BEFORE SCROLLING TO THE WEB PAGE BELOW ABOUT THE CHAGALL MOVIE, PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT THESE NEWS ITEMS, WHICH ARE FAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN ANYTHING I’VE EVER HAD TO SAY:

AMY GOODMAN:     A little-noticed story surfaced a couple of weeks ago in the Army Times newspaper about the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team. “Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months,” reported Army Times staff writer Gina Cavallaro, “the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.” Disturbingly, she writes that “they may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control” as well. The force will be called the chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive Consequence Management Response Force. Its acronym, CCMRF, is pronounced “sea-smurf.” These “sea-smurfs,” Cavallaro reports, have “spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle,” in a combat zone, and now will spend their 20-month “dwell time” — time troops are required to spend to “reset and regenerate after a deployment” — armed and ready to hit the U.S. streets....

FOR THE FULL STORY, CLICK HERE.

It gets worse:

NAOMI WOLF:     On October 1, 2008, President Bush deployed a brigade — which means three to four thousand warriors — somewhere in America. We do not know where they are deployed though citizens have informally reported to me having seen military vehicles and troops in Georgia and Alabama. We do know that their official mandate according to the first report is “crowd control” as well as action in the event of a mass civilian catastrophe. Initial reports described their technology “module package” as involving Tasers and rubber bullets.... The First Brigade is Bush’s force: they are not answerable to Congress or to the Governors of states: they are answerable to the Commander in Chief. In an Alternet posting, I interviewed Air Force Colonel (retired) David Antoon who noted that the troops must obey the president, even if he asks them to arrest Congress or fire on civilians or attack media outlets. If they do not obey orders, he notes, they face five years in prison.... Antoon himself calls the deployment “ominous.” Troops on our streets makes us something less than a democracy: one definition of a police state is when a leader sends his own military units into civilian streets. Meanwhile the civilian policing of citizens is becoming more brutal. Hundreds of preemptive arrests took place in St Paul, dozens of journalists were arrested.... In St. Paul, funds were sent in advance to pay off the lawsuits against police forces that were guaranteed to arise from the planned abuse of citizens. This sort of thing is happening across the country. The tactic has established a closed circle that has turned citizens’ law enforcement agencies into contractors of a state that is directing acts of increasing severity against US citizens. Now a military brigade is being deployed....

FOR THE FULL STORY, CLICK HERE.

Click here to see an interview with Naomi Wolf conducted in early October 2008.

For the past five years or so I hve been hearing rumors that Halliburton has been building (and has now finished building) 800 prisons throughout the USA, not yet functioning, but just waiting for the right crisis. I have not found reliable evidence for the specific quantity, readiness, functionality, locations, or details, but you might be interested in taking a look at page 5 of this Halliburton press release dated 26 January 2006: KBR has been awarded a contract announced by the Department of Homeland Security’s United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) component. The Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity contingency contract is to support ICE facilities and has a maximum total value of $385 million over a five-year term. The contract provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the United States, or to support the rapid development of new programs.... Now, really, what are the chances of “an emergency influx of immigrants into the United States”? And what are the “new programs” that could come under “rapid development”?

FOR THE FULL PRESS RELEASE, CLICK HERE.


NOW, BACK TO THE MAIN PART OF THE WEB PAGE:


Did you happen to record Monty Python’s Flying Circus when it was shown on PBS back in the 1970s?
Do you still have the tapes?
Is there a TIME-LIFE logo at the end?
If so, please write to me. Thank you!


THE WORKS OF TINTO BRASS

Part 1
APPRENTICESHIP

Jump ahead to:

Spatiodynamisme L’India vista da Rossellini
(India Seen by Rossellini)
Les noces venítiennes
(Venetian Honeymoon)
Il Generale della Rovere
L’Italia non è un Paese povero (Italy Is Not a Poor Country)

Chagall

(a.k.a. Marc Chagall, 1958–1962)

Henri Langlois, the semi-insane chief of the Cinémathèque Française, started work on this documentary about his friend Marc Chagall (1887–1985), in 1958 or thereabouts. Joris Ivens was working at the Cinémathèque at the time, and brought his new protégé Tinto Brass on to assist with the editing. The film was either completed or abandoned in 1962 but was never released and now seems to have vanished. Searches have failed to turn up any of the materials associated with this project. Well, you can’t get too much more obscure than that, can you? Here are the references. Have fun!

Chagall (A nice fellow sent me a translation of this page, but then Yahoo deleted all our emails. Could you write to me again? Many thanks!)
The Films of Joris Ivens
Filmografie; de films van Joris Ivens
Ivens
George Henri Anton Ivens—politischer Dokumentarist oder ethnografisher Filmer? (Good luck getting this one to open properly!)
Film de krant: De geruchtenmachine, no 251, January 2004 (Could someone send me a translation please? Thanks!)
MSN Entertainment: Chagall Vincent Price?!?!?!?!? Think about it, though, and it makes sense.

Various garbled sources state that among the camera operators were Frédéric Rossif and Jean Guynot, that the assistant editor was David Perlov, that the producer was Simon Schiffrin, that the music was by Joseph Kosma, and that the narration was by Vincent Price. My uneducated guess is that all these credits are correct, but that they refer not to this film, but to other films on Chagall.

Chagall

Written and directed by Henri Langlois
Camera Joris Ivens
Edited by Joris Ivens
Assistant editor Tinto Brass

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