Hello and a superb Saturday to you! In addition to our amazing art film, “F For Franco”, available on Amazon when you visit our Facebook page (or on iTunes), you may know that CF is in post-production on a film about Arturo Sandoval, the multi-Grammy-winning jazz trumpeter. More on that will be coming very soon, but first – we’re excited to announce that Francisco will be speaking on the radio! His expertise in art, culture, identity, and reflection (or lack of it sometimes) in this hashtag culture of consumerism will be on national radio programs! More details soon, and to get your weekend rolling along, please enjoy “Symbolic” from Francisco’s album, Minimal Souvenirs, and be well!
No Comments on Saturday Updates!Coming on Wednesday – F For Franco! February 21, 2016
Happy Sunday, everyone! The festival is getting into full swing now, and runs through the coming week with well over one hundred films being screened in all genres. Our film, F For Franco, will screen on Wednesday, February 24th. Each day, I will be posting some material to give a sense of the visual journey the viewer will enjoy in watching F For Franco. Here is a short film to get you started:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3MCgmbSH8U&w=700&rel=0]
You can purchase tickets here: http://www.laemmle.com/theaters/4/2016-02-24#get-tickets
Hope to see you there, enjoy the rest of your weekend! 🙂
Comments Off on Coming on Wednesday – F For Franco!More Film Festival Fun with F For Franco February 6, 2016
Hello! It’s Saturday, and CF has some exciting news to share – F For Franco is returning to LA to participate in the Hollywood Reel Independent Film Festival in just a couple of weeks. It opens on February 18th (our film screens on the 24th), and we’ve been nominated for Best Documentary! It looks to be a fun time, and we’d love to see anyone reading this and in the area to come and watch our film. I’ll be posting more material here as the festival approaches, stay tuned! Here are some stills taken straight from the film for you. Have a wonderful day!
After Elmyr de Hory… A New Film November 23, 2015
Happy Media Monday! CF is pleased to announce a new film project, once again tapping into Orson Welles’ genius. In the early 1970’s, Welles travelled to Ibiza, a small island in Spain. He was making a film to eventually be called F For Fake, involving a number of fakers, from to Elmyr de Hory – widely regarded as the best art forger of our time – to his biographer Clifford Irving (himself a fake), to Orson Welles himself. The film is a masterpiece of film editing, and in the middle of the chaos is young twenty-something Mark Forgy. Mark lived with Elmyr as friend, protégé, and assistant for years, up until his death in 1976. Elmyr bequeathed his collection of paintings to Mark, who brought them back to the U.S.
Earlier this year, Francisco reached out to Mark Forgy, and the two began an instant friendship and exchange of ideas about Elmyr and art. From these emails and phone conversations, an idea for a film project emerged – one that goes beyond F For Fake to examine the complications of Welles’ film, the art market, and the work of Elmyr, overlaying these questions in a kind of fugue. Indeed, the story of Elmyr is still relevant and popular, as people have begun to produce fake fakes, which they purport were executed by Elmyr.
Seeing how tangled this web is, we at CF were happy to begin filming this project in October in MN, when Francisco was at Winona State University giving a talk on film, which included discussion of F For Franco and led into F For Fake. This short film gives you a brief intro to F For Fake, Orson, Mark, and Elmyr. Enjoy!
No Comments on After Elmyr de Hory… A New FilmLA, MN, and a New Adventure October 22, 2015
Hello! It’s Thoughtful Thursday, and we have some catching up to do. I was perusing the Hollywood Film Festival website to do some Wikipedia updating, and discovered this photo on our film’s page from the red carpet event the night of F For Franco’s screening. Francisco and I are with the festival’s independently-minded directors Brad Parks and Rod Beaudoin:
When the festival was over, we flew out to Winona,MN – it was my first trip to the Midwest that is Minnesota, and it was beautiful. We were in a small rural town, and the leaves were just changing their colors:
We were there, as the last post indicated, for Francisco to give a class lecture and an evening presentation to usher in a new, interdisciplinary Digital Humanities department at Winona State University, at the invitation of Miguel Elizalde, another former student of his at RISD, now an Assistant Professor at WSU. Naturally, the class and the presentation focused on new media art and film. The students and those attending the lecture were able to watch some sections of F For Franco as part of a discussion on the creative possibilities of film when one doesn’t limit oneself to one particular structure, form, or technique. Experimentation with ideas, form, and visual representation are the ways to move art and film forward, and avant-garde doesn’t have to mean inaccessible or boring. One needs only to be a little quiet and attentive and give the film or artwork a chance to wash over you. Having recently watched 2001:A Space Odyssey for the first time – if ever a film asked for some patience…! 🙂
F For Franco takes its inspiration from the title of Orson Welles’ masterful piece of film editing in F For Fake. This film discusses three fakers, really – Elmyr de Hory, the greatest art forger of the 20th century, Clifford Irving, his ‘biographer’, and Welles himself. Elmyr lived for a time on the island of Ibiza, and in the late 1960’s a young man travelling through Europe named Mark Forgy became Elmyr’s friend and assistant up until Elmyr’s death. Francisco reached out to Mark, and in one of those events that only seem to be real in novels or films, we were able to meet him and his wife before the lecture at WSU, and return with them to their home in New Prague to begin filming a new project. More on that later (soon!). Here is a photo of Francisco and Mark discussing how Mark came to be in F For Fake, with the film version of Mark in the background:
The new project deserves its own post, but what a three-week adventure!Take care!
