Wednesday 7 November 2012

Film Shoot: Cleopatra in Northumberland

Between 11 and 19 Oct 2012, the shooting of a short film, Cinelove (working title), directed by Josephine Halbert, took place in Haltwhistle and Belsay Hall in Northumberland, in the North East of England. Josephine Halbert also wrote and produced the film (which will be about 15 minutes long), and the shooting of the film was organised in collaboration with Newcastle based co-producer and production manager Jack Tarling.

Charlotte Quita Jones and Rhodri Miles as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in Cleopatra (1963)

On 12 and 19 October, I was kindly allowed to go on the film shoot to observe, take some photos and write about it for this blog. I had never been on a film shoot before, and I enjoyed the experience very much: the variety of people present amazed me, but also the shoot felt like a place where a lot of contradictory emotions met - fear, happiness, nervousness, seriousness and excitement – making it all feel very special.

Aiste Gramantaite

One of the 1st people that I met on the shoot was the Lithuanian lead actress, Aiste Gramantaite. She seemed really excited to be there, and explained that she felt a bit like the main character that she played in the film – walking around wide-eyed in awe of what was happening to her, and of the set that was around her.


Aiste Gramantaite
 Aiste finished her MA in acting a year ago, after doing a BA in journalism and media. She was interested in acting, but never thought that it was possible to go on an MA in acting without having studied acting before -“it wouldn’t be possible in Lithuania”. However, following someone’s advice, she applied and got onto an MA in acting in London. She loved the course, and has worked hard since she graduated at getting experience in varied roles. This is her first experience in a lead role in such a well-funded film, and she is beaming with happiness.

She is really friendly and enthusiastically tells me about the film, which surprises me as I thought that actors would be too stressed to chat!

A scene in the lush garden of Belsay Hall

The Plot, the Set

Cinelove is set in Rome, in 1962, and takes place on the set of the film shoot of Cleopatra, the 1963 film directed by Joseph Mankievicz – one of the most expensive films in the history of cinema. Cinelove tells the story of Sofia (played by Aiste Gramantaite), a young woman who goes on the set to deliver a parcel for the actress ElizabethTaylor, and who, through a series of misunderstandings, ends up working as an assistant for the star. Everything is marvellous and new to her, and she ends up having an affair with one of the Italian assistants in the film.



The set of Cinelove is very impressive – it is a replica of parts of the set of Cleopatra, so it includes Egyptian furniture, a massive golden sphinx, a few golden panthers, and some old cinema lights and cameras. The design team has worked hard to find all the right furniture and they even made some of it, like a gorgeous white Egyptian seat with a little cat/dog/interesting creature on each arm.

Detail of the Egyptian seat made for the film

The cast

The Italian assistant with whom the main character, Sofia, falls in love, is played by Cesare Taurasi, a British actor with Italian parents. He explains that he believes to be the only “Cesare Taurasi” in the world – not a common name! He’s very friendly and doesn’t seem stressed about the shoot. When the camera is rolling he concentrates, but otherwise he’s relaxed and happy to chat.

Cesare Taurasi

Many actors play the roles of the real actors from Cleopatra. Charlotte Quita Jones plays Elizabeth Taylor, and with her makeup and her gorgeous pink dress, she looks disturbingly like the real Liz. Beautiful and star-like. The costume designer, Rachel McWha, made that wonderful pink gown herself. Rhodri Miles plays Richard Burton, and Donald Sinclair plays Joseph Mankievicz.

Charlotte Quita Jones as Elizabeth Taylor
The crew

While each scene is being shot, the costume designers and the make-up artists look at the monitor, a screen that shows what is in front of the camera, to check that the actors’ make up and costumes are fine and that they are the same from one take to the next.


The lighting design and the electricity are in the hands of a team of 3 electricians – a gaffer (Dan Chaytor), a best girl (Ileana Cardy) and a spark (Kev Todd). Ileana is apparently the only woman in the UK to have this job: “I don’t know any other British woman who has this job” - she says - “and I don’t understand why, as it's a great job to have. I love it!”

Ileana Cardy, Best Girl
On the last day of the shoot, on 19 Oct, a steadicam specialist is present to film a scene on a vespa: it’s Andy Johnson. He shoots while sitting on a special bike ridden by someone else, and follows a beautiful 1960s Vespa ridden by Aiste Gramantaite and Cesare Taurasi. He used to live in Newcastle but has now moved to London for work reasons.

He talks with passion about the beauty of steadicam shots, about that great shot through a nightculb's kitchen in Goodfellas (1990, Martin Scorsese), about how much he loves operating the machine despite the heavy weight, and about what a steadicam shot can add to a scene.

Preparing for the steadicam shot with Andy Johnson

The sound recordist on the film is Andy Ludbrook, who won the award for best Post Production at the Royal Television Society in 2012. He enthusiastically talks about how much he likes recording sound, and how he enjoys the post-production work too. He is full of interesting stories about the old Tyne Tees Television studios. He is also in a band, The Agency, and you can listen to their latest album here.

