Caligula Night

On 1st June, film professor Stephen Barber will introduce a free screening of Caligula at the Electric Pussycat Lounge in Bangkok. Caligula, directed by Tinto Brass, remains one of the most controversial films ever made.

The original director's cut featured scenes of graphic violence and simulated sex, though producer Bob Guccioni inserted hardcore sex sequences against the wishes of the director and the distinguished cast (which included Malcolm McDowell and John Gielgud). Brass, director of exploitation classics such as Salon Kitty, later disowned the film, and it has been heavily censored around the world.

Explicit imagery is rarely permitted by Thailand's film ratings board: Insects In The Backyard and This Area Is Under Quarantine were banned for this reason. (However, film-festival screenings, such as Anatomy Of Hell, Serbis, Otto, Antichrist, and Dogtooth, are generally given more leniency.) There have been covert screenings of Taxidermia, Reincarnate, and The Terrorists, all of which are extremely graphic; presumably the forthcoming Caligula Night screening is similarly unauthorised.

Sobre la Cristofagia(‘how to cook Jesus Christ’)

Artist Javier Krahe has been charged with blasphemy after one of his art films was shown on television in Spain. Krahe directed the short film with Enrique Sesena in 1978, and it was immediately banned. It was broadcast on the Canal+ TV show Lo + plus in 2004, and the show’s producers are also facing blasphemy charges. The film’s original title is Sobre la Cristofagia, though it is more commonly known as Cómo cocinar un Cristo (‘how to cook Jesus Christ’).

Citizen Dog

Tomorrow, the Thai Film Archive (in Salaya, near Bangkok) will screen Wisit Sasanatieng's film Citizen Dog. This whimsical romantic comedy retains the over-saturated colours of Wisit's debut film, the incredible Tears Of The Black Tiger (screened at the Archive in 2009 and 2010). After Citizen Dog, Wisit directed more mainstream projects: the horror film The Unseeable (featured in Spirits) and the action movie The Red Eagle (screened at Movies On The Beach).

Wisit has also made the short film Norasinghavatar (part of the Traces Of Siamese Smile exhibition), the music video เราเป็นคนไทย, and a segment of the portmanteau film Sawasdee Bangkok. He wrote the scripts for Nonzee Nimibutr's Nang Nak and Dang Bireley's and Young Gangsters [sic], wrote the outline for Kongkiat Khomsiri's Slice, appeared at the 28 Days festival, and designed the posters for the 2008 and 2009 Bangkok International Film Festivals. Currently, he is working with Thunska Pansittivorakul on the forthcoming film Supernatural.

Artists' Postcards

Artists' Postcards: A Compendium, by Jeremy Cooper, is the first book dedicated to the postcard as an artistic medium. Rather than discussing scenic tourist postcards (as in Frank Staff's The Picture Postcard & Its Origins and Martin Willoughby's A History Of Postcards), Cooper focuses on limited-edition postcards produced by artists.

An excellent introduction traces the cultural history of postcards and their artistic appropriation, and subsequent chapters present a chronological survey of postcard artworks. The bulk of the book is dedicated to an annotated taxonomy of contemporary artists' postcards. There is no bibliography.

The Spear

The South African government, the ANC, has insisted on the removal of a portrait of President Zuma from the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg. The painting, The Spear by Brett Murray, depicts Zuma exposing his genitals, and is based on an iconic propaganda portrait of Lenin; it was due to be exhibited until 16th June, as part of the Hail To The Thief II exhibition.

The painting was also reproduced by the Sunday newspaper City Press, on 13th May. It was vandalised today, when two gallery visitors daubed paint onto it (as shown on eNews Channel). Zuma has been caricatured before, by the cartoonist Zapiro.

There is an artistic precedent for The Spear: Ayanda Mabulu's painting Ngcono Ihlewpu Kunesibhanxa Sesityebi (2010) also depicts a naked Zuma. Mabulu's work was included in his Unmute My Tongue exhibition in Capetown.

ประชาเฌอระลึก

An arts event, ประชาเฌอระลึก, will be held tonight at Bangkok's Soi Rangnam to commemorate the second anniversary of the 2010 massacre. An abridged version of Thunska Pansittivorakul's powerful film The Terrorists will be screened.

Two years after the Thai army massacred its own citizens, there has been no accountability. The military's destructive influence continues, and its immunity is a stain on Thailand's reputation.

Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy, a new exhibition by Vasan Sitthiket, opened this evening at Thavibu Gallery in Bangkok. Vasan's work is often scathingly direct in its condemnation of political figures, and the new paintings in this exhibition are no exception. Most graphically, Hillary Clinton is portrayed nude, giving birth to an enormous and literal representation of phallocentric power. In another painting, a beatific Buddha shoots various world leaders with an automatic rifle.

The paintings are accompanied by Thai Nukes, a supplementary exhibition of more than a hundred wooden phalli painted with ironic globalisation slogans, in an adjacent gallery. Hypocrisy and Thai Nukes will close on 9th June. Vasan's recent exhibitions have included the solo shows Obsessive Compulsive and Ten Evil Scenes Of Thai Politic [sic], and joint shows The Human Clay and Chaotic Victory.

Nameye Amir

An Iranian cartoonist, Mahmud Shokraye, has been sentenced to twenty-five lashes after he drew a cartoon of politician Ahmad Lotfi Ashtiani as a footballer. The caricature was published by the newspaper Nameye Amir.

In solidarity with the cartoonist, and in protest at his barbaric sentence, Martin Rowson reproduced the original cartoon and drew a grotesque portrait of the politician as an obese, wailing baby. Rowson's cartoon was published by The Guardian in the UK on Thursday.

Cryptoart

Cryptoart: The Hidden History Of Art, an exhibition by Rafael Andres, known as The Raf, opens at Eat Me in Bangkok on Monday. The Raf has reproduced iconic paintings, such as Leonardo's Mona Lisa, though with a twist: he digitally adds subversive additional elements to each picture.

The effect is similar to Jake & Dinos Chapman's appropriation of Goya's etchings, or an extension of Marcel Duchamp's LHOOQ. Cryptoart, curated by Pan Pan Narkprasert (Gagasmicism) closes on 29th June.

The Heritage Of World's Prints

An exhibition of signed prints, The Heritage Of World's Prints [sic], opened today at Artery Post-Modern Gallery in Bangkok. The exhibition, featuring works by Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and others, will close on 31st May. (Prints by Picasso and other iconic artists were also included in The Art Of Time, in 2008.)

The exhibition's poster is a reproduction of Picasso's 1954 lithograph La Femme Au Singe, which was produced in an edition of fifty. The exhibition also includes another Picasso lithograph, which is perhaps a variation of his Le Chevalier & Le Page from 1951, and three Picasso etchings. (Strangely, the exhibition does not list the titles or dates of any of the exhibits.)

Bastards Of Misrepresentation

Bastards Of Misrepresentation: Doing Time On Filipino Time, a group exhibition showcasing contemporary art from the Philippines, opens today at H Gallery in Bangkok. The exhibition, curated by Manuel Ocampo and featuring MM Yu's photographs of Manila roadkill titled Itch, will close on 11th June.

Museum of the City of New York

The Museum of the City of New York has put its vast collection of Stanley Kubrick's photographs online. In the 1940s, before he became a director, Kubrick worked as a photojournalist for Look magazine, and Look's photographic archive was subsequently donated to the Museum.

Now the Museum has uploaded all 7,271 of Kubrick's photos onto its website. Highlights include a self-portrait of Kubrick's reflection in a mirror, and portraits of Alfred Hitchcock on a train. The photographs are almost exclusively black-and-white, with only one colour image in the entire collection.

The Stanley Kubrick Archive in London and the Library of Congress in Washington both have small collections of Kubrick's Look photos, though MCNY's archive is far more extensive. Many of the photographs originally appeared in Look (1945-1950), and others have been published in various catalogues: Ladro Di Sguardi, Still Moving Pictures, Drama & Shadows, Only In New York, and Fotografie 1945-1950.

100 Artists' Manifestos

100 Artists' Manifestos: From The Futurists To The Stuckists is an anthology of manifestos from 20th century art movements, edited by Alex Danchev and organised with minimalist clarity. Danchev's comprehensive selection includes not only artists but also filmmakers and architects. The concept is similar to the excellent Manifesto: A Century Of Isms, by Mary Ann Caws.

Danchev begins with FT Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto, published on the front page of Le Figaro in 1909, the document that inspired all subsequent art manifestos. The various avant-garde movements of the 1920s all published manifestos inspired by Marinetti's breathless enthusiasm.

The book ends on a sour note with the Stuckists, a reactionary group of anti-Conceptualists who are impossible to take seriously. If Danchev had extended the survey into the early 21st century, he could have concluded instead with the optimistic Sustainism manifesto published in 2010.

