Amelia’s Magazine | An interview with Tim Plester, director of Way of the Morris

(Alt) Way of the Morris by Rosemary Cunningham
Way of the Morris by Rosemary Cunningham.

Actor and film director Tim Plester has produced a beautiful documentary film inspired by his childhood antagonism towards the reignited Adderbury village cult of Morris Dancing. Modern footage is interspersed with old recordings as Way of the Morris follows the lives of current Adderbury Village Morris Men: the film is a touching look at the current renaissance of Morris Dancing in modern lives, adiposity put together with wonderful camera work that catches the Morris Men mid motion like brightly costumed village warriors.

WOTM-Tim Plester dressed as a Morris Dancer
Tim Plester dressed as a Morris Dancer.

What inspired you to make this film? Was there one particular thing that finally kick started the idea into action, pills and if so what was it?
There’s a single Polaroid photograph that has haunted me for most of my life. Taken in April 1976, price it shows me (aged just 5-and-a-half years old), stood outside the family home in Oxfordshire, dressed-up as a Morrisman. There’s a corn-dolly pinned to my breast and there are coloured ribbons tied about my knees. The photo shows me looking towards the camera’s lens with a smile stretched across my unblemished face. But looking at that instant image now, the smile I see displayed there betrays itself as something else entirely. For looking at that photograph now, the captured smile is clearly more of a grimace. It’s a simian smile born only of fear. The rictus grin of a scared and hairless ape. The look of someone who’s unable to turn and face his own destiny. I’ve been running away from my Morris dancing roots ever since the day that photograph was first taken.

Morris Dancers by Faye West
Morris Dancers by Faye West.

What finally stopped me in my tracks and forced me to confront my birthright, was the decision I took to travel to Northern France in the summer of 2008. I’d been invited to visit The Somme as a guest of the Adderbury Village Morris Men (a revival side which my Father and Uncle helped found in the self-same year that the Polaroid image of me was taken); there to commemorate the lives of those village dancers who lost their lives in the stinking trenches of World War One. Of the young fresh-faced team that volunteered to fight for King & Country, only one was to ever return home again. Finding out about that Lost Generation of Morrismen provided me with all the kick-start I ever needed.

WOTM-brothers

How long did it take to make, and how did you manage your other career as an actor around it?
I lost 2-and-a-half years of my life making WAY OF THE MORRIS, and had to juggle any acting work around the filming and lengthy post-production period. On-screen, my hair changes colour 2 or 3 times over the course of the documentary’s 64 minute running-time; the result of a couple of roles elsewhere, that had required a significant change of appearance. I can only recall one instance when the documentary and my acting “day-job” came into direct conflict with each other. Luckily, I have a very understanding agent. And luckily the documentary won out.

Morris Dancer by Erica Sharp
Morris Dancer by Erica Sharp.

What inspired the look of the film, which features lots of old photos and videos interspersed with some new imagery that has also been given an old patina? What feeling were you hoping to achieve?
All of the vintage super-8 used in the film was shot by my late grandfather Harold Jeffrey Plester, who I was very close to. As a child, growing up in Adderbury, I spent almost as much time with him and my paternal Grandmother as I did with my own parents. There’s something potent and magical about the flicker-flicker of 8-millimetre footage. It carries with it an in-built nostalgia. A nostalgia underpinned by melancholy. A homesickness if you like. A lament for lost lands. WAY OF THE MORRIS also features contemporary super-8 footage shot by me, my Father and my Uncle James. The idea here was to keep things in the family whilst helping echo and enforce recurring motifs of circles and cycles and death and rebirth. And finally, in a bid to counteract all of that whilst also acknowledging the reckoning of time, there is some digital HD Flip camera footage to be found right at the very tail-end of the film. This being the modern home-movie equivalent of the footage my grandfather shot. If President John Fitzgerald Kennedy were to be assassinated in public today, then I’d like to think he’d be assassinated on a HD Flip camera.

WOTM-hobby horseWOTM-triv

How easy was it to research everything? Any tales of woe?
The research was the easy part of the process really. Coming from the village, and having known all the major-players my entire life gave me an unquestioned access-all-areas pass. I am extremely grateful to Barry Davis (an old school-friend of my Father’s) for allowing me to trawl though his extensive collection of archival photographs, and also to Bryan Sheppard, the long-standing Fool of the Adderbury Village Morris Men, who kept a meticulous log-book during the team’s fledgling years, and who also (along with his sister), helped unearth all of the information we have regarding that young team that went to war. One poignant aspect of the filmmaking process that I remember clearly, (though not technically a part of the research or a tale of woe) is my initial response to visiting the WW1 memorials in Northern France.

