Much ado about nothing. Shakespeare’s play title is a fitting description for this period drama about an interracial couple: a white female office worker from London and the heir to the throne of British Bechuanaland (modern Botswana). There is a tendency to portray diversity on the silver screen, in response to discouraging figure. Just 5.3% of the film production workforce, 3.4% of the film distribution workforce and 4.5% of the film exhibition workforce were from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds in 2012, according to data published by the BFI. What’s worse, the portrayal of these groups is often inaccurate and clichéd. A United Kingdom is not a milestone for the representation of Blacks in British cinema. Instead, it simply repackages British Imperialism with a black proxy.
The film is a clear example of the fake nostalgia conveyred period dramas – British filmmaker Ken Loach explains this concept very well here. The film is based on a true story: Seretse (David Oyelowo) and Ruth (Rosamund Pike) first met in a jazz club in London in 1947, in which black and white people apparently danced in harmony – Seretse was studying in the British capital. Jazz had became very popular in London due to an earlier influx of Caribbean jazz musicians in 1930s. Still, though, in the 1940s, in particular in London, signs were known to appear in the windows of bed and breakfasts and lodging houses reading ‘No Blacks, No Dogs, No Irish’. Black workers arriving in Britain in the 1940s very often faced discrimination and ‘colour bars’ preventing them from entering pubs and clubs. All of this is featured in the movie.
The director Amma Asante said during the London Film Festival last month: “it was very important that there is a balance between romance and political background”. Nonetheless, the feeling of love and romance prevails over the political charge. The couple ignored the opposition of friends and family and married in a very small wedding ceremony. Ruth followed her heart and thought she would be welcomed by her husband’s relatives in Africa. When the set moves to the tropics, the colour-saturated heat of Botswana is emphasised in the cinematography and in design. The yellow and red colours warm the couple’s nest, indicating that love conquers everything. In reality, though, she would spend months alone in Africa, even during her pregnancy, because Seretse Khama was detained in Britain during an international diplomatic crisis that only ended in 1956.
Winston Churchill signed a document demandind that Seretse stays in Britain, but we never see Churchill in the film. Perhaps the fake nostalgia feeling prohibits Churchill to be depicted in a negative context. Instead, we see diplomats donning immaculate white linen suits somehow immune to dust, dirt and human perspiration. Tom Felton, who plays the district commissioner to Bechuanaland Rufus Lancaster, referring to his character and other British officials in the protectorade, explains that “those individuals are not villains at all”. British people are nice guys, even when they are exercising colonialism.
The most reactionary aspect of the movie is perhaps in the outcome, when the subliminal Imperialistic message surfaces. Seretse signs an agreement with the British authorities, giving him the right to lead his country in exchange for the right to explore diamond mining. That’s how Seretse became the Prime Minister of Botswana. In other words, black leadership is only possible if the government chief is willing surrender to British interests. This is not the role model for black leadership, diversity and equal rights that African people need to see.
On the positive side, at least A United Kingdom tells a story previously untold in cinema and looks into the little-known history of Botswana, an achievement per se. Hopefully it will generate renewed interest in themes, from a less romanticised and colonial gaze.
The film is out in the UK on November 25th; get ready to be inundated with heavy publicity for the next few weeks.
You can watch the colourful film trailer right here:
Punk has been around for 40 years, and this is perhaps the rock’n’roll genre more closely and genuinely associated with subversion. We now regurgitate the X Factors celebs whose vanilla attitude is just a travesty of Sid Vicious. The tumultuous and stormy relationship between Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen have provided several accounts. Sad Vacation: The Last Days of Sidand Nancy revisits the punk scene in London and in New York in late 1970s and sheds some light on Sid and Nancy’s mysterious deaths.
The Spanish documentarist Danny Garcia likes to tell stories of rock myths. His previous features, Looking for Johnny (2014) and The Rise and The Fall of Clash (2013), show unseen footage of Johnny Thunders and The Clash. Now he has collected several interviews with insiders, roadies, friends and members of other bands, such as Sylvain Sylvain (New York Dolls), Walter Lure (The Heatbreakers), Kenny Gordon (Pure Hell) and Cynthia Ross (The B-Girls), and the result is a very heartfelt movie. It starts in the corridors of the Chelsea Hotel, in New York City. The camera suddenly stops in front of the locked Room 100, where Nancy Spungen was found dead. If cinema conveyed smells, this image would stink.
DMovies’ writer Maysa Monção with Conor Hussey at screening of Sad Vacation at Doc’n Roll Film Fest
Sid Vicious was not an anarchist. He was not the Antichrist. Instead, he was a sweet and needy teenager. The film portrays how much he was loved by his friends and how his life changed after he met Nancy Spungen, an American stripper who flew to London determined to meet the Sex Pistols. It uses archive footage but it also reenacts some moments with young musician and Sid Vicious impersonater Conor Hussey. Some people in the film consider Nancy the black widow of punk, like Yoko Ono for the Beatles, and blame her for the splitting up the band. Other testimonies reveal their true love for Nancy, suggesting she was maybe a victim. In reality, drug addiction came prior to his encounter with Nancy. The rocker’s mother, Anne Beverley, was a drug addict herself. His childhood was lost. Anne admitted in an interview to administering the fatal dose to her son, months after Nancy’s death.
There’s no denying, however, that Sid and Nancy’s had a symbiotic relationship. The band manager Malcolm McLaren did everything he could to split the couple. He and Johnny Rotten hoped that the Sex Pistols’ American tour would separate Sid from Nancy. Instead, it was Vicious that drifted from the rest of the band. The sad vacation concluded a tough chapter of their lives.
