The 'Raindance' Tweets

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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11 May

Interesting :

Both times that #UCFF watched True Romance* (1993), there was no bank-robbery... ;)

* I.e. Quentin Tarantino's screenplay under Tony Scott's direction - *that* True Romance ? https://t.co/n7zR2mbINT

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 10, 2020

Meanwhile, others find a difference between :

'Make my day punk' [Jubilee (1978) - Derek Jarman (director)]

- and -

'Make my day, punk' [Dirty Harry (1971) - Clint Eastwood (as Harry Callahan)] https://t.co/eucvYZK9wd

— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 11, 2020

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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Epiphany : my visit to Tate Britain I

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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6 January

Having been to Tate Britain for the last day of The Turner Prize show, I am not surprised that Elizabeth Price’s nomination won it for her in 2012: to say that there were no real contenders is a rather unhelpful way of asserting that she outclassed them all.

I already knew that to be true of Luke Fowler’s 93-minute film, which simply wasn’t art, even if it was going to have the massive draw of footage of Laing, the psychiatrist whom so many people have heard of (or feel that they know about, Fowler probably included). Fair enough, by having All Divided Selves (2011) in the show, Tate was committed to coming up with the means to provide a space in which people could be for that long, and, from what I could tell the solution was effective. That said, there were people sitting on the floor, and, although some of them may have been not only transient, but also the result of last-weekend numbers, that is scarcely something that many would choose to do at the cinema (where I think that Fowler’s film belongs, not in a gallery).

There are several things that bother me still about how a full-length film distorts such a show, not least when the exhibition-space persists on being on the corridor model:

(a) attrition / fatigue / pacing, when one gets to the entry for Fowler’s film first, and, although entry is not exactly limited to the screening-times (and, unlike a gallery of displayed work, one does not have to pass through it), they require one to take that part out of one’s visit to plan to get somewhere to sit* ;

(b) even if Price’s and Fowler’s films were of the same quality, is more than four times as much better, just by virtue of being longer ? ;

(c) on the same question of comparison, how weigh Paul Noble’s drawings with All Divided Selves, even if one did not think that, assuming if the latter were art (not just slightly arty documentary), the Laing factor wins it in a way that Fowler’s film about Cornelius Cardew would not.


Although no one, of course, is going to admit it, I’d be very surprised if a show has another film that long in a hurry. (Or that anyone makes one – not, at least, without being much closer to the spirit of film-making that being a recipient of the Derek Jarman Award might suggest.)

Paul Noble’s work was fine, but it just did not have the virtuosic command of its medium that Price did of hers. As to Spartacus Chetwynd, let’s just say that I have seen better work of this carnivalesque kind, and that I really did mean to watch the whole performance, but it was so much more inviting to go back to the room with the mini-features about the nominees…

This survey concludes with a review of Price's award-winning work


End-notes

* If they do not have the benefits of coming in and out, as a Tate member, visitors are obliged to stay inside when they have bought a ticket, however much a coffee may call.


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Jarman and jerking-off

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
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21 September

You might or might not like Jarman's style of working, and I couldn't make it all the way through Jubilee (1978), but he was patently a film-maker.

At Cambridge Film Festival last night, All Divided Selves (2011) and the demeanour of its director, Luke Fowler, gave a very different impression from that made by Jarman, and the film did not seem much like a film, and the artist - as all artists tend to do - tried, although his language kept tripping him up*, to distance himself from the idea that his work said something or had a message.

The message that All Divided Selves had consisted almost entirely of Laing talking, often enough with visuals, about psychiatric conditions and his personal and cultural background, plus some others talking with or about him, his theories and psychiatry in general. As it is not difficult to pull quotations out of Laing's works, let alone footage, that says something pertinent to us and to now, then there may be no great merit in having done so, even if you have embellished the enterprise with bits and pieces that you have shot.


Conclusion : Would I prefer to have the chance to see Tacita Dean's FILM 2011 from Tate Modern's Turbine Hall again and have it substitute for my memory of Fowler's film? Yes!


End-notes

* He seemed not to want to say 'illustrative', but nonetheless kept saying it, so drawing atention to a word that he purported to eschew.


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