Diane writes about the film A Matter of Life and Death (1946), screening at the Toby this Friday at 7pm as part of the Winter Nights film series.

A Matter of Life and Death (1946). Eagle-Lion Films Inc./Photofest ©Eagle-Lion Films Inc. Photo by Fred Daniels.

There are some old movies that just grab you—heart and mind—and carry you away before you even realize it.  This is one of those films, a British film made during the final days of World War II, that is still on the favorites list of British filmgoers 60 years later.  It is wonderful, especially on a big screen. Oliver Sacks, Martin Scorsese and Steven Sondheim loved it as teenagers.  Teachers–bring your students. Anyone looking for a great night out will be captivated by the drama, the humor, and love despite great difficulties.  If you would like to know more about the work of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, you will enjoy visiting The Powell and Pressburger Pages.

And if you want to enjoy the film without any more preconceptions, you can stop reading now.

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Filed under: Film, Public Programs, The Toby

As soon as the first photographs were produced in the 1830s, there was a desire to make an accurate color photograph.  Images were painted, dyed, and colored with various inks for years until James Clerk Maxwell devised a way to make true color images that finally worked in 1861.

The first color photograph, a tartan ribbon, using Maxwell’s method.

Maxwell’s idea was to use standard black and white film and to take three images: the first with a red filter, the second with a green filter, and the third with a blue filter.  It was a clever idea that merged the idea of art’s color wheel with the scientific ideas of light frequency.  Almost all color imaging uses Maxwell’s principles to this day.

When motion pictures were invented in the 1890s, there was once again a desire for color images.  By 1900, the Pathé company in France had designed an elaborate system to hand-color film frames with the use of stencils.  Others developed ways of tinting film to make certain scenes have a different artistic feel.

Still photographers had no trouble using Maxwell’s method of making color images, but it was more difficult for motion picture cameramen.  While the still photographer could simply load a new plate, put up a new color filter, and reshoot, the motion picture cameraman had to take at least 16 images per second!

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Filed under: Film, Public Programs, The Toby

The Eames are everywhere. Design blogs spill over with images of their iconic furniture. They’re stars in LACMA’s Pacific Standard Time exhibition, California Design, 1930-1965: “Living in a Modern Way (as well as others).  Ice Cube professed his admiration for them. But as a new documentary shows, though they may have started with a chair, their real impact lies in the multi-faceted nature of their work and the unfettered creativity they brought to their four decade long career. Like Ice Cube said, “They were doing mash-ups before mash-ups even existed.”

A few months ago, Richard McCoy – the IMA’s Conservator of Objects and Variable Art – and Tricia Gilson conducted a two part interview on Art21′s blog with Daniel Ostroff, a consultant for Herman Miller and producer/editor of EamesDesigns.com, a website rich with information about the Eames and their work. If you haven’t checked it out yet, it’s a must-read (part one here, part two here).

The IMA will continue the celebration of this dynamic duo tomorrow with a screening of Eames: The Architect and the Painter in the Toby at 7pm. Come and see if it sparks any ideas of your own. As Charles Eames said, “Ideas are cheap. Always be passionate about ideas and communicating those ideas and discoveries to others in the things you make.”

Filed under: Design, Film, Public Programs, The Toby

Recently at The Toby we hosted a talk by an expert on beads named Lois Sherr Dubin. Referencing the Native American art, Nigerian art, and fashion art on display at IMA right now, she led us on a mind-bending trip through time and place, reflecting on these diminutive glass, ceramic or bone doo-dads that humans have endowed with the power to signify social status, connect to the spirits, and more. The earliest known beads, made from seashells, date back to 100,000 BC.

What about the earliest-known drawings? They exist in a cave in France, and are believed to be more than 30,000 years old. The newest film by documentary filmmaker Werner Herzog (of Grizzly Man fame) is a journey into the Chauvet Cave, and a reflection on the profound urge to represent reality—with pigment on a surface.

image courtesy IFC films.

Egged on by Herzog’s rapturous narration, the film’s camera washes over the cave paintings with lavish attention. Beasts of all sizes are depicted. Charcoal brush strokes capture the grace and strength of a horse in motion. Footprints hint at rites of passage and perilous journeys. The film is immersive; the drawings are ghostly, and yet so there. (Read reviews of the film here).

Cave of Forgotten Dreams premiered at the 2010 Toronto International Film Festival. I saw it at the 2011 South by Southwest film festival and fell in love.

You can see it here at the Indianapolis Museum of Art any of four times between Christmas and New Years. Use it as an excuse to get out of the house and get a fat dose of profundity.

Filed under: Film, Public Programs, The Toby

Since The Toby opened in 2009, we have held a Winter Nights film festival in January and February. This winter the theme for our Winter Nights 2012 series is Technicolor.

Design is generally a pretty subjective endeavor, so when starting a new project I like to do a little research into the subject in order to guide the generation of formal elements. Fortunately Technicolor offers a wealth of visual elements to play with, but the methods and appearance of color film varies a lot depending on the time. The earliest versions of color motion pictures involved three separate rolls of film—black, cyan, and magenta—that were layered together in order to produce the color projection. It’s a very distinctive look, and is wholly different from the colors you see in The Godfather: Part II, the last American film made using Technicolor’s dye transfer process. The early three-strip technique provided inspiration for the initial Winter Nights designs, involving a large and somewhat abstract W made from shaded cubes to reference a frigid, icy winter.

While working on this abstract and wintry version, we also pursued a more literal direction using film as the starting point. Keeping the W, this solution retains the grainy texture that characterizes many of those older movies. While each had its merits, ultimately we decided to go with the film-centric version for this year’s series, and a final version was created that made very clear the series’ relationship with film, as well as including the Technicolor theme in the graphic.

Using film stills in a campaign for Technicolor movies is a no-brainer, but this was not as straightforward as one might think. In the 1940s, Technicolor threw out a large volume of color negatives after the studios didn’t reclaim them, and unless they’ve been re-mastered those movies are now only available in black and white. Fortunately, we were able to find some great color images from Charade and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The beauty of these movies speak for themselves when you see them, and in order to try imparting some of that drama and motion in print pieces, I relied on careful crops.

One particularly seductive image of Marilyn Monroe offers plenty of details to highlight—Marilyn’s face, her eyes lightly closed, could be mistaken for being asleep when viewed alone. The diamond bracelet and thick gray fur are a glimpse of luxury, sensuality, and elegant excess. The full image, my favorite among Marilyn’s publicity shots for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, shows the actress dressed in red, wrapped in fur, and draped in diamonds. Her open mouth, even more red than her dress, completes a frozen moment of ecstasy, and was the perfect image to use for our Winter Nights banner.

Filed under: Design, Marketing, Public Programs, Uncategorized