A thrilling documentary on the life and work of the groundbreaking photographer and filmmaker, Robert Frank; from his seminal book of photography, "The Americans," to his revolutionary films with The Beats (PULLY MY DAISY) and the Rolling Stones (@#$%& BLUES).

Directed by Laura Israel (Frank's long-time editor), DON'T BLINK - ROBERT FRANK is Israel’s like-minded portrait of her friend and collaborator, a lively rummage sale of images and sounds and recollected passages and unfathomable losses and friendships that leaves us a fast and fleeting imprint of the life of the Swiss-born man who reinvented himself the American way, and is still standing on ground of his own making at the age of 90. Featuring music by Lou Reed, The White Stripes, Bob Dylan, Yo La Tengo, Tom Waits and more.

Trailer





[www.dontblinkrobertfrank.com]

Thanks for the tip, I love his book The Americans, and I hope it comes out on DVD

Yeah you can't really "get" CS Blues till you have browsed thru "The Americans". it has the same passion/repulsion for America and its heartland. It's as if Frank in was revisiting the America he had discovered in 1956-57 while taking pix for "The Americans".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2016-05-10 21:43 by dcba.

While we celebrate the life and work of Robert Frank, maybe one day we'll actually be able to say the title of one of his films on this messageboard without censorship...

Can't wait to see this!

There will be two screenings of @#$%& Blues in New York this month.

"9:50pm

Wednesday, July 20 and Thursday, July 21
Absolutely 2 screenings ONLY!

PLEASE NOTE: Both shows are sold out online.
A few tickets may be available at the box office on day of show.

Directed by Robert Frank and Danny Seymour

Robert Frank’s legendary @#$%& BLUES, commissioned by The Rolling Stones as a record of their 1972 North American tour in the wake of the release of Exile on Main Street, has been unreleased for over 40 years. Its vérité approach and emphasis on the band’s raunchy exploits and the grind of touring impeded theatrical release. But the Stones dazzle in live performances of “Brown Sugar,” “All Down the Line,” “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and more. Our screenings are presented in association with the premiere of Laura Israel’s documentary on Robert Frank, DON’T BLINK—ROBERT FRANK. Digital.

USA • 1972 • 93 minutes"

[filmforum.org]

Quote
Boognish
While we celebrate the life and work of Robert Frank, maybe one day we'll actually be able to say the title of one of his films on this messageboard without censorship...

Well, I've just read a Variety review of the film ( a bit critical by the way) which refers to the title in all its uncensored glory.
Frankly, (pardon the pun), I am amazed in this day and age it continues to be otherwise.

Quote
Cristiano Radtke
There will be two screenings of @#$%& Blues in New York this month.

"9:50pm

Wednesday, July 20 and Thursday, July 21
Absolutely 2 screenings ONLY!

PLEASE NOTE: Both shows are sold out online.
A few tickets may be available at the box office on day of show.

Directed by Robert Frank and Danny Seymour

Robert Frank’s legendary @#$%& BLUES, commissioned by The Rolling Stones as a record of their 1972 North American tour in the wake of the release of Exile on Main Street, has been unreleased for over 40 years. Its vérité approach and emphasis on the band’s raunchy exploits and the grind of touring impeded theatrical release. But the Stones dazzle in live performances of “Brown Sugar,” “All Down the Line,” “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and more. Our screenings are presented in association with the premiere of Laura Israel’s documentary on Robert Frank, DON’T BLINK—ROBERT FRANK. Digital.

USA • 1972 • 93 minutes"

[filmforum.org]

Was about to post this then did the search...I was thinking of going though it sounds dicey I'd get a ticket. Too old to camp out on line!

Anyone here seen C#@sucker Blues? Whatta ya think?

Wow -- cool -- thanks for the heads-up, Cristiano!

Quote
Wry Cooter

Quote
Cristiano Radtke
There will be two screenings of @#$%& Blues in New York this month.

"9:50pm

Wednesday, July 20 and Thursday, July 21
Absolutely 2 screenings ONLY!

PLEASE NOTE: Both shows are sold out online.
A few tickets may be available at the box office on day of show.

