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WELCOME TO THIS MONTH'S ISSUE OF SCENE ALBA MEDIA TRAINING PROGRAM EXTENDED TO PERTH & KINROSS IN NEW PARTNERSHIP
Pink Saltire’s ‘Rainbow Voices’ training and volunteering program has been extended to cover LGBT people in Perth & Kinross.
In a new partnership with the local authority, Pink Saltire will deliver technical training in digital publishing, journalism, radio and soft skills for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people living in the region. They will also benefit from having their work published on the national LGBT news hub at pinksaltire.com, on air with Scene Radio, or in print with charity partners Scene Alba Magazine.
Scottish Government research published in January 2017 identified that 11% of LGBT are unemployed, three times the national average unemployment rate. Many LGBT people also face anxiety and fear of stigma and discrimination in seeking support into work or further education.
William Watters, Chairperson of the charity said:
“It’s fantastic news that we have the opportunity to expand our new Rainbow Voices training into new territories and its we’re very grateful to be working with Perth & Kinross Council on this program. They have demonstrated a firm commitment to equality for all residents in Perthshire and it’s very encouraging to see a local council in Scotland taking such a positive step towards improved opportunities for the LGBT community.”
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The training program will begin with technical support in a number of areas and continue with coaching and mentoring from the 3 agencies involved. Rainbow Voices will be rolling out soon in the Perthshire area.
The program is co-funded by Big Lottery Fund Scotland ‘Awards for All’ and Perth & Kinross Council.
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Issue
34 Published
11th March 2018 Online
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# NEEDINMYLIFE LOMOND SOAP Lomond Soap is an ethical product, started in 2007 by Corrie Smith, looking for an alternative to supermarket soap & shower gels which are drying and full of chemicals they use
Ultra Rich Shea Butter, Pure Essential Oils and Botanicals and Natural Clays they don't use palm oil. Having grown steadily through mail order and markets they opened a shop in Cardross in September 2012, a dedicated place to work and sell their products. Our favourite in the office is lavender and cedarwood its an traditional lavender with the soft woody scent of cedarwood, ground lavender buds add texture and a very soft exfoliation, They also make a small donation from every soap we sell to The Orangutang Protection Foundation UK to help rescue, rehabilitate & release Orangutang displaced by the palm oil industry. GLASS BY KATHRYN Glass by Kathryn produces’ a wide range of hand-made fused glass giftware. Candleholders, clocks and coaster are just a few items that Kathryn designs and makes. Many stores across the UK have become official stockists of Glass by Kathryn giftware and she is now receiving request from across the world for her unique gifts for weddings, birthdays and other special occasions. Kathryn’s work employs kiln forming techniques to combine glass and metals such as copper, silver and gold to create individual, handmade pieces. Experimenting with other materials to add colour and detail is all part of the fun and using finishing techniques such as etching adds pattern and depth. All of the glass work is cut, drilled, polished, etched and finished by hand. Along with the hand painted designs, all of this culminates to provide a truly unique gift. Kathryn can also offer personalised engraving on wood and glass for that special celebration. Along with her on trend range of giftware, Kathryn can undertake commissions that will create a focal point in any room of your home, office, restaurant or shop bringing light and life in. Kathryn works with a number of talented craftsmen to produce architectural pieces in Glass, Wrought Iron and Wood. CATH WATERS is a Scottish landscape digital artist and photographer. Much of the inspiration for her landscape work comes from campervan travels and family holidays around Scotland. She loves the wide open spaces, vast moody skies and low light of the Scottish West Coast and the Hebrides and tries to capture the essence of these special places. There is a sense of simplicity, space and solitude in her work, which often features the unique calming colours of the Scottish land and sea – soft greys, emerald greens, muted blues and purples. Cath started making and selling botanical and landscape artwork as prints and cards at craft fairs in Edinburgh, not long after her twins were born and in 2011 started a little Scottish landscape and botanical art business called “Paper Snapdragon”. Digital collage can mean any form of collage assembled or created using a computer. Cath’s process starts off on location where she takes digital photographs of the landscape. Back in the studio she uses a computer to blend the landscape photography with sections of additional photographs to add texture, colour and depth. Each finished piece might have between 10 and 20 layers of collage in addition to the original landscape photograph. 4
# NEEDINMYLIFE NOKIA 8 Hot from the recent MWC event in Barcelona comes Nokia’s latest phone to join the line up. The new Nokia 8 is designed and aimed firmly at the higher end of the market and is looking to take a share from Samsung and Apple. Designed in a beautiful, sleek shell with an almost full width display and avoiding the need to show off but then add annoying notches to the display. The internals are of decent caliber and up to a fight with the big boys. Nokia’s greatest achievement in this device however, has to be the use of Android One, a pure version of the worlds most popular OS and receiving fast and regular updates from Google when available.
FIRKIN GIN Inspired by a love of both gin and whisky, Gleann Mór created Firkin Gin! This gin is made with botanicals including juniper, coriander seed, angelica root and orris root, and is left to age in American oak casks before being bottled at 46% ABV. The cask influence is quite pronounced indeed, with lots of caramel and toasted nut notes on the nose. A hint of peppery juniper sits in the background. More vanilla and caramel, followed shortly by spicy coriander and creamy angelic London style dry gin is made in the time-honoured way by redistilling 10 carefully selected botanicals which are a line up of Juniper berries, Coriander seeds, Angelica root, Lemon peel, Orange peel, Cassia bark, Liquorice, Ground nutmeg, Cinnamon bark, Orris root. The result of the process is a delicious sippable spirit, likened to a “Botanical Bourbon” with the perfect equilibrium between the flavours of the base spirit, the botanicals, and the wood. Just the way an aged gin should be. It is bottled at 46% abv, with each batch having its own completely unique cask genre character.
LOUISE SCOTT is a Glasgow-based artist, specialising in copper plate etchings and marine life images. She is a member of the Glasgow Print Studio and the Glasgow Society of Women Artists. Previously, Louise lived in Orkney for 17 years where she ran The Inkstone Gallery in the beautiful village of St Margaret’s Hope. She trained in Printmaking at Cheltenham College of Art back in the 80’s and then spent many years in the Conservation Field. Louise creates her copper plate etchings using a sewing needle and a magnifying glass! Her inspiration comes from the natural world and the animals that inhabit earth, air and sea. Louise has launched In Her Element, an exciting new blog to keep you updated on her work and inspiration. Get instant notifications about her latest blog posts via her pages on Facebook, Twitter and view gorgeous elemental image galleries at Pinterest. 5
BOOKS ‘Let’s Talk About Love’ by Claire Kann
I entered into reading Let’s Talk About Love with a pinch of trepidation. As a debut novel, Claire Kann’s writing was an unknown entity and asexual representation has been sorely lacking across most media. And, when that representation did happen to make its way to the page or the screen, well… it often fell short.
That certainly wasn’t the case with Let’s Talk About Love. Not only did it illustrate the difficulties and discrimination faced by those who identify as asexual within queer spaces, but similarly the stigma attached to being bi – in the case of Let’s Talk About Love, Alice is a biromantic ace, which saw her experience the vitriol of both identities, from inside and outside of the queer community.
Additionally, as a female, black teenager, Alice also suffered from the racist and misogynistic attitudes of those around her. The layers of discrimination working against Alice served as a difficult read, in its absolute honesty, but certainly did not make the novel bleak.
