HIGH UP IN THE TREES

What brilliance this is.

{Collaborative collage featured in It's the Dusty Hour with Hila Shachar.}

Anticipation, that fantastically skin-prickly sense of looking forward to something, why, it is a wonderful sensation to feel coursing through the body and tickling the skin. Last night, Louise and I were lucky enough to be invited to The Australian Ballet’s opening night performance of Icons which submerges the willing in three one-act ballets from three different periods: Robert Helpmann’s The Display  (1964); Glen Tetley's Gemini (1973); and Graeme Murphy's Beyond Twelve (1980). There is something rather wonderful about seeing in sequential order ballets times three that hail from the 60s, 70s, and 80s. In each ballet, there were elements that spoke of the time they were created, and I thought how especially spectacular that was to see. It is a tremendous skill to be able, in any medium, to comment on what you see around you. From Helpmann’s “first work for the fledgling Australian Ballet, in 1964, ... inspired by a dream in which he saw a naked Katharine Hepburn on a dais surrounded by lyrebirds” by way of lycra-clad, make-it-yellow 70s to footy guernseys in the 80s (in colours that would make my Brown and Gold fixated Dad most proud), the ride was as sensory as you’d expect. However, to this I will all soon come. We are still at the beginning.

One of my favourite sounds is that of an orchestra tuning their instruments, be it in the orchestra pit or on stage, and to sit in the theatre or auditorium or somewhere that similar houses, and wait. Wait for it to fill with bodies also in a somewhat heightened state of anticipation. And excitement. And expectation. And tipsiness. What will I see? What will unfold? What will happen when the curtain lifts or draws aside and reveals a stage set? I love watching the theatre fill, though particularly the State Theatre, and I could happily sit in the stalls watching it all for a long time, drinking in the beautiful beforehand-ness of it all. One of the most beguiling scenes in Michael Haneke’s beautifully composed film Amour features at its opening the crowd, the bubbling audience, shown filmed from the area of the stage. The camera, we learn, is on the audience before a concert pianist takes to the stage. This is anticipation. In the audience, we spy Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emanuelle Riva). They are there to hear one of Anne’s former students play. It, too, I recall (or is that project?), is a red and gold warm theatre setting, the type that always feels so inviting and puts you physically in an aware state, a state of wondering what will come. And at ease too, those ordered, welcoming row after row, red covered, alphabetised and numbered seats. And those luminous gold details that for all their impressiveness also serve as welcoming in the expecting-of-great-things glittering ambience they create. Makes you realise how great architecture and its interior clothing can be, doesn’t it, when you think of its mood-altering transformative powers? And so, it is this scene in the film Amour I recalled as I sat last night watching the State Theatre fill for the opening night of the Australian Ballet’s Icons triple bill. It is fascinating to watch the crowd a-bustle with excitement, in a parade of finery, like foxes with their tails brushed or horses in an Epstein silent film with tinsel woven into their manes. It is intriguing to see what faces they wear. To hear fragments of conversations. This is true of both my evening and in Haneke’s film. Of Amour, it is also the only time we see Anne and Georges outside of their Parisian apartment. We see them living a full, creative life on the evening of her birthday, before illness and age begins to lay claim to them. It is curious how various film scenes come to mind later on, some many weeks later. The same is also true of dance. Perhaps it stems, just a little, from the devotion and focus we give them, as well as the mastery of what we see. As Louise commented recently, during a performance or film, one thinks only of what is playing out before the eyes. One thinks about what one is seeing not of the washing still to do, or a painting that will not come, or an overdue email to send, or tax receipts to sort.

Helpmann's The Display begins as an ornithologist's dream, with a lyrebird dance that more than mimics but is the actual dance the male performs to woo the female. Set against a breathtaking backdrop by Sidney Nolan reinterpreted by Paul Kathner, it creates the sensation of the dancers being actually within a painting. With original lighting design by William Akers reproduced by Francis Croese, I loved every bit of this transportation to the 1960s with its playfulness, football picnic antics, flirtations, bird-like head tilts, and real darkness. But of details, I will not share. Instead, I urge you to pop along and with own eyes see what unfolds. See what it is like to step inside a painting. Or remain outside looking in, and simply let it wash over you. Either way, be prepared to see a section of the world, as you know it. It’s a mirror, after all.

