Category: Film

Jun 18

The Milk of Sorrow

This sad and strange Peruvian film is showing at the Stratford Picturehouse on Thursday. I’m miffed that I can’t go so I am sharing it with you, my tiny reading public.

The protagonist, a young woman called Fausta,  is ill with a disease contracted from her mother’s breast milk known as “the milk of sorrow”,  a condition that only affects those women in Peru who were abused or raped during the years of terrorist struggle.  This Grauniad review says “This Peruvian lament examining how distress passes down the generations is subtle and wonderfully moving.”

Here’s the trailer. Please go and support the screening of weird films at Stratford Picturehouse!*

* ‘Weird’ is intended to be entirely complimentary, btw

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Posted in Art, Feminism, Film, Folklore, Stories, Stratford

Feb 13

Kinetica art fair 2010

Flickering into existence in a warehouse space of Baker Street in early February, the Kinetica Art Fair described it’s contents as “artworks from leading contemporary arts organisations and artists specialising in kinetic, electronic, robotic, light, sound, time-based and interdisciplinary new media art”. And how!

There were some really stunning pieces, beautiful and mesmerising, some were creepy, or witty, all intelligent. It was packed when we went, and the abundant duct tape, neon, chatter and clanking of machinery gave the impression of being jostled through some kind of intergalactic souk.

Given the subject matter and the crowd you might expect the show to attract, *everyone* was taking photographs, liveblogging, podcasting, or filming the artworks, so there’s lots for people who didn’t get to see it, this video by Rainycatz takes in a lot of the really eerie lovely stuff that was going on.

There’s also a ton of Kinetica pictures on Flickr which are well worth a browse. Here’s a short video I took on my phone of some serenely spinning solar-powered glassy blue discs, which made me think of an otherwordly orrery: Kinetica – Orrery

I will add the title of that piece and the artist when I can get their website to work – it is clearly not futuristic enough to handle my OS + browser combo (oh snap!) Ok, have tracked it down, it’s called ‘Multiple Organism’ by Daniel Chadwick.

Other favourites include ‘Tease’ by Kathy Taylor, which has really grown on me. It has more layers than might be apparent at first glance, and it’s gentle play with a political/social theme appealed to me. As well as the ‘oooh flying teabag!’ reaction, of course.  You can see the movement in the video above.

The Most Unsettling Work award goes to ‘Memory’ by Mital and Papadakis, which was eerie in the extreme. Plus I’m a sucker for neurological imagery in art from Keats onwards. From ‘Ode to Psyche’:

In some untrodden region of my mind,
Where branchèd thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,
Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind

Wow, I am the culturedest!

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Posted in Art, Film, Tea, robots

Apr 07

‘Trail of the Spider’: an East End Western?

This looks fantastic; a Western set firmly in East London. Here’s the East End Film Festival programme note:

Western genre motifs are transformed to the landscape of East London. Questioning and re-imagining the Western’s portrayal of the ‘Vanishing Frontier’, this film recreates the epic panoramas of the Western in Hackney Marshes, the Thames Gateway and Essex. Using landfills, wastelands and gravel pits linked to the construction of the 2012 Olympic Park, it questions volatile financial speculations, private interests and the spectre of the Olympic gold rush. Working with a large cast of actors and non-actors (many of whom are themselves residents of East London), the film explores the compromises of a population facing this new order.

Trail of the Spider Poster

Trail of the Spider Poster

The trailer manages to transform the scrubby patch down the road, where people walk their dogs and play frisbee, into something wild and strange. Even the hats and the accents don’t break the spell. You can also visit filmmaker Anja Kirschner’s site for more on the ideas behind it. It’s showing at Stratford Picturehouse on Monday 27 April, 8.30pm and followed by a Q&A. See you there?

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Posted in Film, Hackney, Newham, Olympics, Politics, Regeneration