Andy Ludbrook


Romans

Adding to this already eclectic mix of people, on 12 Oct, an interesting group is on set: about 20 men dressed up as Romans! They are not just extras dressed up as Romans - they do this all year-round. They are The Antonine Guard, a Roman Living History Society based in Scotland. They wear the exact same clothes as the 6th Roman Legion, the legion that conquered Egypt at the time of Cleopatra. I speak to John Richardson, who created the Antonine Guard, and who proudly explains that in his society, all the Roman clothes and military items that are used have been proven to exist. They look excited and happy in their Roman clothes, and certainly make everybody smile.

The Antonine Guard
A dancer

In the continuous interesting mix of people on the shoot, a bit later that day, two 20 year-old men from Gateshead arrive: it is Martin Bagnal and Sam Irwin. They are in a boy band, Raw, and Sam Irwin is also a dancer (his professional facebook profile is here).  In the makeup room, he shows a few hat tricks with his cap and everyone seems impressed.

Sam Irwin

Later, on set, with the camera pointed towards him, he improvises an Egyptian inspired hip-hop dance. As he improvises in front of the camera rolling with precious 35mm, everyone holds their breath, not a noise is heard, no-one talks, everyone’s attention is focussed, time seems to stop – and magic seems to happen.

With 35mm being so expensive, every time the camera is rolling, it feels like a big risk is being taken – and even more so in that scene, when the dancer is improvising and that no-one knows what to expect. The scene seems to go perfectly well though, and as soon as the 1st AD shouts “cut”, people look at each and smile. Sighs of relief. Josephine Halbert seems really happy and congratulates the dancer.

Sam Irwin

Magic

In general, a sense of magic is definitely floating on the shoot. It’s quite an exhilarating feeling, and it reminds me of the fascinating power that is generally associated with cinema. Although I have often felt this fascination as an audience member, I suddenly feel like I have discovered another aspect of it – the kind of emotions that you get when the camera is rolling. Fear, excitement and intense emotion all at the same time.

Charlotte Quita Jones


In that sense, the film shoot seems to be a mix of many contradictory feelings: tension (because everyone is aware that time is limited, and that a certain number of scenes have to be shot every day); happiness about meeting new people(most people didn't know each other before the shoot and seem excited about working together); a sense of adventure (about working on a demanding project without really knowing what the finished product will be); the need for concentration and rigor (as every member of the crew has to make sure that each scene goes smoothly), and an equally strong sense of creativity – as at the end of the day, the aim of this big team and production machine is to make art, to realise someone’s vision, and to share emotions with audiences.

I can’t help but noticing, and also enjoying, this contradictory idea that rigor is needed to make someone’s imagination come true, that a tight sense of organisation is essential to make surreal visions come to life, as if adulthood and childhood were clashing and found a way of working together.

Charlotte Quita Jones and Rhodri Miles as Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton


After the last scene has been shot, the production manager, Jack Tarling, and the production co-ordinator, Gerry Maguire, seem very tired - but they are happy. They open some bottles of champagne and offer them to everyone. Josephine Halbert gets a big bunch of flowers. She says that she’s in a bit of daze, but that she’s really happy about how the shoot went. A few good nights of sleep, and the post-production work can begin!




Group photography after the last scene has been shot: Rachel McWha, Lisa O'Grady, Jack Tarling, Charlotte Quita Jones, Cesare  Taurasi, Josephine Halbert, Gerry Maguire (from left to right).


Monday 29 October 2012

Podcast + transcribed interview with Ellie Land about her latest film: Centrefold



Centrefold

This is a 19-minute podcast with an interview with the international award-wining filmmaker Ellie Land, which I recorded in August 2012 (I have also transcribed parts of the interview below).

In this podcast, Ellie Land talks about her latest film (released in July 2012), Centrefold, a 9-minute animation film about Labiaplasty, which gathers the accounts of 3 women who have had labia surgery. Ellie Land has made many animation films on documentary subjects around the themes of femininity, gender politics, education and identity, and she is also a Senior Lecturer in Animation at Northumbria University Design School.

Centrefold was released online in July 2012, and it was incredibly successful very fast: in the first 2 weeks that it was released, it had had 125,000 hits, and it had featured in the national and international media on the radio and in the press.

You can watch the film online here http://www.thecentrefoldproject.org/

PODCAST:
You can listen to the podcast here: 


Feminism in Newcastle

North East Feminist Gathering, Newcastle, October 2012

This film also comes at a certain time when feminism seems to be talked about more widely in the media, and where it is certainly more present at the moment in Newcastle upon Tyne. 

Many feminist initiatives have sprung up recently in Newcastle: the Star & Shadow Cinema has been holding film screenings on feminism throughout the whole of 2012, in partnership with the gender research group at Newcastle University, (LOUDER NOW: Feminism on film); in September 2012, Dr Julia Downes, Research Associate at Durham University, organised a Girl Gang film season on Riot Girls and the punk feminist movements in the USA, also at the Star & Shadow Cinema; in October 2012, the North East Feminist Gathering organised a whole weekend of workshops, debates and discussions; and finally, between 12 and 14 October 2012, a new festival called Imprint Art took place in Newcastle, which focused on the work of experimental/feminist/cross platform female artists.