From here to the 70s we head, and, as with the previous ballet, it is one I know of by reputation but have never had the pleasure of seeing before. I am enthralled by Tetley's Gemini, and I love how the coloured ribbon-like bands in the background read almost, to me, like a charmed science fiction style boxing ring. It is awe-inspiringly physical, intimate, lyrical, and strong. One twenty minute intermission later, and we find ourselves in the 80s and Murphy's Beyond Twelve that tells beautifully and truthfully how creativity feels and works and is. It reads like a self-portrait, to me, for it feels in parts so intimate to watch that I almost blush. As with Gemini, it is an intimate adventure I’ve subscribed to, and as with The Display, a dark one. Not for the faint hearted, a well-worn expression I happily trot out. The dance between the 12-year-old self with the 18-year-old self and the 30-year-old self was heartbreaking. Afterwards, I am reminded of the film I saw recently, Violeta Went to Heaven, which also looks at the creative process of an individual artist, from aspiration and dreams to dizzying heights before and the final inevitable decent down the mountain (to something new and different, sometimes). I found the ending so beautiful and it is a treat, as an audience, to see the back of the stage laid suitably bare. If, for me, there is one thing that links these three ballets from three different decades it is this stripped bareness. They make a revealing raw trio. What could be better than that?

Opening nights have their own special buzz and excited air, and I enjoyed at evening’s close hearing one woman say to another, “...and your son was marvellous on stage too!” The bristle and excitement, like the feeling of static electricity when you rub the soles of your shoes on the carpet and give shock to your nearest companion. Anticipation before a performance and the actual performance itself can feel like that to me, one pleasing electric shock. Where recently I described myself as a mouse, perhaps in the theatre I am, by own rule-breaking imaginary metamorphosis, a hare, ears alert. With ears like two tall dictaphones recording the sound for later playback. Why not?

I look forward to seeing The Display, Gemini, and Beyond Twelve next week with my Mum and to hearing what she sees, and to readjusting my thoughts on all of the above ballets for nothing is ever fixed.

Thank-you for a marvellous night, all involved.

+ The Australian Ballet's Icons runs until the 8th of September.

A dip in waters of another world.

{Featuring Eugene von Guérard's painting, Lake Bullen Merri 1858, and a photograph of Igor Yousskevitch in costume for Les Cent Baisers by Max Dupain, Home 1937.}


{Featuring Eugene von Guérard's painting, The Basin Banks near Camperdown 1857, and a photograph of Serge Lifar in costume for Icare, c. 1930s.}


{Featuring Eugene von Guérard's painting, Spring in the valley of the Mitta Mitta with the Bogong Ranges 1866, and a photograph of Henri Matisse and Léonide Massine, collaborators on Le Chant du Rossignol, 1920.}

Just as Alice made her way down, down the rabbit hole or stepped through the looking glass familiar from childhood reads, yesterday I found an equivalent portal to otherness. One unassumingly quiet windy Tuesday afternoon, Louise and I were blown into The Australian Ballet’s costume department by way of the concrete footbridge that can be found at the rear of the Arts Centre Melbourne. The sensation was every bit as curious as I imagine it was for Lewis Carroll’s Alice in pursuit of her fast-paced white rabbit. Something akin to when, in either the bath or pool, you pop your head underwater and find all changes. Sounds alter, and things new appear and distort. All in the time span it takes to hold your nose and submerge your head. One quick transformation, if ever there was. One moment and you are somewhere else, some place that feels as far apart as the two poles North and South. Oh! the geography you’ve managed to sidestep simply by dipping your head under the water’s surface. Lewis Carroll always springs to mind when I think of stepping, leaping, falling, dipping, stumbling from one reality into the next, and to head into the giant hub that houses The Australian Ballet feels just like that. One moment I was outside on the windy street with Louise, the next, we were peeping at another alien world, at the 19th century styled costumes designed by Hugh Colman for The Australian Ballet’s forthcoming production of Stephen Baynes’ Swan Lake. The lightning speed transformation from windy outside urban land to the ordered peopled warren that is the busy, coloured and light costume department was a delicious whirl, a fairground ride. Over there, the neatly labelled hangers, row after row; behind, up high, the ribbon rolls in colours grouped. To outside eyes, it reads as one sweet buzzing confection that frames the costumes in various stages of fitted readiness for each dancer. The giant space is teeming with so many things to take in and store, I felt like a bright-eyed mouse, mouth agape. (Now if this treat, this invitation to view the costumes up close does not shake me from my own creative despondency nothing will.) In the dyeing room with its tantalising labels of the colours particular to each costume for each ballet, we spy the wings of a bird soon to the stage to take. Mouse-tail in hand, the majesty of this behind the scenes look is not lost on either of us. All these people, all these things, these workings, these cogs whirling at furious pace, all part of one big industry of activity that meshes together to make a performance that will beguile, challenge, and captivate its audience. From the world of costumes made for a dancer’s body and stage lights to illuminate the detailing, we are lead along a corridor that enables you to peer through the glass at the dancers in rehearsals and classes in the many studios. Here, I tuck my tail into my pocket lest it trail on the ground and trip someone up, but I cannot do anything about my eyes that are wide in awe. This experience has left a great everything-is-possible impression upon me and I am so thankful I had the chance one afternoon to steal a look at this other world.

