Pussy Riot Day of Action on Friday

Friday afternoon is when the verdict in the Pussy Riot trial is to be announced. Free Pussy Riot has announced a global day of action, which, at last count, numbers 61 cities!

Among the activities are readings from the trial transcript, protests outside Russian embassies and consulates and flashmobs. Please check the website and get involved!

Here is a contribution from Peaches and friends, shot in Berlin:

Free Pussy Riot! #freepussyriot from Peaches on Vimeo.

Margate Cartival

Margate beach; photo by Val Phoenix

Sun, sea, sand, cross-dressing.... Yes, Margate's got it all, or at least did on my day trip yesterday, which happened to coincide with a soul weekend and Carnival! Well-timed.

As was my trip to see the shiny, new Olympic-branded Turner Contemporary, site of enfant terrible Tracey Emin's homecoming exhibit, And She Lay Down Deep Beneath the Sea. Ironic to see Emin brought in to help regenerate her hometown, which produced so many terrible experiences for her growing up and was the spur to much of her early art.

Here she is in more or less placid form, working through her Blue Period of nude figures. The figures are her, of course, and are mostly reclining with arched backs. Her work is juxtaposed with that of Rodin and Turner, but in a way I found unconvincing. Actually, I didn't find any of the drawings particularly engaging, as those of the men seemed objectifying and Emin's were too porny for my taste. Interestingly, a lot of children were visiting, and the boys ran away from the drawings, giggling. One has to ask: why bring children to a show that is warned as being of adult nature? And if you do bring them, why not use the opportunity to discuss the isses and perhaps educate the kids, eh? No, that didn't happen.

Much more intriguing was Lindsay Seers' installation, Entangled, shown in a secret location in order to enhance its insular, immersive qualities. OK, it was just a shed at the back, but being led into a room and handed wireless headphones while staring at two white orbs did pique one's curiosity about what was to follow. And seeing two male impersonators at work on local music hall stages was a win-win for me. Interestingly, the two figures cited as inspiration for these women were Hetty King, about whom I know little, and Vesta Tilley, whom I discovered while researching my Cabaret Special. I found some old wax cylinders that had been digitised and was able to play one of her numbers. So, it was a treat to see what she looked like in her role as "Britain's Foremost Male Impersonator". Much to ponder here, and the orbs worked wonderfully as screens. It was its last day, though, so you've missed it.

Later I picked my way through the Carnival, which made its way up the hill past the gallery, bearing such luminaries as Miss Herne Bay and so forth. I made my way to the beautiful golden sands, wiggled my toes in the incoming surf and found myself mesmerised by the beauty of the sky meeting the sea. Nature still puts on the best show.

Pussy Riot on Trial

The wheels of justice turn very slowly in Russia, where alleged members of Pussy Riot have been detained for months awaiting trial on charges of hooliganism. The trial is finally set to start tomorrow, 30 July, and is worth keeping an eye on. Numerous stories have come out about the significance of this whole process for Putin's government.

Among Pussy Riot's supporters are high-profile musicians such as Sting, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Franz Ferdinand, as well as members of Bikini Kill, the latter not at all surprising, as the two bands share a lineage of matching music and political expression.

Amnesty International is circulating a petition calling for the women's release. The implications of a seven-year jail term for political protest are quite alarming.

The Artist Is Present

My review of Marina Abramovic: the Artist Is Present is up now on The Quietus.

Jo Spence: Work (Part I)

The rather proletarian title has a double meaning--an introduction to the work of the late photographer and a hint as to her interests and is half of a two-part exhibit (the other in Studio Voltaire) that marks the 20th anniversary of her death.

It's a bit of an unwieldy beast, with a slide show, lengthy texts lining the walls and precious few prints of Jo Spence's work. In light of the current wave of feminist responses to pop culture and commentary (Bitch, Bust, Vagenda), it's interesting to note Spence's witty, feisty ripostes to everyday sexism and injustice, whether depicting her relationship with her mother, noting the absence of childcare for working women or grotesque adverts for "female" products.

