Gloomy Wednesday

Sailor Girl from Entangled2 (Theatre II) by Lindsay Seers

What better way to spend a rainy day than to visit some galleries and take in some art? So, that's what I did yesterday, as the heavens opened in London. Unfortunately for me, my journey required a lot of walking between venues and I was one soggy figure on my arrival at Matt's Gallery for a viewing of Lindsay Seers' Entangled (Theatre II), a version of a piece I viewed last year in Margate.

The viewing requires an advance call to book a slot, and when I arrived early for mine, I had to wait for the previous viewing to finish, even though nobody was actually in the room. Once it was ready, I was handed a pair of headphones and beckoned into a small booth, which resembled nothing so much as a peep show booth which faced a red square viewing area. It was an odd juxtaposition for me: why the booth? The space in Margate was open between audience and the two spheres that formed the screen, so I am not clear on why she has set it up this way. In any event, there's nothing sleazy about the piece, which details testimony from two performers about their lives as male impersonators.

I am not sure if this is any different from the piece in Margate, but the space being discussed (and suggested in the viewing conditions) is the Mile End Genesis, rather than a Kent stage. Seers likes to localise her stagings of pieces, and as the Genesis used to be a live theatre before it was a cinema, she did some filming there and it gets a brief mention in the piece. I don't know if it's better or worse than what I saw in Margate, but I really like the use of the spheres to take on various characters in the stories the performers tell, from eyeballs to wombs. Most imaginative and evocative. Leaving the performance through an anteroom, I saw photos of the performers who inspired the work, Hetty King looking especially dapper as a sailor. Lucky the recipient of her signed photo!

Then it was onto the Whitechapel to see Sarah Lucas's retrospective. I felt I was entering the living room of a very eccentric relative as I opened the door to the first gallery: mobiles, wallpaper, and an array of tables, chairs, and mattresses greeted me. But, what furnishings! The mattresses were stained with food, the wallpaper was lurid newspaper headlines and the settees were made of MDF and breezeblocks. I warmed to the latter, even testing them out, once I was sure it was permitted. Sadly, taking photos is banned, a shame, because the most interesting aspect to my visit was watching the reactions and behaviours of the other visitors. Gleeful laughter, pointed fingers, frowns and grimaces were the order of the day, as everyone got to grips with Lucas's oeuvre. I found myself bemused and charmed, actually.

What is her POV, I wonder. Her use of food to convey markers of sex is well-known, but what point is she making with her giant plaster penises, which, er, popped up in an array of locations on the ground and upper floor? Though the exhibit contains warnings about graphic sexual material, I found it most unsexual, actually, more a presentation of grubby humanity. There is something a bit bleak about her equation of body parts with the detritus of human failure.

Upstairs I quite liked the brass casts, which echo the textile ones downstairs, twisted shapes perhaps recalling legs or even turds, I suppose. And I also really liked the cigarette portraits, which seems an apt form for someone who is often pictured with a fag jutting out of her mouth. An odd character, Lucas, who has abandoned London for Suffolk, but seems no less productive or more optimistic in her post-enfant terrible years.

Neon Wonderland

sign at God's Own Junkyard; photo: Val Phoenix

On Friday I made a very belated visit to God's Own Junkyard, the neon gallery-cum-junkyard that calls Walthamstow home. In truth, I never even knew of its existence until my friend Bev said she wanted to visit. We then discovered that GOJY is threatened with eviction (currently scheduled for 21 September), and while various rescue plans have been floated, its existence is still under threat.

Our visit, while brief, was an exuberant stroll through the very warm interior space (heated, the proprietor said, by the same ionization that occurs with tumble dryer fabric sheets!) and the very English summer drizzle of the outside space, which was a real treat for Bev and me. We both love detritus, and this was some Grade A old school Americana detritus: signs for motels and diners and the odd Jesus statue, among them. Great stuff.

This may have been the last weekend to see God's Own Junkyard, in this or any other location. But, here's hoping it finds a new home in the area very soon.

Totally Girl Powered screenings in Berlin and London

Still from Totally Girl Powered by Val Phoenix

I am pleased to announce that Totally Girl Powered will be screening this Friday at LaDIYfest Berlin in sunny Kreuzberg. Apparently, the venue is an adult education facility. Cool.

Then TGP moves south of the river to screen at Wotever Festival in London on the 27th.

Sounding the Body Electric: Experiments in Art and Music in Eastern Europe 1957-1984

A pretty specific title, that. And yet.... I have been meaning to get to this exhibit in sunny Shoreditch for ages and finally made it down this week. Most enjoyable it was, too. It's often difficult to appreciate sound art in the confines of gallery spaces so associated with visual art. Calvert 22 made some effort to display the works in accessible and aesthetic ways, with displays of notations, music stands showing scores and quite a lot of associated visual material.

In fact, the newsreel footage of Poland's Experimental Sound Studio was among the most strking--gorgeous black and white shots of gleaming equipment. One darkened room was showing Kalah, a film with Richter-esque visuals accompanied by bleeps and blips that reminded me of video games.

What was missing for me was context. Who were these artists? What conditions informed their work? The time span encompasses the post-Stalin era to the Solidarity movement, but there is very little in the captions to explain what was going on. I wasn't even clear on what countries some of them came from, although quite a lot of the artists seem to be Polish. And, where were the women? I counted only three female names (Katalin Ladik, Dora Maurer and Zofia Hansen) from more than 25.

The accompanying sheet does drop tantalising bits of info about "happenings" and the downstairs exhibit mentions post-Prague Spring movements, but the captions don't really relay this. Perhaps one needs to read the accompanying book mentioned in the notes, but not having seen it, I cannot say.

Definitely worth a visit, but you probably need to do a lot of research pre- or post-visit to get the most out of it.

In Herne Bay

View from Neptune, Herne Bay; photo by Val Phoenix

Gingerly applying cold tea to my rather red skin today after a gloriously sunny day yesterday in Herne Bay. Following on from last summer's expeditions to Margate and Whitstable combining sea and art, I turned up hoping to see some of the attractions from the Duchamp in Herne Bay festival (tagline: I am not dead. I am in Herne Bay), celebrating the artist's summer stay in the town 100 years ago. It didn't quite turn out as I expected.

The first surprise was the lack of signage at the train station. No indication as to which way to turn to find the seaside, let alone the festival. I eventually made my way to the museum to see what was advertised as a free exhibition, only to find there was an admission charge. Couldn't find the festival shop and the HQ showed no signs of any festival doings either. Most puzzling.

My first 99; photo by Val Phoenix

I did, however, catch the live music-live cartoonist combo at the very lively Bandstand. I thought the pedal-powered cinema was also meant to be there, when I saw a poster for it right next to the cartoonist one. Only later did I catch the tiny, tiny print listing another destination, one I'd passed some two hours earlier! Ach. So, no cinema for me. I did at least catch some of the artfully designed bicycles parked in various locations. I didn't get the sense that most visitors had any idea why they were there.