There was a wholesome feeling to the entire story, through Alice herself and also in the humour that, under any other hand, might’ve come across as grating, yet under Kann was entirely charming. All the characters were dramatic in that singular way you are when you’re that young, but it wasn’t irritating. Perhaps, when it came to pop culture references, it relied a little heavily on a specific knowledge of the reader, which might not age well, but for its current audience? It served as the perfect counter-balance to the more difficult subject matter.
At the heart of this novel were the relationships between Alice and her friends, particularly with her best friend Feenie. Both Alice and Feenie have their flaws, acknowledged ones, but there were several moments between them that felt like a gut-punch, and served to remind me of several relationships from my teenage years. When it came to both Feenie, and Ryan, an emphasis was undoubtedly placed on the fact that you often build your own family and support network around you. Though I sometimes was frustrated with some of the interactions between Alice and her friends, it ultimately felt very, very real.
What also felt real was the struggle of the pressure on Alice to live up to her family’s expectations for her life, and her desire to follow her own path. Something that, I’m certain, most of us have felt keenly in our own lives. Watching as Alice navigated her desire for what she wanted for her future reminded me so much of my own struggles at that age, which was often difficult to read, but essential to remember.
I have, to a point, written around Claire’s relationship with Takumi. While I, on the whole, enjoyed his character, I was a little less enamoured with their fledgling connection. Whether intentional or not, Takumi’s attitude toward Claire came across a little problematic – in that if you wear someone down enough, they will ultimately give in to your advances. And, for someone exploring and coming to terms with their own identity, as Claire was, Takumi felt predatory at times.
It was difficult to tell whether or not that was a commentary on certain societal expectations, when it comes to relationships and the steps they need to take to be deemed “normal” or “real,” but it would be a caveat to my recommendation of this book to anyone else.
In the end, Let’s Talk About Love truly shines in its depiction of the diverse range of life experiences its characters go through, and was an enjoyable read from cover to cover. I’ll certainly be looking forward to what Claire Kann does next. 6
BOOKS What the Night Sings by Vesper Stamper What the Night Sings doesn’t feel like a rehash of the many other books of the genre. In fact, it feels so personal and accurately portrayed that it could almost be a true story.
Historically, music had a presence in many concentration camps during the Holocaust. Used both as an act of humiliation by the guards to the prisoners when forcing them to sing and chant during punishments, and in a more meaningful yet also tragic way: an act for survival.
I personally do not listen to audiobooks very often, but this book was one I was glad I listened to. The story is in part a true love story for music. Gerta’s singing and music from the viola are intertwined within the spoken words of the audiobook. It feels less like a book and more like a play. You can lean back, close your eyes and take in all the beautiful sounds.
Gerta is a singer and a daughter of a violist. Music was her life before she was taken away. It was a striving force for survival during her time as a prisoner, and then a therapeutic force for her recovery.
Although the audiobook has a lot to offer in the form of music, the written version is just as beautiful. Illustrations, which are drawn by the author, are throughout the book, retaining the originality the audiobook brought with the music.
Overall the story is sweet and original. The story primarily focuses on Gerta’s recovery after the camps are liberated in May of 1945. Similar to the innocence that made the magic in The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, Gerta is by no means the most reliable narrator. Innocence and confusion are often characteristics throughout the story, especially in flashbacks to when Gerta and her father are first taken away. Gerta doesn’t realize she is Jewish. She doesn’t know what it means to be Jewish, and during her recovery she explores embracing what it really means to be a Jew.
What the Night Sings should definitely be added to the shelf of other young adult Holocaust literature like Number the Stars, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, and The Book Thief, to name a few. Whether you are new to reading about the Holocaust, or a returning reader of the genre, this book and audiobook is one to remember.
Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman
Tess of the Road is set in the same world as Hartman’s Seraphina duology of Seraphina and Shadow and Scale. I went into Tess of the Road without having read the other two books, and while I do feel having read them would have enriched my reading of Tess because there are character appearances and references to events in those books, I was not confused without having read them.
That being said, Tess of the Road is in equal parts painful and healing, innocent and mature, fantastic and grounded. For much of the book, Tess is a difficult protagonist. Hints about past trauma, as well as descriptions of an abusive childhood, are sprinkled throughout the book, and slowly Tess’s heart-wrenching backstory is revealed; Tess is haunted and in pain, and her prickly nature and self-sabotage are clearly coping mechanisms.
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BOOKS Tess’s character arc is easily the strongest part of the book. After she punches her future brother-in-law on twin her sister’s wedding night, Tess takes to the road rather than be shipped off to a convent. Tess, we learn, has always been curious and felt a sense of wanderlust, and thus the Road becomes a path for healing.
Taking to the road is a common fantasy trope; journeys and quests are often the backbone of fantasy fiction. But more than that, road novels tend to be male-dominated, starting with the granddaddy of the genre, Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
In fact, this even plays out in Tess of the Road, as early in her travels, Tess realises she’s not safe as a lone woman on the road. She steals male clothes and cuts her hair to pose as a boy, using various amusing aliases. Following the example of her favourite fictional swashbuckler, Tess sets out on an adventure and finds more than she could have ever hoped for.
Tess of the Road, in many ways, is a traditional road fantasy novel. It plays out in an episodic manner, featuring Tess’s numerous adventures and encounters along her travels. But rather than a quest to look for or destroy some magical McGuffin, Tess is searching for self-acceptance. The story follows the gradual cracking of the walls Tess has put up to cope. Each episode, from breaking into a hunting lodge to working on a road crew, serves as a step toward Tess’s emotional and physical development.
These events build on one another, allowing Tess to slowly reveal her history to the audience as she starts accepting what happened. The novel deals with mature themes like abuse, rape and loss as well as their painful aftermaths, but never in an insensitive manner. And watching Tess come to terms with her past, which will allow her to move forward through her own agency, is incredibly satisfying.
As with any road story, supporting characters weave in and out. The most consistent presence is Pathka, a quigutl Tess befriended as a child and encounters again in her travels. It is Pathka’s quest — practically a religious pilgrimage — to find the World Serpents, ancient and powerful beings who helped create the world according to legend that sweeps Tess along and gives her reason to wake up every morning and decide to keep walking.
Like Tess, Pathka is a flawed character whose history features one particular relationship the quigutl must work through over the course of the novel. Tess and Pathka clearly mirror one another, and their journeys to self-acceptance and self-discovery mirror one another.
There are some other delightful supporting figures like the seemingly severe Mother Superior who offers Tess excellent advice to the female road crew boss who hires Tess after seeing through her thin disguise. Some characters Tess may never meet again but will never forget while others will be part of her nomadic life for a long time to come.
While Tess of the Road is a fantasy novel, its grounded exploration of human pain and trauma and the healing that comes from travel and being present within one’s self make it relatable in ways not all fantastical works can be. Tess’s hard-earned character arc is worth sticking around for, and will make the inevitable sequel even more satisfying.
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MUSIC Moby - Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt
2 Stars
Poor Moby, he’s never really been able to escape the mega-success of ‘Play’ has he? Ten albums since that seminal work and people are still looking for Volume two. Well it’s not coming so what’s hiding in the grooves of this new record? A lot of darkness it would seem.
I suppose it’s difficult not to be enveloped in darkness when you look at who is running the world and where they’re dragging us to and clearly this weighs heavily on Moby, a man who has been known for his humanitarian stances. Sensing danger everywhere Moby is channelling those uneasy feelings that come up whenever the news funnels more misery and more examples of the ever decreasing sense of true justice on this planet.
