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.

Year-end Thoughts

It's been a tumultuous year for me, one in which I retreated to offline space to ponder personal vulnerabilities, but I still managed to venture out to enjoy the plethora of culture on offer. Here is a quick round-up of things that made a big impression on me.

FILM

Girlhood

I saw quite a few films I never got around to reviewing, including A Girl Walks Home Alone, Dear White People and A Girl at My Door. Tops for belly laughs would have to be the genre-mashing Dyke Hard. However, for films that made a big and lasting impression, my two favourites would be Girlhood and Carol, both of which I reviewed. 

ART

The Brighton Festival, guest-curated by Ali Smith, offered many delights, including Agnes Varda's installation and Gauge. I also enjoyed Bridget Riley's exhibit at the De La Warr, her intricate drawings deconstructed, yet still mesmerising to the untrained eye. There are still a few more days to see the survey of work by Emily Jacir at the Whitechapel. I was most intrigued by her detective/archaeological/archival retrieval of the life of the assassinated writer, Wael Zuaiter.

For me, personally, my highlights were having 1/3 of a retrospective at Wotever DIY Film Festival, starting work on my next film, the contemporary B-movie, Lactasia, and enjoying some glorious days out at the seaside in Brighton, Bexhill and Folkestone.

Onward, 2016.

Carol Soundtrack

Well, here's a thing. Having become rather obsessed with the music from Carol, I have found a performance the composer Carter Burwell did at the Middleburg Film Festival! Most interesting to hear his views about how the music articulates things the characters can't.

Carol

Carol

Or Oscar for Ms. Blanchett!

Perhaps getting ahead of myself. I headed into this preview screening at the BFI full of trepidation. Would Todd Haynes mess it up, overstylising his adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's 1950s lesbian-themed novel, lavish on his box of cinematic tricks and miss the wood for the trees? Thankfully, No. Haynes hits it out of the park, as we used to say, back in the old neighbourhood. That neighbourhood was slightly north of Manhattan, seen here in all its sepia-toned loveliness, a time when men wore hats and women like Cate Blanchett's Carol wore gloves. And what gloves! Those gloves, so artlessly left on the counter of Therese's (Rooney Mara) department store counter, prove so alluring that she sweeps them up, takes them home and eventually posts them to their owner who promptly reciprocates by phoning her on the shop floor and inviting her to lunch. As you do. And so it begins.

Their romance, teased out through home visits, car journeys to New Jersey and eventually a rather unexpected road trip to Chicago (!) brings the older, wealthier Carol into the orbit of the younger, breathlessly naive Therese, so green she doesn't know how to order at a restaurant, much less define her sexual identity. Blanchett's indefatigable tranche of meaningful looks, hair tosses and the occasional pat on the shoulder is a delight to watch. One envies Therese, for how can she resist?

Despite having read the book many years ago, I didn't recall many plot details and agonised over how the story would play out, as Carol is put through the wringer by her soon-to-be-ex-husband, who is keen to punish her for leaving him and uses their daughter as payback. Carol and Therese's relationship alters as the balance of power shifts, and it is also a lovely touch to see that Carol has an ex-lover who remains a loyal friend, so rare in mainstream films that isolate lesbian relationships. I was enthralled, my one gripe being the sex scenes seemed a bit porny, as seen through a male lens. Generally, though, the tone of the film is just right, not so in thrall to period detail that it forgets the characters or their very powerful emotions.

Suffragette

Finally, finally, finally I caught up with this film depicting the struggle of British women for the vote some 100 years ago, and by an accident of timing, on US Election Day of all days. I have been prepping by reading up on Sylvia Pankhurst, the radical activist branch of the famous family. Ironically, Sylvia does not appear in the film, and Emmeline's much vaunted appearance (courtesy of the venerable Meryl Streep) amounts to one striking speech and then a quick getaway.

A curious beast, this Suffragette. The lead character is a fictionalised launderess in Bethnal Green, played by Carey Mulligan, who is radicalised both by her grinding poverty and social inequities, as well as her associations with suffrage agitators, including Mrs. Pankhurst. Making a working-class woman the protagonist is to be applauded, but in fact, Mrs. Pankhurst was not at all interested in class struggle and specifically withdrew her WSPU organisation from the East End. It was her daughter Sylvia who was devoted to getting the East End involved in the struggle, who made common cause with the nascent Labour Party and who had a life-long intersectional political outlook. Her acknowledgement in Suffragette is limited to one comment by a male character that "Even Sylvia doesn't approve of the violence." No, she didn't, but she had a lot more to offer than that.