Still, I enjoyed my ramble through Herne Bay, from the mesmerising Neptune outcrop stretching out to meet the pier (with its giant Fountain a la Duchamp), to my unsteady attempts to wade on the edge of the sea. I eventually made my way to Kings Hall on the eastern stretch of shore to watch a couple throwing a ball for their dog to fetch from the sea. Quite tiring for the dog, I would have thought. As I returned to London, I thought how handsome the city looked, bathed in pre-twilight sunshine.

The Duchamp festival continues through the 17th. Catch it if you can.

Walthamstow International Film Festival

On one of the sunniest days ever seen (possibly) in London, I cycled over to the Orford Road Social Centre to check out the offerings of the WIFF. Last year this was screened as part of the E17 Art Trail, but as that has been postponed, WIFF is a stand-alone event running across the weekend.

Each bill loops over an afternoon, and while they are meant to be alphabetical, some of the films I saw are showing in the programme as being on tomorrow. Possibly issues with translated titles.

And this is quite the international bill. Probably one-third of the films I saw were in Spanish. Not sure why the WIFF has cornered this market, but E17 has a global reach, clearly. With his grandiose productions, earnest voiceovers and sweeping orchestral music, Roman Reyes is bidding for Hollywood. Either that, or he has a future in perfume commercials. Ten Years After by Jose Ramon Carralero Herrera was an amusing reflection on shyness and smoking.

Two films featured ghosts of dead people. And many, many were accompanied by banal tinkly piano music that seems to code: sensitive. Is this a new rule for shorts?

My favourite was not properly credited in the programme. A French film on a 20th century faker, it featured beautiful black and white animation and a witty script. Not sure what it was called or who made it, though.

A different bill is on tomorrow from 14-17. Will it rain?

Back to The Wick

The view from Mother Studios over Hackney Wick; photo by Val Phoenix

As we now mark the first full year of the much-touted Olympic legacy, it's sobering to consider just how much the face of East London has changed. Though deemed unsalubrious, unlovely or any other property market euphemisms, the area has always provided a home for the resourceful, the quick-witted, and, indeed, at times, the desperate. I count myself in all of those categories, as I have moved around almost all of the E postcodes during my time in London in search of some place to settle.

So it was that I found myself last night standing on the fifth floor of Mother gawping out the window across the canal at the Olympic site, tracing the path of a road I lived on many years ago crossing over the tiny bridge and.... stopping dead in its tracks at the gate to the site. Everything on the other side levelled and reduced to pavement. Wow. I hadn't seen it that way in my head.

My visit was occasioned by a screening at The Lab, an experimental film festival in Hackney Wick's booming artistic quarter. The screening started late, hampered by good weather (oh, the irony) and another screening next door. But, eventually the audience, some ensconced in inner tubes on the floor, was treated to a few of the week's winning films, as well as a selection of locally produced shorts. I had heard a lot about Hilary Powell's The Games but had never seen the whole piece, and found it a mix of amusing absurdity and trenchant comment on the nature of gentrification. Clays Lane, the allotments, those strange tyre factories. Gone.

This is what has become of Hackney Wick since I left ten years ago. Artists' warehouses, a party scene, and on the other side, the commercial behemoth of Olympic regeneration. It's an uneasy mix, even if the hipsters flocking to Crate and other businesses can enjoy better transport links and amenities than in days of yore. Still..... one sometimes yearns for the sense of post-apocalyptic tranquility that used to hang over the area back then.

The Groodoyals on air

Here is Jude Cowan Montague's recent appearance on Resonance, bringing her poetry collection The Groodoyals of Terre Rouge to the airwaves. Some months back I saw Jude read from this volume at the book launch, but this multi-media version includes music and conversation, as well.

Back in Town: Abstract Random

Coming soon to a country near you (if you're proximal to Europe), it's Toronto's dubhop trio Abstract Random in full tour mode.

Last year my encounter with them featured my fledgling attempts at freestyling. Sadly, I shall not be on the mic, but they are playing Wednesday the 5th in sunny (really!) London before heading off to Paris and beyond.

Check 'em out.

Perestroika Reconstructed

An interesting afternoon's viewing of this epic film by Sarah Turner. Not having viewed the original piece, I couldn't say what the remix amounted to, but this work, a three-hour journey, does test the viewer's attention.

The first two hours amount to Turner's retracing of a 1987 train journey from Moscow to Siberia, her motives becoming clear over time: she wants to remember a lost friend who accompanied her on the earlier journey and later died there. She is also recovering from a bike accident.

Over the course of the later journey, it becomes clear that she is operating under certain rules imposed by "You", the unseen and unnamed companion who seems to be part film producer and part lover. "You" proves to be a testing foil for the narrator, checking she has taken her medicine and telling her stories that she comes to question about her own past.

And the film unspools as the narrator's attempt to reshape her own past and try to move on from her trauma. So far, so good, if long. But, the last hour traces another journey, this time by "You", as in "You are constantly watching the meter." It took me awhile to realise that this new "You" was in fact the narrator herself. This journey was a cab ride from London to Land's End, that I found quite comic in its haplessness, but I was the only one having a chuckle at this late moment in proceedings.

Sprawled on my beanbag, I watched my filmic companions, peering over my knees at the screen flickering with endless miles of Russian scenery, which finally resolved to mesmerising waves of mist rolling over Lake Baikal. It was strangely relaxing.

20th anniversary of MOW

My, how time flies. 20 years ago today I was strolling the Mall in Washington, DC, along with about one million other queer folk, at the oh-so-catchily monikered March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. The name was debated for MONTHS before it was agreed upon.

I attended some of the Bay Area organising meetings, which were excruciating at times. Whom to include? Whom not to? How to appear? So much attention given to not offending the mainstream. Sheesh.

Still, the trip was glorious, especially the first Dyke March the night before the main march, with a trip past the White House and the Lesbian Avengers eating fire. Sent shivers up my spine.

CSpan has a recording of the stage. But this is a short clip.

Movement in Light: Pure Figures in Motion

The third in the series (I missed the second, owing to Fringe!) exploring the work of Man Ray and his followers, this programme of shorts at the NPG went in surprising directions, as it took in the many possibilities of cameraless cinema.

Or should that be para-cinema? The first work was Light Time, a performance by Amy Dickson of candles being lit behind a screen, the black covering burning off as the flame generated heat. So, this was all about the light and its movement.

Other works actually involved film, such as Joanna Byrne's Manifestoh!, a clever work juxtaposing increasingly panicked news reports of the 2008 (and beyond) financial meltdown with text from the Communist Party Manifesto. It might have been even more clever, had we been able to read the words, which scrolled across the screen as mere abstract graphics.

Luke Aspell's Luminance Gradients was a feat of endurance, which really should have had an epilepsy warning, as the flashes of white light were accompanied by a soundtrack of tape hiss. I shut my eyes for this one.

Half of the films were silent, and the audience was polite enough to remain silent, except for the event photographer, who did not make use of the camera's quiet option, the shutter noise punctuating the atmosphere with a "ba-jee-ka" every 10 seconds or so. Most irritating.

The closer was another live performance, The Glass by Jamie Jenkinson, a series of glass sculptures forming patterns on the walls, as they rotated around what looked like a turntable (old skool!), with varying effects.