Bruce LaBruce has a very cosy relationship with the tolerant and hedonistic capital of Germany. DMovies‘ editor Victor Fraga travelled last month to Berlin for the Porn Film Festival taking place (click here for our article about the event), and so he took the opportunity to interview the controversial helmer, who had just landed in Germany the previous day. The conversation took place at Moviemento Kino, the oldest cinema in Germany and also home to the aforementioned Porn Fest.
The Canadian filmmaker has a career spanning 25 years, with more than 20 short and feature films made on both sides of the Atlantic. His works include the political porn Raspberry Reich (2004), the zombie porn Otto; or Up with Dead (2008) and LA Zombie (2010) and the more gentle Gerontophilia (2013). He has firmly established himself as the most thought-provoking and audacious porn filmmakers in the world, often treading the fine line between art and sexploitation, between entertainment and socio-political commentary, between pleasure and scrutiny. You can find more information about his work by visiting his website here.
We talked to LaBruce about his relationship with Berlin, radical feminists, 90-degree lines for erections, conservative gays, pseudo-liberal politics, Draconian anti-pornography legislation in the UK, Canada and the US, what role he would give to the “hot” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and much more. LaBruce’s views are breath of fresh air in a world intoxicated by the heady winds of neo-conservatism, particularly given Trump much-feared election win this morning.
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DMovies – Berlin is almost like a second home to you. You have been living and working here intermittently for more than two decades. Can you tell us a little bit about this relationship with the city?
Bruce LaBruce – I always had a romance with Berlin even before I came here. When I was in the punk scene in Toronto, Berlin was some sort of Mecca, a place where you had to go at least once in your lifetime. It was serendipitous that I met with Jürgen Brüning, when he was a video and film curator for an art gallery in Buffalo. Because of that connection I ended coming to Berlin. I met him in 1989, and he brought me to Berlin after I made my first feature film in 1991. I immediately fell in love with the city. The wall was just coming down, so I still got to experience the divided city. I used to go and show my films in the East with a friend called Michael, an avantgarde Super 8 filmmaker. The East Germans were really hungry for weird and experimental work.
DM – Has Berlin changed since you first came here in 1991? Is it still as vibrant as back then, and does it continue to inspire you?
BLB – Certain things never change. I first came to Moviemento in 1991, and here we are again! Certain parts of the city remain exactly the same. Of course certain districts have become gentrified, there has been a foreign invasion since – particularly people from Scandinavia, England and the US. The fact that it’s a city of perpetual night, the extremes, the bohemian side and also the sexual hedonism remain unchanged. These are qualities which are becoming increasingly difficult to find in other major cities. Bohemian places like Vancouver and San Francisco are becoming quickly sanatised, bourgeois and rich, and that’s disappointing.
DM – Berlin was home to the Roaring Twenties nearly 100 years ago. Do you think the city is still as progressive as it was back then? Will we see the Roaring Twenty Twenties in a few years?
BLB – I think it’s kind of getting a Disneyland feel because of American and British influence. Some sort of decadent sexual Disneyland. This diminishes the authenticity and spontaneity of the scene.
DM – Does Berlin want to claim the sexual Disneyland title from Amsterdam?
BLB – That changed a long time ago. Amsterdam has been modernised and commercialised that it’s hardly recognisable. The Red Light District is now vestigial, just a tourist attraction. And I don’t mean sex tourism; people go there just to look at the prostitutes sitting at the windows. Same with Zurich. The old and gritty Red Light District is shrinking and shrinking.
DM – Are you dealing with the subject of immigration in your work?
BLB – Yes! The new short film that I’m working on for Erika Lust is a porn movie entitled Refugees Welcome. It’s about a Syrian refugee who has sex with a Czech boy in Berlin.
Still from ‘Skin Flick’, Bruce LaBruce’s gay Neo-Nazi porn short in London in 1998
DM – Let’s move across the Channel. You have probably heard about the recent law changes in Britain, when they had a large face-sitting protest outside Parliament. They have now banned numerous sexual acts in pornography, including not just face-sitting, but also water sports, caning, verbal abuse and female ejaculation (but not male). Is this an infringement of your artistic freedom, and does it mean that you won’t be making any films in Britain any time soon?
BLB – Oh, I can see that. Because we obviously have an epidemic of female ejaculation taking place right now. My films have been sistematically censored in the UK. If you can an early VHS of my movies that were released in Britain, they are all hacked to pieces. And my movies aren’t even extreme porn. The distributor would often turn a sex scene into a still montage without my knowledge, where they would cut out all the naughty bits. So that’s something I had to live with.
In Britain you also have this 90-degree line for erections. So people started shooting at an angle so it looked like the erected penis was only at 45 degrees. I filmed my gay Neo-Nazi porn in London in 1998, and Jürgen had to smuggle in all the Nazi memorabilia. But then we posted it to Germany. So if I had to make another film in Britain, I would probably do the same. I would shoot it there, but then post it somewhere else so I wouldn’t have to worry about these laws. Also, nowadays I make films that are not sexually explicit. So it would depend on the film.
Canada was well ahead of Britain in the 1980s and 1990s [in terms of censorship], when the government brought in Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin to draft anti-porn legislation. So you couldn’t cum on anyone’s face. This law ultimately led to Andrea Dworkin’s own books being banned. This is a good indicator of how smart she was.
There is a horrible law that they are trying to pass in California, it’s called Proposition 60. It could make people liable to prosecution for even making porn.
DM – Do the British like your films, or are they too prudish and uncomfortable with anything “too close to the bone”?
BLB – Sex in Britain is quite kinky. Because of boarding schools, there’s a lot of fetish, there’s the “prim and proper” veneer, and a lot of dark stuff going on underneath. London can be a raunchy city, I went to this sex club for a fashion shoot – I think it was called The Back Street Bar – and there were loads of guys walking around naked and having sex with each other in the bar, in public.
