BLOW-UP (Michelangelo Antonioni, GB/I 1966, 2. & 4.6.) Models and fashion, the London of the Swinging Sixties and the mod & beat culture of the 60s (at which the film's distribution strategy was aimed) are in the crosshairs of the first film Antonioni shot outside Italy. By dint of his profession, the photographer Thomas (David Hemmings) is part of this fashion and style savvy scene. He arranges, choreographs and fixes the beautiful appearances that go hand in hand with it, yet seeks to flee them at the same time. Whilst out looking for new motifs, he believes to have become witness to a murder. Over the course of his investigations, reality and imagination become blurred, as his apparent photographic evidence begins to curdle into projection.
FREAK ORLANDO (Ulrike Ottinger, FRG 1981, 3. & 9.6.) Ulrike Ottinger draws a line from a mythological past all the way to the 20th century in her "small theater of the world" that tells the story of the life and death of freaks, the abnormal and outsiders, of fallacy, incompetence, the hunger for power, fear, madness, cruelty and the everyday. This episodic, globe-spanning journey through time is led by Orlando (Magdalena Montezuma) who guides the viewer through the centuries and Delphine Seyrig in a variety of roles (from the Tree of Life Goddess to Siamese twin). It starts in a department store where myths are being auctioned off and ends at a "festival of the ugly". Ottinger's fantastic, immensely detailed visual collages are also characterized by the extraordinary costumes designed by the director herself, which take on the function of ironic commentary, opulent subversion or exaggeration.
SOME LIKE IT HOT (Billy Wilder, USA 1959, 7. & 11.6.) After an unintentional encounter with trigger-happy mobsters in the late 1920s, the ballsy jazz musicians Joe (Tony Curtis) and Jerry (Jack Lemmon) pluckily disguise themselves as women and are promptly engaged as part of an all-female band on the way to Florida. What begins as a fast-paced gangster story quickly turns into an equally frantic, but extremely funny and over-the-top farce, in which characters switch clothes, roles and gender over and over again, perspectives change and transformations take place. Drafty skirts, swim suits that pinch, torn bras and murderous shoes –faced with the challenges posed by 1920s women's fashion and the entrancing romantic and naïve singer Sugar (Marilyn Monroe) Joe aka Josephine and Jerry aka Dafne soon begin to sympathize with the "other half".
THE COOK, THE THIEF, HIS WIFE AND HER LOVER (Peter Greenaway, F/GB 1989, 8. & 19.6.) Greenaway's radical and somber Kammerspiel revolves around Albert Spica (Michael Gambon), a violent, sadistic gangster who holds court in a high-end restaurant each evening. He is not a gourmet, but hungry for power, someone who systematically terrorizes those around him. When he finds out that his wife (Helen Mirren) is having an affair, he takes cruel revenge on his rival. His wife refuses to let this murder go unavenged. The costumes, which were designed by Jean Paul Gaultier (working on his first film), range from the elegant and cool to the over-the-top, merging seamlessly with the carefully composed opulence and separate color schemes of the main settings and the restaurant.
ZAPATAS BANDE (Urban Gad, G 1913, 10. & 15.6., on piano: Eunice Martins) DAS LIEBES-ABC (Magnus Stifter, G 1916, 10. & 15.6., on piano: Eunice Martins) Actress, screenwriter and producer Asta Nielsen is regarded as the first film star in history and a film artist of great international significance. She involved herself ardently in different areas of film production, including the creation of costumes, which she on occasion made herself, as was most probably the case for ZAPATAS BANDE and DAS LIEBES-ABC, in both of which she plays her "trouser roles" brilliantly. In ZAPATAS BANDE a film team is sent to Italy to film a "gypsy drama" in an environment that is as "authentic" as possible. By coincidence, a real band of robbers is terrorizing the area. While the actors are shooting, the robbers steal their clothes and disguise themselves. They are thus able to escape and cross the border. The actors are mistaken for the real robbers and arrested. In DAS LIEBES-ABC a young shy man sets out to learn the rules of love. "A comedy with little logic, many transformations, tailor-made for Asta Nielson, her eyes, her mouth and her trademark slim figure."(Vossische Zeitung)
CLEOPATRA JONES (Jack Starrett, USA 1973, 18. & 23.6.)"She's 6 feet 2 inches of Dynamite …And the Hottest Super Agent Ever!" is how Warner Bros advertised their breathtakingly kitted out black super heroine, dressed from head to toe by influential ethno and hippie designer Giorgio di Sant'Angelo. Ex-model Tamara Dobson plays CIA agent Cleopatra Jones, who battles a gang of drug smugglers under the leadership of the ruthless "Mommy". As a sort of female James Bond and larger than life Afro-American female superhero, Cleopatra Jones presents herself as very much in keeping with the times: emancipated, intelligent, attractive, independent, hip and both aware of her self and of fashion.