...I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.
(Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)

Thank-you , thank-you, thank-you for the invitation to view the costumes, Kate, and for showing us around. We had a wonderful time and eagerly await seeing Swan Lake (and those costumes take flight) in September.

+ In the woods there is enchantment: Swan Lake
+ Swan Lake photo gallery
+ Introduction to the Ballet: The dancers of The Australian Ballet will demonstrate their daily training in class on stage. Then, accompanied by an orchestra, the company will perform a fully staged performance of Graeme Murphy’s Beyond Twelve.

+ Curiouser and curiouser: Lewis Carroll’s original drawings for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

+ Thank-you for your recent zine orders of Whose Lights Were Now Seen Glittering and It's the Dusty Hour through our online store. It is nice to send this zine out to you. (The above trio of collaborative collages with Louise all feature in the zine, Whose Lights Were Now Seen Glittering.)

Those seventeen days.

Perhaps the less I say about the above photos the better, otherwise in the process of typing away at the keys I might chicken out and delete this post. A quick scout around various blogs and sites, and there are many people out there documenting what they wore with greater aplomb than I. Wearing essentially a variation of the same thing seventeen days in a row, these photos of me could almost all be taken, upon reflection, on the one day. Nevertheless, good friends, they were not. In truth, I swear it. Borrowing from the 2009 MIFF advertisement of a festival punter's portrait shown over a 19 day period and inspired by Lisa Solomon’s recent 19 days of summer school post, I followed suit, and offer for you today, seventeen days of a film festival by way of the ladies toilets (owing to the abundance of mirrors). (The fifth day, you will note, is not at the film festival for on that particular Tuesday I did not see a film. Instead, here I am at my local gym in leggings that are billowing at the knee.) These iPhone photos were taken before the various mirrors of the Greater Union and ACMI cinemas, The Forum, and the public toilets beneath the Melbourne Town Hall and Federation Square en route to the cinema. They were hastily taken, hence the expression drawn across my face that is part focus (at finding the camera settings as quickly as I could) meets a certain shiftiness (lest someone might walk in and find me peculiar) by way of embarrassment (self explanatory owing to subject matter. Perhaps you, a film patron, even caught sight of me quickly whipping out my iPhone from my pocket in between sessions?). To me, this began as an exercise I did not really think through but once I started I remained committed to the curious project, and I take my hat off to those able to carry out such an exercise well. To see how this could have better been done, visit Brinja København and her What I Wore posts, Lisa’s aforementioned summer school inspiration, or head to this recently published piece on It’s Nice That: Five guys take the same photograph for 30 years. Others are capable of making such exercises read more like a Claude Monet haystack series of one thing understood and in detail studied. The photos above are not, but perhaps they will amuse.

Before I depart, I will leave you with those pearls, those favourite films seen at MIFF this year. For reasons varied, my favourite handful from the fifty recently seen in an order random. Favourites for today, at least, though already I am looking at these stills and thinking I ought add Two Years at Sea (Director: Ben Rivers) and Student (Director: Darezhan Omirbayev), A Woman’s Face (Director: Gustaf Molander), 11 Flowers (Director: Wang Xiaoshuai), First Position (Director: Bess Kargman), Le Tableau (Director: Jean-François Laguionie), and The Hunt (Director: Thomas Vinterberg), and I could, clearly, go on... This could easily become twenty or thirty in length.


{Amour (Director: Michael Haneke)}


{Bestiaire (Director: Denis Côté)}


{Faust (Director: Alexander Sokurov)}


{In the Fog (Director: Sergei Loznitsa)}


{The Lion of the Moguls (Director: Jean Epstein)}


{Beyond the Hills (Director: Cristian Mungiu)}


{Ernest & Célestine (Directors: Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, Benjamin Renner)}


{Sister (Director: Ursula Meier)}


{The Delay (Director: Rodrigo Plà)}


{Just the Wind (Director: Bence Fliegauf)}

+ Dear Photograph

+ MIFF days: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

+ Thank-you for your recent It's the Dusty Hour and Whose Lights Were Now Seen Glittering zine orders. Today finds us posting zine orders around the corner to Carlton, further afield to Warrnambool, and across the vast blue expanse to Bristol's UWE, Los Angeles, CA, and a place called Cinnaminson, Philadelphia. It is exciting for Louise, Hila and me to think of our newest collaborative zine winging way to places as varied as Skipton, Victoria to Bath, UK.