Well, what is in the film? Several real-life suffragettes, including the martyred Emily Wilding Davison (Natalie Press), who flits in and out of the film, arriving in a prison scene and departing via her confrontation with the King's horse at the Derby. In between, we learn precisely nothing about her politics, her life, her reasoning. Nothing except that she hands Maud a book she has received from the suffragette/pharmacist Edith Ellyn (a delightfully arch Helena Bonham Carter), who I am intrigued to learn was a real person. Must read up on her.

While I got fired up watching the women venting their spleen by smashing shop windows in Oxford Street and blowing up pillar boxes, I felt there wasn't nearly enough depiction of this in the film, especially as it spends no time discussing their politics, perhaps reasoning that "votes for women" is self-explanatory. But, it isn't, as the split between the Pankhursts makes evident. Votes for which women? In the end, we are left with a dignified procession for Davison and a scrolling list of countries granting the right to women. The film feels very much like an exercise designed to be used as a teaching tool about equality. This may also explain the downplaying of the violence experienced by the protesters on the streets as well as in the prisons. There is only one depiction of force-feeding, suffered by Maud. While it is awful, it is nowhere near as harrowing as that shown in The Baader-Meinhof Complex, for example. Clearly, the filmmakers wanted that 12A rating.

The film's heart is clearly with the downtrodden women suffering degradation and belittlement at the hands of violent husbands (Anne-Marie Duff's Violet bears the brunt of this depiction) and sexual harassing bosses (Maud's intervention in this regard is curiously underplayed). It could have been much, much more.

Unidentified Photo Object

Nothing spooky to report today, other than this Halloween emoji. Even that is a castoff from the emoji I couldn't get to work in Twitter.

Anyway, enough about my digital incompetence. I have had two rather underwhelming gallery visits recently, not for the subject matter but for the presentation. Galleries in Shoreditch seem to think that presenting photographs without captions or with minimalist captions is somehow doing the art a favour. I disagree.

Last week I saw the Syd Shelton: Rock Against Racism exhibit at Autograph ABP, touring the cool, white space at Rivington Place in quick time, partly because the accompanying information was so utterly inadequate. Photo after photo was captioned with a location and a date, but no information on the subject. Who were those young people slouching against a wall in Hackney? Those two girls at a rally? No idea. In some cases the identifing info could be quite important, as Shelton shot both anti-racist and far right participants. One should not get confused as to who was who!

Moreover, what information was given in the captions was annoyingly shabby. "Jimmy Percy" was some kind of singer, apparently, who performed at the famous RAR gig at Victoria Park in 1978. It wouldn't take more than a quick web search to work out this character was actually Jimmy Pursey. Similarly, "Dennis Bovel" is actually Dennis Bovell, not only a musician but also producer of some renown. I met him some years back at a Slits gig and told him how great the production is on The Slits' Cut. I'm sure there were other slip-ups I missed, but mis-spellings in exhibits is a bugbear of mine and spoils the viewing. If it's important enough to go in a gallery, the text should be given as much attention as the artwork.

At least there were captions in that exhibit. When I stopped by After the Fall: Berlin 1990/2000 at Red Gallery a couple of weeks ago, I found three walls of photos with no captions at all. What the heck? Who were all those people, I wondered. What were their squats called? What was their relationship to techno? as an introductory text opined. I found it a most frustrating experience and did not linger long. Context matters.

Folkestone!

Volcano Castle; photo: Val Phoenix

No gold was found, but I did enjoy my day trip to sunny Folkestone at the weekend. My companion Helga and I attempted to find the elusive Creative Quarter mentioned in guides to the town, only to get lost and request assistance at the library. We were directed back up the hill and then saw the giant Creative Quarter sign flapping in the breeze. Sadly, the Quarter is in need of a bit of a spark, if the many empty if attractive properties for let in the Old High Street are anything to go by. Helga and I attempted to come up with some nifty business ideas, including our screenplay-in-the-window wheeze (£50 per page was my pitch). Such a lovely town. It needs some visitor love.

I was terribly motivated to find some of the gold bars left from last year's Biennale project, Folkestone Digs, and so we arrived on the Sunny Sands Beach equipped with trowel and colander. Our digging for gold proved fruitless, but Helga did leave behind her post-modern creation Volcano Castle for the sea to reclaim. I handled the documentation for the piece, as well as contributing the essential final touch, the shells. Some of my best work, I think.

The End of Summer

Dewy flowers; photo: Val Phoenix

Well, if this rain is anything to go by, summer seems to have departed. Before it breathed its last, it shone on my screening at Wotever DIY Film Festival last week. I have had a stressful time of it recently and wasn't fully alive to the joys of the day, but it was great to meet some enthusiastic filmgoers and see work by my fellow retrospective-ees, Barrelstout and Krissy Mahan. I think they both have more of the camp in them than me, although my next projected film is highly camp. Perhaps I have been saving it up. But, I think their work responds more to pop culture than I ever have. I seem to dredge up rather obscure elements for my films. I don't fully understand them myself!

