Category: Folklore

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 23

The Southwark Mysteries

Ten years since these modern mystery plays were first performed, John Constable’s raucous mystical caravan will be returning to Southwark Cathedral this April. Website sez:

Inspired by the medieval mystery plays, this modern drama is rooted in the history of Bankside – London’s “outlaw borough” – mixing Bible stories with local folklore and contemporary humour.

Crossbones Graveyard Gates

Crossbones Graveyard Gates

It’s not Shakespeare (although he is in it, and Chaucer too – both had strong ties to the area) but it should be an entertaining performance.

The play stitches together symbols from across the centuries, from high art and street scurf, and it’s full of church spires and rags, goddesses, whores, history and magic.

It was inspired by the discovery of the Crossbones Graveyard in Borough. The play was written partly to restore a voice and a memory to the 15,000 nameless people buried there outside consecrated ground – prostitutes and criminals, the sick and the mad.

The whole project is an amazing example of modern myth-making, of a community of misfits and an urban space reclaimed for the non-specific spiritual. One day I’m going to tie a ribbon to the gate and commemorate one of the thousands of born-forgotten women who are buried there.

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Posted in Art, Drama, Folklore, History, London, Magic n that, Myths, Southwark, Stories

Apr 29

London lore

Bishopsgate InstituteLast week  I left the sunny, comfy, biscuit-and-teaness of a normal Saturday morning behind to head down to the London Lore conference at the beautiful Bishopsgate Institute near Liverpool St.

Organised by the Folklore Society and the South East London Folklore Society (SELFS), it sold out weeks beforehand, so there were about 200 of us there in the Institute’s modestly ornate pale green great hall. The amateur enthusiasts, middle-aged men with thick glasses and shirts tucked into their jeans were out in force, as were a number of wild-eyed men sporting exciting hairstyles of both scalp and face. However, I was pleased to discover the audience also contained large numbers of pale bookish girls (that’s me), elderly women in strange purple garments, and goth couples, one half of whom sitting behind me was sporting a fantastic skeletal hand hairclip (like this one).

I won’t write up the whole event, as Bad Witch has already done a good summary of the speakers and topics, but overall I was very very impressed with the quality of talks and speakers. Everyone was clear, engaging, entertaining and kept to time. There was a good variety of topics, my favourites being a talk by Noel Rooney about the way the traditional character of the fox has been adapted for an urban setting and John Constable’s introduction to the Southwark Mysteries although the Chair pressed him into singing a song which I’m not sure the quiet audience really wanted.

There were also intriguing glimpses of two London museums from a folklore perspective – one, the Wellcome Collection, is already on my list of badass places, but the other – the Cuming Museum – was new to me.  Everyone seemed good-natured and lightly eccentric and the whole event had a lovely atmosphere.

The Newham Bookshop were running a stall at the back where all the speaker’s books were available and I very nearly spent a fortune. I did get quite a few copies of 21st century ‘penny dreadful’ One Eye Grey, but haven’t read many of the stories yet.

SELFS hold monthly talks at the King’s Head pub on Borough High Street, which is very near my office, so I shall go along and see what they’re like. Encouraged by the quality of the conference, less so by the fact that the second message I received after joining their email list was a lame sexist joke. Sigh.

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Posted in Folklore, History, London, Stories