Way_of_the_Morris_1908_by_Karla_Pérez_Manrique
Way of the Morris by Karla Pérez Manrique.

I was expecting to be moved by those great towering monoliths and the far-too-many names painstakingly carved upon their stone white walls. But what actually grabbed me by the gut, was the gently rolling countryside that surrounds them on all sides. Scalped, sodomized, and maimed beyond all recognition, those farmer’s fields were left in tatters by the 4 years of abject misery rained down upon them (1914-18). And yet today, the topsoil and the wildlife have long since returned, whilst the nearby villages of Pozières and Albert have been rebuilt brick-by-brick. The old landscape was lost beneath the blood and the clay. Only to be reborn anew. Much like the Morris dancing itself.

WOTM-fiddle

Did you find it hard to direct and feature in the film together?
For this I have to give thanks to my co-director Rob Curry of Fifth Column Films. Rob was always on hand whenever I was needed on the flip-side of the camera, and therefore in danger of neglecting any directorial duties. Amongst other things, Rob must also take a lot of the credit for the way in which we ended-up shooting the raw footage of the Adderbury dancers. Rob has long held this belief that The Morris is, in some strange way, a kind of arcane English martial art. For that reason we shot the dancing mainly in close-up, and tried to capture the kinetic energy of what it’s like to be caught-up within the maelstrom of oscillating willow-sticks and flying pocket-hankies, rather than being on the outside simply looking in.

WOTM-melodeon

??What’s the best thing about coming from a small village in England? What do you have that others can only dream of or aspire to?
I left The Shire many years ago, and have lived in North London for longer than I ever lived amidst the wheatfields. But Adderbury is still the place I go to when I daydream. She’s my own private Avalon. A place where landscape and melody entwine. The locally-brewed Hook Norton beer takes some beating that’s for sure. Sweet, full-bodied and devilishly fruity, Old Hooky is a hallowed ale, brewed-up by a benevolent Malt Giant and his 9 steam-powered billow maidens. So God speed the ploughshare and drink of it deep good people. And give thanks to birthplace and to rural brotherhood. If that in any way shape or form answers your question?

WOTM-hillsidepromo

What’s the best way to encourage community, if Morris Dancing is not an option?
In an age of interactive widescreen 3D television screens, Morris dancing is definitely one way of encouraging community spirit whilst helping maintain a strong connection with one’s cultural identity. But there are certainly others. There’s egg-yarping for one. And cheese-rolling for another. Hastings has its Jack-In-The Green sacrifice, whilst Hallaton and Medbourne have their once-yearly Hare Pie scramble and bottle-kicking fixture. And then of course there’s traditional tar-barrel racing, Tutti-kissing and various seasonal Mumming activities to consider.

Adderbury Morris Dan

How’s the Morris Dancing these days?
It’s enjoying something of a renaissance, truth be told. There are a number of younger teams springing-up around the country, and in Adderbury itself there are currently more people dancing the old ancestral dances than there were during the glory days of the longhaired 1970’s. Dances to make the crops grow tall. Dances to honour the resurrection. For Herne The Hunter and spritely Robin Goodfellow. Dances to hold up the very sky. Or, in the words of the English composer Gustav Holst; Ye who dance not, know not what we are knowing. Here endeth the lesson.

Way of the Morris poster

Tim Plester’s short film ENGLISH LANGUAGE (With English Subtitles) premiered at the 2007 Los Angeles Film Festival, and has gone on to screen at over 45 film festivals worldwide, picking-up 5 awards along the way. The world premiere of Way of the Morris took place at SXSW. You can catch him at the UK premiere of Way of the Morris this Sunday 15th May at 2pm as part of the London International Documentary Festival at the Barbican, where he will also be answering a Q&A. All the details of the Way of the Morris premiere can be found in this listing here.

Watch the trailers here:

Visit the Way of the Morris website for more information on further screenings.
Keep up with the Adderbury Village Morris Men on Facebook.

Way of the Morris by Karla Pérez Manrique
Way of the Morris by Karla Pérez Manrique.

