Sunday, February 9, 2014

L'épitaphe de Louise Brooks.... by Roland Jaccard

A couple of days ago, the French writer Roland Jaccard posted the following video on YouTube. As fans of Louise Brooks know, Jaccard contributed to and edited the first book about the actress, Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star, back in 1977.

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Classic Movie Blog Association

The Louise Brooks Society blog has been voted a member of the Classic Movie Blog Association. The CMBA is a group of blogs dedicated to the celebration of classic cinema. More information about the group can be found on its website or Facebook page.


Friday, February 7, 2014

Louise Brooks included among The 100 coolest Americans

A major photography exhibition opening at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington asks the question, "what and who is cool?"

From Elvis Presley and James Dean to Johnny Depp, "American Cool" namechecks 100 actors, actresses, artists, musicians and writers in the United States whose creativity and style have shaped the concept of cool. The exhibit includes Louise Brooks.

The show was put together by jazz professor Joel Dinerstein and photography scholar Frank Goodyear. The two spent five years going through 500 names of charismatic Americans who might be regarded as cool. To make their selection, Dinerstein and Goodyear came up with four defining factors: 1) originality of artistic vision and especially of a signature style 2) cultural rebellion, or transgression in a given historical moment 3) iconicity, or a certain level of high-profile recognition 4) recognised cultural legacy lasting more than a decade. 

Another deciding factor was that there had to be a classic picture of the person; among the photographers featured in the show are Carl Van Vechten,  Philippe Halsman, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Annie Leibovitz, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Edward Steichen.

Early film stars illuminate the "roots of cool" section - screen legends like Greta Garbo, Buster Keaton and Mae West. The complete list:

Fred Astaire
Bix Beiderbecke
Louise Brooks
James Cagney
Frederick Douglass
Greta Garbo
Ernest Hemingway
Zora Neale Hurston
Jack Johnson
Duke Kahanamoku
Buster Keaton
HL Mencken
Georgia O’Keeffe
Dorothy Parker
Bessie Smith
Willie “The Lion” Smith
Mae West
Walt Whitman
Bert Williams


"American Cool" runs through September 7. The National Portrait Gallery's website is located at www.npg.si.edu.  "American Cool" is accompanied by a fully illustrated 192-page catalogue.

Thursday, February 6, 2014

Seattle art exhibit with Louise Brooks inspired art

A Seattle art gallery is hosting an exhibit of work by Jack Chevalier which features a handful of works inspired by Louise Brooks, as well as some 20 smaller works related to other contemporary film actresses. The show is a mixed selection of Chevalier's work over the last 6 or 7 years - with war, politics, and celebrity being thematic.

The show, at the Linda Hodges Gallery, opens February 6th with a reception from 6:00 - 8:00 pm. It runs through March 1.

According to the gallery website, "Jack Chevalier has exhibited at Linda Hodges Gallery for over three decades. In his most recent solo exhibition, his 16th, Chevalier expanded upon his lexicon of social and political content to include historical references and the personalities that define them, in a format that assumes a condensed postmodern linear narrative. Utilizing a mixed-media approach, Chevalier creates a narrative through a juxtaposition of visual cues unlimited by a stylistic time frame, materiality, or morphology of depiction."

Born in Columbus, Ohio and educated at the Cleveland Art Institute and the University of Illinois, Chevalier arrived in Seattle in the late 1970s and lives and works on Vashon Island. Chevalier has exhibited widely in the Northwest, as well as in New York, Chicago, Cleveland, and Cincinnati.
 
Here are a couple of works in the show. The first, pictured above, is titled "Empty Promise" from 2012. The second is titled "Warrior Princess" from 2013. More work can be found on the gallery exhibit link.

The Linda Hodges Gallery is located at 316 First Ave S in Seattle, Washington, 98104. For further information, or to purchase a piece, call  (206) 624-3034. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10:30 am to 5 pm. Check it out.