Transcription of bits of the interview with Ellie Land

Centrefold is an excellent film about labiaplasty, but it is also about more than that – through this subject, the film talks about the way women perceive their bodies, and about the sense of disgust that some of them might feel towards their own genitals. This in turn, can be linked to the way women are portrayed in the media, to consumerism, and to the way certain women still feel insecure and pressured about the way they look.

Centrefold


I talked about all that with Ellie Land, and this is a transcription of part of the interview that you can find in the podcast:

Q: The film doesn’t seem to condemn labia surgery – was that important to you?

Ellie Land: Yes. Actually, I set out to make a film that I thought was going to be damning to labia surgery, because it’s not necessarily something that I think women should be going through. However, when I met the women [whose interviews feature in the film], that’s not what they think. So that’s why the story talks in that kind of way, because as a filmmaker I’m really interested in what these women have got to say, and to bring that forward in the film.

That’s also why I didn’t include the voices of the research partners who’ve done a lot of work around labia surgery , Sarah Creighton and Li-Mei Liao, because I didn’t want to have that voice of authority in the film, to undermine what the women were saying. So I think that the film is definitely not the film that I set out to make, but the film is very true to what the women say.

And actually, I didn’t’ find a woman who’d had a labia surgery, and who completely regretted it, but that’s because none of the women I interviewed had had their labia surgery more than a year, so I think that they haven’t really had time for it to sink it. It’s a serious piece of surgery, so your body’s got to heal, and get used to that, and you have got to get used to it, and your partner has to get used to it. And as you grow older, you also possibly get more comfortable in your own skin anyway, so your thoughts about your body and how you feel about it also change. 

So it would have been great to have found a woman who'd had labia surgery for 10 years, but labia surgery was not so popular 10 years ago, so it was very difficult to find someone who’d actually had it done.
Centrefold


Q; Was it important for you to use animation to talk about that subject?

Ellie Land: You know, talking about genital cutting is not something that we do very often anyway, and then, to do it in quite an accessible form, like animation, just brings it out of the space where it would normally be talked about, which is probably in feminist and academic circles. So hopefully the film might be more attractive to a wider audience of people.

But also to use animation with documentary subjects really interests me, because you can do whatever you like, you’re not tied down to using live action, and having to try and recreate things in live action. With animation you just have complete freedom. So a flying sequence, to describe the ups and downs of how women feel about their labia surgery, would be quite difficult to achieve in live action, and you probably wouldn't do that, you would probably try and talk about it in a different way. But it’s about communicating these ideas through animation in a way that I feel is much more emotive than a talking head shot of that person talking about labia surgery.

But one thing that’s quite interesting is that people often say “well, actually I would like to see those women who talk about their labia surgery”. They miss that talking head shot, but I really like to keep that out of the process.

Centrefold

Q: You have made several films that talk about feminist issues, and female body identity, why and what exactly interests you in these issues?

Ellie Land: So I suppose, what I am interested in is just how do we, as women, feel about our bodies, how do we look at ourselves, how do we reflect and critically appraise what we think about ourselves. Because I think that in our society, there is so much information and cultural wash about how we should look and how we’re supposed to look as women, and that changes depending on what’s fashionable at the time. And I think that it’s quite easy to get lost in all of that. So I’m quite interested in picking up on these kinds of things. So I suppose it’s body anxiety and body identity mixed up together.

Q: Do you feel like this pressure that women are under (or put themselves under) regarding their looks, is the result of hundreds of years of women being regarded primarily as objects or sexual objects?

Ellie Land: Yes, very much so, but I also think that it’s wrapped up in consumerism and business. So it’s not necessarily just because women are regarded as an object of desire, it’s also about making money from being that object of desire, which I think is a big thing that surrounds us, for both men and women.

Centrefold


Finally, I also talked with Ellie Land about the difficulty that she had in finding the right vocabulary for talking about labia with the women that she interviewed, and about the sense of shame that women might feel regarding this part of their body.

Ellie Land: I think that shame is a good word, there is this feeling of shame about “down there”, about your genitals. I remember when we were starting the project, we thought “what are we going to call it when we speak to the women?”. The women were saying to me: “how shall I refer to myself?” - and I was saying - “well the actual term is your genitals". But it doesn’t sound as good as "fanny" or "vagina". So in the end, people just referred to themselves as they wanted to. 

And there was also a discussion about the way to pronounce “labia”, and is it “labiaplasty” or “labioplasty”? There are all these different terms, so even getting the language right was something that we had to discuss, because it’s not something that is generally talked about.

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Music at the end of the podcast: Feeling Good by My Brightest Diamond (a woman singing about feeling good, I thought it fitted well!)

Tuesday 25 September 2012

Exclusive Interview with Robert Guediguian

Robert Guediguian
In March 2011, I programmed a season of 4 French films from the 1990s at the great Side Cinema, Newcastle, UK (http://www.amber-online.com/sections/side-cinema).

I tried to programme films that were not so famous in the UK, and to show that there were other things than La Haine (Kassovitz, 1995) happening in French cinema in the 1990s!