The Hackney setting is also appropriate for a member of Hackney Flashers photography group, which had a socialist outlook and politicised raison d'etre. While Spence became best known for her self-portraits depicting her struggle with cancer, this exhibit gives more space to her external interests.

In Bloom

I don't have too many details yet, but my film In Bloom, which played last week in London, will be showing in Basel next week as part of the Liste 17 art fair. Very exciting. Wish I could be there.

But, alas, I shall be in rainy-sunny-rainy-can't-make-up-its-mind London, where we are seeing a marvellous outbreak of roses. Here is a selection from my travels.

8 June edit: Ah, now the film isn't showing next week, but it will show at the same gallery sometime this summer. Will update when I know.

Odd Girl Out podcast 6

Further to my posts on Sound::Gender::Feminism::Activism, my new podcast features interviews from the conference (Cathy Lane, Annie Goh, Helena Lopes Braga, and Laura Seddon) plus my meeting with Toronto's Abstract Random.

How does your garden grow?

Last night was the opening night of Bildwechsel's touring Garden programme, which featured the world premiere of my film, In Bloom. I had a little nostalgia walk as I headed over to Four Corners for the screening, noting which shopfronts had appeared since my last visit a few years before. At least the chippy is still in business.

On arriving at the venue to hand over my freshly burned copy of the film, I spotted a familiar face, that of Bildwechsel head Chris Regn, whom I'd met in Berlin in 2009. Since all my correspondence had been with Kate Henderson of Bildwechsel Glasgow, I hadn't realised that the various outposts were linking up for the programme, a pleasant surprise, and later I got reacquainted with Eva Kiezmann of Bildwechsel Berlin.

My film was on first, so I had none of the anticipatory nerves of last week. Instead I was the mystery starter for the wide-ranging programme, which featured entries from Canada and Germany, as well as the UK, in response to the call for submissions. I took no notes (for once!), but I particularly liked Gillian Steel's animation, as well as Lamathilde's multi-part piece. It was also bittersweet to see a film on the late, lamented Rosa Rose garden (now replanted elsewhere) bringing a little piece of grassroots Friedrichshain to East London.

What was also exciting for me was to chat to Super 8 experimentalist Bev Zalcock, the other attending filmmaker. I have only done one Super 8 film, and so it was great to chat to her about her practice making these films the hand-crafted way, adding dyes and so forth. Plus, she said she liked my film, and so I was chuffed.

Bildwechsel Garden Programme

Thursday sees the premiere of the Bildwechsel Garden Programme at East London's Four Corners.

I don't know the rest of the bill but I can say that my strange floral noir In Bloom will be having its world premiere on the day. Very exciting! I seem to be reliving my life this week, as I used to take film courses at Four Corners some years back, and lived around the corner.

Space is limited, so please email Bildwechsel if you would like to attend. bwglasgow@gmail.com

Sound::Gender::Feminism::Activism

The Thing Revealed

So, now that I have uploaded the info, I can reveal that I shall be making my Power Point debut at a conference this week in London.

SOUND::GENDER::FEMINISM::ACTIVISM is an all-day event at the London College of Communication and puts me in formidable company.

It will be interesting for me, as it is positioned very much as an academic research event, and my research and practice are completely removed from that sphere. Amusingly, I am in the last session of the day, titled Sexing the Groove, which happens to be a book in which I appear as a reference, so I guess the shoe fits.

What does please me immensely is to finally take some of my myriad interviews and present them as sound to a live audience. I have been bustling along, learning about multi-channel installations (and Power Point), and while my presentation is by no means super-finessed, I think it should stand on its content.  Hurrah.

Gossip: A Joyful Noise

Just listening to the stream of of the latest Gossip album, A Joyful Noise, via the Guardian website and first impressions are not good. Intrigued by Beth's comment she has been listening to a lot of ABBA, I clicked on the first track and was met by bland, tuneless flannel. And on it went. Only "Get a Job" seemed to have some melody. The rest were over-produced and characterless. What has happened to this band?

