JANUARY 2009 : CINEMATHEQUE FRANCAISE & LE 104

Chapters extracted from http://www.camerawar.tv
AT LA CINEMATHEQUE FRANCAISE IN PARIS
ON JANUARY 9, 2008
AT 21H30

more information at : http://www.cinematheque.fr/

"CAMERA WAR"

"Qu’est-ce que le cinéma à l’ère de la mondialisation ? Comment peut-il rendre compte de la réalité aujourd’hui ? Quel support en permettra la diffusion la plus importante ? Pourquoi certains films, projetés dans le cadre de festival s "intimistes", ne sont-ils pas accessibles à un plus large public ? Où et comment regarderons-nous les films demain ? L’Internet sera-t-il le support privilégié d’un nouveau type de cinéma ?"

Autant de questions que se pose Lech Kowalski et qui l’ont amené à réinventer l’écriture et la diffusion de ses films. Armé de sa caméra, l’artiste sillonne le monde et revisite ses propres images d’archives pour proposer une nouvelle forme de cinéma documentaire via le site "www.camerawar.tv"
Chaque lundi, depuis le 29 septembre 2008, le réalisateur anglais d’origine polonaise met en ligne des films-chapitres de durées variables. Ceux-ci rendent compte de sa vision du monde d’aujourd’hui, en contrepoint de réalités similaires existant depuis une trentaine d’années.

Conceptualisé par la société de webdesign Elephant, le sit est associé à un blog rédigé par le réalisateur. Le public est invité à y laisser un commentaire, à soumettre son propre film ou un morceau de musique de sa composition. Chaque film peut se voir indépendamment des autres, mais l’ensemble est lié, formant indéniablement un récit – lien renforcé par la présence sonore commune des créations de Mimetic.
Pendant sa résidence au CENTQUATRE, l’artiste monte puis met en ligne ses « films-chapitres » et répond aux commentaires et interventions des "inter-spectateurs/acteurs". Il présentera périodiquement au public son travail au sein du CENTQUATRE.

____________________________________________________

Is cinema dead?
What is cinema in the age of globalization?
Why can’t a greater public see the many films that play mainly in film festivals?
Like the music business, is the film business broken?
Where will movies play in the future? Do we need a new cinema?
Is the Internet the venue for a new kind of movie?
Many questions have steered me to create http://www.camerawar.tv

On September 29th a new kind of documentary is launched on the Internet and for one year, every Monday, new film chapters of varying lengths, will be posted online.

Every film chapter, in and of itself, is a short documentary but when viewed together, whether chronologically or in arbitrary sequences, tell a story. They can be viewed in any order. These are not viral videos or news reports. This is a new cinema narrative technique and the Internet is the only way to tell this story. This presents a new way to watch a film.

This is a new kind of cinema in a new venue, a cinema free of television and corporate production restraints. It rips away the walls corporations have erected between the audience and artists, an experimental cinema, sorely lacking in the new world order, accessible outside of traditional venues and television.


Director Lech Kowalski blogs about each chapter and the audience can interact with comments or submit films and music of their own. Jerome Soudan from Mimetic is the musical composer for the documentary. Web designer Jerome Pidoux, known as Elephant has designed the site. Chapters can be viewed full screen, smaller image or with a black border. Headsets or external speakers connected to the computer will produce optimum sound quality.

Chapters extracted from http://www.camerawar.tv will also be presented At le 104 ON JANUARY 17 at 15hoo
more information at : 104.fr

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D.O.A.
AT LE 104 IN PARIS ON JANUARY 17 @ 20h

Filmed in '78 as it happened, when it happened, like it happened, DOA is the legendary and definitive document of the punk generation seen through the demise of The Sex Pistols whilst on their ill-fated US tour which saw both the break-up of the band and the death of Sid Vicious.
Loaded with explosive performances from the prime movers of movement including The Sex Pistols (doing Anarchy In The U.K, God Save The Queen, No Fun, Pretty Vacant, Holidays In The Sun and heaps more), X Ray Specs (with their incendiary classic Oh Bondage Up Yours), The Rich Kids, Generation X, Sham 69, The Dead Boys and tons more, the film really captures something in that classic establishment versus angry youth way.
DOA is more than just a mirror to the scene, it is as much part of the movement as the music itself...chaotic, claustrophobic, nasty and aimed squarely between your eyes.

