For the end of 2015, when this blog has been less than it should have been, and for the start of 2016, when we intend it to be more than it has been, we offer five short lists of five cultural highlights from the past year. Each of the five of us at Illuminations is contributing five things, whether movies, television series, books, exhibitions or whatever, that have meant something significant to us during the year. The final choice isLouise Machin‘s, again offered in no particular order.
Depicting the endless grind of Mumbai slum life, this is a beautifully spirited adaptation by David Hare of Katherine Boo’s award-winning book, starring Meera Syal and Shane Zaza amongst others. The Annawadi slum is situated right alongside the city’s international airport and operates as a kind of chaotic underworld where young scavengers survive by stealing, picking through and sorting the detritus from the airport and hotels nearby. Centred on a violent dispute within the slum, David Hare’s play reveals an extraordinary story, mixed with hope and despair, in particular of the resilience of the Muslim family, the Husains, in the face of disaster. The play gets away from sentimentalising slum life and focuses beautifully on the possibility of goodness in a world of desperate deprivation.
For the end of 2015, when this blog has been less than it should have been, and for the start of 2016, when it will be more than it has been, we offer five short lists of five cultural highlights from the past year. Each of the five of us at Illuminations is contributing five things, whether movies, television series, books, exhibitions or whatever, that have meant something significant to us during the year. Today’s choice isTodd MacDonald‘s, again offered in no particular order.
Listening to paintings, looking at a beautiful image and hearing it sing, wandering around an artwork and soaking up its story, ‘hear’ the painting and ’see’ the sound. The NG commissioned six musicians and sound artists to select and respond to a painting from their collection, creating an airy and celestial immersive exhibit that allowed for you to focus on specific works for longer than you might do normally. Through Chris Watson’s sweeping natural atmosphere amongst Gallen-Kallela’s Lake Keitele, Nico Muhly’s chiming flood surrounding The Wilton Diptych and Jamie XX’s shimmering pulses dancing with Van Rysselberghe’s Coastal Scene we watched these paintings come to life.
This man made his way into my musical mainstay as the front man of punk rock band Thrice. Two years ago when that band broke up, I wrote their farewell London gig into my top moments of 2013. This however was a totally different experience of the sound and musicality that has defined Thrice since my early teenage years. Just him and an acoustic guitar in the expanse of Union Chapel where his raspy voice echoed around the space like a frisbee made of china had the air of a very privileged moment.
• Oresteia, Almeida Theatre
Rob Icke’s new version of Oresteia was easily the most exhilarating theatre I saw this year. We were whipped through a tale of love, sacrifice, betrayal, loss, revenge and justice by the seat of our pants. Agamemnon does the unthinkable and the stage right doors fly open and a fierce gale blasts across the stage. The once so solid family life and home now flailing debris in a blinding beam of light. We watch their ultimately futile attempt to chase after the pieces.
I know virtually nothing about jazz but it’s not hard to notice outstanding musicianship. Basement Tapes lead by Fergus Ireland on double bass were technically unbelievable and having re-watched both Birdman and Whiplash coincidentally in the run up to this gig (films with a heavy jazz presence on the soundtrack) made it an even more hypnotising encounter.
• Ai Weiwei, Royal Academy of Arts
This show was massive in so many ways: for the artist being allowed to travel to London after being held in China under house arrest for over four years, for the RA the scale of the work filled all of their 11 galleries and the volume of people coming through the doors to see it was unwavering in its three months on show, but also for me as our Illuminations documentary for Sky Arts about the exhibition became the first piece of television that I directed. It was an honour to encounter this man and his work so intimately.
Note that the video is part of our Sky Arts documentary directed by Todd and Aneil Karia.
For the end of 2015, when this blog has been less than it should have been, and for the start of 2016, when it will be more than it has been, we offer five short lists of five cultural highlights from the past year. Each of the five of us at Illuminations is contributing five things, whether movies, television series, books, exhibitions or whatever, that have meant something significant to us during the year. Today’s choice isTom Allen‘s, again offered in no particular order.
• Thesis on History by Walter Benjamin/Fire Alarm by Michael Löwy
I’ve included these together as Benjamin’s short essay is wonderfully explored in Löwy‘s slim book. I’ve often struggled with Benjamin due to his almost aphoristic prose, but Löwy picks apart key passages as well as historicising the essay in the context of the rise of Nazism in Benjamin’s native Germany and his unease with Stalinism in the Soviet Union. Moreover, Löwy key point is – and this is perhaps central to my previous misunderstanding of Benjamin – that the use of Marxism, Jewish mysticism, and Romanticism aren’t antithetical to one another in Benjamin’s thinking, rather they complement one another to elucidate a theory of history that is materialist, a rejection of historical progress, and an attempt to theorise history from below.
