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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
