Film Archives

Clive James once occupied prime position on mainstream television as a respected host and interviewer of the stars. Tiring of the unnatural surroundings when interviewing his guests under studio conditions, Australia’s most successful critic began inviting his celebrity friends back to his home to engage in more natural conversation in his ‘library’ - resulting in the popular Clive James Talking in the Library series showing on Sky Arts.

Whether this is a noble example of a man reaching the heights of fame and opting to steer away from the spotlight for the
sake of his craft, or the actions of someone who really can’t be bothered to leave his house – it is not for ArtsWom to decide.

Regardless, Clive James has the charismatic clout to attract some quality guests and the relaxed conditions make the interviews a refreshingly intimate affair and make for some revealing quotes. At great risk to our lives (and with the tragic loss of five junior members of the ArtsWom team) we were able to procure some transcripts from the Sky Arts vaults detailing his two upcoming shows; the first with actress Emma Thompson being shown tomorrow and the second (airing next week) with all-round English gent, Stephen Fry.

Below are some chosen extracts from the shows:

Emma Thompson – Wed 05 Sep 2007 7:30PM - 8:00PM

On Everyone wanting to make movies:
The only reason why there’s more popular films being made right now is that there’s so many more movies being made. I look at newspapers and think about what’s coming out next week and think ‘There’s so many movies. There’s so many….’ Everybody wants to make movies. And how many people want to make movies because there’s actually something to say? I think that part of the celebrity culture and the fascination with that world has produced a whole bunch of people who want to make movies because they want to make movies, not because there’s something that they desperately need to …you know, someone like Todd Solondz, have you seen his stuff – Happiness and Welcome to the Dollhouse? Extraordinary things that he needed to say about life in New Jersey. He writes about particular neuroses and deviants in NJ and it’s something that he’s….he’s on my mind right now as he’s asked me to do a film that I can’t do because I can’t get away right now, and I thought, he’s one of the rare film directors that I’ve worked with that need to get something onto the screen.

On Depression:
ET: Melancholy is a great motor. And if I am depressed, and there’s one area of my mind that if we’re talking about patches of your mind where you keep things, and I don’t know if you ever suffer from depression but I do sometimes and have had to take medication for it, that kind of depression, but the one part of my mind that doesn’t ever get depressed, doesn’t ever enter into that world, is the creative part. Even though it can be struggling with something- I’m writing the next Nanny McPhee right now and I couldn’t think of the ending and for two days I just paced but I wasn’t miserable at all. The bit of me that was miserable was another part altogether. Just the doing bit, the bit that said I’ve got to get this done now, now, now. That bit. Which is quite different to the creative bit. The creative bit is much more connected to your subconscious, which is a part of your mind that works at a slower, glacial level so you do have to give it some time so during that pacing I thought ‘No it’s ok, it will arrive in it’s own good time’ and sure enough it did.

On Charity:
“What is you’re favourite charity?” That is my least favourite question. What do you mean, what’s my favourite thing that’s so awful I have to give money away and do things about it? What’s my favourite evil in the world that makes me so crazed that I have to leave my family? SHUT UP! What are you talking about? This is a time when we all have to engage with the problems. We can’t talk about things in that way, it’s just so reductive

Stephen Fry - Wed 12 Sep 2007 7:30PM - 8:00PM

On attending Cambridge University:
I would say that if I had not got into Cambridge and had gone to another university that my view of the kind of people that went to Oxford & Cambridge would be coloured to say the least. I mean, I would probably use the “W” word a lot. ….I would see it as a cosy-nostra, as it’s been called, or the Cambridge Mafia. All I can say is that you feel the opposite at the time. I would go into the Footlight’s Club room and see up on the wall pictures of John Cleese, Peter Cook, yourself [Clive James], Germaine Greer….and see this vast pantheon of great comic talent and think, ‘well, the door has shut after them. Nothing’s going to happen again’. And when you’re at Cambridge the first thing you hear is ‘Apparently the footlight’s crap this year’.

