BFI Flare: Fantasy + Reality

Just before I set off to visit BFI Flare on the Southbank yesterday, the news broke that the great Agnès Varda had passed. "Oh, No! I expected her to live forever!" was my absurd thought. But, why not? Cinema should allow its makers to live forever and Varda, who almost made it to 91, had a life full of extraordinary experiences and important work. I hope she gets all due recognition from upcoming cinematic gatherings across the globe. I spent this morning watching her turn at the 2017 Governors Awards and marvelled at how few prizes her films accrued from the big festivals. Quel dommage.

My visit to Flare was a mixed bag--couldn't get into Making Montgomery Clift; discussed Whigs and Tories in the reign of Queen Anne; and saw my last film at the festival, Marie Kreutzer's psychological puzzle, The Ground Beneath My Feet. If I say that everyone around me was abuzz afterward, it will give some flavour to this film. I would say it is my favourite so far, but that does not mean I understand it. I had seen some of Kreutzer's previous work, so knew that she does not make it easy on audiences. Her debut The Fatherless was a masterful family drama-cum commune portrait that grappled with memories and their impact in the present.  

The Ground Beneath My Feet wrestles with the pressures of family and work on the psyche while playing with reality and fantasy. What we wondered at the end was: "What was real?" Businesswoman Lola is constantly on the go jetting between Vienna and whatever city houses her current project restructuring failing companies. She has a secret affair with her boss Elise on the go but does not seem happy. Meanwhile her sister Conny has been sectioned after yet another suicidal episode and Lola treats her with disdain, making arrangements but offering precious little human emotion. As the film unfolds, she keeps receiving phone calls from Conny, improbable as this may be as the woman is locked up with no access to a phone. So, who is calling her? Cue Twilight Zone theme. Sadly, Kreutzer was sick and unable to attend the screening to answer our myriad questions, but I found the film quite gripping and at times witty in its delineation of Lola's tightly controlled life, with a scene in which she puts her sister's cat into pet care offering some much-needed levity. The scenes in which she is sexually harassed by clients and gaslight by her lover are grimly true to life. Agnès V would approve.

Knife + Heart

 My other big find of the fest is Yann Gonzalez's wild Knife + Heart, which improbably stars Vanessa Paradis as a lesbian producer of gay male porn in 1979 Paris. From the moment I heard Malaria's "Thrash Me" playing on the soundtrack in an early club scene I felt I would love the film, even if that song was released in 1983. Paradis plays the domineering but alcoholic Anne who runs a company churning out skin flicks while attempting to reconnect with her ex Lois who just happens to be the company editor. Cue mega dyke drama as Anne makes drunken phone calls and begs and pleads for Lois to come back. Anne ends up in an enchanted forest trying to track down a long-dead bird that may be connected to a series of murders. And then things get really weird. The film is wildly uneven in tone, referencing Cruising and a host of other films while paying hommage to both porn and the process of old school film-making: the cuts, rewinds, and grain of actual film. The credits reveal it was shot on Kodak, as should be the case. I loved it but I imagine others may not be so keen.

I also viewed Canadian drama Giant Little Ones, though I have no idea what the title means. Floppy-fringed teen Franky finds himself turfed out of his perch as one of the cool kids once a drunken fumble with best friend and alpha male Ballas becomes the talk of the school. While sidelining the plotline of whether Franky is gay, the film really zeroes in on toxic masculinity, peer pressure and the pleasures of finding friendship in unlikely places. Plus Kyle Maclachlan pops up as Franky's out dad. A pity Maria Bello as his mum isn't given that much to do, other than make reassuring noises. Franky's relationship with Natasha allows both to explore barriers and inhibitions and his dad gives sound advice when he says something like, "Pay attention to who you are attracted to and don't worry about putting a label on it."

BFI Flare: Virtual Lives

This year my viewing is a combination of online and in-person visits. It seems fitting then that the two films under scrutiny feature teenagers who seek connection in the possibilities provided by the internet as well as in their rather bleak surroundings.

Nevrland

 Nevrland is a debut feature from writer-director Gregor Schmidinger who attended the screening with his lead actor, first-timer Simon Fruhwirth. The film is billed as horror which set up expectations of scary things emerging from the shadows. Instead the film delivers a dazzling mix of bewildering images and creepy sound design that builds up atmosphere but never delivers a satisfying plot. 17-year-old Jakob lives in an all-male household somewhere in Vienna but in an insular, grey world which always seems to be dark. He goes to work at an abattoir processing pigs and experiences flashes of an alternate world in which he is in a green forest or diving into a lake. After a mental breakdown, he meets mysterious Kristjan online. This character seems to be North American and yet is name is spelled Germanically, just one of many confusing details. As their relationship unfolds, Kristjan exposes Jakob to many firsts, such as tripping and visiting an "underground club" where the teenager seems to return time and time again in increasingly fraught circumstances. Is it real? Is it part of his metal illness? Who knows? Schmidinger reeled off a string of influences in the post-screening Q&A, which included Kubrick and Noe but also Jungian psychology and the film suffers from over-intellectualising and under-emotionalising. What should be a stunning climax of Jakob breaking free from his repression feels like a set piece. Schmidinger clearly has vision and great technical skill but this film feels more like an exercise than powerful story-telling.

The Spanish film Carmen y Lola is also a frustrating watch, for different reasons. Two 17-year-old gypsy girls, the titular characters, fall in love in Madrid but are held back by their community's lack of acceptance. The story-telling is languid to the point of soporific but the two characters are intriguing, soft-spoken Lola wanting to pursue studies but realising she has few opportunities and sassy Carmen initially following her destiny of marriage and children before rethinking. Lola knows she likes girls and goes online to search, but then backs out of any meetings, while Carmen seems to be a model het. But life is not that simple. The supporting character of Paqui is left underwritten and her relationship to Lola is never clear--boss? best friend? crush object? The setting is striking and the glimpses into modern-day gypsy life are revealing but the story reaches no great dramatic resolution and one is left pondering how the story might have been more sharply told.

BFI Flare: the Swarm

My first visit to BFI Flare yesterday coincided with the big anti-Brexit march and, consequently, I found myself in Waterloo station buffeted by hordes of blue-hatted folk carrying quite amusing and thoughtful placards. Some were even making them as they waited to move on, hand-lettering their messages in felt tip pen. Everyone seemed determined, energised and focused--quite unlike the government! It made me terribly proud to be un-British, as it were.

Tell It to the Bees

Anyway, on to the festival, where I viewed a feature, Tell It to the Bees, and a shorts programme, Challenge Accepted. The former reminded me a bit of Carol, if that were set in a small Scottish town and everyone dressed in black. Actually, it is a bit different. There is an upper class-lower class romance, a child and a villainous husband combining in 1952. But Tell It to the Bees has an odd surrealist cast, most notably in its depiction of the titual bees. The child, who is the narrator for the tale of repressed lesbian love, is a budding bee whisperer and it is his ability to call forth the bees for a key swarm (no spoilers) that forms a key moment in the plot. The lovers, buttoned down Dr. Markham (Anna Paquin) and down on her heels single mum Lydia (a radiant Holliday Grainger), are not welcome in the town any more than the interracial romance of her sister-in-law is. A price will have to be paid.... It is a pleasure to see Anna Paquin, whom those of a certain age will remember as the girl in The Piano, all grown up and back playing a Scot. Even more intriguing that she is the key influence on the child, a role reversal of sorts. The chemistry works well between her and Grainger and if the ending is a bit puzzling, it's an affecting film.

The swarming reminded me of a scene in Vita & Virginia, the opening night film I saw in preview, in which Virginia Woolf rushes out of a house and is confronted by a murmuration of black birds that suddenly descend on her, pecking at her as she cowers and flaps. But they are all in her mind, as the members of her party look on in bemusement. I also felt bemused but for different reasons. Oh, dear. Where to start? How about the casting? Gemma Arterton as Vita Sackville-West? The two would have been about 30 and 40 when they met. Arterton is 33 and her co-star Elizabeth Debicki, playing Woolf, is 28. Moreover, as we all know, Sackville-West was an androgynous woman. Butch, we might say now. She favoured tweeds and extravagant hats and disguised herself as a man to pursue her affair with Violet Trefusis, as depicted in Portrait of a Marriage, in which she was memorably portrayed by Janet McTeer. Watching Arterton and Debicki, one sees in them more of the Sackville-West/Trefusis coupling than Sackville-West and Woolf.

Vita & Virginia

 Arterton, a fine actress, plays Sackville-West as a coquettish, lovestruck puppy dog, batting her eyes at Debicki and then playing hard to get. Her Vita is a power femme, not the "scandalous ruffian" of Woolf's description. Debicki, meanwhile, tries valiantly to grasp the complexity of Woolf, her repression, her wit, her fantastic way with words. But most often she is reduced to staring off vacantly into space. It is a most frustrating film, fraught with contemporary touches like a club soundtrack more at home in Heaven and jarring addresses to camera. That type of eccentricity worked brilliantly in The Favourite. But here it smacks of a director, Chanya Button, not quite sure what to do with the material. Ironic, really, for two such accomplised writers to be left so high and dry.

