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| Name | Werner Herzog |
|---|---|
| Caption | Werner Herzog in Brussels, 2007. |
| Birth name | Werner Herzog Stipetić |
| Birth date | September 05, 1942 |
| Birth place | Munich, Germany |
| Occupation | ActorDirectorScreenwriterProducer |
| Years active | 1962–present |
| Spouse | Martje Grohmann(1967–1987)Christine Maria Ebenberger (1987–1994)Lena Herzog(1999–present) |
| Website | http://www.wernerherzog.com}} |
Werner Herzog (; born Werner Herzog Stipetić, 5 September 1942 in Munich) is a German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor, and opera director.
He is often considered as one the greatest figures of the New German Cinema, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, Wim Wenders and others. His films often feature heroes with impossible dreams, people with unique talents in obscure fields, or individuals who find themselves in conflict with nature.
Legendary french filmmaker François Truffaut once called Herzog, "the most important film director alive."
The same year, Herzog was told to sing in front of his class at school and he adamantly refused. He was almost expelled for this and until the age of 18 listened to no music, sang no songs and studied no instruments. He later said that he would easily give 10 years from his life to be able to play an instrument. At 14, he was inspired by an encyclopedia entry about film-making which he says provided him with "everything I needed to get myself started" as a film-maker—that, and the 35 mm camera that the young Herzog stole from the Munich Film School. In the commentary for Aguirre, the Wrath of God, he states, "I don't consider it theft—it was just a necessity—I had some sort of natural right for a camera, a tool to work with." He studied at the University of Munich despite earning a scholarship to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
In the early 1960s, Herzog worked nightshifts as a welder in a steel factory to help fund his first films.
Herzog has been married three times and has three children. In 1967, he married Martje Grohmann, with whom he had a son in 1973, Rudolph Amos Achmed, who is a film producer and director as well as the author of several non-fiction books. In 1980, his daughter, Hanna Mattes (now a photographer and an artist), was born to Eva Mattes. In 1987, Herzog was divorced from Grohmann; later the same year he married Christine Maria Ebenberger. Their son, Simon Herzog, who attends Columbia University, was born in 1989. Herzog and Ebenberger divorced in 1994. In 1995 Herzog moved to the United States and in 1999 married photographer Lena Pisetski, now Lena Herzog. They live in Los Angeles.
In January 2006 actor Joaquin Phoenix overturned his car on a road above Sunset Boulevard. Herzog, who lived nearby, helped him get out of it. A few days later, while Herzog was giving an interview to Mark Kermode for the BBC, an unknown individual shot Herzog with an air rifle during filming. Herzog continued the interview and showed his wound on camera but acted as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, remarking, "It is not a significant bullet." In the next interview he held with Kermode, Herzog was questioned about his belief that the universe is a godless and random place. Kermode asked that if this was indeed the case, "How come it can produce something as beautiful as the films of Werner Herzog? For me, the proof that what you're saying isn't true is you and your work." To which Herzog replied: "Well, I stem the tide."
In 1987 he and his half-brother Lucki Stipetic won the Bavarian Film Awards for Best Producing, for the film Cobra Verde. In 2002 he won the Dragon of Dragons Honorary Award during Kraków Film Festival in Kraków.
Herzog was honored at the 49th San Francisco International Film Festival, receiving the 2006 Film Society Directing Award. Four of his films have been shown at the San Francisco International Film Festival: Wodaabe - Herdsmen of the Sun in 1990, Bells from the Deep in 1993, Lessons of Darkness in 1993, and The Wild Blue Yonder in 2006. Herzog's April 2007 appearance at the Ebertfest in Champaign, Illinois earned him the Golden Thumb Award, and an engraved glockenspiel given to him by a young film maker inspired by his films. Grizzly Man, directed by Herzog, won the Alfred P. Sloan Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Encounters at the End of the World won the award for Best Documentary at the 2008 Edinburgh International Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary Feature, Herzog's first nomination.
Herzog once promised to eat his shoe if Errol Morris completed the movie project on pet cemeteries that he had been working on, in order to challenge and motivate Morris, whom Herzog perceived as incapable of following up on the projects he conceived. In 1978 when the film Gates of Heaven premiered, Werner Herzog cooked and publicly ate his shoe, an event later incorporated into a short documentary Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe by Les Blank. At the event, Herzog suggested that he hoped the act would serve to encourage anyone having difficulty bringing a project to fruition.