Looking forward to September, I anticipate eagerly publication of Carol Morley's 7 Miles Out, which is billed as fiction but seems to be autobiographical, if the publicity notes are anything to go by. Anyone who's seen her doc, The Alcohol Years, knows she is not averse to putting her eventful life under the microscope, which makes me wonder why it's a work of fiction. Why not just write some memoirs? Legal reasons? Well, she is doing some readings so perhaps this will all be revealed. I had not realised that Carol's life and mine had overlapped until she commented after the Wotever screening that she had met someone who appears in one of my films. "I knew her when I was 14", she said, and I burst out laughing as I suddenly realised the connection. "Six degrees", she added. A small world indeed, especially if it involves underground music and rebellious women.

So long, summer. Wish I'd got in more blackberries, but I ate all of the ones I picked without freezing any at all.

As a memento of the season, here are some flowers I shot recently. No idea what they are, though.

One Third of a Retrospective

Next month festivalgoers will have the chance to honour my illustrious film-making career as I receive a retrospective (!) at Wotever DIY Film Festival. Four of my films will be shown, alongside those of Barrelstout (Bev Zalcock and Sara Chambers) and Krissy Mahan on 22 August in London.

It's a curious state of affairs to be part of a three-way retrospective, but I welcome the chance to get screened in a queer setting, and to discuss DIY film-making with the other practitioners. Bev and Sara I know well, but Krissy is flying in for the occasion. Should be good stuff. I believe I will be showing: Totally Girl Powered, In Bloom, War with Love and the world premiere of The Woman from the Future.

My only concern is we are on opposite the networking session, and I'll want to get some nibbles!

ACT UP 25 memories

SF Pride 1990; photo: L.A.

While I am a great one for marking anniversaries, I almost let slip a very big one: the 25th anniversary of ACT UP protests at the Sixth International Conference on AIDS. Not that I forgot about the actions. They were my coming of age as an activist. I only joined ACT UP in the weeks leading up to the protests and was a very nervous legal observer at some of the demos during that week in June. But, I decided to put my body on the line, as it were, and join in the Women's Day Action, which was June 22, 1990, 25 years ago today.

I wrote a bit about this time in my recently completed MRes dissertation, which I quote below.

Coming out in 1989 was not about exercising personal freedom, and it certainly was not about donning the cloak of respectability to be like everyone else, join the military or get married. It meant joining a community under siege. Once I came out, I knew I had a responsibility to this community, and I was quick to join direct action groups ACT UP and then Queer Nation, seeking to do my bit. I do not think this Generation Y (or whatever they are called) necessarily has this raison d’être. As Jose Muñoz writes in Disidentifications, “The social is both a stage and a battlefield” (Muñoz 1999, p. 199). Every day we need to pick our battles carefully. And ACT UP exemplified this in its tactics. Many members of ACT UP made it their business to get arrested. One of my comrades, Peggy Sue (she described the moniker as her nom de guerre), was quite keen on it, turning her arrests into a kind of performance art. She had mastered the art of yelling as she was dragged away and was known to enjoy the process, ticking off her arrests with pride.

I was not so keen. As my particular battlefield, I chose a big one, getting arrested at the Sixth International Conference on AIDS in June, 1990. It was the women-only day, and I sat down with several hundred others at the intersection of Sixth and Market streets, thereby “blocking a public thoroughfare”, as the charge sheet described it. My friend L. was meant to stay on the side-lines and hold my glasses, but when I arrived at the jail with scores of other detainees, a police officer drew my attention to someone waving to me from an adjoining paddock, my spectacles in her hand. L. told me later she could not refrain from joining in when she saw us being arrested. My glasses were unharmed, and I was grateful to see clearly once more. During our stay in jail, we held an activist fashion show, women parading down an imaginary catwalk, hands still cuffed behind their backs. Availablism in action.

True to form, San Francisco has been marking the anniversary in fine style, with events at old haunts such as The Women's Building and Cafe Flore. I wish I'd known well in advance. But, I like to think I have joined in the reunion in spirit, if not in person.

Two days after that demo was my first Pride march, which I attended in my Women ACT UP t-shirt, protest turning to celebration, as various marches flowed into one another and we experienced the mix of emotions that comes with the cycle of life and death.

Frida

I made the briefest of visits to this exhibit at the Michael Hoppen Gallery in West London. I arrived with great expectations and left rather bemused at the minimalism of the presentation. The text on the gallery's website is far more revealing than anything in the gallery: no brochure, no captions, no supporting materials were to be seen for Ishiuchi Miyako's documentation of Frida Kahlo's personal belongings, long stored in a bathroom at the painter's home.