Quite enduring, this play of light in a darkened room. It could have legs yet.

Fringe! pictured

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School of Fringe! entrance; photo by Val Phoenix

 Still recuperating from my weekend, even though I didn't actually get to many Fringe! screenings.

Rio Cinema ticket booth; photo by Val Phoenix

 The nervous energy expended anticipating my screening and Q&A on Sunday sapped me.

Julia Ostertag; photo by Val Phoenix

The sun, while not helpful for bums in seats, did provide a welcome accompaniment to some post-screening fellowship.

Julia Ostertag introducing And You Belong; photo by Val Phoenix

I also spent some time in a walking tour of Dalston seeking out elusive Vietnamese noodles for
 filmmaker Julia Ostertag, ahead of her closing night film, And You Belong.

Roll out the red carpet

Still from Totally Girl Powered by Val Phoenix

Making short films is not a glamourous exercise. There's none of the romance of the feature, of being recognised as a proper filmmaker with a cast and crew, although that can be a slog.

So, it's a rare pleasure to be able to say: "My film is having its world premiere next week at a cinema in London." OK. I've never been able to say that, but it is true. My film Totally Girl Powered is having its world premiere next week at the Rio in Dalston, as part of Fringe! festival.

This is great on two counts: it's showing in an actual cinema. Not only that, but it's a cinema I know well and have attended. It was my local when I lived in Dalston in the '90s. And it has a fabulous history as an Art Deco Hackney landmark, including hosting punk gigs in the '70s. Marlene Marder writes in her book about playing there. I can't remember if it was with Kleenex or LiLiPUT.

Anyway, TGP is the taster for Itty Bitty Titty Committee, which I have always felt is a bit of a Riot Grrrl throwback, although released in 2006. So, it'll be a bit of a RG afternoon, with fantastic music and fiery women on the silver screen.

There's loads of other great stuff at Fringe! this year, including art, performance, and plenty of features and shorts! It's pleasing to see work by Barbara Hammer, Rosa von Praunheim and Derek Jarman getting an airing alongside new filmmakers. And I am moderating a closing night Q&A, the world premiere of Julia Ostertag's documentary on Scream Club,  And You Belong.

Once TGP has had its premiere, I can put it back up on Vimeo. Until then, hope to see you in sunny Dalston or thereabouts.

Movement in Art: the Art of Movement

On Thursday I visited the National Portrait Gallery for screenings of Dada films connected to the work of Man Ray, who has an exhibit at the NPG (not yet seen). A healthy queue had built up before the doors opened, and it ended up being quite a packed screening. Not surprising as: the films were shown on 16mm and had a live accompaniment by the quartet Collectress.

While I had seen some of the films (including Richter's Rhythmus 21 and Rhythmus 23 and Eggeling's Symphonie Diagonale), I had never seen them with musical accompaniment, let alone a live score. So, I was rather giddy with excitement. In truth, the first few films (see above) didn't seem to really benefit from the score. But things picked up with Moholy-Nagy's gorgeous Lichtspiel Schwarz-Weiss-Grau and Man Ray's La Retour a Raison, even if there were some problems with the projector. We held our breath as a long pause between films (during which the musicians gamely kept playing) was followed by some grinding noises and then.... Silence. Then.... the machine sputtered into life and voila: light and movement on-screen. Such drama.

The programme concluded with two delightfully witty pieces, Richter's Vormittagsspuk, with its dancing hats, and Clair's Entr'Acte. I had seen the former but in this showing was more aware of its use of gun imagery, perhaps a warning of the violence to come in Germany. The concluding film was one I have been keen to see and it didn't disappoint. Watching the assemblage of great and good of the Paris art scene prancing in slo-mo after a runaway hearse gave me a good laugh. If only there were captions to identify the artists!

The series continues with two more programmes to be announced. Here's hoping the later years bring some women filmmakers into focus.

Susan Hiller: Channels

I've been meaning to visit this exhibit since it opened last month, and making light of the snowy air and the rather remote location (I've never been on that side of Mile End Park before), I met up with a classmate to take in this latest show by the veteran artist.

Opening the door to the room, one is confronted with a bank of televisions, which I immediately wanted to approach, as though they played either a blue screen or grey static, there was a babble of voices coming out. But, other visitors were seated on a bench at the back of the room, and it seemed rude to block their view. So, I leaned against the adjacent wall and watched the changes on the screens. Eventually, the voices died down and there was just hum. I sat at the back and waited. After some time, everyone else departed and it was just my classmate and I, and so we debated the meaning of the work: the arrangement of televisions, the voices speaking of near death experiences, even the colours on the screens.

The pattern of the TVs reminded me of really bad 1970s wallpaper, and I wondered if the reference might be apt, as that time was when television seemed to come to the fore as a communication device and promise of a utopian future that never materialised. It's a difficult work to take apart, owing to the number of televisions and changing programming. At various times, many of them are in synch, displaying the waveform of a single voice. But, mostly, they are disparate channels, broadcasting many voices. Quite fascinating, but puzzling.

Channels runs through 14 April at Matt's Gallery.

LLGFF: Gender Performance

Diane Torr and participants in Man for a Day

These three features are all concerned with gendered behaviour in disparate ways, reflecting Diane Torr's contention that gender is a performance.

Katarina Peters' Man for a Day presents Diane Torr's titular week-long workshop, staged in Berlin with participants cast by the director (this fact emerged in the Q&A), which rather changes how one views it. As drama it's brilliant, with clear narrative arcs as the women proceed through the stages of learning how to be men for a day. But, just before it gets to the big reveal and they take to the streets as men, it cuts to Torr and her daughter visiting Italy, and we never actually see how the women got on. Was this footage not sufficient dramatic? Were the men not able to pass? It's not clear.

What is quite interesting is how some of the participants react to their week-long "training" to be men (which involves stuffing cotton down their trousers, "owning" the floor with their steps, and projecting their voices into the ground). Susann, the beauty queen, takes to being a man so much, she continues in character afterward, even visiting a strip club with one of her new-found friends--and making out together "man on man". Hmmm. Peters acknowledged afterward that the strip club scene was staged, although Susann and chum requested the visit. Another woman, who works in politics, felt she was able to assert herself better and work smarter as a result of the workshop. So, it does seem that the workshops, dependent though they are on presenting very stereotyped masculine behaviour, do allow women to expand their behavioural options, as Torr suggests is her goal.

Unfortunately, very extreme masculine behaviour can easily spill over into violence, as is shown in Taboo Yardies, Selena Blake's documentary on attitudes to the LGBT community in Jamaica. To say it's not very queer-friendly is an understatement: beatings, rapes and everyday abuse are commonplace, and most participants are shown disguised. Interestingly, Blake also interviews many diasporic Jamaicans in New York and finds that many have left Jamaica just to live openly without fear. They love the country, but hate the bigotry. Other Jamaicans who are able to travel also say they love visiting NYC, just so that they can be themselves. There is rather depressing footage of the then-PM of Jamaica, Bruce Golding, comparing the demands for LGBT rights legislation with demands for protection of--wait for it--incest and bestiality. That old trope. And there is truly heartbreaking footage of a disguised Jamaican lesbian describing how she self-harms and just wants to die, so desperate is her situation.

