Pina Bausch, Die Klage der Kaiserin

John Walsh is currently running a Flux Magazine brief again for the second years, so for inspiration he showed Pina, Die Klage der Kaiserin, the first film by choreographer Pina Bausch, and I tagged along. After watching this film, I will never look at contemporary dance in the same way again. I found the film wonderfully weird and got really engrossed in the strange mirroring of 'reality' through dance. The movements seemed completely natural, not rehearsed. I became really inspired by the absolute expression of self within the film. Often seeing things on screen can dilute them but when I really thought about what the people were doing in the film I became fascinated by the ever evolving narrative. It is interesting to think that a film which seems so obscure and seemingly sub-cultural could easily be an influence for many big screen, popular films. I could see how Black Swan could have been influenced by this and certain Tarantino films. I like the thought that an idea can start as one thing and evolve into new and changing things until on a fine thread remains between beginning and end, a subtle non-obvious link. Anything can be inspirational and can be a seed of a new idea. I really want to make my own film after watching Pina, so I think I might.

Howl

I am currently involved in a project based around the Beat generation, I am specifically researching the works of William. S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. I have been creating imagery combining it with typography to eventually create a publication, which is a mixture between horror and paradise. I recently went to see the film Howl, which portrays the culture and obscenity trial surrounding one of Ginsbergs most famous poems of the same name. James Franco leads as Allen Ginsberg, and he is fantastic. Man of the moment Franco, really captures subtle mannerisms and idiosyncracies of Ginsberg and his recital of the poem is a really enjoyable and mesmerising aspect of the film. The portrayal of the obscenity trial was impressive and felt well directed. The poem Howl is split up into 4 parts including a footnote at the end, a series of animation sequences run alongside the poem. Although the animation was very well produced, I felt that in some ways it was far too literal in its portrayal of the poem and there seemed to be a few too many animation styles going on at once. It detracted from Franco's precise engaging recital of the poem in that the poem was portrayed almost word for word, far too many things going on and I didn't think it captured the essence of the poem. Franco was so convincing that the simple reading of the poem was enough, that doesn't mean to say that the animation was completely pointless, there were some very beautiful moments within the animation and perhaps if these were celebrated and given time to breathe and stand in their own right, this could have worked. I did still very much enjoy the film, and it definitely helped with my project to see the poem performed. Especially touching was the slideshow of real photographs alongside descriptions of what the beats went on to do; shown whilst Ginsberg himself spoke and then appeared at the end. Directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman

Never Let Me Go

I have just watched 'Never Let Me Go,' people without choices is always heartbreaking.