And then there was Challenge Accepted, which was led by people of colour, though this was not mentioned in the notes. There really should have been a trigger warning for Masks, which presents a budding romance between two girls disrupted by a mass shooting clearly based on the Pulse attack in 2016. The insistent gunfire was incredibly disturbing, but the film, a student project, was of a very high standard. Other films in the programme seemed to be proof of concept projects, establishing a premise but not really seeing it through. I was most taken by Piscina (Pool), a Brazilian drama in which a woman seeks out a woman from her grandmother's life. The references to the Second World War were poignant and if it tailed off at the end, leaving the audience and the elderly woman hanging, well, there was quite enough to suggest a longer version would be well worth a watch, as would Concern for Welfare, an Aussie short in which a trainee police officer finds herself out at work but still closeted at home.

As I made my way home in the evening, thwarted by a disappointing lack of seating at the BFI, I found myself among the returning swarm of the march, more placards waving, hats being doffed and plenty of selfies being taken, as the people had their say.

Dorothea Tanning

In a marriage made in heaven, Tate Modern gives Dorothea Tanning her first retrospective in 25 years, meaning her first posthumous one. Born in 1910, Tanning only died in 2012, her life and career spanning the 20th century, with all that implies. The exhibit is a wide-ranging delight, offering eight generous rooms encompassing 100 works.

Children's Games, D. Tanning

 I found myself wandering open-mouthed through the space, agog at her wild imagination. I had seen her works online but never in-person and found standing inches away from the oil paintings an illuminating experience. Who knew Children's Games (1942) was so tiny? Such detail and such emotional power in a painting smaller than an A4 notebook. And side-by-side with Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (1943) a more spacious work connected by the grouping of transfixed girls in tattered clothing. The two could be scenes in the same film. Interestingly, they also connect with a later work in a different room, Maternity (1946-47), with its spaced-out mother, babe in arms and their human-faced dog. With this, Tanning carried Surrealism into the post-war years.

Even decades later she was still offering jarring juxtapositions with her fabric sculptures. These were displayed across one large room but several were encased or placed in corners, which my friend K., a sculptor, found irritating, as sculpture should be seen from all sides. The ones that were presented in the round were extraordinary. The giant Pincushion to Serve as Fetish (1979) looked like a spiny shark to me, beached on a low plinth. Other works offered variations on two figures embracing or wrestling or fighting. One is not sure. I found it to be quite contemporary, suggesting nightmares, dystopias and dysfunctional relationships. Stranger Things, indeed.

Colette: the writer's life

Having just seen Colette, the biopic of the French writer starring Keira Knightley, I found myself pondering the quite complex relationship depicted between her and her first husband, the rogue about town called Willy. As the film unspooled and Willy offered her feedback on and revised her writing, I thought to myself: "Willy is a great editor. He is really good at shaping and refining other people's work." Where he went wrong, of course, was in denying other people's talent and claiming their work for his own. Bad Willy.

Denise Gough as Missy and Keira Knightley as Colette

 In the film, Colette struggles to throw off his control while thriving under his command. Even her mother suggests she rid herself of him and write under her own name but she declines to do this for quite some time. Is she that insecure or does she draw some strength from what seems quite the toxic relationship? He presents himself as her husband and headmaster but cannot see her as an equal or even a creator. Such is his delusion. If he had just been content to be an editor or even an agent, theirs would have been quite the partnership.

Colette is a curious film in that it depicts the early life of a great female figure, while offering a standout role for a man. Willy is wily, controlling, charismatic, louche and loud, and Dominic West is a hoot in the part. As Colette, Keira Knightley offers only a hint of the writer's inner journey, while displaying her usual charm and affable blankness.

Kudos to the film for not shying away from Colette's bisexuality and giving due weight to her affairs and predilection for cross-dressing. It seems admirably contemporary, right down to her calling her AFAB lover Missy "he" as their relationship develops. The two scandalised Paris by kissing onstage at the Moulin Rouge, a memorable scene in the film, and Missy asks some very pointed questions of Colette, offering her quiet support and never trying to dominate her, unlike Willy. The ideal partner in many ways. Sadly, the film ends before the two set up house together. A sequel is surely warranted.

I saw the film at Genesis Cinema as part of its regular Write Along With monthly series, in which films about writing are shown and the audience is invited to stay afterward to do some writing. It's a great idea and while I have yet to produce anything decent, I do enjoy having a go while sipping some tea and gazing into the middle distance, as you do. For something so solitary, it's great to have the odd collective activity.

DIY Life

It's been quite awhile since I posted as I have been busy making my film, Lactasia, which has been quite the process. We completed shooting in January after a four-year journey from script to shoot. There will be the best part of another year editing and getting it ready for the festival circuit, but things are much less hectic. I am looking forward to taking a bit of a back seat now and letting other people take the lead.

I have, however, had some thoughts on how it went that may inform how I work in future. Having been highly influenced by the feminist and queer groups I started my activism with in the 1990s, I was keen to have a flat structure and lots of ideas contribution from the participants, but others seemed more keen to have me lead in a more traditional way, which I found difficult. It's hard to strike the balance between being authoritative and authoritarian, I feel.

This being the most complex project I have ever undertaken, and not being in optimal health, it's been quite the ride and incredibly mercurial. Doing things the DIY way is not really in vogue now, at least as far as creative projects go. I have seen negative comments on Facebook forums assuming industry norms, and this is not how I have ever worked.  I have been producer-director-location manager-catering manager, and a host of other roles.

In future, I may need to go back to doing my singular small films which require much less logistical planning. But there is a huge buzz in seeing a cast and crew assembled and giving their all. The last day of our shoot we shot a live band performance that had my hair standing on end. Such are the moments that make one want to do it again.

Whitney: two sides

Just back from being blown away by a screening of Kevin Macdonald's new documentary, Whitney. Never a fan of her music, I had only a passing interest in Whitney Houston's life and death. But seeing the film has shifted my view dramatically. There are so many jaw-dropping moments, from her family/employees speaking about her with no hint of irony, to the shaky home movies shot by her childhood friend and rumoured girlfriend Robyn Crawford in which Houston comes across as playful, mischievous and sharp. This is all in direct contrast to the image of her promoted by her label Arista and its founder Clive Davis. "Whitney Houston", we learn, was her public face. In private, she was Nippy. Nippy was way more compelling.



By then end I was in tears. So many if onlys..... Her mother Cissy Houston left her and her brothers alone, allowing (spoiler alert) the children to be abused by a family member. Years into her stardom, Robyn issued an ultimatum, seeking to get Whitney away from her abusive husband Bobby. Houston accepted her resignation, severing ties that had lasted since they were teens. The film does not disclose whether the two reconciled before the singer's untimely death in 2012. Some quick research reveals Robyn is now happily out and has her own family. Phew. She must have suffered so much being on the edges of Whitney's entourage. It is sobering to realise that the most personal, revealing and insightful footage in the film is that shot by Robyn of Houston backstage. It is Robyn whom Whitney (or more likely Nippy) is looking at when she mugs or slags off Paula Abdul or sings in a wacky voice. But Whitney, perhaps seeking to please Dragon Mother Cissy, wanted to "do what was expected of her", as one interviewee puts it.

Some reviews have castigated the film for focusing on her dramatic life arc rather than her music, but there is plenty of music in the film, some of it quite cleverly edited to focus on her vocal, eerily echoing through the cinema speakers. I still find her oeuvre to be over-produced, bland and hopelessly MOR. But I also recognise she had a grounding in gospel and soul and would have done more in that vein, had the record label agreed.

The film emphasises how big a talent she had but also how alone she was, being pulled in different directions and trying to please everyone, most notably her demanding family. In that sense, she was not a superstar above the fray but someone very human, fragile and badly let down by those who could have looked out for her. A tragic loss.

BFI Flare: Fierce and Fabulous

Not styling myself as a fashionista, I was rather more curious than fascinated by the subjects of Susanne Bartsch: On Top and Antonio Lopez 1970: Sex, Fashion and Disco. Who were they? Despite growing up in New York, I was not familiar with either the party organiser Susanne Bartsch or the fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez, who came to prominence in the 1970s and '80s. After seeing these films, I thought: who are they? Both documentaries are rather impressed with their subjects, quoting their friends and associates and showing lavish documentary footage. But, I was left nonplussed. Sure, they had lots of mates and famous friends, but why are they important? I guess it depends how much gravitas one gives to party organising and fashion illustration.

At least the setting came through loud and clear. Bartsch appears in her film, holding court as she prepares for a retrospective at the Fashion Institue of Technology. By coincidence this was where Lopez and his partner Juan Ramos, both deceased, attended early in their lives. There was a bit of crossover between the two films, showing us earlier times in New York City that seemed way more lively and fun than the present. So much so that at the Q&A after the Bartsch film, the question arose as to whether New York is stuck in the '80s!