But there is now a wave of moralism with sex, and that’s not just in the UK. It’s a backlash, the resurgence of anti-porn feminism.
DM – Has the way gay people engage with your films changed?
BLB – Even in the 1990s, my films were disregarded by a certain gay orthodoxy because they couldn’t accept my portrayal of homosexuality. That’s because I was dealing with very kinky characters, who had an uneasy relationship with their own sexuality and homosexual identity, and also marginal characters such as skinheads. The bourgeois gay wasn’t interested in my work.
I sense a certain moralism in the gay world, too. That’s because of the assimilation movement: gay marriage, kids, the military, even transsexuals colluding with the medical establishment. For me things haven’t changed much. The people who liked my films back then, still do. But I’m vexed by this new gay moralism. There’s a lot of people who think that you shouldn’t have multiple partners, or indulge in extreme practices.
DMovies’ editor Victor Fraga with Bruce LaBruce at the lounge of Moviemento Kino, the oldest cinema in Germany. He’s not coughing; that’s his trademark pose!
DM – Earlier this year you played the role of the Canadian Prime Minister in the film Boris without Beatrice, by Denis Còté. Britain perceives the current Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a very progressive leader. If you were Prime Minister, would your agenda be similar to Trudeau’s?
BLB – Trudeau is a deceptive figurehead of liberalism. Compared to the previous Prime Minister, who was an extreme right wing dick, Trudeau of course seems quite liberal. He’s only been in power for a year, and he’s already breaking all sorts of campaign promises. He’s already cut funds for organisations that help people with hepatitis C and HIV, and for indigenous people who have a lot of health problems. That has a huge impact on marginalised groups. He’s still very gung-ho with military intervention in the Middle East. He’s by no means a liberal dream.
If I was Prime Minister I would be the first anarcho-syndicalist head-of-government. I would decentralise government. Canada is the evil empire. It has this veneer of being benevolent and benign country that’s about peace. It’s like the Switzeland of the Americas. But this really isn’t true. Canada has horrible exploitative mining companies all over the world, particularly in Africa. If you dig into what they are doing, they are colluding with despotic regimes that used forced labour. Plus the way we treat our own indigenous people. I would change all of that.
DM – Let’s turn things around. If Justin Trudeau was available to play in one of your movies, what role would you give him?
BLB – Well, he’s hot. He’s kind of junior daddy type. He’s tall. For charity, he did a boxing match with a member of parliament, and you can see that he’s pretty hunky. So I would cast him in a junior daddy role.
Canadian Prime Minister during a boxing charity event; Bruce thinks that he would make a nice junior daddy in his films
DM – Just to finish off, can you talk a little bit about The Misandrist? Is you new film taking your fans to places they’ve never been before?
BLB – Yes, the film is about a group of feminists and lesbian separatists. It gave me the opportunity to work with an almost entirely female cast. There are 13 women and two males. I worked with as much female crew as I could, as well. That was a brand new experience for new, the female world with explicit lesbian sex scenes. Unchartered territory. There’s this orgy scene in which I let the girls guide themselves, and do things the way they would do it. At one point, I even left the room! It was a very different process. With a gay male sex, you get a better understanding of the sex they’re having. So I gave the females actresses plenty of autonomy.
DM – Is the film entirely made in Berlin?
BLB – Not at all. There is one scene shot right here, at Moviemento Kino, but the rest was shot in a remote country estate, 200 miles from here, still in Germany.
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This is not your average science fiction movie. Arrival delves into the difficulties of communication and, by doing so, it shifts the genre into an unusual territory. Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation from Ted Chiang’s short story “Story of Your Life” stars Amy Adams as the linguist Louise Banks, who is hired to decipher the language of extraterrestrial beings that have landed on Earth. Forest Whitaker plays US Army Colonel Weber, who proposes a list of questions Louise has to translate in order to establish whether they came in peace or not.
Amy Adams’s performance is outstanding. Her character is charismatic, clever and curious. As soon as she accepts the invitation to make contact with the aliens, Louise finds herself inside a giant standing egg about to be propelled into alien territory. Some encounters and many discoveries will follow, taking you on a journey into Louise’s personal trajectory on Earth. The film mixes scenes of her past and future, including a very clever and unexpected twist.
Louise is a very unusual, interesting type of woman. Louise balances the skills of a scientist and of a believer. She is both intelligent and sensitive. Her personality spectrum is complete, and Carl Gustav Jung would struggle to define her. According to Jung, people are either extroverts or introverts, either sensitive or intuitive, and either explain the world by thoughts or feelings. Well, you need to blend all of those in order to communicate with the aliens. Louise expresses all those types of personality. In fact, Louise uses a real linguistic theory – the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis – that suggests that the structure of a language you speak determinates how you think.
Along with mathematician Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner), Louise Banks must interpret the symbols and signs the aliens emit. There is also a time limit to decipher their plans. There are other UFOs on other parts of the planet, and other countries can declare war at anytime, which would have catastrophic consequences for the planet. It is necessary to share knowledge and to play along.
The film touches very deep on the topic of identity. Naming objects and people is the first step towards knowledge. If a creature has no name, it remains in a mysterious and abstract zone. That’s why we introduce ourselves once we are interested in engaging in a dialogue. And that’s exactly what Ian and Louise are trying to do. If they engage in a conversation with the aliens, then the creatures are more likely to spare their lives.
The director Denis Villeneuve gently treads on the realms of the visionary and supernatural. The photography is mostly white and blue. White is associated with light, goodness, virginity, innocence and purity, while blue symbolises trust, loyalty, wisdom, faith and confidence. Those are the essential qualities of a real interchange. There is less fear and more trust in Arrival. It echoes Jeff Nichols’ Midnight Special(2016), a film in which luminosity drives the movie narrative.