Directed by Robert Frank and Danny Seymour

Robert Frank’s legendary @#$%& BLUES, commissioned by The Rolling Stones as a record of their 1972 North American tour in the wake of the release of Exile on Main Street, has been unreleased for over 40 years. Its vérité approach and emphasis on the band’s raunchy exploits and the grind of touring impeded theatrical release. But the Stones dazzle in live performances of “Brown Sugar,” “All Down the Line,” “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and more. Our screenings are presented in association with the premiere of Laura Israel’s documentary on Robert Frank, DON’T BLINK—ROBERT FRANK. Digital.

USA • 1972 • 93 minutes"

[filmforum.org]

Was about to post this then did the search...I was thinking of going though it sounds dicey I'd get a ticket. Too old to camp out on line!

Anyone here seen C#@sucker Blues? Whatta ya think?

I'd go and give it a try, if I were in NY.

Quote
Cristiano Radtke

Quote
Wry Cooter

Quote
Cristiano Radtke
There will be two screenings of @#$%& Blues in New York this month.

"9:50pm

Wednesday, July 20 and Thursday, July 21
Absolutely 2 screenings ONLY!

PLEASE NOTE: Both shows are sold out online.
A few tickets may be available at the box office on day of show.

Directed by Robert Frank and Danny Seymour

Robert Frank’s legendary @#$%& BLUES, commissioned by The Rolling Stones as a record of their 1972 North American tour in the wake of the release of Exile on Main Street, has been unreleased for over 40 years. Its vérité approach and emphasis on the band’s raunchy exploits and the grind of touring impeded theatrical release. But the Stones dazzle in live performances of “Brown Sugar,” “All Down the Line,” “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and more. Our screenings are presented in association with the premiere of Laura Israel’s documentary on Robert Frank, DON’T BLINK—ROBERT FRANK. Digital.

USA • 1972 • 93 minutes"

[filmforum.org]

Was about to post this then did the search...I was thinking of going though it sounds dicey I'd get a ticket. Too old to camp out on line!

Anyone here seen C#@sucker Blues? Whatta ya think?

I'd go and give it a try, if I were in NY.

true, what the hell.

That's the spirit, Wry. Good luck, I hope you enjoy the movie!

Quote
Cristiano Radtke
That's the spirit, Wry. Good luck, I hope you enjoy the movie!

Tho "enjoy" and Cucksocker Blues don't really go hand in hand Maybe "appreciate"?

Trailer looks very cool, definitely want to see it. Thanks, Christiano.

Quote
swiss

Quote
Cristiano Radtke
That's the spirit, Wry. Good luck, I hope you enjoy the movie!

Tho "enjoy" and Cucksocker Blues don't really go hand in hand Maybe "appreciate"?

Lol, true!

BTW, here's a Guardian article about this movie:

The least seen movie about the Rolling Stones ranks as the most revealing one ever made.

@#$%& Blues, a documentary by photographer Robert Frank which shadowed the band on their pivotal 1972 American tour, has never had a formal release. The Stones made sure of that after seeing Frank’s wilder footage way back when. Luckily, a convoluted deal between the director and the band allows the film to be shown several times a year, with several odd caveats. One dictates that Frank himself must be in attendance. God knows what happens when the 91-year-old director dies.

Two rare screenings will take place this Wednesday and Thursday at the Film Forum in New York. Those who can’t make the date shouldn’t fret. Anyone can find isolated segments of the film on YouTube, adding up to roughly 20 minutes from the full 93. Other snips have turned up here and there, one of the raciest sanctioned by the band themselves. Their 25 X 5 home video contains a group sex scene shot on the Stones’ private plane (with the genitals pixelated out).

Still, it’s not scenes like this which make @#$%& Blues an artifact worth treasuring. While voyeurs may savor the footage of Keith Richards apparently nodding out on heroin, Mick Jagger snorting a line of cocaine, and a groupie shooting up in a hotel room, it’s actually the most ordinary elements of the film that make eyes go wide.

Most of the footage in the film shows the band and its hangers-on doing nothing more animated than lounging around hotel rooms, smoking cigarettes, casually plunking a piano or staring blankly into space. Essentially, it’s an ambient Stones movie – another likely reason the band shelved it in favor of releasing a more slick, and eventful, documentary of the ’72 tour, titled Ladies and Gentlemen: The Rolling Stones, which was released two years later. So great was the Stones’ charisma and creativity at that time, however, that even the routine moments which dominate Frank’s film are somehow riveting. In fact, it’s their very banality that makes them stand out. When you have as much cool as the Stones did back then, doing nothing is the most transfixing thing of all.

