Essential media about the arts

Dreamweaver

10.05.2013 posted by John Wyver Category: Film

Has there ever been a better time to love the cinema? Sure, it would have been cool to hang out on the Left Bank in ’56 and argue about Ray and Fuller with Jean-Luc, Francois and the gang. And I would dearly like to have shared a pint with documentary makers John Grierson, Basil Wright, Paul Rotha and Humphrey Jennings at a Soho hostelry in the late 1930s (assuming, of course, that they were talking to each other). But if what you care about is actually watching films, then with the DVDs available today and with streaming and specialist cinemas and TV channels and festivals, access to an astounding range of films has never been easier. That said, there are still some areas of film history that are far less well-served than others – and for me one of these is French silent cinema of the 1920s. Which is why it is particularly good news that the 4th Fashion in Film Festival, which opens tonight, is devoted to the work of Marcel L’Herbier. Here’s the slinky, sensuous trailer.

25 random things about Illuminations (again)

9.05.2013 posted by John Wyver Category: About Illuminations, Film, Performance, Television, Visual arts

Back in 2009 we ran a blog post that was based on an article in the New York Times which claimed that the ‘latest digital fad [is] a chain-letter-cum-literary exercise called “25 Random Things About Me”.’ For a while it was big on Facebook, and this was the only excuse the Times needed for its pop psychology: ‘…why this particular distraction has suddenly become a phenomenon is anyone’s guess. For most, it seems to be a creative way to indulge in social networking without coming off as needy or shamelessly self-absorbed.’ The world has moved on a bit since then, as there have been some changes too at Illuminations. Nonetheless, absolved from neediness or self-obsession, we are delighted to offer today the 2013 version of 25 Random Things About Illuminations.
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The intermedial in action

3.05.2013 posted by John Wyver Category: Digital media, Film, Literature, Performance, Television

Upstage there is a set with an enclosed room and other smaller spaces, including two booths like those used for sound recording. The room is dressed as a kitchen, with walls which have extensive glass panelling allowing the audience to see inside. Downstage there are elements of furniture, a table for sound effects, and video cameras, monitors and lights. This is the setting for Katie Mitchell and Leo Warner’s astonishing Fraulein Julie, originally staged at Schaubuhne Berlin and at the Barbican only until tomorrow. (I started this post on Tuesday night but it’s been a crazily busy week, so apologies for the tardiness of its appearance.) Over 80 taut minutes, the actors and creatives make and mix a live “film” after Strindberg’s play, with live sound effects and music. The appeal is both to the mind and to the heart, with an experience embedded in the late 19th century but also acutely, precisely of now. Yet for me this bold, sometimes breathtaking experiment brought to mind nothing so much as live television drama as it used to be made in the studio twenty.thirty, even fifty years ago.
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Videos of the week

20.04.2013 posted by Illuminations Category: Digital media, Film, Links

Our colleague Todd MacDonald (@toddmacd), who works at Illuminations as our in-house editor, facilities manager and much more, has for the past few weeks been putting together an eclectic and enlightening selection of videos each Saturday. He has been posting the list on his own blog, and now we have asked him if we can share it. It will make a terrific complement to Links for the weekend on Sundays. Enjoy!

Todd Macdonald: This is only my sixth week of posting my videos of the week and I’m delighted that it is being hosted on the Illuminations blog for the first time. This week is probably the most mixed bag yet so I hope that readers from both my own site, and at Illuminations, find something that interests them.
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Pictures at a cinema exhibition

12.04.2013 posted by John Wyver Category: Digital media, Film, Television, Visual arts

To Clapham Picturehouse for Manet: Portraying Life, the Royal Academy of Arts exhibition (until 14 April) ‘captured for cinema screens worldwide’. That’s the claim of Exhibition: Great Art on Screen, a new initiative from Seventh Art productions and philgrabskyfilms.com in association with distributors BY Experience. It’s a follow-up to Leonardo Live in 2011 (about which I wrote here), except that it’s not live. It is, however, another element of the rapidly developing bundle of events that cinema owners call ‘alternative content’, along with Met Opera: Live in HD, NT Live and a forthcoming Pompeii Live from the British Museum (on 16 June). Except that this isn’t live. Manet: Portraying Life is a documentary of the kind that is familiar (perhaps over-familiar) from the BBC and Sky Arts. It’s 91 minutes long, it’s on a big screen, it’s thoughtful and finely-shot, but it’s not… well, you get the idea.
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To be… to be… to be… to be… to be… to be… – or not?