The Thing

Haven't blogged much lately, because I have been consumed by preparing A Thing. I can't say what it is yet, but I am working on it, diligently. Gathering information, synthesising it, learning new technologies (for me), such as the mysterious Power Point and Pro Tools. Yes, the thing will be a multi-media, audio-visual delight, A Thing of splendour. And it will encompass some of this other thing I have been working on for the last, oh, 17 years or so. Will let you know how it goes.

BTW can't say I am feeling the new Blogger layout. At All. It really has taken "creative white space" to extremes. Apologies if you are not a Blogger user and can't see the back end of the site. But, urgh. Don't like. Vimeo has also just revamped its site to make it spectacularly less user-friendly. Why, why, why?

Hole Reunion On-stage

They said it would never happen. But, for two songs it did in NYC. You can only watch in awe at the chaos that ensues when you invite Courtney Love to join you....

Filmic Friday

And then it was back to the films, as I made a return to my old stomping ground of Brick Lane for some bagels and then a visit to the Little Joe Clubhouse currently in residence through Sunday (as part of Fringe!) in the basement of Rich Mix, a venue that didn't even exist when I lived around the corner 10 years ago.

The Clubhouse is a wood and textile construction that would do the Scouts and Guides proud and indeed one of the visitors was an ex-Cub, so we bonded over childhood memories of... not going out to the woods and making fires. Didn't happen in my Brownie chapter in the Bronx.

There was a lot of time for bonding, as the scheduled film, Star, was delayed for some reason. But when the DVD got going, we saw some very entertaining clips of two little-known Indian disco films from the early '80s. As presenter Shanay Jhaveri explained, this was an intriguing experiment in a cross-cultural youth movement translating to film. Not too successfully, as it happens, as the films bombed and the actors didn't work again! It was marvelllously camp, with sassy women and tight-trousered men rocking the disco beat, surrounded by totally OTT lighting.

Stumbling out of that humming one of the songs, I headed to the Southbank for two Made In Britain programmes. I have seen the work of most of the directors on show, but not that of the twice Oscar-nominated doc director Lucy Walker and was looking forward to two of her films, Devil's Playground and the recent The Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom. In truth, I wasn't bowled over by either film, though she got brilliant access for both, as an outsider. DP is a 2001 account of the Amish tradition of rumspringa, when teens go out into the world to sample the forbidden before deciding whether to commit to the church or not. She found some intriguing subjects, most notably the wayward Faron and his on-off girlfriend Emma, who tempts him to leave the church and make a new life. But it felt overlong. Tsunami and the Cherry Blossom I found simplistic and a bit manipulative, with Moby's music used to push the audience's buttons in a way that is not necessary. The tragedy of the Japanese tsunami is powerful enough. It didn't need any cinematic trickery. It reminded me of Steven Spielberg's overly sentimental work. Perhaps this is something to do with Walker working in the USA.

After a brief pause, it was on to the second programme, Carol Morley's The Alcohol Years, which I have been keen to see since finding Dreams of a Life. Somehow I missed TAY when it was on Channel 4 all those years ago. It was preceded by two shorts, Everyday Something, which is really quite comic and disturbing at the same time and The Madness of the Dance, which I saw years ago at Raindance and hated. I still find it an uncomfortable mix of quasi-scientific pontificating and musical numbers, and I really, really don't like the final scene, which seems to ridicule the notion of mass hystaeria as experienced by women. But, I accept I may have misinterpreted it, as Morley's other films exhibit a keen empathy with her female protagonists. In any case, it certainly illustrates her fascination with real-life subjects, which she finds through newspaper clippings.

