#Nietzchka Keene

[wesley-de-cornualles]

The Juniper Tree, dir. Nietzchka Keene, 1990

#the juniper tree #Einitréð #nietzchka keene #björk #björk guðmundsdóttir #icelandic cinema #what the birds know

[filmswithoutfaces]

The Juniper Tree (1990) dir. Nietzchka Keene

#the juniper tree #filmedit #nietzchka keene #bjork #bryndis petra bragadóttir #valdimar örn flygenring #cinematography #black and white #films #movies #faceless

[301-302]

The Juniper Tree (Nietzchka Keene | 1990)

#the juniper tree #nietzchka keene #1990 #90s #icelandic #b&w

[centralbazaar]

Björk on the set of The Juniper Tree (1990)

#björk #singers #the juniper tree #1990 #nietzchka keene #ph #film

[metaforadohomeminvisivel]

#bjork #the juniper tree #black and white movies #quando eramos bruxas #Nietzchka Keene #fairy tales

[theaskew]

#movie #film #cinema #Icelandic cinema #medieval fantasy #Youtube #drama film #Icelandic film #foreign film #international film #Nietzchka Keene #Björk #Brothers Grimm #fairy tales #pagan #paganism #witchcraft #pagan witch #witchcraft fairy tale #movie poster #film poster #movie trailer #film trailer #The Juniper Tree

[byneddiedingo]

The Juniper Tree (Nietzchka Keene, 1990) Cast: Björk, Bryndis Petra Bragadóttir, Valdimar Örn Flygenring, Guðrún Gisladóttir, Geirlaug Sunna Þormar. Screenplay: Nietzchka Keene. Cinematography: Randolph Sellars. Art direction: Dominque Polain. Film editing: Nietzchka Keene. Music: Larry Lipkis. Nietzchka Keene's The Juniper Tree, the first feature in her sadly brief career, reminded me of films by Bergman and Dreyer, largely because of its bleakly beautiful, isolated, apparently medieval setting. It has also been called "feminist," a label often pasted on films directed by women, though I think it transcends labels and influences, working its effect largely through the strength of some well-imagined characters. The sisters Margit and Katla have been left homeless after their mother was burned as a witch, so Katla, the elder, casts a spell on Jóhann, a handsome young widower, and the sisters go to live with him.  Jóhann's young son, Jónas, resents his stepmother and lovingly tends his mother's grave, a devotion that only feeds his animosity toward Katla, though he makes friends with Margit, who has visions of her own late mother. Eventually, as in all such tales, tensions, fed by Katla's witchcraft, Margit's visions, and Jónas's resentment, result in calamity. It's a simple story with roots in a tale from the Brothers Grimm, given potency by good performances, particularly Björk as the pivotal character of Margit, by a strong eroticism in the relationship of Katla and Jóhann, and by the exploration of the Icelandic setting in Randolph Sellars's handsome black-and-white cinematography.

#The Juniper Tree #Nietzchka Keene #Björk

[whileiamdying]

Review: Björk stars in Nietzchka Keene’s rarely seen film ‘The Juniper Tree’

Björk in the 1989 film “The Juniper Tree.” (Arbelos Films)

BY ROBERT ABELE

APRIL 16, 2019 12:27 PM PT

At the very least, watching Nietzchka Keene’s haunting Icelandic fairy tale “The Juniper Tree” can cause your sense of time to fall away. A black-and-white movie filmed in 1986, it recalls both the indie wilderness vibe of its time, yet also the monochromatic severity of early Bergman and Tarkovsky.

Heading the cast is an instantly recognizable Björk, prior to her becoming a global music phenomenon, which creates its own recontextualized aura around her. It’s also adapted from a Grimm fairy tale, yet infused with a modern feminist sensibility, and while it’s a ghostly affair with magical touches, it’s shot through with a hard-bitten realism about medieval life.