Amy Adams has been everywhere in Europe and the US promoting Arrival and NocturnalAnimals (Tom Ford, 2016) and a strong contender for an Oscar nomination, for one of those roles. Arrival was released in the UK November 10th at Odeon and Vue Cinemas. Editor Sylvain Bellemare has now won an Oscar for his work in the movie.
It’s not every day you turn 20. So British indie-rock band Placebo decided to celebrate their anniversary in big style by touring 10 cities in Russia, starting in the remoteness of the Siberan Far East all the way to majestic palaces of Saint Petersburg on the Gulf of Finland. Along their journey, they showcased their music – which attract hordes of fans in the most unlikely places – and they also encountered some very unusual Russian treasures.
The tour started in city of Krasnoyarsk, where the band took the Trans-Siberian Express all the way to Moscow, with stops in cities such as Novosibirsk (the capital of Siberia; they note about the region: “that’s bigger than all of Europe put together”) and Nyzhny Novgorod. In each city, they discover a little of the local culture, examining the architecture, visiting bars and noodles restaurants. They also get behind the wheel and drive lorries at 100mph during of thier journey. The tour includes a concert in Moscow’s Gorky Park to 20,000 fans, the same place where they had performed 15 years earlier.
Most of the documentary, which was filmed in the summer of 2014, is narrated by the band’s bassist and guitarist Stefan Olsdal. The eccentric vocalist and guitarist Brian Molko is mostly downcast and silent throughout the film, except when the band performs. The drummer Steve Forrest also talks very little in the movie, and he has since left the band. Stefan defines their trip succinctly: “this is the romantic idea of taking a mythic journey through Russia”.
The film provides some very unusual and interesting insight into some lesser-known aspects of Russia. Stefan goes to trendy bars in Siberia, and promptly compares them to London Shoreditch and Mayfair. He interviews a constructivist architect in Siberia about the imposing and impressive bulding surrounding them. He visits TV Rain, an independent channel highly focused on arts and on the brink of extinction because the Russian government has recently outlawed advertising on cable television. Fortunately they find a new revenue stream into the future.
Towards the end of the doc, Stefan talks to the ultra-subversive artist Petr Pavlensky in Moscow, the biggest highlight of the movie. He has previously sewed his mouth in solidarity with Pussy Riot, and he has also nailed his testicles to the Red Square in a protest against police brutality. Olsdal is overwhelmed by his intense personality.
New York? Chicago? Atlanta? Or is it Paris? None of the above. In the ’60s the best city to listen to live jazz music was Copenhagen. Cool Cats (Janus Køster-Rasmussen, 2015) is the story of how Ben Webster and Dexter Gordon, two of the jazz world’s greatest saxophonists, found a haven way from the racial discrimination in their homeland US in the capital of Denmark.
Initially, both jazz stars traveled to Europe in 1962 for only a couple of gigs, but they soon considered a self-exile. The US entered a decade marked by turbulent changes. President John F. Kennedy was killed in 1963. Widespread economic prosperity in the country, amongst other factors, contributed to the growth of social activism. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. rose his popularity and became a target, too. As the 1960s progressed, rock’n’roll became the dominant popular music as the music industry focused on youth culture. Considering this scenario, it is natural that Webster and Gordon thought of Copenhagen as a more peaceful place to live.
The film provides some useful insight into the lives of two talented musicians, and some of the old footage is particularly impressive. It also reveals a lesser-known side of Copenhagen, and a vibrant jazz destination in the 1960s. It also slips into some platitudes. But that’s about it.
The director skilfully orchestrates archive material of the gigs, including Ben Webster’s own home footage. It portrays interviews with their friends and lovers. Both jazz musicians were black with white spouses. The women understood their suffering back in the US. Dexter was in prison for several years. What their lovers seemed not to realise was that both of them were drug addicted and heavy drinkers. The film takes the easy path of exposing the artist’s tormented life.
Instead of focusing on their art, compositions and their influence on the music scene, the tone of the interviews is usually around “I cannot understand why they chose to be addicted”. Danish filmmaker edited the interviews of their friends with images of wild, lonely and aggressive animals in cages in the zoo, and the metaphor is very simplistic. It is very clear though that both musicians regretted their addiction. Webster cannot explain in words why he left Duke Ellington band. He starts to cry. Dexter said he wrote a theater play called “Connection” that was a fiasco because the actors “didn’t have the necessary background to do the play properly”. The show talks about narcotics.
Years later, Dexter Gordon brilliantly portrayed a fictional tenor sax player in the film Round Midnight (Bertrand Tavernier, 1986). In Round Midnight, sax player Dale Turner slowly loses the battle against alcoholism, estranged from his family, and hanging on by a thread to the 1950s’ New York jazz world. Dexter found an artistic way to apologise.
Fortunately art is stronger than men. The legacy of the artists is still alive in Copenhagen. Ben Webster has a street named after him in southern Copenhagen. While in Copenhagen, Gordon was able to record continuously. They both inspired the Copenhagen Jazz Festival. Lasting 10 days, the festival envelops the Danish capital, offering a sumptuous musical feast to the 250.000 guests year after year.
Cool Cats is part of Doc’n Roll Film Festival, taking place now in London. It is showing at Picturehouse Central, on November 8th at 8:30 pm. Get your tickets here.
Watch a talk with the film director Janus Køster-Rasmussen:
Three friends, two tragic love stories, one lesson about consent. Blu (Valentina Romani, pictured above in the centre), Antonio (Leonardo Pazzagli, top left) and Lorenzo (Rimau Ritzberger Grillo, top right) are Italian teenagers who strike an unlikely friendship. They study together, but have strikingly different personalities and lifestyles. Lorenzo is a headstrong and obstinate gay fashionista who recently moved into town to live with his foster family, while Antonio is an introspective basketball player, and Blu is a confident female with a long-distance boyfriend and a very troublesome relationship with her mother.
