Day Five - Tuesday (March 11)

Voom Portraits—Program 4 (Winona Ryder)

Director: Robert Wilson

United States/2004/16 min/No dialogue

Gitmo soundtrack: Laurie Anderson meets Ashley McIssac meets an audio engineer who wants late 40-something year-olds to realize that they can indeed hear above 15 Kilohertz, if the violin screeching is prolonged and loud enough. Oh, and Winona is a head sticking out of pile sand with the lightning mimicking a day’s worth of sun moving around the sky, over sixteen absolutely torturous minutes. All that was missing were straps on the chairs and eyelid priers and eyeball lubricant (see A Clockwork Orange for details of the Ludovico Technique).

Helmut by June

Director: June Newton

France/2007/55 min/French, English with English subtitles

Helmut Newton attained a certain cultural notoriety with his fashion photography that in part of his career put tall, lithe models in poses of sadomasochism, bondage, or violence, nude or in skintight costumes of a myriad of materials. This loving portrait, shot mostly in the early 1990’s by his wife June, on a video camera she bought for Helmut but ended up using herself, documents the photographer at work in Hollywood, Paris, Monte Carlo, and other ritzy locales, with some of the top female models of the day, such as Claudia Schiffer, famous actors, and celebrities, like Versace, Pavarotti, Sigourney Weaver, Yves St-Laurent and June Anderson. Even Carla Bruni, now Sarkozky, wife of the President of France, is in a shoot with another model. Watching Newton work his process with the subject and seeing the final result (famous photographs in each case) on its own showcases his genius eye. But we also get him explaining his motivation and interest as well – he talks incessantly about his work while June documented him on location and at rest – he has the images in his mind that he wants to photograph, but he has never lived the “life of excess or anxiety of the rich” that he photographed, as he thought he’d never live very long if he did. There is the fascination with the strong, tall, powerful woman that is his leitmotif. His wife June always was with him, but as she admits, he said that she was his second love, after photography.