500 Classic Films

500 classic films, listed chronologically, representing the history of international cinema.

Talk About Cinema

Talk About Cinema, by Jean-Baptiste Thoret, discusses how contemporary cinema is influenced by stylistic innovations of the past. It was originally published in French, with a more descriptive title: Cinema Contemporain: Mode d'Emploi.

Thoret, who writes for Charlie Hebdo, highlights some cinematic technical breakthroughs, briefly summarises cinema's major artistic movements, and profiles some leading contemporary directors (as in Cinema Now). He also lists 20 Seminal Films, chosen because they contain "motifs, situations, or images destined to be reused again and again".

Talk About Cinema's 20 Seminal Films are as follows:

• Freaks
• The Red Shoes
• Invasion Of The Body Snatchers
• The Searchers
• Rear Window / North By Northwest / Vertigo / Psycho / The Birds
• Big Deal On Madonna Street
• The Twilight Zone
• 'the Zapruder film'
• Inferno
• A Fistful Of Dollars / For A Few Dollars More / The Good, The Bad, & The Ugly / Once Upon A Time In The West / Duck, You Sucker!
• Blow-Up
• Play Time
• The Prisoner
• Le Samourai
• Night Of The Living Dead
• Bullitt
• 2001: A Space Odyssey / A Clockwork Orange / Barry Lyndon / The Shining
• Easy Rider
• Aguirre: The Wrath Of God
• Scarface

The list, in chronological order, actually has far more than twenty titles, because Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and Sergio Leone are each represented by multiple films. Even more esoterically, Thoret includes television series (The Prisoner and The Twilight Zone), an actuality film (Abraham Zapruder's footage of John F Kennedy's assassination), and an unfinished film (Inferno). (Note that Scarface is the Brian de Palma version, not the Howard Hawks original.)

The Greatest Movies Ever

Gail Kinn and Jim Piazza's book The Greatest Movies Ever has been slightly updated for its second edition. The list in the latest edition, published last year, is almost exactly the same as the 2008 version, as only two entries have been changed.

My Fair Lady, #55 in the old edition, has been replaced by Slumdog Millionaire; also, The Bank Dick, the old edition's #84, has been changed to The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King. The new edition still lists 102 films, because The Godfather and The Godfather II appear as a single entry at #1.

The 101 Greatest Movies are as follows:

1. The Godfather I-II
2. Citizen Kane
3. Casablanca
4. Sunset Boulevard
5. Lawrence Of Arabia
6. North By Northwest
7. The Wizard Of Oz
8. Annie Hall
9. Chinatown
10. Singin' In The Rain
11. Nashville
12. Some Like It Hot
13. All About Eve
14. Psycho
15. Taxi Driver
16. Apocalypse Now
17. On The Waterfront
18. Gone With The Wind
19. To Kill A Mockingbird
20. The Searchers
21. La Dolce Vita
22. Double Indemnity
23. Pan's Labyrinth
24. Vertigo
25. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
26. GoodFellas
27. Jules & Jim
28. Funny Face
29. A Streetcar Named Desire
30. Saving Private Ryan
31. Strangers On A Train
32. It Happened One Night
33. The Graduate
34. It's A Wonderful Life
35. Raging Bull
36. The Best Years Of Our Lives
37. The African Queen
38. Dr Strangelove
39. Blade Runner
40. The Conformist
41. Schindler's List
42. The Lives Of Others
43. Diner
44. City Lights
45. The Deer Hunter
46. 8½
47. Top Hat
48. La Regle Du Jeu
49. 2001: A Space Odyssey
50. Bonnie & Clyde
51. King Kong
52. Star Wars IV: A New Hope
53. The 400 Blows
54. A Night At The Opera
55. Slumdog Millionaire
56. The Night Of The Hunter
57. The Third Man
58. Dr Zhivago
59. ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
60. Invasion Of The Body-Snatchers
61. Pinocchio
62. Shadow Of A Doubt
63. Fargo
64. Blue Velvet
65. Jaws
66. The Grapes Of Wrath
67. Do The Right Thing
68. Wild Strawberries
69. Bicycle Thieves
70. Bringing Up Baby
71. Paths Of Glory
72. The Maltese Falcon
73. Pather Panchali
74. The Lady Eve
75. The Last Picture Show
76. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
77. Rosemary's Baby
78. Midnight Cowboy
79. M*A*S*H
80. American Graffiti
81. The Producers
82. Rashomon
83. Cabaret
84. The Lord Of The Rings III: The Return Of The King
85. A Place In The Sun
86. Red River
87. The Conversation
88. Grand Illusion
89. LA Confidential
90. Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
91. Imitation Of Life
92. Raiders Of The Lost Ark
93. Spartacus
94. The Manchurian Candidate
95. Seven Samurai
96. A Hard Day's Night
97. Atlantic City
98. American Beauty
99. Pulp Fiction
100. The Shawshank Redemption
101. Groundhog Day