The 4 films that I programmed were: Betty (Chabrol, 1992), Every Little Thing (Philibert, 1997), Beau Travail (Denis, 1999) and The Town is Quiet (Guediguian, 2000).

For the screening of Betty, Prof Guy Austin, from Newcastle University, introduced the screening and stayed for a post-film discussion. Prof Austin has written a book about Chabrol, and Betty is one of his favourite films from that director.

For The Town is Quiet, Robert Guediguian very kindly accepted that I interview him over the phone before the screening, and that I distribute a translation of the interview to the audience. I interviewed him for one hour, and asked him questions about his film The Town is Quiet, but also about filmmaking in general, about politics (inevitably), and about French cinema. By talking about The Town is Quiet, he says a lot about the kind of cinema that he likes to make. This is the interview that you can find below.

His films have not always been very well distributed abroad. His latest film, The Snows of Kilimandjaro (2011), premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, and got great reviews. It also won the Silver Spike at the Valladolid International Film Festival. Despite that, it only got a very small release on Fri 14 Sept 2012 in the UK.


Exclusive Interview with Robert Guediguian, 1 March 2011, for the screening of THE TOWN IS QUIET (2000, Dir. Robert Guediguian) at the Side Cinema, Newcastle upon Tyne
French poster for The Town is Quiet
Why do you make films?
RG: It’s a way for me to be involved with politics. I make films like I could be involved with any other art, but it so happened that I started being involved with cinema. I used to belong to the communist party but for various reasons I left the party in the 80’s. Now I generally support any left-wing movement or party, without belonging to any party in particular. But it’s not possible for me not to be involved politically, at some level.
Is this linked to your roots maybe?
RG: Probably – my dad was Armenian and my mother German, and that’s 2 countries with a heavy history. The Armenians were victims of genocide in 1915, and Germany was involved with another genocide. Also, my family were working class people – my dad worked in the Marseille docks, and my mother was a cleaner, so it is important for me to make films about these people. I will always be on the side of the working class.
Is this also linked to the fact that the working class is not very much represented in French cinema today?
RG: Totally. French cinema today is dominated by representations of the high-middle class, and the working class has disappeared from French films today. Between the 2 world wars, the working class was more represented, but this has stopped, and “popular cinema” has disappeared. Cinema doesn’t give a sense a pride to people like it used to. The way I make films is that I try to make Greek tragedies in a working class setting.
Why do you think that the working class has disappeared from French cinema?
RG: It’s just representative of France at the moment in general – politically, social movements are not represented at the moment. I think it’s great that French people often strike and go to the street when they disagree with a political decision – I am proud of being French in that sense - but these social movements are not represented politically (and this has been the case since the 80’s and the end of communism).
But you are still politically active, you haven’t given up on politics, have you?
RG: No, I haven’t given up on politics, but I wouldn’t publicly support any particular party at the moment – many f them are worth supporting. I wouldn’t support the socialist party, but any other left-wing party is for me interesting. But the best way for me to be politically active, the way in which I am the most useful and original, is when I make films. If I start belonging to a political party, that’s not very original – but when I make films, my views can be expressed more clearly and openly, and can reach more people.
Also, I think that there are many other ways of doing politics than belonging to a party – it is possible to be involved with unions, with charities. The biggest political changes don’t generally come from political parties – they come from popular movements, through other ways in which people get involved.
The Town is Quiet is a very dark film – is this the vision that you had of France at the time?
RG: I think that there are 2 ways of making films – either you make films that are like a “proposition” – you show what things could be like, characters that show what we should be doing. These films are more positive – one of my films, Marius et Jeannette [1996, his biggest popular success in France] is one of those. Or you can make films that show reality as it is, and these films are darker – like The Town is Quiet. It’s a violent film, where there is no hope, and that shows all the things that are going wrong. Several characters in the film are very right-wing, and have turned to that alternative because they don’t know what else to do, they don’t see any other way out. That issue is actually topical as right-wing movements/parties are progressing at the moment everywhere in Europe.
But my vision of the world encompasses these 2 ways of making films: I see the world as positive and negative at the same time. Both sides are present and coexist. However, I don’t think that it is possible to mix these 2 visions in one single film. When you make a film, I think that it’s better to be a bit extreme in the way you show things, to exaggerate the picture slightly. So I make films that are quite dark, or films that are quite positive – but in separate films.
One of the characters in the film says to her husband “I prefer poor people who vote for the national front, than “petit bourgeois” people like you who pretend to defend these same poor people”. Is it something that you feel yourself?
RG: Totally. People who vote for the national front – I want to talk to them. I can understand them and their motivations. They are tired and don’t know for who else to vote anymore.
One day I met an old man in the street, who told me that he had voted for the National Front once. Later he had seen my film Marius et Jeannette [in which one character votes for the national front once], and that made him feel ashamed of having voted this way, and he said that he wouldn’t do it anymore. It was great for me to hear that, and that’s why I want to make films. Making films is a good way of reaching these right-wing people.
Ariane Ascaride in The Town is Quiet