The music is a doomy sounding, even the bass lines sound like they’re hanging their heads but it’s a good kind of misery, a collective gasp for air among desperate people. Melancholic dance music with Moby’s weary vocals being counterpoint to the much lighter female vocals lifting the mood which is much needed, but it tends to stay in a morose, sparse place. The usual Moby tricks of a little piano riff here, some bluesy gospel vocals there, big processed beats and sullen synthesisers are all here, so it has a degree of familiarity if no real big stand out tracks.
It’s clear that Moby is sickened with the world at the moment the track listing alone informs us of this. Songs like ‘Welcome to the Hard times’, ‘The Sorrow Tree’ or ‘A Dark Cloud is Coming’ show his discontent writ large and it’s difficult to disagree with him however a bit of fighting spirit would be welcome here and it’s not like Moby doesn’t do angry, he’s got full albums of sniping rage so this album feels like a surrender when indeed we need more raging against the dying of the light.
Tracey Thorn - Record
4 Stars
The evergreen Tracey Thorn is back and we welcome her with open arms. Tracey is blessed with a voice that fits into a multitude of different musical styles, from the early lo-fi jazz of Everything But the Girl to their rebirth as super hip dance influenced pop with ‘Missing’ to her unmatchable vocal contributions on Massive Attack’s ‘Protection’ it seems she just suits whatever is put in front of her.
‘Record’ isn’t shyly hanging around at the back of the party it comes straight to the point with opening track ‘Queen’ a fast pace, glittering eighties pop number and as Tracey was making music back then she’s more than entitled to claim that style as her own. On this album Ms. Thorn’s voice seems to have matured a touch and there’s a previously unheard depth to her vocals on this album which is a pleasing development. This is no album of moping songs (take note Moby) there’s a real positive thrust even delivering a pean to women everywhere on ‘Sister’ a celebration of feminism featuring guest vocals from Corrine Bailey Rae.
Lending her falsetto to ‘Go’ Tracey enhances the very texture of the song while on ‘Babies’ she discusses her desire for children but on her terms over a great throbbing electronic backing, it’s a deeply satisfying album, there’s a sense of playfulness and experimentation on ‘Record’.
Tracey Thorn sits in that rare place of being a true national treasure and similar to Alison Moyet’s ‘Other’ from last year there’s maturity, experience and solid inventiveness creating some of the best music from one of Britain's best vocalists. Now if only the poor boys could measure up to the women.
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MUSIC Titus Andronicus - A Productive Cough
1 Stars
Devoid of their usual punk thrash-outs ‘A Productive Cough’ has to look to other places to deliver the goods for Titus Andronicus’ fifth album, so where have they looked? A bit indie, bit gospel choir, a bit bluesy, a bit folky and at its worst a bit Bob Dylan.
There’s a real shift towards a warmer, fuller sound on this album. ‘Real Talk’ sounds like an attempt to ape Dylan and The Band and it’s reasonably celebratory if a touch derivative however their shambolic take on ‘(Like a) Rolling Stone’ really shows up the limits of their playing and also singer Patrick Stickles’ voice is turned to rags as he screeches his way through all bloody nine minutes of it. Quite unpleasant, you’ll never complain about Bob’s voice ever again.
On the much gentler ‘Crass Tattoo’ there’s a go at a country ballad which in all fairness suits them much better even if you suspect that the whole thing is one big piss take.
Generally Titus Andronicus are much more believable as snotty punk rockers spitting snot and vitriol rather than trying to push their boundaries, something I normally applaud but not in this case when all it does is show up the band’s limitations.
The Breeders - All Nerve 4 stars
The Deal sisters have haven’t been away as long as you think, they’ve been either playing or releasing EPs it’s just that they haven’t released an album in ten years which is probably why everyone is hearalding this record as a major comeback.
First off to answer your question, no, it’s not as inventive as ‘Last Splash’ and there’s no ‘Cannonball’ however the alchemy created when Kim and Kelly get together is still there, something about their voices together, so similar but still different sounds like indie heaven.
The songs are quite short, little bursts of jangly, gnarly guitar gems just like you remembered, never outstaying their welcome when it’s time to finish they just, stop. This is the same line up that created ‘Last Splash’ and they’re playing just as well as they did back then if anything the rhythm section is even tighter on this album both driving each other and providing a powerful spine to hang the muscles of the songs from.
‘Archangel’s Thunderbird’ and ‘Nervous Mary’ are the most incendiary songs here but everything feels solid if less experimental than you may expect from this line up and there’s much loveliness too. ‘Spacewoman’ and ‘Dawn: Making an Effort’ both have a shimmering beauty to them while ‘Walking With a Killer’ has some of Kim Deal’s lovelist vocals ever.
Solid comeback, very solid it’s just a shame it’s couldn’t be a little more colourful but as it is it still carries the dark beauty of the Breeders near, if not at the top of their game.
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MUSIC Simple Minds - Walk Between Worlds 4 Stars
Simple Minds are a group who throughout their career has phased in and out of fashion from post-punk electronica through to the dove releasing stadium pomp, it’s always been difficult to gauge where they are on that year’s coolometer. I’m going to throw all that in the bin and just come out with it. Simple Minds are cool. And frankly they should be more applauded for the sheer tenacity and willingness to bolt on different textures and styles onto their sound, so here is their twentieth (yes, twentieth) studio album ‘Walk Between Worlds’.
If you’re requirements of a Simple Minds album means Charlie Burchill’s chiming guitars and Jim Kerr’s big big arms aloft vocals then your wish is their command but there’s more to it than that, they’ve got great big voices in the backing singers, generously peppered throughout the album and it’s quite a keyboard heavy album too. The lyrics are the usual vistas of utopian/dystopian worlds or crowd friendly topics like summer or magic, nothing too deep, this is for singing in a crowd.
Sometimes the Minds have a cannibalistic tendency to nibble on their own past for inspiration and with a huge legacy of work to chew upon they can get the knives and forks out. ‘The Signal and the Noise’ harks back to the ‘Empires and Dance’ period of electronica while opener ‘Magic’ could happily hang about with the ‘Once Upon a Time’ songs and not stick out and in ‘Barrowland Star’ not only do they send a kiss to Glasgow but Jim Kerr gives us his best Bowie impersonation that he’s been perfecting for decades.
It’s really no surprise that the album sounds huge, definitely built for good time gigs and crowds of thousand voices bellowing them back at the band but unfortunately while it’s solid there’s nothing that can stand beside the band’s greatest moments like ‘Alive and Kicking’, ‘I Travel’ or even ‘Waterfront’ but it is an enjoyable collection of songs and for a band that’s over four decades old it does sound fresher than recent albums put out by their contemporaries (we’re looking at you U2) there’s certainly enough ideas to keep the Glasgow boys going for a while to come. Simple Minds, they’re rather cool.
Rats From a Sinking Ship - Fight The Future
4 Stars
We need a bit of righteous anger right now, fortunately Rats From a Sinking Ship have grasped this and are applying a dutiful boot to the balls of modern society’s floundering moral compass.
Loudly too, tight beats and the growling metallic guitars supplied by Jamie Price roar alongside vocalist Alex Lusty’s call to arms recalling the golden age of razor sharp political unrest in music that was prevalent in the early nineties, the Rats seem to scurry in the same circles as kindred souls such as Consolidated, Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy or Public Enemy as shot through the most disgruntled of British eyes.
