ASIFA-East Exposure Sheet

Article written by Emmett Goodman.

The films of the Brothers Quay are complicated. I still find myself confused by them. Yet the constant praise and referrals to their work show that there is more than one opinion. You realize that their dark, surrealist vision and extreme detail connects with many. When you see their films, you may picture a couple of guys who live and work in a dusty building surrounded by countless books.

I have to admit, I am not as familiar with the Quay Brothers’ work as others are. I only know them based on a couple of viewings.

First off, I have to say I am very impressed with the Visual Arts Theater. The place is large, yet not ill-decorated. The stage in front of the screen is big enough for a band to play, yet the screen is large and long enough to show anything. I overhead a couple of conversations within the audience, and got the impression that many of the them (mostly from SVA) were in this theater for the first time.

The reason for the Quays’ appearance is due to an upcoming retrospective next month at the Parsons School. The Quays’ retrospective is currently on exhibit in Philidephia, and they managed to make a stop over in Manhattan. To see them in person and answer questions is quite a treat, as the brothers are known for very few public appearances, especially at their own shows. Yet with a career spanning at least 30 years, they certainly have more than enough to talk about. The Brothers, identical twins Stephen and Timothy, seem very uncertain in front of an audience, and often find themselves finishing each others’ sentences.

The show had a program of three showings. The first is a film called In Absentia, a collaboration with composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. In the Q&A afterward, the Brothers made clear how important music is to their films, and how reliant they are upon sound design. Afterward was a 10 minute reel of their commercial work and clips from previous films. The majority of these commercials is highly impressive, some of which can be seen here. Finally a third reel, headed by a long clip from The Phantom Museum. These pieces prompted one audience member to ask the Brothers what was the sexiest piece of art they had ever seen, to which they replied a drawing of Hans Bellmer.

Like Terry Gilliam, whom they were asked about and compared to, the Brothers are not British born, even though they have resided and worked in London their whole career. However they have their own style and, especially, their own world. They seem to come from somewhere very old, yet have a talent for evoking emotion.

Review by Tim Rauch.

Last week Tatia Rosenthal’s “$9.99″ played as a part of the “New Directors/New Films” series at MOMA. The Sunday night screening I made it to was well attended, with a strong showing of support from New York animators including, among others, Fran Krause, Chris Conforti, Elliot Cowan, Andy Kennedy, Emmet Goodman, Chris Timmons and John Lustig. The film was a delight: good direction, solid voice acting, a strong musical score and a fantastic script. It sounds almost cliche to say it, but seeing an animated feature with a non-linear script and complex emotional content is cause to celebrate. The story of this film’s creation includes years of dedication on the part of the director and writer (Rosenthal and novelist Etgar Keret) when there was little or no money for development. Split between sources in Australia and Israel, the budget was razor thin for a stop-motion film of this scale and required a tightly scheduled production in Melbourne. Still, if the animation and effects were at times a bit rough around the edges, it was more than compensated for by the overall strength of Rosenthal’s filmmaking. The intersecting story lines created a poetic, entertaining mix with the big payoff coming at the end as the various strands resolved themselves. A few of the images in the films final minutes that stood out to me: two men leaping like dolphins through a public pond, a liberated piggy bank resting on a patch of grass, and a man literally sacrificing his body in a bizarre and extreme display of affection. The film showed a depth of understanding for human emotion and dramatic subtlety that is truly rare in any medium.

Besides being a joy to watch as entertainment, the extraordinary effort and sacrifice represented by this film is inspirational to me. The world of animation is littered with artists who would love to work on a film with this kind of emotional and intellectual complexity, many of whom are happy enough to complain about “the work that’s out there” but fewer of whom are willing to take on the responsibility to get out there and make it happen. Animation is a rough business that requires real discipline and fortitude for one to actually pull of a competent 70+ minutes of screen time. The bar has been so hard to cross that up to now individuals who can combine unique and off-beat visions of what can be accomplished with the ability to actually produce a film have been hard to come by. Perhaps that bar is beginning to become easier to clear.

The world of animation is a much richer and more interesting place when films like this are being made.

Based on the Short Stories of Etgar Keret, and adapted for the screen by Etgar Keret and Director Tatia Rosenthal, $9.99 is a stop motion animated feature which offers slightly less than $10 worth about the meaning of life.

An astonishing work of stop-motion animation, $9.99 is both visually compelling and timely in its exploration of urban disillusionment and dreams deferred.

March 29th – 7pm, Museum of Modern Art, Titus Theater 1
April 1st – 9pm, Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center

MoMA
The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street,
(bet. Fifth and Sixth Aves)
NYC
www.moma.org
Walter Reade Theater
Film Society of Lincoln Center
165 West 65th St.
(Bet. B’way & Amsterdam)
Upper Level
NYC
www.filmlinc.com