So many decades have passed since the band dulled, it’s hard to remember how cool and outrageous they once were. At the time of the filming, they were touring behind what is arguably their greatest album – Exile on Main Street – with a lineup far more exciting than the one they’ve featured in the years since. The concert footage in @#$%& Blues captures the most erudite and dexterous lead player they’ve ever had: Mick Taylor. It’s electrifying to hear him let loose in moments like the cocaine-manic section of Midnight Rambler, whose lyrics seem to eroticize murder, capturing the threat of the band in their prime.

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The multitudes who see the Stones play Midnight Rambler on their slick and gargantuan tours today experience the song in a very different way – as a vehicle for happy nostalgia and family fun. Today’s Stones so perfectly epitomize the smug classicism of “dad-rock”, it’s downright jaw-dropping to watch them at a time when they made dads fear for their daughters’ virtue, if not their lives.

It’s great, too, to see them looking so beautiful, a quality lost to them by the late 70s. Here, they’re all chiseled cheekbones, tapered torsos, rich shags and pouting lips. It’s the Greek god vision of the 70s rock star.

Of course, the Stones’ particular take on rock stardom pivoted on sleaze, a quality that oozes through every frame of the film. The cherished leer of @#$%& Blues captures a quality the recent HBO series Vinyl pined for and missed entirely. Its edginess also eclipses another contemporary swipe at a rock star series (Showtime’s Roadies). Both series should have studied the techniques of @#$%& Blues. With its shaky camera work, blurry image, and muddled sound, it feels more like the work of a peeping tom than a film-maker. It shares that creepy-cool quality with the great cinéma-vérité rock films of the day, from DA Pennebaker’s Dylan doc Don’t Look Back to Albert Maysles’s film on the Stones’ disastrous show at Altamont, Gimme Shelter. Like those works, @#$%& Blues has a tantalizing hint of the illicit.

If you want far more than just a hint – and who doesn’t? – it’s crucial to check out the song titled @#$%& Blues, more politely known as Schoolboy Blues. The Stones wrote this raw blues grind in 1970 as a screw-you to their record company, Decca, whose contract the song fulfilled. It’s purposely unreleasable, with lyrics that gleefully embrace oral and anal sex, putting Jagger on the receiving end of the latter. Such a perspective would be shocking coming from an ostensibly heterosexual band today, let alone one from 46 years ago. Even the greatest provocateur of our time, Kanye West, wouldn’t dream of going there. The value in watching @#$%& Blues today is that it whisks us back to a time when the Stones couldn’t get there fast enough.

@#$%& Blues is playing at the Film Forum in New York with Don’t Blink, a documentary about Robert Frank.

[www.theguardian.com]

"It’s great, too, to see them looking so beautiful, a quality lost to them by the late 70s. Here, they’re all chiseled cheekbones, tapered torsos, rich shags and pouting lips. It’s the Greek god vision of the 70s rock star"

Did the guy see GS instead? In CS-Blues they all look already pretty damaged.

That is one heck of a review by the Guardian ,makes me wish i had a copy for my home .

Sorry for this off-topic comment, but every time I see the title of this thread I can't help thinking that the director of this documentary might not be very familiar with Doctor Who:

[www.youtube.com]

Quote
dcba
"It’s great, too, to see them looking so beautiful, a quality lost to them by the late 70s. Here, they’re all chiseled cheekbones, tapered torsos, rich shags and pouting lips. It’s the Greek god vision of the 70s rock star"

Did the guy see GS instead? In CS-Blues they all look already pretty damaged.

Agreed, dcba!

The writer also was wrong in suggesting Vinyl was trying and failed to achieve a vibe like CS Blues. This guy--like many critics--may have wished for Vinyl to feel like this sordid slice of 1972, but I saw no evidence in the show itself that Vinyl was aiming for anything like that at all.

I have actually never seen Vinyl. I don't think it was on Netflix in Spain. At least I haven't found it. Was it any good?