The comments by so-called "experts" are not so illuminating. The sexologists seem locked into very old-fashioned notions of gender, while another speaker makes a passing reference to "300 years of colonialism" as an explanation for why public displays of same-sex affection might enrage Jamaican men. But, this idea is never developed. Nobody can say from where exactly the taboo emerged, or why it remains so fixed, other than tradition and religious affiliation.

On the other side of the gender normative coin, She Male Snails is a curious Swedish art film directed by Ester Martin Bergsmark, in which two "Boy Hag Ladies" take a very long bath together, while one of them recollects how they met and what they mean to each other. This is interspersed with baffling vignettes which mostly take place in the woods and may suggest that true freedom is only found in an enchanted forest of the imagination. Or possibly not.

By the 60-minute mark, I was rather concerned that the protagonists, still bathing, might be getting wrinkled, while there was still no clear narrative or action developing. In the end, nothing much happened, except for a delightful closing scene in which a bunch of gender-queered folk welcomed a newcomer onto their island for a picnic. Why couldn't the rest of the film been like that?

LLGFF: Facing Mirrors

Still from Facing Mirrors

As Facing Mirrors opens, Eddie and a friend are in car that gets cut up in Teheran traffic. Rather than let it go, Eddie pursues the driver and gets stopped by police.

This has severe consequences, as Eddie is using his brother's licence and trying to escape his father's attempts to marry him off to a cousin. That he would get involved in a road rage incident in such circumstances shows his impetuous nature.

As Negar Azarbayjani's film progresses, it becomes clear that Eddie was lured back to Iran as he was in the process of transitioning in Germany. He needs to get back there to complete the process and start living his life. But, his very traditional father can only see him as Adineh, the daughter who needs to be married off to protect family honour. So, Eddie goes on the run with taxi driver Rana, who is driving in secret in order to support her son and get her husband out of jail.

The film cuts from Eddie's to Rana's story, as various family members interfere and many misunderstandings and conflicts ensue. Perhaps the point is to show how gender transgression continues to be proscribed in Iran (even while gender reassignment is allowed). The relationship between Eddie and Rana develops in interesting ways, but I found the attempt to position her as some kind of mother figure to the "difficult child" (there is little difference in age) quite problematic and infantilising. The problem isn't the transsexual. It's society's attitudes.

The shorts programme We Can Be Heroes (alas, not about David Bowie) offered a range of gender-queer shorts, among them the very stylish martial arts drama Lee, the amusing Australian doc Queen of the Desert and the German teen drama Who Am I Happy, which was only marred by the unfortunate inclusion of some god-awful Schlager. Surely, "Helden" would have been a better choice?

LLGFF: Disunited in Anger

Caroline Azar in She Said Boom

You wait 25 years for a documentary on ACT UP and then two come along at once. Most curious. Viewing the more feted How to Survive a Plague, I had a distinct feeling of deja-vu. And well I might, because some footage, indeed entire scenes, is identical to that seen in United in Anger, which I viewed on DVD earlier in the week. It just goes to show the power of editing, because the two films, while focusing on the same time period (1987- ca 1996) and the same locale (the original ACT UP in New York), go off on radically divergent paths.

While United in Anger (dir Jim Hubbard) takes great pains to show the great width and breadth of actions ACT UP undertook and the emphasis on social justice many of its campaigners pursued, David France's How to Survive moves into the narrow stream of one faction of the group, the Treatment and Data Committee, and its quest to get drugs fast-tracked through the bureaucracy. But, drugs for whom?

In effect, it ends up being the split that devastated the group, between what came to be characterised as the angry HIV-positive white boys and everyone else. I must say that after viewing How to Survive, I felt curiously unmoved. After seeing United in Anger, I felt a great sense of pride: it was a struggle I participated in, albeit across the country in San Francisco, and I felt I had tapped into my activist heritage seeing the archive footage and hearing people describe their reasons for being there and what it meant to them. By contrast How to Survive seemed highly clinical (in both senses of the word) and a bit smug: "We did this", said its small band of protagonists at the end. Neither film really acknowledges the grassroots nature of ACT UP. It was never centralised, but each chapter had its own methods, issues and strategies, which came together brilliantly at the VIth International Conference on AIDS in San Francisco in 1990 (an episode skipped in United and reduced to a conference speech in How to Survive). It laid the groundwork for many other activist movements, including Queer Nation and to some extent Riot Grrrl, as well.

Activism seems to be having a cinematic revival at this festival, and I wonder if that means the community is awaking from its long slumber. I had two more excursions into reminiscence, with the documentaries Lesbiana and She Said Boom. The first is Myriam Fougere's recollection of lesbian separatist culture in the 1970s and 80s: women's land, womyn's festivals, etc. I wondered if there would be arguments afterward in the Q & A but everyone seemed quite respectful and impressed by the film, which featured recent interviews with women Fougere had first met 25 years ago on her travels as an artist along the Eastern Seaboard of North America. So, there was a lot of material from her hometown of Quebec, as well as New York and the southern states. Women's land still exists, but it seems to have become retirement communities for the Second Wave. I don't know whether to be pleased or depressed.

But, to end on a high note, She Said Boom. Swoon. Kevin Hegge has done a fine job of memorialising Toronto's foremost queer punk feminist band, Fifth Column, who emerged alongside the advent of homocore (a movement named by band member GB Jones). I had no idea what a turbulent history the band had, with members coming and going and a prickly relationship between core members Jones and singer Caroline Azar (a marriage proposal was mooted and rejected at some point. Ouch.).

These days, Hegge revealed, the former members of the band don't speak. But their attempts to ally feminist politics with cinematic and artistic points of view, while positioning themselves in the punk scene take some beating. I do believe this day at the festival pretty much covered my twenties.

LLGFF: Monstrous Passions

Still from Mosquita y Mari

It's often said that teenaged girls experience emotions in such heightened form as to effect complete transformations in their personalities: little angels turn into hormonal monsters. Or so they say.

Well, taking that notion a bit too literally is Bradley Rust Gray, whose Jack and Diane features two would-be lovers who periodically turn into befanged, beclawed monsters and attack each other. Each stage of the couple's relationship features interludes of menacing hairy ectoplash=budding love. Despite this, I found it funny, engaging and offbeat. But, take away the horror element (which is only a clumsily executed metaphor), and it's not nearly so quirky or standout. Still, it certainly beats The Exploding Girl, by the same writer/director, which I found excruciating. Oh, and Kylie Minogue plays a tattooed dyke cougar type who locks lips with the Jack character. Cue "oohs" and "ahs" from the star-struck festival audience.

Not nearly so dramatic, but a bit more dramatically satisfying is Mosquita y Mari, Aurora Guerrero's delightful SoCal Latina growing pains drama in which two girls from opposite sides of the street try to find a middle road for their relationship. Faced with wildly differing expectations of their futures, Yolanda and Mari use their study time to bond, plot their futures and try to work through their growing intimacy, which finds them experiencing emotions they can't quite express to each other. While foregrounding the girls' relationship, Guerrero is also adept at outlining the family pressures that surround them: the struggle of Mari's mother to pay rent and the hopes Yolanda's family are pinning on her academic prowess. A real find.