The insufferable Royal family, our currently disintegrating government and of course the ghastly spectre that is Trump are just some of the society’s modern maladies that are given a refreshing shower of sulphuric acid via Lusty’s insatiable vitriol but it’s not just a madman screaming at the moon, Alex injects a knowing humour into the proceedings with some inventive wordplay but the songs always retain a solid message.
For the most part the music is fuelled by a sneering punk sound but there are diversions away from that sound like the bouncy ‘To The Sword’ with it’s hip hop beats and shimmering guitars, there’s even an acoustic intro into scathing ‘Katie Fucking Hopkins’ but as the energy here is anger that’s what propels the album, it’s not a peaceful record so if you’re looking for something to placate you after a day of fighting the onslaught of the miseries of modern life then this is not the cd to reach for.
However if you need fuel for the fire and maybe want to start a revolution then ‘Fight the Future’ may well be the light to the blue touch paper that you need. 12
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ELIZA HITTMAN Eliza Hittman’s sensitive movie Beach Rats got her a directing prize in Sundance and is now out on DVD and VOD. We had a small talk with her about her work
an image on Facebook that ultimately served as an inspiration for “Beach Rats”. It was a picture of one of those guys took of himself standing in front of mirror and you could see his phone and the flash from the camera. There was this tension between hyper-masculine and homoerotic that the picture so clearly illustrated and that is think is such a huge part of the character and his conflict in the film. He had his shirt off and a cap on, which sort of obscured his eyes. It looked like he was going to pull down his shorts and take a picture. I was also thinking a lot about those guys from my first film and how isolated by class-wise those neighbourhoods are and how they have a long history of violence that erupts when you introduce any otherness into an isolated group. They’re farther from transportation and they don’t have a lot of opportunity. So yes, I would say that insofar as the two films take place in the same world, this film is the male companion piece to that one in a way.
My experience of adolescence, probably many peoples experience, actually, was very similar. It was very much a feeling of being forced into a shape and set of signifiers that I didn’t fit with. The period has such a strong, oppressive regulatory affect and I feel that both of your films capture this struggle of people trying to find a way through these social codes that can really damaging. Including sex and drugs and gender roles etc. What was the impulse to tell these stories?
Both Beach Rats and your first film, It Felt Like Love take place in what seems like an underrepresented part of New York (South Brooklyn, I believe), whose geography and socioeconomic realities are often overlooked. I’m just wondering about your connection to the places, to their everyday rhythms and bodies etc? They are shot with such warmth and familiarity and affection. (More of an aside but perhaps you have a comment) I’m really happy to see filmmakers giving complex identities to figures from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. It was one of the joys of Jenkin’s Moonlight and also with both of your films. To not have purely reductive or didactic portrayals of these characters!
Yes, my connection to this area is that it is where I am from. I grew up in a neighbourhood called Flatbush and my parents still live there in the house I grew up in. I live nearby in a neighbourhood called Kensington now. My grandfather ran a boys’ club in the East Village for 40 years, New York is deeply ingrained in my life and my worldview. I also went to high school and spent a lot of time growing up in the neighbourhoods where my movies take place and I want to show people these neighbourhoods that you wouldn’t see in typical indie films and represented these isolated places to where certain classes have been pushed and where ideas like “coming out” feel impossible and might not be accepted with the progressive attitude you might associate with Brooklyn as it is broadly understood today.
As a film-watcher, I never, never get tired of watching movies that explore youth and the representation of youth. I also just really love working with young actors, because I feel that you're able to find and locate an honest performance in a way that sometimes is trickier or more challenging with adults. You just kind of point the camera at them and feel all of their vulnerabilities. I think teenage years and adolescence are very formative for all of us, in the way that how we navigate them defines who we become as adults.
Harris Dickinson’s performance is super strong in
After your first film’s focus on female adolescence and sexuality, had you conceived of Beach Rats as a counterpoint to your first film? Do you see the two films as two sides of a similar story?
While I was making my first film, “It Felt Like Love”, which also featured a bunch of these guys some the same area of Brooklyn, I came across 15
ELIZA HITTMAN the film. How did you find him? What was the experience of working with a mix of professional and non-professional actors?
working with her is that she’s shot so many films that are explorations of youth, and she’s also shot very dark narratives about youth, so I knew that she would be the perfect DP for the job. Part of our choice to shoot on a 16mm was that I wanted the film to have a consistent, sort of anachronistic, out-of-time feeling throughout, and I knew that 16mm would give us and evoke more of a timeless quality.
And she’s very flexible in terms of working within whatever limitations exist and understands that that’s part of the job. It was a minimal shoot in terms of how it was executed, and a lot of the lighting, especially on the beach, was all just one handheld light that we did several tests on to find the sort of intensity and feeling that we were looking for.
What was the genesis of the story? Did you talk to men about their sexuality and coming of age? How did it begin?
I was struggling after It Felt Like Love for a couple of years to figure out what exactly the film world was expecting me to make next. And I was very lost in trying to navigate both the industry and how to have a career and all of those things. So I decided not to think about any of those things and just go back and do what I had done before, but on a broader canvas. There were a couple of moments that I took note of while I was shooting It Felt Like Love. We were shooting along the water and we noticed that there was still a lot of cruising happening, and that was one thing I filed away in my mind. I cast a couple of kids from Gerritsen Beach, Brooklyn, and those boys are called “beach rats,” and I took note of that being a good title for something. When I got to Sundance in 2013, I started pitching another movie with the title Beach Rats that was about these guys. Throughout It Felt Like Love I did a lot of looking through
I found Harris through a batch of audition tapes that came in. He sort of snuck his tape in through his LA manager and didn’t speak in his British accent at all in it, so I actually didn’t know he wasn’t American when I first saw him. But his audition was extremely strong and had a vulnerability to the performance that I was looking for and not really seeing with other auditions.
Our process was a little traditional in that we had a week of rehearsal, where we read through each of the scenes and loosely blocked them on their feet. And then it was also pretty unconventional in that when Harris arrived I we were still casting some of the roles of the friends, and I took him out to a handball court in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn. I just had him play different games with different guys, and looked at different combinations of kids together. And then, often, after those sort of callbacks and chemistry games, he would go and hang out with the guy, and that became a bit of his research for the film, just the time that he spent palling around with these guys on the beach — lifting weight, doing calisthenics, playing basketball.
How big was the crew? How was it working with Hélène Louvart? How closely did you work together to develop the aesthetic of the film? It’s almost sculptural look at bodies? Did the size of the crew help with the intimacy with the actors as well as gaining access to certain places?
Helene is a phenomenal veteran cinematographer who has done many a movie on 16mm, and part of the reason I was excited about 16
ELIZA HITTMAN Facebook pages and appropriating images, and I found one image that became the generative image for the film.
handled sensitively and delicately and he knew the crew was going to be small, so we didn’t have the same dialogue. He was a bit older too—he was 19. He was very brave and very committed and knew what he had signed up for and there was no backpedaling.
I was also thinking a lot about the guys from It Felt Like Love and how isolated they are classwise and how those neighbourhoods have a long history of violence that erupts when you introduce any otherness into an isolated group. They’re very far from the subway and they don’t have a lot of opportunity. Those were the things circulating in my mind when I started writing the film. I wanted to explore male sexuality as a kind of a companion—even though I have been told not to call it a companion to It Felt Like Love—but the characters are very similar to me. They’re both trying to conform to expectations around them even though they don’t quite fit into their worlds.