Keene didn’t complete her micro-budgeted debut feature, which she wrote, directed and edited, until 1989, after which it made the festival circuit — including the Sundance Film Festival in 1991 — but only received one Los Angeles showing, in 1990 at UCLA, Keene’s MFA alma mater. Now, 15 years after her death, in her starkly enchanting film has been given a 4K restoration, and another single-viewing chance, this time at the American Cinematheque. The opportunity is a welcome one, because Keene’s atmospheric gem deserves renewed appreciation and fresh discovery.

After finding a dead woman floating in a creek, stoned and drowned as a witch, waif-like Margit (Björk) and her pragmatic older sister Katla (Bryndis Petra Bragadóttir) must flee to avoid the same fate, which also claimed their mother. Stern widowed farmer Johan (Valdimar Örn Flygenring) takes them in, but his suspicious son Jonas (Geirlaug Sunna Þormar) — who visits his mother’s grave every day, like a dutiful son trying not to be forgotten — sees in Katla a family interloper practicing the dark arts.

He’s not entirely wrong, in that Katla believes in sorcery, but she’s also a persecuted woman in a harsh time trying to secure protection for herself and Margit — her seduction spells are born out of a desire to bind Johan to her, which she comes to realize would best be achieved with a pregnancy.

Jonas tries to turn his father against Katla, even though he isn’t so fearful of kindly, concerned Margit, and the young pair bond over their respective grief. But when Margit begins seeing visions of her dead mother — a silent, beckoning figure with a black hole in her chest — Jonas’ dislocation intensifies, until he feels the need to confront his stepmother at the most unwise of moments.

Those familiar with the original fairy tale will know where this is headed. Keene’s retelling preserves certain morbid details but alters others, so that a story steeped in misogyny and the supernatural can still resonate as a warning of the damaging ripple effects when desperation, displacement and mourning collide.

Stylistically, the movie is a stroll of otherworldly delirium, like a hybrid of Dreyer’s asceticism and the the chillier reveries in “The Night of the Hunter.” There’s austere beauty in cinematographer Randy Sellars’ rendering of the craggy, unforgiving Icelandic landscape, and for the memorable hypnagogic passages that occasionally fold over Margit’s reality, Keene enlisted acclaimed avant-garde director and optical effects guru Pat O’Neill.

Folk tales are how cultures make sense of the world, of how people changed and fates were secured. Keene fully grasps this, which is why she often has Björk’s Margit turning the details of the story she’s observing around her — hovering birds, a tended grave, her own loss, a boy’s worry, a woman’s desire — into a fanciful yarn she’s constantly spinning and revising. And Björk’s turn is a delicate, inviting thing, that innocent croak of a voice like some bridge between the mystical appeal of fairy tales and the cold truth about what human beings do when reason leaves them.

Keene made only a couple of films in her abbreviated life, but “The Juniper Tree” is absorbing enough to make one rue there weren’t more. But we can at least note for the history books that for all the hype Lars von Trier received for casting Björk in 2000’s “Dancer in the Dark,” a female filmmaker recognized her eccentric on-screen blend of mystery, humanity and guilelessness first.

#Björk #Björk Guðmundsdóttir #The Juniper Tree #Bryndis Petra Bragadóttir #Guðrún Gísladóttir #Valdimar Örn Flygenring #Geirlaug Sunna Þormar #Patrick Moyroud #Nietzchka Keene #Iceland #Quando Éramos Bruxas #Quand nouEinitréð #s étions sorcières #ビョークの「ネズの木」 グリム童話より #Krzew jałowca #Можжевеловое дерево #Cuando fuimos brujas #Ardıç Ağacı #Seljalandsfoss Waterfall #Larry Lipkis #Los Angeles Times #LA Times

[dailyworldcinema]

The Juniper Tree, 1990 dir. by Nietzchka Keene

#filmedit #filmgifs #worldcinemaedit #userfilm #moviegifs #fyeahmovies #cinemapix #userkraina #the juniper tree #1990s #iceland #ours #gifs #by teka #body horror tw

[wakemewitch]

She Will, Charlotte Colbert (2021) Daughters of the Dust, Julie Dash (1991) The Piano, Jane Campion (1993) The Virgin Suicides, Sofia Coppola (1999) The Secret Garden, Agnieszka Holland (1993) Angela, Rebecca Miller (1995) The Juniper Tree, Nietzchka Keene (1990) I Am Not A Witch, Rungano Nyoni (2017) Poison Ivy, Katt Shea (1992) Sister My Sister, Nancy Meckler (1994)

More!