Meanwhile back in London, Madrid and Berlin, Andrea Esteban and Paula Alamillo are less concerned with lesbian passions than lesbian definitions in Born Naked, jumping from city to city and chatting to their friends and circles about..... Well, that's where I am slightly lost, because I never figured out what this documentary was about: two 20-something lesbians from Madrid? Or their friends and contemporaries? Or an overview of the queer scene in three European cities? Or was it meant to be a more theoretical consideration of what it means to be queer today?

A bit of back story on the two protagonists would have gone a long way to establishing some identification in my mind. Who are they? Why are they living abroad? What is their connection? It looks great, features loads of people and a plethora of locations, and I spotted several familiar faces, but I really am not sure what the film is meant to say.

LLGFF: Lives of Artists

Still from Salome

It took a few days, but I have finally assembled the constituent parts of what could be called a Salome trilogy: Salome (1923), Lives of Artists (1972), and Salomania (2009). Mind you, I saw them all ass- backward and woefully ignorant of their lineage, but I got there in the end, and what a puzzling journey it was.

Firstly, Salome, Alla Nazimova's wildly camp, stagey and rather extraordinary take on Wilde's play. Verity Susman's live and very contemporary (at one point, she busted out some dance beats and I bopped along, if my neighbours didn't) score jarred in places, but I quite enjoyed the use of blue light onscreen, as well as reading between the lines of what is rumoured to be an all-queer production.

Coming next chronologically is Yvonne Rainer's Lives of Artists, which is many things, but also contains a solo inspired by Nazimova's film. The film's construction is dense and confusing, containing rehearsals, narrated photos, what appears to be a love triangle and at the very end a kind of photo film, inspired by Pabst's Pandora's Box. Rainer appears to be a very process-oriented director, which can be lost at a remove of 40 years. I actually saw this film in the Atrium of the BFI a few years ago, but I think the sound was turned down, and I had no idea what was going on.

So, to Salomania, which I have already reviewed from its showing at the SLG recently. Now the scenes between Wu Tsang and Rainer make a bit more sense, though I am still baffled as to how these rehearsal scenes fit with other bits of the film.

Speaking of baffling feminist film, what to say about Chantal Akerman's La Captive, also screened in retrospective at the LLGFF? Based on Proust, the film peers into a claustrophobic and tightly controlled relationship between Simon and Ariane, which is as dysfunctional as they come. He is voyeuristic, suspicious and can only express sexual desire through dry-humping her sleeping body! After 85 minutes of watching this expressionless, passionless pair, I wanted to throw myself in the ocean that called to Ariane....

27th London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival opening night

Divine in Pink Flamingos

Yes, Yes, I am late getting to this. I did attend opening night, but other things intervened before I could report back. I have now seen a handful of films onscreen and on DVD and thoughts are percolating.

But, back to opening night. I Am Divine promised glamour and drag and certainly delivered onscreen, but I was surprised how few attendees followed suit: I only spotted one bouffant, thankfully not blocking my view. Harris Glenn Milstead, better known as trash diva Divine, provided the subject for Jeffrey Schwarz's documentary, which was crisply delivered in a plethora of archive footage and interviews. Having only a passing knowledge of Divine, I learned much about his life and working relationship with John Waters, the two growing up six doors apart in Baltimore.

My only complaint was that the clips of the films were so brief that one couldn't really form a judgement on either their quality or of Divine's performances, and as the narrative arc was about his desire to be seen as a serious actor, that would have been appreciated. But, as a document of 1970s underground US and queer cinema, it was a delight.

Totally Girl Powered

I do love an anniversary and yesterday, in addition to being International Women's Day, was also the 20th anniversary of an eventful day in my life. See my new film for a full explanation.
13/3 edit Doing some housekeeping, so this video is offline for the moment.

Female:Pressure

Ahead of International Women's Day on Friday, Female:Pressure has been in touch with the results of its research into gender representation at music festivals. A group of women electronic music producers and performers, Female:Pressure is concerned at the lack of opportunities for female talent to be heard.

To quote their statement:

"The members of the female:pressure network operate within a seemingly progressive electronic music scene and its subcultures. However, when compared with other artistic domains such as literature, we find that women are notoriously under-represented in the realms of contemporary music production and performance. The female:pressure group would therefore like to invite you to take a look at the facts and make the mechanisms of this specific market more transparent. We have looked into statistics regarding festival line-ups, record label releases and the appearance of women in several top 100 lists. The results are shocking and disheartening, even for us deeply involved in the scene. Most festivals – whether financed through public funds or not – clearly do not place any value on ensuring an appropriate ratio of female artists, or diversity in general." You can find out more info at the addresses below. The statement concludes: "Let's be frank – enough is enough. female.pressure believes there is no justification for more male-dominated music events. We need – and paying audiences deserve – invigorating and entertaining diversity!"

www.femalepressure.net facebook.com/femalepressure femalepressure.wordpress.com soundcloud.com/groups/female-pressure twitter.com/female_pressure

This week: Yeastie Girls premiere

I've been busy in the darkroom, printing printing away some of my ancient negatives in anticipation of a film I would like to make (and which may still happen) on my visit to the UK 20 years ago, which happened to coincide with the Huggy Bear-Bikini Kill tour. I only wrote snippets about it at the time, some of which appeared in my newspaper column and some in an article for Deneuve. But, I have held onto the tape and negatives, hoping I would eventually put something more substantial together.

Well, this Thursday sees a tiny part of that realised, as I have some text and a photo in the Yeastie Girls exhibit on the idea of Riot Grrrl. A puzzling title, as the Yeastie Girlz had nowt to do with Riot Grrrl, but I guess the curators liked the name.

I am given to understand that Vyner Street is the hip new art street in ye old Hackney. Not my typical stomping ground. Nevertheless, it is timely to reconsider Riot Grrrl, and for some of us it never went away anyway!

Printing has been delightful. I have been experimenting with various methods of solarisation, with quite varying results (including one accident with a machine solution), and will be pursuing this in future with other subjects, I think.

The exhibit runs for two weeks.

Full of Fire

This new video from The Knife, the first from their forthcoming album, caught my attention, as it's directed by Marit Östberg, a Berlin filmmaker about whom I have written. On first viewing, one can only say, "My, my!" It's super gender-queer and bears further viewing.

Full Of Fire from The Knife on Vimeo.

Twenty Three Percent*

Following my visit to the Sanja Ivekovic exhibits (I didn't blog the Calvert 22 visit, owing to non-art developments that day), I was intrigued to see how this conference would pan out. Rather confusingly, the title is a reference to the pay gap in London, with women's earning falling behind men's by that percentage. But, pay was not the concern of this gathering of the great and good of the art world concerned with feminism.

Instead, it was a range of issues raised by Ivekovic's body of work that caught the attention of the assembled speakers, and the day evolved into a set of wide-ranging papers and panel discussions that ended with a call for revolution! We'll see how that works out.

Incidentally, I had the briefest of chats with Ivekovic and found her to be quite charming and humble. A top comradess.

