TamTam Books’ Tosh Berman in New York City for "Wallace Berman Photographs"

WALLACE BERMAN: PHOTOGRAPHS LAUNCH AT SPOONBILL & SUGARTOWN

For your editorial consideration Contact: Molly Cain
212--627-1999 x203 mcain@dapinc.com

EVENT DATE: Tuesday, June 19th, 2007 at 7 pm

WHAT: The new book Wallace Berman: Photographs will be discussed by Wallace’s son Tosh Berman; film footage and outtakes from Wallace Berman's film "Aleph" will be screened. See details below.

WHERE: Spoonbill & Sugartown, Booksellers
Located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on Bedford Avenue between North 4th and North 5th Streets

Admittance is free and open to the public. Wine will be served.

Tosh Berman, son of the artist and photographer Wallace Berman, will discuss the stories behind the photographs of his late father, recently published by D.A.P. and RoseGallery, in Wallace Berman: Photographs. Tosh Berman will also read excerpts from his own memoir, My Struggle, that reference the period during which these photographs were taken. Film footage and outtakes from Wallace Berman's film "Aleph", recently preserved by the Film Anthology in New York City, will be screened before and during the evening’s talks and readings.

ABOUT THE BOOK…

Wallace Berman: Photographs
Edited and introduction by Kristine McKenna and Lorraine Wild
Published by RoseGallery, Los Angeles

The quintessential visual artist of the Beat generation, Wallace Berman's influence has continued to radiate throughout the American art scene and in our popular culture since the 1950s. As an artist, Berman worked in relative obscurity up until his premature death, at the age of 50, in 1976. Since then, however, interest in his work, and recognition of its importance, have steadily increased. The subject of the recent—and highly lauded—traveling exhibition and accompanying catalogue, Semina Culture: Wallace Berman & His Circle, he was the central and binding figure in a diverse community of artists, poets, actors and musicians, and was revered for his wisdom as well as his achievements as an artist, publisher and filmmaker. However, until the 1999 discovery of an archive of his photographic negatives, very few people have known that Berman was also an extremely accomplished photographer. He documented the West Coast Beat culture of the 1950s, the first stirrings of the hippie culture that took root in the canyons of Southern California in the 60s and the diverse cast of characters who passed through his famously creative world with amazing intimacy and candor. Berman's photographs are gathered here for the first time ever.

Wallace Berman: Photographs, Published by RoseGallery, Los Angeles and D.A.P./ Distributed Art Publishers,
Distributed by D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, Inc., ISBN: 9781933045610, Price: $50.00

D.A.P. 155 6th Avenue, Fl. 2, New York City, 10013

Translation of AUTUMN IN PEKING by Boris Vian; as well as Brigitte Bardot

Paul Knobloch, my faithful brilliant translator did an amazing presentation last night at Cal Long Beach. Basically he showed examples of his work and compared it with the original French text by Boris Vian. In detail, he talked about word choice, and how to deal with various phrases in Vian's work. Translating Vian is very very difficult. Due to Vian's play with words and images. As you can gather I am very much impressed with Paul's presentation and his work for me. Remarkable!

Finding the right person for the right job is also a skill, and lately I have been really good at it. Paul and I connected to not only our love for Vian's work, but also a love for Vian's time and Paris circ. late 40's and early 50's.

For me it is amazing to throw one self into another era to study the lives and the works of its citizens. To be a great translator you have to be a fantastic writer. There is no way around it. You can't cheat on this. Also one has to get into the head of the writer you are translating. And not only that, but you also have to be aware of the situations and particular desires of that era or time that the book was written.

My small role last night was to give a brief introduction to the world of TamTam Books. I told the audience (mostly academic teachers or their students) that I first became involved in TamTam due to my first trip to the cinema with my Dad.



He took me to see Roger Vadim's "And God Created Woman" with Brigitte Bardot. It is without hesitation that I can say Bardot was the most important woman (besides my Mother) in my life. I feel seeing Bardot on a big screen set me for life. Therefore lead me to a life as a publisher and a lover of French pop culture. It has been an adventure of sorts, and as the years pass, the passion gets more intense.

Jacques Tati film festival in Los Angeles

Jacques Tati is one of m all time favorite filmmakers....No, let me take that back. He is my favorite everything. There will be a retrospecstive of his work at the Aero Theater in Santa Monica, and if you don't see it, then you are a loser. It is that simple.

At the Aero Theatre
1328 Montana Ave
Santa Monica, CA 90403




Tickets are available on www.fandango.com or 2 hours before the screening at the Aero Theatre Box Office.





Wednesday, May 2 - 7:30 PM
In 70mm! PLAYTIME, 1967, Janus Films, 126 min. Dir. Jacques Tati. Another chance to see the fully restored Jacques Tati masterpiece PLAYTIME, which was conceived originally as a 70mm viewing experience, then lost for over 30 years (there were only 35mm prints left of a cut version), and finally rescued by Tati's daughter Sophie Tatischeff and Jerome Deschamps. Monsieur Hulot must contact an American official in Paris, but he gets lost in a stylish maze of modern architecture filled with the latest technical gadgets. Caught in a tourist invasion, Hulot roams around Paris with a group of American tourists, causing chaos in his usual manner. Gilles Deleuze concisely states that in PLAYTIME Tati "spreads Mr. Hulots everywhere, forms and breaks up groups, joins and separates characters, in a kind of modern ballet." A "ballet" Noël Burch would famously proclaim "not only begs for multiple viewings, but demands to be seen from several different seats in the auditorium." The star of the film: the city built by Tati and called Tativille/Taticity. From surprise to surprise, it’s an exquisite and divine experience! François Truffaut, writing to Jacques Tati about PLAYTIME, said simply, "A film from another planet." In French and English. Also playing May 6.