Do you feel that it is important to push that line of explicitness or showing things that aren’t often shown?
I do. I really liked Love, the Gaspar Noé film, because I thought the sex was staged so beautifully and it was very balletic. I am intrigued with films that push those boundaries. But it’s hard to do that as a filmmaker here. You will always be battling and you always have to choose your battles, and it’s hard enough to get your movie made in the first place! As a filmmaker, I wish I could be more explicit, but it’s just so impossible in this country.
You really nailed that feeling of deep, deep South Brooklyn, and also the widespread use of Oxycontin and painkillers, which nobody really talks about.
For ratings reasons?
I was aware of it also because some of the kids in It Felt Like Love had big meth problems. There was a kid in It Felt Like Love that was a hip hop artist named Nyck Caution and a lot of the music that he was writing was about how all of his friends had become heavily addicted to pills. I think that all those issues go hand-in-hand— isolation, no opportunities, drugs, and what it means to contend with identity issues in that world.
For ratings reasons, casting purposes. In films like Stranger by the Lake they use body doubles, and it was a lot to ask from the financing company. I knew that I wanted to attempt to normalise male nudity in the film without being overtly provocative, but I knew there was a line that I couldn’t cross.
The storyline with Harris terminally ill father, is that based on your own experiences with your mother being ill when you were in high school?
With It Felt Like Love, your lead actress flagged things in the script that she didn’t feel comfortable with. Can you talk about working with non-actors again, and if you went through a similar negotiation?
For me I have always associated adolescence with being surrounded by illness. And I was also thinking a little about The Stranger and the narrative of someone who loses a parent and does something unforgivable without being able to justify or process it.
I didn’t. At first when the casting director and I started sending the script out, I got very negative responses from agents who were very flippant, and saying, “All this male nudity and gay sex!” It wasn’t something they wanted their clients to go up for, so I wasn’t drawing from a huge pool of actors. Harris Dickinson, who plays the lead role, actually sort of snuck into the mix of casting tapes from an L.A. office and I didn’t know he was actually U.K.-based. He sort of tricked us. He was 100 percent committed from the beginning and had zero questions about that stuff. He had watched my other film and knew it would be
Yeah—that carelessness of youth and how it can snowball into something terrible so quickly. When Frankie and his friends are stealing his mother’s earrings for weed money and they catch Frankie’s sister with her little boyfriend, someone sitting next to me gasped. It could’ve gone such a different way.
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I wanted to set up those moments of small tension that build to a larger event.
ELIZA HITTMAN
films where it’s like, “Check out this strong female character, good for us, we did this!” Simone is just someone who knows what she wants and he’s not it, so goodbye!
It’s such a simple and straightforward story. How did you go about structuring it?
I wrote an early draft that was a mess and was almost all behavioural about this kid going back and forth between worlds. And then I took it to the Sundance screenwriting lab and everybody was like “There’s no progression!” So I went back and built in a major progression to the story.
She tries and she’s patient, and there’s something kind of sexy about his vulnerability and trying to help him through it.
It feels so hard to get people to pay attention to any film now, but you have found ways of getting this very straightforward, non-formulaic Sundance film made that doesn’t just check boxes because it has to.
Did you revisit any other films to help you through that?
I didn’t. It was a tumultuous period of my own life where I was juggling a full-time teaching position and a child, so it wasn’t a period of extensive movie watching. My hours to just get lost in the story were much more constricted.
I owe it all to Cinereach for taking me into their organisation and finding a way to support the film because I don’t know if anyone else would have. It was a really bizarre movie to pitch and actually felt dated to people, and/but now I think it feels more relevant, unfortunately. But I don’t think that people were thinking about class issues, obviously, when I was talking about the film in its early stages.
Was the way the fireworks function in the narrative always part of the plan?
It was part of the plan and it comes back again to those rhythms. There are all these seedy bars in Coney Island and these kids always go out for the fireworks and there’s a bar near the boardwalk that they all go to. This sense of routine and myth of romantic love and these two people trying to have this romance and failing, but trying. I wanted to play with the audience’s expectations to see this heteronormative love affair play out where they’re never going to fall in love, even though they are trying.
What Are you developing anything at the moment? I am. I’ve spent the last few years researching what’s kind of termed “abortion tourism.” I’m working on a movie about two girls from Western Pennsylvania who hop a Greyhound bus and enter into the labyrinth of New York City trying to reclaim their youth. I’m trying to capture the magic and horror of a crisis and transformative moment of youth – the idea that all these women are forced to travel to get abortions.
I love all those scenes with her, because Simone is this strong female character that doesn’t announce herself as that. It’s different from many
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FILMS A Fantastic Woman 5 Stars
Directed by Sebastian Lelio Out at select cinemas now
A moving story about the spiritual journey of a grieving transgender woman.
"The cycle of grief has its own timetable. Until that cycle is honoured and completed we are moving along life's path with an anchor down," Ann Linnea has written in Deep Water Passage. This is certainly the experience of Marina (Daniela Vega), a transgender singer in her late twenties living in Santiago, Chile.
She has been having an intimate relationship with Orlando (Francisco Reyes), an older divorced man with grown children. We are treated to a glimpse of their delight in one another as they flirt during her performance of a song at a club and then head off for a birthday party at a Chinese restaurant where he surprises her by proposing a twoweek trip together to the Iguazu Falls. They return to his apartment and have sex. In the middle of the night, he awakens and after stumbling around, falls down the stairway. She rushes him to the hospital.
Marina is at her wit's end while awaiting news of Orlando's condition. When she is finally told that he has died of an aneurism, she is treated with suspicion. The doctor is very rude toward her and shows no respect for a grieving woman's loss of the person she loved. The medical team calls in the police after noting bruises on Orlando's body and a gash in his forehead. Then a patronizing female detective from the Sexual Offenses Investigation Unit (Amparo Noguera) doubts that they had a healthy consensual relationship and questions Marina as if she were a victim of sexual abuse or a murder suspect.
In his last film Gloria, writer and director Sebastian Lelio creatively presented the spiritual journey of a lonely middle-aged woman on a quest for independence and fulfilment. Here, he shows us Marina's spiritual journey she tries to find some meaning while moving along life's path with an anchor down.
Orlando's family, resentful and angry about Orlando and Marina's relationship, are determined to steal her grief, aggravating her loneliness. His ex-wife Sonia (Aline Kuppenheim) looks down on her and gasps, "I don't know what I'm seeing." Orlando's son Bruno (Nicholas Saavedra) orders her out of his father's apartment. Both make it clear that they do not want her to attend the funeral. But Marina believes that saying goodbye to a loved one after he dies is a human right.
Luckily, Marina has a few people she can look to for love and support, including her sister (Trinidad Gonzalez) and her husband. Best of all is her opera voice coach and father figure (Sergio Hernandez).
Throughout this rich drama, we are touched by Marina's resiliency under the pressures, threats, and physical attacks which test her mettle and courage to carry on. In The Clown in the Belfry, minister and writer Frederick Buechner describes the process we see her going through:
"Being a good steward of your pain … involves being alive to your life. It involves taking the risk of being open, of reaching out, of keeping in touch with the pain as well as the joy of what happens because at no time more than at a painful time do we live out of the depths of who we are instead of out of the shallows."