I’ve not read much fiction this year, sadly, but W.G. Sebald’s Rings of Saturn was astounding. The metaphor of the rings of Saturn sums up the book; whereby one can only speculate as to what kind of disaster must have happened in order for Saturn to gain it’s rings. The notion of history in the book is ‘post modern’ inasmuch as history is understood as a falsification of perspective (this, he shares with Joyce incidentally), but his work doesn’t imply an irrationalism and relativism that postmodernism is so often is accused of. It’s of no great surprise that Benjamin is a huge of influence on Sebald as they both share a similar notion that what history is, is ultimately negativity. In one particular striking passage, Sebald reflects on the impossibility of remembering a battlefield writes and that perhaps what history is at it’s most fundamental level is a pile of corpses.
‘picks apart the thinking that has framed the ‘war on terror’ the past fifteen years from both conservatives and liberals as they are both predicated on the same flawed thinking; one that refuses to engage with the political (read: Western foreign policy) rather that cultural or religious roots of terrorism. Alongside this alternative thinking on causes and origins of extremism, Kundani illustrates the systematic targeting of Muslims by their governments in the US and UK and the rise of Islamophobia with groups like the EDL.
What if Ulysses focused primarily on Stephen Dedalus, rather than Leopold Bloom and he was a folk music in New York 1960s? Ok, so this isn’t exactly the premise of the film, but there are certainly direct references as well as thematic overlaps; both Davis and Stephen are failed or failing artists and both are exiled in their own city, although Stephen is far more sympathetic in my opinion than Davies. A friend of mine, whose theory I’m about to steal, thinks that the film is an allegory of the of the failure of the 60s both culturally and politically. The entry of a certain well-known folk singer at the end is then a reminder of how the ’60s itself is a constructed fantasy while the ‘truth’ of the decade lies with Davies and his failure. Also, Justin Timberlake should do more folk music.
I’ve Todd to thank for this as he first recommended it. A sitcom (see lead image) that focuses on a middle-aged actor who made his name and money in a hackneyed ’90s sitcom. He’s also a cartoon horse. The first few episodes are laugh out loud funny but as the series(s) on Netflix progresses it becomes quite dark as it explores BoJack’s depression which gives it a surprising emotional weight I don’t normally associate with sitcoms, let alone animated ones.
For the end of 2015, when this blog has been less than it should have been, and for the start of 2016, when I intend it to be more than it has been, we offer five short lists of five cultural highlights from the past year. Each of the five of us at Illuminations is putting forward five things, whether movies, television series, books, exhibitions or whatever, that have meant something significant to us during the year. Today’s choice is John Wyver’s, again offered in no particular order.
• The Affair
The past year has been especially rich in series drama on television. The genre-bending Fortitude from Sky was a favourite earlier on, The Good Wife was as great as ever – no, make that greater – and I hugely enjoyed Unreal in the summer; the first episode has to be amongst the most caustic presentations of television that the medium has ever hosted. And this autumn has been exceptional, with London Spy and The Last Panthers both falling into the flawed-but-compelling category, and series 3 of The Bridge and series 5 of Homeland both being close to flawless. Perhaps best of all have been the two series of Showtime’s The Affair, shown here on Sky Atlantic, which is contemporary drama at the highest level, with richly complex characters, a supremely confident sexiness, and super-smart plotting. Plus, the final episode of series 1 closed with a sequence which was so unexpected and so disorienting that it remains the moment I best remember from a whole year of watching the small screen.
For the end of 2015, when this blog has been less than it should have been, and for the start of 2016, when I intend it to be more than it has been, we offer five short lists of five cultural highlights from the past year. Each of the five of us at Illuminations has outlined five things, whether movies, television series, books, exhibitions or whatever, that have meant something significant to us during the year. Up first is Linda Zuck’s choice, offered in no particular order.
• P’tit Quinquin
Made as a French TV mini-series for ARTE, Bruno Dumont’s French black comedy thriller P’tit Quinquin (featured image) was shown at a few British cinemas earlier this year. It concerns a series of unexplained grisly murders in rural northern France, two incompetent cops trying to investigate them, and young P’tit Quinquin, an adolescent boy with a misshapen face — he is our unlikely hero. Superb characterisation and performances, outrageous and weird comedic moments disrupted by reflections on life, death, racism and evil. There are many scenes that have stayed with me.
