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Text of the page (random words):
abbit hole wouldn t run very deep the curatorial eye of the director and the narrative woven through voice over is all the more powerful then in senna employing a familiar yet distinct documentary adhesive to bind the narrative together strike into a particular theme or subject from the archive however one which does not offer an inherent narrative and the challenge of making the material cohere is much more difficult the natural temptation might be to import a narrative line from a biography of tract on a given period of time but by doing so we immediately place the narrative before the material the story is broadly speaking pre established but variegated by whatever archival material the researchers can lay their hands on the more compelling documentary would however be the film which approaches the historic footage as primary material and not secondary one where the narrative is drawn out of the sum of the material and which does not set out to use the material for illustrative purposes that still requires the curatorial eye of the director editor and researcher working in tandem but it does lack an obvious adhesive to draw the material together a brilliant recent example then is to be found in the new total archive documentary show of shows compiled by icelandic director benedikt erlingsson and built on material from and in collaboration with the national fairground archive in sheffield over seventy three tight minutes of archive footage the film pushes through a visual overview of the circus the fairground the variety theatre and performed entertainments more generally as captured on screen in the first sixty years of motion pictures with discreet chapters on various types of performer from acrobats to musicians from animals to human physical wonders each segment loses itself in the singular performance found in the theme skipping from clip to clip in a breathless notion of almost free association from jumping unicyclists to spinning trick bicyclists to a full grown bear spinning around on a bike in central berlin the connections are vivid and unexpected giving the viewer enough time to get lost in the detail of the film before suddenly switching to something similar which is still radically different it quickens the heart while barely giving you a chance to blink for want of not missing some unique peculiarity this free falling free association is not tied together with expert voice over and scant context is offered beyond the thematic groupings of the films what does brilliantly tie together this material is the original score from the icelandic band sigur ros whose distinctive soundscapes give texture and pace to the footage onscreen my own personal connection to some of the footage is also strong as having completed my doctorate from a base in the national fairground archive i was lucky enough to know a lot of the material as it is seen in show of shows countless times my supervisor the director of the archive would call me across to see some new clip or another that had been gifted to the archive do you recognise what country that might be in what bombed out city is this is that a man in drag or not or perhaps most peculiar of all can you tell if it s a dog or a monkey in that dress to encounter these films in isolation and stripped of context was in the first instance a challenge of research and investigation it was also consistently a moment of humour and excitement but all too often a fleeting and fragmentary moment at that moment we would witness in silence of course show of shows is brilliant then for stitching together theses fragments into a vivid and stirring document in its own right the narrative if it can be described as such is the rush of history and the changing face of those we see in it the wonderful score from sigur ros drives this all forward and strengthens the association and totality of this collated material some of the footage is shocking to modern eyes from performers falling a foul of gravity in excruciating fashion or the sight of animals taking the brunt of humanity s cruelty the shock is underscored by how recognisable yet simultaneously distant it feels there is no cut away to the talking head of an academic or expert condoning or contextualising this material no punches are pulled no excuses are made the shock is short and sharp but fleeting affording no time for the viewer to dwell on the suffering the music builds and the film comes to a crashing end and the result left me genuinely breathless in a way you rarely expect a documentary to do perhaps i am too close to the material to not get caught up in it but that doesn t lessen the effect of the film itself and convince me further of the potential and the impact of actual total archive documentaries the show of shows has a one off screening at the cube microplex this thursday the 10th of december at 8pm 8 october 2015 leave a comment film day five at the pordenone silent film festival where tuesday offered almost too many short films to mention wednesday was quite another ball game as i only managed to see three films it does however bear pointing out that one of them happened to be a six hour silent version of les miserables so it s not as if i m shirking my film watching duties while i m here before i get to the colossus in the schedule a brief mention has to go to the other two titles or rather one feature and one collection that i managed to encounter today morning started with the deliriously wonderful swedish comedy flickorna gyurkovics or a sister of six to take the peculiar english title for the film a dizzying tale of betrothals and missed engagements the young lovelorn cast bounced between fighting for the affections of the opposite sex only to lose interest completely once the feeling was requited this incredibly tightly woven farce demanded the audience s complete and utter attention as more than a few gags set up in the first reel only gave their pay off come the final act for this half british half swedish audience member there was a subtle thrill in seeing the british comic actress betty balfour hold her own in the swedish production although initially i was puzzled why the film had a hungarian setting of all things oh that s because it was based on a hungarian play a danish friend pointed out the danes and the swedes were crazy for hungarian stage comedies in the 1920s funny indeed how trends in comedy and drama come and go with the ages as i cannot say the hungarian influence lingers any longer on nordic shores or maybe our modern concept of scandinavian humour actually has it s roots in the magyar tradition who knows there s a research project in there somewhere no doubt the second collection was a very peculiar programme of incredibly short and fragmentary titles from the italian quick change artist leopold fregoli the art of the quick change is not as popular in the uk as it still proves to be in continetal europe and for the uninitiated it can briefly be described as the trick of changing costume on stage dozens of times going from one improbable get up to another in a matter of seconds as in ten seconds of less to be precise the italian quick change superstar arturo brachetti was in town especially for the show and while his status was lost on most but not all brits the buzz among the locals made clear that this was a very special appearance think of him as a celebrity on par with derren brown and we might be approaching an equivalent