Thursday, May 3 - 7:30 PM
THE BIG DAY (JOUR DE FETE), 1947, Janus Films, 79 min. Jacques Tati’s feature debut as director is a priceless showcase for his comedic talents as he plays a mailman attempting to streamline delivery in his small town. But he soon finds his attempts at modernization and a coincidental Bastille Day celebration don’t mix. Tangible proof that Tati remains -- along with Chaplin, Keaton and the Marx Brothers -- as one of the pantheon comic geniuses of the 20th Century. Originally filmed in Thomson-Color, a tentative French alternative to Technicolor, JOUR DE FÊTE was shot simultaneously in black-and-white as a precaution. Eventually, trouble with the new color process led Tati to release this second, backup version. The film proved a commercial and critical success, yet that didn't stop Tati from returning to the film in the mid-1960’s, re-editing the picture, remixing its soundtrack and even shooting new footage for it. Until a 1995 "restoration" of the film's intended, original color version carried out by Tati's daughter Sophie Tatischeff and cinematographer François Ede, the 1964 JOUR DE FÊTE was the sole version in circulation. Plus, prior to feature film: three rare shorts co-written or directed by Tati, all starring Tati: René Clement’s "Soigne Ta Gauche," 1936, 20 min. Tati’s "School For Postmen" (L’Ecole Des Facteurs), 1947, 18 min. Nicolas Ribowski’s "Evening Classes" (Cour Du Soir), 1967, 30 min.





Friday, May 4 - 7:30 PM

Double Feature:

MON ONCLE, 1958, Janus Films, 110 min. Winner of a Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. The New York Times' Vincent Canby once described Jacques Tati's M. Hulot alter-ego as "a kind of fixed point in a view finder with which we are able to put the rest of the world into properly hilarious focus." This is no less true than in Tati's Academy Award-winning MON ONCLE. Following the commercial and critical success of 1953's M. HULOT'S HOLIDAY, Tati set Hulot packing for the suburbs. Rendering Le Corbusier's proclamation that a house is "a machine for living in" literally, Tati's Hulot bumbles through modernity's "gadgeted and pushbuttoned realms," to use New York Times critic Bosley Crowther's apt description of the factory floor and the family home. There Hulot commiserates with his young nephew on the awkward and always comic affects of modernism – such as lawn paths that wind like couture runways or oval windows that resemble cartoon eyes peeping down on visitors. Though Tati would make the claim in a 1968 Cahiers du Cinema interview that he "went a little astray with MON ONCLE" it remains one of his most beloved films.



MR. HULOT’S HOLIDAY (LES VACANCES DE MONSIEUR HULOT), 1953, Janus Films, 85 min. Dir. Jacques Tati. Tati’s first film as Monsieur Hulot, one of cinema's great comic personas, finds the irascible Frenchman going to a resort town for a vacation and chaos predictably ensues. A warm and whimsical hymn to the joys of life and the funny little things continually happening around us we often fail to notice. Both films in French with English subtitles.





Saturday, May 5 - 7:30 PM

Ultra-Rare Double Feature:

TRAFFIC, 1971, Janus Films, 96 min. Jacques Tati reinstates M. Hulot as a protagonist, returning to the bucolic charm of his first feature (1949's JOUR DE FETE) and, in the words of Michel Chion, its subsequent "rediscovery of roads, nature, cows, trees, and meadows." Hulot is assigned with escorting a prototype for a ridiculously gadget-addled, super-deluxe camper from its French factory to the International Automobile Show in Amsterdam. Of course, a comic set of obstacles, detours and mishaps sets the caravan reeling. Another one of Tati's astute appreciations of "the odd beauty that can be revealed in the shapes, patterns and colors created by the technology of planned obsolescence." - Vincent Canby, The New York Times


PARADE, 1974, Janus Films, 84 min. Rarely screened, PARADE is likely the least seen of Jacques Tati's works. Freed from the persona and its ancillary mannerism that he had inhabited onscreen for twenty years, Tati returns to the vibrant pantomiming and giddy clowning of his youth as a music-hall star. Shot on video and originally intended for Swedish television, PARADE is described by critic Jonathan Rosenbaum as "deceptively modest and boldly experimental." Called at times a pseudo-documentary, it depicts a circus performing for a small audience on a soundstage. Maintaining TRAFFIC's exploration of close-ups, hidden cameras and the telephoto lens in general, PARADE is likened by Serge Daney to "a luminous trail of colors in an electronic landscape." Tati would never direct another film, much less produce another television program. Yet PARADE remains a fascinating sketch of what Tati on the tube could have been. Plus prior to the feature films: "Forza Bastia 78," 2002, 26 min. Jacques Tati’s lost short rediscovered and edited by his daughter Sophie Tatischeff. Both films in French with English subtitles.



Sunday, May 6 - 7:30 PM
In 70mm! PLAYTIME, 1967, Janus Films, 126 min. Dir. Jacques Tati. [See description May 2 – Aero]





And the above photo is Tati with my all-time favorite band Sparks.

"Paris Noir" by Jacques Yonnet

The "Paris Noir" book I am reading is a very interesting piece of work. Written during the French Occupation, this non-fiction book exposes a sub-culture that was lurking in the shadows of Paris during the early 40's. I am kind of in awe and struck by how there is the straight powerful society/culture and then there are the little mice that organize among themselves to survive their environment. It's a fascinating document!