Categories ,Actor, ,Adderbury, ,Adderbury Village Morris Men, ,barbican, ,Bryan Sheppard, ,cheese-rolling, ,community, ,director, ,egg-yarping, ,ENGLISH LANGUAGE [With English Subtitles], ,Erica Sharp, ,Faye West, ,Fifth Column Films, ,film, ,Gustav Holst, ,Hallaton, ,Harold Jeffrey Plester, ,HD Flip, ,Herne The Hunter, ,Hook Norton, ,interview, ,Karla Pérez Manrique, ,London International Documentary Festival, ,Los Angeles Film Festival, ,Medbourne, ,Morris Dancing, ,Morrisman, ,Mumming, ,Old Hooky, ,Oxfordshire, ,Premiere, ,Rob Curry, ,Robin Goodfellow, ,Rosemary Cunningham, ,Super 8, ,sxsw, ,Tim Plester, ,Way of the Morris, ,Wolf Marloh, ,World War One

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Amelia’s Magazine | An interview with Tim Plester, director of Way of the Morris

(Alt) Way of the Morris by Rosemary Cunningham
Way of the Morris by Rosemary Cunningham.

Actor and film director Tim Plester has produced a beautiful documentary film inspired by his childhood antagonism towards the reignited Adderbury village cult of Morris Dancing. Modern footage is interspersed with old recordings as Way of the Morris follows the lives of current Adderbury Village Morris Men: the film is a touching look at the current renaissance of Morris Dancing in modern lives, adiposity put together with wonderful camera work that catches the Morris Men mid motion like brightly costumed village warriors.

WOTM-Tim Plester dressed as a Morris Dancer
Tim Plester dressed as a Morris Dancer.

What inspired you to make this film? Was there one particular thing that finally kick started the idea into action, pills and if so what was it?
There’s a single Polaroid photograph that has haunted me for most of my life. Taken in April 1976, price it shows me (aged just 5-and-a-half years old), stood outside the family home in Oxfordshire, dressed-up as a Morrisman. There’s a corn-dolly pinned to my breast and there are coloured ribbons tied about my knees. The photo shows me looking towards the camera’s lens with a smile stretched across my unblemished face. But looking at that instant image now, the smile I see displayed there betrays itself as something else entirely. For looking at that photograph now, the captured smile is clearly more of a grimace. It’s a simian smile born only of fear. The rictus grin of a scared and hairless ape. The look of someone who’s unable to turn and face his own destiny. I’ve been running away from my Morris dancing roots ever since the day that photograph was first taken.

Morris Dancers by Faye West
Morris Dancers by Faye West.

What finally stopped me in my tracks and forced me to confront my birthright, was the decision I took to travel to Northern France in the summer of 2008. I’d been invited to visit The Somme as a guest of the Adderbury Village Morris Men (a revival side which my Father and Uncle helped found in the self-same year that the Polaroid image of me was taken); there to commemorate the lives of those village dancers who lost their lives in the stinking trenches of World War One. Of the young fresh-faced team that volunteered to fight for King & Country, only one was to ever return home again. Finding out about that Lost Generation of Morrismen provided me with all the kick-start I ever needed.

WOTM-brothers

How long did it take to make, and how did you manage your other career as an actor around it?
I lost 2-and-a-half years of my life making WAY OF THE MORRIS, and had to juggle any acting work around the filming and lengthy post-production period. On-screen, my hair changes colour 2 or 3 times over the course of the documentary’s 64 minute running-time; the result of a couple of roles elsewhere, that had required a significant change of appearance. I can only recall one instance when the documentary and my acting “day-job” came into direct conflict with each other. Luckily, I have a very understanding agent. And luckily the documentary won out.

Morris Dancer by Erica Sharp
Morris Dancer by Erica Sharp.

What inspired the look of the film, which features lots of old photos and videos interspersed with some new imagery that has also been given an old patina? What feeling were you hoping to achieve?
All of the vintage super-8 used in the film was shot by my late grandfather Harold Jeffrey Plester, who I was very close to. As a child, growing up in Adderbury, I spent almost as much time with him and my paternal Grandmother as I did with my own parents. There’s something potent and magical about the flicker-flicker of 8-millimetre footage. It carries with it an in-built nostalgia. A nostalgia underpinned by melancholy. A homesickness if you like. A lament for lost lands. WAY OF THE MORRIS also features contemporary super-8 footage shot by me, my Father and my Uncle James. The idea here was to keep things in the family whilst helping echo and enforce recurring motifs of circles and cycles and death and rebirth. And finally, in a bid to counteract all of that whilst also acknowledging the reckoning of time, there is some digital HD Flip camera footage to be found right at the very tail-end of the film. This being the modern home-movie equivalent of the footage my grandfather shot. If President John Fitzgerald Kennedy were to be assassinated in public today, then I’d like to think he’d be assassinated on a HD Flip camera.

