proud flesh • German premiere • Sun 22th • Berlin

hair-e in collaboration with directors lounge present:
proud flesh
a film by jenny graf sheppared and chiara giovando



Sunday, 22 March 2009 / doors: 7pm/ screening: 8pm.

Proud Flesh

Two young filmmakers, Jenny Gräf Sheppard and Chiara Giovando, from Baltimore, Maryland collaborated on “Proud Flesh”, a film shot in the Badlands of South Dakota located in the American West. The film will be presented by Jenny Gräf Sheppard in person, who like her colleague, also is a musician. She will play on Saturday March 21, the night before the screening, at Kuntstraum Richard Sorge Berlin.

“Proud flesh” in medical terms is the wild and excessive flesh that is growing, if, in a deep wound, the skin tissue is so damaged it cannot cover the wound by growing back fast enough. It mostly happens, when skin tensions caused by body movements prevent the tissue from closing and healing. (A reason why doctors nowadays tend to stitch the smallest skin cuts.)

The film starts with a gunshot and the movements of an older woman, who is wounded on her upper leg, struggling to walk through a landscape of the West until she finds a small town. Violence, guns, blood and loneliness, all are ingredients of the common genre Western, however, and without breaking the settings of original, historical backdrops, place and costumes, carefully collected from local sources, the film sets out into a totally different direction than the adaptations of Hollywood Western drama we know of. Neither is it a funny parody of that genre.

Rather, the (mostly) silent human interactions in the movie are staged in more abstract, ritual ways invoking reflections on the symbolism of the characters instead of the psychology of drama. The title “Study of Ritual and Time” ­ and with it the work of Maya Deren, early avant-garde filmmaker ­ may come to mind. Like Deren, by using female main characters and abstracted acting, and unlike Deren, who later travelled to Africa for ritual studies, the filmmakers successfully try to have their own take onto American myths by setting the film into the historical time of their own homeland, and how it can be cinematically revoked, today. “What are the things that we see in our story as American women and how do we want to tell it?” says Chiara (“Into the West” by Brent McCabe,) and Jenny adds: “I’ve always been interested in picturing women in that condition (of the John Ford Western, KWE), and an older woman that position Š picturing older women in the traditional young, male role.”

The wounded, Native American Indian-looking woman in the film, after encountering different situations of near death, ritual and alienation, will finally find her alter ego in an older female home-settler. By doing so, it seems, the two authors try to reach out back into time in order to heal what has been the deepest wound of the proud American move for freedom and individual independency, while “the Frontier” was pushed towards the West.

Another filmmaker may come into mind, a German director, whom the two authors may possibly not know of: Ulrike Ottinger. With abstract acting and ritual, or dream-like scenes of European and Asian tales, she made her mark in German contemporary film history. Like her, the makers of “Proud Flesh” are able to balance the abstract ritual-like acting on a high and light-spirited level, throughout their debut film altogether: It is fun and surprising to watch.

The evening at GDK will be the German premiere and Jenny Graf Sheppard will be present for Q&A after the screening.
(Klaus W. Eisenlohr / Directors Lounge, March 2009)

GDK Galerie der Künste
Potsdamer Straße 98
D-10785 Berlin

Bus: M29 /M48 /M85 bis Potsdamer Brücke

more at richfilm

Spring is coming

Sam Spenser's Umbrella Bloom

Photo by Jessica Rolland

via

The Lost Promenade

Humble People Who Expect Nothing (Margate)


There are some things that just don’t go together, though God knows I’ve tried. Custard and horseradish. Eczema and satin. Margate and December…

Nhung Dang and Tamsin Chapman met some years ago, late one night during a pub lock-in. Tamsin admired Nhung’s shiny black umbrella. She keeps meaning to ask Nhung what happened to it. Nhung takes photographs, makes films, writes and sings. Tamsin also writes and sings, but not the other things. They both live in Brighton. When Tamsin was young and on holiday by the sea, she once took off her jelly sandals and flung them into the ocean. She watched them float away and still can’t tell you why. She was very fond of them, but just had an urge. When Nhung was even younger, she went on a Sunday school trip to the seaside and wandered away from the rest of the group. Although she was lost and alone, she didn’t want to be found. She can’t tell you why either. She just had an urge Nhung and Tamsin have come up with a new wheeze to travel around the coast and make some new seaside memories. Nhung will be photographing and Tamsin will be writing. They don’t really know why. They just had an urge

Let’s face it, fascinating as the town’s crumbling edifices are to trippers like us, outside summer time, when the beach’s glorious orange sands come into their own, this town must be a fucking grim place to grow up in. And if the only alternative teenagers are offered, is art built on sneers not passion, then who can blame them if they turn to bird rustling and hawking blow-up sex dolls.