The artist has provided the Louise Brooks Society blog with a statement. It follows:

"I first laid eyes on Louise Brooks several years ago, when personally  researching the political and social history of 1920's America. A time that seems to live on, or (as some would say) rhymes, so well with our present human dynamic. With this in mind, I was at first  struck by how contemporary she looked in pictures, as if she could have walked off the movie set in 1925 and onto a set today and no one would notice the missing 90 years. But it soon became apparent that this was just the first layer of an amazing life of transparently clear intent lashed, as it were, with the often self defeating consequences of social mores  that would  favor power over natural inclination and expression. The fascinating thing about Louise Brooks (to me) is how she negotiated this contradiction, or rather, lived the contradiction.

On the one hand, she, seemed to hate Hollywood and its attendant careerism's but  rather relied on her own natural experiences and instincts and talents in movement  over convention, and went a long  way toward redefining the craft of acting. She loved modern art but never watched any of the movies she made (until late in life).  She meteorically rose to the top of all her endeavors; modern dance, showgirl follies, film actress, but was always eventually shot down for not playing whatever the inside game was. She entertained the social ladder without  embracing it ( probably out of curiosity). She was notably an unabashed sexual entity, but never used sex to further her career. She was married twice to millionaires and twice divorced without taking a penny. She would rather rendezvous with a lover than please her employer.When it all finally crashed around her she didn't become bitter or blame anyone but herself. Then she re-invented herself and was instrumental in own resurrection as a writer and critic of film history. For a person never empowered by  celebrity, or  outwardly political, or a champion of social causes, or even as a  cultural iconoclast, Louise Brooks continues to inspire in all these realms simply for having been herself.

One of my favorite quotes is:

'For two extraordinary years I have been working on it - learning to write - but mostly learning how to tell the truth. At first it is quite impossible. You make yourself better than anybody, then worse than anybody, and when you finally come to see you are “like” everybody - that is the bitterest blow of all to the ego. But in the end it is only the truth, no matter how ugly or shameful, that is right, that fits together, that makes real people, and strangely enough - beauty…'"

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Pandora's Box screens tonight in UK at historic Aldeburgh Cinema

Pandora's Box (1929), starring Louise Brooks, screens tonight in the UK. Pianist Neil Brand will accompany the film at the Aldeburgh Cinema as part of their "Classic Silent Film& Live Music" series.

The Aldeburgh Cinema is located at 51 High Street in Aldeburgh, IP15 5AU. Telephone 01728 454884.

Neil Brand has worked around the globe with film and music for more than two decades. His mesmerizing series ‘Sound of Cinema: The Music that Made the Movies’ was broadcast to huge acclaim in on BBC in autumn 2013. In partnership with the Britten Pears Foundation, an educational programme of workshops and masterclasses has been devised and arranged and will be delivered by Neil Brand on the day of the evening shows.

The Aldeburgh Cinema has a fascinating history, and it has been screening films continuously since 1919 when the auditorium was built onto the back of a 19th century High Street store. For many years the cinema was privately run until in the mid-1960s, when there was the threat of closure. A group of local people, led by Lettie Gifford and including composer Benjamin Britten and his partner Peter Pears, banded together to purchase the cinema and run it on behalf of the local community. More information and images here.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Pandora's Box (1929) tonight in Luxembourg

Today, Pandora's Box (1929), starring Louise Brooks, will be shown in Luxembourg.

Here is the write-up from the venue, Philharmonie, place de l’Europe, Luxembourg-Kirchberg.

The Louise Brooks Society would love to hear from anyone who attends this event. Pandora's Box will be screened at the Philharmonie with live music from the Ensemble Kontraste, conducted by Frank Strobel and playing a score especially composed for the film by Peer Raben.

We would like to know your impressions. Please post in the comments. 


Here is a January, 1930 newspaper advertisement for Pandora's Box, from the time the film was first shown in Luxembourg. There, the film was shown under the titles Lou lou, and La Boite de Pandore.