WOTM-hobby horseWOTM-triv

How easy was it to research everything? Any tales of woe?
The research was the easy part of the process really. Coming from the village, and having known all the major-players my entire life gave me an unquestioned access-all-areas pass. I am extremely grateful to Barry Davis (an old school-friend of my Father’s) for allowing me to trawl though his extensive collection of archival photographs, and also to Bryan Sheppard, the long-standing Fool of the Adderbury Village Morris Men, who kept a meticulous log-book during the team’s fledgling years, and who also (along with his sister), helped unearth all of the information we have regarding that young team that went to war. One poignant aspect of the filmmaking process that I remember clearly, (though not technically a part of the research or a tale of woe) is my initial response to visiting the WW1 memorials in Northern France.

Way_of_the_Morris_1908_by_Karla_Pérez_Manrique
Way of the Morris by Karla Pérez Manrique.

I was expecting to be moved by those great towering monoliths and the far-too-many names painstakingly carved upon their stone white walls. But what actually grabbed me by the gut, was the gently rolling countryside that surrounds them on all sides. Scalped, sodomized, and maimed beyond all recognition, those farmer’s fields were left in tatters by the 4 years of abject misery rained down upon them (1914-18). And yet today, the topsoil and the wildlife have long since returned, whilst the nearby villages of Pozières and Albert have been rebuilt brick-by-brick. The old landscape was lost beneath the blood and the clay. Only to be reborn anew. Much like the Morris dancing itself.

WOTM-fiddle

Did you find it hard to direct and feature in the film together?
For this I have to give thanks to my co-director Rob Curry of Fifth Column Films. Rob was always on hand whenever I was needed on the flip-side of the camera, and therefore in danger of neglecting any directorial duties. Amongst other things, Rob must also take a lot of the credit for the way in which we ended-up shooting the raw footage of the Adderbury dancers. Rob has long held this belief that The Morris is, in some strange way, a kind of arcane English martial art. For that reason we shot the dancing mainly in close-up, and tried to capture the kinetic energy of what it’s like to be caught-up within the maelstrom of oscillating willow-sticks and flying pocket-hankies, rather than being on the outside simply looking in.

WOTM-melodeon

??What’s the best thing about coming from a small village in England? What do you have that others can only dream of or aspire to?
I left The Shire many years ago, and have lived in North London for longer than I ever lived amidst the wheatfields. But Adderbury is still the place I go to when I daydream. She’s my own private Avalon. A place where landscape and melody entwine. The locally-brewed Hook Norton beer takes some beating that’s for sure. Sweet, full-bodied and devilishly fruity, Old Hooky is a hallowed ale, brewed-up by a benevolent Malt Giant and his 9 steam-powered billow maidens. So God speed the ploughshare and drink of it deep good people. And give thanks to birthplace and to rural brotherhood. If that in any way shape or form answers your question?

WOTM-hillsidepromo

What’s the best way to encourage community, if Morris Dancing is not an option?
In an age of interactive widescreen 3D television screens, Morris dancing is definitely one way of encouraging community spirit whilst helping maintain a strong connection with one’s cultural identity. But there are certainly others. There’s egg-yarping for one. And cheese-rolling for another. Hastings has its Jack-In-The Green sacrifice, whilst Hallaton and Medbourne have their once-yearly Hare Pie scramble and bottle-kicking fixture. And then of course there’s traditional tar-barrel racing, Tutti-kissing and various seasonal Mumming activities to consider.

Adderbury Morris Dan

How’s the Morris Dancing these days?
It’s enjoying something of a renaissance, truth be told. There are a number of younger teams springing-up around the country, and in Adderbury itself there are currently more people dancing the old ancestral dances than there were during the glory days of the longhaired 1970’s. Dances to make the crops grow tall. Dances to honour the resurrection. For Herne The Hunter and spritely Robin Goodfellow. Dances to hold up the very sky. Or, in the words of the English composer Gustav Holst; Ye who dance not, know not what we are knowing. Here endeth the lesson.

Way of the Morris poster

Tim Plester’s short film ENGLISH LANGUAGE (With English Subtitles) premiered at the 2007 Los Angeles Film Festival, and has gone on to screen at over 45 film festivals worldwide, picking-up 5 awards along the way. The world premiere of Way of the Morris took place at SXSW. You can catch him at the UK premiere of Way of the Morris this Sunday 15th May at 2pm as part of the London International Documentary Festival at the Barbican, where he will also be answering a Q&A. All the details of the Way of the Morris premiere can be found in this listing here.