TAY, of course, is about her search for herself, as seen through other people's eyes. Having lost five years of her youth to alcohol-fuelled hedonism in Manchester, Morley journeyed back in 2000 to ask people who knew her then to recount their memories, and it really is a fascinating portrait, utterly unsparing in its criticism of her, her behaviour, her promiscuity and her relationships. What isn't said by anybody, really, is that this was clearly a vulnerable child seeking attention and love and not finding it. Speaking onstage afterward, Morley referred to two or three people in the audience as saving her, but her public demeanour is utterly lacking in self-pity or -congratulation. It's very Mancunian, I would venture to say. As a non-Mancunian, I did find the lack of captions most irritating, as the only people I recognised were Liz Naylor and Pete Shelley, but that is another Morley hallmark, as she likes to let the audience meet the characters without being prompted by captions. This quirk aside, I do find her work quite impressive, and look forward to her next project, which she teased would feature adolescent 1960s girls as we've never seen them on-screen.

Little Battles Launch

It's great to get out and experience some live music again after weeks of film viewing, and last night's She Makes War album launch was a spectacular return. It involved a journey down to Herne Hill, not my neck of the woods, but was well worth it. The venue, Half Moon, was surprisingly roomy, the sound crystal clear and the performance was something special.

Having released her second album, Little Battles, on Monday, She Makes War had gathered some comrades in arms to perform as her backing band, The Olympians, and what an array of musicians! Two violinists, a harpist, two backing vocalists, two guitarists, a keyboardist and a drummer came and went in a range of combinations, making for a very busy stage indeed. And at the centre of it, Laura Kidd aka She Makes War, relieved of her usual multi-tasking duties to play bass, a bit of ukulele and, occasionally, vocals only. She was visibly enjoying the spectacle, grinning broadly, high-fiving a bandmate and generally drinking in the building vibe.

Playing tracks from debut Disarm as well as the newbie, The Olympians applied themselves in grand style. I particularly liked the songs featuring the dual violins, or duelling fiddles, as I called them. There was something magical about the way the two women flanked Kidd as she sang, almost like stringed guardian angels. If I won the lottery (not that I play, mind), I would definitely hire two violinists to accompany me for the day, as I went about my business.

Acting as bookends were my favourite tracks from the two albums, opener "Shields and Daggers" and closer "Scared to Capsize", which ended up in a surprising and delightful singalong, as Kidd stalked the stage with her megaphone and then did a turn through the audience, before returning to the stage to take her bow.

LLGFF Recap

My round-up of the 26th London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival is now live on The Quietus site.

Made in Britain

A quick word about the Made in Britain series at the BFI Southbank. This edition of the ongoing programme celebrating UK filmmakers is devoted to women directors and runs through the end of April.

It's a great chance to check out the back catalogue of celebrated filmmakers like Andrea Arnold, Lynne Ramsay, and Lucy Walker, as well as artist-turned director Gillian Wearing. A pity they couldn't have found space for any women of colour, though.

Tonight Clio Barnard is in conversation after her amazing film, The Arbor. Carol Morley and Joanna Hogg will also participate in Q&As.

LLGFF: Sisters in Struggle

Happy April Fool's Day. There will be no pranks played in this post, which winds up my coverage of the 26th London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.

Saturday's viewing started with a DVD of Joe + Belle, a real find and one of the highlights of the festival for me. An Israeli comic drama directed by Veronica Kedar, the film finds drug runner Joe going on the run with psychiatric patient Belle, who had broken into the former's flat in order to commit suicide. Joe's reaction to finding this stranger in her bathtub, razor in hand, is exquisitely deadpan, setting the tone for the rest of the picture. As they get deeper and deeper in trouble with the law, their relationship also deepens, setting up a most cryptic finale.

Second highlight of the day was Icelandic drama Jitters (dir Baldvin Z), which also had comic elements amid its teenaged highjinks and parental disapproval. Sensitive Gabriel has an encounter with fellow student Markus while on a school trip to Manchester. Returning home to join his group of friends, he finds himself called upon to solve all of their problems while keeping his own uncertainty at bay. What I really liked about this film is that it gave free rein to teenaged passions, especially drink and sex, while at the same time allowing the kids intelligence and sensitivity. The adults were shown to be distant or out of touch with their offspring, while trying to be authority figures, which really rang true.