The Town is Quiet is quite distinctive in that it is a film based on several characters that we follow at the same time – why did you chose that kind of structure?
RG: I had wanted to make a film like that for a long time, that showed people from many different social classes, many different situations. In general, cinema doesn’t allow you to do that – most people will try and discourage you from making a film like that, they will say that it’s too confusing for the audience, that you should always just have one central character, and that too many characters make it impossible for the audience to follow.
But I wanted to do that – ever since I read the book from Dos Passos, Manhattan Transfer. Altmann also made a great film with that structure, with Short Cuts.
One of the characters in the film [ played by actor Jacques Pieiller, the one whose wife wants to divorce him], used to be a left-wing activist, but seems to now have been seduced by power and given up on his beliefs – does this portray a certain kind of left-wing activist for you?
RG: Absolutely. He represents some left-wing people who have changed, who consider that there is not that much that you can do after all, who are fatalistic, and who think that you can’t really change reality. Once, Jospin [French socialist politician] went to a Renault factory where the workers were on strike, and he said to them “The State cannot do everything”. I think that’s appalling – the State can’t do everything, but it can do a lot.
There are a lot of terraces in the film – places where people see the city from above. One of the characters in the film says at some point “the point of view is the place from which you’re looking at the world”. In the film, Yves Froment goes to parties where rich heads of companies and right-wing people are invited, parties taking place at these terraces – and I think that it is not possible to mix with such people and to not be influenced by them at all. I don’t think that left-wing people should attend such parties.
The theme of abortion is present in the film – with the character of Ariane Ascaride who had a very painful abortion from the time when it was still illegal (abortion was legalised in France in 1975), and with the character of Veronique Balme (the young flirtatious woman) who is against abortion. Was it important for you to talk about this issue in the film?
RG: Yes totally. I sometimes have the impression that there can be great confusion in society, and a regression too. All occidental countries have anti-abortion campaigns at some level, with varying degrees of success. It’s important to talk about it, regression is a danger and it scares me.
It’s not because there is no future that we should find refuge in the past, in past beliefs or practices. It is easy to be reassured by visions of the past, and there is a danger to fall back on religion, on conservative values of order or nationalism. I wanted to make reference to that and show that I am against this way of thinking.
How do you understand the character of Veronique Balme? [that’s the character of the young and quite flirtatious woman] Her personality and intentions are difficult to grasp.
RG: She is a bit mad. She represents a certain branch of the extreme right movement that I call “naturalist”. They talk about nature, and can have a strange link with nudity or sexuality. She is a bit mad, and mixes a bit everything, many different values. She is a bit delirious and her values don’t really make any sense.
She has the same name as the baby, Ameline – was there a reason why the 2 characters have the same name?
RG: I wanted to create links between the characters – some of them have the same name, or use the same car, or listen to the same music. It’s a way of linking the characters, while they might not meet. As there are many different characters it was a way of creating meaning in the film. It was also to reinforce the idea that all these characters live in the same place, talk about the same things, and deal with the same problems – but they just have very different points of view on one situation. So it was a way of creating a sense of togetherness.
The film ends with the young Georgian boy playing piano – was it important for you to choose an immigrant, and a child?
RG: Yes, it was very important for me to choose an immigrant as a representation of hope – and also, he plays “Que Ma Joie Demeure” (“Let my joy be” from Bach – part of Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben). Immigrants often have an incredible strength and vitality. They arrive in a new country, have to learn a new language, and have to adapt to a new society. They often have a lot of energy.
Also, music, and art in general, are important symbols for me. Art, beauty and harmony are concepts that are linked for me – art shows a certain degree of civilization, in a good sense. Art is one way of making peace. Another character [the blond woman who wants to divorce her husband] is also a positive character – and she’s a music teacher, so again, she is linked to art and beauty.
How do you understand the character of the actor Jean-Pierre Daroussin [the taxi driver]?
RG: He’s a coward. His dad’s generation was more politically active, but he is mistaken, he doesn’t have a strong position, or a strong set of beliefs. He’s lost and opportunistic. He’s a bit “wet”, he’s not a likeable character. He is ready to do anything. Also, he takes the redundancy money from the docks and doesn’t fight, but in the end he doesn’t manage as a taxi driver either.
The character of the black young man is a very positive character – how do you understand him?
RG: Yes he’s a very positive character; he remains alert and linked to reality. Him, the boy who plays piano, and the character of Christine Brucher [the woman who wants to get divorced] are positive characters who see what is happening, and, even though they might not have solutions, they try, they do what they can. They are linked to reality and to beauty.

Podcast: Presentation of the Star & Shadow Cinema for Radio Scala, Resonance FM, Sept 2012

Photo of the Star & Shadow Cinema Bar  
On 14 Sept 2012, an 18-minute podcast that I made, presenting the Star & Shadow Cinema (volunteer-run cinema in Newcastle, UK), was aired on the Radio Scala show on Resonance FM.

Here is a link to the podcast:
http://soundcloud.com/film-and-beyond/star-shadow-for-scala-beyond

If you don't know the Star and Shadow Cinema (http://www.starandshadow.org.uk/), this podcast is a general presentation of the way the cinema runs and of the type films that are programmed there.

It includes interviews with Ilana Mitchell, Sam Grant and Dan Wallder, who are all regular Star & Shadow volunteers.