In 2009, Herzog became the only filmmaker in recent history to enter two films in competition in the same year at the prestigious Venice Film Festival. Herzog's was entered into the festival's official competition schedule, and his My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? entered the competition as a "surprise film". Herzog also provided the narration for the short film Plastic Bag directed by Ramin Bahrani which was the Opening Night film in the Corto Cortissimo section of the festival.
Herzog is also a Jury Member for the digital studio Filmaka, a platform for undiscovered filmmakers to show their work to industry professionals.
Herzog was the President of the Jury at the 60th Berlin International Film Festival. He Was the Chief guest of the 15th International Film Festival of Kerala(IFFK 2010 December)
Herzog also lent his voice to the animated television program The Boondocks in the third season premiere episode It's a Black President, Huey Freeman in which he played himself filming a documentary about the series' cast of characters and their actions during the 2008 election of Barack Obama.
Herzog also finished another documentary; Happy People: A Year in the Taiga, portrays the life of an indigenous tribe from the Siberian part of the Taiga. The film had its premiere at the 2010 Telluride Film Festival.
As for feature films, the film adaptation of Daniel Mason's novel The Piano Tuner has been re-written by Herzog (after Peter Buchman first draft), and will be directed by Herzog as well. Focus Features will be studio helming the project, along with Mandalay Independent Pictures as production company. No cast, shooting or release dates are known yet.
Herzog has said that he would like to make a biopic about real-life traveler and explorer Gertrude Bell. Until now, it has been classified as a contemplative project.
;Actors in a Supporting Role:
;Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein Reitwein worked with Herzog on seventeen films. Reitwein was Thomas Mauch's assistant camera during Even Dwarfs Started Small. His first independent work for Herzog was Precautions Against Fanatics in 1969. He helped to create poetical atmosphere of Fata Morgana, Heart of Glass, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser and Nosferatu. He won the Film Award in Gold for Heart of Glass and Where the green ants dream at the German Film Awards. He last collaborated with Herzog during Pilgrimage in 2001.
;Peter Zeitlinger Zeitlinger collaborated with Herzog on eleven films, from Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices (1995) to My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2010), including Rescue Dawn, Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World.
;Producers
;Walter Saxer Saxer produced sixteen of Herzog's films, including Nosferatu and The White Diamond. He worked as Sound Department during seven of Herzog's films, including The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner and Echoes from a Somber Empire. He co-wrote Scream of Stone which Herzog directed. Saxer appeared as himself in Herzog's My Best Fiend and in Les Blank's Burden of Dreams, in which he was also subjected to the verbal abuse of Kinski.
;Lucki Stipetic Lucki is Herzog's half-brother. He also produced several Herzog films, including Aguirre and Invincible. Stipetic is a head of Werner Herzog Productions. He won Bavarian Film Award in 1988 for Cobra Verde and International Documentary Association Award for Little Dieter Needs to Fly in 1998. He was also nominated for an Emmy Award in 1998.
;Editors ;Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus Mainka-Jellinghaus worked with Herzog on twenty films, from Signs of Life and Last Words (both from 1968) to Where the Green Ants Dream (1984).
;Joe Bini Bini collaborated with Herzog on eleven films, from Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997) to Bad Lieutenant (2009).
;Costumes designers ;Ann Poppel Poppel collaborated with Herzog on four films, including Nosferatu the Vampyre and Scream of Stone.
;Gisela Storch Storch worked with Herzog on six films: The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Heart of Glass, Nosferatu the Vampyre, Woyzeck, Fitzcarraldo and Cobra Verde. She was nominated for a Saturn Award for Nosferatu the Vampire in 1979.
;Others ;Henning von Gierke Gierke collaborated with Herzog on seven films and several operas. He was Production Designer during The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Nosferatu the Vampyre and Fitzcarraldo. As a Set Decorator he worked on Heart of Glass and Woyzeck, as Stage Designer on operas: Lohengrin and Giovanna d'Arco and as Costume Designer on film The Transformation of the World Into Music. Gierke shot additional still photographs on Stroszek 's set. He appeared twice in Herzog's film The Transformation of the World Into Music as himself and in Herzog's TV realisation of opera Giovanna d'Arco. Von Gierke won Film Award in Gold for The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser during German Film Awards and Silver Bear for an outstanding single achievement for Nosferatu, at the 29th Berlin International Film Festival.