On being an old-fashioned British gent:
CJ: British society is changing. The gent has lost his force and you, in many ways, epitomise the gent. You’re a rogue gent.

SF: Indeed I am. I am shamefully a member of exclusive clubs, so exclusive that many people have not heard of them. And one club that I’m a member of all the club servants are called Charles because the club is hundreds of year’s old and members have never bothered to learn their names.

On Hugh Laurie’s success in America:
CJ: Incidentally I would be jealous of Hugh Laurie’s salary but on the other hand, one of the conditions of giving him that much money is that they never give him any time to spend it.

SF: You’re so right and I’m not jealous of him but I’m so proud of him. I love him, I mean he’s my best friend and I’m so thrilled he’s finally being recognised as the wonderful actor I always knew he was.

CJ: But the price is for him to work 7 days per week.

SF: Yes. I’ve seen him. The TV thing that I did [Bones] was on the TV set next door to his on the Fox lot in LA and I’ve stayed at his apartment many times and it’s just destroying him….They [Fox] kindly asked me if I would like to do a whole series of this thing [Bones] that I just guested on….and I’m not saying I would have reached anything near the heights that Hugh did anyway, partly because I’m nowhere near as good looking as Hugh aside from his talent let’s be honest, but I’ve just seen what it’s done to him. And I’m not giving gossip away about it having done something terrible to him by any means but I’ve seen how hard the work is. He’s far too gracious to complain about it, because you can’t complain when they throw that much money at you after all.

For more information or to discuss these shows, visit the Sky Arts website – clicking here for the Emma Thompson interview and here for Stephen Fry.

Lichtfaktor is a collection of three artists from Cologne who have pooled together their considerable talents to reinvigorate the over-used and yet surprisingly under-exploited practice of taking a still image of a moving light with a slow shutter speed and mixing it up with stop-frame animation.

Light Graffiti, as their art form is called, looks simply fantastic and it’s a credit to the imagination, humour and dedication of the Lichtfaktor team that they have been able to so successfully carve an impressive reputation for themselves – even scoring a commission to produce an advert for Sky Movies. It is interesting that when asked in a recent interview with Penthouse if they consider themselves to be photographers or painters, the guys replied that they think they are closer to painting.

The interview delves deeper into their craft, revealing their methods, influences and view of the growing world of Light Graffiti that is emerging around them. Below is an extract of the interview.

- Do you plan your shots, and then go on the field to take them, or is improvising the main factor of your work? I mean, ok, you take your tools and go out, but have you planned where to go and what to draw? Or do you get inspired by the environment while you are at it?

Most of the time we know what we want to draw before we go out, but we are always inspired by the places and situations. And because it’s a life process it’s always somehow improvised because you can’t plan everything before you actually take the pictures.

- In practice, how close is the outcome, to what you have originally imagined? As you are drawing, how similar is the thing that you imagine you are drawing to the final outcome?

We practiced so much so we are quite precise now. We know our skills (lightwriting) what the different types of lights look like and we got the camera skills to get the results.

- Did you do traditional graffiti before you started light-painting? Do you think of light-painting as the evolution of graffiti?

Yes we did Graffiti. For us it is an evolution and a chance to animate graffiti characters in urban landscapes. In general we would say that graffiti is graffiti and light graffiti is light graffiti.

- How did this form of art occur? Were you the first to do it?

No, we were not the first to use this technique, Picasso already made some pictures this way. We think we are the first group that does animations and has this graffiti background but there are many lightwriters with different skills and backgrounds. For more informations check our MySpace page.

- I can see in Flickr that there is a community of people who like to light-paint. How big is it? Is it expanding?

Yes it is, this technique is much easier to do with digital cameras because you get a direct result. and with pages like flickr where people can see what other people did you get the chance to reach more people. It could be that in the future there’ll be more people who use the same technique, we think that’s because mankind always had a special relationship to light.

(Interview ends)

The guys also revealed to us in a conversation across MySpace that they are aiming to produce a number of short, 30-second films that each tell a short story. We look forward to featuring these on ArtsWom.

