Créteil 31 Honors Anna Karina

Here is a photo of Anna Karina. You may not recognize her. Her face is hidden, behind a camera. The camera eye eclipses the wide eyes that have become immortalized. In the interview below, a photographer claims that it was Anna Karina's eyes that set her apart from other models. These eyes which have become Karina's trademark are behind the agency of a lens. As réalisatrice (director), she does the observing, she looks at us. Though we know Anna Karina as J L Godard's muse, some years after she broke up with him she went on to make a movie, Vivre Ensemble (Living Together)in 1972. There is only one copy of the film in the world, and I saw it at Créteil Films de Femmes 31. (13-23 March) at Cinema La Lucarne in Créteil.
The film, like Vivre Sa Vie, (Living "the life") has a tableaux form. It can be seen as a response to Godard's film. It is the story of Julie (Anna Karina), a hippie girl with a lifestyle involving drugs and alcohol and casual sex who enters into a relationship with a teacher, Alain (Michel Lancelot). He quits his job to be with Julie and slowly becomes a part of her world, leaving his business suits and proper manners behind for a new bohemian life. In the process he becomes addicted to drugs and alcohol. Julie's values change when she becomes a mother, but Alain slowly deteriorates, giving private lessons to children while drunk. In Vivre Sa Vie, Godard's Nana says that we are all responsible for our actions. Although her husband tries to blame Julie for his decline in Vivre Ensemble, Karina emphasizes that he makes his own fate as does Julie but is sympathetic to Alain and the existential angst of his life. Set in New York and Paris, there are many enchanting moments that capture the spirit of the 70s with the political activism, flower power and posture of just letting people be. Karina has made a poignant film that is both whimsical and melancholic.
Anna Karina was honored with a retrospective of films at Créteil this year which includes the first one that she made at 14 in Denmark: Pigen og Skoene - the Girl with the Shoes (11', 1959). The director IB Schmedes noticed Anna on the street dancing and singing. The film won a prize at Cannes at 1959 as the best short. Pigen og Skoene features a tall and very mature Anna sporting a pony tail who spots a pair of high heels that she wants to wear on a date. The shoes cause great pain for her feet and make her late. So her comfortable pumps catch up with her so that she can run to meet her boyfriend. In this film, Anna Karina, born Hanne Karin Bayer in Copenhagen Denmark in 1940, shows how she was ready for the camera. In films with Jacques Rivette, George Cukor, Luchino Visconti and J L Godard she shows a sensibility and wit that have made her an art house icon. Anna Karina continues to make films and her latest feature Victoria caught the attention of Korean youth who skipped school to see it where it debuted at the Pusan Film Festival in 2008, the 30th Florence International Women's Film Festival, 2008 and the 31st Créteil Films de Femmes Festival, 2009. Victoria ,
is directed and written by Anna Karina with music by Philippe Katerine. It is an experimental musical road HD video about a mysterious mute woman, Victoria, Louis' boss who gets gigs around Quebec for two musicians in drag, Stanislaus and Jimmy. Victoria's connection with Stanislaus turns out to be karmic. The film is low budget with artful invention and a clever narrative style.

Below:

• Exclusive interview with Moira Sullivan and Anna Karina at Créteil on Movie Magazine International, April 1, 2009, 9pm PST, 90.3 FM San Francisco, national webcast from April 3-9th.
• Exclusive interview with Moira Sullivan and Julie Dash at Créteil on Movie Magazine International,March 25, 2009, 9pm PST, 90.3 FM San Francisco, national webcast from March 27 - April 2.

Marga Gomez Illuminates Almodóvar's "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" at The Vogue

July 14, 2010 3:27 AM MST 

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Mujeres

The Spanish translation of "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" is organically different from the English, explained local comedienne wonder of the world Marga Gomezto spectators at the Vogue Theatre in San Francisco.  As part of a week long program of local standup comics introducing films at this vintage cinema house, LOL SF , (July 8-15) Gomez said that "Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios" is something quite different from the stereotype of women just losing it. She emphasizes that nervous breakdowns in Spanish are called "nervous attacks". She reported that these attacks involve a loss of emotional control that is often religious where women rip off their clothes and go into esoteric frenzy. The attacks can also be observed in Hispanic enthusiasm for the Spanish squad in the World Cup, and such frenzy is "not unlike life on the MUNI", quipped Gomez.

Marga Gomez.com

Gomez of Cuban-Puerto Rican descent admitted she has a bone or two to pick with the Spanish colonizers of the country where this film originates. But she does not take it out on Pedro Almodóvar's Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdownfrom 1988 ("remember the 80's?", asks Gomez), a superbly fascinating study of women in love with a womanizer who has something positive to say about every woman and any woman.Carmen Maura plays Pepa, a TV actress who plays the role of a mother whose son is a homicidal maniac. Though she is able to clean all the blood stains from his clothes with a miracle laundry detergent she cheerfully promotes when the cops knock at the door.  She is hopelessly in love with Ivan but teetering on the verge of collapse. So she sets fire to her bed and packs his suitcase.

Carmen Maura worked together with Almodóvar in seven of his films and certainly was one of his more sophisticated and commanding leading ladies, followed by Victoria Abril and later Penélope Cruz, all equally captivating.

In this colorful farce, an entourage of characters descend on Pepa's apartment, which she once shared with Ivan (Fernando Guillén) until he decides to take up with feminist lawyer, Paulina Morales (Kiti Manverx). Wife numero una, Lucia, (Julieta Serrano)  is out to get him, having recently been released from the mental asylum, which she longs to return to. Son Carlos, a young Antonio Banderas and virgin girlfriend Marisa (Rossy de Palma) show up, and later two cops and a telephone repairman to fix the red phone Pepa constantly throws out the window. Meanwhile Candela (María Barranco) is hiding from the police so that she is not implicated with Shiite terrorists for hijacking a plane to Stockholm. And Billy Idol drives Pepa around town pursuing Ivan. All this is washed down with some serious spiked Gazpacho.

The ingenious idea of having comics introduce films is clearly in step with how San Francisco keeps its historic movie houses flourishing. Marga Gomez  helped to embellish this comic masterpiece with a dimension that increased its viewing pleasure "exponencialmente". An added bonus was the appearance of ¡GARZA, delivering a melodramatic weepy from the film.