;Popol Vuh Popol Vuh was a German Krautrock band founded by pianist and keyboardist Florian Fricke. The band took its name from the Popol Vuh, a manuscript of Quiché Maya kingdom, after watching Herzog's Fata Morgana (in which Lotte Eisner reads parts of the Popol Vuh). The band composed music for eight Herzog's films: Aguirre, the Wrath of God, The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner, Heart of Glass, Nosferatu, The Dark Glow of the Mountains, Fitzcarraldo, Cobra Verde and My Best Fiend. Their compositions were also used by Herzog in Rescue Dawn. Florian Fricke made a cameo as a pianist in Signs of Life and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser.
For TV:
Short:
;Werner Herzog has written all his films, except these which he co-wrote:
;Herzog has also co-written:
Co-writer: Paul Cronin. Herzog on Herzog (London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 2002, ISBN 0-571-20708-1) (extracts here:
;Screenplays: Writer:
Co-writer:
Category:1942 births Category:Living people Category:People from Munich Category:Documentary film directors Category:Surrealist filmmakers Category:English-language film directors Category:German documentary filmmakers Category:German expatriates in the United States Category:German film actors Category:German film directors Category:German film producers Category:German-language film directors Category:German screenwriters Category:Opera directors Category:People from Los Angeles, California Category:American documentary filmmakers Category:American film actors Category:American film producers Category:American screenwriters
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| Name | Klaus Kinski |
|---|---|
| Caption | Kinski in middle age |
| Birth name | Nikolaus Karl Günther Nakszyński |
| Birth date | October 18, 1926 |
| Birth place | Sopot, Free City of Danzig |
| Death date | November 23, 1991 |
| Death place | Lagunitas, California, U.S. |
| Years active | 1948–1989 |
| Spouse | Gislinde Kühbeck (1952-1955) (divorced) 1 childMinhoi Geneviève Loanic (1971-1979) (divorced) 1 childBrigitte Ruth Tocki (1960-1971) (divorced) 1 childDebora Caprioglio (1987-1989) |
| Occupation | Actor |
Nikolaus Karl Günther Nakszyński, best known as Klaus Kinski (18 October 1926 – 23 November 1991), was a German actor. He appeared in over 130 films, and is perhaps best-remembered as a leading role actor in Werner Herzog films: Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Nosferatu, Woyzeck, Fitzcarraldo, and Cobra Verde.
Klaus Kinski was born in Zoppot, in the Free City of Danzig. He was the son of a German father of Polish descent, Bruno Nakszyński, a pharmacist and a failed opera singer, and a German mother Susanne (née Lutze), a nurse and a daughter of a local pastor. He had three older siblings: Inge, Arne and Hans-Joachim. Because of the depression the very poor family was unable to make a living in Danzig, and was forced to move to Berlin in 1931.
Other companies followed, but his already wild and unconventional behavior regularly got him into trouble. In 1950, Kinski stayed in a psychiatric hospital for three days; medical records from the period listed a preliminary diagnosis of schizophrenia. Around this time he became unable to secure film roles, and in 1955 Kinski twice tried to commit suicide. In March 1956 he made one single guest appearance at Vienna's Burgtheater in Goethe's Torquato Tasso. Although respected by his colleagues, among them Judith Holzmeister, and cheered by the audience, Kinski's hope to get a permanent contract was not fulfilled, as the Burgtheater's management ultimately became aware of the actor's earlier difficulties in Germany. He unsuccessfully tried to sue the company.
Living jobless in Vienna, and without any prospects for his future, Kinski reinvented himself as a monologist and spoken word artist. He presented the prose and verse of François Villon, William Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde among others. Thus he managed to establish himself as a well-known actor touring Austria, Germany, and Switzerland with his shows.