Tonight at BFI Southbank I am introducing three documentaries about the arts made for British television more than fifty years ago. The screening is part of the excellent BFI project Visions of Change about television documentaries from the 1950s and ’60s. Although much from these years has been lost, there is nonetheless an extensive archive of rich and resonant material from which to choose. It might have been interesting to mix up the genres more, rather than to have this evening devoted to films about the arts and another with Tim Boon looking at science documentaries, but nonetheless the triple offering tonight makes, if I may say so, for a great programme. John Read’s foundational profile Henry Moore (1951), British television’s first film profile of a living artist opens proceedings, followed by Ken Russell’s delightfully inventive Monitor film Watch the Birdie (1963) about photographer David Hurn. And to conclude there is the extraordinary New Tempo: Heroes, directed by Dick Fontaine in 1967, which now looks more like an avant-garde classic made perhaps by Bruce Conner than it resembles anything else that ITV might have shown on a Sunday afternoon 48 years ago. read more »
Tonight sees the opening of an exciting series of screenings and talks at BFI Southbank exploring the evolution of the television documentary in Britain. Visions of Change features a host of television treasures from the 1950s and ’60s – and early next month even features me introducing three significant early arts films. For the first programme this eveningIeuan Franklin introduces the work of ‘film poet’ Denis Mitchell, before the showing of three of Mitchell’s ground-breaking documentaries: Morning in the Streets, 1959, which he made with Roy Harris;A Wedding on Saturday, 1964, produced by Norman Swallow; and The Entertainers, also 1964, directed by John McGrath.
A striptease sequence in the latter, which was produced by Mitchell for Granada Television, led to the film being banned by the ITA and it took a year of negotiation before it eventually reached British screens in January 1965. I have written an article for Sight & Sound about the season and two complementary DVD collections forthcoming from BFI Publishing, but the piece is available online only to subscribers. (Equally frustrating is the fact that I can’t be at BFI Southbank tonight.) We’ll return to both the season and the DVDs, but below are some further resources about Mitchell’s work, and a first extract from my article. read more »
In the past week I have seen three exemplary film restorations courtesy of the BFI London Film Festival. Last Sunday offered a luminous, luscious print of Kiss Me Kate, 1953, in 3D; on Friday the Archive Gala screening was Anthony Asquith’s British silent Shooting Stars, 1928; and yesterday rolled out in NFT1 was Ken Russell’s 1969 adaptation of Women in Love. The first and second times, as well as the third which I think was also the last time, that I saw Russell’s film was 45 years ago. Revisiting it now, in all of its sparkling digitally touched-up glory, was a somewhat strange experience, of which more below. read more »
Tomorrow night Sky Arts premieres our new film for The Hot Ticket strand, Ai Weiwei at the RA. We have already produced Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man as a Hot Ticket and next week we are recording another major performance event for Sky. But this programme is a little different, most obviously because it is not a concert, play or dance event. Sky want their new series to embrace the whole range of the arts, including major exhibitions, and so we set out to find a more distinctive way than is usually employed to present a big show on screen. I am delighted with what our team has achieved, which I believe (and as I want to try to detail below) is modestly innovative – and the whole experience has made me enthusiastic to try to build on this the next time we get the chance to make a programme like this. read more »
WIN a special limited edition DVD of MUSE OF FIRE signed by Judi Dench, Tom Hiddleston and Ian McKellen
MUSE OF FIRE is an epic road-trip buddy movie made by actors Dan Poole and Giles Terera that will change the way you feel about Shakespeare forever. Dan and Giles are two friends who loathed Shakespeare at school. Then one day, they saw Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet, starring Leonardo Di Caprio, and suddenly everything changed. They decided to become actors and in the process, fell in love with the Bard.
Determined to know what the secret is and whether others feel the same way – or not – they grabbed their cameras and began an incredible four-year journey covering 25,000 miles around the world: to Hamlet’s Elsinore in Denmark, London’s Globe theatre, a prison in Berlin, taking in Hollywood as they go. Along the road they consult a host of helpful luminaries, including Ian McKellen, Judi Dench, Jude Law, Baz Luhrmann, Derek Jacobi, and Ewan McGregor amongst others, to help to prove that there’s really no need to be afraid of Shakespeare at all.
MUSE OF FIRE is a heartfelt, fun and inspiring film that attempts to demystify Shakespeare’s work for just about anyone. Aiming to dispel the fear and stop us worrying, Dan and Giles simply want us to start loving Shakespeare!
COMPETITION Illuminations is offering someone the chance to win a signed DVD of MUSE OF FIRE through our competition prize draw. Simply email us ([email protected]) the answer to the following question and a winner will be drawn at random. Please also supply your name, email and telephone details. Competition closes at 6pm on October 20th.
From which Shakespeare play would you find the following quotation:
‘O for a Muse of Fire, that would ascend The Brightest heaven of invention, A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!’