29.03.2013 posted by John Wyver Category: Film, Performance, Television

In the diary next week are two Hamlets. On Monday afternoon I am introducing the 1964 television Hamlet at Elsinore at BFI Southbank, and then on Wednesday I have a ticket to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s new production in Stratford-upon-Avon. The former is showing as part of my Screen Plays season Classics on TV: Jacobean tragedy on the small screen. A co-production between BBC Television and Danmarks Radio, it is a fascinating adaptation with Christopher Plummer, Michael Caine, Robert Shaw and Donald Sutherland (and there are still a few tickets to be had). The RSC’s presentation, which stars Jonathan Slinger (above, with Luke Norris as Laertes) and is directed by David Farr, has had mixed reviews this week (Paul Taylor in the Independent largely pro, Michael Billington in the Guardian mixed and the Telegraph‘s Charles Spencer unenthusiastic), although everyone agrees that Slinger is compelling. All of which is my rationale for simply collecting seven versions of ‘To be or not to be’, starting with this one…

Clips from a life

27.03.2013 posted by John Wyver Category: About Illuminations, Film, Visual arts

Just after I had taken the photos above and below of these aged newspaper clippings I tossed them into a recycling sack. They followed hundreds – thousands – of others that had lain in piles in my bedsits and studies across the past forty years. Some of them anchored significant memories – one recalled my visit as a sixteen year old to the Tate Gallery’s William Blake show. But now they’ve gone, and I’m pleased that they have. Indulge me, however, as I explain about how I came to have these clippings and why I felt able finally to throw them away.

Newspaper clippings 2
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Orson’s sketches for early television

19.03.2013 posted by John Wyver Category: Film, Television

Early television programmes do not get anything like the attention they deserve. In part this is because very few such programmes – and I am thinking here of television before the mid-1950s – have been preserved. But even those that are still with us are little-studied and attract nowhere near the attention that is now lavished (appropriately) on early films. A case in point is the six 15-minute episodes of Orson Welles’ Sketch Book, produced in the 1955 by the BBC, with the great man as host. These were re-broadcast in 2009 by BBC Four and ‘Citizen Welles’ has kindly uploaded them to YouTube (complete with the new channel’s branding). Watching them is a bit like sitting next to the 40-year-old Orson at dinner and having this charming, dazzling man pour his anecdotes and reflections into your eager ear. What’s not to like?
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Yes to No (from Curzon on Demand)

15.03.2013 posted by John Wyver Category: Digital media, Film

Film fans, happiness is coming (this to be sung to a jaunty tune with optional hand-clapping). If you’ve seen Pablo Larraín’s remarkable film No, about the rival media campaigns in the 1988 referendum in Chile, you might perhaps pick up the reference (go here for the film’s website from Sony Classics). If you haven’t, then for just the next week you can catch it online for only £4 at Curzon on Demand. This is a comparatively new pay-per-view arthouse service that I have quickly learned to love. Other ppv film offerings are available, as they say, including iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, Lovefilm and Mubi.com, but none at present appear have anything close to the Curzon’s range of arthouse cinema of the moment (much of it from the Artificial Eye list). This weekend, for example, you can watch Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills and Michael H. Profession: Director, Yves Montmayer’s profile of Michael Haneke, both of which are released in cinemas this week (and as a consequence cost £10 each). From Monday, Haneke’s Amour will be available, and if – like me – you are impressed by No, two earlier linked films by Larraín are also on offer, Post Mortem (2010) and Tony Manero (2008). All three can be watched this week for a tenner.
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Steel on screen

6.02.2013 posted by John Wyver Category: Film

I have said this here before but it definitely bears repeating: over the past seven years or so a series of BFI screenings, publications and DVD releases has rewritten the history of the British documentary. This is an achievement that has, as yet, been insufficiently celebrated – and of course the task is far from complete. Much of what we’ve learned and seen anew has been to do with cinema and industrial documentaries and we still have the glories of television documentary to discover. But already we can understand more fully and engage more deeply with and simply and straighhforwardly see an enormously rich filmmaking heritage from the early 1930s to the late 1970s (and occasionally beyond). And the latest instalment of the project is this month’s initiative This Working Life: Steel which was launched on Tuesday evening at BFI Southbank. Here’s the trailer…