It seems as though the fortunes of Lichtfaktor are truly expanding, attracting interviews in such esteemed publications as Wired, Creative Review and Pig Mag. There appeal is also global with upcoming features in magazines from Greece, Turkey and Brazil.

But what’s next in terms of work? Well, it looks like these guys are set to be busy with the Electronic Abstractions festival in France, a video for Philips, video for Ecko and some work for Modart magazine all in the cards. They are also getting plenty of requests from fellow creative types hoping to collaborate with the Lichtfaktor crew…This looks set to be an exciting time for light writers. Hold on to your flashlights, kids - Lichtfaktor is here to cut swathes of colour through the murky darkness of your insignificant existence. No offence intended, of course.

As Wikipedia reliably informs, Irish comedian Sean Hughes lives alone in London with his cat and two dogs. We trust the three are able to co-exist peacefully without constant supervision as their master will be thoroughly occupied tonight curating this week’s Friday Night Hi-Jack. Granted, Sean Hughes’s links would probably have been filmed days, if not weeks ago, but that is no excuse to avoid sparing a few seconds of thought for the pets of the youngest-ever winner of the Perrier award.

Judging by Sean’s choice of programmes, his love of music as well as animals is clear as two of his three selections are performances or gigs. The first is Johnny Cash in San Quentin and the second sees the return to Sky Arts of The Pixies first ever all-acoustic performance from the Newport Folk Festival. Sean ends our evening on a different note by airing Meantime, Mike Leigh’s 1983 social-realist film about unemployment and the dole, which paints a bleak, yet brilliantly evocative, picture of the Thatcher era’s social economics.

The legendary Johnny Cash performance begins at 8pm Friday 24th, followed by The Pixies at 9pm and Meantime at 10.25pm.

Imagine you had a chum who could get you a life size replica of Han Solo frozen in carbonite cast from the original prop. Superb, you are now the owner of one of ‘the’ most iconic objects from one of ‘the’ most iconic films in the history of time. Then imagine (this is going to be difficult) having the cluster-bluster storm of electro-activity inside your brain that leads you to remove Han’s face and replace it with your own; well, that’s what a man called Rob did.

There was debate on whether this is viable content for ArtsWom, but this wanton act of egocentric vandalism is, to the majority of our collective, a travesty. Rob is a friend of the sneeze, who reports that the story is ingenious nerd behaviour. We and Geekologie see it differently… It’s Han in carbonite from The Empire Strikes Back for the love of all that exists in a galaxy far, far away!

English Russia is a blog that never fails to spark the imagination, dropping regular nuggets of randomness originating from the largest country in the world. Daily images are minor works of art by themselves, but this Russian TV ad for an Internet provider gets a special mention.

How to send an elephant via Internet - Click on the image below to view the video.

SlamXHype is a killer site and as such ArtsWom has, as is plain to see, linked to it again making that twice in two days. With the content they have currently on offer though, what choice do we have – Hookers on Van Buren.

Hookers on Van Buren is an exhibition of the photographic work done by Lokey. A Phoenix local, Lokey has though his pictures made static in black and white the world of the Van Buren prostitutes. According to the video on his website, each shot was taken from his car while driving, shouting ‘hey baby’ and then firing his flash. In each picture there is a fragmented sensation of what feels predominantly like a compound of anxiety, alienation and despair. The method of shooting has seemingly pierced through any brash exterior that the street workers put up and due to this there is something distinct about each image that means they are not easy to dismiss; a testament indeed to any piece of art.

Due to open on the 23^rd of August, details of the show and more information about the artist is available on the SlamXHype article or if you prefer you can hit the Lokey Photography site.

Wed 15 Aug 2007 9:00PM - 10:55PM

Satyajit Ray’s Days and Nights in the Forest has been criticised for being too Renoir-esque, but is that not praise? Regardless, Ray is a heavyweight of the film world in his own right (see third paragraph of this article) and Aranyer Din Ratri, to give the film its original title, is an example of his masterful touch.