During the 1960s and 70s, Kinski appeared in various European exploitation film genres, as well as more acclaimed works such as Doctor Zhivago (1965), in which he played an Anarchist prisoner on his way to the Gulag. He relocated to Italy during the late 1960s, and had roles in numerous spaghetti westerns, including For a Few Dollars More (1965), A Bullet for the General (1966), The Great Silence (1968), and A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe (1975). He turned down a role in Raiders of the Lost Ark, describing the script as "moronically shitty". Eventually, his collaborations with director Werner Herzog brought him to international recognition. In all, they made five films together: (1972), Woyzeck (1978), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982), and finally Cobra Verde (1987). In 1977 he starred as terrorist Wilfried Böse in the Israeli movie Operation Thunderbolt, based on the events of the 1976 Operation Entebbe. His last film (which he also wrote and directed) was Kinski Paganini (1989), in which he played the legendary violinist Niccolò Paganini.
Kinski died of a heart attack in Lagunitas, California at age 65. His ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean.
Category:People from Sopot Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:German film actors Category:German people of Polish descent Category:German military personnel of World War II Category:German prisoners of war Category:German spoken word artists Category:German stage actors Category:Spaghetti Western actors Category:Western (genre) film actors Category:World War II prisoners of war held by the United Kingdom Category:1926 births Category:1991 deaths Category:20th-century actors Category:People from Marin County, California Category:Cardiovascular disease deaths in California
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| Name | Henry Rollins |
|---|---|
| Background | solo_singer |
| Birth name | Henry Lawrence Garfield |
| Born | February 13, 1961Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Instrument | Vocals |
| Genre | Spoken, hardcore punk, alternative rock |
| Occupation | Musician, singer-songwriter, actor, motivational speaker, stand-up comedian, spoken-word artist, activist, publisher |
| Years active | 1980–present |
| Label | 2.13.61, Dischord, Quarterstick Records, SST |
| Associated acts | Rollins BandBlack FlagState of AlertHenrietta Collins and the Wifebeating ChildhatersWartimeMother Superior |
| Url | 21361.com |
After performing for the short-lived Washington D.C.-based band State of Alert in 1980, Rollins fronted the California hardcore punk band Black Flag from August 1981 until early 1986. Following the band's breakup, Rollins soon established the record label and publishing company 2.13.61 to release his spoken word albums, as well as forming the Rollins Band, which toured with a number of lineups until 2003 and during 2006.
Since Black Flag, Rollins has embarked on projects covering a variety of media. He has hosted numerous radio shows, such as Harmony in My Head on Indie 103, and television shows such as The Henry Rollins Show, MTV
According to Rollins, the Bullis School helped him to develop a sense of discipline and a strong work ethic. Rollins became involved in the punk rock scene after he and Ian MacKaye bought a Ramones record; he later described it as a "revelation." By 1979, Rollins was working as a roadie for local bands, including MacKaye's Teen Idles. When the band's singer Nathan Strejcek failed to appear for practice sessions, Rollins convinced the Teen Idles to let him sing. Word of Rollins's ability spread around Washington's underground music scene; Bad Brains singer H.R. would sometimes coax Rollins on stage to sing with him.
In 1980, the Washington punk band The Extorts lost their frontman Lyle Preslar to Minor Threat. Rollins joined the rest of the band to form State of Alert, and became its frontman and vocalist. He put words to the band's five songs and wrote several more. S.O.A. recorded their sole EP, No Policy, and released it in 1981 on MacKaye's Dischord Records. S.O.A. disbanded after a total of a dozen concerts and one EP. Rollins had enjoyed being the band's frontman, and had earned a reputation for fighting in shows. He later said: "I was like nineteen and a young man all full of steam [...] Loved to get in the dust-ups." By this time, Rollins had become the manager of the Georgetown Häagen-Dazs ice cream store; his steady employment had helped to finance the S.O.A. EP.
Unbeknownst to Rollins, Cadena wanted to switch to guitar, and the band was looking for a new vocalist.
After joining Black Flag in 1981, Rollins quit his job at Häagen-Dazs, sold his car, and moved to Los Angeles, California. Upon arriving in Los Angeles, Rollins got the Black Flag logo tattooed on his left biceps
Before concerts, as the rest of the band tuned up, Rollins would stride about the stage dressed only in a pair of black shorts, grinding his teeth; to focus before the show, he would squeeze a pool ball. His stage persona impressed several critics; after a 1982 show in Anacortes, Washington, Sub Pop critic Calvin Johnson wrote: "Henry was incredible. Pacing back and forth, lunging, lurching, growling; it was all real, the most intense emotional experiences I have ever seen."
