Ivanovic

Mathematical Events of the Twentieth Century
$149.00
This book contains several contributions on the most outstanding events in the development of 20th century mathematics, representing a wide variety of specialities in which Russian and Soviet mathematicians played a considerable role. The articles are written in an informal style, from mathematical philosophy to the description of the development of ideas, personal memories and give a unique account of personal meetings with famous mathematicians of 20th century mathematics who exerted great influence in its development. This book will be of great interest to mathematicians, who will enjoy seeing their own specialties described with some historical perspective. Historians will read it with the same motive, and perhaps also to select topics for future investigation.

Ulysses' Gaze
$19.98
Greek filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos's 1995 film Ulysses' Gaze (To Vlemma Tou Odyssea) is the first of that director's four films that I have seen that is not unequivocally a great work of art. Yes, there are arguments that can be made in favor of that claim, but at 173 minutes in length, especially, it takes the most out of a viewer, especially considering that it's the least poetic of his films I've seen (which include Landscape In The Mist, Eternity And A Day, and Trilogy: The Weeping Meadow). This does not mean it is a bad film, nor that it lacks Angelopoulos's trademark visual poesy; it has that. But, there are some missing narrative elements, some poorly scripted moments, and a too slow dramatic movement, especially in the latter third of the film, which takes place in the city of Sarajevo.
The basic tale is that a nameless exiled Greek-American filmmaker, played by Harvey Keitel (and referred to as `A' in the DVD credits, and in many reviews, although nowhere in the film is the character's name mentioned), returns to the Balkans after thirty-five years, and is seeking to find three lost reels of footage from the earliest known extant Greek film, made by the Manakis Brothers (Yannakis and Miltos) in 1905. They seem to be near-mythic figures, who represent something akin to what D.W. Griffith was to American cinema, although they were documentarians, logging for decades the travails of the Balkans, and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, in the first half of the Twentieth Century.
Keitel's character seems to have more personal reasons for making this sojourn, and several possibilities are hinted at in flashback scenes, wherein Keitel simply wanders into his past, or a dream sequence involving the claimed death of one of the brothers. Keitel speaks mostly in English, while most of the other characters speak in Greek or the other native languages. The film does not rely on typical narrative to reveal Keitel's quest, rather on a barrage of slowly developing images that subsumes the story into an emotional upwelling. Often, the camera of cinematographers Yorgos Arvanitis and Andreas Sinanos slowly pans ahead of Keitel, then back toward him, or pulls away from a scene, turns 90 or 180 degrees, then swivels back and peers even more deeply at whatever scene it just left, as if to signal that what seems the same is different, which pulls a viewer into a closer reckoning of stasis vs. change,
Overall, this is a very good film. It also has a magnificently effective score by Eleni Karaindrou, especially with great viola passages by Kim Kashkashian, which seem almost organically part of Angelopoulos's visuals. Angelopoulos's film scores are perhaps the only ones which are the equal of the great Werner Herzog's films. This film's main flaws, however, lie in its screenplay. The film was penned by Angelopoulos, longtime Fellini and Angelopoulos collaborator Tonini Guerra, Giorgio Silvani, and Petros Markaris, but goes on a good 40 or so minutes too long. Some trimming of more pedestrian scenes by editor Yannis Tsitsopoulos, some neat Ozu-like elisions (which Angelopoulos makes expert use of in other films), and this film would have been a great film, if just shy of a masterpiece, due to several small forced moments of overacting, and soliloquies tinged lavender in their prose: `If I should but stretch out my hand I will touch you and time will be whole again,' uttered by Keitel. The film came in second at the Cannes Film Festival that year, winning the Grand Prix, not the Palm D'Or, but it has taken a beating from some critics. In this country, the most virulent review came from none other than that noted lover of Spielbergian tripe, Roger Ebert, who among other things, wrote:
What's left after Ulysses' Gaze is the impression of a film made by a director so impressed with the gravity and importance of his theme that he wants to weed out any moviegoers seeking interest, grace, humor, or involvement....It is an old fact about the cinema- known perhaps even to those pioneers who made the ancient footage A is seeking- that a film does not exist unless there is an audience between the projector and the screen. A director, having chosen to work in a mass medium, has a certain duty to that audience. I do not ask that he make it laugh or cry, or even that he entertain it, but he must at least not insult its good will by giving it so little to repay its patience. What arrogance and self-importance this film reveals.
Would that Ebert was so assertive about the vomit that the many Hollywood schlockmeisters he praises put out. Yes, this film is not a laugh riot, but there are some humorous moments, such as Keitel's interactions with an old Albanian woman he lets share a Greek cab with him. As for grace, interest, and involvement? Well, it's there, even if it requires a bit of intellectual cogitation on the part of a viewer, something that most Americans (and American critics) are unwilling to give. This is best illustrated by an anecdote Keitel's character tells, of taking a Polaroid photo of an olive tree that, when he watches develop, shows that the tree was not really there. Yet, we never see this anecdote's stunning imagery play out; it's only related via words, or the imagination, therefore all the more effective, in the way a great film like My Dinner With Andre is. Would that more people had that quality which Angelopoulos so manifestly owns, in the best moments of this work, and his other masterpieces; for then even flawed but excellent films like this would get their proper due.

Ana Ivanovic Ace Poster
$14.19

Ivanovic - 6 Cafe Pieces (For Solo Guitar)
$15.95
Six demanding and dramatic pieces in Latin-American style from Vojislav Ivanovic