Nightfall.

{It's the Dusty Hour, a zine made in collaboration with Hila Shachar.}

It seems fitting that as the late afternoon tickles the shoulder, I should introduce you to a new zine recently made with Hila Shachar and Louise Jennison. Night is preparing to glide in and resume its place; I'd best be quick about my tappity-tap-tapping at the keys. No time to second-guess. It also feels right to introduce to you this brand new fancy on the back of a recent film festival holiday greatly enjoyed. It’s all about transformation, isn’t it? There's the link. One heads into the cinema, sits down, becomes wrapped in a story, perhaps wears it as a cloak, and emerges soon after the credits have rolled out onto the street by way of the fire escape stairway, bewildered as to location. Thoughts as to what took place dance and jump and move quick, in and out of focus, or shadow, if you prefer. The day is gone, night is here, and where once I was in Denmark in autumn, now I am in Melbourne in winter. Day transformed into night, one story rolling into another and something new appearing. Therefore, without further delay, here for you, It's the Dusty Hour. It features Hila's beguilingly atmospheric Evening Postcard and Louise and my collage series The Glorious Night Descends in a twelve-page glossy zine, hand-stitched by the ever-meticulous Louise with a long golden thread. This zine, you should know, sprang into being following a challenge delicious, an idea intriguing. As André Breton and Philippe Soupault wrote, at night "a glance disperses the most wonderful meetings" (The Magnetic Fields, 1920).

We trust you will enjoy, friends.

+ It is available through our online store and Hila's online store. This zine is a limited edition of 90. A copy can be all yours for $9 (AUD).

(Dear Louise, dear Hila, I so enjoyed working on this with you. XO)












{A zine in hand.}

It’s the dusty hour, when the neat corners of day disperse like moths flitting against the window in aimless patterns. They dance with the stars, creating their silvery shapes in the deep void of a black canvas that knows no frame, but speaks through the sensory awareness of what lies beyond light.
(Hila Shachar, (but a taste of) Evening Postcard)

+ Why I adore the night

And that, my friends, makes 50.

{Alois Nebel}


{Beyond}


{Barbara}


{Violeta Went to Heaven}


{In the Fog}


{The intouchables}


{The Hunt}


{Neighbouring Sounds}


{Farewell, My Queen}


{Pola X}


{The Lion of the Moguls}


{La Pirogue}


{While the City Sleeps}


{Wuthering Heights}

So, here we are, fifty films seen in a small period. The film festival is intense. Brilliantly intense. It is all about endurance and complete saturation as you go from one session to the next. You can find yourself going from the company of a security firm in urban Brazil to a railway station on the Czechoslovak border drawn in black and white in but a flash. One handful of cashews chewed, one takeaway coffee knocked back, one shuffle from one cinema to the next, and there you are, somewhere else. Do you know the surrounds? Is the environ familiar? Expected? Often not. It plays out almost like one giant collage that you are a paper piece of until festival’s end. That, or a musical medley. A grab bag. Once we were in the summertime, in East Germany in the year 1980, and now it seems we are in costumes splendid by the Russian-born artist Boris Bilinsky in Jean Epstein’s The Lion of the Moguls. This is one brilliant patchwork. Are you dreaming in Swedish? Awaking in Paris? Not sure? Look out! There rides Catherine Deneuve on a smashed up Norton, mascara streaming mask-like down her face. My subtitles are blurred.

Yes, late this Monday afternoon, I miss already this intensity. This hurtling from one land to the next. Lurching from Chile with Violeta to the German-occupied Western frontiers of the Soviet Union. Blown from Africa in an 11 o'clock session to Bergman’s Sweden for a 1.30 screening. I miss, too, the living by a routine determined solely by a film schedule of my choosing. I knew where I had to be. 1.30, Greater Union, cinema 3. 4 o’clock, ACMI 2. 6.30pm, The Forum. 9 o'clock, The Forum. I miss the surprise of not knowing what film I was about to see. Is this the Romanian one? The one with such-and-such by what’s-their-name? Yes? No? Another handful of almonds?