The strange bond is triggered the fact that the three are marginalised in their school: Lorenzo due to his flagrant homosexuality, Antonio due to his inwardness, while Blu was stigmatised because her colleagues found out that she had an orgy with her boyfriend. As their relationship intensifies, they become increasingly detached from their schools, families and reality. They skip classes in order to embark in unlikely jolly rides and endeavours, to the dismay of some their friends and families. Both Blu and Lorenzo are soon infatuated with Antonio, but they have no idea about the feelings of the tall, handsome and timid sportman.
While marketed as an LGBT film, Blu’s predicament (as a woman) at the end of the movie is just as relevant as Lorenzo’s. The sad fate that both encounter are a direct consequence of a society that has failed to establish a dialogue with its youth on urgent themes such as homosexuality, tolerance and – above all – consent. It’s the inability to negotiate consent in civilised manner that leads Blu and Lorenzo to such a tragic closure. It’s symptomatic of a society that fails to respect women and homosexuals. And you will be stunned into silence at how quickly adolescence can evanesce.
The director Ivan Cotroneo chose to paint a colourful narrative, with plush effects illustrating Lorenzo’s camp imagination. There’s glittler and the pavement changing colours in good Thriller style, representing Lorenzo’s triumphant entrance in school (at least in his mind). There are pop-up subtitles for the mobile phone message exchange, a conspicuous aspect of adolescent life. And there’s plenty of feelgood music: Lady Gaga, New Order, Blondie, Placebo and Emeli Sandé. None of this foretells the harrowing events that unfold in the end of the movie.
The performances are just about strong and convincing enough, and overall One Kiss is a touching and eye-opening movie. The problem is that happy-go-lucky feel prevails for a little too long, and at times it feels that this is a movie about teenagers for teenagers. It’s only at the very end of the movie that it’s possible to grasp the complexity and the profoundness of the story, but by then some older viewers may have lost the connection with the teens.
One Kiss is showing on Sunday, November 6th at the Genesis Cinema in London. It is the third film directed by Cotroneo, who won a Globo d’oro for the best screenplay and the prestigious Biraghi Award to his leading actors at Nastri d’Argento 2016.
The late Zdzisław Beksiński had a fixation with the post-apocalyptical – a nightmarish view of neither heaven nor hell – which made him a renowned architect turned self-taught painter, photographer and sculptor in the field of dystopian surrealism. In The Last Family, however, we see a very different man: the portrayal of a middle-class household of five instead, struggling to keep their bonds as relatives under the same roof. The film depicts a time when the contemporary painter (played here by Andrzej Seweryn) lived with his family in a small town in south-eastern Poland named Sanok, before relocating to Warsaw in the late 1970s. Zdzisław Beksiński was tragically murdered in 2005, days before his 86th birthday.
Although there’s a focus on the father and son’s relationship, we have the remarkable wife Zofia (Aleksandra Konieczna) holding the two together, while looking after her own mother and mother-in-law. Her husband’s needs seem to be her priority as he lives a reclusive life focusing on painting, but their mentally unstable son Tomek (Dawid Ogrodnik) is notable for his outbursts of rage, and ultimately threatens the stability of their home.
Twenty-eight years are put into perspective, and Robert Bolesto rightfully salvaged the bulk of the script from Beksiński’s own video-recording of his family in their new apartment (with some of the footage brilliantly juxtaposed throughout). Jan P. Matuszyński erected these four claustrophobic walls together, and the result is absolutely gut-wrenching. It’s a commendable experience, each individual coming up for air under their distinct circumstances, and the restaging of the scenes is often hard to watch, perhaps due to the sheer intimacy.
There are no easy answers. The Last Family does not provide deep insight into the distressed mind that created such bizarrely detailed paintings, and viewers are never told that such personal turmoil was a trigger for creativity. It might even come as a surprise to some to know that Beksiński was in fact a very focused and optimistic individual, despite his reclusiveness. The film does not attempt to delve into his work. Instead audiences are left to join the dots, and to match the root of his most chaotic work to some of the crudeness of all the played out sequences. It’s an absolutely harrowing experience in the tragedy and nostalgia it evokes.
The Last Family had a worldwide theatrical release in November 2016, and it’s available to view online for free as part of the ArteKino Festival between December 1st and 17th (2017).
Cinema isn’t plain entertainment. Movies are a powerful engagement and transformational tool. They can change the way your see the world, the way how you relate to others. They also can bring about collective change, allowing communities to reassert their identify, and even political systems to legitimise their ideology, and to improve their social and economic strength. Everyone of us have experienced the power of cinema, one way or the other.
But not everyone of us has gone behind the camera to capture the world and we see it and then transmit it to others: your loves ones, your friends, but also strangers. The recent advent of digital technology and democratisation of the internet allows us to reach one to people of all ages and virtually everywhere on the planet. Experimental filmmakers are sharing their gaze and baring their soul for everyone to see.
These people deserve a suitably dirty platform for their word. That’s why DMovies is launching an experimental film platform, where experimental filmmakers can showcase their work and connect with new audiences. Our first subject is Philip Brocklehurst, a 26-year-old independent author, screenwriter, producer and director from Birmingham, with his short film compilation entitled Silence is Golden.
We asked Philip a few questions about his inspiration, his feeling and emotions, and why silence is so important to him. His words might help to elucidate his work, but in the end of the day it’s silence that speaks louder!
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DMovies – What does cinema mean to you?
Philip Brocklehurst – Cinema means everything to me, it’s my whole world, I have such a love and admiration for the art of movies, it’s like watching a living, breathing, moving canvas projected right before your eyes. It holds the great power to do such amazing and extraordinary things, it can make you laugh, cry, scared. It can entertain you or open your eyes to the world around you, make you stop and think about life and see things you never thought was possible.