Trans actress Daniele Vega puts in a top-drawer performance in her screen debut. A Fantastic Woman from Chile has been nominated in the Foreign Language category of the Academy Awards. 21
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FILMS Red Sparrow
2 Stars
2018, 139 min. Directed by Francis Lawrence. Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Matthias Schoenaerts, Charlotte Rampling, Jeremy Irons, Mary-Louise Parker, Joely Richardson, Ciarán Hinds, Sasha Frolova, Sakina Jaffrey.
Sexpionage – using seduction as a tool of spying – is as real as bugging and assassination. In America, it's called honeypotting. The Russians called men sent to get secrets through pillow talk ravens, while female agents on the seduction career track were called swallows. However, a sex-spy movie called Swallow just wouldn't be right, so we get Red Sparrow. Honestly, torture might be preferable.
Lurching away from the high-budget arthouse controversy of Mother!, Jennifer Lawrence returns to action as Dominika Egorova, a ballerina with the Bolshoi whose career is curtailed by a broken leg. Fortunately her spymaster uncle (Schoenaerts) gives her an option: Become a spy, and seduce CIA agent Nate Nash (Edgerton). First, she must go to Sparrow School to learn both tradecraft and the erotic arts. On graduation, she turns double and triple and possibly octuple agent in what is supposed to be a hall-of-mirrors narrative, but instead is just a tedious back and forth. The idea that she outwits each side so precisely with a couple of weeks of spy school training doesn't make her look like a master manipulator; it just makes them look like idiots.
With Russian intelligence operations on every front page, making a neo-Cold War spy drama seems like a zeitgeist necessity. But Red Sparrow is an antiquated mess that is about as sexual as a Fifty Shades of Gorky Park. Adapted from ex-CIA officer Jason Matthews' novel, it seems too savage to blame an actual ex-spy for creating such a farcical depiction of international intrigue. Instead, it seems more plausible to put the dunderheaded script choices on Justin Haythe. Most recently culpable for the equally muddlepated and preposterous A Cure for Wellness, Haythe dawdles through an endless cavalcade of Eurohopping tedium. He also discards everything that made Matthews' novel unique, like Dominika's bizarre synesthesia that allows her to read emotions as colours, or the fascination with local cuisine.
That said, director Francis Lawrence should be sent to his own cinematic gulag. He had clearly built a close working relationship with Jennifer Lawrence on the last three entries in The Hunger Games franchise, but just about every decision here is tone-deaf, tedious, overplayed, and sporadically grisly. He seemingly gets too caught up in the idea that sparrows merely use sex as a tool, but the inevitable seduction scenes are so profoundly anti-erotic that it destroys the idea of any sexual tension between Nash and Dominika. Before that, there's the misguided decision to force every actor playing a Russian part, Lawrence included, to gargle their way through a mush-mouthed Moscow accent. Well, not every actor: Channeling her inner Ilsa, the Tigress of Siberia, Rampling's cut-rate exploitation camp commandante smirks through her delivery with all the convincingly Slavic intonations of Natasha Fatale from The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.
It's not that no one is trying. Edgerton, determined as always, continues to waste his layered everyman persona on high-concept junk (looking at you, Bright), while Schoenaerts gives his Putin-in-waiting spymaster a twisted spin. Shining above all is Jeremy Irons as General Korchnoi: Skeletal and restrained behind shades, like Sisters of Mercy frontman Andrew Eldritch with Russian Ground Forces rank, he a) treats the endeavour with the smirking disregard it deserves and b) can actually do an Eastern European accent. So that's a plus.
But that's not enough, especially since Lawrence's efforts at a glacial aloofness just read as boredom, and are boring. Coming so close on the heels of another clumsy female-led spy adaptation, Atomic Blonde (which at least had the good grace to be stylish in its stupidity), Red Sparrow plummets to Earth.
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FILMS Bomb City 4 Stars
2018, 95 min. Directed by Jameson Brooks. Starring Dave Davis, Glenn Morshower, Logan Huffman, Lorelei Linklater, Eddie Hassell, Henry Knotts, Maemae Renfrow, Dominic Ryan Gabriel, Luke Shelton, Marilyn Manson.
First-time director Jameson Brooks’ Bomb City reads like a recipe pulled from The Anarchist Cookbook: Everyday items which, when assembled, create a dangerous product capable of wreaking havoc and destruction. On Dec. 12, 1997, 19-year-old Brian Deneke was killed after being run over by a Cadillac driven by 17-year-old Dustin Camp during a rumble between punks vs. preps in a parking lot across the street from an IHOP in Amarillo, Texas (nicknamed Bomb City for being the only place in America with a plant that assembles & disassembles nuclear weapons). After a trial involving shameless victim-blaming, Camp was given 10 years’ probation for voluntary manslaughter. (For further context I recommend reading the Texas Monthly article from 1999.)
Bomb City tracks the events leading up to Brian’s death, immersing viewers in the small-town milieu by expertly cross-cutting an intimate show at a punk rock club with scenes from the Friday night football game. What’s interesting here is the similarities between the “acceptable” vs. “unacceptable” outlets for teenage male aggression – although the punks are jovial and inclusive while the jocks bully and berate each other – but there’s nothing more diametrically opposed than the treatment each group receives from the local law enforcement (I’m sure I don’t need to spell it out). The juxtaposition sets the tone for the flash-forward courtroom scenes (in which the defense attorney [Morshower] ponders whether being sent to prison is a “matter of circumstance” … um, duh), but the time spent on the cops crashing the punk house feels a bit drawn-out. The filmmakers (all of whom have an Amarillo connection) do well to avoid martyr-izing Brian (Davis), despite heavy crucifixion imagery in the opening scenes (beautifully composed by cinematographer Jake Wilganowski). The role of villain falls heavily on the shoulders of another jock, Ricky (Huffman), rather than the cherub-faced Cody Cates (Shelton), whose name has been changed presumably because they were unable to obtain Camp’s life rights.
The soundtrack is heavy on punk and hardcore, including some of Brian’s favourite bands. However, the action preceding the tragedy is fuelled by a lurching and melancholy score (credited to Cody and Sheldon Chick) where the simpler, more obvious choice would have been to blast Filth all the way through (Brian was wearing a leather jacket sporting their Destroy Everything logo the night he died). It contributes a layer of haunting inevitability to this night, these kids, life in general – a funeral march toward the encroaching millennium, toward the final brutal, bloody scene. The film’s message, which it wields like a war chain, is a timeless one: Don’t be such a dick to people because they look different from you. We all live in Bomb City: One stray match and the whole thing will explode. 120 Beats per Minute 5 Stars
2017 18 147mins Cast includes Nahuel Perez Biscayart, Arnaud Valois, Adele Haenel, Antoine Reinartz and Catherine Vinatier.
There have been dozens of films about the AIDS epidemic, but few as powerful and transcendent as Robin Campillo’s Cannes prize-winner “BPM (Beats per Minute).” It thrives on its writer-director’s choice to approach the issue from a political slant, drawing on his own experiences as a member of the Paris chapter of ACT UP (the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). It’s a 1990s-set drama that plays like a compelling documentary, with Campillo seating you in the middle of a series of town-meeting type gatherings of HIVpositive activists as they plot and plan acts of civil disobedience against the dismissive federal government and drug companies they feel are dragging 24
FILMS their heels in making promising new protease inhibitors available to the sick and dying.