Note that The Maltese Falcon is the John Huston version, which is actually a remake of an earlier Roy Del Ruth film. Also, Some Like It Hot is the Billy Wilder classic, not the 1939 film of the same name; and Psycho is the original version.

The 100 Best Movies Ever Made...Mostly Suck

The 100 Best Movies Ever Made... Mostly Suck, written pseudonymously by Nick S, is a self-published rant against the classics of world cinema. There are actually 101 films on the list, because he also includes Day For Night as an extra entry.

The films were selected from various other published lists, and the reviews (written in the same 'style' as the late Chas Balun) are taken from the author's website. (Online, he uses a different pseudonym: Mr Satanism.)

I'm not sure exactly how serious Nick Satanism (?) is. If he genuinely hated classic films, why would he bother to watch so many of them? And if he actually liked classic films, why would he review them so negatively?

His comments often border on self-parody, so maybe the book is intended to be ironic? If it is, then he has no sense of humour; if it isn't, then he has no taste.

The 100 Best Movies Ever Made are as follows:

1. Citizen Kane
2. Singin' In The Rain
3. Schindler's List
4. On The Waterfront
5. Casablanca
6. The Godfather
7. Gone With The Wind
8. Lawrence Of Arabia
9. 2001: A Space Odyssey
10. All About Eve
11. The Bridge On The River Kwai
12. Annie Hall
13. Star Wars IV: A New Hope
14. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
15. The Best Years Of Our Lives
16. Raging Bull
17. ET: The Extra-Terrestrial
18. The Wizard Of Oz
19. West Side Story
20. The Graduate
21. Vertigo
22. The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre
23. It's A Wonderful Life
24. The Godfather II
25. Some Like It Hot
26. High Noon
27. It Happened One Night
28. The African Queen
29. Midnight Cowboy
30. Amadeus
31. The Gold Rush
32. Psycho
33. Chinatown
34. City Lights
35. The Maltese Falcon
36. Dr Strangelove
37. Taxi Driver
38. Bonnie & Clyde
39. The Rules Of The Game
40. Mr Smith Goes To Washington
41. 8½
42. From Here To Eternity
43. Battleship Potemkin
44. Ben-Hur: A Tale Of The Christ
45. The Searchers
46. L'Avventura
47. M*A*S*H
48. Double Indemnity
49. Bicycle Thieves
50. Greed
51. The Deer Hunter
52. North By Northwest
53. The Passion Of Joan Of Arc
54. Rear Window
55. The Magnificent Ambersons
56. King Kong
57. Intolerance
58. L'Atalante
59. The Birth Of A Nation
60. Persona
61. The Silence Of The Lambs
62. A Streetcar Named Desire
63. A Clockwork Orange
64. Ugetsu Monogatari
65. An American In Paris
66. Snow White & The Seven Dwarfs
67. Sunset Boulevard
68. The Apartment
69. The General
70. GoodFellas
71. The Grapes Of Wrath
72. Pulp Fiction
73. Seven Samurai
74. Tokyo Story
75. All Quiet On The Western Front
76. Unforgiven
77. Apocalypse Now
78. Louisiana Story
79. Rocky
80. The Sound Of Music
81. Pather Panchali
82. Fantasia
83. Le jour se leve
84. To Kill A Mockingbird
85. Rebel Without A Cause
86. Dr Zhivago
87. Tootsie
88. La Terra Trema
89. Network
90. Brief Encounter
91. Le Million
92. My Fair Lady
93. Wild Strawberries
94. Jaws
95. Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
96. The Philadelphia Story
97. The Third Man
98. Raiders Of The Lost Ark
99. Stagecoach
100. Close Encounters Of The Third Kind
101. Day For Night

Note that Some Like It Hot is the 1959 comic masterpiece, not the obscure 1939 comedy. Also, The Maltese Falcon is the John Huston version and Ben-Hur is the William Wyler version.

Crazily Good!

