Associate Curator at ICP, Assistant Professor of Art History at Southern New Hampshire University, and Saul Robbins, Adjunct Professor at ICP and Board Member Emeritus, The Camera Club of New York, as they discuss The New Woman in Film. Rocco and Robbins will present excerpts from such classics as Blue Angel (Marlene Dietrich), Pandora’s’ Box (Louise Brooks), Metropolis (Brigette Helm), and the mythology of Mulan, while also discussing the environment in which Amelia Earhart made best use of newsreel technology to promote herself and her aeronautics adventures.
 
Images of flappers, garçonnes, Modern Girls, neue Frauen, and trampky—all embodiments of the dashing New Woman—symbolized an expanded public role for women from the suffragist era through the dawn of 1960s feminism. Chronicling nearly a century of global challenges to gender norms, The New Woman International: Representations in Photography and Film from the 1870s through the 1960s, is the first book to examine modern femininity’s ongoing relationship with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’ most influential new media: photography and film. This volume of original essays examines the ways in which novel ideas about women’s roles in society and politics were disseminated through new media technologies, probing the significance of radical changes in female fashion, appearance, and sexual identity. Additionally, these essays explore the manner in which New Women artists used photography and film to respond creatively to gendered stereotypes and to re-conceive of ways of being a woman in a rapidly modernizing world.

The event is free and open to the public.
Saturday, September 29, from 4-6 pm at The Camera Club of New York,
336 West 37th Street (between 8 and 9 Avenues).

http://www.cameraclubny.org/conversations.html

Seating is limited. Please rsvp to: info@cameraclubny.org

Vanessa Rocco is co-editor with Elizabeth Otto of The New Woman International: Representations in Photography and Film from the 1870’s to the 1960s (University of Michigan Press). Saul Robbins photographs have been widely exhibited and published, including The Bolinas Museum, Blue Sky Gallery, chashama Windows, NYC, Deutsche Haus at NYU, MICA, Museum of Fine Arts – Houston, New Orleans Photo Alliance, Portland Art Museum, Aufbau, Berlin Tagesspiegel, CPW Quarterly, Feature Shoot, FlavorWire, Glo.com, More, The New York Times, Real Simple, and Wired.

http://icphoto.tumblr.com/post/32522891199/the-new-woman-in-film

Friday, September 28, 2012

Bronze medallion depicting Louise Brooks

These show up on eBay from time to time, a bronze medallion depicting Louise Brooks. I believe they were made in France, where the actress is more popular than she is in the United States. For completeists only...... I would guess.



Thursday, September 27, 2012

Amateur Photographer magazine features Louise Brooks

Amateur Photographer, the "world's #1 weekly photo magazine," has a long piece by David Clark in their new issue called "Louise Brooks by Eugene Robert Richee - Iconic Photograph." 

"This striking image of Louise Brooks by Eugene Robert Richee captures the spirit of the 1920s and is one of the great Hollywood portraits," writes the author. Check it out here.


Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame


How—and why—do we obsess over movie stars? How does fame both reflect and mask the person behind it? How have the image of stardom and our stars’ images altered over a century of cultural and technological change? Do we create celebrities, or do they create us?

Ty Burr, film critic for The Boston Globe, answers these questions in a new book, Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame, a lively and fascinating anecdotal history of stardom, with all its blessings and curses for star and stargazer alike. From Florence Lawrence and Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin to Archie Leach (a.k.a. Cary Grant) and Marion Morrison (a.k.a. John Wayne) and Julia Roberts to today's instant celebs famous for being famous, Burr takes us on an insightful and entertaining journey through the modern fame game at its flashiest, most indulgent, occasionally most tragic, and ultimately, its most revealing. And yes, there is mention made of Louise Brooks.

Ty Burr will be discussing his new book on Saturday, September 29 at Book Passage in Corte Madera, California. Burr will be in conversation with Thomas Gladysz.

Monday, September 24, 2012

Did you see Pandora's Box in Denver?


If you happened to attend yesterday's screening of Pandora's Box at the Denver Silent Film Festival, please leave a comment or observation in the comments field below. We would love to know what you thought of the film or of its star, Louise Brooks. [An expressionistic scene from the the film is pictured above.]

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Cool pic of the day: Louise Brooks


Saturday, September 22, 2012

Louise Brooks' film closes Denver Silent Film Festival

On Sunday, September 23, the Denver Silent Film Festival will screen Pandora's Box (1929) at the King Center in Denver, Colorado. Live musical accompaniment will be provided by Donald Sosin. Additional details, and ticket availability, can be found here.  The Denver Post ran a piece about the Festival which can be found here.


If you can't make it to the Denver event, please note that Pandora's Box will be shown on Sunday, November 4 on Turner Classic Movies (TCM).

Friday, September 21, 2012

Beggars of Life with Louise Brooks screens at Andy Warhol Museum

Beggars of Life (1928), the sensational William Wellman directed film starring Louise Brooks, will be shown at the Andy Warhol Museum (117 Sandusky Street) in Pittsburgh, PA on Friday November 2nd. The screening is part of a series of films called "Unseen Treasures from The George Eastman House." The Warhol will screen a newly restored, 35mm archival print of the 81 minute silent film with live musical accompaniment. More information about this special event can be found on the Warhol Museum website

The event description reads "Louise Brooks’ penetrating charisma and transcendent naturalness made her an icon of 1920s silent cinema.  In director William Wellman's early Depression-era portrait of transient life, she gave one of her absolute strongest performances during her brief stint in the Hollywood, playing a girl who must go on the run after killing her abusive stepfather in self-defense. Fleeing, she meets the handsome drifter Richard Arlen and the two hit the road, one step ahead of the law and soon encounter Oklahoma Red (Wallace Beery), a tough, high-spirited hobo. Together they ride the rails, with Brooks dressed as a boy, through a hobo underworld where danger is always close at hand. This empathetic, darkly realistic drama is loaded with stunning visuals and is one of the great late silent-era features.  The Warhol Museum continues its partnership with the world-renowned photograph and motion picture archives, George Eastman House, to bring rarely shown silent and early sound masterpieces from its extensive collection exclusively to Pittsburgh."

Here is another lobby card for the film, which to my eye, contains a few stylistic touches which anticipate Pop art. I think Warhol would have liked them.


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