If you're interested, you can listen to the whole one-hour Radio Scala show from 14 Sept, when the pocast was aired, here:
http://soundcloud.com/scalabeyond/radio-scala-julia-marchese-and

Radio Scala is a show put together by Michael Pierce and Philip Wood, who have organised the wonderful Scala Beyond festival (which run in August-Sept 2012 around the UK, http://scalabeyond.com/).

Monday 17 September 2012

Podcast Interview with Philip Wood, Director of Scala Beyond, and Co-Founder of the Roxy Bar and Screen


Philip Wood in Brussels, at the Kinoclimates meeting (June 2012)
In June 2012, I met with Philip Wood in Brussels, as we both attended the Kino-Climates meeting, a meeting for independent alternative cinemas in Europe (http://www.kino-climates.org/). The meeting was organised by the Cinema Nova, a fantastic volunteer-run cinema in Brussels (http://www.nova-cinema.org/?lang=en). On this occasion, I interviewed him and made this podcast.

Philip Wood is the co-founder of the Roxy Bar & Screen, which is a cinema, a bar and a restaurant all at the same time, and which opened in London in August 2006. It’s a bit of an unusual cinema, as audiences can have a meal at the same time as they watch a film on the big screen (http://www.roxybarandscreen.com/). Philip Wood is also the director of Scala Beyond, which is a 6 week film season celebrating all forms of cinema in the UK, between 18 August and 29 September 2012 (http://scalabeyond.com/).

In this 15-minute podcast, Philip Wood tells us about how he programmes films at the Roxy Bar & Screen and about how Scala Beyond (and its previous London-based version, Scala Forever), were born, and also about why he cares so much about film exhibition.



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Transcription of an extract of the podcast interview with Philip Wood


To give you an idea about the podcast, I have transcribed here the last part of the podcast, in which Philip Wood talks about the role that cinemas can play in helping audiences to discover new films.

At the moment, with the internet, people can watch any film, any time, but what we discussed with Philip Wood, is that this situation might paradoxically reinforce the importance of cinemas, as these can guide people through this endless choice of films.

I find this point very interesting, as I sometimes wonder if something that is missing in our internet-based societies at the moment, is the opprtunities for “transmission” between one person and another. Independent cinemas, by putting on film nights with a personalised touch (with the programmer introducing the film, accompanied by a debate, or simply through consistent quality in their programming) can precisely offer this “transmission”. If audiences learn to appreciate a certain cinema, they will trust their programming and might discover new films that they would not have watched otherwise. And this "transmission" might give a film a different value than if it was watched on a computer or at home, simply because it will be connected to a place and a community.

These ideas participate to the wider debate about the role of cinemas nowadays and about their evolution, and I think that it’s important to think about the value of cinemas at a time when the internet might make them seem obsolete.

Photo of the Roxy Bar & Screen, London


Philip Wood:

“What me and Michael [Pierce, co-organiser of Scala Forever and Scala Beyond] really like, is the social, communal aspect of the cinema. I think that’s what I am most proud about Roxy [the Roxy Bar and Screen, in London, is a cinema in which you can watch films and eat and drink at the same time]. The first question people ask at Roxy is “do people talk during the screenings?” Because you sit at tables and you can have a drink. “Do people talk? Is it noisy? Can you concentrate on the film?”

We’ve never ever had to put a sign to say “please don’t talk” or “please turn your phones off”. When you go to a normal cinema, there’s a lot of “don’t do this, don’t do that”. We’ve never had to do that, and I think that’s because of the environment that we’ve created, because it’s sociable, because you interact with staff at the bar and with other customers who might be sitting at the same table as you. Because it’s a different environment, it becomes a different experience, a more sociable communal experience, so people respect each other in the room. It’s not perfect, but it’s a much better communal social experience than going to a normal cinema where you have a ticket, you have to sit in this seat, you can’t see the people behind you, you can’t see the people in front of you, and it’s very sort of alienated experience. You’re a number, you have to sit there, and when the lights go off you have to leave.

At the Roxy [Bar and Screen], you can come before the screening, you can stay after, and you can chat. It’s much more communal, and I think it’s really important for the art form. I think this type of environment is really important for any art form to really connect with audiences. It’s not just about putting something on, or watching something on your laptop. For it to be successful, it’s important that the experience is the best that it can be. So I like that added value.

So with Scala Beyond, I think that it’s really important that audiences find out who programmes the Star & Shadow Cinema [which participates to the Scala Beyond], who put that on? Why did the programmer put that on? He didn’t get paid for it, he spent a lot of his time and effort putting it on, so I want to know that, because it makes me more interested in what that screening is. If I know that the person who did it, did it for this particular reason, and he’s really interested in this, it makes me more interested in the film. And I think that’s really important, so that’s what we wanted to celebrate. Because it’s not just someone picking a film. A lot of thought and effort goes into it, and that’s what can connect with an audience.