By 1983, Rollins' stage persona was increasingly alienating him from the rest of Black Flag. During a show in England, Rollins assaulted a member of the audience; Ginn later scolded Rollins, calling him a "macho asshole." A legal dispute with Unicorn Records held up further Black Flag releases until 1984, and Ginn was slowing the band's tempo down so that they would remain innovative. In August 1983, guitarist Dez Cadena had left the band; a stalemate lingered between Dukowski and Ginn, who wanted Dukowski to leave, before Ginn fired Dukowski outright. 1984's heavy metal music-influenced My War featured Rollins screaming and wailing throughout many of the songs; the band's members also grew their hair to confuse the band's hardcore punk audience.
Black Flag's change in musical style and appearance alienated many of their original fans, who focused their displeasure on Rollins by punching him in the mouth, stabbing him with pens, or scratching him with their nails, among other methods. He often fought back, dragging audience members on stage and assaulting them. Rollins became increasingly alienated from the audience; in his tour diary, Rollins wrote "When they spit at me, when they grab at me, they aren't hurting me. When I push out and mangle the flesh of another, it's falling so short of what I really want to do to them." During the Unicorn legal dispute, Rollins had started a weight-lifting program, and by their 1984 tours, he had become visibly well-built; journalist Michael Azerrad later commented that "his powerful physique was a metaphor for the impregnable emotional shield he was developing around himself."
Rollins and Weiss released Fast Food For Thought, an EP by their one-off side project Wartime in 1990. It was sonically in many ways more reminiscent of Weiss's work with Ween than the Rollins Band. The music, while heavy and driving, had a distinctly psychedelic bent, culimnating in the final track, a cover of "Franklin's Tower" by The Grateful Dead. Early pressings were simply credited to "Wartime" while later releases added the phrase "featuring Henry Rollins" to the cover.
1991 saw the Rollins Band sign a distribution deal with Imago Records and appear at the Lollapalooza festival; both improved the band's presence. However, in December 1991, Rollins and his best friend Joe Cole were accosted by gunmen belonging to the Venice, CA gang, the Venice Shoreline Crips, outside Rollins's home. Cole was murdered by a gunshot to the head, but Rollins escaped without injury. Although traumatized by Cole's death, as chronicled in his book Now Watch Him Die, Rollins continued to release new material; the spoken-word album Human Butt appeared in 1992 on his own record label, 2.13.61. The Rollins Band released The End of Silence, Rollins's first charting album. The Rollins Band embarked upon the End of Silence tour; bassist Weiss was fired towards its end and replaced by funk and jazz bassist Melvin Gibbs. According to critic Steve Huey, 1994 was Rollins's "breakout year".
In 1995, the Rollins Band's record label, Imago Records, declared itself bankrupt. Rollins began focusing on his spoken word career. He released Everything, a recording of a chapter of his book Eye Scream with free jazz backing, in 1996. He continued to appear in various films, including Heat, Johnny Mnemonic and Lost Highway. The Rollins Band signed to Dreamworks Records in 1997 and soon released Come in and Burn, but it did not receive as much critical acclaim as their previous material. Rollins continued to release spoken-word book readings, releasing Black Coffee Blues in the same year. In 1998, Rollins released Think Tank, his first set of non-book-related spoken material in five years.
By 1998, Rollins felt that the relationship with his backing band had run its course, and the line-up disbanded. He had produced a Los Angeles hard rock band called Mother Superior, and invited them to form a new incarnation of the Rollins Band. Their first album, Get Some Go Again, was released two years later. The Rollins Band released several more albums, including 2001's Nice and 2003's . After 2003, the band became inactive as Rollins focused on radio and television work. During a 2006 appearance on Tom Green Live!, Rollins stated that he "may never do music again" a feeling which he reiterated in 2011 when talking to Trebuchet magazine
In both incarnations of the Rollins Band, Rollins combined spoken word with his traditional vocal style in songs such as "Liar" (the song begins with a one minute spoken diatribe by Rollins), as well as barking his way through songs (such as "Tearing" and "Starve") and employing the loud-quiet dynamic. Rolling Stone
In 2001, Rollins appeared as the uncredited host of "Night Visions", a short-lived horror anthology series. Rollins was a host of film review programme Henry's Film Corner on the Independent Film Channel, before presenting the weekly The Henry Rollins Show on the channel. The Henry Rollins Show is now being shown weekly on Film24 along with Henry Rollins Uncut. The show also lead to a promotional tour in Europe that led to Henry being dubbed a “bad boy goodwill ambassador” by a NY reviewer.