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Un baptême, un 45 tours posé sur une platine, un cri d'enfant libératoire et une touche power qui enclenche «Night clubbing» d'Iggy Pop, et déjà une mort est annoncée à l'arrivée. Dans DOA, film désormais de référence en la matière et fondé essen-tiellement sur l'unique tournée des Sex Pistols aux États-Unis en 1978, Lech Kowalski pose un regard à la fois fasciné et désabusé sur le mouvement punk. Détracteurs, fans et suiveurs, tous sont conviés pour cet enterrement prématuré. Et les cada-vres sont nombreux. Ceux d'abord bien réels du bassiste des Sex Pistols, Sid Vicious et de son amie Nancy, décédés tous deux d'une overdose. Et d'autres plus symboliques: celui des Sex Pistols, dissous à la suite d'une tournée de plus en plus violente et chaotique; celui du mouvement lui-même, qui à force d'édulcoration et de marchandisation a perdu sa raison d'être. Car même si des groupes tels que Génération X, XRay-Spex ou Sham 69 ont pris une légitime relève, des suiveurs incarnés ici par Terry, un jeune punk anglais, finiront par tuer la révolte musicale. Ce constat amer, qui préfigure les thématiques déve-loppées plus tard par Kowalski (drogues, échec face à l'auto-rité, etc.), ne rejette pourtant en aucun cas le punk dans une vanité morbide, L’excitation, la possibilité d'une alternative sont ici exaltées par des images d'adolescents revenus à la vie et par une esthétique brutale, sans concession, allergique à tout canon de beauté et d'une séduisante impureté. Le signe d'une résurrection ?
Barbara Levandangeur / Atelier Lech Kowalski -Visions du réel, 2004



more information at : 104.fr

DECEMBER 2008 : THE BOOT FACTORY & EAST OF PARADISE in MARSEILLE, FRANCE

Lech Kowalski will be presenting The Boot Factory and East of Paradise
on December 12 and 13
in Marseille, France

Screenings are free and there will be a bar!
@ the Polygone étoilé
1 rue Massabo
13002 Marseille
(métro et tram Joliette)


It's organized by the association Peuple et Culture Marseille

More information:
Peuple & Culture Marseille
6-8 rue de Provence
13004 Marseille
Tél. 04 91 24 89 71
peupleculture.marseille@wanadoo.fr

NOVEMBER 2008 : CAMERA WAR & BORN TO LOSE (the last rock and roll movie)

BORN TO LOSE will be part of a special program called "pourvu qu'on ait l'ivresse" at ENTREVUES FILM FESTIVAL in Belfort France, on Nov 25th



EntreVues has imposed itself since more than twenty years as the festival of ambitious cinema, combining a first films competition, theme-based retrospectives and tributes. It is also a privileged meeting place for audiences and directors and other professionals of young cinema.



There will be an After party at "la Poudrière" the same day : November 25th where Unfinished will be screened..


more information at
http://www.festival-entrevues.com/



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CAMERAWAR.TV will be presented at CINEMA NUMERIQUE II at Beaubourg, in Paris, France, on November 15,2008 at 16 PM programing organised by les Cahiers du cinéma and le Festival d'Automne.





more at les cahiers du cinema

and Beaubourg


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Camera war will be presented at CPH DOX in Redefining Documentary, Working Multi-Platform

Questioning cinema and the film business and its ability to reach and communicate with audiences, the American undergrounds answer to Werner Herzog, cult figure Lech Kowalski has turned to the internet. Renowned for his controversial award winning documentaries, a journalist once called Kowalski a warrior battling with a camera to redefine the art of documentary. Kowalski has now taken his battle online with www.camerawar.tv.
Launched on September 29th, camerawar.tv is a new kind of documentary where Kowalski will post a new film chapter each Monday for a year. Every chapter is a short documentary in and of itself. When viewed together, whether chronologically or in arbitrary sequences, the chapters tell a story. They can be viewed in any order and express a new cinematic narrative. This is a new kind of cinema in a new venue. A cinema free of television and corporate production restraints, through which Kowalski seeks to rip away the walls between audiences and artists. Blogging about each chapter, the audience can interact with the director with comments or by submitting films and music of their own.