AMBAWI SURAMIS TSICHISA (The Legend of the Suram Fortress, Sergei Parajanov, Dodo Abashidze, Georgia 1985, 20. & 24.6.) Fantastic worlds of images reveal themselves to the observer in strictly framed but magnificently composed tableaux, with which the Armenian director tells an ancient Georgian folktale. To defend themselves against attacks from the Persians, the inhabitants of a remote mountain region try to build a fortress. According to a prophecy, however, it will only stand if a young warrior allows himself to be bricked up alive. Surab, who has just converted to Islam, agrees to sacrifice himself. Parajanov's penultimate film was the first that he made after a long stretch in jail and a 15-year-ban from working in film. The lavish visual world is populated by material, rugs, animals and objects of art in whose midst the protagonists move. Their splendid uniforms, elaborately adorned dresses and playfully over-the-top costumes merge with (art) historical influences, legends and imagination.
NORMAL LOVE (Jack Smith, USA 1963, 21.6.) Beads and pearls, sparklers, incense sticks, the portrait of a Hollywood goddess –it is before this still life altar that underground superstar Mario Montez lies in a mermaid costume and begins, largely improvising, to interact with the objects –the start of an exuberant performance fantasy extravaganza in a rural setting, in which Angus MacLise, Beverly Grant, Francis Francine, Tony Conrad, Tiny Tim, John Vaccaro, Diane Di Prima and Andy Warhol played a part. The never completed, but now restored work, can also be seen as an opulent "costume epic", full of jeweled robes, lace and brightly-colored ribbons - a visionary appropriation of, homage to and evocation of excess.
TOP HAT (Mark Sandrich, USA 1935, 27. & 29.6.) Ginger Rogers' flowing gowns and sweeping skirts and even Fred Astaire's tails and top hat seem tailor-made for the movement of dance, revealing their complete elegance only when in movement as part of complicated choreographies. The elegant overall impression and the great success of this farce of love and mistaken identity can be attributed largely to Bernard Newman, who was head costume designer for TOP HAT and many other musicals. The film is generally considered as the pinnacle of the collaboration between Astaire and Rogers, whose perfect and imaginative song-and-dance numbers in London and in Venice revolve around the barriers to their getting closer. As often was the case, Edward Everett Horton played the “third man”, enjoying some of his best scenes in this film.
DAS WEISSE BAND (The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke, G/A/F/I 2009, 22. & 30.6.) Summer 1913: A series of strange violent incidents takes place in a Protestant village in northeastern Germany: The doctor's horse trips on a wire, a woman falls to her death in a saw-mill, the local baron's son is kidnapped, a barn goes up in flames and a disabled boy is bullied. Police officers from Berlin cannot make head or tail of the incidents. Only the village teacher has an inkling of who could be behind the brutal happenings. Clear, concentrated and sharp, Hanneke creates a haunting microcosm on the eve of the First World War - a narrow world in which severity and rigidity, authority and discipline, dependence and fear reign supreme. The much-trumpeted virtue, morality and modesty of the inhabitants are materialized in the unadorned, slender lines of the clothes, the high-necked dresses and jackets, the starched collars and aprons, in such a way that was visually and historically appropriate. Costume designer Moidele Bickel won numerous awards for the work.
BLACK CAESAR (Larry Cohen, USA 1973, 25. & 28.6.) Tommy Gibbs works his way up from shoeshine boy to Mafia hitman in order to take command of the Harlem underworld himself piece by piece. A Blaxploitation film as a Brechtian people’s theater piece, which works through class and race relations with analytical precision and no shortage of thrills. BLACK CAESAR made former footballer Fred Williamson into a superstar of the genre. The title borrows from the gangster film classic "Little Caesar" (1931). A further point of reference is Coppola's "The Godfather", which had arrived in theatres a year earlier, leading BLACK CAESAR to be shown in German cinemas under the title "Godfather of Harlem" in order to benefit from the earlier film's success. The soundtrack is by "Godfather of Soul" James Brown.
L’ANNÉE DERNIÈRE ÀMARIENBAD (Last Year at Marienbad, Alain Resnais, F/I 1961, 26. & 30.6.) One might think that Lagerfeld wanted to show his reverence for an important French film classic in the show for his 2011 Spring/Summer collection: its decor, music, color (black and white) and design were all hugely influenced by Resnais' cinematic Nouveau Roman. Aside from the film, however, Lagerfeld's homage was directed first and foremost at fashion icon Coco Chanel, who designed the costumes for the film's lead actress Delphine Seyrig. Her designs comprise clear, severe robes as well as playfully romantic dresses that work with feathers, tulle and flowing fabrics, both of which correspond at once to the architecture of the film location, a magnificent baroque castle, often stationary figures and the film’s labyrinthine structure. (mg)