The Tanks

Open now for some six months and subject to intense navel-gazing from those in the know about just what they are meant to accomplish and whom they are meant to represent, The Tanks of Tate Modern have become a must-see destination for the devotee. I am already a fan after a scant two visits. Part of it is the appeal to me of reclaimed industrial architecture. I especially like the odd circular structure which does not appear to contain art but is a draw for those who enjoy atmospheric spaces. When I first ventured there in November, someone was shooting a film there, soaking up the red light. The only drawback is the slightly dusty air, presumably a remnant of the refurbishment.

Light Reading by Lis Rhodes; photo by Val Phoenix

My second visit, this week, was to catch a glimpse of Lis Rhodes' Light Music, set to close tomorrow after a run of several months. The installation was closed for "refurbishment" when I visited in November, and despite the helicopter crash, cold weather and a burgeoning cold, I was determined to see it before it departs, presumably to sit in some store cupboard until someone sees fit to show it again. But will projectors still exist in this dimly glimpsed digital future? Rhodes's two projectors, crossing beams, display film that I believe has been optically printed onto the facing wall. [Here is an explanation of how it is made.] The beams of the two projectors carry out their dance or duel in the centre of the room, daring any spectators to cross their path. When I visited, I realised I was alone in the room and kept a respectful distance until my eyes adjusted and I realised there were seats on the opposite side of the room. Just as I walked through the beam, a flood of visitors entered behind me, and they had no such inhibitions. A group of teens, they danced into the centre of the room and started throwing shapes, filming themselves enacting moves more akin to horror than expanded cinema. It was mildly amusing, if a total mood-killer for Rhodes' more cerebral concerns, her whining optically-produced sound lost in the giggles and high-pitched squeals of the yoof. After awhile, I got annoyed and departed, my shadow spoiling at least one photo.

I am not me... by William Kentridge; photo by Val Phoenix

But my mood brightened appreciably with a return visit to William Kentridge's I Am Not Me, the Horse Is Not Mine, a multi-screen installation sited in what appears to be a kind of roundhouse. My first visit was curtailed because my companion complained of being afraid of the dark, and this one really needs to be seen im dunkel. One feels one is in a kind of nightmarish circus, with jaunty music blaring out, strange animations dancing on various screens, and then out of the corner of one's eye, one sees text from a meeting of the Soviet Central Committee in the 1930s and one knows something more serious is going on. This text comes from the show trial of Bukharin, whose name I dimly recalled from my political science studies of long ago. I rather recalled that things didn't end too well for him, and checking up on it later, I found that, yes, he was executed, his life as with the promise of the revolution and utopia snuffed out by brutality and power struggles. 

Both works close tomorrow, so catch them if you can!

This weekend

After the new year lull, it's time to get out and about and enjoy the cultural delights that await. To that end....

If you are in London on Friday the 11th, Club des Femmes presents its Pussy Riot fundraiser, featuring films by Hito Steyerl, Carol Morley and Cordelia Swann.

Saturday the 12th is Delia Derbyshire Day, being marked in Manchester with a mini-symposium. The Delia Darlings tour then moves on to Liverpool, Sheffield and Newcastle.

And finally, the Women's Music and Liberation exhibit concludes its London run this Sunday the 13th, with some guests and film screenings.

Mekas Interview

 Happy New Year!

My interview with Jonas Mekas at the Serpentine Gallery is up now on The Quietus.

2012 Picks

Well, it's that time of the year again, when once asks, "Where did it go?"

EXHIBIT OF THE YEAR
Whitstable Biennale opening day. I do like to be beside the seaside.

FILM OF THE YEAR
Hit So Hard, P. David Ebersole's doc on the life and near death of Patty Schemel. Grunge, lesbians, Courtney Love's one-liners. What more could you ask for? 

GIG OF THE YEAR
Little Battles album launch, which found She Makes War and the Olympians in excellent form.

INSPIRATION OF THE YEAR
Pussy Riot. Who else?

Best wishes to them and everyone for a swell 2013!

On show

This week was meant to be about viewing art shows I've missed, but I only made it to the South London Gallery to view two. Both are by European women artists making long-overdue UK debuts.

Downstairs is Sanja Ivekovic's Unknown Heroine (one-half of a retrospective, with the other as-yet unviewed at Calvert 22), while upstairs is Toxic Play in Two Acts, by the duo Pauline Boudry / Renate Lorenz. Having met all of these artists at various times in Berlin, I was intrigued.

Both exhibits have explicitly feminist concerns, though coming from separate generations. Ivekovic, a Croat, grew up under the Yugoslav regime, and this section of her retrospective offers her gender commentary over the years, from videos that satirise standards of beauty, to an ongoing series of parallel constructions of magazines juxtaposed with her personal photos, as if contrasting her reality with the supposed ideal portrayed in mass media. The space is quite bright and open, leaving the exhibits looking a bit stranded.

Upstairs the more confined space presses in on Toxic Play in Two Acts, with the film Salomania offering a queered version of Salome's Dance of the Seven Veils presented by veteran filmmaker/choreographer Yvonne Rainer and Wu Tsang, shot in Los Angeles. In the next room is the new film, Toxic, featuring drag artist Werner Hirsch (the creation of Antonia Baehr) quoting Jean Genet, while Ginger Brooks Takahashi (late of MEN) hoovers up glitter. An abundance of cultural references and various forms of queerness and gender play abound in both works, though to what end I am not quite clear.

Having interviewed Boudry and Lorenz separately, I know they share interests in sexuality, labour, and such queer filmmakers as Jack Smith, and that these inform their work. They like to create alternative histories, to recuperate lost figures (here Alla Nazimova and Genet) and to "queer" whatever space in which they work. Toxic, in particular, is self-referential, as Baehr-as Hirsch-as Genet, turns on the filmmakers, questioning why they crew is not in front of the camera in his place. An off-camera voice asks, "Does it interest you to break the order?", followed by a pan that shows the crew and other cast in the audience."Of course," responds Baehr/Hirsch/Genet. The audience outside this filmic space is invited to draw its own conclusions.

Jonas Mekas in London

I have not been publishing much lately, although I have been busily attending events. Is it my Twitter dalliance? My studies? I shall have to evaluate at the end of the year. But, I do retain a fondness for blogging.

So, back to the topic at hand. Filmmaker/archivist Jonas Mekas has two London celebrations at present. One is a retrospective of his films, as well as some Anthology Film Archives selections, which is on at the BFI.

The other is an exhibit of films and installations at the Serpentine, which is where I met him yesterday. I had a good look around the week before at the press preview, but as the exhibits were lacking captions, I wanted to have another viewing before our interview, and I am glad I did, because some of the captions contained his own explanations for the works on show. My eye was particularly taken by a quote stating something to the effect that he has a happy knack of forgetting all that is unpleasant and retaining only that which is beautiful. A funny thing to say, considering one of his new works, Reminiszenzen aus Deutschland, is a recollection of his time in forced labour camps during the Second World War.