DM – What feelings and emotions do you have being behind the camera? For example, do you feel empowered?
PB – It is very empowering to be behind the camera, having the power to create anything that the lens can see, having to control the elements to make the best film you can make. I always feel excited to be taking the ideas and images in my head and bringing them to life on film. When I make a film, I always like the camera to be alive and part of the film, taking every fine detail in. I hope to make bigger and broader short films, and then one day have the chance to move into feature films to show the world my visions. I believe filmmaking is art in motion, the camera is the brush and the world is the canvas, and as an artist I relish creating various moving works of art of every kind for ones viewing pleasure.
DM – What is the meaning of silence to you? How do you communicate in silence?
PB – Silence can speak louder than any words ever can. There is a clarity with silence. there are no words to distract, cloud the truth or alter the facts laid out in a bareness that only silence brings. Without any words, you can focus on what is presented and see it with your own eyes and feel your own feelings without having it told to you. Silence is interesting, you can interpret it in many diverse ways. Your own self creates the words to go with it. And so, in silence, you communicate through the soul, the heart and the mind, and that is translated through the imagery, you speak to the audience with what they can see and feel in the actions and the facial expressions and take what they want from it. There’s no right or wrong way of understanding silence, you understand it in your own way, because silence is always different and personal for everyone, we all have our own silence and in that silence we see things through our own diverse eyes.
I have been accustomed to silence for so long, it’s kindred to me. And so I wanted to translate that in my film: Silence is Golden. It’s a unique experience, a silent collection of experimental short films that will open the eyes and the mind to a world of depth, beauty and visual art. All subconsciously telling the story of one young man’s quest for freedom and self expression. There is no dialogue, and sometimes there is only music, ambiance or complete silence to convey the message behind the shorts.
The film is a very personal one to me, all the short films are representations of my life, views, feelings, thoughts, heart, even my fears and deepest emotions, all expressed into the living, breathing, moving art of film. It is my form of expressing myself and sharing a piece of who and what I am to the world. It is a way of showing that even though I am obscured by the vastness of the world, I still do exist in my own diverse way.
I may not have a voice that can be heard, but I can speak out to the world with this film, it’s my silence communicated to all.
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Below is a compilation of Philip’s most treasured and intimate pieces. They are invaluable fragments of a young man’s life and of his desire to express his most intricate feelings through images. These videos scream out emotions that cannot expressed with words. Ultimately Philip wants to bring these short films together into one larger piece entitled Silence is Golden.
Now it’s up to you to put the pieces together, and gradually to work out the artist behind it – just like you would with a cubist painting. Go ahead, you might even recognise some fragments of yourself!
Free: Philip’s first short film is about the yearning to break free from the constraints that holds one back, to no longer be locked away behind a closed door, sealed inside a prison made by oneself. It takes much courage and much determination to take the brave step outside, but in doing so you are no longer imprisoned behind four walls, you are truly free in the vast world beyond where the sky is the limit.
A New Start: Watch Philip’s short film on change and how sometimes we all need to reinvent, remake and reboot ourselves for a much needed new start.
Narcissus: This short movie is based on a modern day variation of the great ancient Greek mythological character Narcissus that takes the meaning of narcissism to a whole new degree in a bold and passionate way.
Windows to the Soul: A short film on the gateways into one’s own being, the passage that leads into the world within: the eyes, the windows to the very soul that defines the individual bound to the flesh encased around it.
Hands: This short film captures the most two important tools every human being in this world has: hands. In those palms, contained in those fingers is a means to do great good in this world, to create such wonderful things to inspire, amaze and move the masses. Such power that if used right, can make the world a better and beautiful place.
Summer Breeze: Experience the absolute beauty and absolute wonder of a summer day graced with a gentle and strong breeze which has the power to bring the entire garden alive in a great spectacle of nature. So relaxing and captivating for all the senses.
Rain and Shine: This movie focuses on the pure beauty of rain falling during the sheer radiance of the sunlight. Rain and shine, two contrasting opposites meeting together as one, basked in the wonder and grace of nature, the glorious gift of life shining right outside our humble window.
The Cloud: In this short film, nature is highly symbolic. Sometimes we all have a dark cloud hanging so big overhead. With strength and courage, it can be overcome and the glorious light will return, and the dark cloud will grow smaller until it has gone completely, passing as a distant memory.
A Walk by the Canal: Take a visual trip the viewer on a blissful journey down the scenic canal full of tranquil water, lush greenery and peaceful ambiance to create a soothing experience for the senses, on a very beautiful summer’s day.
Walking the Dog: There is the sheer fun and sheer wonder in such a simple gesture of a walk is for our precious and special four legged friends. A walk for a dog is truly one of the greatest gifts a human can give them and makes their day fully complete with a great mix of fuss and food. Featuring the music of Dittersdorf- Harpsichord Concerto in A major (1779) by Janos Sebestyen.
The Crazy Kitten: A short film on the wildness and innocence of youth projecting through a feral kitten, playing around so care free and crazily in her playground of bliss and happiness.
Featuring Beethoven’s 5th Symphony
Stranger in the Night: This is a vivid nightmare where a bizarre and unreal stranger in the night stands, basked in the dark, with sinister intentions to destroy any that he lays eyes on and send them into the darkest depths of damnation. Featuring the Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven.
Light in the Dark: There are lights in the darkness, shining with such a resonating vibrancy. The light and the dark, two contrasting spectrum’s going hand-in-hand to create such an enchanting effect in the serene night, it’s very romantic and very mystical. It makes one yearn to walk in the peaceful night, basked in the light, surrounded by the dark, taken in by the cool breeze and magical atmosphere. One with yourself and the world.
