Thursday 24 October 2013

London Film Festival 2013 Coverage

As some of you will have already realised, I've spent the last four weeks ensconced at the London Film Festival 2013. My writing on the festival has been spread over four different sites and one radio station, so I thought I'd post links to all the online coverage in one place. 
 
There's still one more piece to come, an interview for Filmuforia with Hélène Cattet and Bruno Forzani, directors of The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears, which won't see the light of day until the film is released in the UK. 
 
It's perhaps also worth pointing out that there are a few films I liked that I've not written about anywhere, so an omission doesn't necessarily equate to a negative attitude, but simply to a lack of time and space. 
 

Tuesday 1 October 2013

Saturday 28 September 2013

London Film Festival 2013 Review: Ida

Please note: this review contains spoilers 
 
From the very first image of Pawel Pawlikowski's Ida, something important is immediately apparent: it's absolutely stunning to look at. And what's more, the images are square, once more proving the power – dare I say the superiority? – of full frame ratios. As the near-wordless opening minutes unfold, the film's crisp black and white images and measured pace lull the viewer into an increasing awareness that the film has been assembled by someone with a complete mastery of the cinematic medium. People are pushed to the corners of the frame, like Joan of Arc in Dreyer's masterpiece, and the austere mood recalls Bresson's famous maxim that you should 'build your film on white, on silence, and on stillness'. It's almost as if Pawlikowski is throwing down the gauntlet and stepping forward to claim the hole left by the retirement of Béla Tarr. I must confess to being ignorant about Pawlikowski's prior work, and I can't claim to know his future intentions, but Ida certainly belongs to the tradition of these great masters, and lives up to every bit of promise that the association brings. 
 
A young nun, Sister Anna (a tremendous Agata Trzebuchowska), is ordered by the Mother Superior of the convent where she was raised to meet her only living relative, Wanda Gruz (an equally excellent Agata Kulesza), before confirming her vows. Reluctantly, Anna visits Wanda at her apartment, where she is confronted by some shattering home truths: not only is Anna really called Ida, but she is also Jewish – not Christian. Furthermore, Ida's parents are dead and, like so many other Jews murdered in the Second World War, have no graves. From here, Ida and Wanda venture out on a journey to discover how Ida's parents died, and where they are buried. 
 
Together, Ida and Wanda are an unlikely couple, almost Kazantzakian in their differences: where Ida is meek and mild, Wanda charges like a bulldog, a literally threatening presence (she tells one person they ask for information that she can 'destroy' them, and admits to Ida that in her heyday she was a state prosecutor and sentenced many people to their deaths). But when Wanda takes hold of Ida's Bible during an argument, a latent force flashes forth from Ida – these women are not one dimensional caricatures, and this is one sign of many that perhaps they are not as different as they first appear. 
 
For the briefest moment, the road trip aspect of the film, in which the women from different generations drive to Wanda's hometown, seems to recall memories of Wild Strawberries. But such a comparison would be misleading, for there is no overt psychologising or philosophising here (there is also no sentimentality, just an almost Antonionesque distancing – but I think I've already name checked enough masters, so let's not dwell further on that). The meaning in Ida seeps out from within, with Anna/Ida experiencing something akin to a crisis of identity after discovering her birth name and religion (she is, as Wanda tells her, a 'Jewish Nun'). When Ida and Wanda eventually find the remains of Ida's parents, they exhume them and move them elsewhere, to rebury them in a family grave. But can the past really be so easily (re)buried? At one point Ida sits talking to a young saxophone player the women have befriended, while behind them a window's ironwork seems to entrap them like a spider's web. Perhaps there is no getting away from who we are and the legacy our parents leave us – and perhaps, for Poland and the rest of the world, there is no escaping the legacy of the Second World War. Just as Wanda's past work has placed blood on her hands, so too is there blood on our national heritage, and the spectre of death may never be vanquished. 
 
It is not only the spectre of death, however, that haunts Ida throughout the film: it is also the spectre of life – and in this, the spirit of Kazantzakis once more rises within the frame (when Wanda advises Ida to experience carnal love so that her vows mean something and become a meaningful sacrifice, one thinks of the following line from Christ Recrucified: 'Let him go into the world, Father, and have children and live; when he's had enough of life, he'll become a monk'). For a moment, Ida seems to face the same crisis that has struck so many of Kazantzakis' heroes: whether to follow the path of the spirit, or succumb to the joys of the flesh. When Ida separates from Wanda and returns to the convent, her life seems mechanical. She eats in perfect synchronisation with her fellow nuns, thereby calling to mind mealtimes in the reformatory of G.W. Pabst's Diary of a Lost Girl (perhaps there is a pun to made here regarding Diary of Country Priest?). Although now apart, Ida and Wanda have made an indelible impression on one another – their lives have been changed, and a connection has been formed, in spite of themselves and their differences. 'Jesus adored people like me' Wanda says at one point, after she's referred to herself as a slut. Maybe religion, life, sex and God's love aren't so far apart after all? For Ida, it seems the only way to find out is to give life a go, even if the final shots imply life may not be for her after all (perhaps, in the end, 'life' itself is merely hollow and unsatisfying).
 
Intensely visual, impeccably composed, Ida somehow manages to cram all of this into its perfect 80 minute runtime. If all films could say so much – and so well – in such a short space of time, modern cinema would be a far richer art form.
 
 

Wednesday 14 August 2013

Tuscan Leftovers

Following swiftly on from my last post, here are a few other pictures taken in Tuscany which didn't fit in with the schema of the 'light, colour and texture' set, but which I still liked for one reason or another. (Once again, all photos were taken on a Canon Ixus 115 HS).
 








 

Light, Colour and Texture in Tuscany

While on holiday this year, I decided that, as well as making the phantom rides I posted recently, I'd have a go at a photography project dedicated to the light, colour and textures that I saw while in Tuscany. The results are below. (All photos were taken on a Canon Ixus 115 HS).
 











 

Monday 5 August 2013

Phantom Rides

While in Italy this year, I decided to make the following series of 'phantom ride' films. They are intended as a bit of fun, and are by no means meant to be taken as a serious artistic endeavour! Enjoy.








Tuesday 23 July 2013

Tuesday 18 June 2013

Mobile Impressionism

Before finally upgrading to a smartphone last year, the photographer in me always thought it would be cool to have a camera phone. But then I got my BlackBerry, and I realised…well, I realised that the images are just a bit shit – especially when you zoom in. There's no optical zoom, just a digital option which crops the final file and adds a lot of noise. Add to that no control of exposure and the difficulty of actually taking and framing images on the phone, and the whole thing began to seem rather pointless. But then, one day a few weeks ago, I was bored and waiting for my girlfriend to finish picking something up from her office. So I started taking some photos. The images weren't very good, but there was something about these two pictures which struck me: 

Somewhere, in among the blur and the grain, there was a kind of beauty. The noise in the images reminded me of the brushstrokes of the impressionist painters. When I was a kid, I told my parents that I didn't like impressionism because the images were 'scruffy'. It was this 'scruffiness' that I was now responding to in these two photographs. 
 
With this in mind, I decided to embark on a photography project. A series of photographs taken on my BlackBerry, on full zoom, highlighting the 'impressionism' (the 'scruffiness') of the images generated. What follows below is the result of this project.