As one friend messaged this morning, “You made it! You loved and lost and died in marvellous succession! Don’t get depressed now. Buy a big bar of chocolate and munch it on a park bench under an umbrella…” Wise words. Will do.

Seen:
Alois Nebel (Director: Tomáš Luňák)
Beyond (Director: Pernilla August)
Barbara (Director: Christian Petzold)
Violeta Went to Heaven (Director: Andrés Wood)
In the Fog (Director: Sergei Loznitsa)
The Intouchables (Director: Olivier Nakache)
The Hunt (Director: Thomas Vinterberg)
Neighbouring Sounds (Director: Kleber Mendonça Filho)
Farewell, My Queen (Director: Benoît Jacquot)
Pola X (Director: Léos Carax)
The Lion of the Moguls (Director: Jean Epstein)
La Pirogue (Director: Moussa Touré)
While the City Sleeps (Director: Ingmar Bergman)
Wuthering Heights (Director: Andrea Arnold)

+ With 11 more to go

We are at 36.

{A Woman’s Face}


{Policeman}


{Amour}


{Lovers on the Bridge}


{Pure}


{Facing Mirrors}


{First Position}


{Le Tableau}


{Bestiaire}


{NO}

Before the final four days of MIFF, there is time enough to look back at the films seen earlier in the week. What a giddy ride thus far, cold or no cold.

So let us talk of favourites.

In Bestiaire I was transfixed, absorbed utterly in the beautiful, large, crisp projected scenes that quietly and slowly unfolded. I liked particularly that it allowed me time to think as I drank in the visuals. It, like Two Years at Sea, to me, reads like a giant painting on the gallery wall that, upon closer inspection, moves. Some fantastical sorcery, this! The animal gazes directly at you and holds its gaze. We may think we humans have the upper hand, but, no, the animal has sized us up. He knows us well. From zoo scenes to a taxidermist’s workroom, each read like a finished composition in own right. There, a tiger’s white whiskers and chin up close. There, the legs of the zebra dance in, I presume, their holding pen, ready to get out into their enclosure. The ears of an even-toed ungulate dance, too, flitting back and forth, listening and always at the ready. Like I said, they’ve sized you up. See three bears in a line (were those Asiatic black bears?) waiting, like little buddhas on their haunches, for a grape to be tossed their way by their keeper. A duck’s body moulded with great physical exertion by a taxidermist quietly working. Horns; hoofs; a lounging lion; a lemur feasting; a spotted female hyena receiving medical attention; big peering, searching eyes; we are up close. Up close to a host of amazing creatures in captivity. This film by Denis Côté gave me the space and freedom to contemplate and reflect as I watched an ostrich watch me, no screen between us. (The animals didn't DO anything. Didn't even run! Nothing. And to think I recommended it to a friend! bemoaned a man before me in the queue to NO. Clearly, we don't always see things the same as others do.)

From Lovers on the Bridge to Pure, classical music has played, for me, beautiful role. Several compositions of Mozart, Massenet, Bach, and Beethoven, and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet in Bad Blood earlier, they’ve all had an outing. And they’ve led me well to First Position by former dancer Bess Kargman. First Position proved the uplifting ride I’d hoped and knew it would be, and I saw it in a theatre filled with dance students, a school group, parents with small children, and regular festival goers, spotted easily owing to less shine and suffering a festival fatigue body stiffness. The audience gasped when one of the dancers fell and clapped when they executed a complex series of awe-inspiring moves. They let out one unified sigh when one of the Mum’s spoke of her joy and pride when watching her eldest daughter dance and her sorrow at her youngest son’s decision to give up ballet, something he didn’t feel the necessary hunger for. It was with a feeling of ever-good camaraderie, as we watched young dancers from varied backgrounds perform and stretch and train and show to camera their feet. It reminded me, to some small extent, of my own childhood dreams and the dance classes I took, of summer holidays spent at Mr Rubinstein's classes with students from other schools. It reminded me of Miss Anna, who would spit in the palm of her hand before smoothing down any stray wisps of hair about my face. It reminded me of those sautés towards the end of class. More, girls, more. Lighter. Higher. Watch your turn out! Again. Twenty more. It reminded me of costumes and blisters, and I miss now the discipline and direction and good posture.