The tactics are inventive as well as cathartic; like a raid on a big pharma lab, where the protesters douse the place in buckets of fake blood to draw attention to the immediacy of their plight. But there’s a deeper message that rings as loudly today as it did then, and that’s seeing the power of resistance carried out in the name of a noble cause. That it arrives in the midst of the #MeToo and anti-Trump-anti-racism demonstrations rising up in the streets of America only adds to the film’s invigorating energy. But it’s the people, most of them young, gay and in a desperate fight for self-preservation, that clutch you by the ventricles.
We meet a half-dozen or so of these fierce, cunning “community organisers,” some of whom are based on people Campillo knew and lost to AIDS in his younger days. But the standouts are Adele Haenel’s Sophie and Antoine Reinartz’s Thibault as the de facto leaders of the Paris chapter. The passion these actors bring to their roles is inspiring to the point that you’re eager and ready to aid and abet any scheme their characters concoct. And the invigorating back and forth between them and the other members is something the Congress could learn a lesson or two from, most notably the outlawing of any clapping and cheering. If you agree with something, you simply snap your fingers, preventing any interruptions or distractions. Imagine how much shorter the State of the Union would be with this technique.
Campillo and his co-writer, Philippe Mangeot, give the ACT UP participants plenty of thoughtful things to say, too, in humanizing their righteous anger. The dialogue between the leaders in the front of the room and the soldiers in the seats is reminiscent of the dynamic in Campillo’s award-winning script for “The Class,” a fast-paced exchange of ideas and thought between a teacher and his students. “BPM” is very similar, straying from the meeting room only to show the protest plans put into action and for Campillo to introduce a sexually charged romantic element involving two of the activists: puckish Sean (a superb Nahuel Perez Biscayart), an HIV positive Argentine transplant, and the less demonstrative Nathan (Arnaud Valois), a “non-poz” newbie.
Their story is heartbreaking, particularly when Sean’s T-count begins a steady decline, but it feels shoehorned into the larger theme of AIDS activism. It reminded me a lot of “The Post,” another movie that tries too hard to squeeze two stories -- the publishing of the Pentagon Papers and Katharine Graham’s fight for equality in a “man’s game” - into one. The oscillating between the two facets is distracting and slows the momentum of a movie that already strains to sustain at an overlong 142 minutes.
Patience is rewarded, though, in the final 15 minutes when the death of a founding ACT UP member comes to the fore and the surviving activists stroll past the body, not just to pay respects, but to see their own bleak futures laid out right in front of them. Campillo is terrific at conveying these emotions through his richly drawn characters, allowing you to feel what they feel in a relentless fight to save themselves in a race against the clock. It raises the empathy level to 12. It’s sad, yes, but “BPM” is also very much alive, pulsating with optimism and strength on the part of people like Marco (Theophile Ray), a school boy, whose wonderfully supportive mother, Helene (Catherine Vinatier), often reminds us he was just 16 when infected with HIV.
When the protester’s attack the institutions they believe are fighting against them, Marco is always at the front, often acting impetuously, most memorably by mistakenly throwing a balloon full of fake blood at the head of the government’s AIDS coalition. Like the others, he’s exceptionally brave, intimidated only by the one thing that truly frightens him, death. It’s lurking everywhere like a hidden time bomb, threatening to explode in a war not just against authority, but also against a threat coming from inside a place they no longer can trust -- their own bodies.
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FILMS I, Tonya 4 Stars
2017, 15 119 min. Directed by Craig Gillespie. Starring Margot Robbie, Sebastian Stan, Allison Janney, Julianne Nicholson, Paul Walter Hauser, Bobby Cannavale, Mckenna Grace, Caitlin Carver.
Lest you have forgotten, or perhaps are too young to remember, let’s revisit: Nearly a quarter of a century ago, way back in 1994 (January 6, to be precise), a figure skater named Nancy Kerrigan was assaulted just above the knee with a baton by a person hired by the ex-husband of another figure skater, Tonya Harding. But also, this happened: Everyone went bat-shit crazy about it. The media quickly and mercilessly spun the story of a sweet girl next door getting beat up by poor white trash. Their shorts program at that year’s Olympics was one of the most watched telecasts in American history. Kerrigan got a silver medal and Harding ended up pleading guilty (but only to the charge of hindering the investigation). She was stripped of her championship title and banned from the sport. And everyone went on to the next frenzy.
You can probably tell by the title that writer Steven Rogers and director Craig Gillespie have absolutely zero interest in hearing both sides of the story (Kerrigan is seen but utters not a word, just a shriek). Which is perfectly fine, because none of the key players, Harding (Robbie), her then-husband Jeff Gillooly (Stan), and bodyguard Shawn Eckardt (Hauser), can seem to agree on anything anyway. The film immediately strikes a tone of defiance and does not let up for two exhilarating and entertaining hours.
A skater since she was 3 years old, Harding is barely supported and often abused by her mother LaVona (Janney, having a blast sucking down More cigarettes and playing a despicable bitch). The foulmouthed skate-mom sees her daughter’s talent as a way out of poverty, and when not using assault as a motivator, she employed the method of reverse psychology, paying people in the crowd to mock her child before she performed. Teen Tonya eventually trades LaVona for Gillooly, another abusive asshole who ended up sending her career down the toilet. Did I mention this is a comedy?
I, Tonya is a riveting piece of cinema, successfully utilising all the things that screenwriters are supposed to avoid: voiceovers, direct address, unreliable narrators. It also looks gorgeous, thanks to cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis and production designer Jade Healy. The skating sequences are shot with the usual verve, all low angles and sweeping crane shots, and the film moves constantly to the thrumming rhythm propelled by the soundtrack (I’ll concede the zillionth use of Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” because we’re also treated to ZZ Top’s “Sleeping Bag”). Robbie tears into the role with glee, morphing from an awkward teenager to a cyclone of talent and fury, and the supporting players are perfectly cast, particularly Nicholson as Tonya’s coach and Cannavale as a Hard Copy reporter.
A brutally honest and caustic treatise on the meaninglessness of truth and identity in a media landscape that can only see in binary, I, Tonya starts with a cough and ends with bloody spittle. Tonya Harding may have been abused by her mother, her husband, the media, and the public, but with this electrifying redress, she gets the last laugh. 26
FILMS The Shape of Water 4 stars
2017, 15 123 min. Directed by Guillermo del Toro. Starring Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Michael Stuhlbarg, Doug Jones, David Hewlett, Nick Searcy.
Fear and loathing of The Other is always with us, but much more rare is empathy for another, and even less love for one another in these isolationist and distrustful times. Set in similarly fearful 1962, with a cold war that threatens grim death simmering in the background of everyday life, The Shape of Water is a heartfelt and moving mash note to outsiders, misfits, and the creatures (or so says the status quo) walking among us. A romance of fantastique proportions, a cautionary tale that revels in throwing caution to the wind, and a de facto monster movie with loose but loving ties to director Jack Arnold’s classic Creature From the Black Lagoon and Cocteau’s Beauty and the Beast, del Toro’s latest is a masterpiece of compassion and insight into the (in)human condition and the transformative power of love.