(…) In the 1980s, you had these rep cinemas like the Scala and there were plenty of others. So that was very much a way to discover this world of cinema, because someone had picked it, and they would put that film with that film, and that was part of this season, so you could discover something you would never have known about. Because someone guided you, or that cinema had a particular identity that you could connect with. So you could go “I don’t know what that film is but I’ve read about it on the Scala programme, and I like the Scala, so it must be quite good”. So it’s a kind of way of introducing it. And then when they closed, for my sort of age group, a lot of it was through TV. And you had stuff like Videodrome, with Alex Cox. And he would introduce the film, so you could watch Videodrome, and it could be any film, but you would know that they picked it, and it was a certain type of film, so it was a way of introducing me to stuff. And I was introduced to a lot of Black and White stuff, on BBC2 or late at night, or even Kung-Fu stuff. So you watched TV, but you were introduced to this stuff, because someone somewhere decided to put certain films on TV.

Whereas now you can say “you can watch any film in the world”, but where do you start? You don’t know where to start! Whereas then, you just turned on BBC2, or you went to that cinema, and someone picked it for you. When there’s too much choice, you just go “I don’t know what to watch!” or “I’ll watch something I’ve known, or I’ve seen before”, and it’s very hard to find something new. So it’s very important for venues to have a personality, and an identity, so that audiences can choose to engage with that place."




Friday 10 August 2012

Podcast - Slow Cinema Weekend, Av Festival, March 2012


Photo from the film Two Years At Sea (2011) from Ben Rivers, shown
 during the Slow Cinema Weekend ,  AV festival 2012
This is a 28-minute podcast about the Slow Cinema Weekend, which took place from the 8 to 11 March 2012 in Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, as part of the AV Festival (http://www.avfestival.co.uk/).

The podcast includes extracts from a discussion on Slow Cinema in which you can hear the views from the film critic Jonathan Romney, the blogger and Phd student Matthew Flanagan (http://landscapesuicide.blogspot.fr/), the film curator George Clark, and the artist and filmmaker Ben Rivers. The podcast also includes an interview with Kate Taylor, Exhibition Officer at the Independent Cinema Office, about Slow Cinema, the AV Festival, and  cinema exhibition in Newcastle upon Tyne, and a short interview with an audience member, Stephen Bear.

You can listen to the podcast here:

Interview with Rebecca Shatwell, Director of the AV Festival, about AV 2012


Rebecca Shatwell in discussion with Ben Rivers after the screening of Two Years at Sea at the
Star & Shadow Cinema, during the Slow Cinema Weekend, AV Festival 2012
 (Photo by Michael Pattison)
The AV Festival 2012 took place in March 2012 in the North East of England, in the UK. That year, it held its most adventurous edition to date as it run for an entire month, and that it held 22 exhibitions, 34 films screenings, 15 concerts, 6 walks, and a 744-hour continuous online radio (you can see the whole programme here http://www.avfestival.co.uk/).
In January 2012, I talked to festival director Rebecca Shatwell about the film programme, but also about her curatorial work for the music and exhibition programme, and in general about her experience as a festival director.