The photos could be similarly brushed aside, shorn of their context. But, if you do know anything of Kahlo's extraordinary life, the photos do reveal some stark realities, tenderly realised. The vivid dresses. The chic sunglasses. And the shoes. One image stuck with me, but I can find no reproduction of it: two shoes shot from behind. Bright red. And then one notices that one has a much higher heel, stacked, than the other. These were shoes that must have been custom-made for the artist, to compensate for one of her legs being shorter than the other. I stopped short and stared at this image, struck by its poignancy.

The other notable images include hammer and sickles that seem to have been hand-drawn on her corsets, often sewn into her dresses. To me, these speak of a defiance and a sense of humour: often confined to her bed, Kahlo made her mark on her immediate surroundings and dressed for the stage beyond them. Even her clothes were a canvas.

Taking Flight

A Murmuration; photo: Val Phoenix

Having attended the last day of the Brighton Festival yesterday, I left feeling very tired after a day's walking round but rather charmed by the limited offerings I attended. In truth, it was as much about a day out from London for me, but I still managed to tap into the festival theme of taking flight. Guest-curated by author Ali Smith, the festival wanted visitors to imagine themselves as birds in migration. The bird theme certainly resonated in the exhibits I visited, most notably in A Murmuration, a series of installations at ONCA Gallery. On the ground floor, visitors tucked themselves into a hide and watched videos discussing Second World War surveillance of seabirds. Moving downstairs to the basement, I found myself in an extraordinary crypt- or bunker-like structure arranged with sound recordings. Quite atmospheric. One could also check out artists' archives of notes and slides in an upstairs area.

Across the road was the Agnes Varda installation, Beaches Beaches, which certainly tied in with Brighton's seaside location, if not so much with the avian theme. Varda's array of brightly coloured plastic objects stuck to the wall created a rather camp feel, not so much in keeping with her very serious film footage. The hut in which this played was so crammed with visitors, I couldn't get in, but found myself peeping through a gap in the curtain. Photos adorned the walls, though I was not so sure of the connection of the different elements.

Around the corner in Circus Street was the highpoint of my visit, the multimedia immersive installation, Gauge. Themed around water rather than birds, it was fun, atmospheric and rather thrilling, as I picked my way around a dilapidated indoor market dotted with curious contraptions and enthusiastic visitors--a playground for all ages, I thought. Each gadget was hooked up to microphones, so that visitors' engagements were played out through the speakers, creating an ever-changing soundscape. I got my hands dirty in some mud, just so that I could faintly make out the swishing sounds of the water. A cascade of water suddenly dropped onto a piano, startling everyone in the vicinity. Finding no keyboard on the piano, I plucked on the strings, and was joined by a little boy who tried his hand at making some sounds, as well. An impromptu duet. Steam issued from a small pool and people tried running round it in unison to make a tornado. I wanted to move in there, but left to wander along the beach and enjoy some quiet time before making my way home in the evening, sadly missing out on the enticingly-titled Fleeting, a performance on the beach involving lights and birds.

The Falling

Just out in the UK is Carol Morley's swooning girls drama, The Falling, which I referred to previously.

Here is an interview she did with Radcliffe and Maconie discussing the film. For some reason it won't embed.

But, I have been able to embed some of Tracey Thorn's music for the film.

Flare: Mood Swings

Broken Gardenias

Today's report concentrates on two films that combine comedy and drama, making for uneasy viewing.

In the Australian comic drama (?) Zoe. Misplaced, Zoe is attracted to her housemate Coal's ex, Nat, who reciprocates her feelings. And then Coal finds out.... What starts off as an amusing L Word episode progresses onto darker and darker territory, until it turns into a bit of a psychology lesson. I puzzled over the abrupt shifts in tone, wondering whether they worked or not. Then I pondered the characters' motivations and questioned whether I had missed some key hints. So, I guess it's a pretty effective piece of work, if duplicitous.

Broken Gardenias, an American road movie, looks great, with sweeping vistas of California, as its two loners, hunky butch Sam and forlorn Jenni, go to L.A., in search of the latter's father. A film that includes a suicide attempt early on that is played as one of a number of comic setbacks has an interesting notion of comedy. And I never quite warmed to it, despite Sam and Jenni's quirky budding friendship. It reminded me a little of By Hook Or By Crook, with Jenni's very mannered fragility setting my teeth on edge. Plus, the running joke of her ex-housemates shadowing the duo through L.A., arguing all the way, felt forced and gratuitous. Jenni is played by the film's screenwriter, so she must have felt highly invested in the story.


I believe both films were crowd-sourced, explaining their rough and ready feel, but getting the tone right is something that can really make or break a film, regardless of budget.