more at :
cph dox

OCTOBER 2008 : EAST ON PARADISE ON ARTE TV

EAST OF PARADISE will be screened on the French German channel ARTE
on October 19, 2008 at 23:55

Little-known in France, where East of Paradise was discovered at the International Festival of Documentary in Marseille (FID Marseille) 2006, Lech Kowalski is a star of American underground cinema. “All my films, he says, were shot to create a space for me in the world. I wasn’t finding my place and cinema helped build my reality, forge a world that corresponded to me.” In fact, few contemporary bodies of work like Kowalski’s give such a strong impression of vital necessity, of body and soul commitment in a world that he is not content to visit and film but into which he throws, searches and finds himself. World of outskirts and the subterranean of the West, for a long time the ones of the Lower East Side in New York where Lech Kowalski, born in London to Polish parents, settles in the early seventies. Going with the Sex Pistols on their cataclysmic Unites States tour (D.O.A, 1981), accompanying the suicidal drifting of a junky (Gringo, 1984), or the survival struggle of the New York homeless (Rock Soup, 1991), Lech Kowalski celebrated the end of a generation, of an era and energy: the one of punk, last battle and swan’s song of rebellion, of a lifestyle that paid with the price of self destruction its desperate desire for freedom in regard to all authorities.
Last part of a trilogy through which Kowalski comes back to his Polish roots, East of Paradise is to this day the central piece of his work, an attempt to make account of a life committed to this world, to this era, and weigh its meaning and its inheritance. This meaning, Kowalski builds by articulating two movements whose bringing together had, for some, incited the same stupid indignation than that, dared by Duras and Resnais in their time, of Hiroshima’s destruction and the intimate drama of a young French woman. First movement: the filmmaker’s mother tells her son for the first time the great sufferings during her deportation by the soviets during the Second World War. Second movement: Kowalski tells his life as filmmaker in a New York of drugs, porn and punk, over an edit of fragments and never used rushes from his films. The mothers monologue counts, with those of Shoah, A Dirty Story, or the recent Fengming: A Chinese Memoir by Wang Bing, among the most poignant oral accounts in the history of cinema. Kowalski’s standpoint is opposite to the rigorous austerity of the previous films. His cinema is free of rules, systems, or moderations, he has no fear to cut up, to dramatize the account by framing his mothers face tighter and tighter, up to the mime, in the broken down empty apartment chosen as back drop, of such detail of past events: blackness to recall the obscurity in the train of the deportation, back to image when light enters back the freight car. Distance, propriety, all the common meeting grounds of the so-called ethics of documentary are swept by the empathetic commitment of the filmmaker in the here and now of the filming. The account overwhelms his mother who is stunned by the strength of the images her speech uncovered. Kowalski takes over, starts in the first person the story of his life, his mothers face in tears giving frame to the daily gestures of a junkie preparing his morning shoot accompanied by a casual jazz. If bringing together big history and the little story, the mothers prestigious and universal drama and the son’s drifting in the subterranean of sex, drugs and rock was a shock to some, it’s because Kowalski took care not to justify it straightaway, to let wide open the split of the times and events. Terrific audaciousness, gripping spectator experience: the split fills itself, the archives of the lost generation progressively charge with a painful solemnity, until appear under the faces of New York’s “victims and heroes” those of the Polish deportees. History lesson, act of memory, self-portrait, musical poem, libertarian manifesto, requiem: East of Paradise opens wide the window of documentary.