If Tamsin ruled the world, and Margate Council, she’d use the money and site planned for the gallery, to build a gleaming new community centre/venue offering all kinds of subsidised classes and training to everyone. And she’d re-open Margate’s extinct theme park Dreamland, where one of the only two of the UK’s remaining early wooden rollercoasters once lived. And that’s where the Art would be. All the rides would be designed by the world’s most imaginative architects alongside top fairground engineers. Tatlin’s Tower would come to life. Artists would be invited to design regularly changing installations to feature throughout the park –Wisconsin Death Trip ghost trains and waltzers that make you feel like you’re taking acid in Midnight Cowboy. Hell, you could even have Hook-a-Duck stalls that said something vague about consumerism! The food stalls would sell stuff posh people like, like wheatgrass smoothies and exotically garnished offal, as well as the usual theme park fare. Thousands of jobs would be created and Margate would own something unique that reflected all facets of its history, and best of all, would have a place where both the arty and everybody else could enjoy themselves.

Ye Gods, the rain was still pelting down and we were half frozen. We had a look in a fancy dress shop (“take off your gloves if you touch the clothes” barked the proprietor). We hunted for the Shell Grotto, a mysterious cave system tiled in shells, but like most of the renowned tourist attractions we search for in the Lost Promenade, didn’t find it, though we did come across a nice gasometer instead. We checked out a sex shop called Pillow Talk that is said to be haunted. We saw no spooks but we did overhear the following conversation:
Female assistant: “Does she have, like, breasts?”
Male punter, in definite tones: “Oh no”

T.S. Eliot’s words from The Wasteland, ‘On Margate Sands./I can connect/Nothing with nothing./The broken fingernails of dirty hands./My people humble people who expect/Nothing’, seem more apposite, as you look at the defeated-looking faces of the few Saturday shoppers, skirting the boarded-up windows. But maybe we visited on a bad day. Maybe, despite our cynicism, the investment in art will lead to a boom in the town’s fortunes. Maybe the local teenagers will wake up and be hopeful for the future. And maybe the fairy lights will shine again in Margate. Just maybe.

The Lost Promenade digged via Pinhole Photography by Nhung Dang

couple of the moment

digged here

Non places • Kudász Gábor Arion

Pension, Gyepü utca / Panzió, Gyepü Street 2005

NON-PLACES, The non-place is part of the space. It’s part of the space, but we don’t live in it. It’s part of space, but it’s not a real place, it’s the transitional part ofthe space between places. It’s a kind of matrix: it’s lifeless, apparently unsubstantial space between the spaces, we live in. It’s a lifeless space, which lives it’s own life, hidden away from the everyday life. It lives the life of the useless objects and spaces. Thrown away cigarette-ends, newspapers and nylon bags, cars forgotten forthe night, resting tools, weed and street-furniture, nooks and corners between houses, stands of posters, mechanics of the streets. These kind of things create the lonely scenes of the non-places. We don’t notice it in the day-time, because it’s a natural part of the built environment. At night it forms the life of the non-places, like a turned out glove. We mustn’t imagine the non-places by the logics of the observer. We can see and observe them, but we can’t understand their inner meaning, until we abandon ourselves to the objective and impersonallyricism of the non-places. Maybe even then we can’t. Because the ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘for me’, ‘from me’, and ‘mine’ doesn’t count here. Everything is beyond us, confidently independent from us.In the nightly world of the non-places, the human body is only an object, a scene, it doesn’t count in it’s sensory being. This is why the people of the non-places, the homeless are so different from the people, who turn the key on their doors every day, and cross the threshold, which divides the world of the non-places and the places. There are two worlds hence and beyond the threshold. Out there anything can happen, because out there we are only objects, like the thrown away cigarette-end, or the nylon bag snatched by the wind at the side of a shopping centre.

Márton Szentpéteri for Camp

Car dealership, Csalogány Street / Autókereskedés, Csalogány utca 2004


Flower picker, Hungary / Virágszedö, Magyarország 2008

a small selection from the folio of Hungarrian photographer Kudász Gábor Arion.
The long exposure works remind me on early works by Martin Zeller. Abandoned beauty.