First Position took you right in and it led well into Le Tableau, a French animation also with its own uplifting and inspiring message to impart. A painting that is unfinished is shown as a microcosm of society. It is made up of the ruling class, the Alldunns, who look down on the Halfies the artist never completed. Beneath those still in need of colour about the face or fleshing out of costume, the Sketchies who cannot quite complete a sentence such is their lot. Another session at ACMI filled once more with school children that giggled during the scene with the naked woman painted in the style of a Mattisse Odalisque.

I have seen 36 films, and almost all I have loved. From Haneke’s beautiful Amour (an absolute favourite I recommend you see if you get the chance, it paints so beautifully the story of love and ageing and togetherness) to Ingrid Bergman in A Woman’s Face, roll on, final days. I am ready for more.

Seen:
A Woman’s Face (Director: Gustaf Molander)
Policeman (Director: Nadav Lapid)
Amour (Director: Michael Haneke)
Lovers on the Bridge (Director: Leos Carax)
Pure (Director: Lisa Langseth)
(Screened with Girl (Director: Fijona Jonuzi))
Facing Mirrors (Director: Negar Azarbayjani)
First Position (Director: Bess Kargman)
Le Tableau (Director: Jean-François Laguionie)
Bestiaire (Director: Denis Côté)
NO (Director: Pablo Larrain)

The view from the middle.

{A Respectable Family}


{Student}


{Two Years at Sea}


{The Minister}

I have seen:
A Respectable Family (Director: Massoud Bakhshi)
Student (Director: Darezhan Omirbayev)
Two Years at Sea (Director: Ben Rivers)
The Minister (Director: Pierre Schoeller)

In Two Years at Sea, a filmgoer cracked and rudely yelled out in vain to the hermit on screen quietly fishing on a still lake, "just do SOMETHING!" The hermit he continued to fish, oblivious to Loud Man, for he knew he'd a tranquil life and was happy with his lot in a filmic landscape that was so grainy it looked as I imaged it would from within a Georges Seurat pointillist landscape, were colour reduction his aim. All images made up of little tiny dots by dots, from trees far off to waterery mass, and black cat washing within cabin.

In The Minister, my Mum found the car crash scene too much, and spent the final third of the film lying as close to horizontal in her Greater Union Uncomfort seat. With her legs out in the aisle, she thought she would faint, and I wondered how I would be able to get her out of the cinema if the need arose.

In the poetic Student and A Respectable Family, I wished I had greater stamina, but my eyelids grew heavy. (This was owed solely to my lack of festival endurance, not either film. I must train more.)

In between screenings, I saw a man eating hot chips in the grey Sunday light and I thought I would offer him $4 for 4 perfect salty and golden chips, such was my fatigue.

I am now halfway plus one.

Twenty-four films remain.

+ Onward to 50

Towards the middle.

{Almayer's Folly}


{Shadow Dancer}


{Chicken with Plums}


{Faust}


{Beyond the Hills}


{Bad Blood}


{11 flowers}


{War Witch}


{Miss Bala}

And so we reach the stage where words become hard at the near-to halfway mark. Lest I embarrass myself with ill-considered word choices, I turn to the list.
 
I have seen 22 films.
In 9 days.

I have seen:
Almayer’s Folly (Director: Chantal Akerman)
Shadow Dancer (Director: James Marsh)
Chicken with Plums (Co-directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud)
Faust (Director: Alexander Sokurov)
Beyond the Hills (Director: Cristian Mungiu)
Bad Blood (Director: Leos Carax)
11 Flowers (Director: Wang Xiaoshuai) (At a stranger's recomendation)
War Witch (Director: Kim Nguyen)
Miss Bala (Director: Gerardo Naranjo)

I have visited Iran in 1950s, Paris in the 1980s, Ireland in the 90s, China during the Cultural Revolution, the yellow-green of Malaysia, the Mexican border city of Baja… back and forth, zigzagging through time and place, and finding the world a dark, great place.
 
I have found that it is unlikely, relatively early in the piece I grant you, that I will see in the festival a film more brilliant than Sokurov’s Faust. What a spectacle to behold! What a visual ride with fantastical scenes that make you feel like into a painting you've stepped. Followed beautifully, this dance with the devil, with a visit to an Orthodox monastery in rural Moldavia where once more the devil, it is believed, plays his part. (Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills draws upon a reported exorcism case at a Moldavian monastery.) What a journey, oft harrowing, and, in the case of Chicken with Plums, beautiful. I have followed behind child soldiers in Africa (War Witch) and been thrown in with Mexican drug cartels (Miss Bala). Is it any wonder I am exhausted and disorientated as I exit the cinema by the slow-shuffle fire exit stairs, listening to fragments of conversations overheard by fellow cinema patrons?