Sutee Kunavichayanont's exhibition Crazily Good! opened at Number One Gallery in Bangkok on 15th March, and will close on 21st April. The exhibition features Psycho and other Hollywood film titles - mostly 1950s science-fiction like Creature From The Black Lagoon - copied from vintage movie posters.

Shakespeare Must Die

Ing K.’s film Shakespeare Must Die (เชคสเปียร์ต้องตาย) has been banned by Thailand’s board of film censors. The film was refused a certificate yesterday, on the specious grounds that it may create division within society. (The Thai Ministry of Culture has long been obsessed with maintaining the out-dated notion of social harmony, when in reality Thai society is deeply polarised between red-shirt and yellow-shirt supporters.)

The film, inspired by Macbeth, was produced by the photographer Manit Sriwanichpoom; Ing and Manit jointly run the Kathmandu gallery in Bangkok. Shakespeare Must Die is not Ing’s first banned film: her cult film My Teacher Eats Biscuits (คนกราบหมา) was banned in 1997.

Project Japan

Project Japan: Metabolism Talks..., written by Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist, and edited by Kayoko Ota with James Westcott, is the first comprehensive survey of the Japanese Metabolism architecture movement. The book, published by Taschen, features extended interviews with Metabolism's founders, including its prime exponent, Kisho Kurokawa.

Kurokawa's most famous building, the Nakagin Kapuseru Tawa in Tokyo, was intended as a utopian reconfiguration of urban housing. The structure, an icon of Metabolism, is comprised of movable, connectable, and replaceable capsule apartments. It epitomises Metabolism's focus on expandability, flexibility, and adaptability. Today, like Metabolism itself, the building is largely forgotten.

Project Japan is, therefore, most valuable as a comprehensive record of this under-valued movement. The book reproduces the movement's posters, blueprints, and other rare documents, including the Metabolism 1960 manifesto. Only a handful of copies of the manifesto survive, and it had never previously been reprinted.

Klab Dawla

Moroccan rapper Mouad Belghouat, also known as L7a9d and El Haqed, was arrested on Friday and charged with insulting state authorities. His song Klab Dawla criticises the Moroccan police, and he is a member of the February 20 Youth Movement, a group which organised protests as part of last year's Arab Spring.

The Extraordinary Voyage

The Extraordinary Voyage, directed by Serge Bromberg and Eric Lange, is a documentary about Georges Melies and the restoration of his most famous film, A Trip To The Moon. The documentary was made by Lobster Films, the same company which restored A Trip To The Moon last year. It includes interviews with Jean-Pierre Jeunet (director of Delicatessen), Michel Gondry (director of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind), and Michel Hazanavicius (director of The Artist).

The Extraordinary Voyage begins with a biography of Melies: his initial career as a stage magician and theatre manager, his attendance at the Lumiere brothers' first film screening in 1895, and his subsequent work as a pioneer of cinematic special effects and camera tricks. The documentary features extracts from HBO's From The Earth To The Moon - which included a recreation of Melies's studio - and clips from a tinted version of A Trip To The Moon created for a gala event honouring him in 1929.

The documentary also reveals how the hand-coloured version of A Trip To The Moon was restored. An original colour print was discovered at an archive in Barcelona, and this nitrate reel was digitised by Technicolor. A black-&-white negative, supplied by the Melies estate, was utilised to replace missing fragments from the colour print, which were then digitally coloured.

Melies is the subject of Martin Scorsese's most recent film, Hugo, released in 3D. The 5th World Film Fesitval of Bangkok organised a Melies retrospective in 2007. The restored version of A Trip To The Moon was screened as part of La Fete earlier this year.

The Annotated Godfather

The Annotated Godfather: The Complete Screenplay contains the script to The Godfather written by Mario Puzo and Francis Coppola, with notes by Jenny M Jones. Jones interviewed Coppola for the book, and it's a useful supplement to Peter Cowie's excellent The Godfather Book.

Belle De Jour

Luis Bunuel's Surrealist classic Belle De Jour will be screened at Alliance Francaise in Bangkok on 11th April. The screening is free.

Belle De Jour, starring French icon Catherine Deneuve, is probably Bunuel's most famous film. It was previously shown, as part of a Bunuel retrospective, at the 2007 Bangkok International Film Festival.

Sun City & Other Stories

An exhibition at Alliance Francaise in Delhi, Sun City & Other Stories: Paris - San Francisco - Delhi, by photographer Sunil Gupta, has been shut down following a request from the police. The exhibition opened on 23rd March, and was due to run until 15th April, though police intervened a day after it opened.