Watch the trailers here:

Visit the Way of the Morris website for more information on further screenings.
Keep up with the Adderbury Village Morris Men on Facebook.

Way of the Morris by Karla Pérez Manrique
Way of the Morris by Karla Pérez Manrique.

Categories ,Actor, ,Adderbury, ,Adderbury Village Morris Men, ,barbican, ,Bryan Sheppard, ,cheese-rolling, ,community, ,director, ,egg-yarping, ,ENGLISH LANGUAGE [With English Subtitles], ,Erica Sharp, ,Faye West, ,Fifth Column Films, ,film, ,Gustav Holst, ,Hallaton, ,Harold Jeffrey Plester, ,HD Flip, ,Herne The Hunter, ,Hook Norton, ,interview, ,Karla Pérez Manrique, ,London International Documentary Festival, ,Los Angeles Film Festival, ,Medbourne, ,Morris Dancing, ,Morrisman, ,Mumming, ,Old Hooky, ,Oxfordshire, ,Premiere, ,Rob Curry, ,Robin Goodfellow, ,Rosemary Cunningham, ,Super 8, ,sxsw, ,Tim Plester, ,Way of the Morris, ,Wolf Marloh, ,World War One

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Amelia’s Magazine | Harun Farocki at Raven Row: Against What? Against Whom?

Copenhagen Climate Summit: Lord Monckton rap battles Al Gore

“It’s freedom they’re plundering, viagra sale website and you’re the scare-monger king!” cries global warming sceptic Lord Monckton to former American Vice President Al Gore, store during their furious rap battle over climate change. Hold on… Lord Monckton and Al Gore in a rap battle?! It happened! Sort of. In this ingenious video by The Juice Media you can see how it might play out if Monckton and Gore were to get down wit da kids and engage in a juvenile debate over the issues of climate change and the Copenhagen summit. This video in particular is part of a series called Rap News – with Robert Foster, order which was born in October this year, other titles in the series include ‘Nasa bombs the moon’ and ‘Obama receives Nobel War is Peace prize’. Rap News was spawned from the artistic and philosophical minds of Giordano and Hugo, who reside in Melborne Australia, where they met after moving from the UK and Italy. Together they write and produce the show; Hugo, an MC/spoken-word performer/poet and actor creates the rhymes and impersonates the various public figures featured in the shows. Giordano, a writer, historian, academic, music composer and founder of Juice Media directs using themes and narratives based on his deep-seated interests and ideas about history, the media, the environment, social justice, indigenous peoples and politics.

They’re an intriguing pair, over 1000 are subscribed to their You Tube channel, and amongst the comments on their page is “What a talent mate” and “You make me proud to be Australian”. With the Copenhagen summit underway I have a few questions for the madcap duo, who going by our email correspondence are not only talented but super friendly.

goremonk

So, why rap?

Chuck D once said that Rap was the CNN of the ghetto. We figure, why CNN? Why not a quality news channel like DemocracyNow.org?

How did you 2 first come to work together? What is your relationship like?

We met over common interests in politics, nature and medieval Italian poetry. Our relationship is great. We sit around in the garden and have brainstorming sessions over homegrown salads.

Your raps are driven by politics, environmental and social issues. Tell me more about your views and motivations?

Our view is that the mainstream media is manifestly almost completely failing in its duty to inform the populace of world events in a measured and contextualised manner, and our motivation is therefore to rectify that in a small way, helping people join the dots between the quotidian occurences, and the broader picture. We are putting into practice that wise adage, ‘become the media’, for, as Jello Biafra famously stated, ‘we demand fair and more accurate balanced news coverage – and if we don’t get it… we’ll make it ourselves!’

algore

Hugo, you impersonate various public figures in the video, who is your favourite person to be and why?

So far the only real public figures i’ve impersonated have been Lord Monckton and Al Gore. Out of those two, Lord Monckton came the most naturally – i finally got to use those skills from ‘Latin For Pseudo-Scientists 101′. Of all public figures to impersonate, my favourite has to be David Bowie when he does the Goblin King in Labyrinth: “Go back to your room… play with your toys!” and so on.

What are your hopes for COP15?