No Comments on LA, MN, and a New AdventureHollywood, FFF, and Many Thanks to the Festival October 7, 2015
Hello and Happy Tuesday to you! It’s so strange that two weeks ago today, the Hollywood Film Festival, held at the ArcLight Cinemas, got under way. It was a new era for the festival, looking to change HFF’s direction, to let great films and little-known filmmakers have a chance to show their work. This article from the LA Times discusses the vision of Brad Parks and Rod Beaudoin for the Hollywood Film Festival:
Our film screened on Thursday night, with an introduction before and spontaneous Q & A after the film by Francisco; a few days later, Neon Tommy – a large, student-run news organization that is part of USC-Annenberg (http://www.neontommy.com/annenberg-digital-news.html), gave F For Franco this review:
https://medium.com/neon-tommy/film-review-f-for-franco-ac92640b0fa6
The festival was a wonderful experience (speaking from New England experience,the weather was fantastic for late September!), and we at CF thank Brad, Rod, the HFF team, and Linda Brown for realizing their mission to “Incite, Inspire, Inform” the Future of Hollywood! I believe our film embodies all three.
No Comments on Hollywood, FFF, and Many Thanks to the FestivalHollywood Film Festival Beckons! August 25, 2015
Hello! For this Media Monday on Tuesday, we have an exciting announcement – our film, F For Franco, has been selected to be shown at the Hollywood Film Festival in Los Angeles in September! The theme for 2015 is, “What is the Future of Hollywood?”, and CF’s experimental journey into the creative mind and process of the art of multi-faceted James Franco is a perfect fit for discussing the possibilities of film beyond the tried-and-true formulas. More details to follow, but we are very pleased to show our film there! Here are just a few stills from our film – have a wonderful day!
Videostills of Douglas Gordon’s and James Franco’s collaborative Film Project “Rebel” for the Venice Biennial 2011. Film produced at Cinegate Studios Berlin, actor: Henry Hopper, camera George Geddes. Still images show take “Crayons”
Of Routine and Expectations, then and now May 13, 2015
It’s Media Monday on Tuesday plus one again, and here is a short essay showing that no subject is off limits when it comes to discussing life and art. Not so very long ago, people had certain expectations of a particular kind of lifestyle – if you wanted this in life, you would have to do that, but you could achieve it; if you wanted something else, you had to be prepared to give up certain “creature comforts.” Almost everything fell into well-defined categories. These days, that’s not so much the case – it’s all a mixed bag. In this post, Francisco literally takes us on a drive with him and extemporizes on all of this, and how it pertains to Art. 🙂
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Defez4HvGgo&w=700&rel=0]
Comments Off on Of Routine and Expectations, then and nowOrson’s Birthday, F For Fake, and F For Franco May 7, 2015
Hello! Happy Birthday to Orson Welles, who would have been 100 years old today. Our film, F For Franco, takes its title from Welles’ F For Fake. F For Fake is about an art forger and a faker, while our film discusses how James Franco uses his experimental art and film projects to fake and forge his own identity. I came across this article today about Welles and his efforts in experimentation, which is precisely what Conceptualist Films is about.
The videos below are from our Youtube channel and begin with a short clip of Orson himself from F For Fake, followed by some of our work on our film – Enjoy!
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7BCfhUMZl8&w=700&rel=0]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aln-Ou6fCQM&w=700&rel=0]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xNQ1XwN0AY&w=700&rel=0]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHd1wQ5jHyg&w=700&rel=0]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rDNpPOFWw4I&w=700&rel=0]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goCQQw4AS6M&w=700&rel=0]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGDvUOVO15g&w=700&rel=0]
From the art and film world of author, director, and musician Francisco Ricardo, Ph.D.
Preview The Book
Art & Authenticity May 12, 2017
It’s Fearless Friday! We’re very excited to announce that in a few weeks, our film, “F For Franco”, will have a wide online release! Look for more extra material, etc. in the next few days/weeks/months! Visit our FFF Facebook Page, as well! Today, Francisco ponders aloud how people react when finding out a beloved car, painting, or object is not, in fact, “real.” What about people – finding out they are not who you thought they were? What if the person or persons were manipulating their identities? What is that? That’s “F For Franco”! Enjoy your weekend!
https://youtu.be/JQeastJn9Ro&w=700&rel=0