Too posh to answer the telephone ? [work in progress]

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2018 (25 October to 1 November)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

8 May

Some comments [work in progress], following a screening and Q&A (as film-maker in residence at The University of Cambridge's Centre for Film and Screen), of Lucrecia Martel's La Ciénaga (The Swamp) (2001)

If a film-maker [Lucrecia Martel] sets out to make a film that defies some cinematic conventions, it seems to be odd to want to know if the Q 'Could Chekhov have made it ?' is a compliment

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 8, 2018

Although it was not meant equivocally, it seems ironic for a writer / director who deals in ambiguity / opacity in La Ciénaga (The Swamp) (2001) to want to know if the comparison is meant kindly - if then evading it largely, by saying that Chekhov's work wasn't set in Argentina ? https://t.co/4eptbvEH9x

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 9, 2018

Anton Chekhov's last play, The Cherry Orchard, had sprung to mind.

Yet who necessarily wants a film released in 2001 to be likened to a play written 98 years earlier ?

Not if, now, one is laying store by innovation - even in a film that stays internally consistent and linear ?

— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) May 9, 2018

[...]


'You were all drunk'



Film-references :

* Babel (2006)

* Berberian Sound Studio (2012)

* Drevo (The Tree) (2014)

* Unrelated (2007)


[...]



It has been firmly postulated to be a feature of Andrei Tarkovksy's work that where, say, one sees Fire, the remaining Four Elements (of Earth, Water, and Air) can be found contiguously, but which is a pattern that one might otherwise overlook. In La Ciénaga, whether or not one can seek out the others in proximity (or they are simply pervasively present), one could impose - with some slight 'fudges' - an order on various recurrences to make a new Four Elements :

* Mud

* Blood [+ red wine]

* Water / ice / glass*

* Air


[...]


End-notes :

* Or 'Glass' could be an element in its own right, and substitute for 'Air' - though the latter is palpably there, as when


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here

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

Twitter and Facebook: making language a dying art? (a report from Varsity)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

29 January

This story is carried by Varsity, but, since I do not go near Arsebook, I must post my comment here:

When, more than thirty years ago, there was a Cambridge Collegiate Examination (CCE), the only applicants who did not have to take an 'essay paper' were those studying English : I have no idea when the CCE was abolished, but, before then, colleges could bear writing ability in mind prior to interview.

Are these the days that Dr Abulafia harks back to ?


Actually, what is bizarre is that, first with text-messages, then with the Tweet, we so readily acceded to the reintroduction of the telegram (for the character-limit tends to relate to some sort of cost).

What Dr Abulafia, to be an historian of such matters, would really need to show is that use of telegrams by the classes that could afford them made them as dull as he makes out the so-called social - nearly said 'facial' ! - media have made recent undergraduates*...


End-notes

* I like the alleged exchange between Cary Grant and a reporter (in which you will have to imagine the question-mark, because I do not recall how it was styled in a telegram) :


HOW OLD CARY GRANT

OLD CARY GRANT VERY WELL STOP HOW YOU



If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here