Lopez, who also worked in Paris with Karl Lagerfeld, found models such as Jessica Lange, Jerry Hall and Tina Chow. The former two are quite familiar to me, but Chow was not. Having read up a bit on her, I was saddened to see how young she died. But, all of those questioned in the Lopez film seemed enamoured of him. He seemed to radiate charisma, but didn't want to hang around. Is this something to be celebrated? Seen from another viewpoint, one might find his bevaviour rather insensitive. Perhaps his work was more important to him, but the designs shown didn't seem to me to warrant the reverence the filmmaker displayed. They are now part of an archive shared with the even shadowier (he never spoke in the film) Ramos, who seems to have been the "intellectual" in the partnership. If only we had learned more about their relationship, but the film really tells us nothing about him.

I was also consued by the title: disco music is played throughout the film but from the late 1970s. And the film actually covers the mid-1960s to the mid- 1970s. ????

At least Bartsch gets to tell her story, and we see some very revealing moments, if only to show how demanding she is, but by the end I was thinking how ridiculous all of the scene was: hangers-on described as nightlife personalities, a husband so muscle-bound he can barely walk and a son who seems traumatised by growing up in the Chelsea Hotel. And her signature look? Bushy eyelashes.  It must be exhausting trying so hard to keep up appearances.

BFI Flare: Going Home

On the lighter side of Flare films, I viewed two that focused on finding or inhabiting places.

The first hour of Becks is superb as the title character, a musician played by Lena Hall, finds herself homeless after a break-up with her girlfriend and heads back to St. Louis to live with her mother (Christine Lahti). As she settles into self-pitying recovery, she reconnects with a childhood friend who runs a bar and takes up a residency there, attracting the attention of bored housewife Elyse (Mena Suvari). Clearly, Becks is on rebound but that doesn't stop her playing with fire. The cast are superb,  the writing crisp, and the songs performed by Hall are a vibrant element, but I felt the film fell apart in the last half hour, with the stage set for some kind of evolution of Becks' character. Instead, the film delivers a non-ending with no obvious development of the themes.

Alaska Is a Drag

By contrast the artfully low-budget Alaska Is a Drag is a real find. Boxing, drag and African-American twins are not a typical mix, but writer-director Shaz Bennett takes these elements and runs with them, as Leo, a would-be drag superstar, faces bullying at his fishery job, while his sister Tristen undergoes chemo for Hodgkins disease. Not obvious comedic elements, but the leads, ably supported by Margaret Cho and Jason Scott Lee as surrogate parent figures, depict people who dream big and throw themselves into achieving those dreams, even if it means decamping to the lower 48. As Leo, Martin L. Washington Jr. inhabits a full range of masculinity from punching out foes to strutting on imaginary catwalks. His relationship with goofy but hunky Declan, while important, never outweights his loyalty to his sister, which is refreshing. So many plot strands are left unresolved, one craves a sequel to see what happens to these sparky characters.

BFI Flare: Making Contact

Rain did not stop play at Flare, as I managed a full day of screenings, socialising and a very informative Makers session with producer Elizabeth Karlsen. In response to questioning from Tricia Tuttle, Karlsen outlined her extraordinary career, moving between  London to New York, as she made early contacts with figures such as Christine Vachon and Todd Haynes who grew into film-making colleagues. She also grew quite emotional explaining how her first feature was Parting Glances, working with the late Bill Sherwood as he shot in his apartment. Quite the creative life. I also caught two features, one old and one new that were intense experiences.

Montana

Montana, despite the name, has nothing to do with the US state, but is a slow-burning Israeli drama written and directed by feature debutante Limor Shmila. I found myself quite confused by the large ensemble cast, supporting Noa Biron's star turn as Effi, wondering who all those people were and how they knew each other. This somewhat mirrors Effi's dislocation, arriving back home after an absence of 15 years to find not only romance with a neighbour but a disturbing dynamic developing within the family unit. It proved rather too disturbing for one audience member who chastised the festival and the director in the Q&A for not providing a trigger warning and for the inaction of the title character. Shmila and Biron were gracious enough in response, defending the complexity of the situation being depicted. Ultimately, in this film the silences proved to be the most powerful moments, allowing things that could not be said to hang in the air.

"Goodbye Sadness" is the song by Yoko Ono that plays over the closing credits of Silverlake Life: the View from Here, a film I have long wanted to see. It proved to be a captivating watch, one punctuated by vocal exclamations from the audience as we watched a long-term couple, Tom and Mark, live out their AIDS diagnoses on-screen, moving from good-humoured joshing to hospital procedures to physical decay and death. The KS lesions dotting Mark's back brought shock to some. I guess for many it was their first sight of such things, now not so common. Which is a good thing, I guess. Lives cut short, but lived well.

BFI Flare: Odd Couples

Festival time! I got off to a bit of a slow start as I needed to sort out my festival viewing experience. But I have managed to view 2.5 dramas so far.

My Days of Mercy

The BFI Flare opener, My Days of Mercy, stars Ellen Page and Kate Mara as two women on opposite sides of the death penalty forming a romance. While the two leads are eminently watchable and the film offers some suitably grave moments of inmates' last meals, at some point one does think, "Is this romance in utterly bad taste?" And yet, it's well acted and has a jaunty script. I do fear that Ellen Page is destined to spend her career playing emotionally stunted heroines. But she is on good form as the anti-death penalty protester saddlled with a family haunted by a brutal murder. Can she find happiness with a straight woman who lives several states away, has a boyfriend and is a staunch proponent of capital punishment? This is cinema.

Luft

 While My Days of Mercy follows a rather predictable path, the German drama Luft is cut from very different cloth. I found the first ten minutes gripping, as taciturn Manja is bowled over by a balaclava-clad Louk, fleeing some hunters she has sabotaged. Manja lives in an apartment block in an unnamed city with distinctive pale blue tower blocks that jut up like shoeboxes, in contrast to the mysterious forest where Manja retreats at every opportunity, urged on by her grandmother who tells her the forest is home to all her ancestors. Luft creates a quasi-magical atmosphere as if Manja is gripped by something beyond her every time she encounters the seemingly confident Louk, who cannot resist a dare, no matter how foolhardy. But she too copes with an emptiness, as her mother has not been in her life since the age of 10. The two schoolgirls embark on a journey to find the mother, and become intimate along the way,but while the film builds up brilliant tension and atmosphere, the ending completely punctures that and I found it quite frustrating.

Family Values

I am doing a lot of catch-up with Oscar nominees this week, having seen both I, Tonya and Get Out, and was struck by the formidable and ultimately destructive role played by family matriarchs in both.

I can totally see why Allison Janney has been nominated for best supporting actress for her scenery-chewing turn as LaVona Harding in I, Tonya. She is both hilariously foul-mouthed and painfully abusive in the role and LaVona's insistence that she is doing it for her daughter's own good shows her lack of self-awareness. It's one of the reasons the film works as well as it does, though I share concerns others have raised that it lets the younger Harding off the hook for her own behaviour. LaVona, rejected by her husband, turns her gaze on her young daughter and continues to undermine her into adulthood, a powerful statement about life patterns.

The mother in Get Out--or rather the onscreen mother in Get Out--is played by the redoubtable Catherine Keener who does her best with this slippery, hypnotic character. The key offscreen character is also a mother: the protagonist Chris's mother who was killed in a car crash and never came home to tuck little Chris in that night. This loss dogs him throughout the film and I wondered if it was meant to emphasise his lack of relationships with women and the distrust he carries.


Or is it the filmmaker Jordan Peele's mistrust? There is not one woman in the film who is helpful or trustworthy. What does that say about the film's underlying politics? I found Keener's part rather underwritten, although I think she should have been nominated. But the character I really wanted to know more about was Georgina, the family maid who it turns out is carrying *spoiler alert the brain of the family matriarch inside her and, it is intimated, was seduced by Rose, the girlfriend of Chris. Wow! Betty Gabriel is sensational in this small but important role and I wish we had seen more of her. We never even learn her character's real name, as the film makes clear the zombified characters are given new names when they are rebrained, a not so subtle allusion to slavery.

The female characters in Get Out seem that much more remote and othered than the male characters. It's a pity. I would love to see a Get Out prequel that explained "Georgina"'s back story, as she ends up as the nameless queer black woman nobody ever gets to know before she is despatched.

The 'bourne Identity: Overnight Film Festival

A very belated Happy New Year from Kunstblog. Good heavens. It's practically spring already. Been doing stuff.

Anyway..... I finally had the opportunity to spend a weekend away from stuffy London by attending the second edition of the Overnight Film Festival in Eastbourne. I had booked without seeing the programme, so keen was I to participate. Once the programme was announced, I was happy to see so many female-led and queer-oriented films included.

But, the trip itself was part of the attraction--Eastbourne is only a couple hours by train, and I whiled away the time looking out the window, spotting two pheasant grazing trackside. On my arrival in Eastbourne I took my time getting to the seaside, dragging my wheeled suitcase over the pavement, having a late lunch on Terminus Road and finally arriving at the hotel that served as both accommodation and screening site, the venerable Queens Hotel. Hotels are still an extravagance for me, being a veteran of backpacking, staying with friends, etc. This hotel screamed faded grandeur, with gorgeous high ceilings and speckled mirrors. My room was icy cold, a result of them opening for the festival, but it did warm up after a few hours.