#directed by women #women in film

[ozu-teapot]

Films Watched in January 2023

La Jetée | Chris Marker | 1962

Boro in the Box | Bertrand Mandico | 2011

Lebenszeichen (Signs of Life) | Werner Herzog | 1968

Trans-Europ-Express | Alain Robbe-Grillet | 1966

Henry Fool | Hal Hartley | 1997

Fay Grim | Hal Hartley | 2005

Ned Rifle | Hal Hartley | 2014

Les Enfants Terribles | Jean-Pierre Melville | 1950

La vie rêvée des anges (The Dreamlife of Angels) | Erick Zonca | 1998

Bob le Flambeur | Jean-Pierre Melville | 1956

The Working Class Goes to Heaven | Elio Petri | 1971

Big Time Gambling Boss | Kôsaku Yamashita | 1968

Dementia 13 | Francis Ford Coppola | 1963

One More Time | Maurice Hamblin | 1974

Love Rites | Walerian Borowczyk | 1987

Emmanuelle 5 | Walerian Borowczyk | 1987

Behind Convent Walls | Walerian Borowczyk | 1978

Men | Alex Garland | 2022

The Juniper Tree | Nietzchka Keene | 1990

M3GAN | Gerard Johnstone | 2022

La marge (The Margin) | Walerian Borowczyk | 1976

Flux Gourmet | Peter Strickland | 2022

Letter From Paris | Walerian Borowczyk | 1975

Peter Von Kant | François Ozon | 2022

Lady Oscar | Jacques Demy | 1979

Bold = Top Ten

Some notes: After watching the Borowczyk biopic (of sorts) Boro in the Box I decided to catch up on some of the later movies by the "dead Polish film maker" which I was more unfamiliar with, which turned out to be a very mixed bunch. Similarly I'd been promising myself to watch the Hal Hartley “Henry Fool trilogy” for ages but found Fay Grim a huge disappointment after Henry Fool. Ned Rifle was more of a return to form at least.

#Film Log

[cinemabywomen]

The Juniper Tree (Nietzchka Keene, 1990)

#the juniper tree #bjork #cinematography #directed by women #film aesthetic

[laikuh]

the juniper tree (nietzchka keene)

#the juniper tree 1990 #mine #w i l d

[301-302]

The Juniper Tree (Nietzchka Keene | 1990)

#the juniper tree #nietzchka keene #1990 #90s #icelandic #björk

[female-malice]

do you have fictional movie recommendations (of any genre) that don't have creepy tropes or much misogyny in them? I was watching popculturedetective's videos on youtube and I was like "ffs, so many movies have creepy ass tropes in them"

Old Guard by Gina Prince-Bythwood, Destroyer by Karyn Kusama, and Nomadland by Chloe Zhao are some recent movies I like.

The movie Arrival by Denis Villeneuve is very good. I've thought about it a lot lately due to current events.

I also like all the Miyazaki movies. But I especially love Nausicaa and Princess Mononoke which I believe are parallel stories.

I like Juniper Tree by Nietzchka Keene.

I'm assuming by "creepy tropes" you mean misogyny and not horror tropes. If that's the case and you're open to horror suggestions, The Descent is a great one.

I'm sure there are more good movies that have come out recently but I haven't seen them

I follow @fuckyeahwomenfilmdirectors and I'll randomly see movies on there and watch them

[recursive-rupture]

The Juniper Tree (1990)

A film written and directed by Nietzchka Keene, featuring Björk.

#the juniper tree #björk