And then on to the concluding programme and most problematic of the day: Mommy Is Coming + Sisterhood, two films from Berlin, both related to queer feminist porn. MIC is the latest from Cheryl Dunye, one of my favourite filmmakers since the 1990s, and is an odd mix of screwball comedy and porn, or, as I decided, screwball with the emphasis on the screw. Gender-bending, a fish out of water, and adopted identities provide the humour, while visits to a sex club provide the porn element, as well as the atrociously bad acting. Even Dunye, as the cab driver who picks up all of the characters, over-acts. Maybe it was meant to be a parody of trad porn. Anyway, that and her use of to-camera interviews proved to be quite irritating, tripping up the comedic moments time and again. Odd, really that Dunye and co-writer Sarah Schulman should choose to do porn at this time in their illustrious careers. And a very thin piece it is, too, at only 67 mins.

The companion piece, Sisterhood, directed by Marit Östberg, is a doc on her gang of collaborators who make queer feminist porn in Berlin. It references a film of hers, Share, which showed last year at the festival, but which I have not seen, making the actors' constant nods to it less than illuminating. And, quite frankly, it was a bit dull. While I admire the performers' thoughfulness on their participation in porn and what makes it compelling for them, I do not share that interest and found my attention wandering to the dog, Billie, which was in all of the group interview shots. How did it stay still so long? How did it stay awake?

So, not the best end to the festival, but a sign that many, many tastes are being catered for. Oh, and the Dyke March ending up at the BFI lent a rather surreal air to the proceedings. Emerging from a shorts programme, I wandered in a daze through the throng, wondering, "Where did all these women come from?" Spirits were high, and though the sun had long since departed, a warm glow suffused the hall.

LLGFF: Glam and Swagger

Last night was glam night, with the European premiere of Jobriath A.D., followed by a party, which I missed, because I opted for the Alice Walker premiere.

Anyway, glam has never been of particular interest to me. Too many ridiculous guitar solos, tight trousers, and boys playing at being transgressive. So there's the disclaimer. To my mind, Jobriath's story is far more interesting than his music, which is liberally sprinkled throughout the doc. Starting out as a cast member of Hair, he moves to New York, meets manager Jerry Brandt and gets signed to Elektra. So far, so good, but Brandt hyped his client to the skies, made all kinds of promises of epic greatness Jobriath could not meet and used the singer's sexuality as a selling point. Calling himself "the true fairy of rock", Jobriath was openly gay at a time when many of his contemporaries were hinting at bisexuality to seem daring. But it backfired spectacularly on him. One of the questions the doc doesn't address is why the gay community was so indifferent to him.

But, things didn't go well for the singer, and after being dropped by Elektra and Brandt, he never regained his standing as the next big thing. Interestingly, he reinvented himself as a piano bar singer called Cole Berlin, and there is a piece of intriguing footage showing him in this guise, winking at the camera, nattily dressed in suit and tie with a 'tache. It seemed he had found his calling before he fell ill and died of AIDS in 1983. Jobriath barely speaks in the doc, so dominated was he by Brandt's plotting and scheming. A shame, as he did appear to have a talent for performance, strutting about on The Midnight Special in a Bowie-cum-Pierrot get-up. Director Kieran Turner asked after the screening for a show of hands as to who thought Brandt was good or bad and the vote was pretty evenly divided.

There is a fair amount of strutting in Stud Life, Campbell X's fiction debut and, apparently, the only British feature on show. A love triangle of sorts, the conflict pits butch JJ's best friend Seb against her new lover Elle in what the director-writer calls "mates before muff". I immediately had a problem with this: 1) I don't like the term "muff" to refer to a human being and 2) why can't one be friends with one's lover? Ah, maybe it's a butch-femme thing. Anyway, Seb and Elle don't get along, and JJ is not the most tactful of souls, all swagger and bragging until the shit hits the fan and she needs to reach out to Seb and Elle to reach some kind of compromise. There is a good supporting cast of familiar faces on the queer scene and some funny moments, but it feels a bit self-consciously hipster.