The festival opener was The Velvet Vampire, an exploitation B-movie with feminist overtones, as it was directed by Stephanie Rothman. The acting by the couple who encounter the desert-dwelling vampire was atrocious, but she, as played by Celeste Yarnall, was quite intriguing. The screening room was the hotel's ballroom and with chairs facing blacked-out windows, it was quite atmospheric. We all had a good laugh at how pink the male lead was and the film was a good laugh.



As would prove a refrain, I passed up the opening night party in favour of an early night, wanting to pace myself over the three days. But apparently, the partying went on quite late, spilling over into an appointed party room.

I was keen to be up early enough for the breakfast, which was held in a sea-facing ground floor room, the view to the pier spoiled only by some grey skies. But, it was just what I had hoped--seaside dining. I felt quite decadent, spooning out my grapefruit segments while gazing at the sea.

Saturday was a bit of a queer revival day, with Velvet Goldmine and Bound both showing, having been programmed by guest curator Zing Tsjeng, who shared her experience growing up in Singapore and viewing the former as near contraband. When it came out in 1998, VG was a bit of a flop and I wasn't that keen on it when I saw it on TV. Viewed in a cinema (as such), its bombast made a bit more sense. The production design, music, and extravagant characters made more impact on me, but as the leads are all rather unsympathetic (and Christian Bale's wig is atrocious), it still didn't really move me. I think it's one of Todd Hayne's passion projects that doesn't connect as well as he would have liked. Great soundtrack and costumes, though.

Bound is a total '90s classic, so I was a bit bemused to hear it referred to as "lost" and "unknown", but I think this is a bit of a generation gap. As so many of the attendees and programming team seemed to be 20-somethings, I guess this film was a bit of an unknown quantity and the Warchowskis are, of course, better known for their subsequent projects. Still.... it ain't unknown. As butch released con Corky, Gina Gershon has never had such a good role, and Jennifer Tilly's faux girly act as gangster moll Violet makes perfect sense in this tense thriller. One is always questioning: is she sincere or not? Will she screw Corky over or not? Joe Pantoliano plays his usual sinister mobster figure to perfection. We gasped. We laughed. We enjoyed it very much, thank you.



Again, I passed up the glam rock party with regrets as I was just too tired to stay up. And when I went down in my pyjamas to breakfast the next morning, I was not the only one, although I had no real explanation for my hungover state, having consumed absolutely no alcoholic refreshment. I think it was a combination of long days, very dry hotel air and a bit of nervous energy. But, with some rare sun spotted, I had decided to go wandering on Sunday. Having caught the last half of a curious Portuguese faux doc, The End of the World, which takes place at the seaside, I headed out into the Eastbourne sun and wind for a brisk walk which took me to the Towner Gallery, a gorgeous multi-level space showing several exhibits. I checked out the Haroon Mirza-curated We stared at the Moon from the centre of the Sun, which took over two rooms on the ground floor. In one room were several multimedia displays, such as some projected films by Tacita Dean and Lis Rhodes sharing one large screen side by side, which was intriguing. Playful spinning Technics turntables spun in one brightly lit corner, linking their artists. The connections were a bit difficult to work out: sound, light, orbs. Mirza had drawn from the Arts Council collection and his whims determined the exhibits.

Back at the Queens, guest curator Shiva Feshareki was disappointed to miss the exhibit, as she has collaborated with Mirza and I was the bearer of bad tidings as we had a brief chat after her selection, No One Knows About Persian Cats, a film I saw at London Film Festival back in 2009. It told a real story about underground musicians in Teheran defying the authorities, but staged it with the actual participants, blurring the boundaries between documentary and fiction, which I found interesting. 

The early checkout time on Sunday proved a bit frustrating as the last film was in the evening and I had to dash to make my train. Sorry, Claire Denis. I will have to catch all of 35 Shots of Rum another time. 

It was an enjoyable weekend, although I do feel the team (all volunteers) could make much more of the location, which has numerous unused spaces. How about some cult films running on a DVD overnight? Bring your duvets and pillows and voila! Instant all-nighter. Or maybe something more sedate, such as high tea and discussion? There were salons in the lounge, but with people around talking over their drinks, it was next to impossible to hear what the curators were saying to the small groups that gathered. It's a great concept and certainly well worth supporting.

Slumber Party Massacre

Well, here's to waiting and waiting. I first heard about Slumber Party Massacre in the early '80s, possibly when Rita Mae Brown made an appearance on Late Night with David Letterman. As I recall, when the film came out, she disassociated herself from it. But, it appears all of these statements are bones of contention because when the film appeared on the NFT 3 screen on Friday, there was her credit as screenwriter. It really boggles the mind. Rita Mae Brown of Rubyfruit Jungle and Lavender Menace fame writing a screenplay for a slasher film? But, it appears she had ideas about refreshing the genre, making it feminist. And on this viewing, possibly making it queer, as well.

But, the finished film, reworked by director Amy Holden Jones, is far from those heady heights. It is a scream, in every sense. Viewing it with S., we both laughed, gasped and issued those well-known exultations of the horror genre. Something on the order of "Uh-oh" or "Oh, No!!" or "Ack!" many, many times. The film works brilliantly as both a send-up and an exemplar of slasher cinema: teenaged girls trapped in a house by a maniac try to survive and then fight back. Brown may well have had plans for sporty Trish and new girl Valerie, but the finished work leaves their relationship dangling, as both lie panting next to the bloody pool that contains their nemesis the Driller Killer. Ah, well.

The film and one of its sequels, Slumber Party Massacre II, were screened courtesy of The Final Girls, a group linking horror and feminism, which I heartily endorse. Their conversation between films touched on such topics as the nudity in the film (a requirement of producer Roger Corman), the relationships between the characters, and their means of fightback, which included a baseball bat, a drill and a large machete. I popped out for some air, so missed the end of the chat.

And then it was back for the sequel, making its UK premiere. It is truly batshit cray-cray. The original killer is now a leather clad, black-booted facial-haired singing and dancing rock god driller killer, something on the order of a hillbilly George Michael. What's more, he's touting a guitar-shaped drill, which in no way highlights the whole phallic symbol thing going on in these films. Oh, No. It was all fun and games until the last shot, which kind of undermined the whole film and left us all going, "Oh, really?" Nevermind. The girls had a band in this film! And they practised in a garage!

The backstory of these films is really fascinating and the way they have sort of crept into the mainstream via much better known films such as Scream and Scary Movie is pretty much par for the course. Female-written and -directed horror films have never got the credit they deserve. SPM is worth making an effort for. And whatever happened to Rita Mae's screenwriting career?

Queer British Art 1861-1967

The unwieldy title contains a wealth of meaning and significance--a major exhibit at Tate Britain with an LGBT subject? A rainbow flag (RIP Gilbert Baker) flying over the venerable house of art on the banks of the Thames? Gluck gazing out defiantly from the hoardings and pamphlets? Wowzers. There is something already contradictory in this exhibit using the word queer in such an august institution.

For what is "queer art"? Art made by self-identified LGBT people? Art made by people who had same-sex leanings? Art with overtones of same-sex desire? I am really not sure having spent some hours in this exhibit, with wildly varying representations. It proceeds from changes in the law that affected gay men--sodomy being the important definition for the law, if not for the queer population. So, we are already looking at parameters that may or may not be relevant to the artists and the contemporary viewer.

But, the art seems to have been included based on what the curator Clare Barlow decided was relevant. Rarely did I look at a work and think, "That's quite good" or "That's terrible". I was looking at the biographical information in the captions to see who the sitter in the painting was or what the "queer" relevance was. It's a very different way of looking at art from the usual. As it happened, some of the works were quite compelling, though I was rather unimpressed with Duncan Grant's several contributions. Sorry, Bloomsbury crowd.

Actually, the best known artists were the least interesting in this context--we've seen Hockney, Bacon and Cahun many times before. They are acknowledged for both their artistic achievements and queerness. It is the lesser known artists who captured my attention, many of them women: Evelyn De Morgan, the duo known as Michael Field and so forth. I found myself asking a question I have posed many times since I began writing about women and culture decades ago: "Why have I never heard of her?" Well, there are many reasons--being written out of history, working in secret or cloaking gender to avoid condemnation.

But, there were some happy surprises. Who knew Kenneth Halliwell was a talented artist? His library books with Joe Orton occupy a case and draw giggles but Halliwell also has a large collage on a wall and it is very impressive. The caption tells the story--shown in 1957, the exhibition was a failure. The story of his life, sadly.

There is some effort at social context--captions question the power relations between white artists and black sitters and between servants and masters who painted them. 

But, given the historical backdrop of this whole exhibit, one of legal and social repression, the art is surprisingly lively and joyful. It is also quite multifaceted--portraits, jewellery and even some artifacts are shown. Is the door of Oscar Wilde's prison cell really art? Or is it a memorial to martyrdom?