But, there is no doubt he prefers to dwell on the delights of nature, the familial and the pleasing on the eye, with a sprinkling of New York Beautiful People thrown in. His newest work, finished two days before the Serpentine opening, Outtakes from the Life of a Happy Man, is a compilation of beautiful images, "with no purpose", as his characteristic voiceover repeatedly intones. It is a curious work, quite nostalgic and sentimental in tone, perhaps the summing up of a life on film, which he gave up shooting in preference to video in 1989. This explains the considerable youth of his angel-haired daughter Oona.

Nevertheless, the present and future were also under discussion when we met in a back room at the gallery for a 30-minute chat, for a forthcoming piece in The Quietus. It was not the easiest conversation, as the filmmaker, about to turn 90, was not in the most ebullient of moods and didn't appear especially interested in my line of questioning. But, he did offer some insights into Reminiszenzen and his fondness for Lithuanian folk art. And I didn't miss the opportunity to ask about his disagreements over form with Maya Deren, who turns up as a passing mention in one of the AFA films at the Serpentine. Apparently, she kept her unfinished films in coffee cans. Gives a new meaning to "film grain".

Here is an excerpt from Walden-Diaries, Notes and Sketches.


Walden - Diaries, Notes and Sketches by Jonas... by microcinema

Her Noise

The Her Noise archive now has a dedicated website, which includes a section on the Sound::Gender::Feminism::Activism event in which I participated in May.

So, you can now see an edited version of my presentation (sans introductory witticisms!).

Viv Albertine album stream

The long-awaited Viv Albertine debut album is now up to listen to on Louder Than War. Many of the songs I have heard live or on her EP of a few years ago, but it's a pleasure to hear them collected, and the album closer "Still England" is laugh-out-loud funny, featuring a list of England's finest eccentrics that rhymes "John the Rotten" with "Dot the Cotton".

London Film Festival: the end

Still from Free Angela and All Political Prisoners

My festival ended on Thursday, but I shall round up the last stragglers of films seen this week, which includes some crackers.

Probably the best is My German Friend, Jeanine Meerapfel's consideration of a woman's German-Jewish-Argentine identity over three decades. Combining a bit of history, soul-searching and some romance, it works on all levels. I had hoped to speak to the director, but just missed her.

Moving into the realms of black comedy, the Basque film Happy New Year, Grandma had me covering my eyes in horror, as a family seeking to remove its troublesome elder stateswoman unravelled in fine style. I found it difficult to get past the premise that adult children could be quite so selfish, and so laughs were hard to come by, but it's well-crafted. The lead male actor also starred in Ander.

Documentaries were a bit disappointing this year. Canned Dreams I found overly stylised and way too slow. Les Invisibles focused on individuals from the French LGBT community in a way that seemed about  20 years behind the times, although some of the interviewees were impressive.

The standout doc for me was Free Angela and All Political Prisoners, although the title is misleading. Really it's an explanation of Angela Davis's time underground and the ensuing court case that resulted in her release. Not so much is heard about other political prisoners. And in fact it's a bit of a hagiography. Once Davis is released, there follows a triumphant montage of her visiting lands far and wide to receive acclaim as a revolutionary saved from martyrdom. Not mentioned is the fate of her co-accused, whom she cut loose. legally speaking. Nor is there any explanation of how a gun registered in her name fell into the hands of the man who used it in the botched courtroom raid that led to her arrest. Perhaps director Shola Lynch was so in awe of her subject, she didn't press the awkward points. Still, it remains a fascinating tale well-told.

Still from Breaking the Frame

Breaking the Frame features the intriguing life and work of Carolee Schneemann, but is less well-told. Now if the director had just let the artist tell her own story, it would have been fine. But instead there is an insistent, breathless "dramatic" voiceover inserted to read from Schneemann's works that just had me cringing in embarrassment and frustration. The artistic cutting, perhaps echoing Schneemann's collages, is a bit tricksy, but acceptable.

My review of the comedy Celeste and Jesse Forever is up on The Quietus.

And to end with, I didn't see many shorts, but did catch two shorts programmes. Mati Diop, whose work I didn't know, has a programme showing (today, actually) of three shorts. I caught two, both very different in tone and content. Big in Vietnam features two Vietnamese expats wandering the streets of Marseille and experiencing some kind of connection far from home. I found it a bit abstract, but it does capture the dislocation one can feel when uprooted. And then there's Snow Canon. Well, this is a bit of a cryptic psychological narrative featuring a teenaged girl and a baby sitter spending the weekend in a chalet, with a bit of role-playing and sexual tension thrown in.

Lastly, I saw more family drama on show in Blood Is Thicker Than Water, which amassed a range of ideas of family and drama. A family of dogs roaming Cairo starred in the very impressive A Resident of the City, but human beings had their day, too. I was moved to tears by Curfew, in which a recovering drug addict tries to re-connect with his estranged sister via her daughter. And Get Lucky, featuring Ralf Little as the world's unluckiest man, raised a few laughs, too.

To end with, two moments I forgot to mention from the filmmaker tea. One, as I stood waiting to meet my interviewees, a door opened and an older man with piercing blue eyes crossed my path. "That looks like Terence Stamp", I thought, but nobody else blinked an eyelid, so I thought no more of it. But, now I see he does have a film at the festival, and so it probably was the very same actor.

And, lastly, as I consider it my civic duty to spread feminist notions of film far and wide, I am pleased to say that I introduced Kate Hardie to the Bechdel-Wallace test, and very pleased she was to make its acquaintance, too.

Best of the second week:
Free Angela and All Political Prisoners
My German Friend

London Film Festival: how soon is now?

Still from Tomorrow

Right. So, where was I? The festival closes on Sunday, and I have barely mentioned it. Yesterday was an interesting day as I attended a Filmmakers Afternoon Tea, kind of a speed-dating scenario for "talent" to meet press. My dates for the afternoon were shorts maker Kate Hardie and doc maker Andrei Gryazev, two very different encounters.

Hardie's film Shoot Me! is her riposte to the fashion and acting industries, as experienced by her heroine Claire (Claire Skinner) who nervously turns up for a charity fashion shoot and finds her worst dreams coming true as the photographer, renowned for his "sexy" pictures of young women, has no idea how to shoot her and only makes her feel more uncomfortable with his whacky patter and intrusive entourage. It's very funny, and Kate was quite chatty about the backstory to the film and her own experiences in the show biz and fashion worlds.

Then it was on to Andrei, director of Tomorrow. Never have I approached such a full table! I had expected Andrei's translator to be there, but there were also two representatives of Roskino, which is promoting the film in the UK, plus their laptops. I really don't like people sitting in on interviews. It ruins the intimacy for me, and thankfully, they moved to another table. As it was, it was a difficult enough interview, inasmuch as while I directed my questions to Andrei, he addressed his answers to Vitali the translator, who relayed them to me in English. With limited time, it was difficult to get a conversational flow going, and just as he really warmed to the thread, our time was up.  A pity, as I really would have liked to ask more about his approach to the film, which is a doc on Voina, the political art group, or "actionists", as Gryazev called them. I had expected a film showing serious, committed people protesting Putin's regime. What the film showed was three or four rather comically inept people shoplifting and practising flipping police cars, while carting around a toddler in a rucksack. More Stoke Newington than Moscow. Given the opening disclaimer that what is shown may not be reality, it's difficult to say how much was staged, but it was a bit disappointing for me. Even the title was a puzzle, until Gryazev explained at the post-film Q&A that it sprang from the question on everyone's lips ahead of the election: what will happen tomorrow?