That it will be a turning point. Wherever we’re headed, the future’s not looking too good right now. This seems like a good opportunity to take a break from the reckless ride we’ve been on for the past few centuries and reassess our situation; a chance to consider that we may not have thought all this through that well from the outset: Civilization? – what self-respecting civilization would totally trash it’s own home? And climate is just one of the massive challenges we now face; yet it’s the surest sign that ‘something is rotten in the state of Denmark’ and what better place to rectify this than in Copenhagen?!

Monckton

So, we hope it doesn’t become another Kyoto – with the little time we have left we simply don’t have that option. We hope it won’t legitimise false solutions and myths such as ‘clean coal’ or emission-trading schemes – these just encourage a business-as-usual mentality, and if it hadn’t taken as many as 15 COP’s since the ’92 Earth Summit in Rio, then perhaps these wouldn’t be a case of too little too late. We hope the media does its job and keeps its eye on the ball and doesn’t degenerate into coverage of smashed windows and protester arrests.

But above all we hope that COP15 won’t all come down to money and be limited to market-based solutions – we need a real supra-economic movement to spring from Copenhagen which will carry us through this. It can’t just be about hatching new technologies but also about regaining old knoweldge. We are going to have to finally remember that our economy and society has to adapt to the planet, to the law of the land, and not the other way around. This is the simple fundamental lesson which we are going to have to (re)learn. Whether we do so the easy or the hard way, is what will be decided in these coming days in Copenhagen.

rapnews

What are Juice Media’s future plans? What’s next?

Although this project has existed for several years in our imaginations, we’re really only just setting out on this journey and, well, we’re still figuring out what to pack in the suitcases.

TheJuiceMedia itself is a broader prtoject which seeks to facilitate access to the voices of Indigenous people – particularly from Aboriginal Australia, since that’s where we are. So we’ll carry on working on doing what we’re doing and look to keep the information flowing. As far as Rap News episodes, we are looking forward to covering many more topics, as they come up. First on the cards is a website where we can set up our little campfire in the world-wide-web, light up some hyperlinks and start foraging for new stories.

We’re quite clear about what won’t come next: we’re not hoping to get on TV! The way it is, we encourage people to turn off their sponsor-saturated, Murdoch/Berlusconi-owned mega-networks and tune in to alternative, independent media sources. The internet seems to be the only medium left to us to retain some form of global participation in the production of meaning in today’s society and we intend to dedicate all of our creativity to making the most of it – while we still have it. The more people use this vital medium, the less the likelihood of it being hijacked, like what’s happened to TV. That would truly leave us in the dark(ages), once again.

rapnewslogo

Check out all Juice Media’s Videos here
Farocki4Workers Leaving Factory © Harun Farocki

Harun Farocki is a strange sort of a person. Although he has been making films since 1967, order he is a fairly new addition to the artisan world of video. Developing film as a creative medium since the mid 1990’s, look his Against What? Against Whom? exhibition at the Raven Row gallery in East London feels very much retrospective. It is as if he is inadvertently peering back across his filmic history and showing his audience what he found out.

I sauntered in on a Friday afternoon and was surprised to find the exhibition space bustling with spectators. People from distant walks of life mosied from room to room, giving the labyrinth like gallery an almost homely feel. Picking up a leaflet and heading straight into the first room to see Eye/Machine III, I was somewhat at ease. Unfortunately, the first installation was not an entertaining piece. Two simultaneous projections of computerised views of bombs and aircrafts – and at twenty four minutes long, left me concerned that I had eight more to watch.

Farocki2© Harun Farocki

Fortunately, this was not the case. As the reels of the following pieces unravelled, the exhibition became more evocative and enthralling. The second piece documenting the archaic bricklaying techniques of the third world juxtaposed with more modern methods was a bridge into Farocki’s extensive knowledge of how film works. And indeed how to display film in an artistic approach.

Workers Leaving Factory © Harun Farocki

The two most outstanding works of the exhibition would have the most elite cinephile astounded. The first; Workers Leaving the Factory in Eleven Decades took on the Lumière Brothers original film, extending their original premise through the past century to show the anamorphism of the working class. Intersecting works across eleven screens, Farocki includes sights from film greats such as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times and, most recently, Lars Von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark. Including headphones for sensory immersion, each headset contained a different score. I was blessed with some jovial and jaunty music (I’m assuming from the Chaplin piece but couldn’t be certain). The whole experience of the piece was like a historical document; not only of workers leaving a factory, but also of how filmmakers over time have captured this banal event to create something extraordinary.

inextinguishable Fire © Harun Farocki

The second, Feasting or Flying, made in collaboration with Antje Ehmann, follows the tragic hero in Hollywood. The six screen set is haunting and heart wrenching. Concentrating on male protagonist suicide, it is extremely fluid, spilling from screen to screen along with an overture of highly resonant and mournful scores. The whole experience signifies and remembers tragedy, with saturnine morose. Along with clips, posters and screens of red black inserts determine film, director and how the hero ended his life. Leaving the viewer subdued but deeply attentive, the piece is arresting and thought provoking, and worth the trip in itself.

