Bicycles bask in the shade of a familiar Brutalist landmark on the UW-Madison campus

The George L. Mosse Humanities Building, designed by Chicago architect Harry Weese, has been at the corner of Park and University for four decades. Some see it as a classic of the Brutalist style. Many who work and study there consider it an unlivable monstrosity. The Wisconsin State Journal summarized the situation last fall.

Some faculty and staff can't wait to see the building torn down, but it won't happen for at least another 10 years.

In another 10 years, the building will have taken on even more of a historical patina. Brutalist buildings are being torn down all over the country. By then, pressure may build to remodel it, rather than tear it down. Will Humanities survive?. I don't know. I do know that, as a photographer I always enjoy shooting there. But I don't have to work there.

Be Sexy Vote (Yes on Garver) Today

Chalk message scrawled on the Library Mall on the UW-Madison campus. Note: To be even more sexy, vote Yes on the Garver Referendum.

Finding a way to have a nice meal while attending the Wisconsin Film Festival

I really like both the food and the ambience at Osteria Papavero on East Wilson Street just off the Capitol Square -- including this old espresso machine and the shadows it casts in the corner. Apparently I'm not alone.

Seeing a full schedule of films at the Wisconsin Film Festival and also trying to have a nice meal now and then can be a challenge. Sometimes you just have to do the fast food thing. (Our fastest turnaround was Saturday night -- there was a Civic Symphony concert at the Overture Center and the downtown was just swarming with people -- when we got out of Noodles & Company in under 20 minutes.) But Thursday night we had a better schedule, with plenty of time for a leisurely dinner. Osteria Papavero provided a warm atmosphere in which to decompress on a rainy night. Warmed by two Negronis (equal parts of gin, sweet vermouth and Campari), we watched the rain splatter outside and shared memories of our favorite parts of The Beaches of Agnes. The entrees were excellent, and we had time to savor them before going on to our next movie. I had the scallops special. At the risk of seeming hopelessly gauche, I have to confess that the sauce was so good that it took all the self-discipline I could muster not to lick the plate. We went out into the rainy night totally revitalized.

Not just my favorite film at this year's film festival, but one of the best I've seen in years

Now that the Wisconsin Film Festival has started to recede into the blurred vision of memory, there's one film that remains as joyous and sharply etched in my mind as when I first watched it, entranced: The Beaches of Agnes (Les Plages d'Agnes), by the indomitable 80-year-old French filmmaker, photographer and installation artist, Agnes Varda. It was not only my favorite film at this year's festival, but one of the best films I've seen in years. I don't normally collect DVDs, but this is one I can't wait to buy when it comes out. It's one of those films you want to have close at hand like a favorite book. (It's not just me: The French Union of Film Critics chose The Beaches of Agnes as best French film of the year. It also went on to win "Best Documentary" from the Academy des Cesars -- the "French Oscars.")

It's hard to describe the film and do it justice. You could call it a film memoir, but that doesn't capture the mix of wisdom, joy, humor, whimsy, melancholy, beauty and film technique that this extraordinary film provides. The image here is one of many that keep flashing through my mind. It's Agnes dancing on the beach dressed in black, with her children and grandchildren dancing in white.

Rather than ramble on and on, I want to share two remarkable essays I came across online. One is by British film blogger David Berridge, who wrote about The Beaches of Agnes after it showed at the London Film Festival last fall.

If there was one film at this years London Film Festival festival that had me leaving the cinema newly empowered about the possibilities of cinema it was also the film by the festival's oldest director, and may, the rumour goes, have been her final film.

Not that the film revealed anything but a vital, active creativity, theoretical sophistication and a delicious wit. I so relished Agnes Varda's Les Plages d'Agnes for several reasons. It was a case study in how the most complex ideas about form and cinema can be explored through wit, humour, personal confession and eccentricity. Secondly, related to this, because it could engage with a whole range of experience and imagery: from feminist marches to a giant cartoon cat version of Chris Marker, from domestic life to celebrity portraits to studies of those living off rubbish gleaned in the street. Thirdly, it was an essay about the meaning of a life pervaded in cinema. Future historians could do no worse than show Les Plages d'Agnes alongside Godard's Histoire du Cinema when trying to fathom the meaning of a society based around representations of itself in film.

The other is a long love letter to Varda by the equally indomitable Roger Ebert, whose writing on film has only grown more passionate and lyrical since cancer ended his TV career.