By Cyril Neyrat
Extracted from "Les Cahiers du Cinema"
Translated from French by Keja Kramer


more information :
http://www.arte.tv/

CAMERAWAR.TV IS ONLINE

COMMUNIQUE DE PRESSE - PRESS RELEASE - COMMUNIQUE DE PRESSE - PRESS RELEASE - COMMUNIQUE DE PRESSE - PRESS RELEASE -

version française ci-dessous

Is cinema dead?
What is cinema in the age of globalization?
Why can't a greater public see the many films that play mainly in film festivals?
Like the music business, is the film business broken?
Where will movies play in the future?
Do we need a new cinema?
Is the Internet the venue for a new kind of movie?
Many questions have steered me to create:


http://www.camerawar.tv
{+ http://camera-war.blogspot.com }


On September 29th a new kind of documentary is launched on the Internet and for one year, every Monday, new film chapters of varying lengths, will be posted online.

Every film chapter, in and of itself, is a short documentary but when viewed together, whether chronologically or in arbitrary sequences, tell a story. They can be viewed in any order. These are not viral videos or news reports. This is a new cinema narrative technique and the Internet is the only way to tell this story. This presents a new way to watch a film.

This is a new kind of cinema in a new venue, a cinema free of television and corporate production restraints. It rips away the walls corporations have erected between the audience and artists, an experimental cinema, sorely lacking in the new world order, accessible outside of traditional venues and television.

Director Lech Kowalski blogs about each chapter and the audience can interact with comments or submit films and music of their own. Jerome Soudan from Mimetic is the musical composer for the documentary. Web designer Jerome Pidoux, known as Elephant has designed the site. Chapters can be viewed full screen, smaller image or with a black border. Headsets or external speakers connected to the computer will produce optimum sound quality.



Director Lech Kowalski is a cult figure in underground cinema. Renowned for his controversial award-winning documentaries a journalist once called him "a warrior battling with a camera to redefine the art of documentary" Born in London to Polish immigrants who fled Russian concentration camps, Kowalski grew up in nomadic displacement in the United States. He began his carrier in the 70's in New York. His impressive array of documentaries have garnered critical praise and awards such as the Jury Award for East of Paradise at Venice film festival in 2005, the Special Jury Award for On Hitler's Highway at the 2002 Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival, and the Golden Gate Award for Rock Soup at the 1992 San Francisco International Film Festival. His seminal film, DOA (1980), is a punk escapade that follows the Sex Pistols tour of the USA.



camerawar.tv - A Capricci Films & Extinkt Films coproduction


Capricci Films is a French production and distribution company based in Nantes. It's catalogue includes films by Pedro Costa, Albert Serra and Jean-Claude Rousseau.



Extinkt Films, created by Lech Kowalski and Odile Allard, produces and distributes Lech Kowalski's films.


camerawar.tv is partially funded by CNAP, (French National Center for Visuals Arts), CNC-French National Cinema Center-(help for innovative documentary, DICRÉAM), and has a partnership with 104, where screenings of the film chapters are shown to the public.

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Le cinéma est-il mort ?
Que représente-t-il à l’ère de la mondialisation?
Pourquoi le public a-t-il si peu accès aux films projetés en festivals ?
À l’instar de l’industrie musicale, l’industrie du cinéma serait-elle défaillante ?
Où les films seront-ils visibles à l’avenir?
Assisterons-nous à l’émergence d’un nouveau type de cinéma ?
L’internet deviendra-t-il le nouveau lieu de diffusion des films ?
Toutes ces questions m’ont conduit à la création de

http://www.camerawar.tv
{+ http://camera-war.blogspot.com }



Le 29 septembre, je proposerai sur internet une nouvelle forme de documentaire. Tous les lundis, pendant un an, je mettrai en ligne de nouveaux « films chapitres » de longueur différente. Chacun de ces « films chapitres » sera un court documentaire en soi. Visionnés avec d’autres, de façon chronologique ou arbitraire, ils formeront une histoire. Ils seront aussi liés par la présence sonore commune des créations de Mimetic. Il ne s’agira ni de vidéos virales, ni de vidéos d’actualités, mais d’une nouvelle forme de narration et de visionnage filmiques que seul l’internet rend possible.

camerawar.tv propose une nouvelle forme de cinéma grâce à un outil de diffusion innovant. Un cinéma libéré des chaînes de télévision et des restrictions que subit aujourd’hui la production industrielle ; un cinéma qui détruit les murs érigés par les industriels entre le public et les artistes ; un cinéma expérimental qui manque cruellement dans le nouvel ordre mondial, qui s’affranchit des lieux de diffusion traditionnelle.