I am no good at lists.
I am bound for bed.

In the darkened cinema.

{Just the Wind}


{A Simple Life}


{Easy Money}


{Monsieur Lazhar}

I’ve jumped out of my skin once, tenth film in, during a brilliant and tense film about the murders of Roma families in a village in Hungary (in Just the Wind directed by Bence Fliegauf which though not a documentary is based on a series of actual killings in Hungary that claimed the lives of eight people). I was not alone in jumping from my seat. The man before me did too. As did a few to my right and further forward. The film festival may be a seated affair for hour upon hour, but the body is not asleep. You are aware of your body, from the sore knee joints by third session to the hot red cheeks when angry or confronted by a scene as it unfolds. You may be sitting still in the dark (save for the odd left leg crossed over right leg back to right leg over to left switcheroo etc.), but you are watching a film with more than eyes and you are feeling and responding. From arm prickles to galloping heart, even the suppressed cough so as not to interrupt a quiet scene or disturb those around you, this is a festival of heightened awareness. Sitting in the dark, I am aware of the tips of my toes to my head, from my inside thoughts to outside shell. Were it not for the lack of physical exertion, I’d say there was little bodily difference between myself as cinema patron and during a yoga or pilates class. Emerging from the darkened cinema, I am oft reminded of Ella in Hamilton's book Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky seeing, feeling, finding now "an entire world transfigured and charged with new meaning". Or, at least, that’s me, thirteen films down and aiming to reach fifty by festival close.

Since last I posted I have seen, Just the Wind, the beautifully understated A Simple Life (Ann Hui), Easy Money (Daniel Espinosa), and Monsieur Lazhar (Philippe Falardeau). I can recommend all, if curious, especially, Just the Wind and A Simple Life.
 
Sustenance now calls and I’ve a pot of vegetable soup to make for tonight’s tea.
 
+ Until the 12th of August through our Society6 store there is free shipping worldwide. Enjoy, friends. (Look! A certain red fox appears. Thanks Carolyn and Alice for sharing.)

This must be it, some sort of paradise found.

{The Delay (Director: Rodrigo Plà), screened with The Hosts (Director: Miguel Angel Moulet)}


{The Beauty From Nivernais (Director: Jean Epstein)}


{Mercy (Director: Matthias Glasner)}


{Sister (Director: Ursula Meier)}


{The Fall of the House of Usher (Director: Jean Epstein), screened with The Three-Sided Mirror (Director: Jean Epstein)}


{The Faithful Heart (Director: Jean Epstein), screened with The Sea of Ravens (Director: Jean Epstein)}


{Ernest & Célestine (Directors: Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, Benjamin Renner)}


{Children of Sarajevo (Director: Aida Begić)}


{Tabu (Director: Miguel Gomes)}

There are some who choose to take their annual holidays on a beach somewhere in tropical majesty of Northern Queensland or Bali. There are some who choose to escape winter by heading elsewhere. I am not dissimilar in the escapism department (though winter is a beautiful season to me and I live for the snugness of a coat and scarf) for each year I head to the Melbourne International Film Festival to be transported, well, elsewhere. For it is like being transported, isn’t it, when you head to the cinema or the theatre or playhouse or gallery? It’s what we all say as we emerge from its dark interior and oft warm embrace. Back on the street once more, eyes blinking, where have I just been? What time is it? The bewildered remark mumbled as one sights the wet city ground: it has rained? Delicious, delirious immersion, who would be without it?
 
This year, over 17 days, I plan to see 47 films (though already I have booked another and the figure is 48 and rising. Can to 50 I make?). I have also, with Louise, become a MIFF member, owing to the figure in the bank earlier in the year having a zero or two the right side of the decimal point. So, where are we, four days in? Well, we’re already awaking crumpled, but happy and keen for more. This is proving some marathon, as remembered. As David Weir referred to today in The Age, it is a marathon that begins with a mad sprint; “With several hundred films to choose between and two or three sessions of each film, the cineathlete must select sessions artfully and avoid clashes.”
 
Yesterday we pinballed from Brittany in 1931 (Jean Epstein’s The Sea of Ravens) to Sarajevo present-day with its ghost looming large over a city (Aida Begić’s Children of Sarajevo) by way of the most beautiful and charming French animation (Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar and Benjamin Renner’s Ernest & Celestine), before landing in tale told one part in colonial Africa and the other in modern-day Lisbon (Tabu by Miguel Gomes). Abandonment, separation, and love lost seem the common thread linking all those seen thus far.
 