I shall finish with the mysterious Sammy who was part of a group of women who explored drag in the early twentieth century. Her photo hangs on a wall in the exhibit but very little is stated about her or her circle. I want to know more about these women.

Flare: Heartland

Two very different films set in the American southwest show the limits set on queer behaviour.

The very powerful documentaryl Southwest of Salem outlines the appalling treatment of four women in San Antonio, Texas convicted of child rape in the 1990s, in part because of a religious panic and in part because of anti-lesbian sentiment: "They think this is what gay people do," one of them explains. "No, it's not." Over a number of years the women discuss their lives and we get to know them through their testimony and that of family members and supporters. Eventually, their case comes to the attention of an advocacy group and the wheels of justice begin to move ever so slowly. But, one is forced to reckon with the tremendous power of hearsay, bigotry, and misogyny that allowed the case to proceed in the first place. Sobering.

Not so with the drama Heartland, set in Oklahoma, as a local girl returns home after the death of her partner to find her hometown and family unchanged and unmoved. Having an affair with her brother's girlfriend does not exactly endear her to her mother, who refuses to even acknowledge the death of her girlfriend. The set-up is fantastic but the film falls apart in the third act with ridiculous over-acting and melodramatic music underscoring the emotion. Oh, dear. Why not just let it flow? I found myself only really rooting for the unfortunate interloping girlfriend rather than the annoying family. She had a lucky escape.

Flare: Tales of the City

As I have perused the Flare titles available as online screeners, I couldn't help but notice how many originate in San Francisco, a city dear to my heart as I lived there for a significant time in the 1990s. Much of what I knew is gone now, so I have heard, but I always sit up when I see SF locations in a film.

Naturally, I was intrigued to see a documentary on writer Armistead Maupin, he of Tales of the City fame, directed by Jennifer Kroot. The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin is a fine encapsulation of his extraordinary life, from growing up with "good blood" in the south, to serving in Vietnam, meeting Nixon in the White House, and of course his eventual arrival in SF, coming out and becoming a famous writer. Not that it is told in chronological order. Rather, themes emerge, signposted by some nifty animation, and famous talking heads such as Amy Tan, Sir Ian McKellen and Laura Linney chime in with their thoughts. One of my own thoughts was how extraordinarily privileged a life Maupin has led: not everybody gets invited to do half the things he has. But in the end even he is racked with insecurities and a need to find his own "logical family", as opposed to the biological one from which he felt so alienated. The city has certainly given him that, as well as inspiration for his books. It was a pleasure to view.

Not so much with Snapshot, which could have been a very suspenseful queer take-off on Hitchcock, but ended up being more extended sex scenes interrupted by some plot. I was quite creeped out in the first 15 minutes as photographer Charlie stumbles in on a couple having sex before a terrible murder takes place and she realises she has some photographic evidence. But clearly director Shine Louise Houston is more interested in the sexual shenanigans of voyeur Charlie and her new squeeze Danny than actually unravelling the mystery, which kind of evaporates half-way through. What a disappointment. But, even here sun-dappled San Francisco looks lovey. Nice setting, shame about the story.

Flare: Our Love Story

Films featuring love at first sight are common currency and Flare had its share. One drama I found quite enjoyable was Our Love Story, a Korean film featuring a mature art student who finds love in a junkyard. Definitely a meet-cute. The story that follows features copious late-night drinking, a clueless parent and curiously vague supporting characters, but the two leads are impressive, especially Sang-lee Hee in the thankless part of the endearingly dorky artist, Yoon-ju. Not so keen on the non-ending.

I was much less impressed by Below Her Mouth, a Canadian film starring a supposed super model. Nice cheek bones. Shame about the acting. The filmmakers clearly wanted to foreground the sex and forgot to write a decent story and I found it extremely tedious with shallow characters I didn't care about. Nice lighting and the blue jumper in the (again) non-ending scene was quite cool, too. Why can filmmakers not end their films properly?

Flare: Signature Move

I am starting at the end, as this was the closing night film. This has been one of those festivals which I attended on several days but didn't actually see many films on-site, and so I shall be using the online service to review titles in the coming days. This one I did catch, however, as it was my must-see of the festival.

So, to Signature Move, billed as the latest from director Jennifer Reeder. And indeed she is the director, but the authorship of the film lies more with star Fawzia Mirza, as she co-wrote it and it draws on some of her experiences as a Pakistani-American woman in love with a Mexican-American woman. Mirza, who delivered a hilarious Q&A with Reeder at the early screening on Sunday, explained that the film was inspired by her interactions with her ex-girlfriend. Whether this is the co-writer Lisa Donato (absent) or not I am not sure. But, it is a timely film, given the incredibly rancorous debates over US immigration policy and the place of hyphenate Americans at present. Throw in the lesbian angle and this must rate as Donald Trump's worst nightmare.

But, the heck with him, because this is a very, very funny film. As Zaynab buzzes around Chicago on her motorbike, in her capacity as an immigration lawyer, she meets Alma at a bar and they get extremely drunk and spend the night together. But, Zaynab is not quite as together as she makes out, and she keeps the relationship secret from her mother (Shabana Azmi), while trying to work out how serious Alma is about the two of them. Oh, and while also training to be a lucha libre competitor. Audrey Francis is a scream as the deadpan wrestling coach.

There is so much to recommend this film, from Mirza's throwaway lines to the attention to location and culture, it seems a bit churlish to criticise, but I really didn't feel the mother's story was handled very well. In contrast to the quickfire pacing of Alma and Zaynab's scenes, the camera tended to settle on Parveen and linger there for way longer than seemed necessary. As most of her interactions were with her unseen soap operas, I found these scenes dragged badly, weighing the film down. Having cast a legendary actor in the role, possibly the filmmakers felt they needed to give her ample screentime, but it really unbalanced the film. Interestingly, filming Ms. Azmi proved a challenge to Reeder, who described the experience vividly as trying to approach a silver-backed gorilla without making eye contact--Ms. Azmi would not read the lines as written and basically directed herself. Well, that's showbiz.

Reeder and Mirza exhibited such chemistry on-stage, it really enlivened the occasion and I do hope they collaborate again some time. Thanking the audience for embracing "our little lumpy lesbian film", Reeder and Mirza showered lucky recipients with film merch, spreading the love from Chicago to London.

Flare: Queering Love, Queering Hormones

This was a new experience for me as my first visit to Flare this year was for my own screening. Over the last year I have been busily shooting, processing and editing footage for my film Love/Sick, a reflection on my experience of solitude and illness. Saturday was its world premiere as part of the larger QLQH project. We had the first screening of the day in NFT3, which was a thrill for me as I have been attending screenings at the Southbank Centre since my student days in the 1980s. To screen there was a huge privilege.

I had a chance to check the file played well and then sat down with the other artists and some guests, including my friend B., for some herbal tea to calm the nerves. Then off we trooped just before 12 to the venue, which was pretty full. Officially, it was sold out but there were a few spare seats next to me, from some of the co-sponsors that didn't turn up. I was second up after Nina Wakeford's live performance accompanying her footage of Greenham Common via artefacts and flowers gathered from the peace garden. I was one of the people who tagged along on a field trip to the Common last year, which was very exciting, and I think there may have been a few frames I shot, but I am not sure. She had a very complicated set-up of three screens behind her mic, and one of them did not play properly, but none of us realised it at the time. There were audible chuckles as she listed the sexual orientations given by women who lived at the camps: Lesbian, Lesbian, Het, and then there orientations when they gave interviews later: Lesbian, Lesbian, Lesbian, Lesbian. Hmmm.

My film was a digital output, so much less complex in exhibition and I watched with some anxiety, trying to sense the reception in the room to what is rather a difficult watch, as there is some explicit surgery footage. My heart rate crept up as a certain moment approached and then I calmed down.

Third up was Renee Vaughan Sutherland's much lighter in tone film which is a queering of Hollywood cinema's most cherished tropes of finding one's prince. A dazzling array of processed images featured, including several views of Julia Roberts' retracting tongue from Pretty Woman. This drew laughs every time. She had also soaked the film in hormones, thus influencing the fabric of the film itself, something she discussed in the Q&A. I had been especially nervous about the Q&A which followed our three films, but felt much better when we were on the stage and the feedback I got was I managed to be articulate. I recall I spoke about embracing DIY and the imperfect, so that covers a lot of ground.

The second half of the programme featured films more concerned with science and history. First up was the collaboration of Juliet Jacques and Ker Wallwork, which features beautifully wrought sculptures and narration on the experience of working out one's gender identity and its relationship to hormones. Next up was Sam Ashby's drama-doc staging an unfilmed script by Elizabeth Montagu on blackmail and gay men, which is quite timely as this year marks 50 years since the partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality in the UK. The drama was played against items from LGBT archives, including some T-shirts I remember well from Lesbian Avengers and other activist groups. The concluding film was Jacob Love's dual screen exploration of chemsex and ADHD, an at times abstract and at times figurative depiction of cascading stimuli. I was struck by how many different paths we all took and everyone was really articulate in discussing the work. I hope there will be more screenings and opportunities to discuss the project, which I found fascinating to work on.