Chaque film chapitre sera assorti d’un blog sur lequel le public sera invité à réagir en envoyant des commentaires, des vidéos, des photos, des sons.

Un soin particulier a été apporté à la technicité du site (créé par Elephant – webdesigner Jérôme Pidoux), tant au niveau visuel (lecture possible en plein écran) que sonore.



Né à Londres de parents polonais, Lech Kowalski a grandi aux Etats-Unis. Il débute sa carrière à New-York dans les années soixante-dix avec l’artiste Nam June Paik et la cinéaste Shirley Clarke. Témoin essentiel de l’essor du mouvement punk, il signe en 1981 D.O.A. : A Rite of passage, film culte sur la tournée des Sex Pistols aux États-Unis. Il consacre ensuite son travail au devenir des musiciens de la scène punk (Born To Lose ; Hey is Dee Dee Home), aux junkies du Lower East Side (Gringo, Story of a Junkie) et aux sans-abri (Rock Soup). De retour en Europe, il conçoit une trilogie intitulée The Fabulous Art of Surviving dont le dernier opus, East of Paradise, a été primé à Venise en 2005.



camerawar.tv - Une coproduction Capricci Films & Extinkt Films


Capricci Films est une société de production et de distribution nantaise. Son catalogue comprend notamment des œuvres de Pedro Costa, Albert Serra et Jean-Claude Rousseau.

La société américaine Extinkt Films, créée par Lech Kowalski et Odile Allard, accompagne les productions du réalisateur.

Le projet camerawar.tv est déjà soutenu par le CNAP (image/mouvement) et le CNC (aide à l'innovation documentaire et DICRÉAM), en partenariat avec le 104 où seront organisées des projections de certains « films chapitres ».



Contacts : camerawar@gmail.com - kingoutlaw@noos.fr - contact@capricci.fr

You can be removed at any time. Simply e-mail your request remove my E-mail list to camerawar@gmail.com
Nous pouvons retirer votre nom de notre liste à tout moment, envoyez-nous un mail camerawar@gmail.com

JUNE 2008

On June 13 on the French German channel ARTE in the magazine TRACKS

You can see a portrait of Lech Kowalski shot during a retrospective at the RENCONTRES DE PARIS last december in Paris, France

more information

http://www.arte.tv/fr/art-musique/tracks/emissions-a-venir/396804.html


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On June 12 D.O.A. will be screened in Los Angeles
at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film archive,
as part of a film series : Louder, Faster: Punk in Performance.

More information :
http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/punkfilms2008
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Screenings of EAST OF PARADISE,

CAMERA GUN and DIARY OF A MARRIED MAN

at ECAL in Lausanne, Switzerland on Friday June 6.
Lech will attend a discussion after the screenings which are open to the public.


Friday June 6 :
10h30 : Camera Gun » (2003), 29 min and « Diary of a
Married Man » (2005), 22 min
13h00 : «East of Paradise» (2005), 105 min.
15h00-17h00 : Discussion with Lech Kowalski


ECAL/Ecole d’art de Lausanne,
Renens (avenue du Temple 5),
auditoire Leenards.

Free entrance.

More information at :

http/:www.ecal.ch




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On June 1st, Winners and Losers will be screened at the Krakow film festival in Krakow, Poland



more information at :
http://www.kff.com.pl/festiwal_en.php3









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MARS 2008 : Master class in Tuy, Spain

Lech will be in TUI, Spain at the play-doc festival ( from March 12 to March 16) for a master class









You can find additionnal information at http://www.play-doc.com/

Recent interviews on You Tube....

An interview in Barcelona in January 2008...



An interview in Paris during the Rencontres de Paris in December 2007.

FOOD & FILM ACADEMY

Lech Kowalski has officially become a menber of the Food and film academy.




