Thursday, May 04, 2006

TILDA SWINTON AND THE STATE OF CINEMA


This past weekend was, apparently, a very good one for brilliant, searching and pointed speeches. Tilda Swinton delivered the State of Cinema address at the San Francisco Film Festival Saturday night, April 29, the entirety of which was built around a rumination upon a question posed to her by her five-year-old son: What were people’s dreams like before the cinema? The entirety of her comments can be found here and should be read by anyone with even a fleeting interest in the movies and why they matter.

(Many thanks to David Hudson of the indispensable Green Cine Daily for this and a thousand other things that we wouldn’t be able to do without on a daily basis.)

UPDATE: 5/5/06 The San Francisco Film Festival ended last night with a screening of Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion, followed by a Q-and-A with two of the film's stars, Lily Tomlin and Virginia Madsen. Festivalgoer Michael Guillen has the details of the closing night festivities at his fine blog The Evening Class. (Thanks to Brian Darr for the lead and the correction.)
at

3 comments:

  1. AnonymousMay 05, 2006 11:48 AM

    More of Tilda's impassioned speechifying can be witnessed on the R2 British DVD for Derek Jarman's "The Last of England." Unfortunately it didn't make it onto the R1 Image Entertainment release of the same film (nor did the commentary by his collaborators or the bonus film or the interview with him!).

    Here are links to this speech, which I think is the same as what was on that DVD, although I thought she was speaking after a screening of "The Last of England" and made more references to it, but maybe I'm wrong, since she starts out here talking about Jubilee.

    http://tinyurl.com/fzbjb

    or here

    http://tinyurl.com/od4cl


    - The Meeesteeerious A.d.r}ian bE-ta-m|ax

    ReplyDelete
  2. Brian DarrMay 05, 2006 4:15 PM

    Just a minor correction, Dennis: The State of Cinema address didn't wrap up the festival; that honor fell to Altman's Prairie Home Companion and the q-and-a with Lily Tomlin and Virginia Madsen afterward. It all happened less than 24 hours ago, but the reliable Michael Guillen already has a recap.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dennis CozzalioMay 05, 2006 4:26 PM

    Thansk, Brian! So noted! And thanks for the link to Michael's piece. I'm off to fix the post right now!

    ReplyDelete