Then it was time to celebrate, which took most of the day.

Wide Open Space

It's been awhile, even longer than I intended as Google doesn't seem to want to let me log into my account! But anyway... so many films and other cultural things to share.

Most recently, I watched Certain Women, written and directed by Kelly Reichardt, which prompted me to ponder the slowness of cinema. These days I find myself becoming quite impatient with slow-burning films. I was unimpressed with Moonlight, in part because it moved so glacially, though I had other problems with it, most notably in the characterisations.

But, with Certain Women, I could accept the aesthetic. Reichardt is known for her attention to the minutiae of characters' existence, and in Certain Women, we find this multiplied by three, as there are three distinct plotlines involving characters played by Laura Dern, Michelle Williams and Lily Gladstone, living in the wide open spaces of Montana. I felt the Williams plotline was the weakest and added nothing to the film. But, the first and third worked for me, and even if I got a bit restless watching Gladstone's Rancher repeatedly feeding her horses, trailed by a yippy dog, the repeated actions made sense: here is a creature of routine who has little human contact. When she meets Kristen Stewart's law student-tutor, her routine is disrupted and she can dream of other modes of being. When this doesn't quite happen, the sadness is possible.

Dern's branch of the story features some jet-black comedy as her lawyer attempts to help a client going off the rails, even to the extent that she is sent into a building where he is holding a security guard hostage. Their exchanges are bitterly humourous.

So, here we have rather desperate human beings attempting to connect with one another, with fractious results. Reichardt's view of humanity may be bleak but it is also beautiful.

End of Year (Finally)

Pfft. What to say about 2016? So many traumatic events and deaths. But for me also some exciting creative projects. At the start of the year I promised to let my imagination wander where my corporeal being could not. And that proved to be the case. Currently recuperating, I am quietly optimistic 2017 SIMPLY MUST be much better.

In the meantime, I have been churning through the many online streaming services and can recommend overlooked films such as Blue Jay, This Is Where I Leave You, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (No, really!).

Here's hoping out of the s*&t of 2016 will grow beautiful mushrooms.

Disappearing Women

Over the last few years news reports have provided us with reminders of the dangers of being an investigative journalist, as the cases of Anna Politkovskaya, Marie Colvin and Veronica Guerin attest--all women who were neutralised when their reporting proved too dangerous to the powers-that-be. Many, many other women's names are less well known than these high-profile examples, as the list at the end of the short film, Blue Pen, shows. It went too quickly for me to write them down, but the litany of women with mostly Asian names who died doing their duty shows how deadly a profession journalism can be for women.

An experimental short highlighting the less well known journalist Dorothy Lawrence who "disappeared" after World War I, Blue Pen uses a split screen and voiceover to quote Lawrence, as well as sceptical male figures who were not so keen on her going to the front. Where she went and what she did is not really explained. Nor is her "disappearance", except we know that she ended up in an asylum in her later years. It's a curious piece, part educational film, part installation in waiting. I imagine the staginess is down to it being adapted from a theatrical piece. I found it oddly detached from its subject, although an actress portrays her onscreen at times. I wonder if a documentary on the subject might have had more emotional power. But, if those names at the end become better known, it will be a good thing.

Punk.London?

I was very excited earlier in the year to learn of the Punk.London commemoration of the birth of punk. I haven't been to many of the exhibits, but have found them of varying quality. Still, there's time to revise that opinion. And of course there's the whole question as to whether punk should be commercialised in this way.

So far, I've been to the rather skimpy British Library exhibit which appears to really want to be a celebration of Sex Pistols and The Clash, while grudgingly acknowledging there were other bands. Viv Albertine's guerrilla intervention is much appreciated.

Albertine also turned up a couple of weeks ago on Mary Anne Hobbs's show, offering her views on failure, which I found quite interesting. It's not something one often hears acknowledged, much less celebrated and I didn't recall that as a theme in her memoirs, but apparently it was. Something of a punk philosopher is Viv Albertine. 

I was pleasantly surprised to discover my own borough is getting in on the act, with Punk Waltham Forest featuring exhibits and talks coming up this month, including a visit by Gina Birch to the local library. The revelation that Birch and Helen McCookerybook are making a film about women in punk was the highpoint of the BL exhibit. Can't wait for that to see the light of day.

Finding Dory

Yesterday evening I found myself in the extremely plush Picturehouse Central with my friend L. watching the Disney Pixar release Finding Dory. I had never seen the film that spawned this sequel. Nor have I ever to my knowledge seen a Pixar film. They seemed aimed at kids and I wasn't too interested. But, Finding Dory had good reviews and I was in the mood for some undemanding laughs. And it starred Ellen De Generes as the central character, a blue tang fish, thus ticking a Bechdel-Wallace test box. So.... in I went.

It wasn't too hard to pick up on the plot, though I needed the steer the film provides that it picks up one year after Finding Nemo, with Nemo's dad Marlin proving to be Dory's guide/father figure. Dory's most interesting characteristic, aside from her very disturbing bulging eyes, is her short term memory loss, which provides the film's chief complication. How can she search for her missing parents when she can't remember more than a few seconds back? It is unusual for mainstream films to foreground any kind of disability and this one handles it pretty well. The parents, seen in flashback, try to reassure Dory and also take steps to make it easier to find them, which proves useful. Despite their worried expressions and glances, they clearly want her to make the most of herself. And Marlin losing his temper with her is also easy to understand, though he tries to make amends.

Dory, for me, was a somewhat difficult character. Her age is uncertain. She is meant to be somewhat grown up and is voiced by an adult, but her behaviour is extremely childlike, as she constantly wanders, asking strangers for help and dreaming wistfully of finding the parents she forgot. I guess this makes her easier for kids to relate to, but I found her helplessness grated on me over time. Of course, the mouse house wants its characers to be cute and ingratiating, but it did get to be a bit much, especially as the "finding home" storyline was laid on with increasing unsubtlety.

Thank heavens for Hank the septopus, who turns up in a marine lab to help extricate Dory from captivity. As voiced by Ed O'Neill, he is gruff and gnarled, and desperate to reach the marine centre in Cleveland for his retirement. The character is used to very clever effect, as he is able to camouflage himself in the most unlikely situations and the scene in which he and Dory take over a shipment of fish, with him at the wheel is one of the funniest things I've seen in ages.

 The sealife breakout is quite radical in its own way, as the characters resist the centre's entreaty (as voiced by Sigourney Weaver!) of "Rescue, Rehabilitate, Release" to force their own liberation. This is when the film really took off, its family values homillies expanding to encompass a whole community.

Whitstable Biennale 2016

This is a bit late, as I attended opening day last Saturday and the festival closes tomorrow. Nevertheless, it's always a pleasure to visit the lovely seaside town of Whitstable and take in its arty offerings, this year with my chum, C.

beach chairs; photo: Val Phoenix

In addition to the cultural pleasures, I was on a mission to visit Mystic Chips, celebrated as something of a touchstone by my friend, B., who couldn't make it this year, though we did attend in 2014. Her memory had converted Mr. Chips to Mystic Chips, and I promised her I would make the pilgrimage. In the end, eating chips on the beach while watching the tide go out and finding various crawly creatures in the retreating surf was a blissful interlude in the trip.

Of the works visited in one full day my highlight was Louise Martin's film, Lossy Ecology, on show at the Museum, which coincidentally was also the site for my 2014 favourite. Martin's elegant, beautifully realised work darts from one subject to another, from an acrobat to flowers on a rostrum, puzzling the viewer but making connections to her subject of embodiment, of interest to me as I am currently working on a project also combining art and science. C. and I agreed we were not clear on the connection to autism but thought it was a gorgeous film. One annoyance: not enough headphones to go around, necessary to hear the ambient soundtrack which added much to the work.

Viewing conditions proved to be something of a theme on this visit. Trish Scott's beach hut installation Medium was an audio work experienced while seated in blackout conditions, except when someone pulled back the curtain and audience members were exposed, blinking, to the outside world, while the would-be listener gaped in astonishment at being in such close proximity to the audience. Many backed out while others pushed in, disturbing the ambience of the event, which was a very clever multi-channel work with a great deal of humour not always present in contemporary art. Scott had contacted numerous mediums to ask what they thought would be her work for the festival. She had then voiced their replies, which were played out through speakers in the space, creating a delightful sound art performance. Meeting Scott later, I learned that she had intended for only three people to be in the hut at one time, to preserve the intimacy.

So, not what the artist intended. But, what did Tessa Lynch intend? We never even got into her performance of Green Belt? The door of the venue rose, the audience stood in anticipation, pushing into the Boatshed. And then we stopped, as the artist sat on the floor and spoke into an under-powered microphone, some kind of tablet in her hand. C. and I looked at each other. "What is she saying? Can you see her?" The performance was scheduled to last 75 minutes, but we left after about five, frustrated at not being able to hear or see anything. It was later suggested to me that she may have deliberately created a frustrating experience. Hmm, I though. Did I miss the point? Possibly.