The Slow Food movement, which defends the biodiversity of food and agriculture with initiatives that support and enhance the quality of small productions in danger of extinction, wants to open itself to new forms of communication. This year it has given birth to an international festival of film and food called Slow Food on Film, which will take place in Bologna Italy from 7th to 11th May, with the collaboration of Bologna’s Film Library

There will be competitions, retrospectives, special events and gastronomic moments, but Slow Food on Film wants to be more than a simple thematic festival for food and film experts. It is eager to set itself as a laboratory of ideas on audiovisual communication of gastronomy, an international experience of reflection and comparison.

their aim is to promote and stimulate a new critical awareness in the food culture by showing films, shorts, documentaries and even TV series that develop an original perspective on food (deep feelings, frames of mind, sense of belonging), on the problematic issues of food and agriculture (economic, social and environmental effects) and on gastronomic memory as a heritage to preserve. The festival wants to give voice and space to this bright production – fiction and documentary – that really aims to reflect constructively on the primary gesture of our lives: eating.

they have decided to establish an international network of friends of the festival, made up of people who, in their professional life, have shown an interest in both film and food, and who intend to help Slow Food on Film grow in the best ways possible.

They have named this “network” the FOOD & FILM ACADEMY. Lech Kowalski is one of the member of this network. So he will recommend the titles of films, documentaries, and short TV series for the festiva and Vote for the best of 5 feature films of fiction in the category Best Food Feature


(all the information can be found at www.slowfoodonfilm.com )

FEBRUARY 2008 : COMBAT ROCK

On February 6 and 7, at cinema l'Ecran in Saint Denis, Lech Kowalski will be showing some of his films at the festival COMBAT ROCK

The festival will screen:
Born To Lose (the last rock and roll movie)



D.O.A.




Hey Is Dee Dee Home

Lech will also premiere two new shorts films that are part of the dvd release of
Born To Lose (the last rock and roll movie)
planned for 2008 :

What Happened in New Orleans

"In 1991 Johnny Thunders went to New Orleans. It's not sure why. Did he plan to move there? Was he interested in recording new music? Did he want to write new material? Was he planning to meet friends who live there? Before he left for New Orleans, Thunders listened to songs recorded by Willy DeVille. He checked into a hotel in the French Quarter located right next to where DeVille lived. Less than 24 hours later he was found dead in his hotel room and to this day the police have not solved the mystery of his death. But many characters from the French Quarter have something to say about what happened to Thunders on June 21, 1991."
Lech Kowalski

and

Unfinished


"I started to make this film with Johnny Thunders in 1982. The first scene we filmed was inspired by a picture of Christ on his way to be crucified. We used passages from the bible as the script and filmed Thunders in the basement of a dingy transient hotel on East 22 Second Street. Later, I filmed Thunders performing at the Mudd club in downtown New York. After filming several more scenes, Thunders and his manager had to suddenly flee the city. His manager was somehow implicated in someone's death and Thunders moved to Europe. The film footage was stored in a laboratory vault. Many years later most of the labs in New York closed and some of the material was lost. Stations of the Cross Unfinished film was finally completed with the material I managed to save. "
Lech Kowalski

Chronique d'une mort annoncée : les films rock de Lech Kowalski

Automne 1977. New York ne s'émeut guère du raz-de-marée punk qui affole
l'Angleterre. Parce que c'est ici qu'il est né en tant que musique - New York Dolls en 1972, Ramones en 1974 -, parce que la charge politique n'y prend pas la forme d'une violence médiatique, mais structure l'existence et l'art d'un monde souterrain autonome. Né à Londres de parents polonais, installé à New York en 1971, Lech Kowalski est en 1977 un acteur et témoin important de l'underground new-yorkais. Sous l'influence de Shirley Clarke et Tom Reichman, il a réalisé une série de films dans et sur l'industrie du porno, que vient de Clore son premier long métrage, Sex Stars. Lorsqu'il part à l'hiver 1977 sur les traces des Sex Pistols en tournée américaine, Kowalski ne fait que prolonger son immersion dans un milieu qu'il a fait sien depuis son adolescence : une sous culture où se mêlent le rock, la drogue et le sexe.