Farocki1© Harun Farocki

Farocki once said ‘I always use more than one image, I compare the images, to see what they have in common, it is not a linear image. It’s a form of ‘soft montage,’ taking one image ‘a,’ finding it’s not quite right, and replacing it with ‘b’’. The exhibition at Raven Row is an epitome of Farocki’s way of thinking. Multiple screens; a continual flow of disorientating images, occasionally bombarding, but predominately enthralling. Farocki twists and manipulates images to create a visually provoking and perplexing set of works.

Farocki3© Harun Farocki

The exhibition runs from 19 November 2009 to 7 February 2010 at Raven Row, Raven Row, 56 Artillery Lane, London E1 7LS. T +44 (0)20 7377 4300, info@ravenrow.org. Open Wednesday to Sunday 11am–6pm.

Categories ,art, ,contemporary art, ,director, ,ehibition review, ,film, ,Harun Farocki, ,installation, ,london, ,projection, ,Raven Row gallery, ,review, ,Spittafileds, ,video, ,Video Art, ,video installation

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Amelia’s Magazine | Gurun Gurun featuring Cuushe: Atarashii hi video – an interview with director Cristina Maldonado

Gurun Gurun kon_b-cover
The Japanese influenced Czech group Gurun Gurun return with a new video featuring Cuushe (read more about the Japanese singer in our 2012 interview here). The EP features a host of remixes by well known Japanese artists and all the money is going to the Tenohasi NPO who help the homeless in Tokyo, and is followed by the album Kon B in May featuring Cuushe, Cokiyu, and Miko. We caught up with director Cristina Maldonado to find out more about this trippy video.

Gurun Gurun ft. Cuushe – Atarashii hi from Home Normal on Vimeo.

I am not a video maker, but a video performer, in most of my work I relate to the video in live time, and the action itself is a big part of the sense of it. I am not interested in the final visual effects, but in the challenge of relating in a very physical way to the projection which is practically immaterial, its interesting to see how the body and ordinary objects can bring a lot of magic into this relationship, therefore I don’t use any digital effects, it is all handmade. Jara’s (from Gurun Gurun) invitation to make a video with this principle was quite challenging because I never tried to present this kind of work without the live part, so I was curious if it would actually work. He sent the lyrics of the song which I immediately liked because they seemed to talk about stuff I experience in my video interventions: ‘In the dark beautiful light I try to put out my hand / Let’s make a new day world of paper’… somehow I took that as a good omen. Then he asked for some scary poltergeist stuff and sent the image of their ghost album cover…

Gurun Gurun video 2
Gurun Gurun video
Cristina Maldonado
I started looking for archive-free-copyright stuff…not much ghosts covered in a bed sheet. Then moved on to the beginning of cinema, some cult films with evil characters and devils but it was definitely too old and too well known, then went into B movies, especially the ones dealing with monsters which were too narrative and too cheap really. This definitely needed something abstract, I concluded I would cut a bunch of dark shadowy scenes of suspense and tension where you actually don’t see anything and put them together, and when I started to select films for that I found the black eyes, and somehow it felt to me it was totally matching the music of Atarashii hi, as they were mysterious, hypnotic, and dark, yet there was a sweet persuasive invitation, unclear to what exactly, but mesmerizing and evil.

Asuna (Jp): 100 Toys, Gurun Gurun (Cz)
Gurun_Gurun_photo_by_Libor-Galia_2
I made two versions, Gurun Gurun chose one and gave me feedback for couple of small editing details, and that was it. It was cool to work with them, I felt that we appreciated similar things, which brings a specific satisfaction. I think in the end the video was a proper match for this single, Cuushe’s voice at times seems to belong to the evil black eyes, at times to the dizzying victim, at times to my own hands, and sometimes she seems just to be narrating the whole thing. It all together is a trippy gentle wicked spell.