On the other side of challenging was Marcia Farquhar's jamboree, Rooty Tooty, including Jem Finer on guitar and Dempsey, ex-Dolly Mixture, on vocals. The artist's theme was ice cream and she handed out free samples to various children and held up signs with lyrics, while doing some goofy dancing. Truthfully, I was not clear what the significance of ice cream was, but it was a very enjoyable performance and I became fascinated with some tiny birds flitting about and chirping loudly in the background. Sue Jones, director of the festival, suggested they might be some type of sparrow, possibly hedge sparrows. They contributed greatly to the feelgood factor the day, as did the weather, which was hazy the entire day, sea and sky merging at the horizon, which was a bit disorienting but added to the mysticism of the experience.

Whitstable Biennale continues through 12 June. 

Mustang

If ever a film rested in the spaces between its hypenated words it's Mustang, a "comedy-drama" according to the reviews I'd seen. Intrigued by the idea of five sisters being the leads, I went to see it today and emerged shattered. It's comedy if the idea of girls being so oppressed they have to resort to locking themselves in their own home is funny. There are moments of levity, but it is a gruelling watch--part family drama, part suspense thriller, much coming of age awkwardness and a lot of gender oppression. I would recommend it, but a trigger warning would not go amiss.

What is most interesting about the film is the time it takes to let the audience get to know the girls, who live with extended relatives somewhere in Turkey 1,000 km from cosmospolitan Istanbul, the dream destination for anyone who doesn't enjoy living a rigidly controlled life where modern comforts are locked away, lest they lead to degeneration. The youngest, Lale, gradually emerges as the audience's eyes and ears and unexpected heroine as she seeks to escape the constrictions. When she slams a door and announces, "We are playing hard to get!", it's hard not to raise a fist in solidarity. A surefooted debut from director Deniz Gamze Ergüven, Mustang lingers long in the memory.

We can't compete

Been inundated with things this month and lo! It's May. So, time to get back to blogging.

This week I ventured over to no.w.here artists' space to see films by Deirdre Logue and Allyson Mitchell, visiting from Toronto, where they run the Feminist Art Gallery or FAG, "an irresistible acronym", as one of their pieces had it, drawing a laugh from the audience.

The programme interspersed Allyson and Deirdre's films, as although the collaborate in art and life, they don't actually make films together, which is interesting. The post-screening Q&A didn't really touch on this, though it did touch on how they keep their public and private lives separate, when they are so entangled--FAG is based at their house, for instance, and they seek to make it an open space, where many under-represented groups can find a platform. How, moderator Karen Mirza wondered, did that work? Mitchell and Logue allowed that they were still working through that, as FAG has put them on the edge of bankruptcy and it hasn't proven the seed they quite hoped. As with Ladyfest, they hoped others would take the model and transplant it. Logue and Mitchell differed on the success of this mission.

They have very different styles, which is apparent in the films shown. Logue's were very autobiographical and often quite intense. Tape, which drew many comments, is quite visceral and disturbing in its presentation, with a discordant popping soundtrack that punctuates Logue's efforts to tape and untape her face. Mitchell's work tends to be quite playful, with elements of kitsch and satire. Intro to FAG, which I have quoted above includes the refrain "We can't compete/we won't compete" in a distorted vocal that runs over quite a catchy dance track. I pondered what it means to not compete. Not compete with other women? With the dominant structures? Other galleries? It sounds like a very feminist ideology. And one you can dance too, as well.

I have read Mitchell's article on Deep Lez, as well as attending the duo's Killjoy's Kastle installation and talk at Flare two years ago. Their film oeuvre offers additional insight into their practice.

Flare: Feelings Are Facts

The last few years have offered a range of material on dancer/choreographer/filmmaker Yvonne Rainer. Now comes a documentary on her, Feelings Are Facts: the Life of Yvonne Rainer, courtesy of director Jack Walsh. Taking her 1966 dance piece Trio A as its starting point, the film recounts Rainer's creative output, only pausing midway through to discuss her life, an odd decision, I felt. The interviews with Rainer and a host of luminaries, from Carolee Schneeman, B. Ruby Rich and others, are set in sumptuous rooms with fireplaces and richly coloured walls. I thought they all must live in fabulous mansions until I saw the interview locations credited at the end. Ah, the duplicity of film.

Rainer is a fascinating subject and seeing her on screen, I marvelled she is in her 80s, now quite proudly out and evincing a weathered butchness in her dotage. Throughout the film, she outlines a range of credos, from working with her own limited body to her No Manifesto to her use of pedestrian movement. But, she is adamant she is no theorist. Another critic offers a rejoinder. Rainer's work, she says, is choreography as theory.

Flare: Family Drama

As I did last year, I shall continue reviewing films from Flare, thanks to the online screening service available for a bit. Today I shall look at some films charting personal dramas.

One of the films that earned repeated screenings at the festival was Akron, prompting me to give it a look. It certainly pushes some populist buttons: two hunky jocks hook up in the US midwest, but then are torn apart by tensions between their families. Christopher and Benny have a meet-cute on a football field while playing "mudball" and then quickly get together. Refreshingly, the drama is not because they are gay, but rather improbably that they were witnesses to a death some years back, something their families can never forget. Aside from the ridiculous premise, it's actually a pretty decent film, with some juicy roles for the two actresses playing their mothers. And it's unusual to see a Mexican-American as the lead character, with his family not portrayed as homophobic. It's a bit neat and clean for me, but an unusual mix of first love and melodrama.

Almost entirely in the melodrama corner is the French short Between Silences, which is a rather drawn out encounter between two lovers, before one threatens to leave. It took me ages to figure out this was an adaptation of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, and that the drama was in the power struggle between the two protagonists. Didn't really float my boat, but Fassbinder fans should take note.

A film featuring no dialogue whatsoever is the curious Trouser Bar, directed by Kristen Bjorn and with a script credited to no-one. A series of gentlemen arrive at the titular location sporting awful wigs (to suggest the 1970s), eye each other up, stroke some trousers and proceed to get it on in the changing rooms, all to a 1970s porny soundtrack. While not the target audience, I found it rather funny and silly, especially when other gentlemen arrive to peer through the windows, among them Julian Clary and Nigel Havers!! Online research reveals the gentleman responsible for the script. Well, well.

On a more innocent note, there were tonnes of films featuring kids this year, among them the Heathers-like Little Doll, in which dorky girl Elenore falls in with the beautiful but aloof Alex. At first, all goes well and it seems as if the two will form a band. But, then Elenore comes face-to-face with Alex's circle of friends, including a very jealous girl who looks about five years older. Anyway, it doesn't end well. Kids can be cruel.

On a more positive note, the gender-queer heroine of Take Your Partners, Ollie, finds a way of creating her chosen style and observing school regulations, all while charming the object of her affections. Result! If only all of life were so simple to negotiate.

Flare: La belle saison

The closing night film at Flare was La belle saison (Summertime) (dir Catherine Corsini), which I'd seen some weeks back at a press screening. At the time I found it initially dazzling, losing its verve mid-way through. But, a lovely film. I was struck, though, reading a Twitter comment after the screening last night that it lacked a "lesbian happy ending". Hmm, I thought, it didn't end badly for the protagonists, did it? (spoiler alert) Nobody died.

But, what the viewer probably meant is that the two protagonists, Carole, a sophisticated feminist activist, and Delphine, a younger farm girl, don't end the film by running into one another's arms. True. But, this film is largely about recognising the specificity of existence. Aside from the age difference, the two women come from quite distant backgrounds and the film is set in 1971, when social mores were being prodded from many directions. Geography is important in this film, with Delphine constantly commenting on how different things are, how she's never been this far from home, as she soaks up the vibrant energy of the cause and the thrilling women she is meeting.

For me, the best scene is when the women decide to spring a gay man from an institution where he's been sent to be "cured". The film palls when it deposits Delphine back on the farm to care for her ailing father. Then it becomes more of a family melodrama with typical quandaries: will Delphine tell her family she and Carole are lovers? How will they react? I found this a bit drama by numbers, in contrast to the Paris section where the women are meeting, debating, planning and acting. The ending, by the way, finds the women some years on knowing quite a bit more about themselves and what they need in life. So, it may not be a Hollywood happy ending, but it's a pretty good resolution.

Flare: Horror Show

It's been a striking feature of Flare how many horror films are appearing, something I've noticed for the last couple of years. It may simply be (as someone told me) that it's because one of the programmers, Michael Blyth, is partial to horror. Or maybe there is something inherently queer about horror. It's something I've been thinking about, as my own comic horror is about to swing into production. In any case, I kept an eye on the spooky offerings at this year's festival. I have yet to catch up with Closet Monster, which will be out later this year. But, I sat down to watch Sisters of the Plague with much enthusiasm. And rose 73 minutes later thinking, "File under 'What the Fuck?'"