Dead On Arrival: en 1981, le punk est mort depuis longtemps, mais c'est manquer la beauté singulière du film que de n'y voir que la chronique d'une désintégration. Après vingt ans de liquidation via Thatcher et Blair, il apparaît comme l'émouvante élégie d'une certaine Angleterre. Les Sex Pistols ne sont que le symptôme spectaculaire d'une ultime décharge d'énergie populaire, dont D.O.A. compose un tableau éclaté et précis. Comme dans tous ses films, Kowalski néglige le bon goût et les prescriptions esthético-morales du documentaire pour sculpter sa matière hétérogène avec un génie musical du montage. Il ne craint pas le clip et prouve que cette forme peut atteindre à la plus haute efficacité descriptive - Breakdance Test. Parmi les nombreux clips enchaînés dans D.O.A. au son des Pistols, The Clash, Sham 69 ou des merveilleux X-ray Spex, celui de God Save the Queen condense en deux minutes le présent et l'avenir de l'Angleterre : claire promesse et sombre prophétie d'une foule d'enfants blancs et noirs sautillant et riant sur le "no future" des Pistols.

Loin de se limiter au genre "documentaire musical ", la série des films rock de Lech Kowalski compose la précieuse archive d'un monde disparu : l'underground new-yorkais. C'est avant tout sur les visages, que Kowalski saisit l'éclat et l'ombre d'un présent promis au néant. Visages anonymes qui gravitent autour de celui de Johnny Thunders et des autres stars underground de Born to Lose (2001). The Last Rock and Roll Movie : le film porte bien son sous-titre. Parce que le leader des Heartbreakers reste l'ultime icône rock, petite frappe flamboyante et junkie suicidaire, parce que le montage de Kowalski chauffe d'une même flamme ses captations des Heartbreakers en concert, des interviews des proches de Thunders et les archives vidéo des New York Dolls par Bob Gruen. Parmi les interviews, celle de Dee Dee Ramone se distingue par la générosité de la parole et celle de sa mise en scène : le visage marqué, l'œil brillant et les tatouages du bassiste des Ramones découpés dans le noir. Kowalski n'arrache pas au gentil junkie de piquants secrets, il rend hommage à un héros, un survivant, sculpte son monument. Douze ans plus tard, lorsque Dee Dee meurt à son tour d'une overdose, l'interview fournit la trame d'un affectueux portrait, Hey is Dee Dee Home. Autant que les derniers feux du rock, la vie avec la dope est l'autre sujet des films jumeaux que sont Born to Lose et Hey is... On pense à The Daik Stuff, le livre de Nick Kent sur le sinistre "envers du rock" rongé par la drogue. Mais quand la chronique de Kent tourne parfois à la facile démythification, Kowalski ne distingue jamais l'envers de l'endroit. Il ne sépare pas les lâchetés des héroïsmes, ne juge personne, mais restitue comme personne l'énergie aujourd'hui éteinte, la vérité fiévreuse d'un monde perdu.
Cyril Neyrat


He will be in Saint Denis to introduce and discuss his films on both days.



The detailed program :




You can find more information and check out the festival at:

http://www.combatrock.fr



Hors circuits will held a temporary library there with some of lech's films already available on dvd.
more at :
http://www.horscircuits.com
DOA:
http://www.horscircuits.com/site.php?type=P&id=96
Hey Is Dee Dee Home:
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JANUARY 2008

On the French radio network

FRANCE CULTURE

as part of a series of portraits of filmmakers called

LES PASSEURS DU REEL,

you can hear a program about Lech Kowalski.

To download the show Vue sur les docks about Lech Kowalski :

and podcast it, clich here:

Sur les docks du 24 janvier 2008

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Lech Kowalski will be in Barcelona for the MEMORIA DEL FUTUR

the celebration of the 10 year anniversary of the UAB creative master

(from the january 21 to 27), where he will give a master class.

Some of his films will screen at the Filmoteca de Catalalunya in Barcelona.

more information at :

http://www.documentalcreativo.edu.es


picture by Elena Oroz


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On January 15, Lech will be in Aoste for a screening of East Of Paradise at FRONTDOC les rencontres documentaires d'AOSTE, Italy.