Monday, February 3, 2014

New exhibit includes Louise Brooks character

A new exhibit which includes Louise Brooks is set to open February 5th at Dixon Place in New York City. Here is more information from the artist:


THE CHORUS GIRL SHOW by Carolyn Raship

Come to Dixon Place to celebrate the opening of my show! I've been creating a series of large works on paper depicting the interesting and scandal filled lives of women who began their professional lives in the chorus - then wound up as movie stars, writers or infamous.

To celebrate the opening, please join us for drinks and performances at the Dixon Place Lounge! Performers include:

Anna Copa Cabanna
Charming Disaster
Killy Mockstar Dwyer
Sarah Engelke and Jamie Zillittto

And more!

During the first half of the 20th century becoming a chorus girl was both the most typical entree to show business and a constant punchline. The Chorus Girl was a cliche and a type: tough talking, avaricious, gold digging, dumb. As with most things, the real women often transcended the cliche. Show business and crime, dreams lost, lives lived into little old lady-hood -- and lives cut short. Glamour and art and intelligence. These works are drenched in blood and feathers and gilt trim, and -- like the early movies many real life chorus girl appeared in -- have no formula.


Intricate pen and ink and watercolor fantasias depict moments out of the lives of Princess White Deer (Native American performer who headlined on three continents, played the Palace, and starred in the Follies), Evelyn Nesbit (the teenage chorus girl who played a central role in The Crime of the Century, the murder of Stanford White by Harry K. Thaw), Olive Thomas (legendary Ziegfeld star and whose death was the first Hollywood scandal) and Louise Brooks (serious dancer, legendary chorus girl, movie star, artist and writer). As in the lives of these complicated and fascinating women, nothing in these works is just what it seems.

CAROLYN RASHIP is an artist, illustrator and sometime writer and director of theater. You can find her work online under the guise of Caviglia's Cabinet of Curiosities. She wrote and directed the plays "Die Like A Lady; or What Barbara Got" and "Antarctica" (which was published in NY Theatre Experience's anthology "Plays & Playwrights 2008") along with numerous other works for the theatre. As a visual artist she specializes in meticulous pen and ink and watercolor portraits. Her obsessions include chorus girls, birds, sea creatures and crime.

The show itself will be up from February 5 to February 23. More at
http://cavigliascabinet.tumblr.com/

Sunday, February 2, 2014

New play inspired by Louise Brooks, "The Winter Gift" by Tim Davies

A new play about Louise Brooks titled The Winter Gift is set to open in the UK. From the venue website: "A new play by award winning writer Tim Davies, charting the tumultuous life of legendary silent screen icon Louise Brooks, contrasting her time as a Beautiful, brilliant, and uncompromising young actress, too wild to be contained by the Hollywood studio system or the accepted societal and sexual mores of the time and whose mixture of innocence and intense eroticism were perfectly captured in her celebrated work with German director G.W. Pabst, with the middle aged alcoholic Brooks, living alone, destitute and all but forgotten, until a chance encounter with a devoted fan..."

ROGUE'Z THEATRE COMPANY... Presents THE WINTER GIFT a new play written by Tim Davies, directed by Nerys Rees February 19-22 at the Urdd Theatre, Millennium Centre, Cardiff, Wales, UK. More information and ticket availability at http://www.ticketsource.co.uk/event/51037


Saturday, February 1, 2014

Event for author Robert Murillo for his Louise Brooks inspired novel, The Vanity

One month from today, on March 1st at 1 pm, author Robert Murillo will read from his new Louise Brooks inspired novel, The Vanity, at Orinda Books in Orinda, California. I will be there to introduce Robert and his novel. Here is an article that appeared in the local Orinda News.




March 1st 2014 - 1 PM
Orinda Books
276 Village Square
Orinda, Ca 94563
925-254-7606
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