Following four friends from Calcutta the story juxtaposes their urban exuberance with a rural setting. Ray’s work is subtle enough to appear as a simple tale of self discovery due to an unfamiliar environment, however, Pauline Kael lights up the dark corners where the film’s edge lives greatly undisturbed,

“On the surface, this Satyajit Ray film is a lyrical romantic comedy about four educated young men from Calcutta, driving together for a few days in the country, and the women they meet. The subtext is perhaps the subtlest, most plangent study of the cultural tragedy of imperialism; the young men are self-parodies—clowns who ape the worst snobberies of the British. A major film by one of the great film artists…”

Worth a look? Then ram your eyes through this blue text.

The Power Of Photoshop

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Others may chose to present the capabilities of the ubiquitious Photoshop software by pointing towards some of the awesome artwork created using it - but that won’t attract nearly as many views on MySpace TV now, would it?

Blogging the production of a film as it happens is a fantastic way to engage with your fan-base and attempt to build some pre-release buzz. In fact, it’s surprising that Hollywood hasn’t picked up on, what could potentially be, a cheap and incredibly effective tool to help stimulate some conversation (of course, if anyone knows of any other productions being blogged about let us know).

The award-winning novel, Triomf, written by Marlene Van Niekerk is being translated into film, directed by Michael Raeburn. Apparently still in pre-production, progress is being monitored in the Triomf blog (click here). This is definitely worth a read if you are a fan of the book or are simply interested in following the creation of a movie.

In for a penny, in for a pound as they say. Having already mentioned Jaime Hewlett’s designs for the Ultimate Members range of limited edition vibrators, ArtsWom thought there was never a better time to link to ‘what makes great sex on screen?’ on the Guardian blog.

Josh Spero briefly lays out his conclusions based on the results of a survey by the Independent Film Company. His research leads him to plump for one word to describe the majority of the top entries – relevance – which is on the evidence, a wise and accurate summation.

ArtsWom’s first two choices made the list at numbers 1 and 2, Don’t’ Look Now and History of Violence we were however surprised, to find that the fraternising with flight instructor fornication featured in Top Gun was absent…

Friday 03 Aug 2007 8:00PM - 9:00PM
Thursday 30 Aug 2007 11:00PM - 12:00AM

Sky Arts will be showing the Surrealist film L’Âge d’Or directed by the Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel.

Buñuel is described in the great directors section of Senses of Cinema by Dominique Russell as a surrealist, an iconoclast, a contrarian and provocateur. Certainly no-one could argue comprehensively against this assessment. His films have led him to be regarded by many as one of the most significant directors in cinematic history. They range from the short Un Chien Andalou, a film that genuinely forces the uninitiated to reassess the boundaries of cinematic concepts, to his Cannes conquering, Los Olvidados, a film in the tradition of social realism that reflects on the poverty of Mexico City while being flecked with surrealism.

L’Âge d’Or uses vignettes to tell of the love story between a man and a woman who are unable to consummate their desires, obstructed by various parties throughout. The notable critic Pauline Kael wrote that the film L’Âge d’Or is, “Surreal, dreamlike, and deliberately, pornographically blasphemous.” ArtsWom isn’t sure if this is a recommendation, but if not, it certainly should be…

Anyone who has ever seen stickdeath.com may be concerned at the plight of the crudely drawn characters involved – fashioned, as they are, solely for the humour of morbid types to sit and watch them get destroyed in a shower of pixelated blood. Well perhaps it’s time for them to have their revenge. Brainchild of Alan Becker, and hosted over at Deviant Art, this cute (but far from cuddly animation) shows one such stick fellow do battle with his cruel creator on the pitched battleground of the flash interface itself.

Now from the outset it looks like their can surely be only one winner. For not only is the pen a whole heap mightier than the sword in reality, in animation even more so (after all, a pen tool in flash can draw 1,000 swords and who could argue with that)! But with clever usage of all the resources he can find amongst the flash menus from fill to brush tools, our stick bodied protagonist is a worthy warrior.

