"Manifesto" by German director Julian Rosefeldt is a film tour of the history of art of the 20th century. 12 statements and 13 roles of the double owner of "Oscar" Cate Blanchett, who read the main artistic manifestos of the last century - Guy Debord, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Wassily Kandinsky, André Breton and other art theorists. I will try to make out all 12 stories and briefly tell about the manifestos that sound in each of them.
Situationism
In the image of a homeless man who is slowly trudging through the deserted streets of a big city, Cate Blanchett shouts out a manifesto of Situationism, written in 1960 by movement theorist and one of the ideologists of the 1968 Paris Revolution, the author of The Society of the Spectacle Guy Debord. The idea of Situationism, which in many respects inherits Trotskyism, is non-ideological resistance to capitalist society. This resistance and embodies the colorful bearded man, under whom Blanchett is disguised. Also in the episode used texts by Alexander Rodchenko, Lucio Fontana and Constant Nieuwenhuys.
Futurism
A business-like stockbroker: obviously, it embodies an accomplished future that has deceived all hopes, but immediately gave rise to new ones. Here are the manifestations of futurists, the main of which is "Manifesto of Futurism", written by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti in 1909 and published as a paid ad on the front page of the French "Figaro". Later, Marinetti became the ideologist of Italian fascism, whose promise can be heard here: "We will praise the war - the only hygiene of the world, militarism, patriotism, destructive actions of liberators, great ideas for which it is not a pity to die, and contempt for a woman ..."
Architecture
A depressed and thoughtful worker at an incinerator destroys the wreckage of an utopia never built. And at the same time reads architectural manifestos. The key and earliest (1914) of the texts compiled here is "Manifesto of Futurist Architecture" by Antonio Sant'Elia, a socialist, visionary and projector who tragically died very young in World War I. The manifesto of the German Bruno Taut, the American Robert Venturi, and the Austrian architectural bureau Coop Himmelb (l) au.
"The Blue Rider" / Abstract Expressionism
An elite party in which a businesswoman with a glass of champagne freely expounds the theses of the founders of expressionism - Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc - from the preface to the almanac "The Blue Rider" (the text was published in 1912). And connects them with the manifesto of Barnett Newman, one of the cult artists of American abstract expressionism - it was written after World War II, in 1948. "The spirit crushes the fortresses," wrote Marc.
Stridentism / Creasonism
Quite a different party - alternatives and punks; body of the heroine Cate Blanchett is covered with tattoos. It is time for the manifesto of stenthizm (1921) - the Mexican avant-garde movement founded by the poet and art critic Manuel José Arce. The Realistic Manifesto (1920) of constructivist sculptors, the brothers Antoine Pevsner and Naum Gabo and the text "We must create" (1922) by the Chilean communist poet Vicente Huidobro, who considered himself the creator of Creationism, are intertwined with it. All three directions, like the heroine of the episode, remained marginal among the philosophical and artistic movements of the twentieth century.
Suprematism / Constructivism
An asexual and passionless scientist in sterile white robes sets out the main provisions of the platform of suprematists. Here again, the lines from the manifesto Gabo and Pevsner are heard, but the first violin is played, of course, by the text created by Kazimir Malevich in 1916, along with Black Square: "We, the signatories of this manifesto, were the first to raise the banner of the Art Revolution putting his head under the blows of battle, whistling and ridicule of the press and the crowd. ”There are also fragments from the manifestos of Alexander Rodchenko and Olga Rozanova.
Dada
Dada is presented especially witty. We get to the funeral; Cate Blanchett - whether the widow of the invisible deceased, or not. In strict mourning, her face is hidden under a translucent veil, she goes to the podium - and reads the most sassy and outrageous manifesto of the century, created in spite to the rest, too serious: "The first direction, dada does not oppose life aesthetically, but tears apart all the concepts of ethics , culture and inner life, which are only clothes for weak muscles. " Two manifestoes of the great eccentric Tristan Tzara, as well as texts by Francis Picabia, Louis Aragon, Paul Éluard are connected.
Surrealism / Spacialism
Finally, the first (1924) and the second (1929) manifestos of surrealism, masterpieces by André Breton. They are entrusted to the puppeteer - in full accordance with the precepts of the movement, the heroine Blanchett pronounces texts together with her own toy counterpart: "If anything can make us lower the banner of imagination, then it is not at all the fear of insanity." The White Manifesto (1946) by the founder of Spacialism, the Italian artist Lucio Fontana, as it turned out, does not contradict Breton’s theses in any way.
Pop Art
Pop art, as we know, plays with stereotypes and delights in crying, glaring vulgarity. Here everything is decided quite modestly: simply the many-sided heroine-narrator is transformed into the conservative mother of a prosperous bourgeois family. Before dinner, she offers to pray, and instead of prayer reads aloud the manifesto of the Swedish-American sculptor Claes Oldenburg "I am for art" (1961): "I am for art, unfolding like a map that you can squeeze, like your girlfriend's hand, or even kiss ... "
Fluxus / Merz / Performance
For the manifestos of the most influential current of the 1950s – 60s, fluxus, associated both with contemporary art, and with thinking, and with performance, is answered by the most difficult - structurally and stagedly - film segment. Blanchett is transformed into a choreographer, and in the episode, there really appears a separate and rather complex dance number. The prototype of the invented heroine is probably the legendary Yvonne Rainer, whose 1965 No Manifesto sounds from the screen. The German expressionist Kurt Schwitters, whose ideas of the Merz movement are mixed with the theses of post-war artists indirectly names the predecessor of the Fluxus figures. His manifesto can also be heard in this scene.
Conceptual Art
One of the most successful fragments of the painting is responsible for conceptualism: it uses manifestos by artists Sol LeWitt (written in the 1960s) and Elaine Sturtevant (created already at the turn of the 21st century). Blanchett appears overdressed by leading television news, supposedly presenting their ideas in an objectively objective tone as well-known facts. Then it appears a second time, already in the image of a reporter, going live from the scene. Very conceptual.
Movie
It is no coincidence that the author of "Manifesto" Julian Rosefeldt, who initially presented his work as a multi-channel video installation, decided to turn it into a full-length film. The final episode, he is an epilogue, is dedicated to film manifestations. We find ourselves in school; Blanchett teacher instructively tells the children about the rules of cinema. Her monologue combines the text of Stan Brakhage, the founder of the American experimental film, with manifestos Werner Herzog, Lars von Trier and Jim Jarmusch (whose Blanchett starred, and also in two roles at once, in "Coffee and Cigarettes"). Moreover, reading out the Trier "Vow of Chastity", it is difficult to hold back so as not to hit the test-writing pupils with a ruler.
https://youtu.be/VWzHVroUNA8[MANIFESTO International Trailer - Julian Rosefeldt Movie](https://youtu.be/VWzHVroUNA8)
The illustrations are used in agreement with the Depositphotos photobank
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