Seen: Tabu; Children of Sarajevo; Ernest & Célestine; The Faithful Heart (screened with The Sea of Ravens); The Fall of the House of Usher (screened with The Three-Sided Mirror); Sister; Mercy; The Beauty From Nivernais; and The Delay (screened with The Hosts)

(And for those who want to read a complete list updated daily, look here.)

Atop my list of favourites thus far, I think: The Delay; Ernest & Célestine; Jean Epstein's The Fall of the House of Usher and The Sea of Ravens; and Sister
 
Roll on, Monday sessions. I hanker for the sweet anticipation of waiting for a film to start, and my coat needs an outing.

Through the cinema, a revolver in a drawer, a broken bottle on the ground, an eye isolated by an iris, are elevated to the status of characters in the drama. Being dramatic, they seem alive, as though involved in the evolution of an emotion … To things and beings in their most frigid semblance, the cinema thus grants the greatest gift unto death: life. And it confers this life in its highest guise: personality. (Jean Epstein, Senses of Cinema)

Let us celebrate!

{Celebration collages for Hila.}

When Hila invited Louise and me to put together a guest post linked in some way to the theme of celebration, we were both of us thrilled. Of course, we’d absolutely love to, was the reply. So, to mark the recent publication of Cultural Afterlives and Screen Adaptations of Classic Literature: Wuthering Heights and Company by Hila Shachar published by Palgrave Macmillan, here is our Bravo! post (in full, and with, quite possibly, the sweetest introduction) on the beautiful le projet d’amour.

In coming together to make these collages to mark Hila’s triumph, we asked ourselves what would we like to do for a celebration. Being quiet and oft mole-like, this would perhaps mean an amble about the zoo on an afternoon. A punnet of hot chips shared in front of the seals as they spin, spin, spin in the blue watery pool. A delightful scene to watch, the happiness of seals performing all manner of loops, flips and incredible contortions. What I would not give to join them, were I naturally with flipper, and invited. This is where we began, and from there, this ten grew to include scenes to live vicariously through and peasant dancers in a cabin (in a photograph by Kirchner, in the last piece above). Quiet celebrations and those slightly wilder, yes, this was a great deal of fun to work on. (Thanks for having us, Hila, and here is to one day meeting up for a face-to-face conversation.)

Other good folk celebrating:
Celebration: Amy Borrell
Celebration: Kate Miss
Celebration: Rachel Ball
Celebration: Jen McCabe
Celebration: Jessica Stanley
Celebration: Jane Flanagan

A safety net. A hairnet. An ornithologists mist net.

{Collared Aracari (Pteroglossus torquatus), 2012}


{Black-and-white Warbler (Mniotilta varia), 2009.}


{Montezuma Oropendola (Psarocolius montezuma), 2012.}


{White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys), 2006.}


{Puerto Rican Tody (Todus mexicanus), 2009 (Can you spot Louise's paper Tody?)}


{Rufous-winged Woodpecker (Piculus simplex), 2012}

I look at these works by photographer and professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Todd Forsgren, and I think, I wish I could draw something so beautiful and spectacular and odd on the page. There is nothing I do not like about these mesmerising compositions other than the fact that I did not conjure them, she cried in fit of pique. These photos, found on Time’s Lightbox, show wild birds caught in mist nets. “Ornithologists now use mist nets instead of shotguns for data that cannot be obtained with the help of binoculars, microphones, or telephoto lenses. These nearly invisible nets are set up like fences and function as huge spider webs, catching unsuspecting birds. The researcher carefully extracts the bird from the net. Each bird is measured, aged, sexed, and banded with an individually numbered anklet (Audubon’s philopatry experiments with Eastern Phoebes was likely the first bird banding done in the United States). Then the bird is released, unharmed" (from Todd Forsgren's artist's statement).

The birds negotiating the net remind me of how some days feel. Perhaps, given this, it is good that my annual film festival holiday is about to begin. Clearly, I need a little shake up.

When Louise looks at them, she likes that some seem to almost be having fun. Particularly, I imagine, the fallen acrobatic White-crowned Sparrow (Zonotrichia leucophrys).  One of us is at the circus despite the lead shoes, and the other is feeling thwarted, if this art as inkblot test is anything to go by.

(All images by Todd Forsgren.)

+ Shape-shifting murmurations of starlings and a charm extended

+ A collaged backdrop for some beautiful pieces

+ Get your hands on Lisa's book Knot Stitch Thread: Exploring Creativity through Embroidery and Mixed Media