Hmmm. Where to start? Well, it's a first-time director Jorge Torres-Torres, who also co-wrote. It stars Josephine Decker, herself an acclaimed director, though I have not seen her films so had no predisposition toward or against the film. It's just an ungodly mess. No scares. No atmosphere, though it's set in New Orleans, for cripes' sake! Decker plays a tour guide who lives with her girlfriend and her alcoholic, dying father and wants to find out once and for all how her mother died, all those years ago. Beset by nightmarish visions (wisps of black smoke and crap bubbly screen effects), she consults a psychic. Her relationship with her girlfriend unravels, blah, blah. I could have cried with boredom. The last 15 minutes made no sense and I overheard other audience members commenting on the sound design. Yes, it's that bad.

Much more entertaining is Sauna the Dead, a well executed concept short of zombies invading a gay male sauna. The rather obnoxious lead, Jacob, tries to evade them, eventually teaming up with another client he initially shunned. And there is a heartwarming ending, utterly not in keeping with the previous 18 minutes of towel-clad zombies lurching around the cubicles tearing into flesh, which I found hilarious.

Not at all horror-oriented, but rather downbeat is the much heralded Tangerine, which I finally saw and had mixed feelings about. Cleverly shot, brilliantly acted, but rather short on sexual politics. Two transgendered sex workers, Alexandra and Sin-Dee, roam the streets of L.A. in search of the woman Sin-Dee's boyfriend Chester is meant to be seeing behind her back. There are many, many laugh-out-loud moments, usually from the mouths of Alexandra (Mya Taylor) or Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) and a bit of a less interesting plot involving an Armenian cab driver whose mother-in-law has come to stay. But, my main misgivings were about the film's treatment of the so-called love rival, Dinah (Mickey O'Hagan), a white cis-gendered sex worker who spends much of the film being abused by either Sin-Dee or Chester.

Is it funny to see women beating up other women? Is it hilarious to see them cutting each other down, seeking male approval? Do we just watch and let it go because well, that's how shit is? Where is the revenge film in which the sex workers gang up on the pimp and fuck him up? I'd definitely watch that one. This film isn't it, though it does pay careful attention to the lives of the two protagonists, which is something.

Flare: Young Love, Old Love

One of the best films I've seen in the high school canon is the Israeli film, Barash (dir Michal Vinik), featuring a trio of teenaged girls who roam the streets of their town, bunking off school and smoking various substances. Then a new girl, Dana, turns up and they let her join their gang. The titular character, Naama Barash (everyone goes by surnames), falls hard for the newcomer, attracted by her brash attitude and partially shaven hair. What really stands out for me are the minutiae of Naama's existence, her exasperation with her parents' squabbles, her detachment from her older sister, who is in the army and her infatuation with the mysterious Dana, who represents something else: freedom, non-conformity and sexual allure. How it all unwinds is interesting, but the camerawork is exquisite, the performances captivating and the dialogue quite witty. Naama and Dana checking out their schoolmates and vowing to offer their services to sexually enlighten them is marvellously bold.

The course of love doesn't run smooth in the Israeli short Words Unsaid, as best mates Danny and May get a little too close on the former's hen night and need to renegotiate their relationship. I found it disconcerting as the lead actresses so closely resemble Toni Collette and Rachel Griffiths from Muriel's Wedding, which is quite funny. Watching hetero pre-wedding rituals is enlightening, but the film goes a bit melodramatic for me.

As a tonic, one could try out the US short Partners, in which a lesbian couple enacts a full cycle of dysfunctionality in six minutes, waking up, arguing over sex and bringing up untold historical baggage before heading out for a juice. Laugh out loud funny.

And just to show you are never too old to find love, there is the Spanish short, The Orchid, one of this year's Five Films for Freedom, in which an elderly man attempts to get through to his son in Berlin to share his big news. A big "Awwwwww!" is in order. This film is available to watch online through 27 March.

Flare: A Woman of Words

I've had things going on, so haven't spent as much time at Flare as I would like, but I hope this will be the first of a flurry of reviews from the LGBT film festival in London.

To start with, there is Welcome to This House, which I prioritised because: 1) it's about Elizabeth Bishop and 2) it's made by Barbara Hammer. Well, what a coupling, eh? And it starts off well enough with Hammer nosing about (she remains off-camera, save one reflection) in Bishop's childhood home in Nova Scotia. As one interviewee makes clear, the poet was someone who never found home. And that's the premise: Bishop's various living places and her relationship to them, taking Hammer on a journey from Canada to Brazil and various places in the USA.

In part, it works, as Hammer can focus her camera on small details in each house, from furniture Bishop purchased to things she had on her wall, recounted by a range of interviewees who are not particularly well introduced. I found myself stopping the film to Google various folk to understand why they were picked (possible as I watched it in online form!). Thus, the running time jumped from 79 mins to almost double that, as I found myself increasingly frustrated at the storyline emerging. How did Elizabeth end up in Nova Scotia? How long was she in Seattle? Why wasn't there a stop in New York?

It's described as an "impressionistic" documentary, which gives Hammer licence to skip around and her focus is clearly on Bishop's love life as much as her homes, which is a refreshing counter-balance to earlier biographies of her which completely ignored her queerness. What a writer! There is a generous serving of her writing, both her poems, as wel as excerpts from letters and journal entries. But, far from featuring interviews with former lovers as the accompanying notes claim, the interviews are with academics, a few male former students and a housekeeper. Unless I missed something, no lovers. Perhaps they are no longer with us. But, it does rather reek of tittle-tattle. In the end, I found it a bit unsatisfying. What emerged was a fascinating woman not quite given her due.

Discomfiture

As I've been spending a bit more time at home recently, I've been watching some DVDs lent to me by my cineaste friend, B., whose collection features a fair few under-appreciated female directors. So far, I've worked my way through the moody French Innocence, the No Wave-influenced Smithereens and the British microfeature Gypo. All deal to to greater or lesser with people not quite relating or getting along, making a feature of awkwardness and discomfiture, in contrast with typical Hollywood fare which insists on the happy ending.

Innocence, directed by Lucile Hadzihalilovic, is a curious beast, a horror film that never quite warms up to be scary, a mood piece set in an uncertain time and location, at a secluded girls school, where the pupils are so contained, so regimented, that they seem to be self-regulating, with a few elderly staff members popping in to prepare their meals. There are also two teachers (one a young Marion Cotillard) who may or may not be a couple, who offer ballet instruction laced with lessons such as the importance of conforming and following rules. My mind kept flashing to historical regimes such as the Nazis, especially when the girls were put their paces in front of a mysterious head mistress who wanted to see their gums and other physical features. Were they being prepared for some type of eugenics programme? The ending seemed to be a total cop-out, and I found the film didn't quite reach the heights it could have.

By contrast Susan Seidelman's early film, Smithereens, is bursting with energy, action and seedy New York locations as it charts the misadventures of its anti-heroine Wren. Early on in the film she tells anyone who will listen that she is starting a band. But, she then spends most of the film pinballing between two unsuitable men, the mid-Western dude who lives in a van and the would-be rock star. Why, oh why does she never start the band? Why does Seidelman let her run riot for most of the film and then seem to punish her at the end? It almost seemed like she lost her nerve in creating such an unconventional lead.

Finally, there's the British low budget feature, Gypo, directed by Jan Dunn, which is actually quite timely, dealing as it does with refugees who find themselves unwelcome in an English seaside town. Interestingly, it's told from three viewpoints, including a husband and wife, and a refugee. The story really comes to life in the third version, told by the refugee, and moves into a higher gear. I quite enjoyed it, though the early scenes of the squabbling family felt like they went on too long. Some dramas are a bit too close to home, but cinema can be at its most powerful when it makes us feel uncomfortable.

Carolee Schneemann: Unforgivable

I have been thinking about the day-to-day, the routine, the quotidian, everyday life. I have been thinking about how context and form can reshape the banal into the beautiful. I have been thinking about how critics condemned Carolee Schneemann's experimental Super 8 films for their indulgence and personal clutter and how they really are quite fine pieces of work. The current exhibit, Unforgivable, at Work Gallery has ten of her films on view, in digital form. My friend B. and I took in three of them in pieces, interspersed with cups of hot chocolate, chatter and a meal, making for a very fine afternoon.

The film that really spoke to me was the longest, Kitch's Last Meal, which has been described as Schneemann recording her elderly cat declining over many, many meals, but that does the film a disservice. It is a meditation on death and does show the cat in a state of decline, but it is much more than that. Schneemann records her life, the cat's, her farmhouse, her partner of the time, Anthony McCall over a long stretch of time (in this viewing 53:47 over several reels), from 1973-1976. She also comments on institutional sexism, gender roles, and her own approach to art-making in a way that is fascinating, moving and profound. She also dances, makes preserves, and works with her film reels, and goes on car journeys. Her daily life makes up the film, which is in itself a defiant riposte to the art establishment that dismissed women's lives as unworthy of art.

I ponder all this as I face a period of confinement and reduced mobility. I am in the process of making a film and wondering how I will do it in these circumstances. I hope to take some inspiration from Schneemann and let my imagination wander where my corporeal being cannot.

Unforgivable contines at Work Gallery, London until 11 March.