I thought that was my festival done, but I was in time for an afternoon screening of Museum Hours. As I had left my festival guide at home, I had no idea why I had chosen the film, until about three quarters of the way through. This has to be the strangest film I have seen at the festival, in form if not in content. Jem Cohen is known as a doc maker, and while the film opens with a woman explaining to someone on the phone that she has to fly to Austria, the subsequent shots seem to set up a documentary. The characters speak in broken, unfinished sentences mimicking normal--not cinematic--speech, and I actually changed my mind a couple of times as to whether it was a drama or a doc. "Can't wait for the credits," I thought. I was puzzled as to why the lead character, a Canadian called Anne, kept breaking into song. And then suddenly it hit me: it's Mary Margaret O'Hara! That's why I wanted to see this film, to see the lost songstress as an actress. So, yes, it is a drama, but performed so naturalistically and shot so documentally, that many will be confused and annoyed. As a meditation on art and set in beautiful Vienna, it has its appeal, but it is definitely a Marmite film.

It is also quite slow-paced, which has been a feature of this festival. Perhaps it's a reaction to the MTV-style cutting and pacing that many decried in the '90s, but I feel this has gone way too far in the other direction. Many, many of the films I watched were glacially-paced and really tested my patience. A case in point: Punk, in which angry young French man seeks his long-lost father while wandering the streets of Paris. And wandering. And going to parties. And brooding. And yelling at his girlfriend. Until one despairs: why is he so angry, and why does it drag on so long?

Or House with a Turret, in which a very young Ukrainian boy takes a train ride that goes on so long, I wanted to throw myself under the train. Yes, he is on a journey and needs to reach his destination, but when half the film seems to be cut-aways of snowy buildings and people sitting outside, one wonders what the filmmaker's point actually was.

Keep the Lights On is a relationship drama in which an annoyingly whispery-voiced filmmaker tries to keep his whiny boyfriend off drugs. "Break up with him already!", I thought, after the fourth or fifth conversation-descending-to-argument. Tedious.

And then there's Tall As the Baobab Tree, which I anticipated with eagerness and was left grinding my teeth in frustration. Two sisters in Senegal fight to go to school rather than be married off in keeping with custom. Should be plenty of room for drama in that, and the filmmaker seems sympathetic to their plight, but again the pacing drags really badly, and the film ends up being a well-intentioned community project rather than a drama.

Still from Like Someone in Love

To end this dispatch on a note of confusion, let's try on Like Someone in Love for size. Abbas Kiarostami's first Japanese-language film, it features a bar hostess meeting a mysterious older man for an assignation outside Tokyo. Ignoring her visiting grandmother's pleading phone messages, she whisks off to meet him in his cluttered flat. An academic, he is more interested in talking than getting jiggy. The next morning he drives her back and witnesses her being accosted by her thuggish boyfriend, who mistakes him for her father and asks his advice. There is comedy in this, but it ends up going nowhere really, because the director is more interested in other things. And the ending is.... I don't know what.

Will give my final thoughts tomorrow.

56th BFI London Film Festival: the story so far

Cast and director of Sister at the LFF

This year's festival has been unusual for me, in that I haven't attended it! Everything I've seen thus far has been on DVD or at a press screening, so for buzz and who wore what, please look elsewhere. Four of my reviews are now on The Quietus site, with at least one more to come. But here are my first thoughts: family drama, animal cruelty and blandness.

To the first, my goodness there is a plethora of family drama, from the fraught "siblings" of Sister, to the squabbling brothers of My Brother the Devil, to the son vs. father conflict of My German Friend, blood is not necessarily thicker than water.

And now to our furry friends: mutilated cats, stabbed dogs, and shot deer--it's quite the gorefest.

Lastly, I have yet to be truly knocked out by any of the films viewed so far. Have I become jaded, or is independent filmmaking seeing a bit of a lull this year? So many of them seem to meander nowhere or lose their impetus. Quite disappointing. But, I remain optimistic. Perhaps I have just not picked the best films. But there is a week to go.

Top films seen so far:
The Wall (Die Wand)
The Central Park Five
My Brother the Devil

Pussy Riot Appeal Monday

Pussy Riot's appeal is to be heard Monday am in Moscow. Here is the text accompanying MEN's new video in support of them. "This may be the last chance for the Russian judicial system to free the jailed members of Pussy Riot. After this, the women are expected to be sent to three different penal detention centers, where we are very concerned for their safety. Please check in at www.freepussyriot.org for more information."

Two Lives

 I've been thinking a lot about collaboration lately, about how living and working together must be just about one of the highest states of being: crashing the frontiers of music, art and film, combining the personal and the professional à deux.

So, it's terribly timely that Club des Femmes (a collaboration) is staging Two Lives this Friday in London, showing cinematic work by mostly female duos. I jumped on Skype to chat to CdF's Selina Robertson to find out more.

So, Club des Femmes. It's not about French film, but it is about film. Tell us more.

SR: Yeah, well, we named ourselves after a French film that was one of the first films that had a lesbian character in one of the dominant roles. We are a queer feminist film club and we started in 2007 and we basically do pop-up events in London and sometimes in Berlin. We screen a mixture of shorts and features, and we have Q and As and parties and lots of things.

OK. And you've got an event coming up in London on September 28.

Yeah, we have an event which is part of the Scala Beyond season and is at the Horse Hospital. It's a short film programme, plus a documentary and it's called Two Lives, which we named after Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. The programme is about collaboration and partnership and how people respond to working partnerships, whether they're lovers or family or best friends.

So, why did this topic interest you?

Well, we were asked by Scala Beyond if we wanted to participate in this two-month season. The Scala Cinema was really known for putting on kind of schlocky B-movie stuff, but also a lot of really interesting 16mm work and new work. And we sort of took the Scala Beyond season, sort of the spirit of it, not the letter of it. I was amazed at how many film clubs and organisations wanted to participate in this season. So, we thought of it as a massive collaborative process and we wanted to do an event about collaboration and then we decided to focus on a few filmmakers, at certain times, some from the last century and some from this century, partnerships and filmmakers who work in partnership.

What do you think is the significance of women collaborating?

I think it's an interesting relationship. For example, we're showing some work by Tove Jansson and her girlfriend, who was a graphic designer. They just made sort of home movies together. But then we're showing some work by Sandra Lahire and Sarah Pucill, who are [known as] filmmakers in their own right, but then they also worked together. I think there's obviously a lot of inspiration and creativity that's sparked off with each other and against each other. I'm interested, because I don't think it's all plain sailing. I think it must be a difficult process, but also very rewarding. We've picked some films that really show how interesting partnerships and collaborations can be with queer and lesbian artists.

Two Lives is on at the Horse Hospital in London on Friday, 28 September at 19:30. Filmmakers Sarah Pucill, Bev Zalcock and Sarah Chambers will attend.