Dear Agnes Varda. She is a great director and a beautiful, lovable and wise woman, through and through. It is not enough that she made some of the first films of the French New Wave. That she was the Muse for Jacques Demy. That she is a famed photographer and installation artist. That she directed the first appearances on film of Gerard Depardieu, Phillipe Noiret--and Harrison Ford! Or that after gaining distinction as a director of fiction, she showed herself equally gifted as a director of documentaries. And that she still lives, as she has since the 1950s, in the rooms opening off each side of a once-ruined Paris courtyard, each room a separate domain.

That is not enough, because her greatest triumph is her life itself. She comes walking toward us on the sand in the first shot of "The Beaches of Agnes," describing herself as "a little old lady, pleasantly plump." Well, she isn't tall. But somehow she isn't old. She made this film in her 80th year, and she looks remarkably similar to 1967, when she brought a film to the Chicago Film Festival. Or the night I had dinner with her, Jacques and Pauline Kael at Cannes 1976. Or when she was at Montreal 1988. Or the sun-blessed afternoon when we three had lunch in their courtyard in 1990. Or when she was on the jury at Cannes 2005.

This is a must-read for anyone who cares about film or art. Ebert concludes by placing Agnes Varda in a great tradition:

At Illinois I had a class that made a great impression on me, taught by the famous critic Sherman Paul, about the organic tradition in literature. As models he held up such as Emerson, Thoreau, Louis Sullivan, Edmund Wilson, William Carlos Williams. These men, he said, created as a part of their lives, not as a separate cerebral activity. My professor would have approved of Varda. She never studied film. She never moved in circles with Sartre, Beauvoir and other cafe philosophers who measured out their lives with coffee spoons. She simply went to work, doing what felt right to her, filming, photographing and designing what came to hand. For her there is no distinction between fiction and documentary, for they are both ways of observing and feeling.

Photographer and filmmaker Telemach Wiesinger queries his Wisconsin Film Festival audience

I loved the way German still photographer and filmmaker Telemach Wiesinger leaned forward like an attentive crane at the UW Cinematheque Saturday, while answering questions about his experimental short film -- and asking a few of his own.

"Passage" is a black and white film that Wiesinger calls a "film poem." It's a stark visual meditation on movable metal bridges and other forms of marine engineering shot on waterfronts and rivers in France, Germany, England, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and the United States. It's a haunting, hypnotic work filmed with the eye of an accomplished still photographer. If the still on the right looks familiar, maybe it is -- it was shot in Chicago, according to this article (in German) from the Badische Zeitung.

Wiesinger filmed various old pivot and lift bridges, gigantic dockyard ship hoists as well as the last remaining air cushion boats. The title refers not only to his own journey to these sites, but the water and land traffic with which the bridges are associated. He photographs them moving with slow, ponderous grace, to the accompaniment of an electronic musical score by composer Tobias Schwab that to my ear perfectly evoked both the busy hum of mechanical activity in harbors and ports, but also a sense of underlying melancholy.

There's a heaviness and stillness to the film that seems to owe something to Wiesinger's background as a still photographer. The motion in the film is slow, not because it was shot in slow-motion, but because the massive objects being filmed move so slowly in real time. It almost feels like a film about the physics of inertia. I really liked the effect and "Passage" was one of my favorite films of the festival.

Wiesinger's dialogue with the audience was also interesting. He explained how he got the dark skies of many of the shots. "When photographing with black and white film, one can use filters to darken the blue of the sky," he noted. Indeed -- it looked as if he often shot with a deep red or orange filter. Someone else asked about images that were superimposed -- ghostly images of people or other bridges. He said it wasn't done electronically, but by running a roll of film through the camera two, or even three, times to create multiple exposures -- a process that adds a chance component to the filming process, at least when shooting things you can't control.

Wiesinger also had a question for the audience: Did they like the sound track? Turns out that he originally conceived of the film as totally silent and first showed it as an installation along with still photos of the structures in the film. He only added the soundtrack recently, giving it more of a filmic qualty. It seemed as if he seemed to still think of it as a silent work and wasn't quite sure about the version with music. Perhaps he still sees it as more of a photographic than cinematic project. But most members of the audience liked the soundtrack, and some wanted to buy it (he said it would be on Schwab's next CD). And in a perfect small-world demonstration, one woman said she had seen the original silent version in Freiburg last year and liked this version more.

