An incomplete review of Hilma (2022)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2019 (17 to 24 October)
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1 November
An incomplete review of Hilma (2022)
Paying too little attention, #UCFF expected Hilma (2022), at @Saffronscreen, to be a doc - it was resolute that it wasn't one.https://t.co/o0pAbJUdDyhttps://t.co/k0vQ9VFo4e
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) November 1, 2022
Averaging the Guardian pair splits the difference at 2.5🌟- assuming that The World needs 🌟ratings...
It could well be that Hilma af Klint had a crush on Rudolf Steiner, met him twice only briefly, but took female lovers (seemingly under the nose of her family and of society at large) : whatever Steiner's actual status in her life, he only appears to be in the film, along with numerous deaths, to give it its rhythms.
However, if what just a quick look at Wiki* suggests happened is correct, matters were not as simple as Hilma chooses to tell her story :
In 1908 she met Rudolf Steiner, the founder of the Anthroposophical Society, who was visiting Stockholm. Steiner introduced her to his own theories regarding the Arts, and would have some influence on her paintings later in life.
Several years later, in 1920, she met him again at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland, the headquarters of the Anthroposophical Society. Between 1921 and 1930 she spent long periods at the Goetheanum.
By contrast, Edvard Munch, whose hug seems to be presented as puzzlingly shocking - although there is Strindbergian-style sex in the next room to the laying-out of af Klint's father (yet, given the circumstance and the film's generally Freudian tenor, it may betoken yet another unannounced dream ?) – could clearly have acted as a supporter, if his being so demonstrative had not been found insupportable.
* The review-notes, following the screening, didn't make it beyond a contemporaneous Tweet and a para. or two (or into a posting on #UCFF).https://t.co/HOQDS6jnkM
— THE AGENT APSLEY #ScrapUniversalCredit #JC4PM2019 (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) April 20, 2023
ENDS
End-notes :
* From the item on Hilma af Klint at : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilma_af_Klint.
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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)