Gurun Gurun Cuushe video 3
Gurun Gurun Cuushe video 4
Gurun Gurun Cuushe video 1
Gurun Gurun Cuushe video 2
Gurun Gurun‘s new album Kon B is released on 8th of May, 2015 on Home Normal. Listen to the entire Atarashii hi EP here on band camp. See more work by Cristina Maldonado at www.cristinamaldonado.com

Categories ,Atarashii hi, ,Cokiyu, ,Cristina Maldonado, ,Cuushe, ,Czech, ,director, ,Gurun Gurun, ,Home Normal, ,interview, ,japanese, ,Kon B, ,Miko, ,Tenohasi NPO, ,tokyo, ,video

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Amelia’s Magazine | An interview with James Morgan, director of the video for Cucurucu by Nick Mulvey

Nick Mulvey by Kaja Szechowsko

NIck Mulvey by Kaja Szechowsko.

Nick Mulvey, former founding member of Portico Quartet, releases new single Cucurucu accompanied by a stunning video shot on Nihiwatu beach in Indonesia by National Geographic director James Morgan, filmed in March 2013. Nick says: “I felt this song needed a video with wide expanses. Space to wonder. I didn’t have to look too far for the right film maker – James is a friend of mine, and I’ve loved his work for National Geographic. I knew he’d understand what I was after and have something special in his vaults…” So we caught up with James Morgan to find out more, and see further examples of his beautiful photography.

Can you tell us a little about the locations in this video – how did you come across them and is there any interesting history behind any of the locations?
All the footage for this video was shot on the island of Sumba in Indonesia. I was there in March last year shooting a documentary about the practice of ritualised violence and local esoteric beliefs. You can see more about that here. The opening shot is actually of a shaman gathering sea worms at dawn from the ocean, the colour of the sea worms serves as an augur of the coming harvest. For Cucurucu we decided to focus just on the story of these two boys riding their horses at the beach. 

Sumba-Pasola-by James Morgan

Two young boys and their horses play in the ocean in Nihiwatu, Sumba.

Can you tell us a bit about the boys and their horses?
The two boys are called Laiya Kula and Honga Dedu, we met them in a village in eastern Sumba. I’ve worked in Indonesia on and off for a few years so have a reasonable grasp of the language, I was also working with a producer and frequent collaborator, Johnny Langenheim, who is based in Bali and speaks Indonesian fluently. The horses are what makes Sumba unique in Indonesia, as I understand it they’re a result of Sumba’s place on the old sandalwood trade routes to China and Arabia. Now they’re very much a part of the culture. On another day we were invited to the funeral of a wealthy local landowner where a huge number of pigs and buffalo were slaughtered and, in testament to the man’s status, a horse was also killed quite violently. It was hacked to death with machetes and ran around for a good few minutes, it’s entrails splashing out onto the crowd, before it finally died. I find things like that hard to watch but in a lot of ways its less haunting than getting our horses vacuum packed and passed off as beef lasagne. 

Sumba-Pasola-man chewing betel by James Morgan

Ratu Dangu Duka chewing betel before the Pasola in Sumba, Indonesia.

How did working with Nick come about and how did you come to work on this ‘Cucurucu’ track?
I’ve known Nick for a few years and always been a big fan of his music so I was very excited when an opportunity came up to collaborate. 

Sumba-Pasola-man in hut by James Morgan

Tradition dictates that Almarhum Keledepiku must throw the first spear in the Pasola, a responsibility that he has inherited from his ancestors.

Is this the first music video you’ve been a part of, and if so how did you find melding the images with the music?
Yes, this is the first music video I’ve done. The past few years I’ve been focused on long term investigative photojournalism stories looking at underreported environmental and human rights stories. But even with that work, I’ve always been trying to push the boundaries of multimedia, combining sound and visuals to create a more atmospheric form of journalism. Music videos are definitely something I’m keen to work more on. I’m planning this year to keep up the journalism but also to explore more experimental areas that allow me to create more richly textured and layered films. 

To see more photography and film by James Morgan visit: www.jamesmorgan.co.uk Cucurucu is released on 3rd March 2014 through Fiction Records.

Categories ,Almarhum Keledepiku, ,Cucurucu, ,director, ,Fiction Records, ,Honga Dedu, ,Indonesia, ,interview, ,James Morgan, ,Johnny Langenheim, ,Kaja Szechowsko, ,Laiya Kula, ,National Geographic, ,Nick Mulvey, ,Nihiwatu, ,Pasola, ,photographer, ,portico quartet, ,Ratu Dangu Duka, ,Sumba

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