2002 saw Rollins guest star on an episode of the sitcom The Drew Carey Show as a man whom Oswald would find on eBay and pay to come to his house and kick his ass. He co-hosted the British television show Full Metal Challenge, in which teams built vehicles to compete in various driving and racing contests, from 2002–2003 on Channel 4 and TLC. He has made a number of cameo appearances in television series such as MTV
Rollins appears in FX's Sons of Anarchy's second season, which premiered in the fall of 2009 in the United States. Rollins plays A.J. Weston, a white-supremacist gang leader and new antagonist in the show's fictional town of Charming, California, who poses a deadly threat to the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club. His character was shot and killed at the end of the second season.
Rollins was a voice actor in the animated and voiced Robotman (Cliff Steele) in two episodes of .
Rollins was a guest judge on the second season of RuPaul's Drag Race, which aired on Logo on March 8, 2010. Henry is featured at the beginning of "The Cornholes" public access show of Santa Cruz Community Cable in Santa Cruz,CA. espousing the virtues of the Improv Troupe and quoting Akira Kurosawa.
He has narrated episodes of UFC Primetime.
Rollins was also interviewed in the National Geographic series Explorer "Born To Rage". He was interviewed regarding his possible link to the MAO Gene (Warrior Gene) and violent behavior.
Rollins put the show on a short hiatus to undertake a spoken-word tour in early 2005. Rollins posted playlists and commentary on-line; these lists were expanded with more information and published in book form as Fanatic! through 2.13.61 in November 2005. In late 2005, Rollins announced the show's return and began the first episode by playing the show's namesake Buzzcocks song. As of 2008, the show continues each week despite Rollins's constant touring with new pre-recorded shows between live broadcasts. In 2009 Indie 103.1 went off the air, although it continues to broadcast over the internet.
On February 18, 2009, KCRW announced that Rollins would be hosting a live show on Saturday nights starting March 7, 2009.
In 2007 Rollins published "Fanatic! Vol. 2" through 2.13.61. "Fanatic! Vol. 3" was released in the fall of 2008.
Some feature length movies Henry Rollins has appeared in include:
Commenting on his support for gay marriage, he stated in a 1998 interview with NY Rock "I don't want a wife and I don't want kids. I'm 36 and if I met a woman of my own age and married her, I'd also be marrying her former life, her past." However, in a Sunday Times article from January 2010, he admitted that he was seeing Liza Richardson of KCRW Radio, Los Angeles.
During the 2003 Iraq War, he started touring with the United Service Organizations to entertain troops overseas while remaining against the war, leading him to once cause a stir at a base in Kyrgyzstan when he told the crowd: "Your commander would never lie to you. That's the vice president's job." Rollins believes it is important that he performs to the troops so that they have multiple points of contact with the rest of the world, stating that, "they can get really cut loose from planet earth". He has also been active in the campaign to free the "West Memphis Three"—three young men believed by their supporters to have been wrongfully convicted of murder. Rollins appears with Public Enemy frontman Chuck D on the Black Flag song "Rise Above" on the benefit album ; the first time Rollins had performed Black Flag's material since 1986.
Continuing his activism on behalf of troops and veterans, Rollins joined Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA) in 2008 to launch a groundbreaking national public service advertisement campaign, CommunityofVeterans.org, which helps veterans coming home from war reintegrate into their communities. In April 2009, Rollins helped IAVA launch the second phase of the campaign which engages the friends and family of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans at SupportYourVet.org.
On December 3, 2009, Rollins wrote of his support for the victims of the Bhopal disaster in India, in an article for Vanity Fair 25 years – to the day – after the methyl isocyanate gas leak from the Union Carbide Corporation's pesticide factory exposed more than half a million local people to poisonous gas. He spent time in Bhopal with the people, to listen to their stories. In a later radio interview in February 2010 Rollins summed-up his approach to activism, "This is where my anger takes me, to places like this, not into abuse but into proactive, clean movement".
Category:1961 births Category:Living people Category:Actors from Washington, D.C. Category:American anti-Iraq War activists Category:American bloggers Category:American book publishers (people) Category:American film actors Category:American human rights activists Category:American male singers Category:American poets Category:American public radio personalities Category:American punk rock singers Category:American spoken word artists Category:Black Flag members Category:Feminist artists Category:Grammy Award winners Category:LGBT rights activists from the United States Category:Musicians from Washington, D.C. Category:Songwriters from Washington, D.C. Category:Writers from Washington, D.C.
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| Name | Harmony Korine |
|---|---|
| Caption | Korine at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival |
| Birth date | January 04, 1973 |
| Birth place | Bolinas, California, United States |
| Birthname | Harmony Korine |
He is best known for writing Kids and for directing Gummo, Julien Donkey-Boy and Mister Lonely. He has been a prominent figure in independent film, music and art throughout the past decade. His latest film Trash Humpers premiered at Toronto International Film Festival and won the main prize, the DOX Award, at CPH:DOX in November 2009.
It premiered at the 24th Telluride Film Festival on August 29, 1997. During the screening, numerous people got up and left during the initial cat drowning sequence. Three months later, Werner Herzog called Korine to give praise to the film overall, especially the bacon taped to the wall during the bathtub scene. He told the New York Times, "When I saw a piece of fried bacon fixed to the bathroom wall in Gummo, it knocked me off my chair. [Korine's] a very clear voice of a generation of filmmakers that is taking a new position. It's not going to dominate world cinema, but so what?"
Although a majority of mainstream critics derided it as an unintelligible mess, it won top prizes at that year's Venice Film Festival and earned Korine the respect of noted filmmakers such as Gus Van Sant, among others. Its stature has only grown in the ensuing years, gaining a cult classic status as a truly shocking and experimental film "unlike anything you've seen in a while -- maybe ever" -- and that "if you're the kind of person who claims to be frustrated by the predictability of commercial filmmaking, [it presents] a rare opportunity to put your money where your mouth is."
In 1998, Korine released The Diary of Anne Frank Pt II, a 40-minute three-screen collage featuring a boy burying his dog, kids in satanic dress vomiting on a Bible, and a man in black-face dancing and singing "My Bonnie Lies over the Ocean". It utilizes some of the same actors and themes as Gummo, and can be considered a companion piece. The film "further disgusted critics"
In 2000 The Devil, The Sinner, and His Journey premiered, which featured Korine in blackface as O.J. Simpson and the actor Johnny Depp as Kato Kaelin.
In 2002, Larry Clark made the film Ken Park, based on a script Korine had written several years earlier. The film, another adult tale of youth gone awry, was not distributed in the United States. At the time of its release, Clark and Korine had long since parted ways and Korine had no involvement in its production.
In 2003 he made the television documentary film Above the Below about his friend and collaborator David Blaine and his 44-day stunt in a park over the bank of River Thames in London inside a suspended plexiglas box. A documentary commissioned by Sky Television and Channel 4, it also includes jokes, visual poetry, and music. In addition to the documentary, Korine has worked with Blaine on a number of Blaine's specials.
He first met his wife Rachel, a 17-year-old from Nashville, around this time.
The film is the story of "a young American man lost in Paris. He scratches out a living as a Michael Jackson look-alike, dancing in the streets, in public parks, at tourist spots and trade shows. Different from everyone else, he feels as if he's floating between two worlds. During a show at a geriatric home Michael Jackson meets Marilyn Monroe. Haunted by her angelic beauty he follows her to a commune in the Highlands, joining her husband Charlie Chaplin and her daughter Shirley Temple. The commune is a place where everyone is famous and "no-one gets old". Here, The Pope, The Queen of England, Madonna, James Dean and other impersonators build a stage in the hope that the world will visit and watch them perform. Everything is beautiful. Until the world shifts, and reality intrudes on their utopian dream."
Korine also appeared in the 2007 documentary film Beautiful Losers in which his life and career were one of the focuses of the film, along with other artists such as Mike Mills, Shepard Fairey, Margaret Kilgallen, Jo Jackson and Barry McGee. In the documentary, Korine discusses his motivation as an artist and filmmaker, as well as his inspiration for creating films he has never seen. Footage also appears from one of Korine's rare, early and untitled short films, that preceded his work on Kids.
In 2008 Harmony Korine was signed to MJZ for worldwide commercial representation.
On 6 September 2009 Korine's latest film, Trash Humpers premiered as part of the Visions section of the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival. Despite being a work of fiction, the film went on to win the top award at the prominent European documentary film festival CPH:DOX - Copenhagen International Documentary Festival - in November 2009.
In 1998 Korine published a book entitled A Crack Up at the Race Riots, an experimental novel, described as his attempt to write the Great American Choose Your Own Adventure Novel in his appearance on Letterman. In November 2008, Drag City published a collection of his fanzines called The Collected Fanzines with skateboarder/writer Mark Gonzalez. 2009 sees Korine returning to the collaborative zine process alongside fellow avant-garde artist Noel Sinclair Boyt.
Though mainstream success has eluded Korine, he has gained a significant cult following. Despite the scorn of a majority of mainstream reviewers, he has won festival prizes at Venice and Rotterdam, among others, and established directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci and Gus Van Sant are outspoken proponents of Korine's work. On Gummo Van Sant said it "changed his life" and Bertolucci said Korine has "created a revolution in the language of cinema." A significant number of scholarly essays have been written on the importance of his oeuvre to film and art in general.
The Toronto International Film Festival writes, "Such is the dilemma with Korine and his remarkable career; for all the fireworks, there is an impressive coherence in the subject matter of his work. His four feature films all seek to shed light on a certain class of people: unique and bizarre individuals usually lumped under the heading of 'subculture.' ... His portraits come from many angles - the baroque stillness of Gummo contrasts radically with the rough-hewn melodrama of Julien Donkey-Boy. His last film, Mister Lonely, had an epic quality and interest in celebrity that Trash Humpers disdains, preferring instead a low-end surveillance-video look with frequent in-camera lighting distortions and a cinéma-vérité authenticity.
Recurrent in his work (with the exception perhaps of Mister Lonely) is a portrait of what Korine calls the "American Landscape." He recently stated "to me, the most beautiful thing in the world is an abandoned parking lot and a soiled sofa on the edge… with a street lamp off to the side. America seems like a series of abandoned parking lots, streetlights and abandoned sofas." Such a statement gives insight into Korine's complex aesthetic.
Korine has frequently been labeled as an enfant terrible and been accused of exploitation and self-indulgance, to which he has responded, "How can an artist be expected not to be self-indulgent? That's the whole thing that's wrong with filmmaking today... To me, art is one man's voice, one idea, one point-of-view, coming from one person." Korine feels there is no need to justify or explain the images he puts to the screen, in that they are simply the result of "a cinema of passion and obsession." Korine adds, "Film is like a dead art because of people not taking chances."
In his films, Korine attempts to convey a poetic, or "estatic truth" as filmmaker and friend, Werner Herzog termed in his 1999 Minnesota declaration. Korine is also proponent of what he calls a "mistake-ist" artform. During Julien Donkey-Boy Korine went so far as to write a "Mistakist declaration", which has been published in his Collected Screenplays.
On the current state of cinema, Korine comments, "When I look at the history of film - the early commercial narrative movies directed by D.W. Griffith, say - and then look at where films are now, I see so little progression in the way they are made and presented, and I'm bored with that. Film can be so much more."
In a 1999 Dazed and Confused magazine article Korine listed his top ten films as: Pixote by Hector Babenco, Badlands and Days of Heaven by Terrence Malick, Fat City by John Huston, Stroszek by Werner Herzog, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie and A Woman Under the Influence by John Cassavetes, McCabe and Mrs. Miller by Robert Altman, Out of the Blue by Dennis Hopper and Hail Mary by Jean-Luc Godard.
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Category:American screenwriters Category:American film directors Category:American Jews Category:LGBT Jews Category:LGBT people from the United States Category:1973 births Category:Living people Category:People from Marin County, California
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