Playground, Fenyves Street / Játszótér, Fenyves utca 2006

Urns, Farkasrét / Urnák, Farkasrét 2005

Rollerskater, Margit Island / Görkorcsolyázó, Margitsziget 2005

Looking at a map, parks are nice little green squares in the body of the city, areas for future developments like factories, shopping centers and housing projects. During a period of two years I documented changes to uncover an essential view of decaying public areas in and around my hometown, Budapest - before more profitable investments swallow them. I also tried to discover Wilderness on these footholds. Parks are places of joy and revitalization. Parks are designed to evoke an imaginary view of the Garden of Eden, but urbanization is quite about the opposite. When people move into the cities they wish to escape from the forces of Nature by creating controlled and calculable surroundings. In such an enviroment each park is a heart of nostalgia even if their origin is not natural in any way. They were created by people only to simbolize the idea of Nature, but conquered and stripped from its forces. At the same time refugees who proved to be unable to fit in, or are expelled from society start to inhabit the green areas. To put it in a very dubious way: some return to this artificial Paradise, a place of voluntary exile.

Kudász Gábor Arion

Pine Tree, Budapest / Fenyö, Budapest 2007

Kitchen (Tamás), Budapest / Konyha (Tamás), Budapest 2007

Pine Tree, Budapest / Fenyö, Budapest 2007

Summit, Pietros / Csúcs, Pietrosz 2003

Reichstag, Berlin / Reichstag, Berlin 2007

Acreage, Hungary / Vetés, Magyarország 2008






via another something

The Little Mermaid

Nadya Vessey lost her legs as a child but now she swims like a mermaid. Nadya Vessey told a little boy: "I'm a little mermaid" when he asked what happened to her legs and the idea stuck.Later she wrote to Weta Workshop in Wellington asking if they would help her realise a life long dream and make her a fully functional mermaid tail so she could swim.
She was astounded when they agreed. She lost both legs below the knee from a medical condition when she was a child and now her long-held dream had come true.
"A prosthetic is a prosthetic, and your body has to be comfortable with it and you have to mentally make it part of yourself," she said.
Weta Workshop director Richard Taylor, more used to winning Oscars for visual effects from movies such as Lord of the Rings, was delighted to make it happen. "She was very patient. We haven't always been able to fulfil some requests. We were engaged in it pretty quickly because it was a challenge." Weta costumer Lee Williams, who worked on the suit between film projects with seven other staff, told Close Up she "wanted [Nadya] to be beautiful and sexy". The suit was made mostly of wetsuit fabric and plastic moulds, and was covered in a digitally printed sock. Mermaid-like scales were painted by hand.
Mr Taylor said not only did the tail have to be functional, it was important it looked realistic. "What became apparent was that she actually physically wanted to look like a mermaid." After seeing Ms Vessey test the tail in Kilbirnie pool then frolic in the harbour, Ms Williams was stoked. "It was absolutely amazing. It's beautiful to watch Nadya swim and to see that dream come true and to be a part of that. I feel quite blessed."

source

Underworld Cinema: The Life and Work of J.X. Williams

"Peep Show"

J.X. Williams: Wrapped in an Enigma. If the filmmaker J. X. Williams didn’t exist, someone would have had to invent him..
An exploitation filmmaker with a storied past, Williams is credited as director of the 1965 documentary “Peep Show” - a kind of spiritual vortex of sub rosa Americana surrounding the Kennedy assassination. After supposedly being suppressed for decades, it was recently shown at the Anthology Film Archives in New York, the Film Forum in Los Angeles and a handful of other museum, gallery and festival settings throughout the United States and Europe…

still from "Peep Show"


Shot in stark black-and-white and augmented with copious archival film, “Peep Show” tells a tangled tale of a rigged 1960 election, secret C.I.A. training camps in the Florida outback, sex stings in Mafia hotels and a little-known Mob plot to addict Frank Sinatra to heroin.
Noel Lawrence, who offers his title as curator of the J. X. Williams Archive in San Francisco serves as a kind of one-man advocate for Williams. According to Mr. Lawrence’s spiel, Williams’s résumé reads as a RKO mail-room flunky, closet Communist, abortive House Un-American Activities Committee witness, Mafia gofer, pioneer of mobbed-up stag loops, ghostwriter of some of the blacklist era’s greatest films and incidental avatar of experimental cinema. Williams, as the story goes, has spent the last quarter-century in Zurich in self-imposed exile, leaving Mr. Lawrence to serve as a Robert Maheu figure to his shadowy late-stage Howard Hughes.
(NY Times)


Psych-Burn (1968)

J.X. Williams’ lost masterpiece “The Virgin Sacrifice” (1970)

Tomorrow, Sunday 8th, film curator and archivist Noel Lawrence will share a few of the surviving artifacts of Williams´ tawdry career at the 5th Berlin International Directors Lounge. He also will be previewing excerpts from his forthcoming documentary, "J.X. Williams L.A." which chronicles the misadventures of the mad auteur in Hollywood.