strata of star veneration either ways he gave charming history of the original italian quick change mastermind which served as a brilliant briefing before a very scatter gun and peculiar programme of films almost all from pre 1900 these were fragmentary clips most barely more than 30 seconds and showed fregoli developing ideas workshopping skits generally just trying out things in front of the camera very few had a punchline even fewer had a complete narrative as such but it was a fascinating insight into how the master worked and a fine example of how stars of the stage actively had to adapt their shows for the new phenomenon of cinema and finally we get to the epic film screening the hump of the festival week which had been anticipated with equal parts glee and dread or so i sensed when asking around in the last few days as someone who has tacitly managed to dodge les miserable in all it s forms thanks in great part to mr lloyd webber et co i was eager to see an unexpurgated version of the story clocking in at six and a half hours or eight if you include breaks this viewing experience loomed large as a test of stamina more than anything else yet in the moment the six and a half hour moment that is the film thundered along at a pace which rarely dragged or felt overly languid there really is a truism in the point that a terrible film of ten minutes can drag for a neverending eternity whereas a brilliant film of seven hours can pass in the proverbial blinking of an eye split across four chapters this grand adaptation from 1925 shows french director henri fescourt in his prime coming from a long history of self consciously worthy silent stage to screen adaptations in the long running film d art series this version of les miserable felt liberated from having to justify it s existence in the face of more established art forms it manages to be uniquely cinematic not with the visual fireworks of abel gance s napoleon but rather in it s ability to capture wonderfully humane performances gabriel gabrio as jean valjean was a towering presence on screen and his redemptive arc and gradual aging were shown in a convincing way jean toulout as javert was also superb at times overpowered by some of the mightiest brows and mutton chops i ve seen in a long time the climax of his personal crisis and collapse of his moral world was incredibly striking with extreme close ups capturing a bristling performance however the truly noteworthy performance of the evening was that of accompanist neil brand who followed the whole film in sensitive and grand fashion for the whole duration i could barely imagine typing on a keyboard for six hours flat so how the virtuoso pianist managed to keep pace with the film to underscore the emotional performances without melodrama while also driving the narrative forward is a feat of tremendous skill and talent having heard more than one of his musical peers rave about his performance after the show i think their claim that his was a seminal silent event is no great exaggeration an unforgettable musical accompaniment from a redoubtable pianist for a epic yet utterly humane film it rarely gets much better than that 45 956330 12 661584 7 october 2015 1 comment film day four at the pordenone silent film festival while i may have met the new day with news that i missed a subtly brilliant film in the midnight slot i was more than relieved to be bright eyed and bushy tailed for the 9am programme of girls will be boys curated by laura horak the preeminent scholar on female to male cross dressing in silent cinema the programme included six quite brilliant one reelers that put paid to the idea that marlene dietrich might have been first to the screen in the male garb department the motivations for the cross dressing could be both external to the narrative borrow the theatrical tradition of casting small girls as small boys appear more traditional respectable as a result or wholly baked into the story itself get the job done by dressing as a man in one example masquerading as union soliders in another going incognito to get a male only role on a ranch kitchen humour was at the heart of all these reversals and while the test of gender performativity could be laughable in its own right can a woman really handle a cigar there was a brilliant moment in making a man of her when an impromptu sparring match ends in horror as a hat gets knocked off and oh no the cowboy has been knocking the shit out of a woman all this time from swinging blows to grovelling deference in the dropping of a hat the absolutely highlight of this brief programme was however what s the world coming to a surreal science fiction comedy which posited a world where the men have become more like women and the women more like men which is to say the genders had effectively been inverted but to an absurdly exaggerated degree with the blushing groom barely able function without bursting into an emotional heap and the women constantly swaggering around town and managing cigars without a moments hesitation a high paced and highly physical slapstick affair the film barely gave you enough time to pick apart the gender jokes and included more than a few subtle inferences baked into the comedy one rather jokey title card asking if any person objected to a marriage on the grounds of inter state eugenics laws was an oddly charged note a nod to a time in history when anxieties over women s coming suffrage clashed with a new public rhetoric of race and genetics a flash of brave new world a good few years before that took form otherwise my tuesday viewing schedule was dominated by early cinema which is to say shorter titles from before the first world war and being a huge fan of these earliest years i was more than in my element a programme of colour shorts from the norwegian national library in particular stood out starting as it did with women modelling the latest parisian fashions films of women wearing rather extraordinary hats might not sound like a title to set the world on fire but the distinction in this regard was that the whole programme featured films which had been meticulously hand painted on their original release every reel of every film hand painted or stencilled coloured by an army of women going carefully from frame to frame the labour involved is staggering to imagine and the result is a series of films which shimmer with exaggerated primary colours some films had been immaculately coloured others looked a bit slap dash like an enthusiastic five year old s colouring book come to life the effect can be amazing in it s own right and while the series of films from the parisian zoo used neither the right colours nor stuck within the lines the morphing lines of brown elephants and orange kangaroos had a bizarre and almost impressionistic quality tucked among this programme of colour films was also a short called the princess and the frog which contrary to expectations mostly focused on a lithe contortionist in extremely tight frog costume almost impossible to explain it was basically a man tying himself in knots in a manner you could possibly construe as sexual or not it was after all just a man in a costume but that s not quite how everyone saw it further to this there was also a programme of shorts from the coleccion sagarminaga held by the filmoteca espanola which started off on a troubling note when a programme of early films starts on a series of parades there is always a feeling of unease that this...
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