“But this art of total synthesis that is Cinema, this fabulous newborn of Machine and Sentiment, is beginning to cease its moans and is entering its infancy. Its adolescence will soon arrive, seize its intelligence, and multiply its dreams; we ask that we hasten its development, precipitate the advent of its youth. We need Cinema to create the total art toward which the other arts have always tended.“Combat de boxe (Charles Dekeukeleire, 1927)
Jun
30
Mike Tyson – 1966
One of the fighters receives a direct hit. The camera is so close that we see abstract shapes, texture and contrast before recognising the scene. DP: Antoine Castille.
A [favourite] athlete in a film role for Mike Tyson's birthday
– Ricciotto Canudo, Gazette des sept arts, 1923 (via)
The match you see is real, between two actual fighters. Paul Werrie's rhythmic poem served as the basis. Everything else is illusion made flesh with what was available. An empty painter's studio, a few friends, footage of a crowd, a deep comprehension of the Kuleshov effect and rapid Soviet-style editing. Dekeukeleire places us from the safe world of the spectator right in the line of fire. But there's no release like in James Williamson's The Big Swallow (1901). Without that gimmick, cinema enters Canudo's realm, as the seventh art.
boxing
Klincz [Clinch] (Piotr Andrejew, 1979)
Apr
5
Chicago
One of the boxers goes down (via). DPs: Jacek Mierosławski & Zbigniew Wichłacz.
Set in Chicago (or pizza) for National Deep Dish Pizza Day, USA.
A Polish factory worker hopes to find a better life when he picks up boxing. Initially unsuccessful. he finds himself in Chicago, facing an amateur boxer below his ranking.
“I done wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale; Handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail; Only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalized a brick; I’m so mean I make medicine sick.”Muhammad Ali, the Greatest [Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee] (William Klein, 1974)
Sep
4
Mouthguard Day
A randomly picked screenshot showing Muhammad Ali fighting George Foreman. Each and every scene of a William Klein film is a photograph. DPs: Étienne Becker, William Klein, Richard Suzuki & Patrice Wyers.
– Muhammad Ali