Elisa (Hawkins, splendid), mute but with curious eyes and a generous heart, works as a cleaning woman in a mysterious military facility. The place is overseen by the hawkish General Hoyt (Searcy) and his head of security, Richard Strickland (Shannon), an all-American cold warrior with a home life straight out of Leave It to Beaver, if the Beav’s pop had been a stern-eyed zealot with zero tolerance for human error. One night, Elisa encounters the facility’s newest acquisition, a scaly gill-man (Jones) captured in the Amazon, where “the natives worshiped him as a god.” While the general and his underlings argue for vivisection (and possibly a weapon against the USSR), and scientist Dr. Hoffstetler (Stuhlbarg) appeals for keeping the amphibian alive for further study, Elisa tentatively bonds with this literal fish out of water. Assisted by her African-American co-worker/best friend Zelda (Spencer), she spirits the creature away from the G-men and into the bathtub at her apartment, where the bond between the two blossoms into something far richer. Elisa’s homosexual neighbour Giles (Jenkins) also assists the ruse, until the inevitable discovery of the abduction occurs and all manner of chaos ensues.
No brief synopsis of The Shape of Water can fully convey the power of del Toro’s rhapsodically transgressive paeon to what society would deem deviant or amoral. Audiences familiar with his previous work, however, will discern a thematic streak that runs throughout the director’s filmography, increasingly humanist and humane the more it deals with nonhuman characters. (Fans, of course, will recognise a more sublime evolution of Hellboy character Abe Sapien.) What is increasingly, albeit guardedly, “normal” today brands all four protagonists here – a mute woman, a gay man, a black woman, and an intuitive ichthyoid – as culturally less than ideal, if not outright abhorrent in Cold War-era America.
The Shape of Water is also a stunningly beautiful film thanks to production designer Paul D. Austerberry and cinematographer Dan Laustsen, whose consummately immersive visuals are married to a sumptuous score by composer Alexandre Desplat.
Del Toro is and always has been a notably romantic fabulist, firmly on the side of the monsters, the unloved, the castaways, and those noble of heart no matter what form they assume. The piscatorial individual at the heart of The Shape of Water represents a downright Darwinian leap into ever deeper waters for the director, crossing as it does through the once-taboo meridian of interspecies ardor and ending its voyage at what appears to be only the beginning of a very fine romance. 27
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ARTS Meandering Narratives
Under the stairs in the Basement Galleries at Summerhall
opening Friday 23rd February 6.30 – 9pm
and then daily (Tuesday to Sunday till March 18th)
Our installation will be ‘live’ each day from 12 – 3pm
and at other times if we are there….
They’ve been recently working on a new AV motion reactive set up, presented last October in its beta version at the Paradigm Electronic Arts festival in Edinburgh. Here are some snapshots of performer Marie Williamson interacting with the system through dance. Centre for Contemporary Arts
350 Sauchiehall Street
Glasgow G2 3JD
The Ice Collective is Mirja Koponen, Michael Wolchover, Lorna Simpson, and Mary Walters – with Pete Searle, Conrad Molleson and the Edinburgh Ice Company.
We have been exploring some ideas about the role of ice on our planet, within the
context of current discussion on climate change, and the role the visual and audio arts can play in this exchange. We are excited to present our first set of work – from a series of experimental sessions with no formal exhibition as deadline.
Exhibition:
Cryptic Nights
Refraction
Treading the line between reality and imagination, composer and sound designer Luci Holland invites you to embark on an interactive, virtual exploration of an underwater environment. A collaboration with lighting designer Tom Sulat and visual artist Ross Blair, Refraction is and otherworldly experience where your movement directly affects responsive audio and visuals. Observing and interacting with the space, you control your own immersion and the resulting impact it has on your senses.
We welcome you to the basement in Summerhall during our opening times to see
the work and give us your feedback. The small series of installations will change over
the 3 weeks as a result of the nature of our key material – it melts!
We hope to develop this work further, so your comments are important to us.
These presentations are part of PROJECTSUMMERHALL – an exhibition of work by Summerhall residents and their various wider projects.
Thu 8 Mar / 8pm, Installation followed by artist talk, Free but ticketed
Fri 9 Mar / 11am - 6pm, Installation only, Free Damien Jurado:
An Acoustic Journey Through Maraqopa Tue 13 Mar / 7pm
Ray Interactive in residence St. Margaret's House
151 London Road
Edinburgh
EH7 6AE
It's perhaps fitting for an artist whose sound is so hard to pin down, that the idea for what would become the Maraqopa trilogy appeared in a dream. Damien Jurado's 10th, 11th and 12th records form a loosely autobiographical, sci-fi infused odyssey about a man who literally and figuratively disappears from society and embarks on a spiritual journey across America.
Tuesday 13 March - Sunday 1 April - 11:00 am 5:00 pm
Location: Third Floor
Interactive in residence
Having cut his teeth in the Seattle music scene, in the post-grunge era of the late 90s, Jurado has seen several pop zeitgeists come and go, all the while forging a strange, singular body of work that takes in elements of indie rock, psychedelia, neofolk and found-sound experimentation. Catch him here at his most raw and emotive.
Ray interactive creates interactive installations. At St Margaret’s House, they will be working towards building a multi sensory interactive space for you to come and play in. You will be experimenting with interactive synthesised sound, light and visuals, triggered by objects, midi interfaces and motion detection.
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BARS, CLUBS & SAUNAS GLASGOW
EDINBURGH
The Waterloo 306 Argyle St, Glasgow G2 8LY Mon- Sat 12pm - 12am Sun 12:30pm - 12am
Cafe Habana 22 Greenside Place, Edinburgh EH1 3AA Tel: 0131 558 1270 Open Daily:13:00 - 01:00
AXM Club (Glasgow) 80 Glassford Street, Glasgow G1 1UR Tues - Sun 10pm - 3am
The Regent Bar Montrose Terrace, Edinburgh, EH7 5DL Mon-Sat 11:00-01:00 Sun 12:30-01:00
Merchant Pride 20 Candelriggs, Glasgow Mon - Sat: 12pm - 12am Sun: 12:30pm - 12am
Planet 6 Baxter's Place, Edinburgh, EH1 3AF Tel: 0131 556 555 Open daily: 16:00-01:00
Speakeasy 10 John Street, Glasgow G1 1JQ Sun -Thur 5pm-1am Fir-Sat 5pm-3am
CC Blooms 23-24 Greenside Place, Edinburgh, EH1 3AA Tel: 0131 556 9331 Mon - Sat 11am - 03:00. Sun 12.30 - 03:00
Luke and Jack Shop and more 45 Virginia Street,Glasgow,G1 1TS Tel:0141 552 5699 11am –6pm
Chalky's 4 Picardy Place, Edinburgh, EH1 3J Opening times: Mon-Sun 11pm-3am The Street 2 Picardy Place, Edinburgh EH1 3JT Tel: 0131 556 4272 Mon- Sat 12:00 - 01:00; Sun: 12:30 - 01:00 Food served until 21:00
The Underground Bar 6a John Street, Glasgow G1 1JQ Mon - Sun: 12pm - 12am The Polo Lounge 84 Wilson Street, Glasgow G1 1UZ Mon -Sun: 11pm - 3am
GET YOUR VENUE LISTED IN THIS SECTION OF THE MAGAZINE, SEND YOUR INFO TO,
Delmonicas 68 Virginia Street, Glasgow G1 1TX Mon - Sun: 12pm - 12am Club X 9pm - 3am
[email protected]
WE WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM OTHER CITIES AND TOWNS AROUND THE COUNTRY TO HELP EXPAND THIS FOR ALL OUR READERS, THANKS.
Katie's Bar 17 John Street, Glasgow, G1 1HP Mon-Sat: 12pm -12am Sun: 12.30pm - 12am
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