Incidentally, this isn't Wiesinger's first time in Madison, which is a sister city of Freiburg. In 2005 his "Faces of Freiburg" exhibit showed in several Madison locations as part of the sister city program. And in 2007 he was a Brittingham Visiting Scholar in the UW Department of German and had another show in the Madison Municipal Building, "Jazz Traveler." Some photos from both shows are on his website.

Sampling Wisconsin Film Festival's limited edition Babcock ice cream flavor, "In the Dark"

After watching the first afternoon screening of shorts at the UW Cinematheque yesterday, we wandered over to the Memorial Union to use our discount coupon for the Wisconsin Film Festival's Limited Edition Babcock Hall Ice Cream Flavor, "In the Dark." The UW News Service explains how the legendary Babcock Hall Dairy came up with the cinematic flavor:

As the Wisconsin Film Festival (April 2 to 5) rolls into its second decade, the Babcock Hall Dairy is rolling out a limited edition flavor for the festival, called “In The Dark.”

Festival director Meg Hamel says, “Not only do I have the best job on campus, watching movies all day, I get to have my dream ice cream, too. I grew up a few blocks from Babcock, and my grandparents always had a tub of chocolate chip in their freezer.”

Hamel and Babcock Dairy manager Bill Klein came up with the In The Dark flavor: chocolate malt ice cream with chocolate truffle pieces, chocolate chips, dark fudge swirl, and pecans.

The ice cream will be available starting Saturday, March 7, at both the Babcock Hall Dairy Store and at the Daily Scoop counter in the Memorial Union. As a bonus for people buying advance tickets to the Wisconsin Film Festival, the Memorial Union will also be offering coupons for 60 cents off a single cone (of any flavor). These coupons will be distributed by the festival box office.

The film festival is all about standing in line, and this was no exception. We found ourselves in a long line of people clutching the little red discount coupons like ours (foreground). The wait was worth it -- the ice cream is delicious! I hope they keep it around.

Our time lapse photo sequence tulips go through another stupid spring snow episode

We had another encounter with a bit of snow last night, although it's all gone now. Yesterday's first crocus of the year seems to have buttoned up its coat in self-protection. To get a better view see Large version. (Entire time lapse sequence is here.)

Madison goes nuts about film: 2009 Wisconsin Film Festival

The Orpheum Theater only looked deserted early Thursday evening because everyone was inside watching "500 Days of Summer." The film festival started off with great attendance, recession or no recession.

More typical festival crowd shot, taken across the street at the madison Museum of Contemporary Art -- the end of a long line for the German film "Jerichow." We had just come out of "The Beaches of Agnes," the amazing film by 80-year-old Agnes Varda, one of the richest, most moving (and beautiful) films I've seen in years. I'll post more about it when I get a minute -- but meanwhile, there's another showing Sunday at 1:00 PM at MMoCA. Don't miss it!

This is the Wisconsin Film Festival audience award ballot. Quick and easy -- you tear off the number you select and drop it in a ballot box on your way out of the theater. I used this one to give the highest rating to "The Beaches of Agnes" the other night.

Every year, the Wisconsin Film Festival produces a short, arty introductory spot that welcomes the audience at each screening and acknowledges the sponsors of the event. This is a series of stills from this year's spot, an ironic pastiche of old, 1950s-era Wisconsin tourism and economic development video clips. Yeah, we like it here!

Spring flooding along the Rock River

This is Blackhawk Island Road the other day, at the point where it cuts under Highway 26 to reach the homes along the Rock River. This was the scene a couple days ago. It helped to have a truck. There's usually some flooding here this time of year as the river's level crests with the snow melt, and Blackhawk Island residents have learned to live with it.

So far, the flooding in southern Wisconsin is nothing like it was last year, when flood levels set modern records and there was a lot of damage. But that was later in the year, in late May and early June, mostly the result of torrential rains rather than melting snow. Meanwhile, the ground is saturated, and people are keeping an eye on the weather. The upcoming weekend is expected to be a wet one, possibly including quite a bit of snow.

For more photos, see my Rock River Flooding set on Flickr.

Vote Yes April 7 on the Garver Referendum

When the Vote Yes for Garver Committee asked permission to use my photo of the old Garver Feed Mill behind Olbrich Gardens, I was happy to say yes, because I think the Common Wealth Development plan to develop the property as an arts incubator is a great idea. Vote yes on Tuesday! (Meanwhile, it's fun to see my photo sharing the page with Mayor Dave and Tammy Baldwin.)