Night Life: Our final piece is an experimental short film using garden lights in the pitch black environment that shows just how captivating and enchanting the two sources can be when combined together. They can create pure magic for the eyes. Just sit back and enjoy the spectacular show with Mozart’s timeless piece Eine kleine Nachtmusik to transport you into a magical world of sheer wonder and sheer bliss full of inner happiness and inner serenity that will never end even after the film stops playing.
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You can purchase books by Philip Brocklehurst on Amazon or on the author’s past – just click hereor here. He writes under the pen name P.M. Thomas.
And you can contact us via e-mail on info@dirtymovies.org if you too would like to showcase your work with us.
This 80-year-old English director from the small town of Nuneaton is the most recognisable face of British working-class realism, with a career spanning more than five decades, and more than 60 films for both cinema and television. He also counts two Palme d’Or awards under his belt: The Wind that Shakes the Barley in 2006 and I, Daniel Blake this year, plus a number of accolades from every corner of Europe and the world.
I, Daniel Blake saw its theatrical release just 11 days ago, and it has since stirred a lot of controversy. The rivetting drama tells the story of the eponymous 59-old widower and carpenter living in Newcastle (played by Dave Johns). Daniel has had a heart attack and his GP and physiotherapist will not allow him to go back to work. Tragically, he gets caught up in the red tape of the callous benefit system. The outcome isn’t rosy, with the stress of the procedure triggering a fatal heart.
Victor Fraga, editor at DMovies, met up with Ken at the offices of his film production company Sixteen Films for an exclusive interview . We asked him dirty questions about his though-provoking feature, his left-wing political allegiances, Cannes, Brexit, Truffaut, George Lloyd, Cathy and Daniel. The well-mannered cricket-lover has views that are both accurate and sobering. So read on!
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DMovies – Two thousand and three hundred people in the UK died between December 2011 and February 2014 after they were deemed fit to work, according to figures published by the DWP in August 2015. That’s 2,300 Daniel Blakes. Where did we get it so wrong?
Ken Loach – Well, I don’t think we got it wrong. This is a deliberate policy of government to drive people out of the benefit system. They know what they are doing; they know that they are humiliating and destroying people by how they operate, by forcing sick people to go through an assessment in order to get the means to survive. And in that situation of course people will die. That’s unfortunate collateral damage for the government.
DM – Our reader Richard Banker said in a Facebook comment of our review of I, Daniel Blake: “The whole system was brought in by New Labour in 2008 with the Employment Support Regulations 2008 and awarding Atos Origin the contract. It has taken the Labour Party till now with the advent of Jeremy Corbyn to finally repudiate the system. I will be watching it”. Do you agree with Richard?
KL – I absolutely agree. The Labour Party under Blair and Brown was, in some ways, hardly distinguishable from the Tories, and they did bring this system in. The Party now under Jeremy Corbyn is a different Party, politically. The Shadow Minister of Housing said that Labour would end the assessments and rely instead on doctors and consultants, the real medical experts to provide the answers, and they would also end the punitive sanctions regime. These sanctions drive people’s lives into chaos. There’s nothing in their fridge, nothing in their bank account. They have nothing. They become hungry, and they can’t get warm. The government uses hunger as a weapon to discipline people.
Your reader is dead right. That was Labour indeed. Thank God that Labour Party no longer exists, except for the few idiot backbenchers who attack Corbyn all the time. The Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell is very different.
DM – The Welfare State is now over 100 years old. Do you think the former Chancellor of Exchequer and Prime Minister David Lloyd George would be proud of what has been achieved in a century?
KL – I wouldn’t say the Welfare State began with Lloyd George. I would say it began with the Clement Attlee government of 1945. There has been some things put in place by Lloyd George, but the Welfare State as we know began with the establishment of free healthcare, support for the most vulnerable. This was brought in at a time of full employment, but sadly successive governments have allowed this system to be eroded – and that’s another significant element. The Welfare State also exists in housing, that’s another aspect that came in my Nye Bevan. This also includes social care: organisations in community supporting old and disabled people. The whole idea of being looked after from the cradle to the grave, that came in with Attlee, and that’s what the Tories have been dismantling for years.
DM – And do you that Attlee and Bevan would be proud of what has been achieved?
KL – I think that Clement Attlee would have been dismayed, and Nye Bevan would have been incandescent with rage. I think Nye Bevan would be alongside Corbyn. Attlee was more defined by his time, while Bevan had underlined social principles in his heart, which would have aligned him with Corbyn.
Ken Loach and Victor Fraga at the offices of Sixteen Films. If Cathy was alive, she’d be in a room half this size.
DM – It’s 50 years since you made Cathy Come Home. So let’s move the years back. If Daniel Blake was born 50 years earlier and was unable to work, at the time of Cathy, do you think that he would have survived?
KL – I think that’s a really good question. I think Daniel certainly would have survived because he would have received his sickness pay. He would have not been humiliated and tested time after time. There would have been no cruel regime to get him out of the office as quickly as possible. Not only would he have survived, but the health service would have been better set up to look after him. There weren’t cutbacks in beds, in nursing care. Everything was owned and controlled by us all. It was a proper National Health Service. Daniel wouldn’t have been forced into another heart attack back then.
DM – Let’s turn things around. Had Cathy been born 50 years later, would she be homeless right now?
KL – She probably would be homeless if she lived in London because the housing crisis is much worse now than it was 50 years ago. The arrangements for homeless people are different now. She would probably be in a hostel in room half the size of this room [an average double size room, pictured above] with three kids, including her baby, feeding, eating, sleeping and doing school work, all in one place. So maybe she wouldn’t be homeless, but that’s where she would be.
DM – The French filmmaker Truffaut once famously said that the words “British” and “cinema” were an oxymoron. Yet, it was a French Festival, Cannes, that gave you possibly the most important accolade of your career, and twice: the Palme d’Or. On the other hand, American awards such as the Oscars haven’t recognised your work as emphatically, despite the enormous cultural affinity between the US and the UK. Why do you think that is?