So place your bets, pop over to Deviant Art and see who will triumph in this deadly (yet hilarious) combat between the animator – and his animated adversary.

Avant-garde filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni has died aged 94, less than 24 hours after the passing of legendary director Ingmar Bergman. Antonioni’s films were filled with abstract motifs that create a powerful sensation of dissociation – a feeling reflected in his central characters.

“Classical narrative causalities are dissolved in favour of expressive abstraction. Displaced dramatic action leads to the creation of a stasis occupied by vague feelings, moods and ideas. Confronted with hesitancy, the spectator is compelled to respond imaginatively and independent of the film. The frustration of this experience reflects that felt in the lives of Antonioni’s characters: unable to solve their own personal mysteries they often disappear, leave, submit or die.” James Brown, Michelangelo Antonioni, Senses of Cinema, 2002.

The world of cinema is justly in mourning, having lost two in as many days of its modern era’s greatest visionaries. Again this news was first displayed on Art Forum and the Guardian.

The Swedish director Ingmar Bergman has died aged 89. A modern great in his field, Bergman created cinema that interrogated human nature in a manner that was exclusive to the artistic qualities and form of film.

“Ingmar Bergman’s mature cinema provokes the viewer into an intimate engagement in which a range of uncomfortable feelings are opened up, shared and laid bare.” Hamish Ford, The Radical Intimacy of Bergman, Senses of Cinema, 2002.

ArtsWom’s own endeavours into understanding cinema at a higher plane of consciousness began in part with Persona, The Silence, Cries and Whispers and Wild Strawberries. The result was a hazy stupor of intense close-ups and baffling content, delivered so directly from screen to retina that the sensations evoked felt as if they had been fed intravenously, occupying the blood with a heavy presence. Needless to say this state is a much craved and rarely reached reaction to film, and this is why Woody Allen considered him “probably the greatest film artist […] since the invention of the motion picture camera.”

Further responses are available at Art Forum and at The Guardian.

George Melly featured recently as one of Sky Arts’ most invigorating of guest curators for their popular Friday Night Hijack series. As a tribute to the late jazz and blues singer, who passed on earlier this month, the channel will be airing his favourite shows (interspersed with his commentary) again tonight, starting at 8pm.

The shows picked by George Melly are:

Cinema Dali – a revealing documentary film on Salvador Dali’s little-known film works.
Distant Voices, Still Lives – an autobiographical and elegiac meditation on the childhood of the post-war working class.
Literary Classics: Lord of the Flies – an informative look at William Golding’s hugely popular novel.
The Secret Policeman’s Ball – the first major incarnation of the legendary charity comedy-fest, including greats such as John Cleese, Peter Cook and Michael Palin.

Broadcast times – Wed 25 Jul 2007 9pm – 10.50pm

Directed by the critically-acclaimed, Turkish-Italian and openly gay screenwriter/director Ferzan Ozpetek, Facing Windows (La Finestra di fronte, to give its original title) is part mystery, part love-story and will be broadcast tonight on Sky Arts.

Originally released in the UK on the 3 September 2004, the film collected 18 awards and 15 nominations for such categories as best actress (awarded to Giovanna Mezzogiorno for her portrayal of the overburdened wife, also called Giovanna, stuck in a life that has failed to live up to her dreams) and best feature. It tells the tale of a married couple, forsaken by the romance that has long left their relationship they appear to stay together only for the sake of their children - arguing constantly about the jobs they hate, the money they need and the sex they don’t have. This depressing routine is interrupted after a chance encounter with a disoriented old man with amnesia, who the couple invite back to their home.

Suffice to say, the story continues to cover voyeurism, Nazism, sex, love and lies… Jump across to IMDB to read some comments from fans of the film, offering informed opinion of the themes and subtext of Ozpetek’s unpredictable and beautiful masterpiece.

If you are a fan of such films, be sure to bookmark Pellicola the ‘window to fine Italian cinema’. Although this blog does not appear to be updated often, it is packed with insightful commentary of classic films that will excite anyone with even a passing interest in Italian movies.