The theme for this year’s festival is “slow”. Why did you pick this theme?
There were various reasons for it. We always select a theme that isn’t just art industry-speak, and that might have a wider relevance to issues in contemporary society. At the moment, in journalism and popular culture, people talk not having enough time to be in the moment or to really experience artwork. So I wanted respond to that, and also I was very aware that this festival was going to take place in 2012, so I wanted to make some creative response to the Olympics without alluding to it so directly.
A lot of the way artists work with technology now is about making things quicker. For example, in cinema, the speed of Hollywood films is increasing, with very fast editing techniques. I don’t think that all art that’s slow is good, but I think that there’s a lot of durational work that demands a different attention from audiences, and that if you want to go on a journey with it, it really can really change your life and be transformative. You’re transported outside of your routine, you forget your worries and you’re in a different space.
The film programme of the AV cuts across between “artist film” (generally shown in galleries), and “traditional” feature films (shown in cinemas) – was it important to you to programme both types of films?
My background is from the visual art, more than film, and I don’t really make a division in terms of the different types of contemporary culture. I think that it’s a shame that the different ways of producing films (artist film and traditional film are not funded by the same authorities, and obviously artists make work in a different way to filmmakers) eventually affects how these films are brought to audiences.
Artist films are shown in galleries only, and commercial films are shown in the cinema, but that’s an artificial distinction. There’s a perception that artist films can’t be seen by people who go to a cinema and see a mainstream film. I think there are cross-overs between all these films and that people can relate to both types of film.
Also there are lots of blurry divisions: a lot of artists are now making feature films, and I don’t just means films like Shame by Steve McQueen. There are artist filmmakers that are making feature films within their own parameters and controlling it a lot more. So the festival actually has 3 feature films that are made by artists. I’ve made a point not to call them “feature films made by artists” - they are in the feature film programme. The films are Ben Rivers’ Two Years at sea, Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Lung Neaw Visits His Neighbours, Ken Russell’s Let Each one go Where he may.
Because of commercial pressure, some cinemas are fearful of showing artist work. But I think that that narrows down audiences’ choice before they are given a chance to experience a wider variety, and there are just different ways of presenting artist films to audiences so that people aren’t afraid by the lack of narrative in work, and just take a risk with it.
How did you pick the films? Most of the films that you have programmed are from the 2000s, while “slow cinema” is traced to a few decades ago…
It was a very difficult process. In the early stages, I was very keen to present a historical perspective on slow cinema, starting from the 1960s onwards. For the feature films, we would have shown Bresson and Antonioni, and in terms of artist films, it would have been Andy Warhol, Chantal Akerman, Michael Snow or Hollis Frampton. I was keen to reflect the fact that this is not a new phenomenon.
But then one of the difficulties was that it was too many films. I do find it criminal that Chantal Akerman isn’t in the programme – there are so many directors that should be there. But at the end of the day, I decided to focus on films that people wouldn’t be able to get anywhere else. Obviously watching a film on DVD and on 35mm is not the same, but at the end of the day, I thought that maybe we should look at films that aren’t distributed, and that was really the starting point to the slow cinema weekend. Lav Diaz’s and Fred Keleman’s  films - they are not easily distributed, and unless you go to film festivals, you can’t see them.
So what do you think about the slow cinema movement? And about the fact that some people say that it’s a new “festival trend”, that it’s a new “conventional” style?
[There’s been a massive debate among film critics since 2010 about this, about the existence or the growth, or not, of “slow” films since the 2000s, about what the term would mean, about whether this category is relevant, and about whether film critics and festival programmers might have bought into “slow cinema” too easily without being critical enough]
It’s difficult, and like with any kind of new movement or trend, one has to be wary of it. But personally, I’m almost more interested in individual filmmakers and in their own development, and in making sure that their work is shown. Although obviously, contextualising work in critical writing is very important, and some really important questions have been asked in the slow cinema discussion of the last 2 years.
Also, I was interested in the fact that, apart from being “slow”, a lot of sub-themes or commonalities cut across between the films. For example James Benning and Sharon Lockhart – they have collaborated previously, and they have a clear vocabulary, exclusively focussed on a single shot, almost static takes of American landscape. There is a whole conversation on the American landscape, the change in normal ecology, the change in urban landscapes in America in that period.
Also some of the sub-themes within the festival programme are around architecture, decays and architectural landscapes. For example in Colossal Youth, Pedro Costa has made films on the collapse of a housing complex in Lisbon. And Still Life is about the decay of a certain area in China, which was submerged as part of a dam project.
I don’t think that all slow films are about the landscape, nature or change, but there’s definitely a thread there. Certain techniques in cinema, like the long-take and time lapse, can actually help to convey certain stories and certain themes.
There’s also some alternative political films, and different ways of depicting ethnography, so Ben Russell’s Let Each One go Where He May, and Rirkrit Tiravanija’s Lung Neaw Visits His Neighbours both have a documentary style, in the way that they are following people in their own indigenous environment for a few days or weeks, almost as a journey. In a lot of slow films there is a sense of a journey, and the road movie comes up quite a lot, so I don’t know if that’s just because road movies are durational in their nature as well.
If people see more than one of these films, there is going to be emotional relevance and meaning that go from film to film, and they will get different ways of seeing the world. Definitely for me, after watching several Pedro Costa films, watching Albert Serra’s films, watching the Lisandro Alonso films, a couple of weeks watching  those films, you just start thinking about your daily routine in a different way and how you look at things.
The festival is there to kind of question and to explore, and the reason why I wanted to bring in filmmakers over is to have a dialogue with them. The reason why we’re showing a lot of films is to communicate that slow cinema isn’t a particular genre or a particular thing, it cuts across different types of filmmaking, different techniques, and we want to question whether these films are part of the slow cinema movement or not.
The festival is based in the North East – is this important to you?
For me that’s really important. I think it’s really important to work where you live, and live where you work.
The North East is not really seen as being at the forefront of avant-garde art - you could be working in bigger cities like London or Berlin…
I know, but for me that’s part of the challenge, because I’m interested in how festivals can help develop audiences for work that’s more experimental. A festival can be more risk-taking than a venue that has to put on stuff year-round. I play across different spaces, and I can encourage audiences to take a particular route. When you programme a festival, you’re curating / marketing / designing something to make it easy for people to take a risk, so maybe you show an installation at an establishment like Baltic but you also encourage people to see something else at the same time.
So for me a festival in somewhere like the North East, I think there’s actually a lot more opportunity to be experimental and to be broad in the way you think about it, because you are genuinely bringing work to a place that doesn’t normally see this sort of work. I don’t know what a festival like AV would look like if it was in London or in Berlin, where, for example with the BFI in London, maybe you can see films more regularly. So for me I’m interested in the response, I do feel very strongly about the responsibility to bring work like this to a region like the North East where there is curiosity and an appetite. I don’t think that international festivals only need to happen in the main metropolises. I think it is a bigger challenge, but I think it’s really important to take that challenge, otherwise experimental work is even more segregated just to happen in areas of the country that has a population that can deal with it.
Also, we do have a lot of people who come from outside the region, and I love the fact that if the festival brings 20% of people from outside the region into the region, then , if you work in events and you talk to people, you’re being introduced to new people, and hopefully new collaborations can start and new things happen, so that’s interesting as well, the social side of the festival.