KL – I hope Truffaut was joking. I think the French take cinema more seriously. They don’t see it as a commodity, as a product to make money, like Americans do. They have a wider view of cinema. Of course I was delighted to receive this accolade from the French. Well, the jury isn’t exclusively French, it’s international, but the French audiences have been incredibly generous to us. They have always screened our films to a very wide public. They are very conscious of our depth.
It would be nice to meet with François Truffaut, share a glass and change his mind!
KL – It’s a fake patriotism. There’s always exceptions, but by and large the traditional Sunday night television period dramas are nostalgic, like a Christmas card. People walking through snow and not getting damp. That’s ok, as long as we know what it is, but you need the corrective of films and stories that tell the truth rather than a kitsch nostalgia.
Gordon Brown once said that we need to stop apologising about the British Empire, but I don’t recall there ever being an apology. The British Empire was founded on land conquests, enslaving people, transporting them to other countries, stealing people’s natural resources, exploitation, brutality, concentration camps. We do need to tell the truth about that. I’m not saying we should wallow in guilt. This is what happened and we need to know our history, that’s all. The fake patriotism of Britannia rules the waves is nonsense.
Still from I, Daniel Blake (Dave Johns on the top right)
DM – Can you mention a few names in film or television of people who do a good job in portraying an authentic Britain?
KL – I prefer not to name people because I don’t want to miss anyone out, and also because my memory is rubbish. I think there’s a lot of hugely talented young people who could do it. There are also brilliant writers out there, and they need producers who can work with them, and of course we need the television channels to commission the right work. And not be cowered by management, or be micromanaged. No one should be chipping in and telling them what to do.
DM – Let’s talk about post-Brexit Britain. Do you think being British now means the same as before the referendum?
KL – The debate over Europe was complicated. On the left, a lot of people opposed the EU as an economic project because it’s a neo-liberal project favouring business. It doesn’t mean that they refuse to work with the EU corporation. They might want to stay or to leave for tactical reasons.
The position of the right is that they had a romantic idea of British sovereignty and English, of us as a separate nation. This is very strong in both English and British consciousness. Britannia Rules the Waves is part of this nostalgia.
A lot of people on both sides felt alienated and neglected, like no one spoke to them. So they voted against the establishment, against what Westminster was telling them. The Leave vote was a complicated mixture of all that.
This [conjecture] has raised up old memories of dislike of immigrants. It’s very disturbing. We need very strong political leadership from the left in order to change this, in the interest of ordinary people.
DM – Will you be dealing with the subject of immigration and xenophobia anytime soon?
KL – I don’t know yet. I’ll have to wait and see first what the future brings!
Richard Linklater is not your average filmmaker. His debut feature, Slacker, in 1991, caused a commotion in the media and public as he lent an entirely new meaning to “slacker”. For that generation, it did not mean “a person who evades military service” but a “young guy who was part of a subculture characterised by apathy and aimlessness”. Linklater was talking about his own experiences: in late ’80s in Texas nobody cared about movies. And to a certain degree he kept choosing projects that avoided the mainstream. The biopic Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny illustrates his career and work, and it also uncovers the fiercely independent arts scene that emerged from Austin, Texas.
Family and colleagues reveal that at a very young age Linklater would isolate himself in order to write. He kept all his early writings, though he admits he wasn’t ready to author a script. “It takes a long way until your technical abilities catch up with your ideas.” He then realised he wanted to be part of a collective; he wanted actors and crew to join the creative process, and this is what distinguishes Linklater from other ordinary filmmakers. His top priorities were never achieving technical excellence writing the ‘perfect script’. His films are always a work-in-progress and very much reliant on his collaborators.
Late North-American film critic Roger Ebert soon found out Linklater’s style: “We don’t get a story, but we do get a feeling”. Some actors couldn’t cope with this unorthodox moviemaking approach. The diva Shirley Maclaine, who was in Bernie (Linklater, 2011), once asked to him: “But what do you want?”. The answer was very succinct: “I want you!”.
Ethan Hawke (Jesse) and Julie Delpy (Céline) accepted for three times to act on the sequels, Before Sunrise (1995), Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013). Linklater never planned a series. Accidently, he desired to film a relationship in time. In Before Sunrise, two characters meet in a train and feel attracted by each other. The plot is minimalistic, as not much happens. Because they have limited time together, they reveal more about themselves than they would normally do. When they meet up again, nine years later, Jesse is more cynical than Céline: he doesn’t tell her he is married. The third film, Before Midnight, was co-written by Linklater, Hawke and Delpy. While vacationing in Greece, the couple expose their perspectives on love, marriage and long-term commitment that are based on their relations with other partners.
The biopic also portrays Linklater’s box office failures, such as the animations Waking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006). It seems that the non-narrative style has led to a big question mark: what the hell is going on?
On the other hand, Linklater’s most ambitious project gave him many awards and recognition. Boyhood (2014) was shot in 39 days and covered 12 years of a boy from Texas, a child of divorce. Mason (the boy Ellar Coltrane), Samantha (the daughter Lorelei Linklater), dad (Ethan Hawke) and mom (Patricia Arquette) agreed to take part in this movie that is considered a lifetime achievement. We learn about the difficulties of getting funds for a film that lacked unity and that would be completed after 12 years. Everyone involved had commitment and faith. The film feels extremely authentic, despite little cohesiveness in the narrative.
Richard Linklater still lives in Texas, away from the busy urban life and the spotlights of Hollywood. He is still telling his stories as if he was the boy who is skipping lessons in order to go to the library.
Richard Linklater: Dream Is Destiny is released in UK cinemas on November 4th. Watch the trailer below:
