FILMERFAHRUNG UND ZUSCHAUER

Rising Stars, Falling Stars-We Must Have Music was SRO and jam packed with so many celebutants anxious to get swept up in the beauty of Chantal Akerman’s musical Golden Eighties starring the luminous Delphine Seyrig and pop star Lio. Golden Eighties or Window Shopping which was its title in The States is beyond brilliantine and uses language in such an innovative manner. Heading the Belgium contingent at our screening the lovely Anne Quirynen the video artist and Professor at the University in Potsdam with her girlfriend Bettina Knaup the performance gender curator of React: Feminism, Koen Claerhout of Haus de Kulturen die Welt, the vivacious DJane Manuela Schinina aka: Bianka Kruk, Michaela Wünsch, film scholar and bbooks kollektiv diva extroidinaire, Nanna Heidenreich, Uli Ziemons and Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus all overworked and exhausted from their tireless efforts with the Berlinales Forum Expanded Section, Trixie Schoenherr, Yusuf Etiman the creative director of Berghain Niteclub with humpy SouthAfrican artist Adrian who is Rosemary’s Baby all grown up, Marcuse Siegelstein the Goethe Universitaet film historian, visiting NYU student Marina C. Roselli who is the intern of the fab Art Forum writer Alex Jovanovich, Rami Malek the super handsome Egyptian/American male ingénue and star of the Twilight films, The Master and Night at the Museum franchise with supermodel Yasmine LeBon daughter of Simon LeBon of Duran Duran, Stephen Ira the 21 year old trans son of Warren Beatty and Annette Benning with Salome Gersch and film editor Ruth Schoeneger, choreographer Assaf Hochman, USC music fagademic Sean Nye, film scholar Christian F. Weber and his super lovesexy intellectual posse of queer activist Rufus Sona, Karsten Schubert and her handsome pal Rasmus,wealthy art patron Harry dÁvigdor-Goldsmid,Stanford University visting scholars Sianne Ngai and her life partner Mark McGurl who are fellows at the Wissenschaftskolleg for the next school year with a Romanian film critic and his artist wife Eike Wittrock. All the bottoms in the audience were going stir crazy over my partner in grime the power top Daniel Hendrickson, the Scandanavian Muzlim Mulatto who was so superlative on klavier and who curates the musical portion of my film event every month. There were so many famous people at RSFS that if I forgot to mention you please send my young student assistant Gleeson Brevard at GleeBrevard@aol.com a note and I will rectify the situation ASAP. I am running around like a chicken with its head cut off because I leave for the town of Oldenburg for the Perverse Gefuege Art Congress. Thank you for being patient with the Vagimule doll.

PUTZFIMMEL

Rising Stars, Falling Stars - January 2015 - Vaginal Davis, Chantal Ackerman, FORUM EXPANDED & CHEAP by Filmanzeiger on Mixcloud

HOERSTURZ

Saw the last of the Hollywood Musicals Festival at the Arsenal with Scandinavian Mulatto Muzlim Daniel Hendrickson.  Kino 1 was packed liked it is during The Berlinale for the rare screening of the 1943 all black musical Stormy Weather starring the incandescent Lena Horne who looks so much like my mother Mary Magdelene Duplantier.

The film also stars Bill “Bojangles”Robinson” Cab Callaway and his zoot suit, The Nicholas Brothers stealing the show in the final production number, Katherine Dunham, Ada Brown and Fats Waller.  The last time I saw the film was in the early 1970s when it was on TV so I forgot that it was fashioned as a semi biopic about the career of Bojangles.  Besides getting to see Ms. Horne in all her glamorous glory I was very impressed  by Fats Waller being allowed to be the queenly queen that he is.   Fats basically plays himself and I doubt if a mainstream audience of that time was aware that his references were towards people ‘in the life’ as they use to say in Harlem Renaissance days.  The blues singer Ada Brown is also a standout and I even liked the black face vaudeville bit by two black comics who darken their skin just a shade or two from their natural color which was oddly riveting. The films humour was so olde school its new school.  The Katherine Dunham ballet sequence was also intriguing, but the costumes for her gany male dancers was the ultimate in homo poovah.  Of the two all black musicals that came out in 1943 the other being Cabin in the Sky from MGM directed by Vincente Minnelli starring Ethel Waters I think I like Cabin better.  Cabin also features Lena Horne.  There is more of Ms. Horne in Stormy but when it comes to greatness no one can surpass Miss Ethel Waters.

DER NEO-AKTIONISTISCHE AUFBRUCH

Met with Marcuse Siegelstein, Daniel Hendrickson, Piero Bellomo my former students Glee Brevard, Acme Singt, Christophe De Rohan Chabot and Chrome Chastain at the Communist Pizza Parlour on Schonhauser Allee for din din before going to the ICI Kulturelabor Institute to hear a talk on the Theory of the Gimmick by visiting scholar Sianne Ngai.  Ms. Ngai is a glamorous delight bringing much needed pizazz to Berlina as she lectured wearing Vivienne Westwood.  Ms. Ngai’s research on the gimmick as a sometime failed special effect within the literary canon is in its earliest stages as she introduced some of her work-in-progress findings and observations.  Can’t wait to see how she furthers this discourse through race via Richard Wright’s The Outsider and Samuel R.Delaney’s Babel-17.

It’s been over a year since I last had a rendezvous with my sometime fuckbuddy the Scientist I call Saarbrucken who is from said German/French border town.  On this visit we met at his Charlottenburg hotel for goodies and then he took me to the cute and very authentic Italian boite Pasta & Basta at Knesebeckstrasse 94 where I gorged on white bean soup and Linguini with Lachs.  I am always famished after a bit of longoverdue sexing.  Saarbrucken retired this year from his stressful job with the German government and wants to buy an apartment in Berlin.  Maybe I can get him to buy a flat for me as he’s loaded coming from a prominent German industrialist family. 

Went to a birthday breakfast with the handsomest man in all Europa Uli Ziemons of Forum Expanded.  Uli was happy to take a little time off from work on the ten year anniversary of The Berlinale’s Forum Expanded planning.  The Vagimule Davis doll and kollektiv CHEAP will be a part of the celebration which will start on Feb 3^rd at the Akademie de Kunst.  I love the theme this year, “To The Sound of the Closing Door” which for me is very Nora of A Doll’s House.

HONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE

Was taken for a nice luncheon to Maxway Café at Winterfeldt Platz by the personable visiting art dealer from Chicago G.Craig Smith.  Mr. Smith has been following my retarded lady career since the early 1990s when we first met at a reading I did at the People Like Us bookshoppe.

The great fearless leader of kollektiv CHEAP Ms. Susanne Sachsse had one of her delightful dinner parties for the visiting literary scholars Sianne Ngai and Mark McGurl of Stanford University.  We were joined by my young proteges Acme Singt, Christophe DeRohan Chabot and film historian Marcuse Siegelstein who actually did the cooking following La Sachsse’s secret recipe.  The food was heavenly as is always the case at the famous East Berlin salon of Susi Su.  Mr. McGurl and Ms. Ngai are enchanting and very vivacious.  Ms. Ngai will be giving the talk “Theory of the Gimmick” on Monday January 12 7:30pm at the ICI Foundation.  She is a Harvard educated English professor and has published the books Ugly Feelings, Out Aesthetic Catagories-Zany, Cute & Interesting as well as essays with such fab titles as “The Cuteness of the Avant Garde” and “Merely Interesting”.  I can’t wait to hear what she has to say at her lecturina and I’m bringing a cadre of my interns and young former students.  During dinner Ms. Ngai  recommended two books by D.A.Miller  A Place for Us on Hollywood Musicals and Jane Austen and the Secret of Style.

I took Scandinavian Muzlim jihadist Daniel Hendrickson for his birthday breakfast to a relatively new café on the canal in NeuKoeln called California Breakfast Slam at Instrasse 47.  Loved the décor of the joint and the food was American style without being too chi chi.  I had mushroom scrambled eggs that were very fluffy the way I like em with homefries and Daniel had gravy & biscuits. Our waitress was a lovely young  Spanish woman.

On Silvester I watched several serials that were sent to me on DVD including Transparent which includes a small role by my delightful multi media artist daughter  ZacKary Drucker.  Love ZacKery but I didn’t care for the main characters in this program which involves three grown children of an elderly man who comes out as a transgendered woman.  The acting of Gaby Hoffman(the daughter of Warhol legend Viva) is superb.  I’ve known lil Miss Gaby since she was a young girl.  But all of the other leads just come across as too sour Apple Annie in that American TV fashion that tries to be edgy and winds up falling flat.  Was also sent an Australian TV show called Please Like Me with a lead in the form of the ungainly Josh Thomas who is quite unlikeable on many fronts besides being fugly.  In one of the episodes he calls himself “a 50 year old looking baby” and I couldn’t agree more.  Because Mr. Thomas is the writer and star of this series he chooses only the best looking young lads to play his love interests.  Nice work if you can get it . . .   I much prefer watching the episodes sent to me of two defunct series The Tomorrow People and Star Crossed that don’t try to be anything other then mindless escapism.

AN DER NASE DES MANNES ERKENNT MAN SEINEN JOHANNES

Went to Arsenal to see Meet Me In St. Louis  and An American In Paris directed by the legendary Ganymede Hollywood film director Vincente Minnelli father of Liza and ex-wife of Judy Garland.  I’ve seen St. Louis a million times but I always find new things to admire in the film.  This time the supporting players really caught my attention starting off with FIT male ingénue Tom Drake who use to be boyfriends with Gore Vidal who modelled one of his City and the Pillar characters after Mr. Drake.  Drake was also a regular sex partner of the late great Taylor Mead.  I also appreciated on this viewing the performances of Leon Ames as Alonzo Smith family pater,a humorous Chill Wills in a tiny part as the iceman cometh and the radiant Mary Astor as the nuanced matriarch of the clan.  Too bad Miss Astor was forced by Hollywood to play mostly mothers for Metro during the 1940s. Mary Astor’s father was German and born in Berlin later in her life like Louise Brooks her writing on film received much praise.

In An American in Paris Nina Foch is amazing as the wealthy patron to Gene Kelly’s character and during a student ball sequence there are some scantily clad sexy gay male couples.

On Sunday the Rising Stars, Falling Stars joint presentation with Annette Lingg & Hans Joachim Fetzer of All Singing,All Dancing Hollywood Musicals 1933-1957 Festival was packed with a screening of the Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire frolic Follow the Fleet.  The SRO crowd included Arsenal Empress Stefanie Schulte Strathaus, Uli Ziemons and Nanna Heidenreich of Forum Expanded, my partner in grime Daniel Hendrickson the Scandinavian Muzlim jihadist, film historian Marcuse Siegelstein with his lady love Susanne Sachsse, Assaf Hochman with a visiting pal from Israel the TV/Film scribe and comedy sensation Galit Hoogie who like Daniel doesn’t care for the assless Fred Astaire, super sweet queer activist Rufus Sona with beauty boy Tomas and posse, Piero Bellomo with due sorelle di Firenze Elena y Monica, Olivier Nowitzky and his hot new Arab lover, superstar Antonia Baird aka Werner Hersch, artist Maggie Schneider, blue movie idol and and high priced male concubine Tommy DeLuca, with rectal hydrating actor Hamish Linkletter, Stedelijk Museum curator Hendrik Folkerts, Salome & Richard Gershe and G. Craig Smith of Chicago who is doing his European tour and first saw Ms. Davis perform in Chitown back in the early 1990’s during the heyday of Homocore Chieta.

I don’t celebrate Christmas but every year I do go to Piero Bellomo’s Christmas Eve dinner at his Embassy Row compound.  His husband Daniel Hendrickson the Scandinavian Muzzy takes care of the cooking.  Last year he made an American style Turkey dinner with all the trimmings which I hadn’t had in ages, but this year The Muzlim jihadist made gourmet enchiladas with mole sauce and masculine Cornisch Game Hen which was delicious.  Fearless Leader of CHEAP Susanne Sachsse did her yearly post Christmas dinner party that features mounds of sumptuous organic lamb, kale and mashed sweet potato in carmelized garlic droplets----heavenly. 

I hate New Year’s Eve known as Silvester in Germany.  Berliners overdo the fireworks thing so it gets loud and unruly.  You won’t see me at any allnite party, I prefer to spend the evening alone meditating and enjoying some well deserved Michele Obama style “ME” time.  Its great not having to feel like I have to entertain anyone or be “ON”.